Adam Grant with Jennifer Garner

By Live Talks LA | November 19, 2023
Join us for a virtual
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Tuesday, November 19, 2023, 3pm PT/6pm ET
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This event was taped on November 14 in Los Angeles.
 
Adam Grant
in conversation with Jennifer Garner*

discussing his book,
Hidden Potential:
The Science of Achieving Greater Things
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*Rainn Wilson was originally the interviewer for this event.
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS, November 19 (Click here)
TICKETS:
$48 Virtual Admission + book (book is not signed, 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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The New York Times bestselling author of Think Again illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights...
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Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. His books include Think Again, Give and Take and Originals and  have sold millions of copies.  His TED talks have been viewed more than 30 million times, and he hosts the hit podcast Re:Thinking.  He has been recognized as one of the world’s ten most influential management thinkers and Fortune‘s 40 Under 40, and has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. Grant received his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and he is a former Junior Olympic springboard diver. 
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“This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self. It would’ve helped me find a more joyful path to progress.”
—Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam singles tennis champion
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“I read Hidden Potential in one sitting, loved it, and have been thinking about it ever since. Which is the highest praise I can give a book. This is Adam Grant‘s finest work—it will inspire you to bigger dreams.”—Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and host of Revisionist History
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How can anyone rise to achieve? Adam Grant’s latest book, Hidden Potential, weaves together groundbreaking evidence that shows progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess—it’s about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.
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Jennifer Garner has enjoyed a successful career at the top of her field in both film and television, and has also taken on the role of philanthropist and entrepreneur. Her credits include roles in Alias, Dallas Buyers Club and Juno – Jennifer starred in HBO’s Camping and STX action film Peppermint and on Netflix’s Yes Day, a comedy based on the children’s book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, which she stars in and produced. She has held the position of Artist Ambassador for Save the Children for over 10 years. In 2017, Jennifer co-founded the organic-food company Once Upon a Farm with Cassandra Curtis and former Annie’s president John Foraker. Together the visionaries have grown the company with a goal of providing children with the best tasting, most nutritious and highest quality food utilizing sustainable methods.
Posted in Events

Ethel Morgan Smith with Jane Smiley

By Live Talks LA | November 13, 2023
Join us for an in-person
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Monday, November 13, 2023, 8pm

Ethel Morgan Smith
in conversation with Jane Smiley

discussing her book,
Path to Grace:
Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement 

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William Turner Gallery
at Bergamot Arts Station
2525 Michigan Ave E-1,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
(Free parking available at the venue)
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This event is complimentary.  
Books by both authors will be available for purchase at the event.
 

Path to Grace is a personal history. A masterful re-envisioning. An intimate portrait of the civil rights movement through the eyes of the folks on the ground. The unsung heroes. This is their story, our story, and it is compelling and powerful and necessary. — Kwame Alexander
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Ethel Morgan Smith is author of From Whence Cometh My Help: The African American Community at Hollins College and Reflections of the Other: Being Black in Germany. Her essay “Love Means Nothing” won the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Prize. “We Ready” was a finalist for the Jeanne M. Lieby Prize and was published in the Florida Review. She has also published in the New York Times, Callaloo,and African American Review. Smith has been a Fulbright Scholar (Universität of Tübingen, Germany); Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio, Italy); Visiting Artist (American Academy in Rome); and DuPont Fellow (Randolph Macon Women’s College).
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Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel Some Luck was long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award. She has written for numerous magazines and newspapers, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper’s, and The Nation. Her most recent book is, The Questions That Matter Most: Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom
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The civil rights movement is often defined narrowly, relegated to the 1950s and 1960s and populated by such colossal figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Many forget that the movement was bigger than the figures on the frontline and that it grew from intellectual and historical efforts that continue today. In Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement, Ethel Morgan Smith shines light on unsung heroes of the civil rights movement, the ordinary citizens working behind the scenes to make an impact in their communities.
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Through eleven original interviews with teachers, parents hosting fundraisers for civil right workers, volunteers helping with voter registration, and more, Smith highlights the contributions these figures made to the civil rights movement. Some of these brave warriors worked at the elbows of icons while others were clearing new paths, all passing through history without wide recognition. Path to Grace introduces readers to new witnesses and largely neglected voices. Also included are interviews with such esteemed but less studied figures as writer Gloria Naylor, poet Nikki Giovanni, fashion designer Ann Lowe, and educator Constance Curry.
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This work of social change situates these narratives in both the past and present. Indeed, many of Smith’s subjects, such as Emma Bruce, John Canty, Andrea Lee, Ann Lowe, and Blanche Virginia Franklin Moore, can trace their ancestry back to enslavement, which provides a direct chain of narrators and firmly plants the roots of the civil rights movement in the country’s foundation. Through historical contextualization and an analysis of contemporary sociopolitical events, Path to Grace celebrates the contributions of some of the nameless individuals, generation after generation, who worked to make the United States better for all its citizens.
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Posted in Events

Jeff Tweedy with Nick Offerman

By Live Talks LA | November 13, 2023
Join us for a virtual
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Monday, November 13, 2023, 6pm PT/9pm ET
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Jeff Tweedy
in conversation with Nick Offerman
 
discussing his book,
World Within a Song:
Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music

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PURCHASE TICKETS (Click here)
$45* Virtual Admission + signed book 
* Tickets include access to watch the virtual event for five days after it airs on video-on-demand (thru November 18)
** US orders only.  We only ship to US addresses
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An exciting and heartening mix of memories, music, and inspiration from Wilco front man and New York Times bestselling author Jeff Tweedy, sharing fifty songs that changed his life, the real-life experiences behind each one, as well as what he’s learned about how music and life intertwine and enhance each other.

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Jeff Tweedy is the founding member and leader of the Grammy Award–winning American rock band Wilco, and before that the cofounder of the alt‐country band Uncle Tupelo. He is one of contemporary music’s most accomplished songwriters, musicians, and performers. He has released four albums, written original songs for thirteen Wilco albums, and is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc. and How to Write One Song. 
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What makes us fall in love with a song? What makes us want to write our own songs? Do songs help? Do songs help us live better lives? And do the lives we live help us write better songs? 
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Jeff Tweedy’s new book is  about why we listen to music, why we love songs, and how music can connect us to each other and to ourselves. Featuring fifty songs that have both changed his life and influenced his music—including songs by the Replacements, Mavis Staples, the Velvet Underground, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding, Dolly Parton, and Billie Eilish—as well as Jeff’s “Rememories,” dream-like short pieces that related key moments from Jeff’s life.
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Nick Offerman is the New York Times bestselling author of Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living, Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America’s Gutsiest Troublemakers, and Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop, as well as co-author of The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, with his wife, Megan Mullally. Offerman is the narrator for the audiobook of Wendell Berry’s latest, The Need to Be Whole, and co-stars in Episode 3 of The Last of Us. 

Posted in Events

John Stamos with Josh Peck

By Live Talks LA | November 11, 2023
Join us for a virtual
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Saturday, November 11, 2023, 3pm PT/6pm ET
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This event was taped with an audience on November 6, 2023 in Los Angeles.

John Stamos
in conversation with Josh Peck

discussing his memoir,
If You Would have Told Me
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Virtual event only (November 11) Tickets can be purchased here.
Virtual event airs on November 11 at 3pm PT, 6pm ET
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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John Stamos is a two-time Emmy Award-nominated television, film, and Broadway theater actor, as well as a producer. He rose to stardom on General Hospital, and his career includes performances on Big Shot, Grandfathered, ER, You, Full House, and Fuller House, and on the stage in Cabaret, Bye Bye Birdie, and Nine. He is also a musician, having toured, recorded, and collaborated with The Beach Boys for over thirty years. Stamos is an ambassador for Childhelp.
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A universal story about friendship, love, loss, and the courage to embrace love once more, John Stamos’s memoir is filled with some of the most memorable names in Hollywood, both old and new. Funny, deeply poignant, and brutally honest, If You Would Have Told Me is a portrait of a boy who went from believing in Disney magic to a man who learns that we have to create our own magical moments in life.
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Josh Peck is an actor, writer and podcast host. TV and film credits include: Oppenheimer, Hulu’s How I Met Your Father, iCarly on Paramount+, 13: The Musical on Netflix, the Disney+ reboot of Turner & Hooch and the upcoming film Summer Camp alongside Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, and Alfre Woodard. His memoir Happy People are Annoying was published in 2022 and he co-hosts the podcast, Good Guys with Ben Soffer.

Posted in Events

Sheila Johnson with Lee Daniels

By Live Talks LA | November 9, 2023
Join us for an in-person & virtual
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Thursday, November 9, 2023, 8pm
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Presented in association with the Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center

Sheila Johnson
in conversation with Lee Daniels

discussing her book,
Walk Through Fire: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Triumph

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Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center
at Vista Del Mar
3200 Motor Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(Free Parking available at the venue)
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Face masks recommended
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PURCHASE TICKETS for Nov 9 (click here)
TICKETS: 
$48 General Admission ticket +book
$20  General Admission ticket 
*Tickets include access to also watch the virtual version of the event 
that airs on November 15 at 6pm PT, 9pm ET.
(additional signed books available for purchase at the event).
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VIRTUAL EVENT ONLY TICKETS, Nov 15 (click here)
6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$45 Virtual Admission +  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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The cofounder of BET and first African American woman billionaire shares her deeply personal journey through love and loss, tragedy and triumph—an inspiring story of overcoming toxic influences, discovering her true self, and at last finding happiness in her work and life.
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Sheila Johnson is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, cofounder of BET, founder and CEO of Salamander Hotels & Resorts, and the only African American woman to have a principal shareholder stake in three professional sports teams.
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Lee Daniels is an Academy Award® nominated filmmaker whose credits include MONSTER’S BALL, making Daniels the first African American producer of an Academy Award®-winning and nominated film;  PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE;  THE BUTLER and THE UNITED STATES VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY. His next film is THE DELIVERANCE (Netflix) which he wrote and directed and produced. TV credits include EMPIRE.
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From humble beginnings as a schoolgirl and young violinist in Maywood, Illinois, Sheila Johnson rose to become one of the most accomplished businesswomen in America. A cofounder of Black Entertainment Television, she became an entrepreneur and philanthropist at the highest levels.
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But that success came at a painful personal cost.
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Sheila grew up in a middle-class family that encouraged her love of the arts and music. But her idyllic childhood ended at age sixteen when her beloved father announced he was leaving for another woman, an act that shattered her mother and destroyed Sheila’s trust. She vowed she’d never be in her mother’s position—dependent on a man for her sense of self-worth and for financial security. Yet when she was barely out of her teens, Sheila married a man who would take her right down that same unfortunate path.
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Filled with sharply drawn, emotionally powerful scenes, Walk Through Fire traces the hardships Sheila faced in her marriage and her professional life. Despite her skills as a violinist and music teacher, as well as her obvious entrepreneurial talent, she had to fight to overcome self-doubt and fears of failure. Sheila vividly details her struggles, including battling institutional racism, losing a child, suffering emotional abuse in her thirty-three-year marriage, and plunging into a deep depression with her divorce. And yet, out of that pain came renewed purpose and meaning. In the third act of her life, Sheila Johnson has not only made her mark as the founder of Salamander Hotels & Resorts and the only Black female co-owner of three professional sports teams, she has also, finally, found true love.
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Walk Through Fire is a uniquely American success story. And it is the deeply personal portrait of one woman who, despite heartache and obstacles, finally found herself and her place in the world.

 

Posted in Events

Schuyler Bailar with Dylan Mulvaney

By Live Talks LA | November 8, 2023
Join us for an in-person & virtual
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Wednesday, November 8, 2023, 8pm
.
Presented in association with the Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center

Schuyler Bailar
in conversation with Dylan Mulvaney
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discussing his book,
He/She/They:
How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters
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Gloria Kaufman Performing Arts Center
at Vista Del Mar
3200 Motor Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(Free Parking available at the venue)
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Face masks recommended
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PURCHASE TICKETS for November 8 (click here)
TICKETS: 
$48  General Admission ticket +signed book
$20  General Admission ticket
*Tickets include access to also watch the virtual version of the event 
that airs on November 14 at 6pm PT, 9pm ET.

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VIRTUAL EVENT ONLY, November 14 (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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Go‑to expert on gender identity, Schuyler Bailar, offers an essential, urgent guide that changes the conversation.
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Schuyler Bailar (he/him) is an educator, author, and advocate. He is also the first transgender athlete to compete in any sport on an NCAA Division 1 men’s team. His work has earned him numerous honors including NYC Pride Grand Marshall, the Out 100, LGBTQ Nation’s Instagram Advocate of the year, and the Harvard Varsity Director’s Award. In addition to being one of the top LGBTQ+ educators and advocates, Schuyler is a leading DEI speaker and advisor. Schuyler also hosts the podcast “Dear Schuyler” on gender and culture and is the creator of the LaneChanger.com gender literacy online learning series. He holds a degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology from Harvard, and works in four research labs focusing in clinical psychology and public health.
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Dylan Mulvaney (she/they) is a trans actress, comic, and content creator of the viral TikTok series “Days of Girlhood,” which raised $200,000 for The Trevor Project to support LGBTQIA+ teens in crisis. Winner of the 2022 “TikTok Trailblazer” award, Queerty “Groundbreaker Award,” THEM “Now Award,” a Webby “Special Achievement Award,” and many others, Mulvaney was invited by President Joe Biden to speak at the White House about trans rights. Pre-pandemic, Dylan played Elder White in the “Book of Mormon” Broadway musical. She now lives in LA where she works to bring trans stories to the mainstream.
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Anti-transgender legislation is being introduced in state governments around the United States in record-breaking numbers. Trans people are under attack in sports, healthcare, school curriculum, bathrooms, bars, and nearly every walk of life. He/She/They addresses fundamental topics, from why being transgender is not a choice and why pronouns are important, to more complex issues including how gender-affirming healthcare can be lifesaving and why allowing trans youth to play sports is good for all kids. With a relatable narrative rooted in facts, science, and history, Schuyler helps restore common sense and humanity to a discussion that continues to be divisively coopted and deceptively politicized.
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Schuyler Bailar didn’t set out to be an activist, but his very public transition to the Harvard men’s swim team put him in the spotlight. His choice to be open about his transition and share his experience has touched people around the world. His plain-spoken education has evolved into tireless advocacy for inclusion and collective liberation. In He/She/They, Schuyler uses storytelling and the art of conversation to give us the essential language and context of gender, meeting everyone where they are and paving the way for understanding, acceptance, and, most importantly: connection. He/She/They speaks to trans folks directly, answering the question, “does it get better?” with a resounding yes, celebrating radical trans joy. Myth-busting, affirming, compassionate, and fierce, He/She/They is a crucial, urgent–and lifesaving–book that forever changes the conversation about gender.

Posted in Events