ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library
823 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago - ★★★★★ - 49 ratingsALOUD is the Library Foundation of Los Angeles' award-winning literary series of live conversations, readings and performances at the historic Central Library and locations throughout Los Angeles.
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Episodes
Unbreakable Spirit: The Freed Angola Three
April 10, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 80.7 MBIn a special Los Angeles visit, human rights activists Robert King and Albert Woodfox, the two surviving members of the Angola 3, known for having served the longest solitary confinement sentences in U.S. history, share their remarkable story of survival and advocacy. As comrades inside Louisiana State Penitentiary—the largest prison in the U.S. and former slave plantation known as "Angola"—they jointly established a chapter of the Black Panther Party within the prison and led peaceful non-vi...
Exit West
April 03, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 92.9 MBNew York Times bestselling author Mohsin Hamid returns to ALOUD to discuss his latest novel Exit West, a visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands. Infusing the stark reality of a refugee narrative with the hopeful fantasy of a fairy tale, Exit West follows the journey of two young lovers who flee an unnamed country on the brink of civil war through a magical door that transports them to other places. A pr...
The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption
March 29, 2018 03:00 - 56 minutes - 60.6 MBDuring his long tenure on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia—engaging as well as caustic and openly ideological—moved the Court to the right. In this eye-opening new book, legal scholar Richard L. Hasen analyzes Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s complex legacy as a conservative legal thinker and disruptive public intellectual who was crucial to reshaping jurisprudence on issues from abortion to gun rights to separation of powers. Hasen is joined by Erwin Chemerinsky in a special lunchtime...
Misfits Unite
March 14, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 61.1 MB"What if, for once in history, a woman’s story could be untethered from what we need it to be in order to feel better about ourselves?" writes visionary author Lidia Yuknavitch in her latest work, The Book of Joan. In this provocatively reimagined Joan of Arc story set in the near future, the world is ravaged by war, violence, and greed, and it brings into question art, sex, gender, and what it means to be human. Amber Tamblyn, widely known for her work as a director and actress, including he...
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Gained Their Civil Rights
March 09, 2018 03:00 - 58 minutes - 60.8 MBIn his new book, UCLA law professor Adam Winkler offers a revelatory portrait of how U.S. corporations have seized political power over time. He traces the 200-year effort of pro-business court decisions that give corporations the same rights as people and details the deep historical roots of recent landmark cases like Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. For a special lunchtime conversation, Winkler discusses with author Rick Wartzman of the Drucker Institute how businesses have transformed the ...
The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches from the Border
February 22, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 82.9 MBFor award-winning writer and former agent for the United States Border Patrol Francisco Cantú, the border is in his blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. His new book, The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches from the Border, is haunted by the stories he experienced both while working for the Border Patrol—where he hauled in the dead and delivered to detention those he found alive—and also as a civilian after he abando...
The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
February 07, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 78.9 MBWhat moved humans to create cultures—intelligent systems including the arts, morality, science, government, and technology? The answer to this question has typically been the human faculty of language, but preeminent neuroscientist, professor, and director of USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute Antonio Damasio argues that feelings―of pain and suffering or of anticipated pleasure―were the prime engines that stirred human intellect in the cultural direction. In his newest book The Strange Orde...
Exiled from Cairo: Humor as Dissent
February 01, 2018 03:00 - 59 minutes - 65.8 MBBassem Youssef, a satirist who rose to international fame in the middle of the Egyptian Revolution with his incendiary brand of comedy and his knack for unabashedly mocking dictators, has been dubbed “the Jon Stewart of the Arabic world.” In his new book, Revolution for Dummies: Laughing Through the Arab Spring, Youssef chronicles his transformation from a heart surgeon who filmed YouTube skits in the laundry room of his home to the host and creator of the popular Egyptian television show, Al...
Haiku in Zapotec: From Oaxaca to Japan and Back
January 24, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 106 MBBecause of its similar celebration of the beauty of the natural world and focus on compactness, contemporary Zapotec-language poetry shares much in common with the Japanese haiku. Poet Víctor Terán—who’s performed his work from Oaxaca to London—will share some of his translations of the Japanese masters of the form alongside his own original Zapotec haiku, and American poet Jane Hirshfield will discuss both the haiku form and the way that the natural world informs her own work. The program wi...
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
January 19, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 79.9 MBWinner of a 2017 Pulitzer Prize, historian Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on the infamous 1971 Attica Prison riot as one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century. Chronicling the horrific conditions that led to 1,300 prisoners taking over the upstate New York correctional facility and how the state violently retook the prison—killing thirty-nine men and severely wounding more than a hundred others—Blood in the Water also confronts the gruesome aftermath. From bruta...
An American Family: Being Muslim in the U.S. Military
December 08, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 41.8 MBLast fall’s presidential election brought a range of impassioned voices to the national stage, but one of the most captivating speakers rose above petty politics with a deeply personal and very different view of what it means to be American. You may recall the Muslim parent Khizr Khan from the DNC when he spoke about his son, a U.S. Army Captain who was killed while protecting his base camp in Iraq. In Khan’s inspiring new book, An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice, he reflects ...
The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
December 06, 2017 03:00 - 55 minutes - 50.6 MBWhat lies at the heart of humanity’s ability―and drive―to create? New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist David Eagleman teams up with internationally acclaimed composer and Associate Professor at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music Anthony Brandt in a wide-ranging exploration of human creativity. In their new book, The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, the pair studies hundreds of examples of human creativity from landing on the moon to paintings by...
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
November 30, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 81 MBWhy has our society become so punitive? In recent years, critics have assailed the rise of mass incarceration, emphasizing its disproportionate impact on people of color. However, many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers supported the war on crime that began in the 1970s. James Forman, Jr., a professor of law at Yale Law School and former D.C. public defender, wrestles with the complexities of race and the criminal justice system in his new book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime a...
The Revolution of Marina M.
November 17, 2017 03:00 - 50 minutes - 49 MBL.A.’s own Janet Fitch, the mega-bestselling author of White Oleander and Paint It Black, returns to ALOUD with her newest work, a sweeping historical saga of the Russian Revolution. Beginning on New Year’s Eve in 1916 St. Petersburg, The Revolution of Marina M. follows the mesmerizing coming-of-age story of a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Joining Fitch to discuss thi...
Oaxaca’s Third Gender: Man, Woman, Muxe
November 15, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 79.6 MBThe program is conducted in both Spanish and English. Anthropologists have traced the Meso-American acceptance of people of mixed gender back to pre-Columbian Mexico accounts of Aztec priests and Mayan gods who cross-dressed and were considered both male and female. In the shifting landscape of gender identity, what might we learn from the indigenous Zapotec people of Oaxaca’s isthmus region, who embrace a third gender—the muxe—within their communities? Zackary Drucker, transgender multimedi...
La Lengua Sin Frontera (Language Without Borders): Three Indigenous Poets
November 10, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBJoin us for an evening celebrating indigenous poetry from the United States and Mexico with three major poets—Natalie Diaz (member of the Mojave and Pima Indian tribes, winner of the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, language activist, and educator), Layli Long Soldier (an Oglala Lakota poet, writer, and artist whose debut poetry collection Whereas is short-listed for the National Book Award), and Natalia Toledo (a Mexican poet and translator who writes in Spanish and Zapotec and ...
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
November 02, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBCaitlin Doughty, a mortician, best-selling author, blogger, YouTube personality, and director of the nonprofit funeral home, Undertaking LA, has long been fascinated by death, what it means to treat the dead with dignity, and why we are so afraid of dead bodies. Her new book, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, sets out on a global journey to discover how other cultures care for their dead. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters a range of rituals f...
Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America
October 27, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 65.5 MBNo American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. There were Nazi plots to hang prominent Hollywood figures like Charlie Chaplin, gun down Jews in Boyle Heights, and plans to sabotage local military installations. As law enforcement agencies were busy monitoring the Reds instead of Nazis, an attorney named Leon Lewis and his ring of spies entered the picture. Acclaimed historian and USC Professor Steven J. Ross’...
Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York
October 25, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 65.2 MBNew York Times bestselling author Roz Chast returns to ALOUD with her hilarious new graphic memoir, Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York. Chast is a native Brooklynite and quintessential New Yorker whose street cred is regularly on display in The New Yorker, where she’s published over 1,000 cartoons. But when she moved to the suburbs, navigating life filled with trees instead of garbage was surreal— although her kids would grow up thinking the opposite was true. On the occasion of her d...
Threat of Extinction: Language Activism and Preservation
October 22, 2017 03:00 - 79.6 MBThe essence of who we are is wrapped up in our language. What is human knowledge lost when a language goes extinct? Why should we care? Join ALOUD for a freewheeling conversation among language activists working to reclaim indigenous languages in California and Mexico. For the first time together on stage, this unique group of participants includes master linguist and language preservationist Leanne Hinton; Native California language activist Vincent Medina and Virginia Carmelo; Odilia Romero...
Manhattan Beach: A Novel of WWII New York
October 20, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 65.5 MB“Is there anything Egan can’t do?” asked The New York Times Book Review. In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan masters her first historical novel. Beginning during the middle of the Great Depression, Manhattan Beach follows the story of Anna Kerrigan, a young girl who comes of age with a country at war. Inheriting the role of providing for her mother and sister after her father mysteriously disappears, Anna works at the Brooklyn...
An American Genocide: California Indians, Colonization, and Cultural Revival
October 11, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 77.3 MBThere’s one major aspect of the popular Gold Rush lore that few Californians today know about: during that period, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000, much of the decline from state-sponsored slaughter. Addressing the aftermath of colonization and historical trauma, a leading scholar explores the miraculous legacy of California Indians, including their extensive contributions to our culture today. Join us for a conversation with UCLA historian Benjamin Madle...
The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: From Fiction to Faith
October 06, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 63.6 MBStephen Greenblatt—the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author of The Swerve and Will in the World—investigates the life of one of humankind’s greatest stories. His newest book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, explores the enduring narrative of humanity’s first parents. Tracking the tale into the deep past, Greenblatt uncovers the tremendous theological, artistic, and cultural investment over centuries that made these fictional figures so profoundly resonant in the Jewish, Ch...
American Inferno: How My Cousin Became a South Central Statistic
September 27, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 68.1 MBIn Danielle Allen’s elegiac family memoir, Cuz: On the Life and Times of Michael A., she tries to make sense of a young African American man’s tragic coming-of-age in Los Angeles. Allen, a Harvard professor and author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, became the "cousin-on-duty" when her younger cousin Michael was released from prison. Arrested at fifteen, tried as an adult—three years after his release, Michael was shot and killed. Why? ...
Rebellion! Public Art and Political Dissent: Oaxaca and L.A.
September 20, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 71.2 MBWith the likes of Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, Mexico has a long tradition of politically engaged public art, which has often depicted—with varying degrees of accuracy—the country’s indigenous population. Two gifted young artists from the collective Tlacolulokos have been commissioned to create a new artwork in the Central Library’s Rotunda in juxtaposition to the 1933 historic Cornwell murals. They will discuss their new work as well as their street-level actions in their hometown ...
Moving the Center: African Literature in African Languages
August 01, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 75.2 MBTwo generations of African writers—Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, an elder statesman from Kenya, and Richard Ali A Mutu, a young novelist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo—discuss the politics of writing in African languages, the vibrancy of the continent’s cultural output, and exciting new trends in East, West, and Central African writing. Thiong’o and Mutu will be joined for a rare look at groundbreaking indigenous voices by David Shook, the founding editor of Phoneme Media and publisher of Mut...
The Challenges of American Immigration
July 28, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 59.5 MBAli Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum in Washington, D.C., an advocacy organization promoting the value of immigrants and immigration, sheds new light on our nation’s brewing immigration debate in his timely book, There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration. Although U.S. politics are more polarizing than ever, Noorani argues that our issues of immigration are more about culture and values than ...
Resist, Disrupt, Transgress: Four Poets
July 26, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 61.5 MBJoin us for an electrifying evening of poetry as four bold writers from diverse backgrounds come together on the stage to explore their common experiences of loss through time and history. Navigating losses of home, of life, and of identity—from a family displaced by war to an examination of videos capturing police killing civilians—these local poets will read from their uncompromising work that perseveres despite loss by searching for ways to rise up and recover.
Missing Persons: Two Novelists
July 12, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 61.4 MBAn award-winning writer of short stories, children’s books, and literary novels, Maile Meloy’s new novel Do Not Become Alarmed is a masterfully executed emotional thriller about what happens when two American families go on a tropical vacation and the children go missing. New York Times bestselling author Marisa Silver’s latest novel, Little Nothing, follows an electrifying story of a girl, scorned for her physical deformity, whose passion and salvation lie in her otherworldly ability to tran...
An Evening With Arundhati Roy
June 30, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 87.4 MBTwenty years after her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, internationally celebrated author Arundhati Roy returns to fiction with a dazzling new novel. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness journeys across the Indian subcontinent—from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the new city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war. Braiding together a cast of characters who have been broken by the world they live in and th...
An Evening with Arundhati Roy
June 30, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 87.4 MBTwenty years after her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, internationally celebrated author Arundhati Roy returns to fiction with a dazzling new novel. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness journeys across the Indian subcontinent—from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the new city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war. Braiding together a cast of characters who have been broken by the world they live in and th...
Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Accidental Activism
June 22, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBFrom growing up as a devout woman from a modest family in Saudia Arabia to becoming an unexpected leader of a courageous movement to support women’s right to drive, Manal al-Sharif recounts her life’s journey in her ferociously intimate new memoir Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening. When working in the male-dominated field of computer security engineering in her twenties, al-Sharif was labeled a slut for chatting with male colleagues. Her teenage brother chaperoned her on business tri...
An Evening With Alan Alda
June 13, 2017 03:00 - 38 minutes - 53.4 MBAlan Alda, the award-winning actor and bestselling author, discusses his decades-long quest to understand the intricacies of communication. With his trademark humor and candor, Alda’s new book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating, chronicles communication breakdowns in his own life from a life-changing misunderstanding with a dentist to learning how to make science relatable to the masses as host of PBS’s ...
An Evening with Alan Alda
June 13, 2017 03:00 - 38 minutes - 53.4 MBAlan Alda, the award-winning actor and bestselling author, discusses his decades-long quest to understand the intricacies of communication. With his trademark humor and candor, Alda’s new book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating, chronicles communication breakdowns in his own life from a life-changing misunderstanding with a dentist to learning how to make science relatable to the masses as host of PBS’s ...
When the FBI Investigates the White House
June 07, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 77.9 MBEver since J. Edgar Hoover died, six weeks before the Watergate break-in, the FBI has had to confront presidents. FBI investigations led to President Nixon’s resignation, indictments of President Reagan’s national-security team, and the impeachment of President Clinton. Now the current administration faces a major counterintelligence case. When the FBI confronts the power of the presidency, America must navigate uncharted waters. Tim Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Awa...
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
May 26, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 77.2 MBWhy do we do the things we do? Author and MacArthur recipient Robert Sapolsky’s game-changing new book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst attempts to answer this very question, one of the deepest questions of the human species. Moving between neurobiological factors, to the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology, to tracing individual’s childhoods and their genetic makeup, to encompassing larger categories of culture, ecology, and evolution, Sapolsky considers mil...
An Evening With Dennis Lehane
May 24, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 87.9 MBFrom searing stories of suspense to literary novels, historical fiction, and film and television scripts, no other writer today has such a wide-ranging body of work like Dennis Lehane. The international bestselling author and screenwriter is best known for his edgy, morally complex, and effortlessly masterful stories that often take place in his hometown of Boston. Now a resident of Los Angeles, many of Lehane’s novels have been adapted into award-winning films, including Mystic River, Shutte...
An Evening with Dennis Lehane
May 24, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 87.9 MBFrom searing stories of suspense to literary novels, historical fiction, and film and television scripts, no other writer today has such a wide-ranging body of work like Dennis Lehane. The international bestselling author and screenwriter is best known for his edgy, morally complex, and effortlessly masterful stories that often take place in his hometown of Boston. Now a resident of Los Angeles, many of Lehane’s novels have been adapted into award-winning films, including Mystic River, Shutt...
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space
May 19, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 70.1 MBSince 1916 when Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves—the powerful aftermath occurring when black holes collide—scientists have been trying to provide evidence of this profusion of energy. However, a telescope cannot record this event—the only evidence is the sound of spacetime ringing. Janna Levin, one of today’s most eminent theoretical astrophysicists and an award-winning writer, recounts the fascinating story of the surprises, disappointments, achievements, and risks of ...
The Evolution of Beauty
May 17, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 71.4 MBDeep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays—from pheasants with 3D feathers to moonwalking manakins—traits that seem disconnected from selection for individual survival. Culminating 30 years of fieldwork, Richard Prum, the Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and a world-renowned ornithologist, revives Darwin’s long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a ma...
In a Western Light: Poetry at the Edge of America
May 12, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 69.8 MBCalifornia poetry has looked to the future, as well as to its complex past and the present, as a way of understanding our place at the edge of the continent. California is about the magic of the land and the promise of possibility— yet the question remains, for whom? Seven contemporary California poets celebrate the diverse poetry of seven distinguished California writers, hoping to provide a lens through which to experience these visions of a life lived in the harsh clarity of a Western ligh...
From L.A. to the Outback: Two Novelists
May 10, 2017 03:00 - 58 minutes - 57.8 MBDavid Francis’ latest novel Wedding Bush Road follows the visceral journey of a young L.A. lawyer called back to his family’s horse farm in rural Australia when his mother falls ill. Offering a uniquely intimate take on the timeless struggle between the past and present, town and country, Francis’ writing is fueled by a deep understanding of characters and landscapes that are worlds apart—he also works as a lawyer based in Los Angeles and spends part of each year on his family farm in Austral...
Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards
April 21, 2017 03:00 - 36 minutes - 37.4 MB2017 marks the 25th anniversary of one of contemporary poetry’s most prestigious awards—Claremont Graduate University’s Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, given for poetry volumes published in the preceding year and created to both honor the poet and provide the resources that allow artists to continue working towards the pinnacle of their craft. In a celebration moderated by the Poetry Society of America’s Executive Director Alice Quinn, join us for an evening looking back at 25 years of this spec...
Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River
April 19, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 68.9 MBThe Colorado River is a crucial resource for a large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. New Yorker staff writer David Owen, and author of more than a dozen books, delivers his latest work, Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River, and takes readers on an eye-opening adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico...
How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything
April 14, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBWar used to be a temporary state of affairs, but in today’s post 9/11-world America’s wars are everywhere and forever. Law professor and Foreign Policy columnist Rosa Brooks’ book, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon, traces what happens when the ancient boundary between war and peace is erased. Part reportage and part memoir, this thought-provoking book is directly informed by Brooks’ unconventional perspective—she is a former top Pentagon of...
Infidels: A Novel
April 13, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 73.5 MBBorn in a public library in Morocco where his father was a janitor, Abdellah Taïa is an acclaimed novelist and filmmaker who lives in Paris, but sets his latest novel in his home country. With deep lyricism and erotic energy, Infidels follows the life of Jallal, a young gay Muslim who is the son of a prostitute witch doctor. The mother and son struggle as outsiders inside their Islamic world until Jallal moves to Belgium and becomes a jihadist. Taia discusses this powerful story about love an...
An Evening With Cheech Marin
March 29, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 127 MBYou know Cheech as half of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong, and you know him for his memorable roles in Up in Smoke, Born in East L.A., Desperado, The Lion King, and Jane the Virgin, to name a few. But did you know that Cheech—which is not his real name—is also the owner of the most renowned collection of Chicano art in the world? Did you know that before he became a face of the recreational drug movement, he grew up the son of a cop? Did you know that he crushed Anderson Cooper on Celebrity Je...
An Evening with Cheech Marin
March 29, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 127 MBYou know Cheech as half of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong, and you know him for his memorable roles in Up in Smoke, Born in East L.A., Desperado, The Lion King, and Jane the Virgin, to name a few. But did you know that Cheech—which is not his real name—is also the owner of the most renowned collection of Chicano art in the world? Did you know that before he became a face of the recreational drug movement, he grew up the son of a cop? Did you know that he crushed Anderson Cooper on Celebrity Je...
The Idiot: A Novel
March 21, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 64.7 MBElif Batuman, a New Yorker staff writer and author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, offers up a delightfully refreshing coming-of-age story about not just discovering but inventing oneself. Batuman’s debut novel The Idiot begins in 1995 when email is new and Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard where she navigates the strange new worlds of academics, friendships, and falling in love via email. Batuman ...
Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean
March 17, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 65.2 MBWriter, sailor, and surfer Jonathan White journeys deep into the world’s oceans in his new book Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean. From investigating the growth of tidal power generation in Chile and Scotland to delving into the threat of rising sea levels in Panama and Venice, join us for this exploration of the current state of our oceans’ infinitely complex and ever-changing ecosystems and the forces that keep our planet’s waters in constant motion.