The Leonard Lopate Show

Guest Hosts

Lisa Birnbach

Lisa Birnbach is probably best known for her very first book, The Official Preppy Handbook, which she wrote when she was a wee child. Since then she has written for many magazines (among them Parade, New York, Rolling Stone, Travel & Leisure) and appeared on all kinds of radio and television talk shows, including a "Farm Report" in Texas and "Jewish Outlook" in New York. (David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, the "Today Show", "Charlie Rose," and "Later with Bob Costas" were highlights.)

Her affiliation with Spy Magazine led her to co-writing and producing their TV specials for NBC and as well as a stint as Deputy Editor there. She was co-writer of the off-Broadway revue, "Loose Lips," which was directed by Martin Charnin, and wrote two TV pilots, "Me Me Me", which was produced for Fox/UPN and "Uptown, down there," for HBO. From 1999- 2002 she was a correspondent on CBS’ "The Early Show," where Lisa’s segment was called "Yikes! I'm a Grownup!"

With Patty Marx and Ann Hodgman she has written the 1,003 Great Things series. As a board member of The Creative Coalition, she wrote and produced "Seconding the First," to underscore the importance of the First Amendment.

Most recently, she hosted "The Lisa Birnbach Show" for Greenstone Media, which won two Gracie Awards in 2007, one for Outstanding Talk Show, and one for Outstanding Comedy Show. Lisa has three children, ages 17, 14, and 10.

Sara Fishko

Sara Fishko spent her early life practicing the piano and ducking into the Bleecker Street Cinema. She has spent her professional life juggling careers between radio and film. She spent many years as a film editor and won a film editing Emmy in 1991. Her first radio show was at WBAI in 1974, where she won two Armstrong awards and met long time friend and colleague Steve Post. In the early 80's Sara and Steve migrated to WNYC, forever changing classical radio. At WNYC, Sara hosted the weekend mornings and eventually a program called Sunday Best. After a brief sabbatical, she returned to WNYC in 1996 to host Midday Music, and now acts as WNYC's cultural attaché, producing features, documentaries and special programs for her regular series The Fishko Files.

Philip Gourevitch

Philip Gourevitch is the Editor of The Paris Review, and a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of A Cold Case (2001) and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: stories from Rwanda (1998), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angelese Times Book Prize, and in England, the Guardian First Book Award. His books have been translated in nine languages, and his short stories have appeared in a number of journals. Before relaunching The Paris Review last year, Gourevitch had traveled extensively for a decade, writing from Africa, Asia, and Europe, and In 2004, he was The New Yorker’s Washington Correspondent, covering the presidential election. Most recently, he reported on Sri Lanka’s civil war in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Katherine Lanpher

Katherine Lanpher is a writer and broadcaster whose first book, a memoir of her move to New York from Minnesota entitled "Leap Days," will be published this fall. She was the host of a popular weekday call-in show on Minnesota Public Radio from 1998-2004 and also hosted "Talking Volumes," an interview show with authors ranging from Salman Rushdie to Margaret Atwood that was broadcast live from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. She moved to Manhattan on Leap Day 2004 to co-host on "The Al Franken Show" as heard on Air America Radio and seen on the Sundance Channel and left a year and a half later to pursue work on her book. A former reporter and newspaper columnist, Lanpher's work has appeared in The New York Times, as well as More and Marie Claire magazines. She is the host and curator of the music and interview series held at the flagship Barnes and Noble store in Union Square, "Upstairs at the Square." She has been a guest host and commentator on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and has appeared on shows on CNN, MSNBC and PBS. She lives in Greenwich Village.

Dean Olsher

Dean Olsher has been a radio broadcaster for 30 years. Much of the last 20 he spent in public radio, serving as arts and culture correspondent for NPR News and, most recently, as the creator and host of The Next Big Thing. Currently a visiting professor in the journalism department at NYU, Dean also recorded the audio version of Steven Pinker's new book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature and is finishing his own book about crossword puzzles (Scribner).

Kenji Jasper

A native of Washington, DC, Kenji Jasper was first paid for his writing at the age of 13. Since then his work has appeared in The Village Voice, VIBE, Essence, Atlanta Magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Charlotte Observer and on National Public Radio. He is the author of three novels : Dark, Dakota Grand and Seeking Salamanca Mitchell, all published by Random House books. The House on Childress Street, his first work of nonfiction, will be published in January of 2006. For more information on Mr. Jasper visit his website at www.kenjijasper.com

Budd Mishkin

Budd Mishkin is the host and reporter for NY1's weekly profile series, "One on 1 with Budd Mishkin.  "One on 1" profiles influential New Yorkers who have significant personal and professional ties to the city.  The series started in 2003.  The list of profile subjects includes musicians Wynton Marsalis, Wyclef Jean and Judy Collins, writers Robert Caro, Gay Talese and Pete Hamill, TV chefs Rachel Ray, Bobby Flay and Anthony Bourdain, broadcaster Mike Wallace, educator Geoffrey Canada, environmental activist Majora Carter, Donald Trump, Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo and many others. Budd started with the newschannel in 1992 and is one of NY1's original employees.  He has served as a sports anchor/reporter for NY1's nightly program "Sports on 1, The Last Word," covering some of the biggest events in recent New York sports history and interviewing some of the greats of the New York sports world and beyond: Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Rod Gilbert, Boris Becker and Brooks Robinson, to name a few. His anchoring work was cited in an Emmy awarded to NY1 in 1999 for a half-hour special on the death of Joe Dimaggio. Budd was born in 1959 and raised in Monroe, New York. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1981 with a degree in International Relations. 

Alice Rhee

Alice Rhee is a two-time Emmy award winning television producer who has covered breaking news and special events for NBC News and MSNBC for over a decade. From 2000 to 2004, Rhee was a national political producer and field producer for "The News with Brian Williams" and "The News" on MSNBC and CNBC.  In the past decade, her assignments have taken her around the country as well as overseas. She worked as a field producer at the crash of TWA 800, the Columbine High School shootings, the Oklahoma City bombing trial, the execution of Timothy McVeigh, and the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. She has also worked on location at events ranging from the Democratic and Republican national conventions to the 2003 explosion of the space shuttle Columbia. Rhee covered the 1997 Hong Kong handover and Pope John Paul's travels to Cuba and the United States. She also covered the Pope's death at the Vatican. She was awarded an Emmy in 2003 for producing a profile about the chief trauma surgeon at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Rhee is the recipient of several national and regional awards including a National Headliners award and the New York Newswomen's award for her reporting in the days following 9/11. She is a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Danyel Smith

Novelist, editor, critic, and instructor, Danyel Smith is a former editor-at-large for Time Inc. and a former editor-in-chief of Vibe. She has written for Elle, Time, Cosmopolitan, Essence, the Village Voice, the New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Spin, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Condé Nast Media Group, and the New York Times. Smith is the author of the San Francisco Chronicle-bestselling novel, More Like Wrestling (Crown) and she wrote the introduction for the New York Times bestseller Tupac Shakur. Her second novel, Bliss (Crown) was published July 2005. Danyel comments regularly on pop culture at VH-1, WNYC, and CNN. An MFA candidate (May 2006), Danyel lives in Manhattan with her husband. She was born and brought up in California.

Jeffrey Toobin

Jeffrey Toobin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since January 1993. Mr. Toobin is also the legal analyst for CNN, which he joined in 2002 after six years with ABC News. In 2000, he received an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elian Gonzalez case. His most recent book is Too Close to Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election, which was published in 2001 by Random House. He is also the author of A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President (Random House, 2000), and The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson (Random House, 1996). Both books were New York Times best-sellers. Mr. Toobin lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.

Touré

Touré is the author of Soul City, a novel, and the Portable Promised Land, a collection of short stories, both published by Little, Brown. He's also the Pop Culture Correspondent on CNN's American Morning, a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone, and the host of MTV2's Spoke N' Heard. He's appeared on the Today show, the O'Reilly Show, the Paula Zahn show, On the Record with Greta Van Sustern, Topic A with Tina Brown, Anderson Cooper 360°, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Dateline NBC, Nightline, and many others. Tina Brown has called him, "a one-man media conglomerate." His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Tennis Magazine, the Best American Essays of 1999, the Best American Sports Writing of 2001, the Best Music Writing of 2004, and the Best American Erotica of 2004. He studied at Columbia University's graduate school of creative writing and lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. For more information on Touré, visit his website at www.toure.com.