It took no time at all. In the beginning, we looked at computers and the internet with wide eyes and open arms. It was a technology of liberating potential for us all. Now, it is arguably a dystopia: a dark monolith of algorithms, surveillance, criminality, and job-displacing robots. Three Stanford professors with long careers in the tech industry, know of the shadows of these tangled webs—they shined a light on them, and offered some hope with System Error. It doesn’t have to be this way. Big tech’s focus on optimization leaves out one key facet: human optimism. Big tech is driving towards deeper riffs of discrimination, further erosions of privacy, and more losses for the working class. What do we hope for in the future? What is it that we value? Should big tech tell us what we value? Or should it be the other way around? Reich, Sahami, and Weinstein offered thoughts, suggestions, and tools to give us some power against that dark monolith. Rob Reich is a philosopher who directs Stanford University’s Center for Ethics in Society and is the associate director of its new Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Mehran Sahami was recruited to Google in its start-up days and was one of the inventors of email spam-filtering technology. He’s been a computer science professor at Stanford University since 2007. Jeremy Weinstein was a White House staffer for Barack Obama, launching Obama’s Open Government Partnership. Since 2015, he’s been a professor of political science at Stanford University, where he now leads Stanford Impact Labs. Lauren Sato is the Chief Executive Officer of Ada Developers Academy, a nonprofit, cost-free coding school for women and gender-expansive adults. Creating greater economic power and agency for BIPOC women and gender expansive folks means a better world for everybody. Buy the Book: System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot (Hardcover) from Elliott Bay Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation online click here. 

Town Hall Seattle Civics Series

258. Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, and Jeremy M. Weinstein with Lauren Sato: How to Reboot Big Tech

We are all connected. We are all far apart. This is our American reality as we all become more and more polarized. Inequities of wealth, class, and culture are pulling us further away as we struggle to define what America is, was, and should be. In Wildland, Evan Osnos focuses on three places he’s lived in the United States: Greenwich, Connecticut, where Wall Street tycoons gut the heartland’s economy for their own profit; Clarksburg, West Virginia, where opioid abuse is rampant and white identity politics take center stage; and Chicago, Illinois, where violence and poverty run deep. Bookended by the attacks of September 11, 2001, to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Osnos examines the seismic changes in American politics and culture by focusing on the lives of everyday Americans in three cities across two decades. Much has changed. Much has stayed the same. This is our American reality. Evan Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His first book, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, won the 2014 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Eric M. Johnson is an American journalist, author, and outdoorsman. His current journalistic focus is aerospace – from Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis to Elon Musk’s SpaceX – and he has covered former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, breaking national news, and transportation since joining Reuters in 2011 in Chicago. He has also been a staff reporter for Sun-Times Media Group and covered sports for the Observer, in London. Buy the Book: Wildland: The Making of America's Fury (Hardcover) Third Place Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation online click here.

257. Evan Osnos and Eric M. Johnson: American Fury, from 9/11 to 1/6

Fair housing has never been that fair. In fact, in California at one point, realtors successfully campaigned for a California constitutional amendment that would permanently prohibit fair housing. In the process, they created the script of color-blind freedom that polarizes America on issue after issue today. Realtors helped invent “the American Dream,” while systematically denying it to millions of Americans. Gene Slater’s Freedom to Discriminate makes note of racial deed restrictions, homeowner associations, redlining maps, and federal rationales for excluding minorities. These were all pioneered by America’s realtors. Focusing on how California’s realtors defended all-white neighborhoods against the Civil Rights Movement, he shows the thread that others followed. Ronald Reagan’s political rise drew, in part, from the arguments the realtors gave to continue segregation. That rise would lay the groundwork for many of today’s conservative narratives. Gene Slater has served as senior advisor on housing for federal, state, and local agencies for over forty years. Slater cofounded and chairs CSG Advisors, which has been one of the nation’s leading advisors on affordable housing for decades. His projects have received numerous national awards, and in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009, he helped design the program by which the United States Treasury financed homes for 110,000 first-time buyers. He holds degrees from Columbia, MIT, and Stanford. Jay Reich is a retired partner of Pacifica Law Group and spent two years as Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Commerce under Secretary Gary Locke. Prior to his time in Washington, D.C, his private law practice in Seattle focused on affordable housing, education, nonprofit and government finance, as well as public/private partnerships and general municipal law, for nearly 3 decades. He served as a White House Fellow in the office of the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Reich has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law and has published and spoken extensively on issues in public finance. Buy the Book: Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregate Housing and Divide America (Hardcover) Third Place Books  Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

256. Gene Slater with Jay Reich: How Realtors Conspired to Segregate America

India’s border meanders over 9,000 miles from Pakistan to Myanmar, crossing desert, fertile plains, rivers, and snow-capped mountains. India’s border is also the site of a massive crisis of statelessness, with hundreds of thousands of people stripped of their citizenship and entangled in the region’s ever-shifting— and often arbitrary— boundaries. Suchitra Vijayan took us to the thick of it in her book Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India, detailing seven years of travel amongst people living in the margins of her home country. Through vivid and painful vignettes, Vijayan captured human stories that would otherwise remain untold; and in doing so, brings the impacts of a legacy of colonialism, state violence, and government corruption into clear view. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Nation, and Foreign Policy. A Barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. She is an award-winning photographer and the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. She lives in New York. Dr. Amrita Ghosh is a research fellow at SASNET (South Asia Center, Sweden) and an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute of Social Research. Ghosh is also co-editor of the coming anthology: Tagore and Yeats: A Postcolonial Reenvisioning (2021), which covers themes of translation, authorship, the Nobel controversy between the two writers. Buy the Book: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Hardcover) Elliott Bay Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation online click here.

255. Suchitra Vijayan with Dr. Amrita Ghosh: Intimate stories from India’s disputed border

Arguably the single most essential aspect of a good education is literacy. “To learn to read is to light a fire,” Victor Hugo wrote. By becoming literate, one develops a whole host of skills that allows one to develop potential and success in society; skills including critical thinking, self-discipline, curiosity, empathy, motivation, and leadership. The fire has been hard to come by for many of our nation’s vulnerable children. Tracy Swinton Bailey knows this all too well and has taken steps to give those children their first sparks. In Forever Free: A True Story of Hope in the Fight for Child Literacy, Bailey’s memoir offers valuable insights for effecting change in families, communities, and nationwide in our long-standing struggle to adequately educate vulnerable children. With a lifelong love of books and reading, and the power that both imparts, she founded the non-profit organization Freedom Readers. Based in the rural South, it is a one-on-one tutoring program that, she believes, can be modeled and work across the United States. The book offers the steps to make that happen and what she thinks can come of it if we do. Sparks, perhaps, can become flames and society will be a better place because of it, literate citizens within. Tracy Swinton Bailey earned a Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in Language and Literacy at the University of South Carolina in 2013. She is the founder of Freedom Readers, an after-school and summer literacy program. Buy the Book Forever Free: A True Story of Hope in the Fight for Child Literacy (Hardcover) from Third Place Books  Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation online click here.

254. Tracy Swinton Bailey: A True Story of Hope in the Fight for Child Literacy

“For-profit health insurance is the largest con job ever perpetrated on the American people—one that has cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives since the 1940s,” says popular progressive radio host Thom Hartmann. The New York Times bestselling author returned to Town Hall with the latest installment of his “hidden history” series, The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich. He explored how attempts to implement affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted by greed, racism, and oligarchic corruption and what can be done to make healthcare for all a reality. Hartmann shared examples of other countries that have shown that affordable universal healthcare is not only possible but also effective and efficient, and argued that America’s “sickness for profit” system can be replaced with Medicare. Thom Hartmann is an award-winning author, radio host, teacher, and psychotherapist. He’s written six books as part of the Hidden History series, covering controversial and important subjects and institutions in the United States like the Supreme Court, Gun Control, and Healthcare. A former journalist, editor, and occasional woodsplitter, he lives in Vermont with his wife, Louise. Buy the Book: The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich (Paperback) Elliott Bay Books  Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

253. Thom Hartmann: Replacing America’s “Sickness for Profit” Healthcare System

In the last two decades, many nations have adopted “gay reparations,” or policies intended to make amends for a history of discrimination, stigmatization, and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The United States, however, has been reluctant to embrace any form of gay reparations, making the country something of an outlier among Western democracies. Professor and author Omar G. Encarnación joined us for a presentation, in conversation with CEO of Epiphanies of Equity LLC ChrisTiana ObeySumner, to share takeaways from his book, The Case for Gay Reparations. Beyond making the case for gay reparations in the US, Encarnación explored three big questions: why, after centuries of attempts to marginalize, dehumanize, and even eradicate LGBT people, are governments coming around to confront this historical legacy?; how do we make sense of the diversity of gay reparations being implemented by governments around the world?; and what would an American policy of gay reparations look like? Drawing upon the rich history of reparations to confront the legacies of genocide, slavery, and political repression, he argued that gay reparations are a moral obligation, intended to restore dignity to those whose human rights have been violated. He examined how other Western democracies notorious for their repression of homosexuals–specifically Spain, Britain, and Germany–have implemented gay reparations, from a formal apology to financial compensation, to the erection of monuments to the memory of those who have suffered. Encarnación invited us to consider that while there is no universal approach to gay reparations, foreign experiences reveal that it is never too late for countries to seek to right past wrongs. Omar G. Encarnación is Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, where he teaches comparative politics and Latin American and Iberian studies. He is the author of Out in the Periphery: Latin America’s Gay Rights Revolution and Democracy without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting, and has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, and the National Research Council, among others. ChrisTiana ObeySumner (they/them) is a Black/Indigenous, Queer, Non-Binary, and Multiply disabled person. They are a community organizer and activist, and CEO of Epiphanies of Equity LLC, a social equity consulting firm that particularly specializes in social change, intersectionality, antiracism, and disability justice. Buy the Book: The Case for Gay Reparations (Hardcover) Elliott Bay Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation online click here.

252. Omar G. Encarnación with ChrisTiana ObeySumner: The Case for Gay Reparations

On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. Author Sasha Issenberg introduced a definitive account in this presentation that discussed his book The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage, in conversation with CMBC Reporter Aditi Roy. The story begins, Issenberg shared, in Hawaii in 1990, when a rivalry among local activists triggered a sequences of events that forced the state to justify excluding gay couples from marriage. Then in the White House, one president signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which elevated the matter to a national issue, and his successor tried to write it into the Constitution. Over 25 years, Issenberg told us, the debate played out across the country, from the first legal same-sex weddings in Massachusetts to the epic face-off over California’s Prop 8, and finally, to the landmark decisions of United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. Across those 25 years, nearly every corner of American life was touched in some way by the debate. With insight from those who sought their own right to wed, those who fought to protect the “traditional” definition of marriage, and those who changed their minds about it, Issenberg invited us to a riveting story about a banner topic of the modern culture wars. Sasha Issenberg is the author of three previous books, including The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. He has covered presidential elections as a national political reporter in the Washington bureau of The Boston Globe, a columnist for Slate, and a contributor to Bloomberg Politics and Businessweek. He is the Washington correspondent at Monocle, and his work has also appeared in New York, The New York Times Magazine, and George, where he served as a contributing editor. He teaches in the political-science department at UCLA. Aditi Roy is an Emmy-winning journalist who has spent two decades covering local, national and business news. In 2016, she joined CNBC’s San Francisco bureau, covering the California economy, the vaping/cannabis industry, the rise of alt-foods, and the Equifax breach. Roy left CNBC earlier this year to spend time with her daughters (ages 1 and 7) and pursue personal passion projects. Buy the Book: The Engagement: America's Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage (Hardcover) Elliott Bay Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation online click here.

251. Sasha Issenberg with Aditi Roy: A Chronicle of America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Marriage Equality

On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, the end of legalized slavery in the state was announced. Since then, a certain narrative and lore has emerged about Texas. But as Juneteenth verges on being recognized as a national holiday, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people—reworks the traditional “Alamo” framework, forging a new and profound narrative of her home state with implications for all. In conversation with South Seattle Emerald’s Marcus Harrison Green, she weaved together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir chronicled in her book On Juneteenth. She recounted the origins of the date in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured since and explained how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas, African-Americans played an integral role in the state’s story. She demonstrated that the slave and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but indeed caused the Mexican-American and Civil Wars. Don’t miss this urgent program for an essential revision of conventional renderings of history, one that starkly reminds us that the fight for equality is demanding and ongoing. Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. The author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello, she lives in New York and Cambridge. Marcus Harrison Green is the publisher of the South Seattle Emerald, and a columnist with Crosscut. After an unfulfilling stint working for a Los Angeles based hedge-fund in his twenties, Green returned to his community determined to tell its true story, which led him to found the South Seattle Emerald. He was named one of Seattle’s most influential people by Seattle Magazine in 2016. Northwest African American Museum opened in 2008 and serves to present and preserve the connections between the Pacific Northwest and people of African descent, as well as investigate and celebrate Black experiences in America. It is the premier institution for showcasing African American art, history, and culture in the Pacific Northwest. Buy the Book: https://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/9781631498831  Presented by Town Hall Seattle and NW African American Museum.

250. Annette Gordon-Reed with Marcus Harrison Green: The History and Future of Juneteenth

Somewhere, between character and caricature, there exists an authentic and unique urban place, believes urbanism consultant and author Charles R. Wolfe. One that blends global and local, old and new. Yet, in a dramatically changing world dominated by crises of climate change, maintaining public health, and social justice, finding such places—and explaining their relevance—may be easier said than done. In conversation with interviewer Steve Scher, Wolfe joined us to introduce a comprehensive method for assessing how and why successful places come to be, with an explicit emphasis on context, as captured in his book Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character: Principles and Best Practices. They discussed how to enact urban change, using the past and the status quo as inspiration rather than a hindrance or obstacle. Wolfe shared his strategies for how we as a society can understand and unlock a public place, neighborhood, or city, using a new tool called LEARN: Look, Engage, Assess, Review, and Negotiate. With real-life examples, Wolfe provided a catalogue of techniques that emphasize “bottom up,” resident-based input about local history, building forms, cultural assets and tradition, and more. For those who seek an urbanism of distinctiveness rather than a bland, generic uniformity, join Wolfe for this singular presentation on how to make that happen. Charles R. Wolfe is a London-based, multinational urbanism consultant, author, visiting scholar in Sweden, recent Fulbright specialist in Australia for an award-winning project, and long-time American environmental/land use lawyer. He has served as a long-time affiliate associate professor in the College of the Built Environments at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is also the author of Seeing the Better City and Urbanism Without Effort. Steve Scher is a podcaster, interviewer, and teacher. He worked in Seattle public radio for almost 30 years. He has taught at the University of Washington since 2009. He is Senior Correspondent for Town Hall Seattle’s In The Moment podcast. Buy the Book: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538133248/Sustaining-a-Citys-Culture-and-Character-Principles-and-Best-Practices  Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

249. Charles R. Wolfe with Steve Scher: Strategies for Creating and Enhancing Distinctive City Culture

India is in a crisis. In September 2020, the Indian government passed three new agricultural bills that deregulate and privatize India’s agricultural industry. Since then, farmers and farmworkers across India have taken to the country’s capital, staging the largest protest in human history. By prioritizing corporations over people and the planet, many believe these laws further environmental degradation and economic oppression, deepening an already stark wealth disparity. These protests are as much about land rights as they are about human rights, as dissent continues to be silenced. In this urgent conversation, moderated by social impact advisor Manpreet Kaur Kalra, panelists Arjun Singh Sethi, a human rights lawyer, and Navyug Gill, scholar of modern South Asia and global history, unpack the history of industrialized agriculture in India and the geo-political factors influencing the protest that is unfolding today. Arjun Singh Sethi is a human rights lawyer, professor, author, and community activist based in Washington, DC. He works closely with Muslim, Arab, South Asian and Sikh communities, and holds faculty appointments at Georgetown University Law Center and Vanderbilt University Law School. In the wake of the 2016 election, Sethi traveled the country and met with a diversity of people to document the hate they experienced during the campaign and after inauguration. American Hate: Survivors Speak Out was released in August 2018r. Sethi also serves as Co-Chair of the Committee on Homeland Security, Terrorism & Treatment of Enemy Combatants at the American Bar Assocation and has served as a legal observer across the world, including military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Navyug Gill is a scholar of modern South Asia and global history. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at William Paterson University. His research explores questions of agrarian change, labor politics, caste hierarchy, postcolonial critique, and global capitalism. Currently he is completing a book on the emergence of the peasant and the rule of capital in colonial Panjab. His academic and popular writings have appeared in venues such as the Journal of Asian Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, Al Jazeera, Law and Political Economy Project, Borderlines, and Trolley Times. Manpreet Kaur Kalra (she/her) is a social impact advisor, anti-racism educator, and Seattle-based activist working to decolonize storytelling. She navigates the intersection of impact communication and sustainable global development. She founded Art of Citizenry to support impact-driven businesses and organizations to address inclusion in all aspects, from business development to marketing strategy. Her activism focuses on the interconnectivity of economic, social, and climate justice. She educates using a variety of mediums, including the Art of Citizenry Podcast, where she shares her nuanced and unfiltered insights on building a more just and equitable future. Her work unpacks history and addresses systemic power structures. She serves on the board of the NYC Fair Trade Coalition and co-established the Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the Fair Trade Federation. Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

248. Industrialized Agriculture: A Fight for Human Rights in India with Arjun Singh Sethi, Navyug Gill, and Manpreet Kaur Kalra

The guilty verdict against Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, was celebrated as a victory for racial equity progress in our country. As our nation continues to wrestle with racial equity, what local progress has been made? What have our leaders learned from the protests and calls for reform over the past several years? Are there steps we can take as a community to create a more equitable community for all? Join us for a virtual Civic Cocktail program with our host Joni Balter and guests Jasmyne Keimig, staff writer at the Stranger, Naomi Ishisaka, assistant managing editor at The Seattle Times, and Kurt Streeter, Sports of The Times columnist at The New York Times.  As a 40-year-old nonpartisan, civics-focused nonprofit, Seattle CityClub provides a platform for insightful and educational conversations that include a diverse range of perspectives. This program wouldn’t be possible without Comcast as our premiere partner, our media partner Seattle Channel and our production partner Town Hall Seattle.  Presented by Town Hall Seattle and Seattle City Club. 

247. Virtual Civic Cocktail: One Guilty Verdict – What’s Next?

How healthy is journalism in the United States today? Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff of Project Censored joined us for a conversation on this topic, espousing their view of corporate media biases, censorship, and the importance of independent journalism, and the state of the free press. Project Censored was founded in 1976 by Dr. Carl Jensen at Sonoma State University to research and publicize news media censorship in the news, and to develop students’ critical thinking skills and media literacy. That same year, The Project produced its first list of important but under-reported news stories, a tradition that endures to this day. Roth and Huff shared the biggest stories from the most recent yearbook, endeavoring to expose the corporate media’s failures to cover systemic social problems, including the deadly consequences of enduring economic inequality, attacks on freedom of expression, and the plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. They presented documentation of double standards and skewed framing that they believe have served to mystify the public about COVID-19, obscure the events surrounding the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020, and quash urgent conversations about universal healthcare, stimulus payments, and the U.S. government’s response to the pandemic. Tune in for some critical media literacy skills and an illuminating discussion about the state of the free press. Mickey Huff has been director of Project Censored since 2010; president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation since 2016; and co-host and executive producer of The Project Censored Show on Pacifica Radio, since 2010. In 2019, he co-authored United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (And What We Can Do About It). Huff is a professor of social science and history at Diablo Valley College, where he co-chairs the History program and is chair of the Journalism Department. He also serves on the editorial board for the journal Secrecy and Society, the advisory board at the crowd contested media site Credder.com, as well as the board of the nonprofit Behind the Headlines. Andy Lee Roth is associate director of Project Censored and coordinator of the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program. His research and writing have been published in a variety of outlets, including Index on Censorship, In These Times, YES! Magazine, Media, Culture & Society, and the International Journal of Press/Politics. Roth has taught courses in Sociology at Citrus College, Pomona College, Sonoma State University, the College of Marin, and Bard College, and he serves on the board of the Media Freedom Foundation. Buy the Book: https://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/9781644210260  Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

246. Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth: Project Censored’s State of the Free Press

In 2016, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump declared: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.” This led many after his victory to blame “identity politics” for his win. When Trump was banned from Twitter, he claimed it was an assault on free speech. Columnist Nesrine Malik contended that both of these things were myths, and joined us to explain how these arguments over lies impact the struggle for greater equality in society. In a presentation with novelist Ece Temelkuran, Malik shared from her book We Need New Stories: The Myths That Subvert Freedom, looking at how what she believes to be the lie that American values are under assault creates a solid obfuscation from the real problems. By interweaving reporting with a frank and no-holds-barred analysis of American history and politics, Malik offered a compelling account of how calls to preserve “free speech” are used against the vulnerable; how a fixation with “wokeness,” “political correctness,” and “cancel culture” is in fact an organized and well-funded campaign by elites; and how the fear of racial minorities and their “identity politics” obscures the biggest threat of all–white terrorism. Don’t miss this poignant inspection of the crises roiling American contemporary politics–and the introduction of a radical framework for understanding and identifying it. Nesrine Malik is an award-winning British-Sudanese columnist and features writer for the Guardian. She lives in London. Ece Temelkuran is one of Turkey’s best-known novelists and political commentators, and her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Der Spiegel, and more. Her latest book How To Lose A Country: The Seven Steps From Democracy to Dictatorship was internationally acknowledged. Her new book Together is out in May 2021. Buy the Books: We Need New Stories: The Myths that Subvert Freedom by Nesrine Malik Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now by Ece Temelkuran Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

245. Nesrine Malik and Ece Temelkuran: Making Progress in a Moment of Inequity and Division

 Jeff Bezos’ empire, once housed in a garage, now spans the globe. Between services like Whole Foods, Prime Video, and Amazon’s cloud computing unit AWS, plus Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post, it’s nearly impossible to go a day without encountering its impact. Many argue we live in a world run, supplied, and controlled by Amazon and its founder. But how did this man and his company come to dominate such a large part of modern commerce? Sometimes called Amazon’s biographer, journalist Brad Stone joined us with the deeply reported and vividly drawn portrait of how a retail upstart became arguably one of the most powerful and feared entities in the global economy, also contained in his book Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. In conversation with The New York Times’ Karen Weise, Stone took us from his bestseller which captured the rise of Amazon, The Everything Store, to the Amazon and Bezos of today. He looked at how Amazon has expanded over the last decade especially, with new products like virtual assistant Alexa and with a workforce that has quintupled in size. Stone presented a picture of a man, probing the evolution of Bezos himself, from a geeky technologist to billionaire–and to his transition away from day-to-day activities as CEO to executive chairman. Brad Stone is senior executive editor of global technology at Bloomberg News. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which has been translated into over thirty-five languages, and The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley. He has covered Silicon Valley for more than twenty years and lives in the San Francisco Bay area. Karen Weise is a technology correspondent for The New York Times based in Seattle, covering Amazon, Microsoft, and the region’s tech scene. Before joining The New York Times in 2018, she worked for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News, as well as the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica. Buy the Book: https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/book/9781982132613  Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here.  

244. Brad Stone with Karen Weise: The Evolution of Jeff Bezos and Amazon

The Civics series at Town Hall shines a light on the shifting issues, movements, and policies, that affect our society, both locally and globally. These events pose questions and ideas, big and small, that have the power to inform and impact our lives. Whether it be constitutional research from a scholar, a new take on history, or the birth of a movement, it's all about educating and empowering.

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Town Hall Seattle Civics Series

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