Across more than 40 years as a popular New York talk-show host on WNYC and WBAI, Leonard Lopate interviewed writers, artists, actors, directors, politicians, scientists, journalists, musicians, athletes, designers, and explorers, including 42 Nobel Prize winners, one U.S. President (Jimmy Carter), and two future presidents (Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.) Mr. Lopate died on August 5 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 84.

In 2010, he told The Brooklyn Rail, an arts and culture journal, “If I’m talking to a novelist, I’m not going to ask him why Mary killed John on page 84. I’m going to ask instead how he or she came up with the idea for the book.

“Same thing applies to a painter, a sculptor, a conceptual artist. It’s all about how they approach their work and how they come up with what they’ve achieved. Audiences are interested in hearing how they came to be what they are, and why they have succeeded and someone else has not.”