Library Talks

Latest Episodes:

Masha Gessen—The Stories of a Life Jan 02, 2018

Show notes

The journalist and 2017 National Book Award Winner delivered the Library's annual Robert B. Silvers Lecture. The talk is named in honor of the co-founding editor of the New York Review of Books, who died in March 2017. With unexpected candor and intimacy, Gessen traced her own life as a sequence of choices and explored how notions of choice affect ideas about immigration, identity, and purpose.

Neil Gaiman Reads "A Christmas Carol" (Rebroadcast) Dec 19, 2017

Show notes

Neil Gaiman's reading from 2013 uses a rare prompt copy that belonged to Charles Dickens himself and now resides in The New York Public Library. Dickens marked it up and annotated it for the express purpose of performing the story in front of an audience, which he did regularly in the 1850s and 1860s.

Muhammad Yunus & Jeffrey Sachs Dec 12, 2017

Show notes

Is self-interest the only force motivating business? Or can altruism be an equally powerful driver? It's a question that Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize–winning father of microcredit, answers in his latest book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions. He spoke with fellow economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Nikki Giovani & Joy-Ann Reid Dec 05, 2017

Show notes

The titan of American poetry was at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in November to talk about her latest collection, A Good Cry. She spoke with Joy-Ann Reid, the host of MSNBC's AM Joy.

Stephen Greenblatt & Tony Kushner: Adam and Eve in the Teeth of Time Nov 28, 2017

Show notes

The Pulitzer Prize–winning literary historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright discuss Greenblatt's latest book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, "a life history of one of the most extraordinary stories ever told." Exploring the power of narrative to travel from myth into reality, Greenblatt and Kushner traced the tale from its biblical origins through its imaginings in the minds of writers and artists from St. Augustine to Albrecht Dürer to John Milton.

Kevin Young & Bunk—Hoaxes, Hooey, Hocum; Cons, Plagiarists, and Forgers Nov 21, 2017

Show notes

The Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Poetry Editor of The New Yorker speaks with Garnette Cadogan about his most recent work of nonfiction, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. Young traces the particularly American tradition of cons, hoaxes, and fakes, from P. T. Barnum to today.

Anne Applebaum: Fighting Against the Great Forgetting Nov 14, 2017

Show notes

The Soviet famine of the early 1930s killed around 5 million people; almost 4 million of them were Ukrainians. As Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum demonstrates in her latest book, Red Famine, it wasn't fate or chance that skewed those numbers so heavily—it was something much more deliberate, and much more sinister. And the story behind it was, until recently, in danger of disappearing. Applebaum spoke about recovering it at the New York Public Library with John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine.

Theaster Gates: "I'm Trying to Create an Intimate Moment with Our Most Treasured Assets." Nov 07, 2017

Show notes

Envisioning the archives of the future with the Chicago-based artist, who was joined by Nettrice Gaskins, director of the STEAM Lab at the Boston Arts Academy, and Greg Carr, a professor at Howard University.

Van Jones: "You have to keep open the possibility for redemption." Oct 31, 2017

Show notes

Jones may be known as a liberal activist, but his new book, "Beyond the Messy Truth," is a call to action for all Americans seeking a way out of our ideological and cultural divisions. He spoke about it at the Library with CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin.

Ron Chernow: Grant Oct 24, 2017

Show notes

Ulysses S. Grant has for decades routinely listed as one of our worst presidents. Ron Chernow says the legacy of the Civil War hero and 18th president is deeply misunderstood, making the case in both his latest book and in this conversation with Richard Stengel, former managing editor of TIME magazine.

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