The Leonard Lopate Show
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Guest Picks: Danny Meyer
Restaurateur Danny Meyer was on the Lopate Show's Food Fridays series recently to talk about the food that chefs cook for each other for the family meals at each of his restaurants. He also told us what toppings he puts on his favorite pizza. What have you read or seen over the past year (book, play, film, etc…) that moved or surprised you? Theatre for A New Audience's production of Much Ado About Nothing. Reminded me of why Shakespeare is the most contemporary stage writer going. Funny and...
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Outcry Over Bear Bile Farming in China
There's an article in today's New York Times about anger over bear bile farming in China and the growing animal rights movement in that country. Bear bile is an ingredient in some Chinese medicine, and the methods for collecting it from bears held in captive is seen by many as animal cruelty. Listen to Leonard's 2012 interview with Jill Robinson, founder and CEO of Animals Asia, discussing bear bile farming and bear rescue efforts and the documentary "Cages of Shame."
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George Packer on the Unwinding of America; Alex Gibney...
George Packer discusses the social, political and economic upheaval the United States has experienced over the past generation. And Alex Gibney talks about his documentary “We Steal Secrets: the story of Wikileaks.”
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George Packer on The Unwinding of America
George Packer discusses the Seismic shifts in the United States that have created what he calls a country of winners and losers, allowing unprecedented freedom while rending the social contract, driving the political system to the verge of breakdown, and setting citizens adrift. In The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America Packer journeys through the lives of several Americans, interweaving intimate stories with biographical sketches of the era’s leading public figures, from Newt...
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The Story of Wikileaks
Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney talks about his new film “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks.” He details the creation of Julian Assange’s controversial website Wikileaks, which facilitated the largest security breach in U.S. history. “We Steal Secrets: the story of Wikileaks” opens May 24 at Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center at Lincoln Center and the Angelika Film Center.
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The Cool War with China
Noah Feldman looks at the future of U.S.-China relations, and how their coming power struggle will reshape the playing field for nations around the world. He argues that we’re entering an era of renewed global struggle: the era of Cool War—between the United States and China. In Cool War: The Future of Global Competition, Feldman depicts what he sees as a likely contest for dominance, alliances, and resources.
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Peter Hessler's Dispatches from East and West
Peter Hessler, staff writer at The New Yorker and Beijing correspondent 2000-2007, and a contributing writer for National Geographic, discusses living in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions. His new collection of stories is called Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West, and includes his writing on his taste test between two rat restaurants in South China, and profiles of basketball star Yao Ming and an...
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The Cool War with China; Peter Hessler on Dispatches...
On today’s show, New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler talks about his time reporting in China and in the West. And Noah Feldman explains why he thinks the United States is entering a Cool War with China—a contest for alliances, resources, and economic dominance.
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Guest Picks: David Sedaris
David Sedaris was on the Lopate Show to talk about his latest book, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. He shared a few of the books he's been enjoying lately. What have you read or seen lately (book, play, film, etc...) that moved or surprised you? Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (book) What are you listening to right now? Julie Klausher's I Don't Care About Your Band (audiobook). What’s the last great book you read? The Book of My Lives, by Aleksandar Hemon...
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David Sedaris; Paul Farmer of Partners In Health
David Sedaris talks about writing about his family, living abroad, cleaning up roadside rubbish, and keeping a diary. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In Health, talks about healthcare and social justice.
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David Sedaris: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
David Sedaris, a master of the personal essay, talks about writing about his family, living abroad, and keeping a diary. He’s a regular contributor to The New Yorker, This American Life, and BBC Radio 4, and his latest book is Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls.
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Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation
Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In Health and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, discusses working in Haiti, health and human rights, and his role as a voice for global health equity and social justice. His new book, To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation, is a collection of speeches about the encouraging ways to improve the lives of the billions of people around the world without access to health care, safe...
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Please Explain: Pasta
Pasta is a staple of Italian food, but noodles are also an important part of Asian cuisine. Pasta is versatile, comes in hundreds of shapes and sizes, and on this week’s Please Explain we’ll find out how it’s made and ways to cook with it. Joining us: Ron Palladino, pasta expert and Fresh Pasta counter general manager at Eataly, and Jack Bishop, editorial director of America’s Test Kitchen and author of several cookbooks, including The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook, Pasta e Verdura,...
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The Art of Food Styling
Food stylist Roscoe Betsill shares the tricks of his trade and explains what food stylists do to make foods look fresh and delicious in photographs.
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Danny Meyer on Staff Meals at His Restaurants
Danny Meyer, of Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Maialino, Blue Smoke, The Modern, and more, talks about the food that the chefs make for one another—the staff “family meal.” It is simple, often improvised, but special enough to please the chefs’ discerning palates. In Family Table: Favorite Staff Meals from Our Restaurant to Your Home, the restaurants’ culinary director, Michael Romano, coauthor of the award-winning Union Square Cafe Cookbook, collects and refines his favorite in-house...
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Food Styling; Danny Meyer on Staff Meals, Please Explain...
Today is the final episode of our Food Fridays series! First, we’ll find out what food stylists do to make food look good on film. Then Danny Meyer tells us about the staff meal traditions in his great restaurants. And this week’s Please Explain is all about pasta!
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Comedian Jim Gaffigan: Dad Is Fat
Stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan examines all the joys and horrors of life with his five young children and talks about his comedy career. His new book, Dad Is Fat, is reminiscent of Bill Cosby’s Fatherhood, and is a humorous cry for help from a man who has realized he and his wife are outnumbered in their own home.
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Alan Cumming in "Macbeth"
Alan Cumming discusses his acclaimed one-man production ofShakespeare’s “Macbeth.” The action is set in a clinical room deep within a dark psychiatric hospital. Cumming is the lone patient, reliving the infamous story and inhabiting each role himself.“Macbeth” is playing at the Ethel Barrymore Theater and has been extended through July 14.
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"Colin Quinn Unconstitutional"
Colin Quinn talks about “Colin Quinn Unconstitutional,” a new comedy written that he wrote and stars in. On May 25, 1787, 55 delegates in wigs and tights sat down to create a country from scratch. Quinn offers his unique comedic perspective on our national character, from predator drones to the Kardashians, and he asks if this is what the founding fathers planned. It opens at The Barrow Street TheatreMay 16.
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Colin Quinn Unconstitutional; Jim Gaffigan on...
Colin Quinn talks about his new comedy, “Colin Quinn Unconstitutional,” about what our founding fathers might think of our country today. Stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan shares stories about fatherhood. Alan Cumming discusses his acclaimed one-man production ofShakespeare’s “Macbeth.” And we’ll find out about a new production of Horton Foote’s classic play “The Trip to Bountiful.”
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"The Trip to Bountiful"
Actress Cicely Tyson, director Michael Wilson, and Hallie Foote (Horton’s daughter) discuss Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.” Cicely Tyson plays a woman trapped in a cramped Houston apartment with her soft-spoken son and out-spoken daughter-in-law, dreaming of a return to the small Gulf Coast town of Bountiful, where she grew up and raised her family. Worried that she’s an imposition and longing to escape her daughter-in-law’s watchful eye, she steals away with her latest pension check...
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The Documentary “Bidder 70”
In their documentary “Bidder 70,” Beth Gage and George Gage tell the story of Tim DeChristopher. In 2008, as George W. Bush tried to give the energy and mining industries thousands of acres of pristine Utah wilderness via a widely disputed federal auction, DeChristopher, then a college student bid $1.7 million, and won 22,000 acres with no intention to drill. For this act of civil disobedience he was sent to federal prison, but his actions helped ignite a movement. “Bidder 70” opens May 17...
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Dave Bry Makes a Public Apology
Dave Bry discusses the many things he’s sorry for, and how he’s come to grip with his past and his regrets. In Public Apology: In Which a Man Grapples with a Lifetime of Regret, One Incident at a Time, he writes funny and moving apologies to those he has wronged--to the girl whose ear he sung the last verse of "Stairway to Heaven" into while slow dancing in junior high school to his own father, who he feels more compassionate about now that Bry has become a dad. Do you have something you...
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Apologies, Restaurant Reviews, the Documentary "Bidder...
Dave Bry talks about how apologizing to everyone from his date to a junior high school dance to his cancer-stricken father has helped him come to terms with his past. Then, Raymond Sokolov on watching the food world change since 1971, when he was named food editor at the New York Times. And the directors of the documentary “Bidder 70” tell the story of Tim DeChristopher, who was sent to prison after he successfully bid against energy and mining companies to buy 22,000 acres of land in Utah...
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Raymond Sokolov's 40 Years in Food
Raymond Sokolov became food editor of the New York Times in 1971, and he discusses his long, memorable career as restaurant critic, food historian, and author. In Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food, he traces the food scene he reported on in America and abroad, from backwoods barbecue shack in Alabama to molecular gastronomy at El Bulli in Spain.
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Lauren Graham
Lauren Graham talks about her career as an actress—from "Gilmore Girls" to "Guys and Dolls" to "Parenthood"—and her new novel, Someday, Someday, Maybe. She shares stories about anxiety and auditions.
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Andrew Revkin's Stroke of Luck
Reporter Andrew Revkin, who writes the Dot Earth blog for the New York Times, talks about having a stroke 22 months ago. His article "My Stroke of Luck" is in the Science section of today's New York Times.
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Actress Lauren Graham, Surviving a Stroke, Jared Cohen...
Lauren Graham talks about her acting career and about writing her first novel. New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin talks about having a stroke nearly two years ago. Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas and a former advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, talks about how new technologies are making us re-evaluate all corners of public and private life.
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Photojournalists on Covering the War in Iraq
Michael Kamber interviewed photojournalists from many leading news organizations to create a comprehensive collection of eyewitness accounts of the Iraq War—Photojournalists on War. He’s joined by photographers Alan Chin and Ashley Gilbertson, who discuss trying to cover the war in Iraq and examine the role of the media and issues of censorship. Photojournalists on War includes previously unpublished photographs by diverse group of the world's top news photographers.
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The Philadelphia Chromosome
Science journalist Jessica Wapner tells the story of how an accidental discovery of what's called the Philadelphia chromosome was the starting point of modern cancer research In The Philadelphia Chromosome, Wapner reconstructs more than 40 years of crucial breakthroughs based on the chromosome, including successful treatment of cancer at the genetic level.
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The Philadelphia Chromosome; the Beatles in the USSR;...
We’ll hear the story of how the accidental discovery of the Philadelphia chromosome led to the first successful treatment of a cancer on a genetic level three decades later. Leslie Woodhead tells how the Beatles helped to inspire an entire generation of Soviet youth. Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale talk about their new album, “Buddy Jim.” And Michael Kamber and photojournalists Alan Chin and Ashley Gilbertson talk about covering the Iraq War.
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How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin
Leslie Woodhead reveals how the music of the Beatles played a major role in waking up an entire generation of Soviet youth, opening their eyes to 70 years of bland official culture and rigid authoritarianism. In How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin, he writes about how, in the USSR, music fans risked repression to hear the Beatles, and the Beatles and the bands they inspired helped break down the walls of Soviet culture.
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Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale
Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale discuss their new record “Buddy Jim,” which features newly written songs and several vintage covers. They also talk about “The Buddy Jim Show”—each week Buddy and Jim invite artists to Buddy’s home studio in Nashville, where they tape performances and interviews with artists and friends.
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Eat the City
Robin Shulman, author of Eat the City, talks about the fishers, foragers, butchers, farmers, poultry minders, sugar refiners, beekeepers, winemakers, and brewers—past and present—who’ve made New York City into such a great place for food. She’s joined by Latif Jiji, who transformed his 4-story brick townhouse on the Upper East Side into a vertical winery, and Imran Uddin, who owns a slaughterhouse in Queens that sources naturally raised heritage breeds of chicken, lamb, goat, and other...
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Please Explain: Olive Oil
Lou DiPalo, third-generation expert olive oil importer and the co-owner of Di Palo Fine Foods in New York City, and Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a writer and food historian who’s the author ofThe New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, tell us all about olive oil--from its history to to how it's made to its many varieties.
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Food in NY, Lina Prokofiev, Please Exlain Olive Oil,...
Author Robin Shulman, winemaker Latif Jiji, and slaughterhouse owner Imran Uddin on food and making food in NYC. Simon Morrison on the love and wars of Lina Prokofiev. Please Explain is all about olive oil. Icelandic novelist Sjón on The Whispering Muse.
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The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev
Simon Morrison reveals the life story of the composer Serge Prokofiev’s wife, Lina. In Lina Serge: The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev, Morrison depicts her as a remarkable woman who fought for survival in the face of unbearable betrayal—she spent eight years in a Soviet gulag—by the irresistibly talented but self-absorbed musician she married.
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Icelandic Novelist Sjón
Celebrated Icelandic novelist Sjón has won many international awards and has been compared to Borges, Calvino, and Iceland’s other literary superstar, the Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness. His new novel The Whispering Muse is set in 1949, and follows Valdimar Haraldsson, an eccentric Icelander who joins a Danish merchant ship on its way to the Black Sea.
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James Salter's Novel All That Is
PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter talks about his new novel, All That Is, a sweeping, seductive story set in the years after World War II. It’s the story of Philip Bowman, who returns to America from in battles off Okinawa, and finds a position as a book editor. It is a time when publishing is still largely a private affair, and in this world of dinners, deals, and literary careers, Bowman finds that he fits in perfectly. But despite his success, what eludes him is love.
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Why Wall Street Always Wins
Earlier this week the House Financial Services Committee approved several pieces of legislation which alter the portion of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that deals with derivatives. Jeff Connaughton, a former investment banker, lobbyist, White House lawyer and Senate aide, talks about the state of Wall Street regulation. He's the author of The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins.
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Stolen Tyrannosaurus Skeleton Returns to Mongolia
This week the United States returned a stolen 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus skeleton to Mongolia. Dr. Mark Norell, Curator-in-Charge of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, was one of the first people to bring the looted skeleton to the attention of U.S. customs officials, and he'll talk about the skeleton and how it was discovered.
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Homeless Families, What Conductors Do, James Salter's...
In January, New York City’s homeless population topped 50,000. On today’s show: we’ll look into the increase in homeless families and talk with a woman about how this happened to her. Leonard Slatkin explains what it is that conductors do, from running rehearsals to raising a baton to start a performance. Celebrated writer James Salter talks about his latest novel, All That Is. Plus, we’ll discuss the case of a stolen Tyrannosaurus skeleton, which is being returned to Mongolia.
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Leonard Slatkin on Conducting
Conductor Leonard Slatkin explains what it is exactly that conductors do for a living. In Conducting Business, he brings this most mysterious of jobs to life for the music lover as well as for the aspiring maestro, and tells tales of some of the most fascinating people in the musical world, including Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein, and John Williams. Maestro Slatkin is conducting the Detroit Symphony in two concerts as part of the Spring for Music Festival at Carnegie Hall Thursday and...
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Homeless Families in NYC
In January, the city’s homeless population exceeded 50,000, the highest number since the Great Depression. Kim Velsey, New York Observer senior editor, talks about the growing number of homeless families that made up most of the city’s shelter population. She'll be joined by joined by Anne Pierre, a homeless mother Velsey wrote about in her article “The Return of Hooverville,” in the April 29 New York Observer.
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Frank Rich on Race and the GOP, Rescuing Italian Art,...
New York Magazine’s Frank Rich discusses the Republican Party’s efforts to remake its image in an effort to attract more minority voters. We’ll find out about the American soldiers who rescued some of Italy’s art treasures from destruction by the Nazis during World War II. Bill Cheng discusses his novel, Southern Cross the Dog, about how the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 upends the relationships of three childhood friends. Plus, our word maven Patricia T. O’Conner takes your calls and...
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Southern Cross the Dog: A Novel
Bill Cheng talks about his novel Southern Cross the Dog. It’s an epic literary debut in which the bonds between three childhood friends are upended by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. In its aftermath, one young man must choose between the lure of the future and the claims of the past.
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Rescuing Italian Art from Nazis
Robert Edsel talks about the men and women who rescued great Italian art from destruction during WWII. In May 1944 two unlikely American heroes—artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt—set out from Naples to track billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli. Edsel tells the story in Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis.
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Frank Rich on Race and the GOP
New York writer-at-large Frank Rich discusses the Republican strategy to convince mainstream America that it is still the party of Lincoln, even as it fails to win over black voters. In his article “White Wash,” in the May 13 issue of New York magazine, he looks at how the GOP is attempting to remake its image by spinning its racial history.
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Word Maven: Patricia T. O'Conner on Mother's Day
Our word maven Patricia T. O'Conner talks about the apostrophe and Mother's Day. She’ll also answer questions about language and grammar. An updated and expanded third edition of her book,Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, is available in paperback, as is Origins of the Specious, written with Stewart Kellerman. If you have a question about language and grammar, leave a comment or call us at 212-433-9692!
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Jaron Lanier and Eric Drexler on Technology and the...
Jaron Lanier, who has been called the father of virtual reality, explains how technology continues to transform our culture. We’ll look at the life of philosopher Erich Fromm, who wrote about both political and personal relationships and was a major founder of Amnesty International. Nathaniel Philbrick talks about how the Battle of Bunker Hill ignited the American Revolution. Eric Drexler, the founding father of nanotechnology, discusses the future of that science.
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How Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization
K. Eric Drexler, the founding father of nanotechnology talks about the rapid scientific progress that is about to change our world. In Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization he explains that the result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment.
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Nathaniel Philbrick on Bunker Hill
Nathaniel Philbrick tells the story of the Boston battle that ignited the American Revolution, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists. In his book Bunker Hill: A City, a Seige, a Revolution, Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to every aspect of the story of the battle that led to the Revolution.
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The Lives of Erich Fromm
Lawrence J. Friedman talks about Erich Fromm, a political activist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet, is the first study of Fromm's influences and achievements, and revisits his most important works.
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Jaron Lanier Asks Who Owns the Future?
Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality and one of the most influential thinkers of our time, examines the effects network technologies have had on our economy. In his new book Who Owns the Future? he asserts that the rise of digital networks led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class. He looks at why and charts the path toward a new information economy that will stabilize the middle class and allow it to grow.
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Burt Bacharach, Saul Bellow's Life, The Great Gatsby,...
On today’s show: Songwriter Burt Bacharach talks about his life and career in music. Greg Bellow looks at his complex relationship with his father, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow. We’re airing a conversation recorded in the Greene Space in March with the BBC World Book Club. on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Plus, “Venus and Serena,” a new documentary about how the Williams sisters broke new ground and came to dominate women’s tennis.
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Burt Bacharach on his Life in Music
Burt Bacharach, award-winning songwriter and composer, talks about his life and music—from his tumultuous marriages and the tragicsuicide of his daughter to his collaborations with Hal David, Carole Bayer Sager, Neil Diamond, Elvis Costello, and others. His new memoir is called Anyone Who Had a Heart: My Life and Music.
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Saul Bellow's Son Remembers His Father
Greg Bellow, son of Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow, talks about Saul as a father, a side of him unknown to most others. Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir is an affectionate yet honest look inside the life of one of America's greatest 20th century writers.
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“Venus and Serena”
Director Michelle Major talks about her documentary “Venus and Serena,” about the remarkable lives of the greatest sister-act in professional tennis. The Williams sisters broke new ground for female and African American athletes everywhere, dominating the women’s game for over a decade. “Venus and Serena” is currently playing on demand and on iTunes and will be opening at the Village East Cinema May 10.
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March's Book: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
We're broadcasting a discussion recorded in the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in March. The Leonard Lopate Show Book Club joined the BBC World Book Club for a conversation about The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, with writerJay McInerney and literature professor Anne Margaret Daniel. They answer questions from around the world about what makes The Great Gatsby one of the great classics of 20th-century American literature.
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Mark Bittman on Dinner Parties and Changing Your Diet
Mark Bittman talks about what to cook for the perfect dinner party. He’ll also talk about altering his diet to lose weight and be healthier. He shares his plan in his new book, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lost Weight and Restore Your Health…for Good, and provides all the necessary tools for making the switch to a “flexitarian” diet.
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Mark Bittman, Philip Galanes, Wine and Beer Advice, the...
On today’s show: our Food Fridays series continues with New York Times columnist Mark Bittman’s tips on how to cook for the perfect dinner party—and how to lose weight. Social Q’s columnist Philip Galanes takes calls and questions on how to survive dinner party disasters. Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg help us pick the perfect wines and other drinks to serve at any dinner party. And on this week’s Please Explain, we delve into the science of cooking with Harold McGee!
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Please Explain: The Science of Cooking
For Please Explain, Curious Cook Harold McGee talks about the science of cooking—from how heat changes meat to the differences between baking powder and baking soda. He’s the author of a number of books, including Keys to Good Cooking, and On Food and Cooking.
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Drink and Food
Food writers Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg talk about how to choose the perfect wines and other drinks for a dinner party—or any party. They’re the authors of What to Drink with What You Eat, The Food Lover’s Guide to Wine, and The Flavor Bible.
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Philip Galanes on Dinner Party Etiquette
Philip Galanes talks about dinner party etiquette—how do deal with diet restrictions, unexpected guests, hostess gifts, and steering conversation. He's the New York Times Social Q’s columnist and author of Social Q's: How to Survive the Quirks, Quandaries and Quagmires of Today. Share your dinner party etiquette questions!
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Hem Performs Live
The band Hem—Sally Ellyson, Dan Messe, Gary Maurer, and Steve Curtis—talk about their new album “Departure and Farewell” and perform live in our studio.
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Lead Wars, Hem Performs Live, Mars Rover, Nadeem Aslam's...
We’ll find out how the effort to protect children from lead poisoning became one of the most contentious and bitter battles in the history of public health. The Brooklyn-based band Hem perform songs form their new album “Departure and Farewell.” Adam Steltzner, the leader of the Mars Rover’s entry, descent, and landing team, and New Yorker staff writer Burkhard Bilger discuss the Mars Rover and the future of NASA. And Nadeem Aslam talks about his latest novel, The Blind Man’s Garden.
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Lead Wars
David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz look at lead poisoning during the past half century, focusing on one of the most contentious and bitter battles in the history of public health. Their book Lead Wars: The Politics and Science and the Fate of America’s Children chronicles the obstacles faced by public health workers in the conservative, pro-business, anti-regulatory climate that took off in the Reagan years and that stymied efforts to eliminate lead from the environment and the bodies of...
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The Mars Rover
New Yorker staff writer Burkhard Bilger and Adam Steltzner, theleader of the Mars Rover's entry, descent, and landing team, talk about the Mars Rover, NASA, and federal finding. Bilger wrote the article “The Martian Chroniclers” in the April 22, 2013, issue of The New Yorker.
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The Blind Man’s Garden, by Nadeem Aslam
Nadeem Aslam discusses The Blind Man’s Garden, his new novel set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the months following 9/11. It’s a story about two foster brothers from a small town in Pakistan who were inseparable as children but whose adult lives have diverged. When one decides to sneak across the border into Afghanistan to help care for wounded civilians, the other decides to go with him to protect him.
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Dana Priest on the U.S.'s Role in Mexico's Drug War
The United States and Mexican security services have forged an unparalleled relationship in recent years in the fight against drug cartels. But now, much of that cooperation may be in jeopardy. Washington Post National Security Reporter Dana Priest talks about the cooperation between agencies like the CIA, the DEA, and the FBI and their Mexican counterparts and looks at how that relationship may change on the eve of President Obama’s trip to Mexico.
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Academy Award–winning director William Friedkin
Academy Award–winning director William Friedkin talks about his career in movies and how Hollywood changed to capture the paranoia and fear of a nation undergoing a cultural nervous breakdown. His long-awaited memoir The Friedkin Connection is about making the films The French Connection, The Exorcist, and To Live and Die in LA, from the 1960s to today.
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Clare Balding on Animals and Other Family
Clare Balding talks about growing up in an unusual household—with more than 100 thoroughbred racehorses, mares, foals, and ponies, as well as an ever-present pack of dogs. As the child of a renowned horse trainer, Clare rode legendary racehorses and received her first pony as a gift from Her Majesty the Queen of England. In her memoir My Animals and Other Family, she writes of her struggles growing up and tells her own coming-of-age story through portraits of her beloved horses and dogs.
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A Mother’s Story of Nurturing Genius
Kristine Barnett talks about her son Jacob, who has an IQ higher than Albert Einstein’s, a photographic memory, and taught himself calculus in two weeks, despite the fact that when Jake was diagnosed with autism at age two, Kristine was told he might never be able to tie his own shoes. The Spark: A Mother’s Story of Nurturing Genius is her memoir of raising her son, focusing not on what he couldn’t do, but on what he could do.
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Mexican Drug War, Raising a Genius, Growing Up with...
Anna Sale fills in for Leonard. She talks to Kristine Barnett about raising her son, Jacob, who’s a math genius who many think could win the Nobel Prize in Physics one day. Then, Clare Balding tells us about growing up on an estate with more than 100 horses. Oscar-winning director William Friedkin talks about directing “The Exorcist,” “The French Connection” and “The Rules of Engagement.”
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The Life and Work of David Foster Wallace
D. T. Max talks about his biography of David Foster Wallace, one of the most influential writers of his generation. In Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, Max charts Wallace’s battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest. Since his death by suicide at the age of forty-six in 2008, Wallace has become a symbol of sincerity and honesty in an inauthentic age.
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Inside Scientology
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright descirbes the inner workings of the Church of Scientology. His book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and Prison of Belief is based on more than 200 personal interviews withcurrent and former Scientologists and years of archival research. He looks at Scientology’s leaders—the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who invented the new religion, and his successor, David Miscavige. He also describes the ways the church pursues celebrities and...
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Inside Scientology, Looking at David Foster Wallace,...
On today’s show: We’re re-airing a conversation about the inner workings of the Church of Scientology with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright and a conversation with D. T. Max on how David Foster Wallace has become one of the most influential writers of his generation. Then we’ll take a look at Mary Pickford with film historian Christel Schmidt and piano accompanist Ben Model. And Temple Grandin talks about the latest scientific research about autism and how our understanding of...
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Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies
Christel Schmidt talks about Mary Pickford, cinema's first great star, along with Ben Model, piano accompanist. Schmidt is editor of Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies, a collection of essays by film historians that sheds new light on this icon's incredible life and legacy. Pickford is revealed as a gifted actress, a philanthropist, and a savvy industry leader who fought for creative control of her films and ultimately became her own producer.
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Temple Grandin on The Autistic Brain
Temple Grandin talks about the latest autism science. When she was born in 1947, autism had only just been named. Today, one in 88 children diagnosed on the spectrum, and autism studies have moved from the realm of psychology to neurology and genetics, and there is far more hope today than ever before thanks to groundbreaking new research into causes andtreatments. Her book The Autistic Brain, brings her singular perspective to an exploration of innovative theories of what causes autism and...
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Joseph Stiglitz on Debt
Economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz discusses public debt and argues that concerns over debt are crowding out the relief and recovery policies that the United States—and other nations facing debt problems—needs. Stiglitz was chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and served as senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank, and his most recent book is The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future.
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Reimagining American Influence in the Middle East
David Rohde looks at the evolving nature of war and argues that a dysfunctional Washington squandered billions on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, neglected its true allies in the war on terror, and failed to employ important nonmilitary weapons in the war on terror. His new book Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in the Middle East surveys post-Arab Spring Tunisia, Turkey, and Egypt, and finds a yearning for American technology, trade, and education, and says only Muslim...
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David Rhode on Reimagining War, Willa Cather's Letters,...
Reporter David Rohde talks about how the nature of war has evolved since 9/11, and why Muslim moderates are the only ones who can truly help eradicate militancy. We’ll take a look at the personal letters that writer Willa Cather never wanted to be published. Soprano Renée Fleming talks about the final concert in her Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall. Economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz on why politicians and economists are focusing on public debt instead of the economic policies...
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The Selected Letters of Willa Cather
Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout discuss The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, published for the first time than 65 years after her death. The 566 letters collected here range from funny reports of life in Red Cloud in the 1880s that Cather wrote as a teenager to such letters to luminaries such as Sarah Orne Jewett, Robert Frost, Yehudi Menuhin, Sinclair Lewis, and the president of Czechoslovakia.
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Renée Fleming's Perspectives
SopranoRenée Fleming discusses “Vienna: Windows to Modernity,” the final concert in her Perspecitives series at Carnegie Hall on May 4. The concert is a tribute to the music of the turn of the 20th century, an era in which Vienna was a hotbed of creativity and music and art. Renée Fleming is joined by pianist Jeremy Denk, the Emerson String Quartet, violinist Paul Neubauer, and cellist Colin Carr. WQXR will be rebroadcasting her January Carnegie recital with Susan Graham on Friday, May 4, at...
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Please Explain: Mushrooms and Fungi
Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia: Revelations of the Weird World of Mushrooms, talks about the world of mushrooms and other fungi. She’ll cover how to forage for mushrooms, how to identify the good and the poisonous, how fungi grow, and how to eat them.
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The Backyard Parables
Margaret Roach offers her best tips for gardening, discouraging animal and insect pests, pickling and preserving, and more. In The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening and Life, she looks at what she's learned through gardening.
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Restaurants Reducing Food Waste in NYC
More than 100 restaurants will participate in the first-ever Food Waste Challenge, a new City program to reduce the amount of organic waste sent to landfills and the greenhouse gases that waste produces. Elizabeth Balkan, senior policy advisor for the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability tells us about the program, participants, and the city's goals of reducing waste.
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Meat Inspection, Restaurant Workers, Gardening, Please...
For this week’s Food Fridays show, Ted Conover describes his experience working as a meat inspector in Nebraska for 6 weeks. We’ll look at how many cooks and servers in restaurants are poorly paid and mistreated, why that is so often overlooked. Margaret Roach shares her tips for making your edible garden grow. We’ll find out how New York City restaurants are starting to compost their kitchen scraps. And this week’s Please Explain is about mushrooms and other edible fungi!
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Ted Conover Goes Undercover as a Meat Inspector
Ted Conover talks about going undercover as a U.S.D.A. inspector at Cargill Meat Solutions in Schuyler, Nebraska. He learned the the meat inspection trade, sees what goes on insideslaughterhouses and, much to his surprise, runs into a representative from Eli Lilly who’s looking for the effects of antibiotics on the meat. He’s written about it in May’s Harper’s magazine, "The Way of All Flesh: Undercover in an Industrial Slaughterhouse."
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Behind the Kitchen Door
Saru Jayaraman, cofounder and codirector of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, discusses the low wages, poor working conditions, discriminatory labor practices that many restaurant workers across the country endure. Her book Behind the Kitchen Door looks at the working conditions at restaurants and at the people who work there, many of them immigrants and minorities, who live on some of the lowest wages...
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Jeremy Scahill on Dirty Wars
Jeremy Scahill, National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine, gives an inside view of America’s new covert wars. He looks at the CIA’s Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command, which conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, and direct drone, AC-130, and cruise missile strikes. Scahill’s new book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield follows the consequences of the declaration that “the world is a battlefield,” as Scahill uncovers...
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Chuck Close: Photo Maquettes
Artist Chuck Close discusses his work and the photographs he works from to make his large-scale portraits. There’s an exhibition of his photographs, “Chuck Close: Photo Maquettes” is on view Eykyn Maclean Gallery.
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Wall Street Manipulation, Chuck Close, Jessica Soffer's...
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi talks about whether bankers and brokers manipulated the market rates that affect global borrowing costs. Chuck Close describes the process of using large-scale Polaroid photographs to create his paintings. Jessica Soffer discusses her novel called Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill talks about America’s covert wars and the elite soldiers who operate in more than 100 countries around the world.
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Jessica Soffer's Novel, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots
Jessica Soffer discusses her novel Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. It’s the story of two women adrift in New York, a widow and an almost-orphan, each searching for someone she’s lost. They’re brought together through cooking, and begin to suspect they are connected by more than their love of food.
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Matt Taibbi on Manipulation of the Swap Market
Matt Taibbi talks about the manipulation of the swaps market. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently subpoenaed brokers at the interdealer broker ICAP and bankers at 15 Wall Street institutions to find out if they colluded to manipulate the ISDAfix rate. ISDAFix impacts global borrowing costs as well as the price of $379 trillion interest-rate swaps, and other important benchmarks in the wake of the Libor rigging scandal.
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Actor Jim Parsons
Actor Jim Parsons discusses his role on the hit television show “The Big Bang Theory,” and starring in the HBO version of “The Normal Heart.”
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Better Medicine, Jim Parsons, Rachel Kushner's New...
We’ll find out what can be done to protect the estimated 100 thousand patients who are affected by preventable medical errors or infections. Jim Parsons drops by to talk about his hit TV series, “The Big Bang Theory” and the upcoming HBO version of Larry Kramer’splay “The Normal Heart.” Rachel Kushner discusses her new novel, The Flame Throwers. Vali Nasr, who was senior advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, explains why he feels American foreign policy is in retreat.
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Rachel Kushner's Novel The Flame Throwers
Rachel Kushner talks about her novel, The Flame Throwers, the story of a young artist and the worlds she encounters in New York and Rome in the mid-1970s—by turns underground, elite, and dangerous. She falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in the 1970s.
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Beyond the Checklist: Making Medicine Safer
The U.S. healthcare system is now spending many millions of dollars to improve "patient safety" and "inter-professional practice." Yet every year an estimated 100,000 patients are still affected by preventable medical errors or infections. Suzanne Gordon and Patrick Mendenhall look at how health care providers can reduce medical errors and injuries. In Beyond the Checklist: What Else Health Care Can Learn from Aviation Teamwork and Safety, they show that lives could be saved and patient care...
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Vali Nasr on American Foreign Policy
Vali Nasr, Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who was Senior Advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke from 2009 to 2011, offers a critique of America's foreign policy and outlines a new relationship with the Muslim world and with new players in the changing Middle East. In The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, Nasr goes behind the scenes at the State Department and reveals how the U.S. government's fear of political backlash and the...
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Michael Pollan on Cooking
Michael Pollan explains that cooking is the most important thing we can do to help reform the American food system to make it more sustainable and healthier and improve the health and well-being of individuals. He discusses how fire, water, air, and earth transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. In his new book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, he tracks his effort to master cooking with the four elements: learning from a North Carolina barbecue pit...
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Selling and Giving Away NYC Parks
The practice of selling, or even giving away, public parkland and historic sites to private developers has become a disturbing trend in recent years. Attorney Jim Walden has taken several of these cases to court, including one involving Brooklyn Bridge Park, as well as the current case of the New York University expansion taking over public open space. He'll look at what the law says, and what can be done to protect these public spaces.
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MIchael Pollan, "Kon-Tiki," "Talley's Folly," and...
Michael Pollan has written about how our food is raised, grown and harvested. Today, he talks about how we cook, transforming those foods into dinner. Then, we’ll find out how the Oscar-winning documentary about the voyage of Thor Heyerdahl’s “Kon-Tiki” was made. Also Danny Burstein and Sarah Paulson talk about starring in a revival of Lanford Wilson’s “Talley’s Folly.” And a look at the recent trend of selling of public parkland and historic sites to private developers, and what can be done...
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"Kon-Tiki"
Olav Heyerdahl and Petter Skavlan discuss the film “Kon-Tiki,” based on the 1951 Academy Award-winning documentary of the same name. It tells the story of Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer who crossed the Pacific Ocean in a balsa wood raft in 1947, with five men, to prove that South Americans could have crossed the sea and settled on Polynesian islands in pre-Columbian times.They embarked on this 101 day-long journey across 4,300 miles, while reporting back via morse code, and the whole...
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"Talley's Folley"
Danny Burstein and Sarah Paulson talk about starring in Roundabout Theatre Company’s new off-Broadway production of “Talley’s Folly.” At the end of World War II, a Jewish immigrant who has spent his life keeping others at a distance, returns to the small town where he first met Sally Talley, anurse with deep misgivings about the country’s future. The two try to figure out their place in the world and with each other. “Talley’s Folly” is playing at the Laura Pels Theatre.
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Chemical Testing and Regulation
Ian Urbina, New York Times investigative reporter, and Monona Rossol, chemist, industrial safety expert and author of Pick Your Poison, talk about the lack of testing of chemicals found in shampoos, cosmetics, cleaners, and other household goods. They’ll explain how the FDA regulates these chemicals, concerns about their safety, and how states are creating their own programs to police chemical safety.
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Online Etiquette, Afghan History, Vittorio Grigolo in...
From Facebook to accidentally hitting “Reply All” on an email, life online is full of potential faux pas, and today we’ll get tips on how to navigate the digital world with grace and ease—and how to get through those sticky situations. William Dalrymple talks about the first battle for control of Afghanistan in 1839. Tenor Vittorio Grigolo discusses singing the role of the Duke of Mantua in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “Rigoletto.” And we’ll find out from Ian Urbina of the New York...
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The Battle for Afghanistan: 19th Century and Now
Award-winning historian, journalist, and travel writer William Dalrymple talks about the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839, and argues that it’s an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly, and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan: 1839-42 illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today.
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Italian Tenor Vittorio Grigolo
Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo talks about his role in “Rigoletto” at the Metropolitan Opera. The production is an exciting new take on the famous tragedy that moves the action from a misogynistic court in the 17th century to the swinging, dangerous world of 1960s Las Vegas. It’s Grigolo’s first role at the Metropolitan Opera since his debut there in 2010.
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Manners in a Digital World
Daniel Post Senning gives advice on how to behave in the digital world. His book Emily Post’s Manners in a Digital World explains how to appropriately handle a breakup announcement on social media, what makes for the best—and the worst—online comment, how to maintain privacy and security for online profiles and accounts, how parents and children can establish digital house rules, and the appropriate, low-maintenance ways to separate personal and professional selves online.
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Judith Jones on Great Books on Food
Legendary cookbook editor Judith Jones talks about some of the most important, influential, and entertaining cookbooks and books about food. Jones was an editor at Alfred A. Knopf for over fifty years, editing authors such as Julia Child, Lidia Bastianich, James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Joan Nathan, Jacques Pépin, and Claudia Roden. Judith Jones's Food Book Picks: Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle The...
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Where to Eat in Queens
Tom Liddy, Queens news editor and columnist for DNAinfo.com, talks about the borough’s diverse variety of restaurants tells us where to eat in Queens. He writes the "Make This Tonight" column.
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Please Explain: Veganism and Vegetarianism
We’re talking about vegetarianism and veganism on this week’s Food Friday Please Explain. Joining us: Amanda Cohen, Chef and owner of the restaurant Dirty Candy and author of Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant; food historian Andy Smith; and Rynn Berry, the historical advisor to the North American Vegetarian Society and the author of a number of books including The Vegan Guide to New York City. They’ll explain the basics of vegan...
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Update on the Boston Manhunt
Joining us for an update on the latest on the manhunt in the Boston area is Ibby Caputo, reporter at WGBH. She’s been on the ground both in Watertown and Cambridge since very early this morning.
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Christopher Kimball on Kitchen Tools, Top Food Books,...
We’ll start off with Christopher Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen, offers tips on the basic equipment that every home cook should have. Editor Judith Jones, who worked with Julia Child, Lidia Bastianich, and James Beard, shares her list of essential books about food. We’ll find out where to eat in Queens. And this week’s Please Explain is all about being a vegetarian or a vegan, and how you can cut meat and animal products from your diet without sacrificing nutrients or taste.
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Chris Kimball on Essential Kitchen Equipment
Christopher Kimball, founder, publisher and editor of Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines and host of America’s Test Kitchen, talks about kitchen equipment—from colanders to cookie sheets. He'll give advice on what you need, what you don’t, and how much quality and cost matter.
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Arkansas Oil Spill
On March 29, an oil leak started in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, near Little Rock, spilling between 80,000 and 420,000 gallons of tar sands diluted bitumen. If you haven’t heard much about it, it’s because Exxon Mobil, which operates the pipeline that ruptured, has limited access to the site. Michael Hibblen, News Director at Arkansas public radio station KUAR, talks about trying to cover the spill and Anthony Swift, Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer, talks about the potential...
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Coping with Fear and Anxiety
Dr. Drew Ramsey, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, talks about how people react to events like this week’s bombings in Boston. He’ll discuss fear and the symptoms of acute stress response, how to help with coping, and how to know when to get help.
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The Doors' Drummer, "The Searchers," Magic and Ricky...
John Densmore talks about being the drummer in The Doors and the conflicts that grew along with the band’s success. We’ll look at how the story of Cynthia Ann Parker has inspired operas, plays, and John Ford’s classic movie “The Searchers.” Author, historian, actor, and magician Ricky Jay discusses about his true love, conjuring. Dr. Drew Ramsey on dealing with fear and anxiety. Plus, we’ll look at the damage created by the oil spill in Arkansas and we’ll talk to one of the reporters who’s...
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The Searchers, an American Legend
Glenn Frankel tells the story behind “The Searchers.” In 1836 in East Texas, nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanches, raised by the tribe, and eventually became the wife of a warrior. Twenty-four years later she was reclaimed by the U.S. cavalry and Texas Rangers and reunited with her white family. It’s become a foundational American tale and has inspired operas plays, and a novel by Alan LeMay, which was adapted into one of Hollywood's most legendary films, “The...
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The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
Ricky Jay, author, acclaimed actor and magician, talks about his career in magic. He’s the subject of the documentary “Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay,” which traces the story of his achievement, from his early apprenticeship, beginning at age 4, with his grandfather Max Katz, as well as with Al Flosso, Slydini, Cardini, Francis Carlyle, and Roy Benson, all of whom were among the best magicians of the 20th century. “Deceptive Practice” is playing at Film Forum...
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John Densmore on The Doors: Unhinged
Drummer John Densmore talks about his time in The Doors and about the conflicts that broke out as the band became more successful. His book The Doors: Unhinged is part memoir and part exploration of the what makes some people focus on attaining wealth, even at the expense of principles and friendships.
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The Life and Times of TIm Hetherington
Sebastian Junger talks about directing the documentary “Which Way is the Front Line from Here: The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington,” a portrait of the war photographer who in April 2011 was killed by mortar fire in Misrata, Libya, where he’d been covering the civil war. Junger is joined by James Brabazon, a war photographer who is featured in the documentary, and who was a friend of Hetherington. The film debuts April 18 on HBO, in conjunction with “Sleeping Soliders,” an outdoor...
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Philippe Petit Ties Knots
Philippe Petit, who performed on a wire illegally rigged between the New York World Trade Center’s twin towers on August 7, 1974, talks about how knots have been indispensable throughout his celebrated career. His new book Why Knot? How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving, Secure Knots! is a guide to tying his essential knots.
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Mental Health Care, Philippe Petit on Knots, Tim...
On today’s show: we’ll look at the relationship between violent crimes like the shootings in Aurora and Newtown, and the country’s mental health policies and access to mental health care. Philippe Petit, who once walked between the two World Trade Center towers, explains how to tie a knot. We’ll look at the life and work of war photographer Tim Hetherington with his collaborator Sebastian Junger and war photographer James Brabazon. Chris Smith from New York magazine on whether or not Andrew...
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Gov. Cuomo: The Albany Machiavelli?
New York magazine contributing editor Chris Smith discusses "The Albany Machiavelli," his recent profile of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He discusses why governing may be getting tougher for Cuomo.
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Mental Health Care
As the Senate prepares to vote on gun control, the effects of gun violence are still front and center in the public consciousness. Mac McClelland, Mother Jones human rights reporter, explores the issue from a different angle–that of how mental health policy and access to quality care might prevent these tragedies. Her article “Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.,” in the May/June issue of Mother Jones, is about the deteriorating state of mental health care in this country, as seen through the...
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Update from Boston
Los Angeles Times reporter Andrew Tangel joins us from Boston, where he’s covering the aftermath of the explosions at the Boston Marathon yesterday.
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April's Book: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary,...
Madame Bovary, one of the most celebrated novels ever written, defined the novel as an art form when it was published in 1875. Lydia Davis’s landmark translation of Flaubert’s work breathes new life into it. When it was first published, Madame Bovary was embraced by bourgeois women who felt it illuminated the frustrations of their lives. It tells the story of Emma Rouault, whose dreams of a passionate life crumble when she marries a dull, provincial doctor Charles Bovary. She struggles to...
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Billy Ray Cyrus and His Hillbilly Heart
Country music star Billy Ray Cyrus talks about his life and finding his own way to faith, family, and music. His memoir Hillbilly Heart tells of his turbulent childhood in Kentucky, where he sought refuge in music and sports after his parents’ divorce. When he heard a voice telling him to get a left-handed guitar and start a band, he found his cause. Cyrus looks back at his stratospheric breakthrough with “Achy Breaky Heart.”
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The Astor Orphan, a Memoir
Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendant of John Jacob Astor, discusses her eccentric, fractured family. In her memoir, The Astor Orphan, she reaches back to the Gilded Age, when the Astor legacy began to come undone, leaving the Aldrich branch of the family penniless and squabbling over what was left.
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Mapping the Brain, The Astor Orphan, Billy Ray Cyrus,...
Dr. Eric Kandel talks about the Obama Administration’s plans to jump start efforts to map the human brain. Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendent of John Jacob Astor, talks about her eccentric, fractured family. Billy Ray Cyrus describes his family and how his turbulent childhood led him to country music. Lydia Davis joins us for this month’s Leonard Lopate Show Book Club to discuss her translation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
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Mapping the Brain
Dr. Eric Kandel, Director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and co-director ofthe Mind Brain Behavior Initiative at Columbia University Medical Center, discusses the federal brain mapping project that President Obama announced this month, aimed at understanding problems like epilepsy, autism, and Alzheimer's disease. He’ll explain the challenges of brain research and discuss whether this project will advance brain science.
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Fishing with John Lurie
Musician, actor, filmmaker, and artist John Lurie discusses his short-lived TV series, "Fishing with John," which he conceived, starred in, and directed.He’ll also talk about his painting, a decade-long battle with Lyme disease and the controversial profile of him published in The New Yorker in 2010.
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Nathaniel Rich on Odds Against Tomorrow
Nathaniel Rich talks about his new novel, Odds Against Tomorrow. It’s set in New York City in the near future and follows Mitchell Zukor, a gifted young mathematician hired by a mysterious new financial consulting firm, FutureWorld, to calculate worst-case scenarios in intricate detail.
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Foreclosure Settlement, John Lurie, Nathaniel Rich's...
ProPublica’s Paul Kiel explains how the government plans to compensate the 3.9 million homeowners who were victims of aggressive foreclosure policies. John Lurie discusses his career in television, film, art, and, of course, music. Nathaniel Rich talks about his new novel, Odds Against Tomorrow. And yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of the first complete mapping of the human genome, and we’ll talk to bioethicist Robert Klitzman about how the human genome sequence has changed medicine.
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Details of the Government Foreclosure Deal
As the government's largest effort to compensate victims of the banks' foreclosure practices comes to a close, ProPublica's Paul Kiel reports that it won't be much of an ending: roughly 3 million borrowers will receive no more than $500. He goes into the history of robo-signing and other aggressive practices that caused homeowners who weren’t behind on their mortgage payments to face foreclosure. His latest article is "For Most Homeowners, Gov’t Foreclosure Deal Brings A Few Hundred Bucks."
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The Human Genome Project: Ten Years Later
April 14th marked the tenth anniversary of the first complete mapping of the human genome. Dr. Robert Klitzman, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University and author of Am I My Genes?, talks about how human genome sequencing has changed medicine and bioethics.
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Three Top Chefs on Opening Restaurants in NY
Gabrielle Hamilton, chef/owner of Prune; Marcus Samuelsson, chef/owner of Red Rooster; and Andrew Carmellini chef/owner of The Dutch and Locanda Verde, talk about what it takes to open a restaurant in New York and make it successful.
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A Slew of Cooking Shows on Television
Emily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker, talks about the variety of cooking shows on television—from Julia Child’s stand and stir style to the intense competitions on "Hell’s Kitchen" and "Top Chef." Her article "To Stir, With Love" appeared in the April 8, 2013, issue of The New Yorker. What's your favorite cooking show, past or present?
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"American Meat" - Can Farming Be More Sustainable?
Graham Meriwether, director of the documentary “American Meat,” looks at whether sustainable farming can feed America. He looks at cattle, hog and chicken production in the U.S. and presents the viability of more humane, sustainable farming practices. The film explains how America arrived at its current industrial system and introduces industry leaders who are working to change it for the better. “American Meat” opens April 12 at Cinema Village.
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Opening a Restaurant, Sustainable Meat, Cooking on TV,...
We’ll find out what it takes to open a restaurant—and keep it open —with chefs Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune, Marcus Samuelsson of Red Rooster, and Andrew Carmellini of The Dutch, Locanda Verde, and the soon-to-open Lafayette. We’ll look into whether sustainable farming can really meet America’s demand for meat. The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum talks about the rise and evolution of food television. And this week’s Please Explain is all about fertilizer!
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Please Explain: Fertilizer
Fertilizer is crucial for food—plants need it in order to grow and thrive. Harold Van Es, professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University, explains what fertilizer is made of, why it's so important, and how to manage it. Let us know if you have a question! Leave it as a comment or call us at 212-433-9692.
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“The Revolutionary” - Sid Rittenberg in China
Irv Drasnin, writer and producer of “The Revolutionary,” discusses the documentary, along with its subject, Sidney Rittenberg, a 91 year-old American expatriate who was the only American citizen to join the Chinese Communist party. He was dedicated to Mao’s revolution, reaching a position of influence unprecedented for a foreigner, and he was Mao’s acolyte through the upheavals which formed contemporary China. “The Revolutionary” opens April 12 at the Quad Cinema.
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Carol Burnett Remembers Her Daughter
Carol Burnett talks about her late daughter and about mothering an extraordinary young woman through the pain and joy of her life. Her memoir Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story recounts Carrie and Carol’s bravely going public with Carrie’s drug addiction and recovery when she was a teenager. Carrie lived her adult life of sobriety to the fullest, becoming a successful actress, writer, musician, and director, and her passion for life never wavered as she battled the cancer that took...
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Knowing What Companies Know About You
The data-brokering company Acxiom, which tracks the online behaviors of nearly 700 million people, has announced a new service that will reveal to people what the company knows about them. Financial Times reporter Emily Steel talks about online data tracking, and whether individuals have a right to know what data companies know about them.
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Underground and Overhead: Urban Exploration Adventures
Moses Gates gives a glimpse into the world of urban exploration, describing his trespasses in cities from Paris to Cairo to Moscow. In Hidden Cities: Travels to the Secret Corners of the World’s Greatest Metropolises he talks about secret art galleries in subway tunnels, breaking into national monuments for fun, sleeping in centuries-old catacombs and abandoned Soviet relics, and getting arrested on top of Notre Dame Cathedral.
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Carol Burnett, Mao's American Confidante, Hidden Cities,...
Carol Burnett talks about her relationship with her daughter Carrie, who recovered from drug addiction as a teenager and then died of cancer at the age of 38. Sidney Rittenberg, a confidante of Mao and the only American to join the Chinese Communist Party, joins the filmmaker of a new documentary about his life. Moses Gates introduces us to the hidden corners of New York, Paris, Cairo and Moscow. And we’ll find out how growing numbers of giant crabs are threatening the ecosystem of the...
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Giant Crabs in Chesapeake Bay
Washington Post environmental reporter Darryl Fears explains that climate change is creating supersized crabs in Chesapeake Bay that are wreaking havoc on other species.
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Mary Williams on Being Adopted by Jane Fonda
Mary Williams talks about being born into the Black Panther movement, being raised amid violence and near-poverty, and being adopted as a teenager by Jane Fonda. Her memoir The Lost Daughter is a chronicle of her transformed life, her time working with the Lost Boys of Sudan, and reconnecting with her biological family in Oakland.
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The Gurus of How-To Embrace Spring
The Gurus of How-To, Al Ubell and Larry Ubell, answer questions and give advice on how to repair and maintain your home or apartment. Call 212-433-9692 with your questions or leave a comment below!
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The CIA's Way of War, Adoption Stories, the Gurus of How...
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mark Mazzetti explains how the line between soldiers and spies has been blurred, and what that means for America’s national security. Mary Williams talks about growing up in the Black Panther movement and then being adopted as a teenager by Jane Fonda. Jennifer Gilmore talks about her latest novel, The Mothers. And our gurus of how-to, Alvin and Lawrence Ubell, will be here to answer your calls and questions about home repair.
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Jennifer Gilmore's Novel The Mothers
Jennifer Gilmore talks about her latest novel, The Mothers, the story of one couple’s ardent desire for a child and their emotional journey through adoption.
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Mark Mazzetti on the CIA's Secret Army and Shadow War
Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Mark Mazzetti gives an account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines around the world. In The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth, Mazzetti tells the story of that shadow war, a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies.
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Paul Anka
Former teen idol Paul Anka talks about his life and his career in music—and his new CD. His autobiography My Way recounts how he rocketed to fame with a slew of hits, including “Diana” and “Put Your Head on my Shoulder,” and his time touring with Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly. He was a charter member of the Rat Pack, he wrote the theme music for The Tonight Show as well as a string of pop hits. He shares stories of the business and the people in his life, from Elizabeth...
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Meg Wolitzer's Novel The Interestings
Meg Wolitzer discusses her new novel, The Interestings, a panoramic story about what becomes of early talent, and the roles that art, money, and even envy can play in close friendships. It follows a group of teenagers who met at summer camp in the 1970s into adulthood.
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Toms River, Music Icon Paul Anka, Novelist Meg Wolitzer,...
Dan Fagin talks about how Toms River, New Jersey, was a dumping ground for cancer-causing industrial pollution for decades. Paul Anka looks back at his life and his career in music, working with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Barnum Bailey Circus acrobats. Meg Wolitzer talks about her latest novel, called The Interestings. And Olly Lambert discusses his new Frontline documentary about Syria’s civil war—he spent time living on both sides of the conflict.
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Pollution and Cancer in Toms River, NJ
Dan Fagin tells the true story of a small New Jersey town ravaged by industrial pollution. When a cluster of childhood cancers was scientifically linked to air and water pollution in Toms River, it spurred a decades-long struggle that culminated in 2001 with one of the largest legal settlements on toxic dumping. Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation is about the fight for justice and about the pioneering scientists and physicians who first identified pollutants as a cause of cancer.
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Frontline's “Syria Behind the Lines”
Olly Lambert, writer/director/producer, discusses his Frontline documentary “Syria Behind the Lines.” Lambert is the first Western filmmaker to spend an extended period living on both sides of Syria's war—and to document, on camera, the realities of everyday life for rebels, government soldiers and the civilians who support them. “Syria Behind the Lines” airs Tuesday, April 9, at 10 p.m. on PBS.
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Leaked Documents Shed New Light on Tax Havens
A leaked trove of 2.5 million financial records shed new light on the murky world of offshore tax havens and finance. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists obtained the documents and has collaborated with a number of news organizations to interpret them. Washington Post reporter Scott Higham looks at the ways wealthy American citizens use offshore finance to their advantage. He's written the article "Piercing the Secrecy of Offshore Tax Havens."
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Good Regulations, Middle East to Lower East Side, Crony...
Cass Sunstein served as President Obama’s regulatory czar for three years, and on today’s show he talks about how we can make regulation both simpler and smarter. Rayya Elias tells how her family fled the violence in Syria, how she came to New York at the height of the punk movement, and put her life back together after becoming a homeless addict. We’ll take a look at a trove of leaked documents which shed light on the darker side of global finance. David Stockman, a budget director in the...
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From the Middle East to the Lower East Side
Rayya Elias talks about her family fleeing political conflict in their native Syria when she was seven, and later moving to New York City at the height of the punk movement. Her memoir Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side charts four decades of a life lived in the moment, from addiction and homelessness to recovery and redemption.
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Making Government Simpler—and Better
Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s former “regulatory czar,” talks about his time in the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, overseeing a far-reaching restructuring of America’s regulatory state. He explains what was done, argues that Americans are better off as a result, and explores what the future has in store. His book Simpler: The Future of Government discusses the benefits of simpler government with smarter regulations.
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David Stockman on the Corruption of Capitalism
David Stockman looks at Washington’s response to the recent myriad of financial crises. He argues that the American state—especially the Federal Reserve—has fallen prey to the politics of crony capitalism. In The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America Stockman looks at some of what he calls corruptors and defenders of sound money, fiscal rectitude, and free markets, including Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Fed chairmen Greenspan and Bernanke, George W. Bush, and...
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What do you make for lunch? Let us know and get advice...
Brown bag lunches can be pretty boring, but New York Times Dining Section columnist and cookbook writer Melissa Clark is here to help! She shares ideas for how to make lunch more creative and delicious—and how to transform leftovers into lunch. Her most recent cookbook is Cook This Now: 120 Easy and Delectable Dishes You Can't Wait to Make. Ask questions or share your suggestions for turning leftovers into lunch or how to improve your brown-bag lunch habits!
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Please Explain: Grains
Grains have been a cornerstone of the human diet since the dawn of civilization. We'll find out about the wide variety of grains and the difference between whole, refined, and enriched grains.Abdullah A. Jaradat, USDA Department of Soil Management Research, and Maria Speck, author of Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, explain.
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Rosie Perez Dishes about Food
Rosie Perez talks about the role food has had in her life.
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Leftovers to Lunch, Rosie Perez, Gardening without Soil,...
Today’s show is the latest installment in our Food Fridays series! New York Times food columnist Melissa Clark is here with her suggestions on how to turn last night’s dinner into today’s lunch. Rosie Perez talks about how food has shaped her life. We look into how hydroponic gardening works, and how you can grow a garden just about anywhere. Plus, this week’s Please Explain is all about grains!
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How to Garden without Soil
Lee Mandell, the founder of Boswyck Farms, a hydroponic farm in Bushwick, Brooklyn, discusses hydroponic gardening and how grow lettuce, herbs, and other vegetables without soil.
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Tribute: Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert’s career as a film critic spanned over four decades in print (46 years at the Chicago Sun-Times), television (thumbs up, thumbs down) and on into Twitter (which he embraced with gusto). In 1975, he was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer. He died after a long battle with cancer at the age of 70. You can hear his interviews with Leonard from 2005. Roger Ebert on the Leonard Lopate Show in 2005 "I prefer black and white. I think it's more pure, more dream-like, more of a...
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Dr. Hawa Abdi, the Mother Theresa of Somalia
Dr. Hawa Abdi has been called "the Mother Teresa of Somalia." Since 1991, when the Somali government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled, she has dedicated herself to providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and poverty. In her new memoir, Keeping Hope Alive: One Woman: 90,000 Lives Changed, she talks about founding a camp for internally displaced people located outside war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. She also tells of being kidnapped by radical...
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Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire
Economics reporter Neil Irwin discusses how, how the leaders of the world’s three most important central banks—Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank—managed the global economic crisis. He tells of the birth of central banking in 17th-century Sweden, and traces how banks and bankers came to exercise extraordinary power over our collective fate.In his new book, The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and...
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Honeybee Update
Eric Mussen, apiculturist at University of California, Davis, discusses the latest findings on what’s killing honeybees, what the loss of bees means for agriculture, and how beekeepers and researchers are addressing the problem.
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Aid Work in Somalia, Bankers and the Economic Meltdown,...
Dr. Hawa Abdi, who has been called the Mother Teresa of Somalia, talks about turning her farm into a camp for 90,000 internally displaced. Washington Post economics reporter Neil Irwin on how the world’s top central bankers steered the global economy through the economic meltdown. ProPublica reporter Joaquin Sapien talks about his investigation into why the city’s district attorneys are rarely disciplined for misconduct.
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Who Polices Prosecutors?
Joaquin Sapien talks about his ProPublica report that found that New York City prosecutors who withhold evidence, tolerate false testimony, or commit other abuses almost never see their careers damaged.
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Tributes: Phil Ramone
Even though you may not know Phil Ramone’s name, you probably know the music stars whose work he produced – including Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, and Barbra Streisand among them. Phil Ramone admitted in his memoir, Making Records, “Unlike a director (who is visible, and often a celebrity in his own right), the record producer toils in anonymity.” Billy Joel acknowledged that “I always thought of Phil Ramone as the most talented guy in my band. He was the guy that no...
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Political Conversations and Political Prisoners
Martin Clancy and Tim O’Brien talk about how the Supreme Court has shaped the death penalty. We’ll look back at the debate over whether the United States should enter World War II—before Pearl Harbor changed everything. Blaine Harden tells the story of a man who managed to escape one of North Korea’s political prison camps. Dr. Mamphela Remphele on her frustration with South Africa’s ANC.
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Escape from Camp 14: North Korea's Political Prisoners
Blaine Harden tells his story of Shin Donghyuk, who was born and raised—then escaped from—one of North Korea’s political prison camps. In Escape from Camp 14, he offers a narrative of Shin's life and remarkable escape and offers an inside account of one of the world's darkest nations.
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Roosevelt, Lindbergh and America's Fight Over World War...
Lynne Olson discusses the debate over American intervention in World War II—a bitter, sometimes violent clash of personalities and ideas that divided the nation. Her book Those Angry Days focuses on the years 1939 to 1941 and on he two most famous men in America: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh.
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Capital Punishment and the Supreme Court
Martin Clancy and Tim O'Brien discuss the crucial links between landmark capital-punishment cases and the lethal crimes at their root. The cases reported are truly "the cases that made the law"—and have defined the parameters that judges must follow for a death sentence to stand up on appeal. In Murder at the Supreme Court they tell how, in 1969, Supreme Court justices cast votes in secret that could have signaled the end of the death penalty, but the justices' resolve began to unravel.
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Dr. Mamphela Ramphele on South African Politics
Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, co-founder of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement with Steve Biko and founder of the first rural primary care clinic while banished by the Apartheid regime, eventually became the first black woman Vice Chancellor of a South African University, Managing Director of the World Bank, and successful businesswoman.She discusses the increasing anguish in South Africa over the failure of the ANC as a governing party to deliver on the promises of the liberation...
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Julia Sweeney: If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother
Julia Sweeney discusses her new memoir, If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother. She writes of adopting a Chinese girl, and then, a few years later, getting married and moving from Los Angeles to Chicago. She also offers meditations on strollers, nannies, knitting, The Food Network, and how she explained the facts of life her nine-year-old daughter.
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How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession
Barbara Garson talks about the human costs of our economic recession and slow recovery. In Down the Up Escalator: How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession Garson interviewed an economically and geographically wide variety of Americans to show how loss and insecurity is affecting their lives. She looks at the consequences of the stagnation of wages and our growing reliance on credit.
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Baseball Season
Ben Reiter, Sports Illustrated staff writer, talks about the baseball season, the prevalence of strikeouts in games, why so many baseball players are getting injured. He’ll also field calls.
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Shaping Style
Patricia Volk discusses the two women— iconoclastic designer Elsa Schiaparelli and her own mother—who offered her contrasting lessons about womanhood and personal style that allowed her to plot her own course. Her new book is Shocked: My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me.
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How the 99 Percent Live, Shaped by Sciapparelli, Julia...
Guesthost Mike Pesca finds out how the 99 Percent have been struggling through the Great Recession. Then Patricia Volk explains how her ideas of style and womanhood were shaped by her mother and the designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Julia Sweeney talks about her new memoir, about motherhood and other life events. And Sports Illustrated’s Ben Reiter talks about baseball!
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Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen on The Dark
Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen discuss their collaborative project, The Dark, a new book that attempts to conquer a universal childhood fear.
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The Magic of Saida, by M. G. Vassanji
M. G. Vassanji discusses his new novel, The Magic of Saida. It tells the story of an African/Indian man who returns to the town of his birth in search of the girl he once loved—and the sense of self that has always eluded him. The novel moves between the past and present, and tells a personal story as well as a broad story of political promise and failure in contemporary Africa.
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DIY Medicine
As healthcare costs rise, doctors and hospitals are saying "no" to high-tech tests more frequently. We'll speak with Dr. Sven Schwatzbaum about how some patients in Europe are getting around the problem. His article "DIY Medicine" is in the current issue of Radiology Today.
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Immigrants in Solitary Confinement, Lemony Snicket,...
New York Times reporter Ian Urbina talks about why U.S. authorities have been putting illegal immigrants in solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks at a time. Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen discuss collaborating on their new book about that age-old childhood fear, The Dark. M. G. Vassanji tells us about his new novel, The Magic of Saida. Bob Harris explains how he became a philanthropist $10-$15 at a time.
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Ian Urbina on Immigrants and Solitary Confinement
New York Times reporter Ian Urbina discusses the lengthy detention in solitary confinement of many illegal immigrants here in the United States, "Immigrants Held in Solitary Cells, Often for Weeks."
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Please Explain: Food Traditions
Ken Albala, Professor of History at the University of the Pacific and Cathy Kaufman, who teaches culinary history at the Institute of Culinary Education and is the author of Cooking in Ancient Civilizations, talk about food traditions and why certain peoples and cultures eat certain foods to celebrate or to mark certain occasions.
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Springtime Foraging
Tama Matsuoka Wong discusses foraging in spring and what you can pick in the wild to use in your kitchen. She’s the author of Foraged Flavor: Finding Fabulous Ingredients in Your Backyard or Farmer's Market, with 88 Recipes.
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Lidia Bastianich on Italian Easter Foods
Lidia Bastianich talks about the foods and traditions of an Italian Easter. She’ll also talk about teaching her kids how to cook and about her latest book, Nonna’s Birthday Surprise, a book for children. She's the author of a number of cookbooks—her most recent is Lidia's Favorite Recipes.
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Jack Bishop on Essential Ingredients
Jack Bishop, editorial director of America's Test Kitchen, discusses the essential ingredients that home cooks should have in their kitchens. He’ll talk about simple dishes to make with limited ingredients.
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Kitchen Essentials, Lidia Bastianich, Springtime...
We’ll start off today’s Food Fridays with Jack Bishop from the America’s Test Kitchen, who gives advice about what ingredients you should always have on-hand in your home. Lidia Bastianich discusses the foods and traditions of an Italian Easter. Tama Matsuoka Wong shares tips on what you can find in the wild to use in your kitchen. And on this week’s Please Explain, we’ll find out how foods like gefilte fish and ham have come to be associated with certain holidays like Passover and Easter.
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Dr. Robert Lustig on Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and...
Dr. Robert Lustig documents the science and the politics that has led to the pandemic of chronic disease over the last 30 years. In the late 1970s the government mandated that we limit fat in our food, and the food industry responded by putting more sugar in. Dr. Lustig argues that the result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control. In Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease he...
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Aleksandar Hemon's The Book of My Lives
Aleksandar Hemon talks about his first book of nonfiction, The Book of My Lives, about growing up in Sarajevo, moving to Chicago just as war broke out in Sarajevo, leaving him no way to return home, and about starting a new life and family in this new city. He writes of his love of two different cities, the bonds of family, the joys of soccer, and the feelings of displacement.
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Public Defenders; Aleksandar Hemon; Typhoid Mary; and...
We’ll look at the current status of public defenders and the legacy of the Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright. Aleksandar Hemon talks about growing up in Sarajevo, and watching its destruction from Chicago during the Balkan War. Mary Beth Keane discusses her new novel about Typhoid Mary, called Fever. Dr. Robert Lustig explains how the massive amount of sugar we’re consuming has changed our brain chemistry, affecting what—and how much—we eat.
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Public Defenders and Justice
The 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright states that all defendants facing significant jail time have the constitutional right to a free attorney if they cannot afford their own. Fifty years later, 80 percent of criminal defendants are served by public defenders. Karen Houppert chronicles the stories of people in all parts of the country who have relied on public defenders in Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice.
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