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History/Bio

LAPL ID: 
6

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present

In conversation with Nick Goldberg, L.A. Times Op Ed page editor
Thursday, October 22, 2009
01:12:57
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Episode Summary
Gail Collins, brilliant New York Times columnist and bestselling author, recounts the astounding revolution in women's lives over the past 50 years.

Participant(s) Bio
Gail Collins joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an Op-Ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times's editorial page. At the beginning of 2007, she stepped down and began a leave in order to finish her latest book, When Everything Changed. She returned to the Times as a columnist in July 2007. Before joining the New York Times, Collins was a columnist at Newsday and the New York Daily News, and a reporter for United Press International.

The Holocaust by Bullets

In conversation with Louise Steinman, Curator, ALOUD
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
01:01:37
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Episode Summary
Desbois, a French Catholic priest, has devoted his life to confronting anti-Semitism and furthering Catholic-Jewish understanding. Since 2001 he and his team have crisscrossed the Ukrainian countryside in an effort to locate every mass grave and site at which Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

Co-presented with Claremont McKenna College's Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights

Participant(s) Bio
Father Patrick Desbois is a Roman Catholic Priest and Advisor to the Vatican on Jewish relations. He has spent the last five years leading investigative teams to the Ukraine and Belarus in order to find the missing mass graves of the 1.5 million Jews killed outside their homes during the Holocaust. Father Desbois has interviewed over 900 surviving eye-witnesses and discovered over 800 killing sites in his effort to uncover this missing chapter of Holocaust history, discount Holocaust deniers and give the fallen a respectful burial. Father Desbois has received worldwide acclaim for his work including honorary doctorates from Hebrew University and Bar Ilan, and awards from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, B'nai Brith and the ADL. His book, Holocaust By Bullets, was recently awarded the National Jewish Book Award.

A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age

In conversation with David L. Ulin, book editor, LA Times
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
01:12:55
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Episode Summary

Tabloid crimes, the Roaring 20's, and the onset of the Depression form the backdrop of Rayner's captivating tale of how the City of Angels lost its soul.


Participant(s) Bio

Richard Rayner is the author of Drake's Fortune, The Cloud Sketcher, The Associates, and several other books. His writing regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.


Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California

In conversation with William Deverell, Director, USC-Huntington Institute on the West
Thursday, July 16, 2009
00:59:57
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Episode Summary
An award-winning journalist chronicles the life of her great-great grandfather, a brilliant gold-rush era entrepreneur and financier, who rose from store clerk to the upper echelons of society, founded L.A.'s first bank, resurrected the financially troubled Los Angeles Times, and helped establish U.S.C.

Participant(s) Bio
Frances Dinkelspiel is an award-winning journalist and the great-great granddaughter of Isaias Hellman. Her work has appeared in, The New York Times, People, The San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Magazine and other venues. She lives in Berkeley, California.

How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization & the End of the War on Terror

In conversation with Amy Wilentz, author and journalist
Co-presented with the Center for Global Understanding
Monday, May 4, 2009
01:18:41
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Episode Summary
Surveying the global scene, a preeminent scholar of religion launches a revolution in the way we understand-and confront-radical Islam.

Participant(s) Bio
Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a fellow at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy and Middle East Analyst for CBS News.

The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World

In conversation with Sue Horton, Op-Ed & Sunday Opinion Editor, LA Times
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
01:08:55
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Episode Summary
An award-winning investigative reporter exposes the global war on women's reproductive rights and its disastrous and unreported consequences for the future of global development.

Participant(s) Bio
Michelle Goldberg is an investigative journalist and the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a New York Times Bestseller which was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. A former senior writer at Salon.com, her work has appeared in Glamour, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian (UK) and many other publications, and she has taught at NYU's graduate school of journalism. The Means of Reproduction won the 2008 J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award

West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders & Killers in the Golden State

In conversation with Thomas Curwen, LA Times staff writer
Monday, April 6, 2009
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Episode Summary
Arax, a native son, spent four years traveling the breadth of the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. From the marijuana growing capital of the U.S. to the town that inspired The Grapes of Wrath, Arax offers a stunning panorama of California in a new century.

Participant(s) Bio
Award-winning author and journalist Mark Arax is a co-author of The King of California-a Los Angeles Times bestseller-and author of In My Father's Name. He is a contributing writer at Los Angeles magazine and a former senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. He teaches nonfiction writing at Claremont McKenna College and lives in Fresno.

MYhistoricLA: Preserving Los Angeles

Moderated by Larry Mantle, host of KPCC-FM's Air Talk
Co-presented with the Getty Conservation Institute, and the City of Los Angeles' Office of Historic Resources
Friday, April 3, 2009
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Episode Summary
SurveyLA marks a coming-of-age for LA's historic preservation movement. Join amateur historians and LA aficionados for the public kick off of SurveyLA, share your knowledge of LA's hidden gems, view a screening of the SurveyLA video, and attend a lively panel discussion with city officials, preservationists, community organizers and developers regarding this historic survey.

Participant(s) Bio
Ken Bernstein is Manager of the Office of Historic Resources for the City of Los Angeles' Department of City Planning, where he directs Los Angeles' historic preservation policies. In this capacity, he serves as lead staff member for the City's Cultural Heritage Commission, is launching a multi-year citywide survey of historic resources, and is working to create a comprehensive historic preservation program for Los Angeles. He previously served for eight years as Director of Preservation Issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, where he directed the Conservancy's public policy and advocacy activities.

Adriene Biondo is the Commercial Chair Emeritus, and Residential Chair Emeritus of the Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee (Modcom). Adriene is working to establish a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (historic district) for the Granada Hills Eichler tract where she resides, and participated in writing National Register nominations that were unanimously approved for two Bay Area Eichler tracts. She helped pave the way for the Modcom program to nominate the remaining Case Study Houses for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and she a wide range of preservation efforts, including the preservation to date of the 1958 Johnie's Broiler in Downey, which has officially been declared eligible for the California Register.

William Deverell is an American historian with a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth century American West. He has written works on political, social, ethnic, and environmental history. He is currently working on a book exploring the history of the post-Civil War American West. With David Igler of UC Irvine, he is co-editing The Blackwell Companion to California and with Greg Hise of USC, The Blackwell Companion to Los Angeles. William Deverell is the director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Michael Diaz serves as the current chairperson of the Lincoln Heights HPOZ Board and is the founder of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood and Preservation Association. His civic involvement is extensive and varied including serving as a board member of the Los Angeles Conservancy, as a commissioner of the Los Angeles Historical Records & Landmarks Commission, a member of the Northeast Community Plan Advisory Committee and the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Steering Committee, as well as the founding president of the Latin-American Cinemateca of Los Angeles.

Larry Mantle is the host of KPCC's AirTalk, the longest continuously airing daily radio talk program in Southern California. A fourth-generation Angeleno, he has interviewed thousands of prominent guests on an extraordinary array of topics and is the recipient of numerous journalistic awards.

Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents

In conversation with journalist Swati Pandey
Thursday, April 2, 2009
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Episode Summary
In this groundbreaking work, Hajratwala mixes history, memoir, and reportage to explore the questions facing not only her own Indian family but that of every immigrant: Where did we come from? Why did we leave? What did we give up and gain in the process?

Participant(s) Bio
Minal Hajratwala was born in San Francisco and raised in New Zealand and suburban Michigan. In the course of researching Leaving India, she spent seven years traveling the world and interviewed over seventy-five members of her extended family. A poet and performer, she worked as an editor and reporter for eight years at the San Jose Mercury News.

Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America's Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad

In conversation with Mike Shuster
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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Episode Summary
Relying on recently declassified documents, Richelson--Senior Fellow with the National Security Archive--reveals how NEST operated during the Cold War, how the agency has evolved, and its current efforts to reduce the chance of a nuclear device decimating an American city.

Participant(s) Bio
Jeffrey T. Richelson is the author of several books on intelligence, including Spying on the Bomb. He is currently a Senior Fellow with the National Security Archive. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

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