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Arts & Entertainment

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The Battle Over Books: Authors & Publishers Take on the Google Books Library Project

Presented in conjunction with The WIRED Speaker Series
Monday, June 12, 2006
01:29:01
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
A provocative discussion about the competing interests and issues raised by The Google Books Library Project, and whether a universal digital repository of our collective knowledge is in our future. With: Allan Adler, Association of American Publishers; David Drummond, Google; Fontayne Holmes, Los Angeles Public Library; Jonathan Kirsch, author and lawyer, Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School, and Gary Wolf, WIRED Magazine.
Participant(s) Bio
Allan Adler is Vice President for Legal and Governmental Affairs in the Washington, D.C. office of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the national trade organization which represents our Nation's book and journal publishing industries, where he deals with intellectual property, freedom of speech, new technology, and other industry-related issues. From 1989 until joining AAP in 1996, Mr. Adler practiced law as a member of Cohn and Marks, the Washington, D.C. communications law firm. His practice focused primarily on government relations in areas of federal law, regulation and policy concerning information, telecommunications & technology.
www.publishers.org

David Drummond is Google's Vice President, Corporation Development and works with Google's management team to evaluate and drive new strategic business opportunities, including strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions. He also serves as Google's general counsel.

Fontayne Holmes is the former City Librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library, the library system for the city of Los Angeles. It serves the largest population of any library in the US, with its Central Library, 73 branches and web-based services. She has successfully managed the largest library construction program in the nation, which has rebuilt more than 90 percent of the city's libraries. She also has led the library in its successful role of bridging the digital divide in every community in Los Angeles through her commitment to technology. The 3,000 computers in libraries citywide provide everyone with free and easy access to information and the valuable resources of the World Wide Web. She continues to use technology to automate library operations and services and provide equity of access for everyone.

Jonathan Kirsch is the author of the best-selling God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism (Viking 2004) and nine other books, including the national best-seller The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible (Ballantine). His next book is A History of the End of the World: How the Bible's Most Controversial Book Changed the Course of Western Civilization (HarperSanFrancisco 2006). Kirsch is also a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times, a broadcaster for NPR affiliates KCRW-FM and KPCC-FM in Southern California, an Adjunct Professor on the faculty of New York University, and an attorney specializing in publishing law and intellectual property in Los Angeles.
www.jonathankirsch.com

Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Stanford Law School, the Founder and Chairman of Creative Commons, and the author of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace; The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World; and Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity.
www.lessig.org

Gary Wolf is a contributing editor at WIRED, where he reports regularly on the dreams and realities of the information age, and has written The Great Library of Amazonia, about Amazon.com's Search-Inside-the-Book project, and The Curse of Xanadu, about Theodor Holm Nelson's thirty-year effort to build a universal information system. In the mid-nineties, Wolf was executive producer of WIRED's online division, WIRED Digital. His books include Dumb Money: Adventures of a Day Trader (2000), with Joey Anuff; and WIRED - A Romance (2003), both published by Random House. Wolf is currently a Knight Fellow in the Department of Communications at Stanford University

Jacques D'Amboise, "I Was a Dancer"

In conversation with Sasha Anawalt
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
01:09:21
ALOUD
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Episode Summary

One of America's most celebrated classical dancers writes of his years with Balanchine, Robbins, LeClercq, and Farrell-the irresistible story of an exhilarating life in dance.

Participant(s) Bio

Jacques d'Amboise joined the New York City Ballet at fifteen, became a principal dancer at seventeen, and remained so for the next thirty-five years. He has appeared in the films Seven Brothers, Carousel, The Best Things in Life Are Free, Watching Ballet, and Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1976, he founded the National Dance Institute, an arts education program, and is the author of Teaching the Magic of Dance.

Sasha Anawalt is director of USC Annenberg Arts Journalism Programs, including the Masters degree in Specialized Journalism (The Arts) program. She also directs the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program and the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater. In October 2009, she co-directed and co-produced with Douglas McLennan the first-ever National Summit on Arts Journalism. Anawalt wrote the best-selling cultural biography, The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company. She was chief dance critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, LA Weekly and on KCRW, National Public Radio. Her reviews and features have been published widely.

Colin Thubron, "Climbing Through Memory and Magic in Tibet"

In conversation with Pico Iyer
Thursday, March 17, 2011
01:11:05
ALOUD
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Episode Summary

Two of the world's most respected travel writers discuss pilgrimages to exceptional places, mining one's personal history, and the holiest mountain on earth.

Participant(s) Bio

British-born Colin Thubron has spent his working life writing and traveling in the vast land mass of Asia. His earliest books were on Damascus, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Cyprus. In the eighties he traveled by car through the Soviet Union for Where Nights Are Longest and through China for Behind the Wall. His later travel books include The Lost Heart of Asia, on the republics of Central Asia; In Siberia; and Shadow of the Silk Road, the account of a journey from eastern China to the Mediterranean. He has published seven novels including A Cruel Madness and Turning Back the Sun. His many awards include the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.

Born in England, to Indian parents, Pico Iyer grew up in Southern California. He is the author of seven works of non-fiction, including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul. He has also written the novels Cuba and the Night and Abandon. Iyer has been an essayist for Time magazine, while also writing for The New York Review of Books, Harper's, The New York Times and National Geographic. His most recent book, The Open Road, describing more than 30 years of talking and traveling with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was a best-seller across the U.S. Iyer has been based for the past 20 years near Nara, in rural Japan, though he is always on the road.

The Nature of Observation

Tuesday, April 5, 2011
01:22:27
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
How does a poet view time, the slant of light on a windowsill? How might a theoretical cosmologist approach those same phenomena? Hirshfield and Carroll---both at the vanguard of their disciplines-- discuss different (and perhaps similar) points of entry into the realm of observation and metaphor.
Participant(s) Bio
Jane Hirshfield is the author of six collections of poetry, including After, Given Sugar, Given Salt, The Lives of the Heart, and The October Palace, as well as a book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. She edited and co-translated The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Komachi & Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan, Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, and Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems. Her work has appeared in many publications including The New Yorker and The Times Literary Supplement. In 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets, an honor formerly held by such poets as Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop.

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on theoretical physics and cosmology. Carroll is the author of From Eternity to Here, about cosmology and the arrow of time, has written a graduate textbook, Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity, and recorded a course on dark matter and dark energy for The Teaching Company. He is a contributor to the group blog Cosmic Variance.

Shepard Fairey, "MAYDAY: The Politics of Street Art"

Presented in conjunction with LA Weekly
Monday, March 7, 2011
01:19:31
ALOUD
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Episode Summary

The Los Angeles-based artist and designer behind the ubiquitous Obey Giant stencil and the now legendary Obama HOPE poster, talks about his life, his work and his move from the street to large-scale museum exhibitions.

Participant(s) Bio

Shepard Fairey is the man behind OBEY GIANT. What started with an absurd sticker he created in 1989 while a student at the Rhode Island School of Design has since evolved into a worldwide street art campaign. In 2003, Fairey founded Studio Number One, a creative design firm dedicated to applying his ethos at the intersection of art and enterprise. In 2008, Fairey's HOPE portrait of Barack Obama became the iconic image of the presidential campaign and the original image now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In May of 2010, his exhibition MAYDAY was the final show to be mounted at Dietch Projects, in New York City. His work has also been exhibited in museums worldwide.

Joan Schenkar and Kathleen Chalfant,"The Talented Miss Highsmith"

Tuesday, March 1, 2011
01:10:59
ALOUD
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Episode Summary

Patricia Highsmith's dazzling, dangerous novels entered the American consciousness in classic films such as Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Join us for an evening celebrating Highsmith: Schenkar's author talk that captures Highsmith's brilliance in creating disturbing fictions, a dramatic presentation by Obie Award- winning actress Chalfant, and never-before seen photos.

Participant(s) Bio

Joan Schenkar is the author of the highly acclaimed, award-winning biography The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith; of the widely praised biography Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde; and of a collection of award-winning plays, Signs of Life: 6 Comedies of Menace. She lives and writes in Paris and Greenwich Village.

Kathleen Chalfant is a Tony-nominated, Drama Desk and Obie Award-winning actress. Her many credits include the Broadway hit Angels in America, the Off-Broadway Wit and Nine Armenians. Her films include Duplicity, The People Speak, The Last New Yorker, Murder and Murder, among numerous others, and the TV shows Law and Order, Rescue Me, Book of Daniel, The Guardian, and The Laramie Project, as well as numerous radio programs.

Interfaith Sing ALOUD

Wednesday, December 15, 2010
59:25
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
From Auld Lang Syne to Henei Ma Tov, from Sanskrit devotionals to gospel spirituals, join us for an evening of songs new and old drawn from various faith and folk traditions, with perhaps some surprising new lyrics set to familiar tunes. No singing experience necessary, a willingness to participate is the only requirement. Appropriate for all ages. Let us Sing!
Participant(s) Bio
Daniel Brummel is a composer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and music educator from Los Angeles. He holds a B.A. in music composition from UCLA, where he sang baritone in the concert choir under Don Neuen and studied choral composition with Paul Chihara (a former member of the Roger Wagner Chorale). As a singer with the rock bands Ozma, the Elected, and the Gowns, he has given performance tours to audiences of thousands across the United States, Japan, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Daniel is on the faculty at the California College of Music, where he teaches subjects such as sight-singing, songwriting, harmony, music theory, and ear training.

Jessica Catron is a cellist, vocalist, composer and educator living in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her musical adventures include touring, performing, and/or recording with such notable artists as Pauline Oliveros, James Tenney, Harold Budd, Linda Ronstadt, Wilco, Dave Matthews, Devotchka, Nels Cline, Eleni Mandell, Rebekah Jordan, Corin Tucker, and Spiritualized. In 2007, Jessica won the National A Cappella Harmony Sweepstakes as a member of the eclectic vocal quartet Voco, with whom she led community-based singing workshops throughout the US and Canada for several years. She currently performs regularly with Missincinatti, a storytelling band that recently released their first album "Remove Not the Ancient Landmarks." In addition to performance, Jessica works as a teaching artist of both voice and cello for the wonderful Harmony Project/Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), serving hundreds of at-risk youth in Los Angeles.

NPR at 40: What is the Future of Public Radio?

In conversation with Leslie Berenstein Rojas
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
01:10:31
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
News and stories from NPR have helped shape our world. Join two veteran journalists to explore how public radio might respond to tectonic shifts in the media landscape.
Participant(s) Bio
Susan Stamberg is a nationally renowned broadcast journalist and special correspondent for NPR. She is one of the pioneers of NPR, on staff since the network began in 1971 and is the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame. Beginning in 1972, Stamberg served as co-host of NPR's award-winning news magazine "All Things Considered" for 14 years. She then hosted "Weekend Edition Sunday", and now serves as guest host of NPR's "Morning Edition" and "Weekend Edition Saturday", in addition to reporting on cultural issues for all the NPR programs. Prior to joining NPR, she served as producer, program director, and general manager of NPR member station WAMU-FM/Washington, DC. Stamberg is the author of two books, and co-editor of a third: TALK: NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things, Every Night at Five: Susan Stamberg's All Things Considered Book, and co-editor of The Wedding Cake in the Middle of the Road.

Geneva Overholser is director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Previously she held the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism. She was the editor of The Des Moines Register for seven years, where she led the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. While at the Register, she also earned recognition as Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation. In addition, Overholser has been ombudsman of The Washington Post, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group, and a reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun, among others. She also spent five years overseas, working and writing in Paris and Kinshasa. She was for nine years a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the final year as chair. Through the Annenberg Public Policy Center, in 2006 she published a manifesto on the future of journalism titled On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change.

Leslie Berestein Rojas is the lead reporter for KPCC's new immigration blog, "Multi-American." Formerly with the San Diego Union-Tribune, she covered immigration issues from the US-Mexico border, followed legal and illegal immigrants coming to the U.S., and investigated immigrant smugglers and detention contractors. She reported on stories about the new American families resulting from immigration, and about those being left behind. In addition to her work in San Diego, Ms. Berestein Rojas has reported from throughout the Americas and has written for the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, Time, People and People en Español.

Finding God in the City of Angels: Film Excerpts and Discussion

Moderated by Jim Burklo
Thursday, December 2, 2010
01:08:26
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
Filmmakers Jessum and Joseph explore the meaning and value of inter-faith dialogue with selected representatives of the more than 40 devotional communities in Los Angeles profiled in their award-winning new documentary.
Participant(s) Bio
Jim Burklo writes and speaks about the progressive Christian movement. He served as the minister of Sausalito Presbyterian Church, Sausalito, CA, of College Heights Church of San Mateo, CA and was campus minister of United Campus Christian Ministry at Stanford University. He was the organizer and executive director of the Urban Ministry of Palo Alto. Currently, he is the Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California.

Cindi Moar Alvitre (Tongva) has been a cultural/environmental educator for over three decades. She is descendant from the Tongva, the original inhabitants of Los Angeles & Orange Counties. In 1985, she co-founded Mother Earth Clan, a collective of Indian women who created a model for cultural and environmental education. In the late 1980s, she co-founded Ti'at Society renewing the maritime culture of the Tongva. Cindi is currently a PhD candidate at UCLA, Department of World Arts and Culture. As a social-political activist she has represented her community domestically and internationally.

Jennifer Jessum is an award winning director, choreographer and producer. She holds an M.F.A., in film production, from USC's School of Cinema/Television and an M.F.A., in dance, from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She has produced and directed numerous short films, music videos, and commercials and has had her choreography and films commissioned and presented throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. She is currently finishing up post-production on her 2nd feature documentary, Holy Man, narrated by Martin Sheen.

Simon Joseph (Writer/Producer) holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Claremont Graduate University and a master's degree in Religious Studies from New York University. He is the author of a volume for the Documenta Q series for the International Q project, under the auspices of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, and has also been published by the Journal for the Study of Historical Jesus, New Testament Studies and History of Religions. His research interests and expertise include the study of the New Testament, Christian origins and the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as Native American religion and history, in particular Lakota (Sioux) religion and culture. His second feature documentary film, Holy Man, is in post production and is narrated by Martin Sheen.

Rabbi Laura Geller is the Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, California, the first woman to be selected to lead a major metropolitan synagogue. A former Trustee on the Board of Brown University, and the founding Chair of the Beverly Hills Human Relations Commission, she has received many honors, including the Woman of the Year Award from the California State Legislature. Rabbi Geller has written chapters in many books and newspapers and has been featured in several others, including the PBS documentary The Jewish Americans, and she was recently named as one of the fifty most influential women rabbis in America by the Forward newspaper.

The Reverend Canon Dr. Gwynne Guibord is the Founder and President of "The Guibord Center, Religion Inside Out" that is housed at St. John's Episcopal Cathedral. Its stated mission is "to bring people together to challenge assumptions, unleash the Holy, and affirm the faith that transforms the world." She is also the Consultant for Interfaith Relations for the Episcopal Church in the United States. Dr. Guibord co-chairs The National Muslim - Christian Initiative Dialogue on behalf of The National Council of Churches in Christ USA and also represents the Episcopal Church for the NCC's Christian-Jewish Dialogue.

Imam Jihad Turk is the Director of Religious Affairs at the Islamic Center of Southern California. In addition to serving the religious needs of his community, he focuses much of his attention on interfaith work, including an annual interfaith 9/11 memorial which is held at the Islamic Center. He also currently serves as President of the Wilshire Center Interfaith Council, which sponsors an annual interfaith trip to the Holy Land. Additionally, Turk serves as the Vice President of the Interreligious Council of Southern California, and, together with Gwynne Guibord, an Episcopal Priest, Turk founded and currently serves as Co-Chair of the Christian-Muslim Consultative Group, comprised of major Christian and Muslim denominations and organizations intent on understanding each other and working together on common goals.

Funding for this film was made possible by the Institute for Signifying Scriptures.

ALOUD at Central Library's Interfaith Series is made possible by the generous support of the Righteous Persons Foundation.

Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues: Bass Lines of Music History

Tuesday, October 19, 2010
01:20:25
ALOUD
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Episode Summary

The New Yorker music critic leads an audio tour of several hundred years of music history, from Renaissance lute songs to Led Zeppelin, showing how certain motifs of celebration and lament recur in many different contexts and cultures.

Participant(s) Bio

Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. From 1992 to 1996 he wrote for the New York Times. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, became a bestseller and has been translated into sixteen languages. Selected as one of the New York Times' ten best books of year, The Rest Is Noise won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. Ross has served as a McGraw Professor in Writing at Princeton University. In 2008, he was named a MacArthur Fellow.

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