Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham is at the helm of a five-part audio docuseries exploring five defining moments when Americans were forced to confront crises of historic magnitude, offering a portrait of the events and an overview of how they impacted the economy and culture, and how the country came together. Guests include the likes of presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and author and former CNN boss Walter Isaacson, both of whom you might have seen right here at A&L.

New Yorker writer, author and celebrated historian Jill Lepore is host of the new podcast The Last Archive, tracing the history of evidence, proof and knowledge in troubled epistemological times. Produced in the style of a classic 1930s radio drama, it's a show about how we know what we know and why it seems, lately, as if we don’t know anything at all. Lepore takes listeners around the country – and across time – in search of an answer to the question: Who killed truth? Just launched, season one begins with a murder in northern Vermont in 1919 and ends in Silicon Valley in 2020.

In his 2017 lecture presented by A&L, historian, philosopher and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari examines themes from his bestselling book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, looking to the future to explore how global power might shift as the principal force of evolution – natural selection – is replaced by intelligent design. How does Harari's insight help us draw lessons from what we are experiencing today?  

Video available through Friday, May 29, 2020.

Be a fly on the wall in this week's virtual A&L outreach session featuring Ranky Tanky’s Clay Ross. He performed tracks from the 2020 Grammy Award-winning Gullah band's repertoire while providing a fascinating history lesson on Gullah music, culture and influences for students in UCSB's World Music class. 

Congratulations, Roman!

A&L's Associate Director Roman Baratiak will retire this month after more than four decades with the organization. He started as a work-study student in our ticket office while an undergrad in UCSB's Environmental Science program and went on to bring Nobel Prize winners, esteemed authors and poets, scientists, filmmakers and more to Santa Barbara. 

We asked him to reflect on the thousands of public lectures and film screenings, no small order when you consider the list of luminaries he's brought to Santa Barbara. Here's Roman's shortlist of career highlights:   

• Enjoying 29 fun-filled annual editions of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour with Santa Barbara’s large and enthusiastic outdoor adventure community. 
• Curating and hosting the amazing free Summer Film Series for thousands of people under the stars at the Sunken Gardens of the gorgeous SB County Courthouse. 
• Having the honor to be on the A&L team producing public events with Nobel Peace Prize laureates like the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Malala Yousafzai, Elie Wiesel and many more. 
• Meeting hundreds of poets and writers, from James Baldwin and Margaret Atwood to Toni Morrison and Octavio Paz, and from Allen Ginsberg and Amy Tan to Ray Bradbury and Susan Sontag. And equally gifted Santa Barbara-connected writers like T.C. Boyle, Gretel Ehrlich, the astounding Barry Spacks and the incomparable Pico Iyer. 
• Presenting films from every corner of the world and brilliant thinkers and doers on every theme imaginable. I’ve also been thrilled to collaborate with outstanding UCSB faculty and staff on impactful and important programs inside and outside the classroom. 
• Plus I have had the privilege to work with three dedicated and supportive executive directors, amazing hard-working A&L staff colleagues and thousands of work-study students. And acquired tremendous respect for generous donors, loyal patrons, talented local journalists and creative leaders of local non-profits.