Posts by Live Talks LA
Ione Skye with Jon Cryer
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Jon Cryer
discussing her memoir,
Say Everything
. Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
at New Roads School
3131 Olympic Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90404
(Free Parking available at the venue)
Thursday, March 6, 2025, 8pm
$50 General Admission + signed book
$25 General Admission
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PURCHASE VIRTUAL TICKETS (US Orders Only)
Wednesday, March 12, 2025, 6pm PT/9pm ET
$46 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on March 12 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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Gen X icon Ione Skye bares all in an achingly vulnerable coming-of-age memoir about chasing fame, desire, and true love in the shadow of her famous, absent father.
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Ione Skye made her film debut opposite Keanu Reeves in River’s Edge, followed by her iconic role as Diane Court in Say Anything. Skye has appeared in other notable film and television projects including Zodiac, Wayne’s World, Fever Pitch, Arrested Development, Camping, Good Girls, Beef, and much more. In addition to acting, Skye is a painter who has exhibited and sold her work for twenty-five years. She is the author of the children’s book, My Yiddish Vacation, and cohost of the weekly podcast Weirder Together. Ione is the mother of two daughters and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, and collaborator, the musician Ben Lee.
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“Ione Skye captivated an entire generation when she emerged as a new kind of ingenue — idiosyncratic, almost vulpine, she made the films she appeared in her own and became a fascinating fixture of LA lore. But this book proves that even though she was on everyone’s screen (and bedroom wall) she had more to say than anyone else’s work could contain. That the most fascinating, funny, and ferocious version of events is her own.” –Lena Dunham, actor, filmmaker, creator of HBO’s Girls, and bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl
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In 1987, sixteen-year-old Ione Skye landed the breakout role of Diane Court, the dream girl who inspires John Cusack’s iconic boombox serenade in the hit Cameron Crowe film, Say Anything. While Skye seemed perfectly typecast as an aloof valedictorian, she was anything but.
Deserted by her dad, the folk singer legend Donovan, Skye was a ninth-grade dropout who sought solace and validation in the eyes of audiences and dreamy costars like Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix, Matthew Perry, John Cusack, and Robert Downey Jr. But like her sixties It Girl mom, Skye’s greatest weakness was musicians.
On the heels of a toxic relationship with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis, which began when she was just sixteen and he was twenty-four, the actress leapt into wedded bliss with her first great love, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz.
But marriage was not the magical hall pass to adulthood Skye had imagined. Awakening to her bisexuality and desperately insecure, she risked her fairytale marriage for a string of affairs with gorgeous nineties “bad girls.” The dream marriage imploded, and Skye’s trust in herself and her future along with it.
Set against a backdrop of rock royalty compounds, supermodel cliques, and classic late-century films like River’s Edge, Gas Food Lodging, and Wayne’s World, Say Everything is a wild ride of Hollywood thrills as well as a lyrical reflection on ambition, intimacy, and a messy, sexy, unconventional life.
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Jon Cryer’s award-winning career spans film, television, the stage and podcasts. He earned two Emmy Awards for his work as Alan Harper on the CBS hit comedy Two and a Half Men. Other television credits include: Extended Family, Supergirl, The Famous Teddy Z, Getting Personal, Partners, The Trouble with Normal. Film credits include: No Small Affair, Pretty in Pink, Hot Shots, Hiding Out, Shorts, Weather Girl, Hit by Lightning, Big Time Adolescence. He co-wrote, produced, and starred in two well-received independent films,The Pompatus of Love and Went to Coney Island on a Mission from God…Be Back by Five. Stage credits include: the New York Philharmonic revival of Company, Torch Song Trilogy, Brighton Beach Memoirs; Boys Life and 900 Oneonta. His memoir, So That Happened was a New York Times bestseller. Most recently he’s been active in the podcast world. Under his production company banner, Discount Sushi, he produced The Man Who Calculated Death, a true-life thriller; Lawyers, Guns and Money, a deep dive into the Iran-Contra scandal of the ‘80’s. He also guest hosted several seasons of Undisclosed, a podcast whose investigations were instrumental in overturning the wrongful convictions of over a dozen people.
Kristin Hannah with Brooke Baldwin (virtual)
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Brooke Baldwin
limited edition of her novel,
The Nightingale
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Sunday, February 23, 2025, 3pm PT/6pm ET
TICKETS:
$50 Virtual Admission + signed anniversary edition of The Nightingale (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on February 23, 2025, at 3pm PT/6pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days. Books ship a week after the virtual event.
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With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale was New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year, and is soon to be a major motion picture.
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Kristin Hannah, former lawyer turned writer, is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including The Women, The Nightingale, The Great Alone, and The Four Winds.
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The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France―a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
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Kristin Hanna’s most recent novel is The Women — the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on the story of all women who put themselves in harm’s way to help others — women whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has all too often been forgotten. The Women is a profoundly emotional, richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose extraordinary idealism and courage under fire define a generation.
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In The Women, like in The Nightingale and The Four Winds, Hannah exposes an important but largely unknown historical story: there were women serving in Vietnam. This novel shows us the Vietnam war up close and personal, through a woman’s eyes; what it was like to serve in a combat hospital and how it was to come home to an angry, bitter and divided America. What it was like to have your story forgotten.
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It is about the unremembered women in an unpopular war. About women finding their voices and being sustained by friendships made on the battlefield. About the birth of a new culture and the music, ideas, fashion, and freedom that came with it, a story told about the price of patriotism and war through the hearts, minds, sacrifices and courage of the women who were there.
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Brooke Baldwin is a TV host, award-winning journalist and bestselling author. Brooke most recently published a first person essay in Vanity Fair entitled: Leaving CNN Was How I Found My Voice. She’s now the author of a weekly Substack entitled Unraveling, with Brooke Baldwin.
For more than a decade, Brooke anchored her own live daily news show on CNN. After CNN, she hosted a popular social experiment show on Netflix called The Trust. She is the author of the bestselling book Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power, redefining the word ‘huddle’ to explore how women lean on one another to provide support, empowerment, inspiration, and the strength to enact meaningful change.
Kristin Hannah with Paul Levine (Santa Barbara)
Kristin Hannah
limited edition of her novel, The Nightingale
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1214 State St
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
(Paid Parking available in structure behind the theatre)
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TICKETS:
$54-84 Assigned seats + signed book (The Nightingale)
(Signed copies of The Women available for purchase at the event)
*Tickets include a signed limited 10th Anniversary Edition with foil and embossing, gorgeous designed edges, a ribbon bookmark, exclusive four color endpapers, and a decorative, gold foil stamp on the front case.
With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale was New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year, and is soon to be a major motion picture.
.
Kristin Hannah, former lawyer turned writer, is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including The Women, The Nightingale, The Great Alone, and The Four Winds.
.
The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France―a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
.
Kristin Hanna’s most recent novel is The Women — the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on the story of all women who put themselves in harm’s way to help others — women whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has all too often been forgotten. The Women is a profoundly emotional, richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose extraordinary idealism and courage under fire define a generation.
.
In The Women, like in The Nightingale and The Four Winds, Hannah exposes an important but largely unknown historical story: there were women serving in Vietnam. This novel shows us the Vietnam war up close and personal, through a woman’s eyes; what it was like to serve in a combat hospital and how it was to come home to an angry, bitter and divided America. What it was like to have your story forgotten.
.
It is about the unremembered women in an unpopular war. About women finding their voices and being sustained by friendships made on the battlefield. About the birth of a new culture and the music, ideas, fashion, and freedom that came with it, a story told about the price of patriotism and war through the hearts, minds, sacrifices and courage of the women who were there.
Paul Levine is the author of the Jake Lassiter and Solomon vs. Lord novels, Paul Levine has won the John D. MacDonald Fiction Award and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, Shamus, and James Thurber prizes. His forthcoming novel of historical fiction, Midnight Burning, is the first of a series of thrillers featuring real-life friends Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. He also wrote twenty episodes of the CBS military drama JAG and co-created the Supreme Court show First Monday starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna.
Ethan Kross with Michael Gervais (virtual)
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Michael Gervais
discussing his book,
Shift: Managing Your Emotions–So They Don’t Manage You
. This event was taped on February 11 with an audience.
PURCHASE VIRTUAL TICKETS (US Orders Only)
Monday, February 17, 2025, 6pm PT/9pm ET
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A myth-busting, science-based guide that addresses the timeless question of how to manage your emotional life using tools you already possess—from the bestselling author of Chatter.
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Ethan Kross, PhD, is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. An award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, he is the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory. He has participated in policy discussion at the White House, and has been interviewed about his work on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, and NPR’s Morning Edition. His pioneering research has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New England Journal of Medicine and Science.
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Michael Gervais is a sport and performance psychologist. He is one of the world’s leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance. He founded Finding Mastery, powered by a world-class team of Olympians, PhDs, psychologists and changemakers, to bring insights from the frontier of sport and performance into the business world. He is the host of the popular Finding Mastery podcast that explores the psychology of the world’s most extraordinary thinkers and doers. He is the author of The First Rule of Mastery, published by Harvard Business Review Press.
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“A revolutionary guide to mastering your emotional life.”—Charles Duhigg, NYT bestselling author
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From the mundane nuisances we encounter each day to devastating & enormous losses so many people are experiencing in the Los Angeles area today, our lives are filled with situations that send us spiraling. From psychologist Dr. Ethan Kross, the bestselling author of Chatter, comes a myth-busting, science-based guide that addresses the timeless question of how to manage your emotional life using tools you already possess. Kross writes that emotions, rather than being “good” or “bad,” can be our superpower.
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When they’re activated in the right ways and at the right time, they function like an immune system, alerting us to our surroundings, telling us how to react to a situation, and helping us make the right choices.
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Join us for a conversation with Dr. Kross about his new book, Shift, where he discusses to make emotions work for us rather than against us—and a new framework for shifting our emotions so they don’t take over our lives.
Naomi Watts with Eve Rodsky (virtual)
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Eve Rodsky
discussing her book,
Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause
. This event was taped with an audience on February 3
PURCHASE VIRTUAL TICKETS (US Orders Only)
Monday, February 10, 2025, 6pm PT/9pm ET
$46 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on December 10 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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A frank, funny and informative guide to menopause and aging by beloved actress Naomi Watts, one of the leading voices in menopause awareness.
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Naomi Watts is a renowned actor and producer. She has Academy Award nominations for her performances in 21 Grams and The Impossible, and is also known for starring in critically acclaimed projects such as Mulholland Drive, King Kong, and, more recently, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. She is the founder and chief creative officer of Stripes, a company dedicated to raising menopause awareness and providing women with education, community, and solutions for a holistic approach to menopause.
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At thirty-six, Naomi Watts had just completed filming King Kong and was trying to start a family when she was told that she was on the brink of menopause. It is estimated that seventy-five million women in the United States are currently dealing with menopause symptoms (dry itchy skin, raging hormones, night sweats), and yet the very word “menopause” continues to be associated with stigma and confusion. With so little information, many women feel unprepared, ashamed, and deeply alone when the time comes.
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This is the book Naomi Watts wishes she had when she first started experiencing symptoms. Like sitting down over coffee and having an intimate chat with your girlfriend, Dare I Say It blends funny and poignant stories from Naomi and her friends with advice from doctors, hormone experts, and nutritionists to take the secrecy and shame out of menopause and aging. Answering questions such as: What’s hormone therapy and should I be on it? Will I ever sleep again? Will I get myself back? What happened to my libido? Do I need eighteen serums for my aging skin? Whose body is this anyway? Who am I now? Naomi Watts shares the most up-to-date research on how to manage menopause symptoms and tackle the physical and emotional challenges we encounter as we age.
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Irreverent, bold, and reassuring, Dare I Say It is the companion every woman needs to embrace the best version of herself as she moves into what can be the most powerful and satisfying period of her life.
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Eve Rodsky transformed a “blueberries breakdown” into a catalyst for social change when she applied her Harvard-trained background in organizational management to ask the simple yet profound question: What would happen if we treated our homes as our most important organizations? Her New York Times bestselling book and Reese’s Book Club Pick, Fair Play, a gamified life-management system that helps partners rebalance their domestic workload and reimagine their relationship, has elevated the cultural conversation about the value of unpaid labor and care. In her follow-up, Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World, Rodsky explores the cross-section between the science of creativity, productivity, and resilience. Described as the ‘antidote to physical, mental, and emotional burnout,’ Rodsky aims to inspire a new narrative around the equality of time and the individual right to personal time choice that influences sustainable and lasting change on a policy level.
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Eric Idle with Alex Edelman (virtual)
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Alex Edelman
discussing his book,
The Spamalot Diaries
. (This event was taped with an audience on January 28)
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Sunday, February 2, 2025, 3pm PT/6pm ET
TICKETS:
$46 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on February 2, 2025 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days after it airs. Books ship a week after the virtual event.
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From comedy legend Eric Idle, the fascinating inside story of bringing Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Broadway as the unlikely theatrical hit Spamalot.
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Eric Idle is a comedian, actor, author, and singer-songwriter who found immediate fame on television with the sketch-comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Following its success, the group began making films that include Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Eric wrote, directed, and created The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, the world’s first-ever mockumentary, as well as the Tony Award–winning musical Spamalot. His memoir, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life was a New York Times bestseller.
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Watch videos of Eric Idle’s three previous appearances at Live Talks Los Angeles — interviewing John Cleese and Alan Zweibel; and interviewed by Bob Saget.
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Writer & actor Alex Edelman is best known for solo shows that blur the line between his stand-up comedy roots and narrative-driven storytelling. His last offering, JUST FOR US, played more than 500 performances all over the world before premiering as an HBO original comedy special. In 2024 Alex was the recipient of a special Tony Award, was named to the Time100 list of most influential people, and won an Emmy. His debut non-fiction collection, I DON’T BELONG HERE, recently sold to Avid Reader at auction. Alex will next be seen starring in Greg Daniels’ THE PAPER for Peacock. He also writes on the show as a Consulting Producer.
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“Idle provides a rollicking account of the making of his Broadway musical Spamalot. . . . [and] an irresistible and unfiltered ode to the art of live theater. Fans will love this tantalizing glimpse behind the curtain.”—Publishers Weekly
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Long before Spamalot was the toast of Broadway and the winner of three Tony awards, it was an idea threatening to fizzle out before it could find its way into existence. In The Spamalot Diaries, Eric Idle shares original journal entries and raw email exchanges that reveal the sometimes bumpy, always entertaining path to the show’s unforgettable run.
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Financial anxieties, collaborative disputes that tested decades-long friendships, endless rewriting and a broken ankle were just some of the challenges. Idle chronicles every minor mishap and triumph along the way, as well as the creative tension that drove the show to new heights. An unforgettable look behind the curtain of a beloved musical and inside the wickedly entertaining mind of one of our most treasured comic performers.
Photo credit: Lily Idle