November 2017
There Goes the Neighborhood Live
There Goes the Neighborhood Live: Is there Still a Place for You in Los Angeles? Hosted by KCRW’s Madeleine Brand Wednesday, November 15th, 2017 6:30PM – Come grab your seats! 7PM – Show 8:15PM - Reception with complementary beer and wine In the past five years, the median price of a house in L.A. has doubled. Average rent on a two-bedroom apartment is now over $2,900. Your household would have to earn over $100,000 to afford that. Those kinds of…
Find out more »March 2018
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Gained Their Civil Rights
Adam Winkler In conversation with Rick Wartzman In his new book, UCLA law professor Adam Winkler offers a revelatory portrait of how U.S. corporations have seized political power over time. He traces the 200-year effort of pro-business court decisions that give corporations the same rights as people and details the deep historical roots of recent landmark cases like Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. For a special lunchtime conversation, Winkler discusses with author Rick Wartzman of the Drucker Institute how businesses have transformed the…
Find out more »Misfits Unite
Lidia Yuknavitch and Amber Tamblyn In conversation with Ann Friedman “What if, for once in history, a woman’s story could be untethered from what we need it to be in order to feel better about ourselves?” writes visionary author Lidia Yuknavitch in her latest work, The Book of Joan. In this provocatively reimagined Joan of Arc story set in the near future, the world is ravaged by war, violence, and greed, and it brings into question art, sex, gender, and…
Find out more »The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption
Rick Hasen In conversation with Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, Berkeley Law, University of California During his long tenure on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia—engaging as well as caustic and openly ideological—moved the Court to the right. In this eye-opening new book, legal scholar Richard L. Hasen analyzes Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s complex legacy as a conservative legal thinker and disruptive public intellectual who was crucial to reshaping jurisprudence on issues from abortion to gun rights to separation of powers. Hasen…
Find out more »April 2018
Exit West
Mohsin Hamid In conversation with author Viet Thanh Nguyen New York Times bestselling author Mohsin Hamid returns to ALOUD to discuss his latest novel Exit West, a visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands. Infusing the stark reality of a refugee narrative with the hopeful fantasy of a fairy tale, Exit West follows the journey of two young lovers who flee an unnamed country on the brink of civil war…
Find out more »Unbreakable Spirit: The Freed Angola Three
Robert King and Albert Woodfox In conversation In a special Los Angeles visit, human rights activists Robert King and Albert Woodfox, the two surviving members of the Angola 3, known for having served the longest solitary confinement sentences in U.S. history, share their remarkable story of survival and advocacy. As comrades inside Louisiana State Penitentiary—the largest prison in the U.S. and former slave plantation known as “Angola”- they jointly established a chapter of the Black Panther Party within the prison and…
Find out more »Between Thought and Expression: Stories About Stories
Laurie Anderson In conversation with author Maggie Nelson An icon of performance art and the indie music world, Laurie Anderson is one of the most revered artists working today. As a musician, performance artist, composer, fiction writer, and filmmaker (her most recent foray, Heart of a Dog, was lauded as an “experimental marvel” by the Los Angeles Times), Anderson seamlessly moves between the fine art world and the music world, and her interest in new media has made her an…
Find out more »Should We Praise the Mutilated World? Poetry from California to Krakow
Robert Hass and Adam Zagajewski Reading and conversation with Andrew Winer Two of the world’s greatest living poets come together for a rare Los Angeles reading and conversation. The work of Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate and long-time translator of Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz, speaks to us of love and loss, of the hopefulness and the limitations of intimacy, of our humanness laid bare in the midst of art, the natural world, and each other. His most recent essay…
Find out more »May 2018
The Mars Room
Rachel Kushner In conversation with novelist Danzy Senna From the twice National Book Award–nominated and bestselling author of The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner offers a heart-stopping new novel, The Mars Room, that straddles the inside—and outside—of protagonist Romy Hall’s reality: an inmate beginning two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley, where “you do not see a single star.” With great humor and precision, Kushner moves between Hall’s polar worlds: the severed world of her past in San…
Find out more »The End of Capitalism: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment
Yanis Varoufakis A lecture What happens when you take on the establishment? Renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis gives a blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth when he attempted to re-negotiate Greece’s relationship with the EU in 2015, sparking a spectacular battle with global implications. In a special lunchtime talk, Varoufakis offers an inside look at an extraordinary story fueled by hypocrisy and betrayal that shook the…
Find out more »Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: How Capitalism Works – and How it Fails
Yanis Varoufakis In conversation with Alex Cohen, 89.3 KPCC's "Morning Edition" host Greece’s former finance minister, international bestselling author, and an activist working for the revival of democracy in Europe, Yanis Varoufakis pens a series of letters to his young daughter, educating her about the business, politics, and corruption of world economics. In this intimate new book, written to his teenage daughter, Varoufakis uses clear language and vivid examples to explain heady economic theories, the historical origins of inequality, and…
Find out more »Planet of the Blind: A Poet’s Journey
Steve Kuusisto In conversation with Louise Steinman From the author of several collections of poetry and memoirs, including the New York Times “Notable Book of the Year” Planet of the Blind, Stephen Kuusisto discusses his latest book, Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey, a lyrical love letter and “a dog-driven invitation to living full forward.” Born legally blind, Kuusisto was raised in the 1950s before the Americans with Disability Act, and was taught to deny his blindness in order to “pass” as sighted. For…
Find out more »June 2018
The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
Howard Bryant and John Carlos In conversation with Dr. Todd Boyd, Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, USC For most of the twentieth century, politics and sports were as separate as church and state. Today, with the transformation of a fueled American patriotism, sports and politics have become increasingly more entwined. However, as sports journalist Howard Bryant explores in his new book, this has always been more complicated for black athletes, who from the start, were committing a political act…
Find out more »Heart Berries: A Memoir
Terese Mailhot In conversation with author Roxane Gay The New York Times bestselling memoir Heart Berries is the powerful, poetic meditation of a woman’s coming-of-age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder, Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for…
Find out more »July 2018
What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha In conversation with journalist Geoffrey Mohan, LA Times The dramatic story of the Flint water crisis is one of the signature environmental disasters of our time—and at the heart of this tragedy is an inspiring tale of scientific resistance by a relentless physician and whistleblower who stood up to power. What the Eyes Don’t See is the personal story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha—accompanied by an idiosyncratic team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders—proved that Flint’s kids were…
Find out more »Bruce Lee and the Afro-Asian Culture Connection
Kamau Bell, Jeff Chang, Shannon Lee In conversation with Sharon Ann Lee In the 1970’s Bruce Lee captivated African American audiences with his stylish and philosophical kung fu movies. Lee was a rarity—a non-white leading man fighting oppression, crime, and racism at a time when there were still signs that read: “No dogs or Chinese Allowed” and “Whites Only.” Through the physical, mental, and spiritual embodiment of martial arts, Lee modeled an intense pride in his own cultural heritage that…
Find out more »From Prison to President: The Letters of Nelson Mandela
A reading, conversation, and celebration With Zamaswazi Dlamini-Mandela, Sahm Venter, Ashaki Jackson, Colm Tóibín, Amanda Gorman, and DJ Nnamdi On the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, comes a new portrait of one of the most inspiring historical figures of the twentieth century. Arrested in 1962 as South Africa’s apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, forty-four-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next twenty-seven years in jail. During…
Find out more »September 2018
The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation
Miriam Pawel and Kathleen Brown In conversation with author and professor Natalia Molina Miriam Pawel, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of the definitive biography, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, continues to chronicle the fascinating history of California and the exceptional people who have shaped our state. In Pawel’s newest work, she demystifies transformative moments of California history—from the Gold Rush to Silicon Valley—as she considers the significant impact of one family dynasty. Beginning with Pat Brown, the beloved father…
Find out more »There There: A Novel
Tommy Orange In conversation with author and professor Rigoberto González Tommy Orange’s There There is an extraordinary portrait of America like we’ve never seen before. Orange, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma who grew up in Oakland, brings an exhilaratingly fresh, urgent, and poetic voice to the disorienting experiences of urban Indians who struggle with the paradoxes of inhabiting traditions in the absence of a homeland, living both inside and outside of history. In his…
Find out more »October 2018
History of Violence: A Novel
Édouard Louis In conversation with Steven Reigns “Édouard Louis uses literature as a weapon,” says a recent New York Times profile of the internationally bestselling French author. Louis, whose highly acclaimed first autobiographical novel, The End of Eddy, confronts both the institution of discrimination as he experienced it first-hand, growing up in a small town in Northern France where he was bullied and forced to conceal his homosexuality and as well, the violence perpetrated on his hardscrabble community by an…
Find out more »The Library Book
Susan Orlean In conversation with author Attica Locke Join us for a special program on the 25th anniversary of the reopening of the Los Angeles Central Library that brings home the inspiring story of how Central Library rose from the ashes after the catastrophic fire of April 29, 1986. In a new book by New Yorker staff writer and author of seven books, including Rin Tin Tin and The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean offers a profoundly moving cultural history of…
Find out more »The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity
Kwame Anthony Appiah and Njideka Akunyili Crosby In conversation with Erin Christovale, Assistant Curator, Hammer Museum Who do you think you are? What do you think you are? These questions of gender, religion, race, nationality, class, culture, and all our polarizing, contradictory natures permeate Kwame Anthony Appiah’s newest book. In The Lies That Bind, Appiah, the author of the Ethicist column for the New York Times, challenges our assumptions of identities—or rather mistaken identities. Njideka Akunyili Crosby, a MacArthur Award-winning…
Find out more »November 2018
Of Love & War
Lynsey Addario In conversation The Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur-winning photojournalist and New York Times bestselling author Lynsey Addario has captured audiences with her highly compelling and beautifully harrowing photographs from war zones across the globe. With her uncanny ability to emotionally connect with her subjects and to personalize even the most remote corners and unimaginable circumstances, Addario offers a stunning new selection of work from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa that documents life in Afghanistan under the Taliban,…
Find out more »Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border
Reyna Grande, Jean Guerrero, Octavio Solis A reading and conversation Bestselling author Reyna Grande’s newest memoir, A Dream Called Home, offers an inspiring account of one woman’s quest to find her place in America as a first-generation Latina university student and then pursue her dream of writing. Award-winning writer Jean Guerrero’s Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir tries to locate the border between truth and fantasy as she explores her troubled father’s life as an immigrant battling with self-destructive behavior. Octavio Solis,…
Find out more »December 2018
Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018
David Kipen and guest readers A reading What might Marilyn Monroe, Cesar Chavez, Susan Sontag, Albert Einstein have to say about Los Angeles? Their diary entries, along with those of other actors, musicians, activists, cartographers, students, geologists, cooks, merchants, journalists, politicians, composers, and many more—provide a kaleidoscopic view of Los Angeles over the past four centuries, from the Spanish missionary expeditions of the 16th century to the present day. Book editor, critic and Los Angeles native David Kipen has scoured…
Find out more »July 2019
The Future of Movies
The movie industry is going through seismic changes as we enter the streaming era. Will fewer movies come out in theaters? How will Netflix weather the onslaught of new streaming services about to debut? And are there new opportunities for underrepresented storytellers to make their mark? Join New York Times pop culture reporter Kyle Buchanan, who is also The NYT’s awards season Carpetbagger columnist, as he speaks with Jordan Horowitz, producer of “La La Land,” Franklin Leonard of The Black…
Find out more »October 2019
Lost & Found at the Movies: True Lies
Lulu Wang In conversation with John Nein, Senior Programmer, Sundance Film Festival From the outset, Lulu Wang’s The Farewell lets us know that the film is “based on an actual lie,” which turns out to be true. Wang drew inspiration from a deception that unfolded within her own family when her grandmother, living in Changchun, China, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The family kept the diagnosis a secret from the grandmother and in order to bid her goodbye, they gathered…
Find out more »Modern Love
Daniel Jones In conversation with Terri Cheney Daniel Jones, who has edited the weekly “Modern Love” column for The New York Times since 2004, has read tens of thousands of stories about the trials and tribulations of love, relationships, and humanity at large. First expanding this popular series of weekly reader-submitted essays into a podcast and now as a newly premiering Amazon Original Series, Jones will discuss bringing some of the most beloved columns to life on television with a…
Find out more »November 2019
Rights Night: Our Rights, Our Issues
Randall Kennedy In conversation with Eric Miller, Professor of Law, Loyola Marymount University Rights Night returns with author and American Law scholar Randall Kennedy on the Bill of Rights. Kennedy is a professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. For his education he attended St. Albans School, Princeton University, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the…
Find out more »Dreams, Genes, & Machines: Are We Living Science Fiction? – Artificial Intelligence
Dr. Achuta Kadambi In conversation Nellie Bowles, reporter for The New York Times What if search-and-rescue robots could sense survivors through dense smoke? What if surgical robots could perform impossible surgeries by seeing details invisible to a human doctor? At Dr. Achuta Kadambi’s UCLA lab, his team works to make these possibilities a reality. By symbiotically blending camera and algorithm designs, Kadambi gives the gift of sight to machines. With journalist Nellie Bowles, who covers tech and internet culture from…
Find out more »February 2020
National Book Foundation Presents: Untold Stories
Erika L. Sánchez and Kali Fajardo-Anstine In conversation with Lisa Lucas, Executive Director, National Book Foundation 2019 National Book Award Finalist Kali Fajardo-Anstine (Sabrina & Corina: Stories) joins poet, essayist, novelist, and 2017 National Book Award Finalist Erika L. Sánchez (I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter) to discuss their work and why the preservation, perpetuation, and presentation of the experience of Mexican-American women in literature matters. Moderated by Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, and presented…
Find out more »Rights Night: Our Rights, Our Issue
Mark Rosenbaum and Talia Inlender In conversation with Lindsay Toczylowski and Miriam Jordan Featuring a special performance by poet Marcelo Hernandez Castillo What makes a country home? Four experts on immigration and human rights will come together to share from their work from different sides of the border crisis. Having argued landmark cases on immigration before the Supreme Court, Mark Rosenbaum will share from his work defending the rights of both DACA recipients and the rights of documented and undocumented…
Find out more »Gish Jen
In conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen “I think this book could really save the world,” said Ann Patchett of Gish Jen’s new dystopian novel The Resisters. This extraordinary story imagines a not-so-distant future of America—which she calls “AutoAmerica” and is half underwater and populated by two groups of people: the “Netted” of the higher ground and the “Surplus,” who live on swampland. A “Surplus” family’s home life is upended when their teen daughter with amazing baseball talents is allowed to play…
Find out more »March 2020
Lost & Found at the Movies
A conversation with John Cooper, former Festival Director, Sundance Film Festival Having stepped down last month as Director of the Sundance Film Festival, John Cooper offers a unique perspective on an artistic movement that became an invaluable part of our cultural and social fabric—its renegade films and filmmakers, outrageous stories of grit and determination, late-night deals, the serendipity of cult classics, and the making of its own mythology, including the culminating wisdom of Cooper’s “Ten Commandments” of Indie Film. From…
Find out more »CANCELLED – Rights Night: Our Rights, Our Issues
In conversation with Kathryn Eidmann, staff attorney, Public Counsel Every day thousands of Americans are jailed because they don’t have enough money to pay bail. Directly impacting low-income and minority communities the most, people who are unable to post bail can lose their jobs, their homes, and their lives are torn apart. The Eighth Amendment was established to prohibit the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments, but is it protecting our citizens enough?…
Find out more »