Posts by Live Talks LA
Steve Case with Brian Grazer
at Vista Del Mar
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(Free Parking available at the venue)
Steve Case is an entrepreneur, and a pioneer in making the internet part of everyday life. He cofounded America Online in 1985, when just three percent of people were online for an average of just one hour a week. He saw the possibilities of the digital future and built AOL into the largest and most valuable internet company in the 1990s (and the first internet company to go public). He was the founding chair of the Startup America Partnership—an effort launched at the White House in 2011 to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship in every region of the country. Case also was the founding co-chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, where he chaired the subcommittee on entrepreneurship. As chairman and CEO of Revolution, a Washington, DC-based investment firm he cofounded in 2005, Case partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build businesses such as Zipcar, Sweetgreen, Clear, Tempus, DraftKings, and many others. Case also serves as chair of the Smithsonian Institution, which under his leadership has launched a bold effort to make the best of the Smithsonian available to every home and classroom. He is also Chairman of the Case Foundation, and with his wife Jean was among the first to commit to The Giving Pledge, dedicating a majority of their wealth to charitable causes.
Brian Grazer is an Oscar-winning producer and New York Times bestselling author. His films and television shows have been nominated for forty-three Academy Awards and 195 Emmys. His credits include A Beautiful Mind, 24, Apollo 13, Splash, Arrested Development, Empire, 8 Mile, Friday Night Lights, American Gangster, and Genius, among others. He is the author of Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection and the New York Times bestseller A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. Grazer was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and is the cofounder of Imagine Entertainment along with his longtime partner, Ron Howard
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In The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream, Case takes readers on an exhilarating journey into the startup communities that are transforming cities nationwide. Rise of the Rest’s signature road trips, on a big red tour bus, have created significant local and national buzz and spotlighted communities large and small that have committed to a new tech-enabled future. Along the way, Case introduces readers to dozens of entrepreneurs whose inspirational stories of struggle and achievement match the most iconic examples of American invention.
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To date, Case has traveled to forty-three cities on his Rise of the Rest bus tour and has been featured on 60 Minutes, and in The New York Times, USA TODAY, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal. With dedicated venture funds, backed by an iconic group of investors, executives, and entrepreneurs including Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Meg Whitman, John Doerr, Sara Blakely, and Ray Dalio, Rise of the Rest also invests in the most promising high-growth startups located anywhere in the US outside of Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston. The fund has invested in more than 175 companies across more than eighty cities, including: Phoenix, Chattanooga, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Louisville, Baltimore, Columbus, St. Louis, Green Bay, Madison, Buffalo, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Miami, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Indianapolis, New Orleans, and dozens of others.
Scott Turow with Jon Avnet
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Scott Turow is the author of many bestselling works of fiction, including The Last Trial, Testimony, Identical, Innocent, Presumed Innocent, and The Burden of Proof, and two nonfiction books, including One L, about his experience as a law student. His books have been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and have been adapted into movies and television projects. He has frequently contributed essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.
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Jon Avnet directed his first movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, in 1991, followed by The War in 1994, with Elijah Wood in the lead and Kevin Costner in a supporting role as his father. He directed Up Close & Personal in 1996, which was loosely based on the life of Jessica Savitch. It was written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne and starred Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. Other film credits as director and/or producer include: Risky Business, Less than Zero, Red Corner, 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill, Three Christs, Four Good Days. And his television credits include: Call to Glory, Between Two Women, Uprising, Boomtown, Justified, Have a Little Faith, Sneaky Pete.
“Since Presumed Innocent rocked the publishing world, Scott Turow has cemented his status as a writer with few peers in any genre. Now the master is back with a brilliant courtroom chess match that shows us the human quotient in all its rot and virtue. The Last Trial is a first-class legal thriller.”―David Baldacci
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For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation—until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. With few people left who she can trust, Chief Gomez turns to an old friend, Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation, insisting to Rik that the accusations against her are part of an ugly smear campaign designed to destroy her career and empower her enemies—both outside the police force and within.
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Clarice “Pinky” Granum spent most of her youth experimenting with an impressive array of drugs and failing out of various professions, including the police academy. Pinky knows that in the eyes of most people, she’s nothing but a screwup—but she doesn’t trust most people’s opinions anyway. Moreover, she finally has a respectable-enough job as a licensed P.I. working for Rik on his roster of mostly minor cases, like workman’s comp, DUIs and bar fights. Rik’s shabby office and even shabbier cases are a far cry from the kinds of high-profile criminal matters Pinky became familiar with in the law office of her grandfather, Sandy Stern. But Rik and Pinky feel that Chief Gomez’s case, which has attracted national attention, is their chance to break into the legal big leagues.
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Guided by her gut instinct and razor-sharp investigative skills, Pinky dives headfirst into a twisted scandal that will draw her into the deepest recesses of the city’s criminal networks, as well as the human mind. But she will need every scrap of tenacity and courage to unravel the dark secrets those closest to her are determined to keep hidden.
Jann Wenner with Chris Willman
Rolling Stone founder, co-editor, and publisher Jann Wenner offers a “touchingly honest” and “wonderfully deep” memoir from the beating heart of classic rock and roll (Bruce Springsteen).
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Jann S. Wenner was born in New York City and raised in San Francisco and Marin County. He founded Rolling Stone in 1967. Over the ensuing decades, Rolling Stone won many awards for its design, photography, public service, and journalism, and was instrumental in launching the careers of many groundbreaking journalists and photographers. He also founded and published Outside, US Weekly, Family Life, and Men’s Journal. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he is the youngest inductee in the American Society of Magazine Editor’s Hall of Fame.
Chris Willman is senior music writer and chief music critic at Variety. He was named Entertainment Journalist of the Year by the Los Angeles Press Club at the 2020 SoCal Journalism Awards. Prior to joining Variety, Willman was a longtime senior writer at Entertainment Weekly and a contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Billboard, TV Guide, the Hollywood Reporter and other publications.
“The planet got much hipper right around the time Jann Wenner arrived on it. It feels like every significant wave that’s broken over the surface of the world I have lived in, Jann has been there to bear witness and often to catalyze. In memoir as in life, Wenner lets his serious and his silly get the better of him. And we, his readers—for nearly half the century—get the best of him in these pages. I had a lot of fun getting lost in him and no interest in being found.”―Bono
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His deeply personal memoir vividly describes and brings you inside the music, the politics, and the lifestyle of a generation, an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond. The age of rock and roll in an era of consequence, what will be considered one of the great watersheds in modern history. Wenner writes with the clarity of a journalist and an essayist. He takes us into the life and work of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bono, and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few. He was instrumental in the careers of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Annie Leibovitz. His journey took him to the Oval Office with his legendary interviews with Bill Clinton and Barak Obama, leaders to whom Rolling Stone gave its historic, full-throated backing. From Jerry Garcia to the Dalai Lama, Aretha Franklin to Greta Thunberg, the people Wenner chose to be seen and heard in the pages of Rolling Stone tried to change American culture, values, and morality.
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Like a Rolling Stone is a beautifully written portrait of one man’s life, and the life of his generation.
Randall Munroe with Conan O’Brien
The New York Times bestselling author of What If? and How To answers more of the weirdest questions you never thought to ask.
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Randall Munroe is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers How To, What If? and Thing Explainer, the science question-and-answer blog What If?, and the popular web comic xkcd. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time.
“With his steady regimen of math jokes, physics jokes, and antisocial optimism, xkcd creator Randall Munroe, a former NASA roboticist, scores traffic numbers in NBC.com or Oprah.com territory. One key to the strip’s success may be that it doesn’t just comment on nerd culture, it embodies nerd culture.” —Wired, in an issue featuring “the people who have shaped the planet’s past 20 years”
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Conan O’Brien‘s path in comedy started when he served twice as the president of The Harvard Lampoon. He went on to become a writer and producer on several television shows, including Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, until 1993, when NBC tapped him to take over as host of Late Night. Since then, he’s won four Emmy Awards, seven Writers Guild Awards, and the People’s Choice Award for “Favorite Television Host.” Conan has hosted two Emmy Awards, and performed at the White House Correspondents Dinner for two presidents. In 2021, O’Brien concluded his 11 year run with “CONAN” on TBS, solidifying his 28 year career as a late night host and one of the longest tenures in late night history. His Emmy award winning Conan Without Borders series has visited 13 countries and his podcast Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend currently has over 312 million downloads since it launched in 2018. His award winning digital brand Team Coco, which spans across digital and branded content, live events, merchandise and expertly produced comedy specials was recently acquired by SiriusXM.
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What If? 2:
Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the Moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist.
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Before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to a T. rex, or fill every church with bananas, be sure to consult this practical guide for impractical ideas. Unfazed by absurdity, Munroe consults the latest research on everything from swing-set physics to airliner catapult–design to answer his readers’ questions, clearly and concisely, with illuminating and occasionally terrifying illustrations. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances.
Grant Morrison with Amy Nicholson
A drag queen initiates her protégée into the magical arts in this phantasmagoric epic, the first novel from the legendary comics writer and New York Times bestselling author.
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Grant Morrison is best known for their innovative work on comics, from the graphic novel Batman: Arkham Asylum to acclaimed runs on Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the X-Men, as well as their subversive creator-owned titles such as The Invisibles, Seaguy, The Filth, and WE3. In television, they have developed adaptations of their comic series Happy! for Syfy and Netflix and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for Peacock. In addition, Morrison is an award-winning playwright, a musician, an occult practitioner, and a stray-cat magnet. They are also the author of the New York Times bestseller Supergods. Morrison was awarded an MBE for services to film and literature.
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Amy Nicholson is a film critic in Los Angeles and host of the podcast “Unspooled.” Her credits include the New York Times, LA Weekly, Variety, Rolling Stone, MTV News, and the Guardian, as well as the podcast miniseries “Quentin Tarantino Presents,” “Halloween Unmasked,” and “Skillset.” Her first book, “Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor,” was published by Cahiers du Cinema, and her second, “Extra Girls,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2023.
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“Grant Morrison is a modern mythmaker—a once-in-a-lifetime storyteller who has crafted some of the most evocative sagas of our generation. With Luda, Morrison has created a mesmerizing, evocative, and unforgettable journey that still manages to be grounded and character driven. Luda discards the trappings of genre boundaries to concoct something wholly new and truly phenomenal.”—Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
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Luci LaBang is a star: For decades this flamboyant drag artist has cast a spell over screen and stage. Now she’s the leading lady in a smash hit musical. But as time takes its toll, Luci fears her star is beginning to dim.
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When Luci’s co-star meets with a mysterious accident, a new ingenue shimmers onto the scene: Luda, whose fantastical beauty and sinister charm infatuate Luci immediately . . . and who bears a striking resemblance to Luci herself at a much younger age.
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Luda begs Luci to share the secrets of her stardom and to reveal the hidden tricks of her trade. For Luci LaBang is a mistress of the Glamour, a mysterious discipline that draws on sex, drugs, and the occult for its trancelike, transformative effects.
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But as Luci tutors her young protégée, their fellow actors and crew members begin meeting with untimely ends. Now Luci wonders if Luda has mastered the Glamour all too well . . . and exploited it to achieve her dark ambitions.
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What follows is an intoxicating descent into the demimonde of Gasglow, a fantastical city of dreams, and into the nightmarish heart of Luda herself: a femme fatale, a phenomenon, a monster, and, perhaps, the brightest star of them all.
Jenifer Lewis with Niecy Nash
Walking in My Joy is a collection of electric stories by the one and only, super hilarious Jenifer Lewis. Her commentary on what’s happening in the world today, told through her outrageous real-life adventures, will have you laughing out loud, while her insightful messages touch your soul.
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Jenifer Lewis is an award-winning actress, entertainer, activist and bestselling author. She starred on ABC’s Black-ish, as the hilarious grandmother Ruby Johnson. She has appeared in over 400 episodic television shows, 68 movies, 40 animations, and 4 Broadway shows. Her credits include: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Friends; A Different World; Twenties;Castaway; What’s Love Got to Do with It;The Preacher’s Wife; Think Like a Man; Madea’s Family Reunion; Strong Medicine; The Princess and the Frog; Mickey Mouse Funhouse; Rugrats, Cars 1, 2, and 3; American Dad; andHairspray. She has performed in more than 200 concerts worldwide including, sold out audiences at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. This year, she will begin a new television series, I Love That for You for Showtime. She appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles when her memoir, The Mother of Black Hollywood, was published in 2017. Watch the video.
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Niecy Nash is an actress, comedian and television host, best known for her performances on television. Her credits include: Clean House on the Style Network, for which she won an Emmy; she played the role of Deputy Raineesha Williams in the comedy series Reno 911!; as nurse Denise “DiDi” Ortley in the HBO comedy Getting On; as Lolli Ballantine on the TV Land sitcom The Soul Man; Denise Hemphill in the Fox horror-comedy series, Scream Queens. and as Desna Simms, in the TNT crime comedy-drama Claws. Nash played the role of civil rights activist Richie Jean Jackson in the historical drama film Selma directed by Ava DuVernay. In 2019, she starred as Delores Wise in DuVernay’s miniseries When They See Us, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. In 2020, she portrayed feminist leader Florynce Kennedy in Mrs. America. In 2021, she served as a guest host of the show The Masked Singer for five episodes.
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“If you want to walk in your joy, Lewis advises, you must love yourself, set boundaries, and remember that you oversee your happiness.”– Starred Booklist .
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A self-described “traveling fool and nature freak,” Jenifer takes readers with her all over the world, from Cape Town to Bali; Washington, DC, to the Serengeti; Mongolia to St. Petersburg; and Argentina to Antarctica to demonstrate how she walks in her joy by seeking pleasure in everyday encounters. Every step of the way you’ll be doubled over with laughter as she faints at the Obamas’ holiday party; awakens to a swollen face and has to go to the hospital during the height of the Covid pandemic; an alien visitation; a successful takedown of a conman; as well as meeting a handsome Maasai warrior and being chased by a Cape buffalo.
An actress, activist, and mental health advocate, Jenifer Lewis imparts ways to love yourself that will allow you to deflect negative energy and keep people who may come to take your joy in check. She stresses the importance of fully living to your greatest ambitions and taking the time to admire the world’s natural gifts. She also encourages embracing each other’s uniqueness as a way of finding societal healing. Walking in My Joy is a riveting and enthralling journey.