2019 Season
John Leland: Happiness, Aging, and the Lessons of the Oldest Old
July 25, 2019
`What's the secret to living a fuller, more content life? For John Leland, an award-winning New York Times reporter and author of the New York Times bestseller "Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year among the Oldest Old," the answer came from an unexpected place: from the lives of six people age 85 and up. He expected them to educate him in the hardships of old age. Instead, they taught him lessons of resilience, gratitude, purpose and perspective that apply to people of any age. All had lost something – spouses, mobility, their keen eyesight or hearing. But none had lost everything. And they defined their lives by the things they could still do, not by what they had lost.
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Pardeep Kaleka: Healing after Hate
August 29, 2019
Over the years, mass shootings and hate crimes have been on the rise in the U.S. As a survivor of one of the deadliest race-based hate crimes committed by an affiliated white supremacist, Pardeep will share his personal journey and the communal impact that violence has had on our collective psyche and the increased importance to address all violence from a holistic public health framework.
Katherine Cramer: Listening Well in a World that Turns Away
September 26, 2019
Katherine “Kathy” Cramer is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on the way people in the United States make sense of politics and their place in it. She is known for her innovative approach to the study of public opinion, in which she uses methods like inviting herself into the conversations of groups of people to listen to the way they understand public affairs. She is the author most recently of The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness and the Rise of Scott Walker.
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