92NY Talks

Legendary filmmaker and writer John Waters joins us for a reading and conversation spanning the arc of his remarkable career, in celebration of the new reissue of his classic early screenplays, with The New Yorker's Michael Schulman. From the shocking Pink Flamingos, which established him as a household name and set a new bar for cinematic filth, to Hairspray, the sweetly triumphant story of a dance-crazy teen in 1960s Baltimore — later adapted into a smash hit Tony Award-winning musical — John Waters' films redefined the art of trash in the '70s and '80s, and in the process blew open the doors of modern independent film. And as his early screenplays attest, Waters has long been more than filmmaker — he is a towering literary filth artist, a writer of radical and subversive wit; in other words, an intellectual in reverse. In this reading and conversation covering Waters' earliest days as a filmmaker in Baltimore to his status as the auteur king of exploitation films made for art theaters, we celebrate the entire arc of Waters' singular career, to honor the reissue of six of Waters' early screenplays — Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Flamingos Forever, and Hairspray.

Join former US attorneys Joyce Vance and Preet Bharara for a conversation and special live podcast taping of Stay Tuned with Preet, about history, the law, and what it will take to save our democracy — and Vance's first book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable. "We're in this together." For the past two years, Joyce Vance has signed off posts on her the chart-topping Substack Civil Discourse with these four words as she's guided readers through a continued erosion of democratic norms. Now, in Giving Up Is Unforgivable, she reaffirms that we're in this together with a clarion call to action — putting our current crisis in historical context and sketching out a vision for where we go next. Hopeful, even as she acknowledges the daunting challenges that lie ahead, Vance is the constitutional law professor you never knew you needed, explaining the legal context, political history, and the practical reasons that the rule of law still matters. In a conversation between two brilliant legal thinkers and major figures in US law, hear Vance's political manifesto for our moment — an empowering conversation about taking action in your community, rallying for a new era of civic engagement, and finding hope when we need it most. "The most frequent question I get, from frustrated citizens worried about our democracy, is this: What can I do? In Giving Up Is Unforgivable, Joyce answers that question with actual action items. She inspires as she informs and offers pragmatic advice even as she waxes poetic about all that America is and can be. This is a shining tutorial and a reminder that we the people still have the power." — Preet Bharara

Join #1 New York Times-bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell discuss his latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point; a fresh look at his breakthrough book, The Tipping Point. In 1996, Malcolm Gladwell published a piece in The New Yorker that became the seed of The Tipping Point. Twenty-five years after the book's publication, it remains a global phenomenon — blending social science, history, pop culture, and business to look at how a single event can spark a movement, a social phenomenon, or an epidemic. In Revenge of the Tipping Point, Gladwell draws on fresh case studies to rethink and expand on his original ideas about how trends are born, catch on, and spread. Why in the late 1980s and early '90s did Los Angeles become the bank robbery capital of the world? What is the Magic Third and what does it have to do with racial equity? How did COVID and the opioid crisis become so devastating? Hear Gladwell discuss these questions and more — The New Yorker's crucial early support of Gladwell's writing, the enormous impact of The Tipping Point, what Gladwell has learned since its publication, and what social epidemics can teach us about the future.

The Booker prize-winning author of Atonement and Saturday joins us for the launch of his audacious new novel — a genre-bending, time-traveling tour de force. For decades, Ian McEwan's novels have probed the depths of the human heart, creating unforgettable and utterly relatable characters of extraordinary moral complexity, caught in the crosscurrents of memory, history, and desire. His new novel, What We Can Know, begins at a dinner party in 2014 with the recitation of a love poem among friends and follows to 2119, in the wake of a catastrophic nuclear accident, as a lonely scholar and researcher chases the ghost of that poem. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem's discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about the world he thought he knew. It is at once a love story and a literary detective story, reclaiming the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, imagining a future world where all is not quite lost. In a special reading and conversation with The New Yorker's editor David Remnick, hear McEwan discuss the genesis of the new novel, his creation of a new kind of speculative literary fiction, why we will never stop longing for the literature of the past even as we reach inexorably toward the future, and much more. The conversation will air on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

The Atlantic's Thomas Chatterton Williams joins #1 New York Times-bestselling social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation) for a searching conversation about the evolution, paradoxes, and taboos of American social justice movements in the years since 2020 — and Williams' bracing new book, Summer of Our Discontent. In this sharp and unsettling work, Thomas Chatterton Williams — among the most incisive social critics of his generation — examines a culture transformed by the upheavals of the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the rise of punitive social media. He traces how well-intentioned movements reshaped journalism, education, the arts, policing, and even the language we use to make sense of the world — often in ways that have unintentionally frayed the shared civic fabric that once held us together. In this reading and conversation, Williams and Haidt — two of today's most fearless and provocative thinkers — wrestle with the aftershocks of the summer of 2020, the threats to liberalism from both left and right, and what renewal might require. "Mass insanity broke out among America's elites in the summer of 2020, with devastating consequences for America's knowledge-creating institutions. Thomas Chatterton Williams is one of the few intellectuals who stood firm and made the case with great courage for liberal values and the free exchange of ideas." — Jonathan Haidt "Thomas Chatterton Williams uses a fiercely probing intelligence, instinctively dissatisfied with absolutist explanations, to explore without ideological blindfolds what happened in one momentous summer." — Adam Gopnik

Join Pulitzer Prize winning writers Trymaine Lee and Nikole Hannah-Jones for a conversation about mortality, the weight of journalistic witness, and the enduring power of family in the face of violence — and Lee's new book, A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America. A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, nearly died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter, Nola, asked her father why, he had to confront what almost killed him — the weight of being a Black man in America; of bearing witness, as a journalist and in his own family, to relentless racist violence. A Thousand Ways to Die confronts the long and bloody history of African Americans and guns; his work as a chronicler of gun violence; and his own life story— from almost being caught up in gun violence as a young man, to exploring the legacy of the Middle Passage in Ghana through his ancestors' footsteps. In a deeply personal conversation, join Lee with fellow journalist and historian Nikole Hannah-Jones as they unpack and examine the burden of witnessing violence and oppression on both a personal and systemic scale — a powerful evening of conversation about the true stakes of survival.

In a moment when campus culture wars dominate headlines and government is putting enormous pressure on universities to change, two titans of American academia meet for a rare public conversation at 92NY. Lawrence H. Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University and former US Treasury Secretary, and Lee C. Bollinger, President Emeritus of Columbia University and one of the nation's leading First Amendment scholars, take on a question that cuts to the heart of American intellectual life: When the conservative media and federal authorities say that elite universities have been captured by a progressive ideology that is destroying higher education, are they right, or are universities still essential engines of free inquiry and democratic renewal in which a wide-range of perspectives and viewpoints can be expressed, explored and critically examined? The stakes could not be higher: Billions of dollars in federal funding; the future of some of America's oldest and most important institutions; and the character of our country's leadership for generations to come. Is American higher education at risk? Summers raises concerns that universities may have become too one-sided in their thinking and are risking public trust, while Bollinger believes such claims have been overstated and that universities continue to reflect a broad range of ideas. Moderated by Robert Costa of CBS News and CBS Sunday Morning, this event launches the new season of 92NY's Dialogue Project, a series dedicated to modeling civil, incisive public debate at a time when it is urgently needed. Don't miss this chance to witness two of the sharpest minds in higher education wrestle with a question that will shape the future of intellectual life in this country.

Join the stars and producers of Hulu's new limited series, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox — Knox herself, who is an executive producer; star Grace Van Patten; creator and executive producer KJ Steinberg; and executive producers Monica Lewinsky and Warren Littlefield — for a special conversation.

Broadway's megawatt new season starts here, as award-winning actors Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris and director Scott Ellis join CBS Sunday Morning's Tracy Smith to talk about the upcoming, first-ever Broadway revival of Yasmina Reza's Tony Award-winning Art. The play The New York Times called "a lacerating comedy" centers on the purchase of an abstract white painting by one of three longtime friends – an act that provokes a sharp and witty exploration of friendship and perspective. Hear Cannavale, Corden, Harris and Ellis talk about returning to the Broadway stage, working together on what promises to be one of the fall season's hottest tickets, Art's relevance 27 years after its original Broadway run, and its incisive commentary on how we look at art – and each other. This talk was recorded on August 5th, 2025 at The 92nd Street Y, New York.

Join New York Times columnist David Brooks with renowned economist Tyler Cowen for a conversation about technology, morality, and finding humility in today's fractious political culture — in a live taping of Cowen's hit podcast Conversations with Tyler. David Brooks' explorations of morality in contemporary politics and culture — the cultivation of spiritual and intellectual rigor through compromise and humility — have made him an uncommonly steady voice in an unsteady time. Critiquing the excesses of the right and the left in his bestselling books and New York Times columns, Brooks examines how class, education, and consumer culture have shaped our identities. He is exactly the kind of thinker who Tyler Cowen loves to talk with on Conversations with Tyler — Cowen's hit podcast offering wide-ranging examinations of work, the world, and everything in between: a platform for genuine intellectual curiosity. Returning to 92NY's stage after his sold-out conversation kicking off The Dialogue Project, hear Cowen talk to Brooks about what has shaped their intellectual lives. Take an unscripted tour of Brooks's early Chicago crime-reporting days, how he would redesign his famed Yale "Humility" syllabus for a TikTok-native generation, the evolution of his religious worldview, his latest ideas on "moral capital," and much more.

Join award-winning actor John Turturro for a conversation with Happy Sad Confused's Josh Horowitz about his Emmy-nominated performance in Apple TV+'s hit series Severance, including clips from the show. Following a team of office workers at a mysterious company whose employees have undergone a procedure that surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives, Severance is one of the biggest hits of the season — a brilliant dystopian vision of work and corporate power. The gripping new season is being hailed as one of the most thought-provoking shows of the year, and as the ultra-devoted severed employee Irving Bailiff — for which he has been nominated for a 2025 Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama — John Turturro delivers a knockout performance. Alongside clips from the series, hear Turturro tell Horowitz the story of Bailiff's invention, his moving romance with Burt (Christopher Walken), what's next for Severance, stories from the set, and more in this live taping of the Happy Sad Confused podcast. Recorded Aug 13, 2025 at The 92nd Street Y, New York. 

The breakout star of HBO Max's Hacks, comedian Megan Stalter, is joined for conversation with Sarah Sherman about Too Much, the new series created by Lena Dunham. When Megan Stalter burst onto the scene as the hilariously brash (and slightly deluded) assistant/talent agent Kayla in Hacks, critics and audiences immediately recognized her as a major new voice in comedy. Now, as the lead of Lena Dunham's Too Much, she is poised to make an even bigger splash. Following a thirty-something workaholic who moves to London from New York to mend her broken heart after the dissolution of a long relationship, Too Much is an ex-pat romantic comedy par excellence, anchored by a star performance from Stalter. Hear Stalter discuss her journey from internet comedy to Netflix, the new series, working with Lena Dunham, stories from the set, and more. Recorded Jul 14, 2025 at The 92nd Street Y, New York.

In this episode of 92NY Talks, join legendary comedian and podcaster Marc Maron with fellow comedian Jim Gaffigan following a special screening of his new HBO comedy special, Panicked. Hear Maron and Gaffigan discuss how the new material evolved, making comedy in dark times, why he's decided to wrap up WTF, and much more. The conversation was recorded July 31, 2025 at The 92nd Street Y, New York as part of the Newmark Civic Life Series.

Join Wall Street Journal's Josh Dawsey, The New York Times' Tyler Pager and The Washington Post's Isaac Arnsdorf with Pulitzer Prize winner Maggie Haberman for a conversation about Donald Trump's stunning political comeback, what it means for America, and Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf's new account of the election, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America. "The whole world was against me, and I won," said Donald Trump in an exclusive interview, ten days before his second inauguration. Nearly four years after Trump's first turbulent presidency concluded in a violent attempt to overturn the election, he made a political comeback on a scale that stunned the nation. In 2024 — drawing on extraordinary access to the Trump, Biden, and Harris teams —Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf bring us the definitive account of how he did it. In a special conversation, hear these award-winning reporters talk to Maggie Haberman about how the 2024 election is influencing Trump's policy — vindicating and emboldening him — and what it means for US democracy. This talk was recorded on July 17th, 2025, at The 92nd Street Y, New York.

Join acclaimed comedian and New York Times-bestselling author Zarna Garg for a special conversation with Ira Glass (This American Life) about her new Hulu stand-up special, Practical People Win. The conversation was recorded on July 18th, 2025, at The 92nd Street Y, New York.

Ready to optimize your travel? Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy and "The Man Who Turned Credit-Card Points into an Empire" (The New York Times) relates secrets and tips from his bestselling book How to Win at Travel – and all you need to know to help you save money while upgrading your getaways. Recorded July 10, 2025, at The 92nd Street Y, New York.

Join Bridgewater founder and #1 New York Times-bestselling author and investor Ray Dalio for an urgent conversation about America's role in the global economy and debt — and his new book, How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle. Ray Dalio, one of the preeminent investors of our time, anticipated the 2008 global financial crisis — and he has deep concerns about US government debt. Does government debt threaten our wellbeing? Could the US really go broke? Where do we stand? In his new book, How Countries Go Broke, Dalio answers these questions with a clear-eyed perspective on US financial policy and global investment, laying out a remarkably simple proposal for what the US can do to prevent a debt crisis. In a special conversation, hear Dalio discuss the risks of big government debt, why the US is struggling to catch up with China, what it means for our collective economic future, and more. This was recorded Jun 26, 2025 at The 92nd Street Y, New York. 

In Who Knew, Barry Diller tells his story for the first time (and what a story it is). In a career spanning six extraordinary decades, Barry Diller has become one of the most successful executives in media history. Diller's ascent was meteoric, launching ABC-TV's Movie of the Week at age twenty-seven, becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures at age thirty-two, and launching the Fox TV network at age forty-four. Along the way, Diller oversaw the production of classic films such as Saturday Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Home Alone and hit TV shows such as The Simpsons, Married…with Children, and Cops. Along the way Diller tangoed with movie stars and moguls, using his unique management acumen to set the table on his terms. He went on to develop some of the most successful online businesses in the world, including Expedia, Match, and Angi. Indeed, Diller's media savvy changed the course of American culture. While successful professionally, Diller struggled personally. In Who Knew, he reveals the extent of those struggles with astonishing candor before finding his "unique and complete love," Diane Von Furstenberg. Intimate, candid, and moving, Who Knew is a memoir filled with heart, imbued with humility, and infused with wisdom.

In American Jewish life, few questions are as fraught — or as revealing — as this one: Is Donald Trump good for the Jews? For some, the answer lies in his record. As president, Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, brokered normalization deals between Israel and Arab states, and cast himself as an unflinching ally of the Jewish state. In recent months, he has demanded action on campus antisemitism and positioned himself as a defender of Jewish students. But others see a more cynical calculus: a president who invokes Jewish loyalty tests, traffics in antisemitic tropes, and redefines criticism of Israel as bigotry — thereby narrowing the space for dissent and civil discourse. They worry that his brand of politics is less about safeguarding Jewish life than about instrumentalizing it, often at the expense of liberal values many American Jews hold dear. In this launch of the SAPIR Debates, two prominent Jewish voices take opposing sides of this urgent and emotionally charged question: Jason Greenblatt, who served as Trump's Special Envoy to the Middle East and worked for him for 20 years, and Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to President Obama, Mayor of Chicago, and US Ambassador to Japan. Moderated by SAPIR Editor-in-Chief Bret Stephens, this is a timely, unsparing exchange on identity, power, politics — and what it means to stand with the Jews in America today.

In this episode of 92NY talks, join the stars of the Netflix coming of age drama Ginny and Georgia, Antonia Gentry and Brianne Howey. The series follows a mother and daughter with a mysterious past as they attempt to set up a life for themselves in a small New England town. Hear them discuss the making of the show, creating a new kind of teen drama, what's new this season, stories from the set, and much more. The conversation was recorded on June 4th, 2025 at the 92nd Street Y, New York.