REVISIONIST HISTORY, Malcolm Gladwell’s groundbreaking podcast now in its fifth season examines a diverse new slate of topics that its millions of fans have come to expect.  Gladwell turns his revisionist eye to everything from museums to elections to hiring to our collective memories of war in 10 episodes that will a season that fans will love—and possibly totally disagree with, all at the same time.  It’s a journey through the overlooked and misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past—an event, a person, an idea, or even a song—and asks if we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.

In Yes I Can Say That, comedy veteran Judy Gold argues that “no one has the right to tell comics what they can or cannot joke about…. Laughter is a unifier. It’s the best medicine. It’s also the most palatable way to bring up seditious, subversive topics.” For Gold, nothing is more insidious than enforcing silence and repressing jokes—the job of a comedian is to expose society’s demons, and confront them head-on, no prisoners allowed. In ten impassioned polemics, she frames comedy as a tool of empowerment, a way to reclaim hateful rhetoric and battle the democracy-crushing plight of censorship. Uninhibited and bold, Gold is as skilled at making readers laugh as she is at exposing uncomfortable truths about our culture and society. In this era of partisan politics and gaping inequalities, Yes I Can Say That is the refreshingly candid, wickedly funny and deliciously blunt manifesto we need. 

Jim McKelvey, cofounder of Square, shares an inspiring and entertaining account of what it means to be a true entrepreneur and what it takes to build a resilient, world-changing company. He is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, philanthropist and artist. He is the cofounder of Square, was chairman of its board until 2010, and still serves on the Board of Directors. McKelvey’s fascinating and humorous stories of Square’s early days are blended with historical examples of other world-changing companies built on the Innovation Stack to reveal a pattern of ground-breaking, competition-proof entrepreneurship that is rare but repeatable.

SUZANNE NOSSEL is the CEO of PEN America, the foremost organization working to protect and advance human rights, free expression and literature. As CEO, Nossel has led campaigns for free expression in Hong Kong and China, Myanmar, Russia, Eurasia, and the United States. JENNIFER EGAN is the author of several novels and a short story collection.  Her most recent novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. She is President of PEN America. Nossel’s book, “Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All” is avital, necessary playbook for navigating and defending free speech today and provides a pathway for promoting free expression while also cultivating a more inclusive public culture.

COLSON WHITEHEAD is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Underground Railroad, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. He is also a recipient of the MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. In 2020, he won his second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Nickel Boys.

Charlie Kaufman is the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of films including Anomalisa; Synechdoche, New York; Adaptation; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; and Being John Malkovich. He won an Oscar for his work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and has been nominated three additional times. He is also a three-time BAFTA winner for screenwriting, and he has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, among many other film honors. “Antkind” is his bold and boundlessly original debut novel.

Over the past 35 years, Robbie Conal has made more than 100 street posters — from oil portraits — satirizing politicians and bureaucrats. He has also taken on censorship, war, social injustice, and environmental issues. Conal recently began applying his wit on celebratory portraits of his personal heroes Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Greta Thunberg, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, and Maya Angelou. “Robbie Conal: Streetwise 35 Years of Politically Charged Guerrilla Art” features every image in Robbie Conal’s storied poster campaigns — gnarled, gut retching, and emotionally laden —  and is the definitive history of  “America’s foremost street artist” (Washington Post) with a foreword by Shepard Fairey.

We welcome Michael Lewis back to our stage.  His bestsellers include The Fifth Risk, The Undoing Project, Flash Boys, The Big Short, The Blind Side, Liar’s Poker, Moneyball,  Boomerang, The New New Thing and Panic, among others.  What are the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works? If there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes, unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system―those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.

Stacey Abrams is the New York Times bestselling author of Lead from the Outside, a serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO, and political leader. After serving eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as minority leader, Abrams became the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, where she won more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. She has founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels; and she is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award.

Murthy’s prescient message is about the importance of human connection, the hidden impact of loneliness on our health, and the social power of community. In his groundbreaking book, the 19th surgeon general of the United States Dr. Vivek Murthy makes a case for loneliness as a public health concern: a root cause and contributor to many of the epidemics sweeping the world today from alcohol and drug addiction to violence to depression and anxiety. Loneliness, he argues, is affecting not only our health, but also how our children experience school, how we perform in the workplace, and the sense of division and polarization in our society.