Politics and Prose Presents

This event is in partnership with WorldPride DC. 

More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, dubbed the "Einstein of Sex," grew famous (and infamous) for his liberating theory of sexual relativity. Today, he's been largely forgotten.

Journalist Daniel Brook retraces Hirschfeld's rollicking life and reinvigorates his legacy, recovering one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century. In an era when gay sex was a crime and gender roles rigid, Hirschfeld taught that each of us is their own unique mixture of masculinity and femininity. Through his public advocacy for gay rights and his private counseling of patients toward self-acceptance, he became the intellectual impresario of Berlin's cabaret scene and helped turn his hometown into the world's queer capital. But he also enraged the Nazis, who ransacked his Institute for Sexual Science and burned his books

Driven from his homeland, Hirschfeld traveled to America, Asia, and the Middle East to research sexuality on a global scale. Through his harrowing lived experience of antisemitic persecution and a pivotal late-in-life interracial romance, he came to see that race, like gender, was a human invention. Hirschfeld spent his final years in exile trying to warn the world of the genocidal dangers of racism.

Rich in passion and intellect, The Einstein of Sex at last brings together this unsung icon's work on sexuality, gender, and race and recovers the visionary who first saw beyond the binaries. A century after his groundbreaking work--as the fights for personal freedom and societal acceptance rage on--Hirschfeld's gift for thinking beyond the confines of his world has much to teach us.

Daniel Brook is a journalist whose writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine, Nation, and New York Times Magazine, and he is the author of several books, including A History of Future Cities and The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction. A New York native and a Yale graduate, Brook lives in New Orleans. He researched The Einstein of Sex in Berlin on a Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship.

*recorder 6/4/2025

This event is in partnership with The Atlantic.

 It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.

The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.

We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for--if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants--and our own place--in the natural world.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063073869?ic_referral=80qknxkuGfL65as3gHPmt2joMhEBKQDGBuIHLspdb_gwM5niKjNuRDMN0gsY5IATm7JnO4A0kwtMYbMOvGyIPSGIKNjJRfReYMssSIc-sQuT1P3HiQgZYtwMlpBR5NMQlmfnNg

Zoë Schlanger is a staff writer at the Atlantic, where she covers climate change. She previously covered the environment at Quartz and Newsweek. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Time, NPR, and elsewhere. Schlanger was the recipient of a 2017 National Association of Science Writers reporting award. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Schlanger is in conversation with Ross Andersen. Andersen is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers science, technology, and culture. He is also at work on a book on the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe for Random House.

*recorded 5/30/2025

When prize-winning reporter Sibylla Sumner checks into a monastery for a silent retreat, romance is the last thing on her mind. She plans to spend five meditative days surrounded by the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley – and apart from her famous husband and their crumbling marriage.

James Fitzmaurice Kelly isn’t looking for romance either. He’s the Archbishop of Dublin, and has maintained a vow of celibacy for decades – even as he’s publicly questioned the church’s teachings.

But as Sibylla and Fitz continue silently crossing paths, an undeniable charge builds between them, one that could see them abandoning their vows.

In this sophisticated, sexy, and soulful love story, novelist Sally Quinn explores the boundary between flesh and spirit, restraint and ecstasy, and asks what we’re willing to sacrifice in the name of passion.  

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798891385528?ic_referral=Nql2E7LY07oq5mqPeYpHtYRqK5NCOEtePVlyC-gokjEwM7uyrsurw9QBhzTzVGIMJ0FHu546QAyEQBb2TuAjJlJukIxughYhmPDA6dIvwVv2crc9FUA22HUzVtXAfE8wJk38ovc

Sally Quinn is a longtime journalist at the Washington Post, a bestselling novelist, and a Washington DC insider. Her religion website “On Faith” ran in the Washington Post for seven years. She is the author of We’re Going to Make You A Star, Regrets Only, Happy Endings, The Party, and Finding Magic. She lives and works in Georgetown.

Quinn is in conversation with Maureen Dowd. Dowd is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, known for her sharp and incisive commentary on politics and culture. She is the author of three bestselling books: Bushworld, Are Men Necessary?, and The Year of Voting Dangerously. She lives in Washington, DC.

*recorded 6/3/2025

This event will be in conversation with The Atlantic. 

When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, news spread about his implementation of Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page document published by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. The debates--and anxiety--surrounding this initiative have only increased as authors of the Project assume positions of power in the second Trump administration.

So, what is Project 2025, exactly? Who wrote it, and what does its mean for everyday Americans, across the political spectrum, now and in the years to come?

In The Project, award-winning journalist David A. Graham offers much-needed context and distills the essential elements of this sprawling document. Breaking down the Project's strategy for transforming--and radically empowering--the executive branch, Graham then explains what the architects behind Project 2025 are doing with that power: enforcing traditional gender norms, decimating the civil service, performing mass deportations, reducing corporate regulation and worker protections, and more.

Project 2025 is the intellectual blueprint for the new administration, Graham argues, and its tenets should not be legible only to policy wonks. Authoritative yet highly accessible, The Project demystifies it for those whose lives it will affect most.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217153725?ic_referral=lZGyNQQzjp0RAQGO8bFgCQPbc0ha5bdj_qFEFq7W898wMxOoh52QMB_dmnshJl15CIOwRPeN8ZdbsckSNEzVlT2qmx-0yYEdWnKw54I8EAV3H5x_8PWchHCW3hRvKjZPd8XyJCM

David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers politics and national affairs. He won the Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting for his coverage of the 2020 presidential election. Before joining The Atlantic, he reported for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Wall Street Journal, and The National.

Graham is in conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic and the moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic. He joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and in 2016 was named the magazine’s 15th editor in chief. In 2020, Goldberg was named editor of the year by Adweek, which also named The Atlantic magazine of the year. Before joining The Atlantic, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent, and then the Washington correspondent, for The New Yorker. Earlier in his career, he was a writer for The New York Times Magazine, where he wrote 15 cover stories. He began his career as a police reporter for The Washington Post. Goldberg is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror.

*recorded 5/27/2025

Music and hula by Halau Nohona Hawai'i.

From an early age, Sara Kehaulani Goo was enchanted by her family's land in Hawai'i. The vast area on the rugged shores of Maui's east side--given by King Kamehameha III in 1848--extends from mountain to sea, encompassing ninety acres of lush, undeveloped rainforest jungle along the rocky coastline and a massive sixteenth-century temple with a mysterious past.

When a property tax bill arrives with a 500 percent increase, Sara and her family members are forced to make a decision about the property: fight to keep the land or sell to the next offshore millionaire. When Sara returns to Maui from the mainland, she reconnects with her great-uncle Take and uncovers the story of how much land her family has already lost over generations, centuries-old artifacts from the temple, and the insidious displacement of Native Hawaiians by systemic forces.

Part journalistic offering and part memoir, Kuleana interrogates deeper questions of identity, legacy, and what we owe to those who come before and after us. Sara's breathtaking story of unexpected homecomings, familial hardship, and fierce devotion to ancestry creates a refreshingly new narrative about Hawai'i, its native people, and their struggle to hold on to their land and culture today.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250333445?ic_referral=TKXuya5r-t9cH7TtNhUGhhl6Z_5SINWzecihKYj3OKQwMxuA1wWffQ8_cvMXVC1hnq1xLTqZFhhSiOtGRjIVRyO63ETeYphfHiuzj4_Z3BtIiyDGp2R1yaGCOo78-m-ERoS2mR8

Sara Kehaulani Goo is a journalist and senior news executive who has led several news organizations including Axios, NPR and The Washington Post. She is the former editor-in-chief at Axios, where she launched the company's editorial expansion into national and local newsletters, podcasts and live journalism. Before Axios, she led online audience growth as a managing editor at NPR, overseeing the newsroom's digital news operation. Goo also served as news director at The Washington Post, where she also served as a business editor and reporter. Originally from Dana Point, California, she graduated from the University of Minnesota's journalism school. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Goo is in conversation with Niala Boodhoo, an American journalist, podcast and events host. You can hear her many Fridays on NPR stations hosting the Friday News Roundup on 1A. Currently the founder of Glad You’re Here Productions, she's launched shows for public media and podcasts, including Axios Today and 1 Big Thing, and hosts live news events for organizations that have included Axios, the World Bank, Ascend at the Aspen Institute and the Religion News Service.

*recorded 6/15/2025

This event is in partnership with The Atlantic.

Every parent exists inside of two families simultaneously - the one she was born into, and the one she has made.

Ten-year-old Margaret hides beneath a blackberry bush in her family's verdant backyard while her brother hunts for her in a game of flashlight tag. Hers is a childhood of sunlit swimming pools and Saturday morning pancakes and a devoted best friend, but her family life requires careful maintenance. Her mother can be as brittle and exacting as she is loving, and her father and brother assume familiar, if uncomfortable, models of masculinity. Then late one summer, everything changes. After a series of confusing transgressions, the simple pleasures of girlhood, slip away.

Twenty-five years later, Margaret hides under her parents' bed, waiting for her young daughters to find her in a game of hide and seek. She's newly divorced and navigating her life as a co-parent, while discovering the pleasures of a new lover. But some part of her is still under the blackberry bush, punched out of time. Called upon to be a mother to her daughters, and a daughter to her mother, she must reckon with the echoes and refractions between the past and the present, what it means to keep a child safe, and how much of our lives are our own, alone.

Warm and generous, unflinchingly human, and ultimately joyful and empowering, Sleep is about the cycles of motherhood and childhood, the cost of secrets and the burden of love, and what's on the other side of silence: the world, rich in possibility.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593851982?ic_referral=EcAU95TK56eXBC8s8IXGdt23PkQ2rUoRPVItqIIbnBUwMyTtseYGi4wM7ogPmkF2e7_yF2b32DE-Ox2NgsiaGgli5Cmr97mbhI6XCF1xiTMqFWPOymnvUQ0SOUetTqFUmz9ORp0

Honor Jones is a senior editor at The Atlantic, and previously at The New York Times. She lives in Brooklyn with her three children.

Jones is in conversation with Clint Smith, a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and the poetry collections Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award and most recently Above Ground. His poetry collection, Above Ground, was recently published on March 28th. Smith is also the host of the YouTube series Crash Course Black American History. Born and raised in New Orleans, he currently lives in Maryland with his wife and their two children.

*recorded 5/23/2025

Patriarchy has oppressed women and denied their contributions worldwide, but the United States of America has its own unique gendered hierarchy. Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs applies her signature blend of approachable yet rigorous analysis in this definitive and groundbreaking history of American patriarchy. She proves that humanity in the United States is determined by gender in a limited and flawed binary that is also always tied to whiteness. Tubbs shows how a fabricated hierarchy became so deeply ingrained over time that it now goes unnoticed, along with everything it intentionally conceals.

From the founding fathers to the current Supreme Court justices, from the treatment of enslaved women to the American maternal health crises, from the exclusion of women in the Constitution to the continued lack of an Equal Rights Amendment, Tubbs brings together academic research, the stories of freedom fighters both past and present, and her own experiences to reveal what is erased in the wake of American patriarchy. The system has survived by hiding the tools that are necessary to dismantle it. But Tubbs beautifully reminds us that those tools, including our intuition, courage, ancient wisdom, and power, are still well within our reach.

Erased is the story of the United States from a new perspective: one where the people who shaped this country-who have been oppressed and whose contributions have been denied-are at the center, reminding us that we can restore what has been strategically kept from us. Once again, Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs has written a book that will be a touchstone for conversations on gender, race, and equity for years to come.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250876690?ic_referral=7Qen1OHgC-5tsdZhc2mkQZRbYdV9BrqfA7cqNqK8bhAwM1RKMxbfPHp2LnkMKuSgTRvBKVlQ_bii_JJKbU4GrB66wLv7PGrL-GN5yhJ5uUgCpBjPCa3QV09iIKtjoemr5Gpm2PY

Anna Malaika Tubbs is a New York Times bestselling author and multidisciplinary expert on current and historical understandings of race, gender, and equity. With a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Masters in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge in addition to a Bachelors in Medical Anthropology from Stanford University, Anna translates her academic knowledge into stories that are clear and engaging. Her articles have been published by TIME Magazine, New York Magazine, CNN, Motherly, the Huffington Post, For Harriet, The Guardian, Darling Magazine, and Blavity. Anna's storytelling also takes form in her talks, including her TED Talk that has been viewed 2 million times, as well as the scripted and unscripted screen projects she has in development. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their three kids.

Anna is in conversation with Brittany Packnett Cunningham. A formidable force at the intersection of culture, justice, and policy, Brittany drives transformation as the Founder and Principal of Love & Power Works, a social impact agency catalyzing change across industries and communities. As Host and Executive Producer of the acclaimed UNDISTRACTED podcast and a respected on-air political analyst, Brittany delivers truth that ignites action. Her TED Talk, "The Revolution of Confidence," has captivated nearly 8 million viewers worldwide and ranks among 2019's top ten most influential talks. Her voice resonates through the pages of New York Magazine, The Washington Post, and Cosmopolitan, with her debut book, "We Are Like Those Who Dream: Black Women's Blueprint for a New Power," forthcoming from One World/Random House.  Brittany has contributed vital perspectives to audiences across the globe, including at the famed Oxford Union, documentaries like Netflix’s Amend, and television shows like HBO’s Pod Save America. 

*recorded 6/2/2025

Radical Reality reveals how independent documentary makers around the world produce cinematic stories that speak truth to power-and why nonfiction storytelling matters for social justice. Pushing against increasingly difficult political and economic constraints, these tenacious filmmakers produce artistic nonfiction stories that stand up for freedom of expression, serve as witnesses to conflict and resilience, maintain cultural memory of human rights abuses, and open intimate windows into acts of protest, activism, reconciliation, and resistance that often go unseen in dominant news portrayals. They collaborate with activists and civil society leaders to create powerful movements of dissent, centering underrepresented voices, providing spaces for community healing and recognition, and challenging damaging narratives of people and their lived realities--and they do so in significant times.
Across the globe, forms of repression continue to be wielded against artists who challenge power. And yet, there is hope and inspiration found in the hands of storytellers who marshal a way forward, again and again, to push the status quo toward justice. This book tells their stories.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780197604267?ic_referral=2W8M2nl49NMBqD3FSpn4pNWVZ-IVuftfocdoIaAO9YQwM5kNCZcGT2ybcbuQ8SrBJiXaAGsjjqlvmiYvqOTjy0z-c0RtwjKASMpqUCMt_YC9tLsYye9XPsJljcB3rAvPWSdE6gk

Caty Borum is Executive Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact and Provost Associate Professor at the American University School of Communication. She is an award-winning documentary producer, book author, engaged scholar, professor, and strategist working at the intersection of social change communication, documentary, and entertainment storytelling. 
David Conrad-Pérez is a journalist, media historian and Research Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University, working at the intersection of documentary studies, journalism history, and social justice.

Caty and David are in conversation with Jeffrey P. Jones. Jones is the Executive Director of the George Foster Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia, and Lambdin Kay Chair for the Peabody Awards in the Department of Entertainment & Media Studies.

*recorded 5/21/2025

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the "compute" power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans "cleaning up" that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?

Spoiler alert: it didn't. Armed with Microsoft's billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history--toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry--Altman's sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn't just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too--as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they're the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we've seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593657508?ic_referral=J-p2tFVoN4tp8UwGmnstE-40rYRej5XC73uq_aLqTO8wM9FdRIAbJ9XoiSDih-58noAT-r8tcCNF0B42D8xRR7EZQDxp825bGgJJANC3ogO-mK2bvNfcKgJdBS5ySkVFH-xoGP0

Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. She leads the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series, a program training journalists around the world on how to cover AI, and sits on the AI advisory board of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She was formerly a foreign correspondent covering China's technology industry for the Wall Street Journal and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. Her work is regularly taught in universities and cited by governments. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30. She received her B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.

Hao is in conversation with Bina Venkataraman. Venkataraman is an American journalist, science policy expert, and author. She is currently Editor-at-Large for Strategy and Innovation and the inaugural Columnist of the Future at The Washington Post.

*recorded 5/31/2025

The ride was so wild that it forced a sitting president to drop his re-election bid, a once and future president to survive felony convictions and a would-be assassin's bullet, and a vice president, unexpectedly thrust into the arena, to mount an unprecedented 107-day campaign to lead the free world.

Fight is the backstage story of bloodsport politics in its rawest form--the clawing, backstabbing, and rabble-rousing that drove Donald Trump into the White House and Democrats into the wilderness. At every turn, the combatants went for the jugular, whether they were facing down rivals in the other party or their own.

Bestselling authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes give readers their first graphic view of the characters, their motivations, and their innermost thoughts as they battled to claim the ultimate prize and define a political era. Based on real-time interviews with more than 150 insiders--from the Trump, Harris, and Biden inner circles, as well as party leaders and operatives--Fight delivers the vivid and stunning tale of an election unlike any other.

In the end, Trump overcame voters' concerns about his personal flaws by tapping into a deep vein of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country. At the same time, Democrats struggled to connect with an electorate that felt gaslit by Biden's insistence that he had delivered economic prosperity--and his pledge to be a "bridge" president. He tore his party asunder, leaving destroyed personal relationships in his wake, as he clung to power. And when he gave it up, he kneecapped Harris by demanding unprecedented loyalty from her.

As Allen and Parnes have done in the #1 New York Times bestseller Shattered and Lucky, they provide readers with a skeleton key to the rooms where it all happened, revealing a story more shocking than previously reported.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063438644?ic_referral=rabqiaISFJoGBRnJr6y-k28xRVunIVA6WyXyH_sX4rcwM52cHCKbohn0mf8MUscvVinG63zKTV-OLSpifXEearGweq75C8SvirL7oVsAnFDXMeIyQO6dAI_Zr7ROy7bLhUPtmrU

Jonathan Allen is an award-winning political reporter at NBC News. He previously worked as the Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg News and as the White House bureau chief for Politico. He has coauthored three prior books with his writing partner, Amie Parnes, two of which, HRC and Shattered, became New York Times bestsellers.

Amie Parnes is a senior political correspondent covering national politics at The Hill. She previously worked as a staff writer at Politico, and during the first Trump administration, she was a CNN political analyst. Amie has also appeared on CBS, NBC, and ABC and is the coauthor of three books with Jonathan Allen, including the New York Times bestsellers HRC and Shattered. 

Allen and Parnes are in conversation with Ali Vitali, the host of “Way Too Early” on MSNBC. Most recently, Ali covered Congress as a Capitol Hill Correspondent for NBC News. In 2022, Vitali authored Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put A Woman In the White House…Yet, a book detailing her experiences as a “Road Warrior” and investigating the double standards placed on female presidential candidates. She joined NBC News in 2012 and is a graduate of Tulane University.