ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library
823 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 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.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
The Crusades of Cesar Chavez
April 02, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBHow do you write/convey/film the story of a visionary figure with tragic flaws who founded a labor union, launched a movement, and inspired a generation? Biographer Miriam Pawel, playwright/director Luis Valdez (Teatro Campesino) lend their perspective on the crusades of an unlikely American hero who ignited one of the great social movements of our time.
All Our Names: Dinaw Mengestu
March 28, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 62.9 MBFrom the MacArthur Award-winning writer comes a subtle and quietly devastating new novel about love, exile, and the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. All Our Names is a tale of friendship between two young men who come of age during an African revolution and the emotional and physical boundaries that tear them apart—one drawn into peril, the other into the safety of the American Midwest. In this political novel, Mengestu presents a portrait of love and grace, of se...
A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran
March 26, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 73.8 MBIn 2009, three American hikers (and UC Berkeley grads) hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan unknowingly crossed into Iran and were captured by a border patrol. Accused of espionage, they were incarcerated in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison—Sarah, for fourteen months and Josh and Fattal, for two long years. This poignant memoir is their story, as told through a bold and innovative interweaving of the authors’ three voices that recounts the psychological torment of interrogation and the collective strength ...
The Great Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
March 21, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 70.8 MBThis National Book Award-winning account illuminates the erosion of the social compact—the collapse of farms, factories, public schools—that had kept the United States stable and middle class since the late 1970s. In The Great Unwinding, Packer probes the seething undercurrents of American life, offering an intimate look into the lives that have been transformed by the dissolution of our economic glue. From unchecked banks to the rise of Walton's Walmart, this retelling of American history th...
Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
March 19, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 72.9 MBImagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and embarked on a multicity speaking tour. How would he handle the host of a cable news program who denies there can be morality without religion? How would he mediate a debate between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a tiger mom on how to raise the perfect child? Philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein provide an original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today’s debates on religion, morality...
Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture
March 14, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 68.8 MBIn this revelatory study of Muslim youth movements that have emerged in cities around the world in the years since 9/11 and in the wake of the Arab Spring, Aidi illuminates the unexpected connections between urban marginality, music, and political mobilization. By examining both secular and religiously-fueled movements as a means of protest against the policies of the "War on Terror," he explains how certain kinds of music—particularly hip hop, but also jazz, Gnawa, Andalusian, Judeo-Arabic, ...
Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot
March 13, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 65 MBOn February 21, 2012, five young women entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow wearing neon-colored dresses, tights, and balaclavas to perform a "punk prayer" beseeching the "Mother of God" to "get rid of Putin." What transformed a group of young women into artists with a shared vision, and what gave them the courage to express that vision and to deal with the subsequently devastating outcomes? Through the trial of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, Russian-American journalist Ma...
The Un-Private Collection: Jeff Koons and John Waters
February 25, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 69.4 MBArtist Jeff Koons and filmmaker/author/photographer John Waters discuss Koon’s innovative and ever-changing art-making practice, which ranges from sculpture to painting to digital media. Like Waters, Koons’s art comments on the notion of "good taste," as well as the decadence of capitalist culture, the innocence of childhood, and beauty’s eternal resonance. Waters will speak with Koons about the inspiration and ideas behind his iconic works, such as Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Balloon Dog (B...
Writing Los Angeles
February 21, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 63.8 MBWalter Mosley, one of America’s most admired crime novelists joins one of its newest stars—Attica Locke—for a conversation about noir, race and writing in and from Los Angeles. Presented in collaboration with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, the evening kicks off Tales from Two Cities: Writing from California, a free two-day conference at the downtown Central Library spotlighting the writers who help define Los Angeles as a place with a language, culture, and aesthetic...
Edward Frenkel and Chris Carter
February 14, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.5 MBFrenkel, one of the 21st century’s leading mathematicians, works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of mathematics in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. In his lyrical autobiography, he reveals a side of math we’ve never seen, suffused with all the metaphysical beauty and elegance of a work of art. Known for his controversial erotic film about math, Frenkel believes a mathematical formula can carry a charge of love. Frenkel is joined by screenwriter and The X-Files creator Chris C...
Call Me Burroughs
February 04, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 61.7 MBWilliam Burroughs was the original cult figure of the Beat Movement, author of Naked Lunch, and influence to scores of artists, writers, and musicians. For the centennial celebration of Burroughs’ birth, beat historian and biographer Barry Miles discusses the long-term cultural legacy of Burroughs and his literary risk-taking.
The Days of Anna Madrigal
January 31, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 57.9 MBThe Days of Anna Madrigal, the suspenseful, comic, and touching ninth (and final) novel in Armistead Maupin’s bestselling Tales of the City series, follows one of modern literature’s most unforgettable and enduring characters—Anna Madrigal, the legendary transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane. While some members of Anna’s family head for the other-worldly landscape of Burning Man, Anna embarks on a road trip that takes her deep into her past, including a visit to Winnemucca, Nevada where the...
Orfeo: A Novel
January 29, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 60.8 MBThis new work by the MacArthur Award-winning novelist begins when composer Peter Els opens the door to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab—where he experiments to find music in surprising patterns—has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Seeking help from family and a longtime collaborator, this "Bioterrorist Bach" hatches a plan to turn his disastrous collision with the security state into a work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around t...
Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music
January 24, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 79.4 MBHailed as one of the most inspiring women of our time, musician and activist Angélique Kidjo shares the story of her world in the memoir, Spirit Rising: from the communist regime of her native Benin to her work as a UNICEF Ambassador and activist promoting education for all girls in Africa. Kidjo’s GRAMMY-Award winning music, rich with African rhythms, speaks to her own vibrancy, resilience, and to the hope she carries for the world’s spirit rising. Kidjo brings her electrifying presence to t...
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
January 22, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 66.5 MBThis first sweeping history of Parks' life challenges perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement. Theoharis offers a compelling portrait of the working class activist who stared poverty and discrimination squarely in the face and never stopped rebelling against them in both the segregated South and North. Ericka Huggins—former political prisoner, human rights activist, poet and teacher—who met Parks during her days of Black Panther activism—joins the discussion
A Tribute to Wanda Coleman
January 19, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 72.6 MBA Tribute to Wanda Coleman with Terrance Hayes and Douglas Kearney. Music by David Ornette Cherry and featuring Stephen Kessler, Ron Koertge, Laurel Ann Bogen, Charles Harper Webb, Michael Datcher, Suzanne Lummis, Sesshu Foster, Jack and Adelle Foley, Brendan Constantine, Cecilia Woloch, Robin Coste Lewis, Austin Straus.
Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography
January 15, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 71.2 MBIn a series of meditative essays, the award-winning writer Richard Rodriguez turns his perceptive gaze to the desert—in both the physical and spiritual sense—in a quest to understand his relationship to the "desert God" and to terrorists who kill in the name of that same God. He delves into what it means to be a gay, devout, Roman Catholic in his 60s—attempting to make sense of a world and a religion that have both rejected him at times. His peregrinations take him beyond the Middle East—to S...
Queens of Noise- Music, Feminism and Punk: Then and Now
January 10, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.8 MBQueens of NoiseMusic, Feminism and Punk: Then and NowExene Cervenka, Evelyn McDonnell, and Allison WolfeMcDonnell’s Queens of Noise: The Real Story of The Runaways is a testimonial to the inspiration and insecurity of the trailblazer, a look at the Los Angeles music scene of the 70s and women on the run. Joined by Exene Cervenka of seminal L.A. punk band X and Riot Grrrl Allison Wolfe—veteran journalist McDonnell will lead a discussion on music making and selling, legacies and the women who a...
Queens of Noise - Music, Feminism and Punk: Then and Now
January 10, 2014 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.8 MBMcDonnell’s Queens of Noise: The Real Story of The Runaways is a testimonial to the inspiration and insecurity of the trailblazer, a look at the Los Angeles music scene of the 70s and women on the run. Joined by Exene Cervenka of seminal L.A. punk band X and Riot Grrrl Allison Wolfe—veteran journalist McDonnell will lead a discussion on music making and selling, legacies, and the women who are breaking new ground.
The Un-Private Collection: Artist as Activist
December 12, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 62.5 MBWorld-renowned visual artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat’s provocative yet poetic work addresses issues of social repression among women, in her native Iran and beyond. Through haunting allegory and imagery, she portrays women as complex individuals with desires and ambitions, who move between intense private feelings and public life. Reaching beyond her own identity, Neshat also addresses broader concerns about cultural beliefs and the power of the erotic.
An Evening With Anjelica Huston
December 10, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBRobert Capa photographed her as a toddler; she chatted with Brando and Steinbeck in her living room. Academy Award-winning actress/director Anjelica Huston shares from A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York with Colm Tóibín, one of Ireland’s greatest living writers. Huston’s memoir illuminates the unconventional life of the daughter of director John Huston and prima ballerina Enrica Soma. She recounts her childhood, early romances, and the successful modeling care...
An Evening with Anjelica Huston
December 10, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBRobert Capa photographed her as a toddler; she chatted with Brando and Steinbeck in her living room. Academy Award-winning actress/director Anjelica Huston shares from A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York with Colm Tóibín, one of Ireland’s greatest living writers. Huston’s memoir illuminates the unconventional life of the daughter of director John Huston and prima ballerina Enrica Soma. She recounts her childhood, early romances, and the successful modeling care...
Michael Connelly
December 06, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBIn Connelly’s newest courtroom drama, lawyer Mickey Haller defends a murder case in which the murder victim was his very own former client, a prostitute he thought he’d rescued and put on the straight and narrow path. Haller is forced to find justice for both of his clients, living and dead. As he faces the "gods of guilt," he must struggle with personal demons for a shot at his own redemption. Connelly discusses the mysteries of crime writing with Miles Corwin, acclaimed author, and former c...
The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter
November 22, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 80.5 MBAs an activist lawyer and leading member of the African National Congress, Albie Sachs lost his right arm and the sight in one eye when his car was bombed by agents of South Africa’s security forces in 1988. After recuperating in London, he returned to South Africa and played a key role in drafting its democratic constitution. Nelson Mandela appointed him a judge in the new constitutional court, where Sachs made a number of landmark rulings, including recognizing gay marriage. Sachs, a man wi...
L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food
November 14, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBRoy Choi, border-crossing chef and co-founder of the Kogi BBQ taco truck, pays homage to the city that he loves in this memoir, a tale of his journey from childhood afternoons at his parents’ Korean restaurant, to pizza-fueled studying at the Culinary Institute of America, to becoming one of America’s most acclaimed chefs. Join us as Choi takes a break from the kitchen to talk about his new book, L.A. Son, a flavorful love letter to Los Angeles.
Making History Graphic
November 13, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.9 MBHailed as the creator of war reportage comics, Joe Sacco uses darkly funny short-form comics to recount conflicts, including his latest book The Great War, an illustrated panorama of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Gene Luen Yang, the author of the acclaimed graphic novel American Born Chinese, brings clear-eyed storytelling and magical realism to tell parallel stories of two young people caught up on opposite sides of China’s violent Boxer Rebellion in his new work, Boxers and Sain...
The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation
November 08, 2013 03:00What happens when formerly estranged peoples look at their entwined history together? After attending a Zen Peacemaker retreat at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2000, Steinman embarked on a decade-long exploration—into her own family’s history in a small Polish town—as well as an immersion in the exhilarating and discomforting, sometimes surreal, yet ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation taking place in today’s democratic Poland.
The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons
November 06, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.7 MBIn her new collection of selected stories, Taraghi—one of Iran’s best-known and most critically acclaimed authors—draws on her childhood experiences in Tehran, adult exile in Paris, and subsequent returns to post-revolution Tehran. Her stories are, as Azar Nafisi writes, “filled with passion, curiosity, empathy, as well as mischief—definitely mischief.” Listen in as Taraghi shares from The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons, made fully accessible to the English-speaking audience for the first time.
Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
October 23, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 65.8 MBThe National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges in his new book. From families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, and schizophrenia, to children who are prodigies or transgender—Solomon illuminates the universal experiences of difference and the triumph of love.
Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
October 16, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 71.7 MBWeisman offers a long-awaited follow-up to The World Without Us, his brilliant thought experiment that considered how the Earth could heal if relieved of humanity’s constant pressures. Now, after traveling to more than 20 countries to ask four questions that experts agreed were probably the most important on Earth—he explores the complexity of calculating how many humans this planet can hold without capsizing.
Tell, Not Show: The Pleasure of Not Writing for the Movies
October 11, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 62.3 MBSeven years after the publication of the extraordinary novel After This, the National Book Award-winning author returns with Someone, a transformative novel about childhood, adolescence, motherhood, and old age, deftly stitched together by McDermott’s lyrical voice. McDermott takes the stage to discuss this masterful portrait of the 20th-century Irish-American family.
Moby Dick: How Scientists Came to Love the Whale
October 04, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 73.1 MBHow was our understanding of whales transformed from grotesque monsters, useful only as wallowing kegs of fat, to playful friends of humanity and bellwethers of environmental devastation? Burnett, a historian of science and energetic polymath, offers a sweeping history of how science, politics, and simple human wonder have transformed our way of seeing these behemoths from below.
MaddAddam: A Novel
October 03, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 71.2 MBIn Atwood’s dark and hilarious new novel, a man-made plague has swept the earth, but only a small group survives. In a world only Atwood could imagine, the Crakers’ reluctant prophet is hallucinating, and giant Pigeons and malevolent Painballers threaten to attack. Join us for a conversation with this visionary author on the stunning conclusion to her dystopian trilogy, set in a future that is not only possible but perhaps inevitable.
Remixing Moby Dick: Media Studies Meets the Great White Whale
September 27, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 74.8 MBOver a multi-year collaboration, playwright and director Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Melville scholar Wyn Kelley, and media expert Henry Jenkins have developed a new approach for teaching Moby-Dick in the age of YouTube and hip-hop. They will explore how "learning through remixing" can speak to contemporary youth, why Melville might be understood as the master mash-up artist of the 19th century, and what might have happened if Captain Ahab had been a 21st century gang leader.
Body Politics: Art, Identity and Memory
September 25, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 70.1 MBAward-winning Los Angeles-based visual artist Alison Saar explores her own artistic practice and that of the Luba people of Central Africa with African art scholar and curator Polly Nooter Roberts. Using memory and the use of the female body as a mnemonic for social and political history, they explore race and gender through this conversation on artistic form.
For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action and the Law
September 20, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 71.6 MBKennedy—a Harvard Law professor, former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and author of the New York Times best-seller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word—ponders the future of affirmative action and offers a definitive reckoning with one of the most explosively contentious and sharply divisive issues in American society.
Wilson: An Intimate Portrait
September 17, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBPulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg clears away myths and misconceptions in this penetrating portrait of one of America’s most influential yet often misunderstood presidents. This deeply emotional study reflects the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments, and failings- from designing the ill-fated League of Nations, using his trailblazing ideas that paved the way for the New Deal, to his denouement as a politician whose partisan battles left him a broken man.
The Un-Private Collection: A New Museum for Los Angeles
September 13, 2013 03:00 - 59 minutes - 54.3 MBLos Angeles is a city of renowned private collections that have become public museums: The Getty, the Hammer, the Norton Simon, The Huntington, and soon, The Broad. Consisting of over 2,000 artworks by established and emerging international artists, The Broad will add significantly to the contemporary art holdings on view to the Southern California public. Inge Reist will lead a discussion with the Broads and The Broad museum director Joanne Heyler about how their aesthetic tastes and social ...
The Blank Page: Literature, Hip-Hop and Freedom
September 11, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 60.3 MBIn MK Asante’s new memoir Buck, the award-winning writer, filmmaker, poet and professor scripts his rise from Philadelphia dealer and delinquent to the passionate and driven artist he is today. To share his powerful story of redemption, Asante sits down to rap with Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, on how he was transformed by the most unconventional teachers and the freedom to create on the blank page.
Never Built: Los Angeles
July 31, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 69.5 MBWhat might our city look like if the master plans of prominent architects had been brought to fruition? This panel—including architects, an architectural curator and the L.A. Times’ architecture critic—looks at those visionary works, which held great potential to re-form Los Angeles, yet were undermined by institutions and infrastructure. Can L.A.’s civic future be shaped from these unrealized lessons of the past?
Catastrophe in California: A Reappraisal of the St. Francis Dam Collapse
July 24, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBIn March of 1928, the St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles—designed by William Mulholland as a reservoir for the California Aqueduct—collapsed. The largest engineering disaster in California history is inextricably woven into the epic history of water in Los Angeles. In this centennial year of the California Aqueduct, join us for a discussion of the St. Francis tragedy and its enduring catastrophic and cultural significance.
Songs in the Key of Los Angeles
July 19, 2013 03:00 - 10 minutes - 9.27 MBThe recently published Songs in the Key of Los Angeles showcases the rich sheet music collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, and is the fruit of a collaboration between USC Professor Kun, his students and the Library Foundation. Join us for a night of rare L.A. musical history, in which the Los Angeles Public Library’s sheet music archive will come alive in story and song when Kun is joined by beloved, GRAMMY-winning Los Angeles band Quetzal.
Yet Do I Marvel: Black Iconic Poets of the 20th Century
July 12, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 76.7 MBIn this Los Angeles segment of the Poetry Society of America’s 2013 national series, three distinguished poets will celebrate the lives and poetry of major 20th century figures—James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and Gwendolyn Brooks-—discussing their influence, and reading poems of their own in tribute.
El Planeta—From Plankton to Afghanistan: A Poetry Reading
June 21, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 66.1 MBIn his newest book, Senegal Taxi, California’s Poet Laureate—and teacher and activist—turns his gaze to Africa. For this special evening, Herrera invites two talented younger poets to join him for a foray into what he calls: "the Plankton-like, Picasso-Like, Kandinsky-like chromatics of heart fire, short line enlightenment meditations…double shocked to the present life of what is going on in our diagonal world, war here, peace there—making it all right with these oceanic voices."
A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris
June 19, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 62.5 MBOn the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, walked into the German embassy in Paris and assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a low-level Nazi diplomat. Two days later, the Third Reich exploited the murder to inaugurate its long-planned campaign of terror against Germany’s Jewish citizens—what became known as Kristallnacht. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Kristallnacht, Kirsch— lawyer and bestselling author—unpacks the moral dimensions of one of the...
Magical Partnerships: Remembering Samuel Beckett
June 12, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 77.5 MBImagine a rain-soaked Beckett knocks on your door with a new manuscript. What was it like to collaborate with, publish, and know the genius? Seaver (who with her husband discovered and published Beckett’s early work) and Mandell (an actor directed by the playwright himself) team up to read both Beckett’s work and the Seavers’ memoir about the golden age of publishing—and to discuss how the unconventional writer came to be revered by audiences everywhere.
Americanah: A Novel
June 07, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 70.5 MBThe award-winning author of Half a Yellow Sun delivers a powerful new story of love and culture clash between two Nigerian friends across several decades and three different continents—keenly observing race, identity, and belonging in today’s globalized world.
Red Doc>
May 31, 2013 03:00 - 47 minutes - 43.2 MBFifteen years ago, in Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson, critically acclaimed poet, essayist, translator and classics professor, wrote about a boy named Geryon and his love affair with Herakles. In her newest work Red Doc>, Carson revisits these characters in later life, yet creates a dreamlike offshoot, abandoning her previous style and narrative threads while moving towards the perilous edge of living past the end of one’s myth.
Why Does the World Exist?
May 30, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 70 MBHolt, an irreverent detective of metaphysics and science, dives deep into conversation with Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll, to try and answer the most persistent mystery of existence: Why should there be a universe at all, and why are we a part of it? why is there Something rather than Nothing? Join us for a discussion of time, infinity, consciousness, the multiverse, and the haunting possibility of Absolute Nothingness.
Bodies, Women, The World
May 24, 2013 03:00 - 1 hour - 79.4 MBEve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and the new memoir In the Body of the World, discusses the female body and the world’s responsibility to protect it with Jody Williams, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work banning landmines. Williams’ memoir, My Name is Jody Williams, promotes civil society's power to help change the world. These two remarkable women discuss activism, their collaboration on ending violence against women, and bringing women together through the Internatio...