92NY Talks

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison helped Americans of all races see themselves with radical clarity in modern classics like Sula and Beloved. Her lectures on American literature and racial imagination, now available for the first time, have never been more necessary.
Join The New Yorker's poetry editor Kevin Young, novelist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, writer Sasha Bonét, and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts for a conversation that breaks open the taboos about race in American literature — and a celebration of her new collection, Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon.
Drawing a direct line from the Black bodies that built the nation to the Black characters that many of the country's canonical white writers imagined in their work, Morrison's lectures are an antidote to fear and intellectual repression at a time when discussion about race in American literature has become fraught and muted — revealing that liberation is possible through language.
In a celebration of the book's launch — and the reissue of her classic oeuvre — don't miss this group of distinguished novelists, poets, and scholars as they step inside the classroom with Morrison to revel in her singular brilliance — cracking the code of America's deepest fears, longings, and hopes for collective liberation.

Michael Douglas embodied the ruthless extremes of 1980s capitalism with his Oscar-winning portrayal of investor Gordon Gekko, the coldly calculating corporate raider who takes eager young stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) under his wing.
"There's no nobility in poverty anymore," Bud tells his working-class dad (real-life father Martin Sheen), before embarking on a series of ethical compromises in the pursuit of quick wealth, adding an art-savvy interior designer (Daryl Hannah) to his portfolio along the way. Writer-director Oliver Stone was inspired by his own father, a longtime Wall St. broker, and several real-world financiers when he delivered this sharply critical cautionary tale, which photographs the rarified air of lower Manhattan in amber-tinted, smoke-stained hues. But the film's enduring image is that of Douglas's steely-eyed Gekko, who hungrily consumes businesses — as well as his friends and rivals — like platefuls of blood-red steak tartare.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro joins us for a conversation about the intersection of public service, personal faith, and Jewish values — and his new memoir, Where We Keep the Light: Stories from a Life of Service.
From an early age, Josh Shapiro learned and practiced the power of showing up, listening, and working to make peoples' lives a little better. And as Governor of Pennsylvania, he's delivered. Reflecting on what he's learned by knocking on doors, serving his community, and tackling the tough issues we face, Where We Keep the Light is Shapiro's testament to how the Jewish values instilled in him as a young man have shaped his life and career in public service.
In a candid conversation celebrating the book's launch, hear Shapiro discuss his political, spiritual, and personal journey — how he's combatting political violence and hate in Pennsylvania, why we need leaders who are willing to bring people together and deliver results, why he believes there's more that unites us than divides us as Americans, his take on the future of the Democratic Party, and much more.

A neuroscientist, a philosopher and a physicist convene to discuss one of the biggest and most significant questions of all time: human consciousness, what we know and don't know about it, and whether science will ever be able to understand what makes you, you.

Join bestselling Trump biographer Michael Wolff (author of Fire and Fury and All or Nothing) and the Daily Beast's Joanna Coles for a live recording of their hit podcast, Inside Trump's Head.
Combining expert reportage and in-depth character analysis, Coles and Wolff dissect the singular motivations of the most powerful man in the world. Diving deep into Trump's secrets and psyche and drawing on over a decade of incisive coverage of Trump's impact (including extensive interviews with Jeffrey Epstein), they ask to what lengths will the President go in his attempt to secure a third term? Is MAGA falling apart? And what is really behind the Trump and Epstein relationship?