Past Events

September 17

Malcolm Gladwell with Larry Wilmore

(Riverside)

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and the bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers—and why they often go wrong.  He was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.  Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news.  Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. 

September 16

Malcolm Gladwell with Brit Marling

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and the bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers—and why they often go wrong.  He was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.  Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news.  Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. 

September 12

Randall Munroe with Kyle Hill

Randall Munroe is the author of the popular webcomic xkcd and the science question-and-answer blog What If. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full-time supporting himself through the sale of xkcd t-shirts, prints, posters, and books.  He appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles in conversation with Will Wheaton when his book, What If was published.
For any task you might want to do, there’s a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It’s full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole

September 11

David Koepp with Andrew Kevin Walker

David Koepp is a celebrated American screenwriter and director best known for his work on Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Panic Room, and War of the World. His work on screen has grossed over $6 billion worldwide. His debut novel, Cold Storage is an astonishing debut —  a wild and terrifying adventure about three strangers who must work together to contain a highly contagious, deadly organism.

 

September 10

Emma Donoghue with Marisa Matarazzo

Emma Donoghue migrates between genres, writing literary history, biography, stage and radio plays as well as fairy tales and short stories. She is best known for her novels, which range from the historical (SlammerkinLife MaskLandingThe Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Stir-FryHoodLanding). Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes. The screen adaptation of Room was nominated for four Oscars. In her new novel, Akin, a retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes a young great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother’s wartime secrets.

September 5

Walter Mosley with Viet Thanh Nguyen 

Walter Mosley is the author of more than fifty critically-acclaimed books, including the major bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy, PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and an Edgar Award. In his first book on the craft of writing, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In the follow up, Elements of Fiction, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. 

September 4

Steve Aoki with Howie Mandel

Steve Aoki is an Asian-American electronic musician, record producer, DJ, and music executive. He has collaborated with artists such as BTS, Daddy Yankee, Migos, Tiesto, Linkin Park, blink-182, Lil Jon, and Fall Out Boy, and has released several Billboard-charting studio albums, notably Wonderland, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronica Album in 2013. His most recent album, Neon Future III, which serves as the third chapter of the Neon Future concept albums, featured Louis Tomlinson, Lil Yachty, Bill Nye, Mike Posner, and many more. Blue is his remarkable story―in pictures and words― the superstar DJ/producer who started his career as a vegan straightedge hardcore music kid hellbent on defying his millionaire father, whose unquenchable thirst to entertain―inherited from his dad, Rocky Aoki, founder of Benihana―led him to global success and two Grammy nominations.

June 26

Tom O’Neill with Alex Cohen

A journalist’s twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations about the FBI’s involvement in this riveting reassessment of an infamous case in American history.Tom O’Neill is an award-winning investigative journalist and entertainment reporter whose work has appeared in national publications such as Us, Premiere, New York, The Village Voice and Details. Twenty years ago, when he was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the “official” story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. 

June 25

An Evening with

Guy Kawasaki

Silicon Valley icon and bestselling author Guy Kawasaki shares the unlikely stories of his life and the lessons we can draw from them. Guy Kawasaki has been a fixture in the tech world since he was part of Apple’s original Macintosh team in the 1980s. He’s widely respected as a source of wisdom about entrepreneurship, venture capital, marketing, and business evangelism, which he’s shared in bestselling books such as The Art of the Startand Enchantment.

June 20

Jim Acosta with Larry Wilmore

Jim Acosta is CNN’s chief White House correspondent, currently covering the Trump administration. He previously reported on the Obama administration from the White House and around the world. His new book is a first-hand account of the dangers he faces reporting on the current White House while fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth. Acosta presents a revealing examination of bureaucratic dysfunction, deception, and the unprecedented threat the rhetoric Mr. Trump is directing has on our democracy.