Alan Cumming with Annabelle Gurwitch

Monday, September 19, 2016
8pm 
 
Alan Cumming
in conversation with Annabelle Gurwitch
 

discussing his upcoming book,
You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams:
My Life in Stories and Pictures

Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School

Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404

PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission Section Seat 
$45 General Admission Section seat + Cumming’s book
$50 Reserved Section Seat + book
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat + book

Alan Cumming is an award-winning actor, artist, writer, activist, photographer, and raconteur. He has won an Olivier award for his work on the London stage, and a Tony for his work on Broadway; he appeared in all seven seasons of The Good Wife on CBS for which he received multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. He is currently touring a cabaret show Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs and recently released an album of the same name. He is the author of novel Tommy’s Tale and the  New York Times best-selling memoir Not My Father’s Son. He last appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles to mark the publication Not My Father’s Son.

“One of the most fun people in show business.”  -Time Magazine
Put David Sedaris and Glenn O’Brien in a blender and add a dash of New York and Hollywood gossip, and you wind up with Alan Cumming. In You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: And Other Stories, Alan Cumming takes the reader on a wild journey of pithy and cheeky fun, presenting his real-life stories of debauchery during late night Hollywood parties, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and hilarious yet poignant memories of his life, family, and friends. In this new book, he recounts hysterical and sometimes embarrassing encounters, from awkwardly entertaining Elizabeth Taylor at Carrie Fisher’s birthday party to being on a movie set with Helen Mirren and being mocked for wearing Croc sandals to making a friend’s day by chasing down Oprah at a glitzy gala for a prized photograph with her. These forty-five stories are humorous novellas, each featuring memorable photographs—many simply snapshots taken by Cumming—that document or illustrate the tale told.

Annabelle Gurwitch
is the author of The New York Times Bestseller I See You Made an Effort a finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor Writing 2015. Other books: You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up and Fired! The former co-host of Dinner and a Movie on TBS, her acting credits include television shows like Boston Legal, Dexter, Medium and Seinfeld and critically acclaimed appearances on stage Off-Broadway and in regional theaters. Her writing appears in The New Yorker, The New York Times, O Magazine, More, The Los Angeles Times and NPR. Her theatrical adaptation of I See You Made an Efforthits the road for a national tour in late 2016. She is currently at work on a new memoir Where Ever You Go, There They Are, to be released in 2017.

Lisa Ling with Michaela Pereira

Wednesday, September 14, 2016
8pm 

Lisa Ling 
in conversation with Michaela Pereira 

discussing and featuring clips
from the upcoming season of the CNN Original Series,
This is Life with Lisa Ling
  

Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404

This event is presented in association with CNN.  
RSVP for Complimentary tickets  

Award-winning journalist and author Lisa Ling takes her audience on a gritty, breathtaking journey across America, immersing herself in communities that are unusual, extraordinary and sometimes dangerous. Each episode gives viewers an inside look at some of the country’s most unconventional segments of society.

In season three of This is Life with Lisa Ling, Ling goes inside the cage with female fighters, attends a wedding behind bars, and learns to code with Silicon Valley teens. She explores legalized prostitution, investigates the ravages of America’s heroin epidemic, and uncovers state laws that allow rapists parental rights.  In Los Angeles she gains unprecedented access to America’s largest jail, and in Philadelphia, takes a 360-degree look at how technology is changing the landscape of law enforcement.

Ling is also the host of an upcoming digital series, This is Birth, where she explores how healthcare legislation, income inequality and cultural shifts are changing how people have children in America. Before coming to CNN, Ling was a field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show and contributor to ABC News’ Nightline and National Geographic’s Explorer. She has reported from dozens of countries, covering stories about gang rape in the Congo, bride burning in India and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, among other issues that are too often ignored. Ling got her start in journalism as a correspondent for Channel One News where she covered the civil war in Afghanistan at 21 years of age.  She later went on to become a co-host of ABC Daytime’s hit show The View, which won its first daytime Emmy during her time at the show.  Ling has also served as a special correspondent for CNN’s Planet in Peril series and is a contributing editor for USA Today’s USA Weekend magazine.  In 2011, her acclaimed documentary journalism series, Our America with Lisa Ling, began airing on OWN. 

Ling is the co-author of Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood and Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home, which she penned with her sister, Laura.  

In 2014, President Obama named Ling to the Commission on White House Fellows.

Michaela Pereira is the host of HLN’s new three-hour daily news program Michaela. Live from CNN’s Los Angeles bureau, the show airs from 10am-1pm ET/7-10 am PT.  She joined CNN in 2012 and was the co-host of New Day with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.  For nine years, Pereira was the co-host of KTLA Morning News.

Beyond her broadcasting achievements, Pereira is active in several community organizations working with at-risk children and teens. She served as a member of the board of directors for the Long Beach Boys and Girls Club; an advisory board member of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), supporting children in foster care; and co-chair of the advisory board of Optimist Youth Home, providing services for troubled youth.

Daniel J. Levitin with Larry Vincent

Monday, September 12, 2016
8pm (Reception: 7:00-7:45pm)


Daniel J. Levitin
bestselling author of This is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind

A Field Guide to Lies:
Critical Thinking in the Information Age

in conversation with Larry Vincent
Founder of UTA Brand Studio 
& Chief Branding Officer at United Talent Agency

United Talent Agency

9336 Civic Center Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission (on sale Aug. 12)
$45 Reserved Section Seat + Levitin’s book
$95  Pre-event reception + Levitin’s book

Dr. Daniel J. Levitin is the author of three #1 bestselling books: This is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind.  He is also the James McGill Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, where he runs the Laboratory for Music Cognition, Perception and Expertise.

 
Levitin is about as knowledgeable a guide to neuroscience as one might hope for.   –The New York Times Book Review
 
Misinformation is a bigger problem than ever before as we’re bombarded with distortions, pseudo-facts and jibber-jabber, all masquerading as the truth.  It’s nothing new—especially when it comes to politicians— but we’ve created more human-made information in the last five years than in all of human history before then. And right along with it has come a proliferation of errors, lies, and manipulations that cross social and educational classes like never before. How do we separate the wheat from the digital chaff?

Levitin’s new book, A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age is an indispensable and funny primer on how to recognize misleading announcements, graphs, and written reports, and how to think critically about the stories and statistics we encounter on a daily basis.  

Larry Vincent is the founder of UTA Brand Studio and serves as Chief Branding Officer at UTA. Over the last two decades, Larry has worked with globally beloved brands including Barbie, Disney, MasterCard, Microsoft, the NFL, Oakley, Playstation, Fisher-Price, and the Four Seasons. He is an award-winning writer and speaker whose last book, Brand Real, was selected by strategy+business magazine as one of the best business books of 2012. 

Daniel Siegel with Paul Zak

Thursday, September 8, 2016
8pm 
 
Daniel Siegel
in conversation with Paul Zak

 
discussing his new book,
Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human


Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School

Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404

PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission Section Seat
$43 Reserved Section seat + Siegel’s book
$30 Reserved Section seat
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat + book

Dr. Daniel J. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, where he also helped to establish the Mindful Awareness Research Center.  He also heads up the Mindsight Institute, an educational center devoted to promoting insight, compassion, and empathy in individuals, families, institutions, and communities. Dr. Siegel’s books include three New York Times bestsellers: Brainstorm, and, with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D, The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline. As a lecturer, he’s spoken before King of Thailand, Pope John Paul II, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, at Google University, and TEDx.  

“His insights into the mind as an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information in the ecosystem of life have had a deep impact on my own understanding of mind and life and have impacted the way I practice and understand the healing process.” -Deepak Chopra, MD
What we mean by the term “mind” has traditionally been the province of philosophers, but what might neuroscience teach us about it? How does the mind differ from consciousness? And how do we know who we really are? In Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human, Dr. Siegel explores the nature of the who, how, what, why, and when of your mind—of your self—from the perspective of neuroscience. Mind is the essence of our true nature, our deepest sense of being alive, here, right now, in this moment. How science explains this most perplexing of topics is truly one of the most exciting journeys into knowledge we can take. 
 
Paul Zak‘s two decades of research have taken him from the Pentagon to Fortune 50 boardrooms to the rain forest of Papua New Guinea.  All this in a quest to understand the neuroscience of human connection, human happiness, and effective teamwork.  His academic lab and companies he has started develop and deploy neuroscience technologies to solve real problems faced by real people.

Paul is the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University.

His latest book, Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High Performance Companies, uses neuroscience to measure and manage organizational cultures to inspire teamwork and accelerate business outcomes.  His 2012 book, The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity, recounted his unlikely discovery of the neurochemical oxytocin as the key driver of trust, love, and morality that distinguish our humanity.   In another obsession, Paul’s group uses neuroscience to quantify the impact of movies, advertising, stories, and consumer experiences.  Along the way, he has help start several transdisciplinary fields, including neuroeconomics, neuromanagement, and neuromarketing.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with Jim Hill

Monday, August 29, 2016
8pm 
 
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
in conversation with Jim Hill
 
discussing his upcoming book,
WRITINGS ON THE WALL:
Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White


Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School

Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404

PURCHASE TICKETS -SOLD OUT
$45 General Admission seat + a copy of Writings on the Wall
$50 Reserved Section Seat + a copy of Writings on the Wall
$20 General Admission seat
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat 
        + copy of Writings on the Wall

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. Since retiring, he has been an actor, a basketball coach and the author of eleven books, many of them New York Times best sellers, including What Color is My World?, which won the NAACP Image Award for Best Children’s Book. Abdul-Jabbar is also a columnist for Time Magazine and The Washington Post, writing on a wide range of subjects including race, politics, age and pop culture, and his essays and columns have also appeared in the Huffington Post, in the Los Angeles Times and on Esquire.com, among other publications. In 2012, he was selected as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador. 

Since retiring from professional basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has become a lauded observer of culture and society. He now brings that keen insight to the fore in Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White. He uses his unique blend of erudition, street smarts and authentic experience in essays on the country’s seemingly irreconcilable partisan divide – both racial and political, parenthood, and his own experiences as an athlete, African-American, and a Muslim. The book is not just a collection of expositions; he also offers keen assessments of and solutions to problems such as racism in sports while speaking candidly about his experiences on the court and off.

Timed for publication as the nation debates whom to send to the White House, the combination of plain talk on issues, life lessons, and personal stories places Writings on the Wall squarely in the middle of the conversation, as many of Abdul-Jabbar’s topics are at the top of the national agenda. Whether it is sparring with Donald Trump, within the pages of TIME magazine, or full-length features in the The New York Times Magazine, writers, critics, and readers have come to agree on what The Washington Post observed: Abdul-Jabbar “has become a vital, dynamic and unorthodox cultural voice.”

Jim Hill has been a fixture on CBS 2 in Los Angeles for more than 30 years. He appears on the station’s weekday 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts and also hosts the weekend editions of “Sports Central” – Southern California’s most comprehensive sports newscast. In addition, he co-hosts “LTV,” the Los Angeles Lakers pre-game show on KCAL 9, where he joins Lakers legend James Worthy.

Hill, who played defensive back in the National Football League, draws upon his experience as a player, his talents as a broadcaster and relationships with top athletes and coaches to deliver his award-winning sports reports.

 

Penn Jillette

Thursday, August 11, 2016
8pm 
 
Penn Jillette
in conversation with Matt Donnelly
 
discussing his upcoming book,
Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales


Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School

Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404

PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission Section Seating 
$43 Reserved Section seat + a copy of Presto!
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat
        + 2 books (Presto! and Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday!

Penn Jillette is a cultural phenomenon as a solo personality and as half of the world-famous Emmy Award­-winning magic duo Penn & Teller. His commentary has appeared in the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared onDancing with the Stars, MTV Cribs, and Chelsea Lately, Howard Stern, Glenn Beck and hosted the NBC game show Identity. As part of Penn & Teller, he has appeared more than twenty times on David Letterman, as well as on several other TV shows, from The Simpsons and Friends to Top Chef and The View. He cohosts the controversial series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, which has been nominated for sixteen Emmy Awards. He is currently cohost of the Discovery Channel’s Penn & Teller Tell a Lie and the author of God, No! and Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday!  Penn Jillette appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles in 2012 and interviewed Richard Dawkins in 2015. 
 
“Penn Jillette is a 21st-century Lordof Misrule: big, boisterously anarchic, funny, Rabelaisian, impossible—andunique. There isn’t—couldn’t be—better not be—anybody like him.” — Richard Dawkins, (The Greatest Show on Earth and The God Delusion)
 
In Presto, Jillette takes us along on his journey from skepticism to the inspiring, life-changing momentum that transformed the magician’s body and mind. He describes the process in hilarious detail, as he performs his Las Vegas show, takes meetings with Hollywood executives, hangs out with his celebrity friends and fellow eccentric performers, all while remaining a dedicated husband and father. Throughout, he weaves in his views on sex, religion, and pop culture, making his story a refreshing, genre-busting account. 
 
Jillette tells how he lost 100 pounds with his trademark outrageous sense of humor and biting social commentary that makes this success story anything but ordinary. He was approaching his sixtieth birthday. Topping 330 pounds and saddled with a systolic blood pressure reading over 200, he knew he was at a dangerous crossroads: if he wanted to see his small children grow up, he needed to change. And then came Crazy Ray. A former NASA scientist and an unconventional, passionate innovator, Ray Cronise saved Penn Jillette’s life with his wild “potato diet.”
 
Matt Donnelly is a fellow “cro-nut” with Penn who also lost 74 pounds following Ray Cronise’s plan. Matt currently co-hosts the Penn’s Sunday School podcast with Penn as well as the “Best Comedy Podcast”, Matt and Mattingly’s Ice Cream Social. When Matt isn’t writing for Penn & Teller Fool Us on CW, you can catch him performing in 50 Shades the Parody at Bally’s, or performing in the “Bucket Show” at the Art Square Theatre in downtown Las Vegas.