Posts by Live Talks LA

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VIRTUAL EVENT ONLY, February 13 (click here)
TICKETS:
$42 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses)
*Includes access to watch the event on video-on-demand for five days after it airs
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Acclaimed Harvard sociologist makes the case for reexamining what we value to prioritize recognition—the quest for respect—in an age that has been defined by growing inequality and the obsolescence of the American dream.
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Michèle Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University. An influential cultural sociologist who studies inclusion and inequality, she has tackled topics such as dignity, respect, stigma, racism and anti-racism, class and racial boundaries, social change, and how we evaluate social worth across societies.
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Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and numerous other awards. His most recent publication is A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial. His other books are the sequel to The Sympathizer, The Committed; a short story collection, The Refugees; Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War ; and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He has also published Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book written in collaboration with his son, Ellison. He is a University Professor at the University of Southern California. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, he is also the editor of The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.
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“Michèle Lamont’s book Seeing Others is so important for this time we’re living through — as our country grapples with changing ideas of “who matters” and how we can move to a more equitable and understanding nation. Her extensive research encompasses the intersectionality that is the key to making a better world for us all. A must read.” — Joey Soloway, creator of Transparent
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Michèle Lamont unpacks the power of recognition—rendering others as visible and valued—by drawing on nearly forty years of research and new interviews with young adults, and with cultural icons and change agents who intentionally practice recognition—from Nikole Hannah Jones and Cornel West to Michael Schur and Roxane Gay. She shows how new narratives are essential for everyone to feel respect and assert their dignity.
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Decades of neoliberalism have negatively impacted our sense of self-worth, up and down the income ladder, just as the American dream has become out of reach for most people. By prioritizing material and professional success, we have judged ourselves and others in terms of self-reliance, competition, and diplomas. The foregrounding of these attributes of the upper-middle class in our values system feeds into the marginalization of workers, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and minority groups. The solution, Lamont argues, is to shift our focus towards what we have in common while actively working to recognize the diverse ways one can live a life. Building on Lamont’s lifetime of expertise and revelatory connections between broad-ranging issues, Seeing Others delivers realistic sources of hope: By reducing stigma, we put change within reach.
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Just as Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone did for a previous generation, Seeing Others strikes at the heart of our modern struggles and illuminates an inclusive path forward with new ways for understanding our world. 

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VIRTUAL EVENT, February 12 (click here)
TICKETS:
$45 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses)
*Includes access to watch the event on video-on-demand for five days after it airs
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From bestselling author, media pioneer, and curator of TED, comes an inspiring guide to amplifying kindness and igniting a movement on both an individual and global scale.
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Chris Anderson has led TED since 2001, overseeing its transformation from an annual conference to a nonprofit with global reach, sharing TED Talks, podcasts, and TED-Ed videos freely to all.
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Today’s culture seems to be trending ever meaner and more divisive: INFECTIOUS GENEROSITY offers an antidote. Chris Anderson argues that by rethinking generosity in this connected era, we can shape it into a force that can spread across the world. Generosity? Really?! It seems too small a force arrayed against today’s problems. But the pandemic taught us that even a tiny virus can have global impact by virtue of being infectious.  So what does it take to make generosity infectious? There are dozens of inspiring people out there, toiling away from the limelight, who have demonstrated how this is possible. The book is filled with their stories, which collectively offer a playbook we can all make use of. The result? A fundamentally more hopeful view of human possibility in the 21st century.
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As the curator of TED for over twenty years, Anderson has seen first-hand the ways in which ideas can spread. Through the power of the internet, he has helped the world’s boldest thinkers share their most uplifting and world-changing concepts and with INFECTIOUS GENEROSITY, Anderson encourages all of us to harness the internet as a force that brings people together instead of driving them apart. Through a combination of inspiring stories, cutting-edge psychological research, and practical guidance INFECTIOUS GENEROSITY serves as both a manifesto and a playbook for embarking on a journey of generosity. Broken into three sections, WHY Infectious Generosity’s time has come; HOW we each can play part; WHAT IF? Imagining a world in which Infectious Generosity has claimed its rightful place.

Irwin Miller is an award-winning designer, artist and thought leader who has worked in the design industry for over 30 years with a focus of architecture and interior design. He had been a Principal and Design Director at Gensler for 20+ years working on projects of every scope and scale around the world. Before that, he worked with a variety of international architects throughout Europe after receiving degrees from RISD and Harvard Graduate School of Design. His current passion is ceramic work – and stop motion animation for television and music videos.

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Virtual event Tickets for November 20 (Click here)
TICKETS:
$45 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses)
*Includes access to watch the event on video-on-demand for five days after it airs
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A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain
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David Brooks is one of the nation’s leading writers and commentators. He is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, a writer for The Atlantic, and appears regularly on PBS Newshour. He is the bestselling author of The Second Mountain, The Road to Character, The Social Animal, Bobos in Paradise, and On Paradise Drive.
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If you want to know someone, what kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to? In How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, best-selling author David Brooks sets forth a practical, heartfelt guide.
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Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, history, and education, he presents a hopeful, integrated approach to fostering deeper human connections—and a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility and misperception.
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The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.
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Larry Wilmore has been a television producer, actor, comedian, and writer for more than 25 years. He can currently be heard as host of Larry Wilmore: Black on the Air on The Ringer Podcast Network. The show features Wilmore’s unique mix of humor and wit as he weighs in on the issues of the week and interviews guests in the worlds of politics, entertainment, culture, sports, and beyond. Filmo and TV credit include: Jerry and Margo Go Large, alongside Bryan Cranston and Annette Benning on Paramount+; Reasonable Doubt for Hulu’s Onyx Collective; Amend: The Fight for America on Netflix;   The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore on Comedy Central; Insecure on HBO;  Black-ish on ABC; The Daily Show with Jon Stewart;  In Living Color, The Office and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He also served as creator, writer, and executive producer of The Bernie Mac Show, which earned him a 2002 Emmy Award for “Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series” and a 2001 Peabody Award.