Claudia Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric and four previous books, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric.  Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness. Rankine’s questions disrupt the false comfort of our culture’s liminal and private spaces―the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth―where neutrality and politeness live on the surface of differing commitments, beliefs, and prejudices as our public and private lives intersect. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016. Rankine is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.

JANE FONDA talks about her new book, “What Can I Do?: My Path from Climate Despair to Action.” She is a 2-time Oscar winner and an Emmy-award winning American actress and political activist.  Her new book is a call to action urging us to wake up to the looming disaster of climate change and equipping us with the tools we need to join her in protest. “This is the last possible moment in history when changing course can mean saving lives and species on an unimaginable scale. It’s too late for moderation.”

Sid Meier, creator of Civilization, has been honored with virtually every award in the video game industry.  Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world’s most popular video games, including Sid Meier’s Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier’s Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multibillion-dollar industry. He is a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame and founder of Firaxis Games.

The legendary comedian, actor, and writer of Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and A Fish Called Wanda fame shares his key ideas about creativity: that it’s a learnable, improvable skill. Drawing on his lifelong experience as a writer, Cleese shares his insights into the nature of the creative process and offers advice on how to get your own inventive juices flowing.

An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present—from Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer-prize winning biographer and author of The Soul of America. Meacham is a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review and a contributing editor of Time magazine, he is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Hope of Glory, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, American Gospel, and Franklin and Winston. Meacham, who holds the Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, lives in Nashville.

BRIAN STELTER is the chief media correspondent for CNN Worldwide and anchor of Reliable Sources, which examines the world’s top media stories every Sunday. Prior to joining CNN in 2013, Stelter was a media reporter at The New York Times. His first book, the New York Times bestseller Top of the Morning, inspired the Apple TV+ drama The Morning Show. Stelter is a consulting producer on the series. He is also the executive producer of the HBO documentary After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News.  In Hoax, Stelter tells the twisted story of the relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News. 

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.