Events
Brad Stone with Nick Bilton
8pm
Senior Executive Editor, Global Technology
Bloomberg News
Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair
The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$45 Reserved Section seat + a copy of The Upstarts
$20 General Admission Seat
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat
+ copy of The Upstarts
Brad Stone is senior executive editor of global technology at Bloomberg News and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. He has covered Silicon Valley for more than 15 years and lives in San Francisco.
“Brad Stone gives us a lively, fascinating picture of the new new thing in technology—startups like Uber and Airbnb that are disrupting old businesses across the world. He provides a much needed glimpse into the companies that fail as well as the ones that make it big. And he points to the broad policy issues raised by these new technologies, which are surely no fun for the people whose lives are being disrupted.”—Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World and host of CNN’S “Fareed Zakaria GPS”
The world today is vastly different than it was even ten years ago, and it is due to the upstarts. In THE UPSTARTS, Brad Stone provides the rollicking narrative that shows the how our latest–and perhaps greatest–technological wave was born.
Nick Bilton is a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair, where he writes about technology, politics, business and culture. He is also a contributor to CNBC, and a former columnist and reporter for The New York Times.
He has written three books, including The New York Times bestseller, Hatching Twitter, which chronicled the turmoil and chaos inside Twitter as it grew from a fledgling startup to a multi-billion dollar company. The book is currently being turned into a TV show for Lionsgate.
His next book, American Kingpin, will be published in May, 2017. The book tells epic story of the hunt for the Dread Pirate Roberts, who created The Silk Road marketplace, which sold guns and drugs on the dark web.
Over the years, Bilton’s columns and articles have led to investigations by the U.S. government, and helped press the Federal Aviation Administration to overturn a rule requiring people to turn off devices during takeoff and landing.
T Bone Burnett with Jonathan Taplin
8pm
in conversation Jonathan Taplin
The Value of the Artist,
and the Value of Art
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission Seat
$30 Reserved Section Seat
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat
T Bone Burnett recently gave gave the keynote address at AmericanaFest convention of the Americana Music Association on the value of the artist and the value of art. We felt the compelling speech needed to be delved into further and invited him to our stage. Read more about the speech.
T Bone Burnett is an Academy Award winner, a Golden Globe winner and 13-time Grammy Award winner. He’s worked and collaborated with musicians across many genres including Elton John, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, Elvis Costello, The Civil Wars, Taylor Swift, Ryan Bingham, Steve Earle and Leon Russell. With 50-years’ experience in music and entertainment, he has earned an unparalleled reputation as a first-rate innovative artist, songwriter, producer, performer, film and concert producer, record company owner and artists’ advocate.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Burnett grew up in Fort Worth, Texas where he first began writing songs and making records. Burnett was traveling the country as a free-lance record producer when he was asked by Bob Dylan to play guitar in his band on the now-legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour leading Burnett to form the Alpha Band with David Mansfield and Steven Soles. Burnett made three acclaimed albums with the group before making a string of solo records in the 1980’s at the end of which, he began to work in film, beginning with Roy Orbison’s, A Black and White Night.
Burnett’s first major foray into film was his collaboration with the Coen Brothers on The Big Lebowski, and has since held multiple titles for numerous films including The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cold Mountain, The Hunger Games, Walk The Line, Inside Llewyn Davis and Crazy Heart, which he also produced. He also has multiple credits in television including as the Executive Music Producer and Composer for the HBO series True Detective, and he was Executive Music Producer and Composer for the first season of the ABC television series, Nashville. He is currently producing and narrating an animated series with Drew Christie called Drawn and Recorded.
Jonathan Taplin is an author and Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. Taplin’s book Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Have Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy will be published in April, 2017. Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese’s first feature film, Mean Streets that was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival seven times.
A graduate of Princeton University, Taplin was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism from 2003-2016. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the California Broadband Task Force in January of 2007. He currently sits on Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Council on Technology and Innovation. His commentary has been published by The New York Times, Time.com, The Huffington Post, Medium and Talking Points Memo.
Michael Lewis with Mindy Kaling
8pm
in conversation with Mindy Kaling
The Undoing Project:
A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS — SOLD OUT
Will be posted on our Facebook page a few days later.
$45 General Admission seat + a copy of Undoing Project
$50 Reserved Section Seat + a copy of Undoing Project
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat
+ copy of Undoing Project
Michael Lewis’ bestsellers include Flash Boys, The Big Short, The Blind Side, Liar’s Poker and Moneyball. Michael Lewis previously appeared with Malcolm Gladwell at Live Talks Los Angeles discussing his book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. Watch the video.
“I read Lewis for the same reasons I watch Tiger Woods. I’ll never play like that. But it’s good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like.” — Malcolm Gladwell
In The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, Lewis brings his narrative gift to the fascinating collaboration between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose Nobel Prize-winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality. Kahneman and Tversky showed the ways in which the human mind errs, systematically, when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. By undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process, Kahneman and Tversky’s breathtaking work created the field of behavioral economics, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made possible much of Lewis’s own writing, on topics from business to baseball.
The characters at the center of this story have the dramatic complexity of great literary figures, heroes both in the university and on the battlefield. Their breakthrough ideas were deeply linked to their extraordinary life experiences, and their findings might well have changed, for good, mankind’s view of its own mind.
Mindy Kaling is an actor, writer, producer, and director. She currently stars in the Hulu original comedy series The Mindy Project, which she also writes and executive produces. The show centers on Dr. Mindy Lahiri, a successful OB/GYN whose love of romantic comedies is wreaking havoc on her personal life.
Before The Mindy Project, Mindy was best known for her work on the critically acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning NBC show The Office. In addition to directing, producing, and portraying celebrity-obsessed Kelly Kapoor, Mindy wrote 18 episodes of the series, including the Emmy nominated episode “Niagra.”
She is currently in production on Ocean’s 8 alongside Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway. She will next begin production on A Wrinkle in Time for Disney.
Aside from her work in film and television, Mindy is the author of the comedic memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns), and her second memoir Why Not Me? was released in September 2015 — both New York Times’ best-sellers. She appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles in September 2015.
Thomas L. Friedman
Friday, December 9, 2016
Note this is a morning event!
7:45-8:15am Continental Breakfast
8:15-9:15am Forum
Thomas L. Friedman
discussing his upcoming book,
Thank You for Being Late:
Finding a Job, Running a Country, and Keeping Your Head in an Age of Accelerations
Gensler
Downtown Los Angeles
500 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
PURCHASE TICKETS:
$50 includes one copy of Thomas Friedman’s book
$65 includes attendance for two, and one copy of Thomas Friedman’s book
* includes continental breakfast
Thomas L. Friedman is a three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his work with The New York Times and the author of six bestselling books, including The World Is Flat.
Friedman’s new book is a field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observers
In his most ambitious work to date, Thomas L. Friedman shows that we have entered an age of dizzying acceleration–and explains how to live in it. Due to an exponential increase in computing power, climbers atop Mount Everest enjoy excellent cell-phone service and self-driving cars are taking to the roads. A parallel explosion of economic interdependency has created new riches as well as spiraling debt burdens. Meanwhile, Mother Nature is also seeing dramatic changes as carbon levels rise and species go extinct, with compounding results.
How do these changes interact, and how can we cope with them? To get a better purchase on the present, Friedman returns to his Minnesota childhood and sketches a world where politics worked and joining the middle class was an achievable goal. Today, by contrast, it is easier than ever to be a maker (try 3-D printing) or a breaker (the Islamic State excels at using Twitter), but harder than ever to be a leader or merely “average.” Friedman concludes that nations and individuals must learn to be fast (innovative and quick to adapt), fair (prepared to help the casualties of change), and slow (adept at shutting out the noise and accessing their deepest values). With vision, authority, and wit,Thank You for Being Late establishes a blueprint for how to think about our times.
Ticket sales are final. No refunds.
Andy Cohen with RuPaul
in conversation with RuPaul
discussing his upcoming book,
Superficial: More Adventures from the Andy Cohen Diaries
Barnum Hall
Santa Monica High School
600 Olympic Blvd,
Santa Monica, CA 90405
ONLINE TICKET SALES HAVE ENDED.
A Limited number of tickets available at the door.
$40 General Admission Seat + 1 copy of Superficial
$50 Reserved Section Seat + 1 copy of Superficial
$75 Premium section Seat
– Includes 2 books: Superficial + The Andy Cohen Diaries (paperback)
– also includes a Live Talks Los Angeles tote bag per order
Superficial is the star-studded and sidesplitting follow up to The Andy Cohen Diaries.
Andy Cohen is the host and executive producer of Watch What Happens: Live. He is the executive producer of The Real Housewives franchise and hosts Bravo’s highly rated reunion specials. He tours nationally with Anderson Cooper on AC2, hosts Then & Now with Andy Cohen on Bravo and Radio Andy on Sirius XM. He has won an Emmy and two Peabody Awards for his work. The author of two New York Times bestsellers, Most Talkative and The Andy Cohen Diaries, he lives in New York City with his dog, Wacha.
On the Andy Cohen Diaries:
“After reading this funny, intimate, candid, honest diary of a year in Andy’s life, I couldn’t help but wonder, ‘Is Andy Cohen…Carrie Bradshaw?’” ―Sarah Jessica Parker
“The funniest thing I’ve done all year is read Andy Cohen’s Diaries. He has more genuinely funny and surprising encounters with celebrities and sublebrities in a day than I do all year. Then my name popped up. Now I just want to sue him.” ―Anderson Cooper
“Andy Cohen’s diaries are the literary equivalent of a Fresca and tequila.” ―Jimmy Fallon
The popular host of Watch What Happens: Live and executive producer of The Real Housewives franchise is back with a follow up to his bestseller, The Andy Cohen Diaries.
Since the publication of his last book, Andy has toured the country with his sidekick Anderson Cooper, hit the radio waves with his own Sirius station, Radio Andy, appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher despite his mother’s conviction he was not intellectually prepared, hosted NBC’s Primetime New Year’s Eve special, guest edited Entertainment Weekly, starred in Bravo’s Then & Now with Andy Cohen, offended celebrities with his ongoing case of foot-in-mouth disease, and welcomed home Teresa “Namaste” Giudice, from a brief stint in jail. Hopping from the Hamptons to the Manhattan dating world, the dog park to the red carpet, Cardinals superfan and mama’s boy Andy Cohen, with Wacha in tow, is the kind of star that fans are dying to be friends with. This book gives them that chance.
If The Andy Cohen Diaries was deemed “the literary equivalent of a Fresca and tequila” by Jimmy Fallon, Superficial is a double: dishier, juicier, and friskier. In this account of his escapades―personal, professional, and behind-the-scenes―Andy tells us not only what goes down, but exactly what he thinks of it.
RuPaul Charles was born and raised in San Diego and moved to Atlanta where he studied theatre at North Atlanta School of Performing Arts. In 1992 RuPaul achieved international fame with the hit song Supermodel (You Better Work) and has recorded a duet with Sir Elton John. He is a singer-songwriter of 13 solo albums including the latest Butch Queen. His books include Lettin’ It All Hang Out and Workin’ It. RuPaul has appeared in over 50 films and television sitcoms in addition to being the host of VH1’s The RuPaul Show and host and executive producer for Logo TV’s RuPaul’s Drag Race, for which he won an Emmy. He currently hosts the podcast What’s the Tee? With Michelle Visage. He splits his time between NYC and LA.
Lisa Napoli with Frank Buckley
8pm
in conversation with Frank Buckley
Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
RSVP/PURCHASE TICKETS*
General Admission tickets are free – RSVP HERE
$30 Reserved Section Seat + a copy of Ray and Joan
$35 Two Reserved Section Seats + a copy of Ray and Joan
* This event is part of our Newer Voices Series with authors with one or two books. The first 50 tickets purchased are invited to a pre-reception, 6:30-7:30pm.
Lisa Napoli was among the first journalists to cover the digital age as a staff reporter and columnist for The New York Times and its CyberTimes. She then appeared as an on-air technology reporter and columnist for MSNBC and as a host and reporter for public radio’s Marketplace. Her first book, Radio Shangri-La, chronicles her time in and around the Kingdom of Bhutan, where she was invited to help start a radio station at the dawn of democratic rule. For four years, she covered arts and culture for the acclaimed public radio station KCRW. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she currently lives in Los Angeles, where she leads an award-winning cooking group for homeless women on Skid Row.
Ray and Joan is about many things: mid-20th century US cultural history; post-WW2 emergence of fast food culture; addiction and its impact on the family; addiction treatment (the early days of, in particular;) philanthropy that precedes the grandeur of Buffett and Gates; the no-nukes movement of the 80s; the San Diego Padres; the mass media’s influence on all of the above, and, most importantly of all, the complexity of marriage.
When Lisa went to cover the fate of a crumbling peace sculpture in front of the Santa Monica courthouse for radio station KCRW, she didn’t know she’d spend the next five years tracking down the story of Joan Kroc, one of the greatest and little known philanthropists of the twentieth century. The heiress to the McDonald’s fortune had anonymously funded the 26-foot tall mushroom cloud by Paul Conrad, titled Chain Reaction, at the height of the no-nukes movement. Lisa knew just two things about Joan: that she had given a landmark posthumous gift to NPR, and that at one point she’d run the baseball team she’d inherited from her late husband. But she found it curious that a woman who lived in San Diego would come to fund a polarizing artwork nowhere near her home. When Lisa went in search of a biography, she couldn’t find one—so she decided to write one. Soon, she disccovered: why no book yet existed about Joan; that writing about Joan meant writing about Ray, and learning about the roots of the fortune that the third wife of the founding chairman of McDonald’s ultimately gave away.
Frank Buckley is an anchor of KTLA Morning News. Frank joined KTLA in June 2005 from CNN where he had been a national correspondent. Frank is also host of the “Frank Buckley Interviews” podcast.
Frank’s reporting experiences have taken him around the world and have included assignments covering the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, politics for CNN, frequent reporting from the White House during George W. Bush’s presidency, natural disasters in Japan, the Los Angeles riots, the Hong Kong handover, the OJ Simpson trial and countless other stories in Southern California and across the U.S.
Prior to KTLA and CNN, Frank reported for Los Angeles station KCAL-TV, WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, N.C., and at KESQ-TV in Palm Springs. He has also written for the Los Angeles Times and the Detroit News.