Signature Event Archive

Search the Signature Event Archive to discover past Library events. Watch videos, hear speaker interviews, and listen to audio recordings of previous presentations. Search by keyword (event title, subject, or presenter name), location or by date range.
Signature Event Video Video Signature Event Audio Audio
E.g., 2020/09/24
E.g., 2020/09/24

Indie Lens Pop-Up film: Eating Up Easter

Sergio Mata’u Rapu, Elena Rapu, Rachel Pittman
Indie Lens Pop-Up

Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is more than just a picture postcard of iconic stone statues. It’s a microcosm of a planet in flux. Native Rapanui grapple with a booming tourism trade that brings in money – but also waste – and a changing climate that threatens the Pacific island’s fragile ecology.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2020 7:00 pm

The Soul of an Entrepreneur

David Sax, Philip Gaskin

We’ve been beguiled over the past decade by a romanticized, Silicon Valley-inspired take on entrepreneurship, glorifying its practitioners as daring dreamers and heroes who’ve revved innovation and invented the future. But startup failure is an all-too-common truth.

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Thursday, May 21, 2020 6:30 pm
Event Videos

Childhood in the COVID-19 Era

Laura Cline, Robert Grant, Steven Woolfolk

The Library begins a series of programs exploring issues related to COVID-19 with an examination of the immediate and long-term effects that the pandemic likely will have on children.

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Thursday, May 14, 2020 6:30 pm
Event Videos

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Jared Diamond

Can the U.S. and other coronavirus-ravaged countries take a cue from individuals in crisis and follow their own 12-step path to recovery? Jared Diamond, one of America’s most celebrated scholars, says the answer is yes. In a discussion drawing from his book Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, the Pulitzer Prize and National Medal of Science winner from UCLA looks at how and why some nations through history have recuperated from trauma and others haven’t. As with people, success lies in taking responsibility for problems, seeking and accepting help, and being open to change.
 

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020 7:00 pm
Event Videos

18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics

Bruce Goldfarb, Kaite Stover

Francis Glessner Lee seemed an unlikely candidate to become the early 20th-century godmother of forensic science. But she had a bent for science and an obsession for getting the bottom of suspicious deaths. Bruce Goldfarb, a former journalist who’s now executive assistant to the chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland, spotlights her improbable life and work in his newly released 18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics. He joins Kaite Stover, the Library’s director of readers’ services, in a discussion of the book.
 

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Thursday, May 7, 2020 6:30 pm
Event Videos

Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future

Jennifer Baumgardner, Amy Richards

Feminism’s ultimate breakthrough remains elusive. America again will not elect a woman as president in 2020, despite the initial promise in a crowded field of Democratic candidates, underscoring the questions and challenges facing the feminist cause.

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Tuesday, April 28, 2020 6:30 pm
Event Videos

Barbara Bush: Pearls of Wisdom

Jean Becker, Neil Bush, Lauren Bush Lauren, Ashley Walker Bush
Family members and other close associates share what they learned from late first lady Barbara Bush in the newly released Pearls of Wisdom: Little Pieces of Advice (That Go a Long Way). Bush’s ghostwriter and longtime aide, Jean Becker, discusses the book and its remarkable author. She will be joined in the online presentation by Bush’s son, Neil Bush, and his daughters Lauren Bush Lauren and Ashley Walker Bush.
 
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Tuesday, April 21, 2020 6:30 pm
Event Videos

What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues

Clifford Thompson
In an online discussion of his new book,What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues, author Clifford Thompson discusses his interviews with a small but varied group of Americans from whom he heard sharply divergent opinions about what is happening in the country and how those views shaped his own.
 
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Thursday, April 16, 2020 6:30 pm
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Event Videos

Indie Lens Pop-Up film: Bedlam

Peter Miller
This Indie Lens Pop-Up event goes online with a screening and discussion of the 2019 documentary Bedlam, which takes an intimate look at America’s mental health crisis. Producer Peter Miller joins experts from the National Alliance on Mental Illness in the virtual chat. Get details on how to view and participate.
 
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Image - Indie Lens Bedlam screening
Tuesday, April 14, 2020 6:30 pm

Driving While Black

Gretchen Sorin

Perhaps no one took more meaning from the advent of the automobile—and its promise of freedom and adventure, power and self-expression—than African Americans. With the aid of the famed Green Book and other travel guides, black-only businesses, and informal communication networks, they could navigate the mid-20th century’s Jim Crow landscape.

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In a discussion of her new book Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, historian Gretchen Sorin looks back at the rise of the automobile in the mid-20th century and its impact on black Americans. It brought the promise of freedom and adventure, power and self-expression – but also such new challenges as unwarranted traffic stops and subsequent racial violence.
Thursday, March 12, 2020 6:30 pm
Reception: 
6 pm
Central Library
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