Spies & Journalists: Daughters Breaking Silence
Leslie Absher, daughter of a CIA father, and Eric Newton, husband of the late author and Bay Area journalist Mary Ann Hogan, discuss how memoir led each writer to better understand themselves and their secretive fathers. This is a free e…
A Life in Books
Each of us has a different, and beautiful, relationship with the books we read…and write. That is no less true if you’ve just published your first, as legendary librarian Dorothy Lazard has with her memoir What You Don’t Know Will Make…
An Evening with Joan Baez: Trailblazing Musician, Artist, and Activist
From the moment Joan Baez stepped on stage at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959, she’s been making history. Her seminal debut, Joan Baez, Vol. 1, released the following year, proved her to be a musical force of nature. It was selected…
What Makes a Critic?
Much has changed in the world of letters since 1890, when Oscar Wilde famously wrote that "the critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic." These days, when Goodreads reviews and social media takedowns outnumber dwindling…
True Stories: Northern California
Northern California is home to countless compelling stories—in this session, authors of nonfiction books each get twelve minutes to share one with you. The first one tells a tale as old as time, or maybe even older—in Deep Oakland, geologist…
Words and Pictures
We admit it—we're word people. But books featuring beautiful, provocative imagery can make for a singularly powerful reading experience. Immerse yourself in striking visual artworks and the stories behind them in this hour devoted to the art…
J Dilla: The Beatmaker Who Changed The Way Musicians Play
Discover a hidden genius—a man whom the greatest figures of contemporary pop call a “demigod” of music. J Dilla, who died in 2006 at the age of 32, never had a mainstream pop hit, but he created a new “time-feel” that forever changed…
Red Carpet: China, Hollywood, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy
Who decides what films appear at your local theater or on your TV screen? Would you guess Xi Jinping, autocratic President of the People’s Republic of China? Wall Street Journal film industry reporter Erich Schwartzel and veteran China watcher…
Buster Keaton and the Dawn of Cinema
“All my life, I've been happiest when folks watching me said to each other, 'Look at the poor dope, will ya?’” Humility aside, Buster Keaton, aka “The Great Stone Face,” shares equal stature with Charlie Chaplin as a comic genius and…
Revolution Then and Now: Four Authors Talk about Radical Change from the 1960s to Today
A quartet of maverick minds will take us on a wild ride of activism, defiance, and hard-won change. Bestselling journalist and historian David Talbot and New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot are known for pulling back the veil on social and political…