Past Events

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.

 

June 19

An Evening with

T Bone Burnett

At the 2019 SXSW conference, T Bone Burnett gave a compelling speech about artists and art in the digital age.  This talk is a conversation about the themes he brought up in the speech. He spoke out against the growing power of Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook while affirming the importance of artists’ rights. With 50-years’ experience in music and entertainment, T Bone Burnett has earned an unparalleled reputation as a first-rate innovative artist, songwriter, producer, performer, film and concert producer, record company owner and artists’ advocate. Burnett is an Academy Award winner, a Golden Globe winner, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award (BAFTA) winner, and a 13-time Grammy® Award winner. He’s workedand 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, RyanBingham, Steve Earle and Leon Russell. 

June 18

David Epstein with Eric Barker

David Epstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance. He has worked as an investigative reporter for ProPublica and a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. In his new book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, he examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.

June 17

Ed Levine with Nancy Silverton and Kenji López-Alt

Ed Levine is the founder of Serious Eats, as well as creator and host of the Serious Eats podcast, Special Sauce. In 2016, Ed was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America. Against all sane advice, he created a blog for $100 and called it…Serious Eats. The site quickly became a home for obsessives who didn’t take themselves too seriously. Intrepid staffers feasted on every dumpling in Chinatown and sampled every item on In-N-Out’s secret menu. Talented recipe developers like The Food Lab’s J. Kenji López-Alt and Stella Parks, aka BraveTart, attracted cult followings. 

June 11

Diane C. McPhail with Jane Smiley

In her sweeping debut, Diane C. McPhail offers a powerful, profoundly emotional novel that explores a little-known aspect of Civil War history—Southern Abolitionists—and the timeless struggle to do right even amidst bitter conflict. Diane C. McPhail is an artist, writer, and minister. Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres,which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Golden AgeSome Luckand Early Warning, the volumes of The Last Hundred Years trilogy.

June 10

Eve Ensler with Idina Menzel

From Eve Ensler, author of one of the most influential works of the twentieth century–The Vagina Monologues–and one of Newsweek‘s “150 Women Who Changed the World,” comes a powerful, life-changing examination of abuse and atonement. Ensler is a Tony Award-winning playwright, author, performer, and activist. Her international phenomenon The Vagina Monologues has been published in 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries. She is the author of the bestseller I Am an Emotional Creature, the highly-praised In the Body of the World, and many more. She is the founder of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, and One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries. She is one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and the Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.” 

 

June 5

Celeste Barber with Jameela Jamil

From funny woman, Instagram star, and international comedy sensation, Celeste Barber’s Challenge Accepted! is a raucous, hilarious, and outspoken guide to life, unwanted gas, and how to rock a sexy scar. Part memoir, part comedy routine, part advice manual, Challenge Accepted! is Celeste at her best, revealing her secrets to love, friendship, family, and marriage (oh hai, #hothusband), and how to deal with life’s many challenges—why she checks the bath for sharks, how Nutella quite literally shaped who she is as a woman, and why being famous on Instagram is like being rich in Monopoly. It’s real, like totally, really real. She talks to Jameela Jamil who stars on NBC’s The Good Place.

May 16

An Evening with

Jared Diamond

Upheaval is the final book in Jared Diamond’s trilogy. Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Upheaval reveals how nations and individuals recover from crisis and become more resilient. Jared Diamond, a noted polymath, is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan’s Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the international best-selling books Guns, Germs, and SteelCollapseWhy Is Sex Fun?The World until Yesterday, and The Third Chimpanzee, and is the presenter of TV documentary series based on three of those books.

 

May 15

An Evening with

Jon Meacham

In his new book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear.  Meacham is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review