Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure with Ingrid Burrington, who writes about the Internet, politics, and art, and has been published in The Atlantic, The Nation, ProPublica, and San Francisco Art Quarterly.

This illustrated lecture offers a guided tour of the physical Internet, as seen on, above, and below the city’s streets.

 

Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why with Sady Doyle, a writer and blogger whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Slate, The Atlantic, Rookie, and other publications.

This talk dissects a centuries-old phenomenon, raising questions about gender expectations and the "female trainwreck."

 

What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us and How to Fix It with Jon Lukomnik, executive director of the Investor Responsibility Research Center and Stephen Davis, Ph.D. a senior fellow at the Harvard Law School.

This illustrated lecture explains a system that doesn’t appear to be working in the public interest and calls to reboot capitalism and preserve $85 trillion in retirement savings for their owners—not for use as the financial industry’s ATM. The industry is supposed to be a service industry and this talk shows how to realign it to make it serve the real economy.

 

A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression with food historians Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe.

This illustrated lecture provides an in-depth exploration of the greatest food crisis the nation has ever faced—the Great Depression—and how it transformed America’s culinary culture.

 

Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records with Adam Tanner, writer-in-residence at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the 2016–17 Snedden Chair in Journalism at the University of Alaska.

This illustrated lecture explores how the hidden trade in our sensitive medical information became a multi-billion dollar business, but has done little to improve our health-care outcomes.

 

You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin with Rachel Corbett, executive editor of Modern Painters magazine.

This illustrated lecture reveals one of the greatest stories of modern art and literature: Rodin and Rilke’s years together as master and disciple, their heartbreaking rift, and ultimately their moving reconciliation.

 

ADHD Nation: Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic with Alan Schwarz, a Pulitzer Prize–nominated investigative reporter for "The New York Times."

This illustrated lecture examines the roots and the rise of the widespread misdiagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—and how its unchecked growth over half a century has made ADHD one of the most controversial conditions in medicine with serious effects on children, adults, and society.

 

Dinner with Edward: A Story of an Unexpected Friendship with Isabel Vincent, an award-winning investigative reporter for "The New York Post" and author of four books.

This illustrated lecture explores the author's memoir, a story about love, nourishment, and how dinner with a friend can, in the words of M. F. K. Fisher, “sustain us against the hungers of the world.”

This illustrated lecture tells the oral history of the squatting movement through a close look at a diverse group of Lower East Side squatters. 

 

Brooklyn Bridge Park: A Dying Waterfront Transformed with Joanne Witty, a lawyer and environmentalist, who has served in both city and state government.

This illustrated lecture spotlights one of the largest and most significant public projects to be built in New York in a generation, unravels the many obstacles faced during the development of the park, and suggests solutions that can be applied to important economic and planning issues around the world.

 

New York/Los Angeles, Photographs: 1967-2015 with Lloyd Ziff, photographer, art director and award-winning designer.

This illustrated lecture features the exciting collection of new images of America's two most interesting cities taken over some 40 years, captured in black and white and color photography.

 

(Un)sanctioned: The Art on New York Streets with Katherine “Luna Park” Lorimer, a Brooklyn-based graffiti and street art photographer, curator, and librarian.

This illustrated lecture features a decade of NYC graffiti and street art, a time period which saw a seismic shift in the public perception and acceptance of the art-form.

 

Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell with Alexandra Horowitz, author of the bestselling Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know and On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation.

This illustrated lecture explains how dogs perceive the world through their most spectacular organ—the nose—and how we humans can put our underused sense of smell to work in surprising ways.