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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Bechdel follows her best-selling graphic memoir, Fun Home, with a second tale of filial sleuthing-this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, amateur actor, and also a woman, unhappily married to a gay man. Bechdel's quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf leads through…
Upon her mother's passing, Williams inherited three shelves of journals. Not only was it a shock that her mother kept journals, but it was also a shock to see what the journals contained-pages and pages of blank pages. In fifty-four chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own…
