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Friday, September 12, 2025, from 7–9 PM

Raúl de Nieves, Tega Brain, and Sam Lavigne

To celebrate the paperback launch of Robert Macfarlane’s

, we’re delighted to share the video from the book’s U.S. debut. The author sat down with PW Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro to discuss our relationship with water, and with life itself.

In this extraordinary work, Macfarlane explores a radical and urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Through three unforgettable journeys—from Ecuador’s cloud forests and mountain streams to India’s polluted creeks and lagoons and Canada’s wild rivers—he interweaves the story of a fragile chalk stream near his home in England, flowing through his own life and years. ♦

In a hollow at the foot of a hill on which flints lie white as eyes, water rises for the first time from a crack in the chalk—and flows away. Rises and flows, rises and flows: for days, then years, then decades, then centuries, watched by a midsummer day-moon and a berry-red winter sun, watched in all weathers, watched by deer who stand six feet tall at the withers, watched by the sentries of hawk and fox, watched in sleet and hail, watched by aurochs 11 feet long from muzzle to tail. 

This spring water fell first as snow. It settled, melted, seeped slow through the bedrock, then surfaced here as a spring—a sleepless flutter of silver movement, rippling the pool it has made with its whispers and mutters. 

The years below ground have clarified this water. It is transparent as glass and there is a blueness to it. North of here, the glaciers are in grudging retreat: vast crystal lobes and prows of ice, creaking as the warming climate hauls them back towards their last stand in the high places. The great ice-sheet leaves behind it scoured ground, scarred plains of bedrock, meltwater lakes and moraine. An immense weight has been lifted—and the land itself rises in relief. Trees stalk the glaciers northwards: first birch and hazel, then grey willow follows, filling the hollows. Down in the south, the frost has at last yielded its iron grip: water can soak deep into the earth, sate the aquifer—and cause this spring to flow at the foot of the hill. 

Spring becomes stream becomes river, and all three seek the sea.

Now it is 8,000 years ago—the time of the linden tree. A wildwood of lime thrives, thronging right to the coasts and tight to the pool where the spring emerges. Rain-fed, the spring’s stream surges seawards: gravity at work, or something like longing. The stream joins the river who winds in fat meanders to its mouth where at last—between bronze beaches—it reaches the ocean, and is havocked into waves by tide and wind’s commotion. 

Shadows shift between the trees around the spring: here are people for the first time, drawn to this place where water is born. The spring becomes a fixed point in their wanderings; a strange attractor in the loops and curls of their seasonal movements. Here they drink, eat, sleep, and use deer antlers to knap tools from knuckles of flint which are white without and dusky blue within. They haft blades to wooden shafts, craft awls and adzes, sharpen burins with which to engrave bone. They make cooking hearths from stones, leave them charred on the chalk. Their night-fires blaze in the great loneliness of this scarcely populated land, in the greater loneliness of the universe. One winter night, the aurora flickers across the heavens: shifting, radiant sky-rivers that flow and twine in currents, and pink-green light falls on the people’s upturned, astonished faces—before all is once more swallowed in the immense dark. 

Shadows shift between the trees around the spring: here are people for the first time, drawn to this place where water is born. 

History runs both fleet and slow, eddying back upon itself to shape spirals where flow meets counterflow. Life and death rise and fall—and the spring, as it has always done, organizes existence around itself, exerting something like will upon the land. Settlement begins: a causewayed enclosure is dug and fortified atop a hill overlooking the spring, big enough for ten families or so. Centuries pass. The enclosure is abandoned, overgrown, absorbed by green. New dead are buried in the old chalk, and grave goods with them: pots, beads, and the sweeping horns of an aurochs killed with a poleaxe that punched a hole in its skull right between its brimming eyes. 

The magic lantern flickers fast and faster. 2,000 years pass: the chalk hills are a stronghold again—the site of a huge ring-fort, ditched and palisaded. In the little wood, more springs have risen: nine of them, filling two pools. Water carriers beat a path into the earth, treading back and forth from fort to springs to fort, over and over. Water-worship floods the wider land. Springs and streams become sacred places, where water speaks in voices that cannot be understood or denied. In this age, rivers are seen and named plainly as gods: Dana (later the Danube); Deva (the Dee); Tamesa (the Thames); Sinnann (the Shannon). But if the stream who flows from the springs who pulse at the white hill’s foot is ever named, that name is lost to time.

Numberless nows become thens. The Pax Romana brings peace to the valley of the springs. Small farmers divide up the land. Their iron ploughs strike orange sparks from flints at dusk, shattering the stones so their sharp flakes lie indistinguishable from those knapped by human hand 4,000 or 5,000 years earlier. The Romans venerate the dryads of the trees and the naiads of the water. The water of each spring and stream is not interchangeable. Water’s source 

. Each river is differently spirited and differently tongued—and so must be differently honored. Far to the north, where glaciers once dragged their bellies, Batavian soldiers build a temple over a spring and dedicate it to the goddess Coventina, whose name they take from the Celtic word gover, meaning "little stream." Gifts are made to the water goddess, thousands of them: coins, beads of bone and lead and jet, a copper brooch of water serpents. As for the little springs with their lucid waters: each year a few legionaries turn from the straight and aggered road that runs a mile away, and come to lay down spear and dagger, slake their thirst and murmur prayers. They call the place Nona, after one of the goddesses of fate. In time, Nona will become Nine—Nine Wells. The springs of fate, where a river is born.

Time lapses, repeats, and the springs flow on, season after season. Blossom in succession: blackthorn, plum, hawthorn, dog rose, spindle. Leaves with their different greens: hornbeam, hazel, oak and maple. In the wood around the springs, owls call from ash and beech, each to each, year on year. Someone fastens an iron ladle on a long chain to a tree at the pool’s edge, so people can dip and drink the springs’ cold water.

Centuries pass. Plague moves westwards from Europe in long-legged leaps, reaches the region. Sharp-toothed and hungry, it stalks the young city of Cambridge which is now growing near the springs—and devours its people. Half of the city dies. Half of Europe dies. An old thorn tree flourishes by the springs, and petitioners come to tie rags of cloth to its branches, hoping the life of the waters will protect them from death. But the buboes still fester in their armpits and groins. Some of the dead are buried alone and with care; others are heaped together in trenches dug in churchyards. Still the springs run on, still the river seeks the sea.

It is the 1530s. Henry VIII has broken with Rome and overthrown the authority of the Pope. The Reformation is under way, but it is not only altars that are stripped and rood screens that are smashed. A purging fury is visited upon the animate land as well, bent on exorcizing 

. Vigilante groups fan out across the country. Running water—with its power to heal, bless and act—attracts particular persecution. Holy wells are filled and capped. A chapel built by a saint’s spring far in the west is destroyed, its attackers vowing to leave 

. Some of those who persist in making pilgrimages to springs and rivers are arrested and tried. Still people come, sometimes under darkness’s cover, and still they leave offerings. To many, the authorities’ suppression of spring sites simply confirms the numinous power of such water, welling mysteriously and wilfully from the earth as it does—as it has done for thousands of years.

Almost three centuries later a burningly handsome young poet with a limp, who is reputed to keep a bear in his university rooms, swims naked in a green pool of the river near the springs. Later he writes a poem describing a nightmare in which the sun was extinguished, and an icy Earth swung blind and blackening through space, and

 the rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, while nothing stirr’d within their silent depths

Horses give way to tractors on the slope of White Hill, as they now call the high ground beneath which the springs rise. War engulfs the world, threatens the land. The city’s people turn out in their thousands to dig a seven-mile trench into which the Wehrmacht’s tanks will supposedly plunge if they attack from the south. But the grey soldiers never make landfall, the trench is back-filled, and during the peace that follows a big new hospital arises near the springs.

The hardest winter on record comes in 1967: the springs freeze solid for six weeks, and tree branches break under the gathered weight of ice. The hardest drought comes in 1976: roads melt, scrub-fires rage and billions of aphids drift over fields and towns like plumes of green smoke. Drawn by the aphids, a plague of ladybirds swarms the south, settling in number upon people who suddenly find themselves shimmering with thousands of insects, as if they have grown their own elytra. The springs run dry for the first time since the retreat of the glaciers. And that August, at the height of the drought, a boy is born; he has very dark hair which soon turns flaxen.

The fast-growing city is thirsty for water: to flush, to wash, to drink. Boreholes are dug, the aquifer is tapped, and abstraction begins from stream and river. The water table drops as the crops, the taps and the hosepipes all take their share. Almost no one now comes to the springs, whose flow grows weaker and weaker. The stream falls into disregard, choked by algal blooms and duckweed. The river becomes slower, more polluted. The water company fears bad press if the springs run dry on their watch, so they send men with back-hoes and lengths of blue plastic piping to install an ‘augmentation scheme’: water from elsewhere in the system will be pumped into the springs to keep them alive.

Five hundred yards away in the hospital, scores of human bodies lie on ventilators, chests rising and falling to the steady rhythm of the pumps, the bleep of the heart monitors. Here in the little wood, the springs are also on life support.

The boy with flaxen hair, who is now a man, and a father for the first time, has moved to live on the edge of the city, a mile from the foot of White Hill. It takes him two years to discover the springs, forgotten as they have become, hidden as they are in a copse of beech and ash trees, tucked between fields of wheat and barley, close by the railway line. Quickly, the springs come to fascinate him. He starts to visit them often: walking, cycling or running up to the wood, sometimes three or four times a week. He likes to drink a handful of the spring water; it feels round on the tongue and has the silky chill of stone. He discovers that the stream who flows from the springs is only one of around two hundred chalk streams in the whole world; that a spring-fed chalk stream is among the rarest habitats on Earth. He discovers that on current trajectories of pollution and abstraction, the entire English chalk-stream network is unlikely to survive into the second half of the century.

Ten more years pass. The man, who is me, has three children now. It is the summer of 2022, the hottest on global record—the summer when all the rivers nearly die.

The rainlessness begins in June. Dry days lengthen into weeks then months of drought. Crops brittle in the fields; soil cracks into stars. Fierce light frames curtains and shutters from dawn until what passes for dusk. I dream often of rain; we all do.

One morning we wake to find that southerly gales have carried a fine red dust up from the Sahara and left a powdery film on cars, windows, and the leaves of plants. It gets in the mouth and tastes of exhaustion. The sun shines rust-orange through the haze, as in disaster movies or California.

Time falls out of joint. The mind fails to process the dissonance. The first of the year’s two autumns comes in early August, when the trees begin to shed their leaves from heat stress. Oaks and beeches stand bare-branched. Asphalt melts glossy on the pavements and sticks to our soles like black chewing gum. Each new day brings the same old weather. We wear the heat like a suit of armour.

The rivers have it worst. The Po dead-pools. Sections of the Rhine are no longer navigable to the shallow-draughted barges that keep Germany’s heartlands moving. In western Canada, spawning salmon are poached alive in gravel beds. On the banks of the Yangtze in Sichuan, parents sit their young children in buckets of water to keep them from heatstroke. In the borderlands of England and Wales, the run-off from giant chicken farms sickens the listless water of the River Wye.

The source of the River Thames has moved nine miles downstream.

As water levels drop worldwide, things that have been hidden begin to surface and some of them are marvelous: medieval Buddhist statues; the 100,000-year-old skull of a deer; and a Bronze Age city that discloses itself on the banks of the Tigris River in Iraq. Archaeologists hurry to the site, where they wander and map the city’s light-struck streets. They find five ceramic vessels containing more than a hundred unfired clay tablets, dense with script, and are astonished that these texts could have survived so long underwater.

Lake Mead on the Colorado River shrinks deep into its sandstone belly, leaving million-dollar speedboats beached at its margins. Wise-guy ghosts appear: a decayed body, dead from a single gunshot wound, stuffed into a 55-gallon steel barrel and wearing sneakers from the early 1980s. Six other human corpses are also exposed; one is mistaken at first for the skeleton of a bighorn sheep. In nearby Death Valley, men film themselves frying eggs on the sun-scorched bonnets of Lamborghinis, and monetize the footage.

And along the edges of the Elbe, the drought stones appear: river boulders that are exposed when water levels are desperately low. They carry carved dates and inscriptions from earlier drought years: 1417, 1473, 1616, 1830. Near Děčín, close to the Czech–German border, a stone emerges that bears a warning:

One day late in the long dry, I walk up to the springs with my younger son, Will.

I know what we will find that day and I cannot quite understand why we are going, but I hold hands with Will and together we cross the threshold between the hot light of the fields and the wood’s cool.

Nightshade, magpie cackle, flies scribbling the same message over and over again in floating patches of sun.

The springs have almost perished. Over-abstraction from the aquifer and a series of arid summers have done their preparatory work—and now the drought has struck. I’ve never seen the main pool so low. The hollow is choked and rank with leaves. There’s less than an inch of water in the streambed that leads from the springs, and no perceptible flow.

"Has the water died?" asks Will. He is only nine. It is painful for him to see this. He understands that there is something very wrong here, though he cannot name it. Something in the old power of this place, and its new injury, troubles him deeply.

"No, of course not," I say, but my certainty is a deceit.

As we leave the wood we see an egret, white as a slice of snow, standing stone-still in the exhausted outflow channel, as if its patience might somehow summon back the water’s life. ♦

Robert Macfarlane is the author of many celebrated books on nature, people, and place. Pioneer Works will host the U.S. launch of his latest, 

Is a River Alive?

Robert Macfarlane and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro at Pioneer Works, 2026.

We welcome novelists, scientists, and leading writers across disciplines to discuss new books shaping the cultural conversation at large.

Robert Macfarlane Says Rivers Are Alive

, Ben Lerner sat down with Alexandra Schwartz to discuss his haunting and inventive new novel. 

The story follows a narrator who travels to Providence, Rhode Island, to conduct what is meant to be the final interview with Thomas—a 90-year-old artistic giant, mentor, and the father of his college friend, Max. But when the narrator accidentally destroys his phone and arrives without a recording device, something he cannot bring himself to admit, the encounter takes on a strange, dreamlike quality. What unfolds is a layered exploration of memory, perception, and the uneasy dynamics between Thomas, Max, and the narrator. 

Their conversation delved into the novel’s central questions: how we navigate love and failure within families, what it means to care for others in a fractured world, and how constant digital distraction reshapes our attention and relationships. At once intimate and philosophical, 

 asks what it means to listen to others, to ourselves, and to the invisible ghosts and messages that surround us. ♦

To celebrate the release of Transcription, Ben Lerner sat down with Alexandra Schwartz to discuss his haunting and inventive new novel. 

Ben Lerner on Parents, Ghosts, and Transcription

What is consciousness, who has it, and why? How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like, when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? 

, Michael Pollan joined Janna Levin for a special conversation on the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life. ♦

For the launch of his new book, A World Appears, Michael Pollan joined Janna Levin for a special conversation on the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.

Michael Pollan on Feelings, Psychedelics, and AI

What makes a good spy? To celebrate the paperback launch of 

, Rachel Kushner joined PW Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro for a conversation on power, seduction, and her dazzling new noir. The novel follows “Sadie Smith”—an American agent of ruthless tactics and clean beauty—dispatched to France for dirty work. Kushner is one of today’s most influential writers, known for her singular works spanning art, motorcycles, politics, and prisons. Her cherished books have traveled from Cuba to California, from Italy's  Red Guards to ancient caves and anarchist collectives. ♦

What makes a good spy? To celebrate the paperback launch of Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner joined PW Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro for a conversation on power, seduction, and her dazzling new noir.

Rachel Kushner on What Makes a Good Spy

Why do we die, and what happens to our biologies when we do? PW’s Founding Director of Sciences Janna Levin hosted Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan to find out. He’s the author of 

Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

, and won the Nobel with his co-laureates for determining the atomic structure of the ribosome, a molecular machine that synthesizes proteins in all living cells. Together, Ramakrishnan and Levin discuss the biological mechanisms that initiate the process of dying and the ethical questions of immortality. ♦

Why do we die, and what happens to our biologies when we do? PW’s Founding Director of Sciences Janna Levin hosted Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan to find out. He’s the author of Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality, and won the Nobel with his co-laureates for determining the atomic structure of the ribosome, a molecular machine that synthesizes proteins in all living cells. 

Why We Die with Venki Ramakrishnan

How can we find meaning in an apparently meaningless cosmos? This fall, we were thrilled to host the launch of Simon Critchley’s latest book,

, with a special dialogue between the author and Dr. Cornel West. The longtime friends discussed nihilism, the boundaries of divinity and reason, and the "funky" stuff of mystical experience.

As the barbarism of our times reaches a fever pitch, Dr. West reminds us: "This is nothing new. We are a wretched species, no matter our color, gender, sexual orientation, or nation. And yet, we're also wonderful." ♦

, we welcome novelists, scientists, and leading writers across disciplines to discuss new books shaping the cultural conversation at large.

We were thrilled to host the launch of Simon Critchley’s latest book, On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy, with a special dialogue between the author and Dr. Cornel West.

Simon Critchley and Cornel West on Mysticism

 weaves oral history, hard-hitting journalism, and memoir into a powerful portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence. Raised between his Secwépemc and St’at’imc father’s heritage and the urban Native community of Oakland, California, NoiseCat explores his past and identity while bringing the traditional “Coyote Story”—the trickster tale of Indigenous creation—to life for contemporary readers. To launch the book at Pioneer Works, NoiseCat was joined in conversation by filmmaker, video artist, and photographer Sky Hopinka. ♦

Julian Brave NoiseCat explores his past and identity while bringing the traditional “Coyote Story”—the trickster tale of Indigenous creation—to life for contemporary readers. To celebrate his latest book, NoiseCat was joined in conversation by filmmaker, video artist, and photographer Sky Hopinka. 

Julian Brave NoiseCat on Indigenous History and Myth

In 1999, Brian Greene introduced legions to modern physics and the quest for ultimate understanding of the cosmos with his iconic bestseller, 

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

. In the fall of 2024, we were thrilled to launch his new edition, marking the tome’s 25th anniversary with a captivating conversation between Greene and PW's Director of Sciences, Janna Levin. The renowned physicists came together to celebrate and discuss the latest theoretical developments of the past quarter-century—exploring black holes, God, dark energy, string theory, and the limits of mathematics. ♦

In 1999, Brian Greene introduced legions to modern physics and the quest for ultimate understanding of the cosmos with his iconic bestseller. In the fall of 2024, we were thrilled to launch his new edition, marking the tome’s 25th anniversary with a captivating conversation between Greene and PW's Director of Sciences, Janna Levin. 

Brian Greene's Elegant Universe, 25 Years Later

 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

 helped revolutionize how we understand sexuality, gender, and the performative dimensions of identity. In the decades since, Butler has become one of our most trenchant and iconic public intellectuals—a thinker who has made countless timely and urgent interventions on questions of violence and peace, language and war, and precarity and cohabitation. Now, in 

 (2024), Butler returns to the topic that made their name, to illuminate how “anti-gender ideology movements” have become central to reactionary politics and rising authoritarianism worldwide.

In a special launch event, co-presented by Pioneer Works and Dia Art Foundation, Jack Halberstam joined Judith Butler on stage at Dia Chelsea to discuss their new book, what it’s like to be burned in effigy, and so much more. ♦

Jack Halberstam joins Judith Butler at Dia Chelsea to discuss their new book, what it’s like to be burned in effigy, and so much more.

Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam in Conversation

“Looking into Prince’s eyes,” writes Hilton Als in 

, “must be like looking at the world. Or more specifically, the world of one Black man loving another.” In this new, brilliant paean to the late, great, purple genius of music, Als takes an oblique inventory of himself—and of the culture that made them both, in all its racial, sexual, and emotive contours and contradictions.

The writer talks to Broadcast's very own Joshua Jelly-Schapiro about Prince’s outsize oeuvre and legacy, criticism as art, and how Als' own evolving practice, as a writer and curator alike, has shaped his singular creative voice.♦



The writer talks to Broadcast's very own Joshua Jelly-Schapiro about Prince’s outsize oeuvre and legacy, criticism as art, and how Als' own evolving practice, as a writer and curator alike, has shaped his singular creative voice.

Hilton Als: My Pinup

“The most interesting ideas are heresies.” So said Susan Sontag, a writer who refused party lines always, and whose work changed how we think about photography and identity, gender and metaphor, performance and play. 

—a new collection of Sontag’s seminal essays—emphasizes her ferocious intellect and ideological incongruities in equal measure.

To celebrate the book’s release by Picador, Pioneer Works hosted a conversation between three writers—Merve Emre, Sigrid Nunez, and Doreen St. Félix—to examine Sontag’s complex relationship towards womanhood. The three probe the writer’s refractive legacies, revealing her keen resonance in our new era of women watching women. 

To celebrate the release of "On Women" from Picador, Pioneer Works hosted a conversation between three writers—Merve Emre, Sigrid Nunez, and Doreen St. Félix—to examine Sontag’s complex relationship towards womanhood. The three probe the writer’s refractive legacies, revealing her keen resonance in our new era of women watching women. 

Merve Emre, Sigrid Nunez, and Doreen St. Félix on Susan Sontag Now

Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal argues that the study of our closest genetic relatives (an absolutely crucial way we make sense of our own biology) has been misguided by patriarchal assumptions. Primatologists, he says, have historically focused on masculine and feminine archetypes, and have systematically overlooked all who don’t fit this mold. In his experience, these outliers—gender non-conforming apes—comprise between 5-10% of chimpanzee populations. Unlike in human society, the chimpanzees are fully accepting of this diversity. 

He is joined by cinema icon Isabella Rossellini—creator of the natural sciences video series 

, with a master’s degree in animal behavior and conservation—to discuss his most recent book, 

. Together, they explore the matriarchal hierarchies of the ape kingdom, articulating all that we may learn about sex, gender, and nature from our simian cousins. This is inspiring without being maudlin: instead of looking to chimpanzees to justify who we are, we may look to bonobos to think about who we could be. ♦

Primatologist Frans de Waal is joined by cinema icon Isabella Rossellini to discuss his most recent book, "Different." Together, they explore the matriarchal hierarchies of the ape kingdom, articulating all that we may learn about sex, gender, and nature from our simian cousins.

Frans de Waal

Primatologist Frans de Waal in Conversation with Isabella Rossellini

Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences? According to acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, there may be. In his latest book, 

The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science

, and his new public television mini-series, 

SEARCHING: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science

, Lightman draws on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists and asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience. 

Follow Alan Lightman on this enlightening journey that reveals spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human. Lightman is joined in conversation with Tim McHenry, Deputy Executive Director of the Rubin Museum of Art. ♦

In conversation with Tim McHenry, Alan Lightman illuminates our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience.

Alan Lightman

Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality in the Age of Science

On the occasion of the publication of his evocative new book, 

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion

, Sean Carroll takes us on a deep dive into the physics that pulls back the veil of mystery from the most complex ideas in the field. 

Sean Carroll is a Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and the creator of the wildly popular YouTube series "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe," after which the book is named. Attracting fans eager to expand their minds, Carroll has a special knack for explaining the most expansive concepts in an entertaining, witty, and uniquely lucid way. In this author's view, the foundational concepts of classical physics from Newton to Einstein are as worthy of our gaze as the Mona Lisa, and he is committed to making these ideas accessible to all. ♦

On the occasion of the publication of his evocative new book, "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion," Sean Carroll takes us on a deep dive into the physics that pulls back the veil of mystery from the most complex ideas in the field.

Sean Carroll

Physicist Sean Carroll on "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe" | Author Talks

Sean Carroll on the Biggest Ideas in the Universe

Elif Batuman joins Joshua Jelly-Schapiro to discuss Batuman’s new book 

, a novel that has given us new ways to think—and laugh—about how books shape our lives. 

, Batuman introduced us to Selin, a reluctant protagonist and unforgettable narrator searching her way through freshman year at Harvard, grappling with the confusions of first love and the growing realization that she is doomed to become a writer. In 

, it’s sophomore year and Selin’s quest for self-knowledge finds her trying to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. But then she sets out, with a prod from Kierkegaard, to seek the kinds of experiences she’ll need in order to ponder a lasting question: how does one live a life as interesting as a novel—a life worthy of becoming a novel—without going crazy? ♦

Elif Batuman joins Joshua Jelly-Schapiro to discuss Batuman’s new book Either/Or, a novel that has given us new ways to think—and laugh—about how books shape our lives. 

Elif Batuman on Life as Literature

In the eyes of eighteen-year old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them.

On September 28, 2022, Pioneer Works hosted the launch of 

 staff writer Hua Hsu's acclaimed memoir of friendship, music, art, and grief, 

. The event featured a special conversation between Hsu and one of his literary heroes, Lucy Sante. ♦

In the eyes of eighteen-year old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them.

On September 28, 2022, Pioneer Works hosted the launch of New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu's acclaimed memoir of friendship, music, art, and grief, Stay True. The event featured a special conversation between Hsu and one of his literary heroes, Lucy Sante.

Hua Hsu and Lucy Sante

Stay True: A Conversation with Hua Hsu and Lucy Sante

Journalist and author Zoe Mendelson joins in conversation with Radiolab’s Molly Webster to discuss Mendelson’s new book 

. Written by the creators of the popular website and illustrated by Maria Conejo, this book on the pussy is based on “extensive reviews of peer-reviewed science that address old myths, confusing inconsistencies, and the influence of gender narratives on scientific research—always in simple, joyful language.” In the conversation, Mendelson and Webster discuss the book’s genesis (an inquiry into squirting), the importance of democratizing science, and how to create an inclusive feminist discourse spanning US-Mexico borders. ♦

Journalist and author Zoe Mendelson joins in conversation with Radiolab’s Molly Webster to discuss Mendelson’s new book Pussypedia. Written by the creators of the popular website and illustrated by Maria Conejo, this book on the pussy is based on “extensive reviews of peer-reviewed science that address old myths, confusing inconsistencies, and the influence of gender narratives on scientific research—always in simple, joyful language.” In the conversation, Mendelson and Webster discuss the book’s genesis (an inquiry into squirting), the importance of democratizing science, and how to create an inclusive feminist discourse spanning US-Mexico borders.

Pussypedia Author Zoe Mendelson in Conversation with Molly Webster

Neuroscientist, psychologist, and author, Dr. Carl Hart urges us to change the way we think about drug use. In his new book Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, published January 2021, he argues that the demonization (and profiteering) of drug use causes more harm than the drugs themselves—that as responsible American adults, we have an inalienable right to pursue happiness, and if that pursuit includes responsible drug use, we should be able to do that. He joins Janna Levin to discuss his recent book.

Dr. Hart is the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Colombia University. He is also Ziff Professor of Psychology in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University.  In 2014, Dr. Hart was awarded the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for his book High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery.

Janna Levin is Chair and Director of Science at Pioneer Works and Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Barnard College of Columbia University.

Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Dr. Carl Hart in Conversation with Janna Levin 

Dr. Carl Hart on Drug Use for Grown-Ups

Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God. Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he felt certain that they must have had a designer. Learning about the theory of evolution changed his mind. In his 2019 book, Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism, Dawkins provides an accessible primer to atheism for readers looking to rethink some of the big questions that shaped his own path towards seeing the magnificence of a world without God.

In twelve fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer—the improbability and beauty of the “bottom-up programming” that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings—and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world’s religions: Do you believe in God? Which one? Is the Bible a “Good Book”? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? Dissecting everything from Abraham’s abuse of Isaac to the construction of a snowflake, Outgrowing God is a concise, provocative guide to thinking for yourself.