It is these three prayers- asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating the goodness in our lives, and feeling awe at the world around us- that Lamott believes can guide us through the day and illuminate the way forward. As one of today's most trusted authorities on life lessons, Lamott coalesces everything she has learned about prayer through her own everyday trials of faith, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.
Dec 11, 2012•1 hr 21 min
Meditations on captivity, knowledge and inheritance permeate Trethewey’s poems, as she reflects on her own interracial, complicated—and utterly American—roots. This brilliant and fearless poet masterfully gives a voice to the past and present as she explores human struggles we face in common.
Nov 30, 2012•1 hr 6 min
With excursions into culture and public policy, a theoretical physicist named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” explores how we decide which scientific questions to study, how we go about answering them, and how science might radically revise our understanding of the world.
Nov 20, 2012•1 hr 3 min
Mendelsohn, who has devoted his career to nonfiction—memoir, translation and criticism—discusses his latest collection of essays, (Waiting for the Barbarians), with novelist and essayist Lethem (The Ecstasy of Influence), as the two celebrate (and commiserate) the blessings and curses of the contemporary essay form.
Nov 09, 2012•1 hr 21 min
Martínez, an award-winning author and performer, takes us on a deeply personal tour of the 21st century West—far from our romantic illusions of John Wayne, cacti and cowboys—and discusses the political and demographic upheaval in this most iconic of American landscapes
Nov 08, 2012•1 hr 18 min
In the wake of 9/11 and the growth of a worrying animosity towards American Muslims, Patel—author, activist, and presidential advisor—argues that prejudice is not just a problem for American Muslims but also a challenge to the very idea of an America founded on the premise of pluralism. In this visionary book, he illuminates how faith can be a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.
Oct 31, 2012•1 hr 23 min
Master American chronicler Tom Wolfe, author of more than a dozen books—including, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test—presents us with a panoramic story of America in his most recent novel, Back to Blood. Wolfe joins screenwriter Howard A. Rodman for a conversation that spans Wolfe's seven-decade writing career, from the days of a new journalism to how he penned the terms "good ol boy" and "the right stuff."
Oct 30, 2012•1 hr 18 min
The culinary experience has turned into an experiment through the hands of Chef Ludo’s guerilla style pop-up restaurant LudoBites and Chef Roy’s roaming Kogi BBQ truck. How do these ephemeral establishments play with the identity of the city and the palates of its inhabitants? Listen in on what promises to be a playful, irreverent journey into the creative minds of these celebrated chefs.
Oct 18, 2012•1 hr 18 min
From stardom at Motown at age sixteen, to obscurity and near destitution, to an amazing career revival in her sixties when she sang at President Obama’s pre-inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial, LaVette—one of R&B’s legendary singers—discusses her roller-coaster ride through the world of music.
Oct 11, 2012•59 min
Locke, whose new novel The Cutting Season is set at a Louisiana plantation re-purposed for weddings and Civil War reenactments, joins Edwards (Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership) to explore how African American literature, rooted in stories of struggle and dispossession and overcoming all odds, has been affected by the same racial progress that has culminated in the first African American presidency.
Oct 10, 2012•1 hr 23 min
From the intellectuals who remade China, Turkey and Iran, to East-West encounters in Benares to the footprints of the Buddha in the small towns of India, Pankaj Mishra takes us on a historical journey through Asia, with detours to explore his own fiction and non-fiction.
Oct 02, 2012•1 hr 18 min
Play is an inherent part of life. How are games revolutionizing the way we educate our children, think about the future, and engage with each other? Game designers Essen and Fullerton bridge the gap between art and education with their approach to play, and show us how reality is really just one big game we should all be playing.
Sep 28, 2012•1 hr 17 min
Rushdie, recipient of the 2012 Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award, honoring his commitment to public libraries and literature, discusses Joseph Anton, his provocative new memoir—a frank depiction of how he and his family lived with the threat of murder for nine years after being condemned for his writing, and how he struggled for the freedom of speech.
Sep 25, 2012•59 min
Imagine a world where kids got gold stars for grit and curiosity. Paul Tough introduces us to a new generation of scientists and educators who are radically rethinking our understanding of how children develop character, how they learn to think, and how they overcome adversity.
Sep 19, 2012•1 hr 18 min
Hass, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate, is also a luminous essayist. In this talk and discussion with poet Carol Muske-Dukes, he considers the claims on a poet’s attention as he explores art, imagination, and the natural world.
Sep 15, 2012•1 hr 18 min
The seventeenth annual newer poets program is guest curated by three acclaimed poets: Eloise Klein Healy, Arktoi Press; Suzanne Lummis, Los Angeles Poetry Festival; and Gail Wronsky, professor, Loyola Marymount University and member, Glass Table Collective.
Jul 25, 2012•1 hr 25 min
How are downtown chefs curating our cultural palate? New culinary projects are stirring up a neighborhood renaissance as the city’s best chefs are blending their ethnic and cultural traditions with the contemporary taste of eclectic Los Angeles. Join us to explore this diverse panel of chefs who are pushing downtown’s flavor forward. Stay for a post-panel tasting reception in the library courtyard, complements of participanting restaurants.
Jul 18, 2012•1 hr 13 min
In her new memoir, Harjo, an internationally known performer and writer of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation, explores her own journey to becoming an award-winning poet. From growing up in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, and learning to escape her abusive stepfather through her imagination, to attending an Indian arts boarding school, to becoming a teenage single mother, Harjo eventually finds her poetic voice.
Jul 11, 2012•1 hr 16 min
Bestselling author Sapphire tells the electrifying story of Abdul Jones, the son of Precious, the unforgettable heroine of her novel Push. This generational story—which moves from a Mississippi dirt farm to Harlem in its heyday—tells of a twenty-first century young man’s fight to find a way toward the future.
Jul 10, 2012•1 hr 2 min
The struggles of an artist’s life are re-examined through a modern urban lens by these two critically acclaimed novelists. In Spiotta’s Stone Arabia, a fifty-year-old musician sinks away from public life until his niece begins to make a film about him, bringing many vulnerabilities to the surface. Fitch’s Paint it Black unravels the painful aftermath of the suicide of the son of a renowned pianist. Both novels, set in Los Angeles, vibrantly depict characters who are inspired and destroyed by mus...
Jun 29, 2012•1 hr 3 min
Lost City Radio novelist Daniel Alarcón and team joins us for a special live presentation of Radio Ambulante - the first ever Spanish-language radio show created to tell the stories of latinoamericanos de todas las Américas. Everyday stories find voice in this multi-national, bilingual production, a collaboration of NPR stations and independent journalists from over nine countries. In a city with a majority Spanish-speaking population, Radio Ambulante introduces Angelenos to the crónicas de nues...
Jun 27, 2012•1 hr 21 min
In less than a decade, President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal agencies radically transformed Los Angeles as they did other American cities in a successful, but largely forgotten, effort to extricate the nation from the Great Depression. In addition to building the region's cultural infrastructure of schools, libraries, and museums, the Federal Writers Project left us a vivid freeze frame description of what Southern California was like just before World War II. Author David Kipen discusses the ...
Jun 22, 2012•1 hr 19 min
As a culture, we are often focused on beginnings— the start of things instead of the endings. Acclaimed sociologist and MacArthur prize-winning Harvard professor Lawrence-Lightfoot examines moments that define how we transition through our lives. From looking at an Iranian teenager who leaves the political strife of his native land, to a middle-aged gay man who reflects on his ‘exit’ from the closet, to the director of a hospital ICU who oversees patients facing death, Lawrence-Lightfoot examine...
Jun 20, 2012•1 hr 6 min
Part One: Tales of DesperationM.C.'d by Richard Montoya of Culture ClashJoin in this first-ever edition of live storytelling at ALOUD as six local voices take us through the comedic, tragic, entertaining, and desperate tales of life in the City of Angels.Music by Tom Lutz and Blue TunaIn partnership with the Los Angeles Review of Books
Jun 14, 2012•6 sec
The popular columnist for the New York Times declares that the proud state of big oil and bigger ambitions matters most in America’s political landscape, that “what happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas anymore.” The country’s fundamental divide has long been seen as a war between the Republican heartland and its two liberal coasts. But after visiting Texas, Collins reconsiders where the epicenter of a conservative political agenda resides and how it is sweeping across the country to redefine o...
Jun 13, 2012•56 min
Two celebrated writers deeply influenced by the riparian and other landscapes of the American West will read from their work and explore how storytelling, in the tradition of Thoreau and Emerson, can give voice to natural resources. Activist and award-winning author Kathleen Dean Moore discusses her newest book Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril and Craig Childs, the author of more than a dozen acclaimed books on nature and science, reflects on expedition adventures from Colorado...
Jun 07, 2012•1 hr 16 min
The Washington Post calls Richard Ford, "One of the finest curators of the great American living museum." In his haunting new novel, Canada, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author explores the mysterious and consoling bonds of family in a tale about a young man forced by catastrophic circumstance to reconcile himself to a world that has been rendered unrecognizable.
Jun 01, 2012•1 hr 15 min
From hired mourners who will scatter your loved one's ashes, to nameologists (who help you name your child)-the sociologist and acclaimed author of The Second Shift draws on original research to reveal the threats inherent in a world in which the most intuitive and emotional of human acts have become work for hire.
May 25, 20120
How have unreasonable principles —from negotiating to risk-taking, from investing to hiring— helped billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad in founding two Fortune 500 companies, funding scientific research and education reform, and building some of the world’s greatest contemporary art museums? Why is he drawn to the unreasonableness of contemporary artists like Richard Serra and Robert Rauschenberg? What can we learn from the wisdom of an unreasonable man?
May 23, 2012•47 min
If the conscious mind is the only part of the brain we are aware of, then what in the world else is happening up there? Renowned neuroscientist (and novelist) David Eagleman navigates the depth of the subconscious brain to illuminate surprising mysteries that take in brain damage, plane spotting, dating, drugs, synesthesia, criminal law, artificial intelligence and visual illusions.
May 16, 20120
