Family Service Center (FSC)

[FAN] We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Ph.D.
2024-04-26 12:30 - 14:00 (America/Chicago) | Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practic, 969 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Friday, April 26, 2024, 12:30 PM, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, 969 E. 60th St. Chicago, IL 60637. Interviewer: Lisa L. Moore, Ph.D., LICSW. NOTE: REGISTRATION REQUIRED. CEUs available. Information on registration website. BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY to the first 200 attendees, one per household.
REGISTER HERE: https://bit.ly/GlaudeFANCrown
We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Ph.D., one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Dr. Glaude shows how ordinary people have the capacity to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires, rather than outsourcing their needs to leaders who purportedly represent them.
The book begins with Dr. Glaude’s unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency had become a disciplining tool to narrow legitimate forms of Black political dissent. This narrowing continues to undermine the well-being of Black communities. In response, Dr. Glaude guides us away from enthusiastic reliance on elected leaders and full surrender to a belief in unchanging political structures. He weaves anecdotes about his own evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Sheldon Wolin, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison.
Dr. Glaude (FAN ’20) is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University and the author of several books, including Democracy in Black and the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, winner of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Book Prize.
Dr. Glaude will be in conversation with Lisa L. Moore, Ph.D., LICSW, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master’s Program in Social Work, Social Policy, and Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. She has worked in higher education for over 25 years as an administrator and faculty member.

[FAN] The Civil Rights Act at 60: Is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream for Chicago and the Country Attainable?
2024-04-29 19:00 | Evanston Township High School Auditorium, 1600 Dodge Ave, Evanston, IL, 60201
Monday, April 29, 2024, 7:00 PM, The Civil Rights Act at 60: Is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Dream for Chicago and the Country Attainable?, Evanston Township High School Auditorium, 1600 Dodge Ave, Evanston, IL 60201. Interviewer: Natalie Y. Moore. NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
Sixty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pushed for the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the signature legislation of the Civil Rights Movement. With that victory, Dr. King turned his attention north, where he helped lead the Chicago Freedom Movement, a coalition of organizations that addressed the range of ills connected to residential segregation and economic inequality in Chicago. Though shortlived, the Chicago Freedom Movement is credited with inspiring the 1968 Fair Housing Act. This event takes stock of Dr. King’s legacy in Chicago and the nation, offering views on how far we’ve come, what work remains, and how best to carry out that work.
For this lively and wide-ranging discussion, FAN is collaborating with the brand-new Stanford Institute for Advancing Just Societies, led by founding co-directors Tomás R. Jiménez, Ph.D. and Brian Lowery, Ph.D. (FAN ’23). Together, we are honored to welcome two acclaimed leaders as panelists: award-winning author Lerone A. Martin, Ph.D., Professor in Religious Studies and African & African American Studies at Stanford University and director of Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, and Vaughn Bryant, executive director of Chicago-based Metropolitan Peace Initiatives (MPI), an organization that provides services to heal communities at the highest risk for gun violence. MPI’s core specialties include the Metropolitan Peace Academy, behavioral health, workforce readiness, legal aid, and street outreach supervision.
Moderating the panel will be Natalie Y. Moore, an award-winning journalist covering segregation and inequality for WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR affiliate. Her reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice, and violence and her work has been broadcast on the BBC and Marketplace, and on NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. She is the author of The Billboard and The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.
NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED. This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded but not live streamed and will be available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations David Montero
2024-05-06 19:00 | Zoom
Monday, May 6, 2024, 7:00 PM, The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations, a FAN webinar featuring David Montero, in conversation with Michael Eric Dyson, Ph.D.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/MonteroFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of The Stolen Wealth of Slavery from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Mr. Montero and Prof. Dyson that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
In this timely, powerful, investigative history, The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations, Emmy Award-nominated journalist David Montero follows the trail of the massive wealth amassed by Northern corporations throughout America’s history of enslavement. It has long been maintained by many that the North wasn’t complicit in the horrors of slavery. The truth, however, is that large Northern banks—including well-known institutions like Citibank, Bank of New York, and Bank of America—were critical to the financing of slavery; that they saw their fortunes rise dramatically from their involvement in the business of enslavement; and that white business leaders and their surrounding communities created enormous wealth from the enslavement and abuse of Black bodies.
Most white Southern enslavers were not rich—many were barely making ends meet—with Northern businesses benefitting the most from bondage-based profits. And some of the very Northerners who would be considered pro-Union during the Civil War were in fact anti-abolition, seeing the institution of slavery as being in their best financial interests, and only supporting the Union once they realized doing so would be good for business. It is a myth that the wealth generated from slavery vanished after the war. Rather, it helped finance the industrialization of the country, and became part of the bedrock of the growth of modern corporations, helping to transform America into a global economic behemoth.
In this remarkable book, Montero elegantly and meticulously details rampant Northern investment in slavery. He showcases exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is owed, calling for corporate reparations as he details contemporary movements to hold companies accountable for past atrocities.
Montero will be in conversation with Michael Eric Dyson, Ph.D., Distinguished University Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University and author of 25 books, including 7 New York Times bestsellers, among them Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World R. Jisung Park, PH.D.
2024-05-08 19:00 | Zoom
Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 7:00 PM, Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World, a FAN webinar featuring R. Jisung Park, Ph.D., in conversation with Robert Frank, Ph.D. (FAN ’22)
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/ParkFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Slow Burn from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Prof. Park that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
It’s hard not to feel anxious about the problem of climate change, especially if we think of it as an impending planetary catastrophe. In Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World, R. Jisung Park, Ph.D., an environmental and labor economist at the University of Pennsylvania, encourages us to view climate change through a different lens: one that focuses less on the possibility of mass climate extinction in a theoretical future, and more on the everyday implications of climate change here and now.
Drawing on a wealth of new data and cutting-edge economics, Prof. Park shows how climate change headlines often miss some of the most important costs. When wildfires blaze, what happens to people downwind of the smoke? When natural disasters destroy buildings and bridges, what happens to educational outcomes? Park explains how climate change operates as the silent accumulation of a thousand tiny conflagrations: imperceptibly elevated health risks spread across billions of people; pennies off the dollar of productivity; fewer opportunities for upward mobility.
By investigating how the physical phenomenon of climate change interacts with social and economic institutions, Park illustrates how climate change already affects everyone, and may act as an amplifier of inequality. Wealthier households and corporations may adapt quickly, but, without targeted interventions, less advantaged communities may not. Viewing climate change as a slow and unequal burn comes with an important silver lining. It puts dollars and cents behind the case for aggressive emissions cuts and helps identify concrete steps that can be taken to better manage its adverse effects.
Prof. Park received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, where he was an NSF Fellow, and master’s degrees in Environmental Change and Management (MSc) and Development Economics (MSc) from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He will be in conversation with Robert Frank, Ph.D. (FAN ’22), the H. J. Louis Professor Emeritus of Management and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] The Algebra of Wealth: Achieving Economic Security Scott Galloway
2024-05-13 12:30 | Zoom
Monday, May 13, 2024, 12:30 PM, The Algebra of Wealth: Achieving Economic Security, a FAN webinar featuring Scott Galloway, in conversation with Adam Alter, Ph.D. (FAN ’17, ‘23).
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/GallowayFANWebinar
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY! We are giving away copies of The Algebra of Wealth to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page.
Today’s workers have more opportunities and mobility than any generation before. They also face unprecedented challenges, including inflation, labor and housing shortages, and climate volatility. Even the notion of retirement is undergoing a profound rethink, as our life spans extend and our relationship with work evolves. In this environment, the tried-and-true financial advice our parents followed no longer applies. It’s time for a new playbook.
In The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security, Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a serial entrepreneur, lays bare the rules of financial success in today’s economy. In his characteristic unvarnished, no-BS style, he explains what you need to know to better your chances for economic security no matter what.
Galloway has founded nine companies, including Prophet, RedEnvelope, L2, and Section, where he also teaches. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona, and Adrift: America in 100 Charts. He has served on the boards of directors of The New York Times Company, Urban Outfitters, University of California/Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Panera Bread, and Ledger. He has won multiple Webby and Best Podcast awards, and his books have been translated into 28 languages. Across his Prof G and Pivot podcasts, No Mercy/No Malice newsletter, and his YouTube channel, Galloway reaches millions.
Galloway will be in conversation with Adam Alter, Ph.D. (FAN ’17, ’23), Professor of Marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow, with an affiliated appointment in the New York University Psychology Department. Prof. Alter is the author of multiple bestsellers, including Anatomy of a Breakthrough, Irresistible, and Drunk Tank Pink.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
2024-05-15 19:00 | Zoom
Wednesday, May 15, 2024, 7:00 PM, The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder, a FAN webinar featuring Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D., in conversation with Liz Gerber, Ph.D.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/SuttonFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of The Friction Project from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Prof. Sutton and Prof. Gerber that will start immediately after the webinar. AND: FAN will gift a second copy of the book to After-Hours guests! Details on the webinar registration page.
Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. In The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder, co-authors Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D. and Huggy Rao, Ph.D. draw from seven years of hands-on research to teach us how to become “friction fixers.”
The Friction Project unpacks how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others’ time. The authors provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their “help pyramid” shows how friction fixers do their work, from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now, so they feel less threatening, to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams.
Prof. Sutton is an organizational psychologist and Stanford professor (emeritus) who studies, writes, teaches, and speaks about the interplay between people and organizations. He has written more than 200 academic and practical articles and is a New York Times bestselling author of eight books. He is a co-founder of the Stanford d. School, Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and Center for Work, Technology and Organization.
Prof. Sutton will be in conversation with Liz Gerber, Ph.D. (FAN ’13, ’16), a professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University, co-director of Northwestern’s Center for Human Computer Interaction + Design, and faculty founder of Design for America.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (And Why That's a Good Thing) Sal Khan
2024-05-20 19:00 | Zoom
Monday, May 20, 2024, 7:00 PM, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (And Why That’s a Good Thing), a FAN webinar featuring Sal Khan, in conversation with Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. (FAN ’12, ‘16).
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/KhanFANWebinar
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY! We are giving away copies of Brave New Words to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page.
Whether we like it or not, the AI revolution is coming to education. In Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (And Why That’s a Good Thing), Salman Khan, the visionary behind Khan Academy, explores how artificial intelligence and GPT technology will transform learning, and offers a road map for teachers, parents, and students to navigate this exciting (and sometimes intimidating) new world.
A pioneer in the field of education technology, Khan examines the ins and outs of these cutting-edge tools and how they will revolutionize the way we learn and teach. For parents concerned about their children’s success, Khan illustrates how AI can personalize learning by adapting to each student’s individual pace and style, identifying strengths and areas for improvement, and offering tailored support and feedback to complement traditional classroom instruction. Khan emphasizes that embracing AI in education is not about replacing human interaction but enhancing it with customized and accessible learning tools that encourage creative problem-solving skills and prepare students for an increasingly digital world.
But Brave New Words is not just about technology—it’s about what this technology means for our society, and the practical implications for administrators, guidance counselors, and hiring managers who can harness the power of AI in education and the workplace. Khan also delves into the ethical and social implications of AI and large language models, offering thoughtful insights into how we can use these tools to build a more accessible education system for students around the world.
Khan will be in conversation with Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. (FAN ’12, ’16), co-founder of Character Lab, Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, founding faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics, and author of the international bestseller Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters Charan Ranganath, Ph.D.
2024-05-21 19:00 | Zoom
Tuesday, May 21, 2024, 7:00 PM, Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters, a FAN webinar featuring Charan Ranganath, Ph.D., in conversation with Gloria Mark, Ph.D. (FAN ’24)
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/RanganathFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Why We Remember from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Prof. Ranganath and Prof. Mark that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters, pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath, Ph.D. radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future.
As Prof. Ranganath shows, memory is a highly transformative force that shapes how we experience the world in often invisible and sometimes destructive ways. Knowing this can help us with daily remembering tasks, like finding our keys, and with the challenge of memory loss as we age. What’s more, when we work with the brain’s ability to learn and reinterpret past events, we can heal trauma, shed our biases, learn faster, and grow in self-awareness.
Ranganath is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, he has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling, and studies of patients with memory disorders.
Prof. Ranganath will be in conversation with Gloria Mark, Ph.D. (FAN ’24), Chancellor’s Professor Emerita at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Prof. Mark has been a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research since 2012. Her recent book is Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity, named by The Globe and Mail as the #1 Best Business and Management book of 2023, and chosen as the Season 20 selection of the Next Big Idea Book Club.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Thinking with Your Hands: How Gestures Shape Our Thoughts Susan Goldin-Meadow, Ph.D.
2024-05-23 19:00 | Zoom
Thursday, May 23, 2024, 7:00 PM, Thinking with Your Hands: How Gestures Shape Our Thoughts, a FAN webinar featuring Susan Goldin-Meadow, Ph.D., in conversation with Carol Dweck, Ph.D. (FAN ’11, ‘14).
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/SGMFANWebinar
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY! We are giving away copies of Thinking with Your Hands to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page.
We all know people who talk with their hands—but do they know what they’re saying with them? Our gestures can reveal and contradict us and express thoughts we may not even know we’re thinking.
In Thinking with Your Hands: How Gestures Shape Our Thoughts, esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow, Ph.D., the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago, argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias, or how the shape of a student’s gestures can track their mastery of a new concept—even when they’re still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child development milestones, to what’s admissible in a court of law, to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation.
Prof. Goldin-Meadow is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, received the William James award for lifetime achievement in basic research from the Association for Psychological Society, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.
Goldin-Meadow will be in conversation with Carol Dweck, Ph.D. (FAN ’11, ’14), the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of psychology. Prof. Dweck is the author of the widely-acclaimed bestseller Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, which has been translated into over 40 languages. Her pioneering research on mindsets has led to important innovations in schools and businesses worldwide, innovations that have increased creativity, productivity, inclusion, and equity.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery Lawrence Ingrassia
2024-05-28 19:00 | Zoom
Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 7:00 PM, A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery, a FAN webinar featuring Lawrence Ingrassia, in conversation with Joanne Lipman.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/IngrassiaFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of A Fatal Inheritance from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Mr. Ingrassia that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
In A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery, Lawrence Ingrassia weaves his moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, delivering an intimate, gripping tale that sits at the intersection of memoir and medical thriller. Ingrassia lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to cancer—different cancers developing at different points throughout their lives. And while highly unusual, his family is not the only one to wonder whether their heartbreak is the result of unbelievable bad luck, or if there might be another explanation.
Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, Ingrassia takes us from the 1960s—when Frederick Pei Li, MD and Joseph Fraumeni Jr., MD first met, not yet knowing that they would help make a groundbreaking discovery that would affect cancer patients for decades to come—to present day, as Ingrassia and countless others continue to unpack and build upon Li and Fraumeni’s initial discoveries, and to understand what this means for their families.
Ingrassia is an author and award-winning journalist, having worked as a senior editor at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times before retiring from newspapers in 2017. In his decades-long newspaper career, journalists directed by him won five Pulitzer Prizes – for national reporting, explanatory reporting, international reporting, and commentary – as well as Polk, Loeb and other awards.
Ingrassia will be in conversation with Joanne Lipman, a pioneering journalist and the bestselling author of Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work and the No. 1 bestseller That’s What She Said: What Men and Women Need to Know About Working Together. She has served as Editor-in-Chief of USA Today, USA Today Network, Conde Nast Portfolio, and The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Journal, leading those organizations to six Pulitzer Prizes. She is also an on-air CNBC contributor and Yale University journalism lecturer.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People David Yeager, Ph.D.
2024-09-09 19:00 | Evanston Township High School Auditorium, 1600 Dodge Ave, Evanston, IL, 60201
Monday, September 9, 2024, 7:00 PM, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, Evanston Township High School Auditorium, 1600 Dodge Ave., Door 6, Evanston, IL 60201. BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY of 10 to 25 at the event, while supplies last.
No registration required.
“David Yeager has spent his career designing experiments that inspire students to aim higher, persist longer, and achieve more. His engaging, data-driven book is filled with practical insights to turn you into a better motivator.” – Adam Grant, Ph.D. (FAN ’14, ’16)
“10 to 25 offers actionable advice and real-life storytelling that’s beautifully written, comprehensive, and filled with warmth.” – Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. (FAN ’12, ’16)
Neuroscientists have discovered that around age ten, puberty spurs the brain to crave socially rewarding experiences, such as pride, admiration, and respect, and to become highly averse to social pain, such as humiliation or shame. As a result, young people are subtly reading between the lines of everything we say, trying to interpret the hidden implications of our words to find out if we are disrespecting or honoring them. Surprisingly, this sensitivity to status and respect continues into the mid-twenties. In his first book, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, acclaimed developmental psychologist David Yeager, Ph.D. (FAN ’16) helps adults develop an ear for the difference between the right and wrong way to respect young people and avoid frustrating patterns of miscommunication and conflict.
Yeager explains how to adopt what he terms the mentor mindset, which is a leadership style attuned to young people’s need for status and respect. Anyone can adopt the mentor mindset by following a few highly effective and easy-to-learn practices such as validating young people’s perspectives (rather than dismissing them), asking them questions (rather than telling them what to do), being transparent about your beliefs and goals (rather than assuming that they will accurately guess your thoughts), and holding them to high standards (rather than coddling them). Yeager’s pioneering research and interventions have shown these practices reduce a wide variety of behavior problems, including school dropout, unhealthy eating, stress, purposelessness, mental health problems, and more.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded but not live streamed and will be available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People David Yeager, Ph.D.
2024-09-11 19:00 | Lake Forest High School, 1285 N. McKinley Rd, Lake Forest, IL, 60045, United States
Wednesday, September 11, 2024, 7:00 PM, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, Lake Forest High School, Raymond Moore Auditorium, 1285 N. McKinley Rd., Lake Forest, IL 60045. BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY of 10 to 25 at the event, while supplies last.
REGISTRATION REQUIRED: www.bit.ly/YeagerLFHS
“David Yeager has spent his career designing experiments that inspire students to aim higher, persist longer, and achieve more. His engaging, data-driven book is filled with practical insights to turn you into a better motivator.” – Adam Grant, Ph.D. (FAN ’14, ’16)
“10 to 25 offers actionable advice and real-life storytelling that’s beautifully written, comprehensive, and filled with warmth.” – Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. (FAN ’12, ’16)
Neuroscientists have discovered that around age ten, puberty spurs the brain to crave socially rewarding experiences, such as pride, admiration, and respect, and to become highly averse to social pain, such as humiliation or shame. As a result, young people are subtly reading between the lines of everything we say, trying to interpret the hidden implications of our words to find out if we are disrespecting or honoring them. Surprisingly, this sensitivity to status and respect continues into the mid-twenties. In his first book, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, acclaimed developmental psychologist David Yeager, Ph.D. (FAN ’16) helps adults develop an ear for the difference between the right and wrong way to respect young people and avoid frustrating patterns of miscommunication and conflict.
For this event, Yeager will first offer brief remarks and will then be in conversation with Matthew Montgomery, Ph.D., superintendent of Lake Forest School Districts 67 and 115 in Illinois. A proponent of lifelong learning, Dr. Montgomery is also the Lead Superintendent for Cohort and Partner Connections with the School Superintendents Association (AASA), and co-chairs the AASA STEM Leadership Consortium.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will not be recorded or live streamed.

[FAN] Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math Shalinee Sharma
2024-09-16 19:00 | Zoom
Monday, September 16, 2024, 7:00 PM, Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math, a FAN webinar featuring Shalinee Sharma in conversation with Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. (FAN ’12, ‘16).
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/SharmaFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Math Mind from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Sharma that will start immediately after the webinar. AND: FAN will gift a second copy of the book to After-Hours guests! Details on the webinar registration page.
In her new book, Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math, Shalinee Sharma, one of the world’s top experts on math learning, shows how complex problem solving and puzzle solving, abstract and logical thinking, developing fluency with numbers, and cultivating persistence in math are crucial skills for success that can be taught to everyone and how math, far from being a dry, dull exercise, shares common ground with art and creativity. She also debunks the myths that prevent us from learning and enjoying math, with chapters dedicated to the three roadblocks that discourage adults and kids from learning.
Sharma is the CEO and cofounder of Zearn, a nonprofit educational organization behind the top-rated math-learning platform used by one in four elementary-school students and by one million middle-school students nationwide. In addition to her role at Zearn, she serves on the Braven board of directors, is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow, and serves as cochair of the Brown University Advisory Council for the College. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Brown University. A child of refugees, Sharma is passionate about universal access to an excellent education.
Sharma will be in conversation with Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. (FAN ’12, ’16), co-founder of Character Lab, the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, founding faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics, and author of the international bestseller Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price Anthony Abraham Jack, Ph.D.
2024-09-25 19:00 | Zoom
Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 7:00 PM, Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price, a FAN webinar featuring Anthiny Abraham Jack, Ph.D. in conversation with Jeff Selingo.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/JackFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Class Dismissed from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Jack and Selingo that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
“Jack powerfully illuminates the aspects of the student experience that exist beyond the gloss of the university brochure, showing how inequality reverberates both on and off campus and providing readers with specific frameworks for what equitable university policies could look like.” – Clint Smith, Ph.D. (FAN ’23)
Elite colleges are boasting unprecedented numbers with respect to diversity, with some schools admitting their first majority-minority classes. But when the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial unrest gripped the world, schools scrambled to figure out what to do with the diversity they so fervently recruited. And disadvantaged students suffered. In his new book, Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price, Anthony Abraham Jack, Ph.D. exposes how woefully unprepared colleges were to support these students and shares their stories of how they were left to weather the storm alone and unprotected.
Drawing on the firsthand experiences of students from all walks of life at elite colleges, Jack reveals the hidden and unequal worlds students navigated before and during the pandemic closures and upon their return to campus. He shows how COVID-19 exacerbated the very inequalities that universities ignored or failed to address long before campus closures. Jack examines how students dealt with the disruptions caused by the pandemic, how they navigated social unrest, and how they grappled with problems of race both on campus and off.
Jack will be in conversation with Jeff Selingo (FAN ’20, ’21, ’22), New York Times bestselling author of three books on education and the job market. For more than twenty-five years, Selingo’s in-depth reporting and storytelling have provided practical insight about the future of higher education and the workforce to university leaders, corporate executives, as well as students and parents.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness Jamil Zaki, Ph.D.
2024-09-26 19:00 | Zoom
Thursday, September 26, 2024, 7:00 PM, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, a FAN webinar featuring Jamil Zaki, Ph.D. (FAN ’19) in conversation with Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/ZakiFANWebinar
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY! We are giving away copies of Hope for Cynics to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page.
“With rigorous scientific research and fascinating narratives, Zaki challenges the belief that humanity is inherent selfish, and advocates, instead, for a ‘hopeful skepticism’ that creates a better world.” – Charles Duhigg (FAN ’24)
In 1972, half of Americans agreed that most people can be trusted; by 2018, only a third did. Different generations, genders, religions, and political parties all think human virtue is evaporating. Cynicism is an understandable response to a world full of injustice and inequality. But in many cases, it is misplaced. Dozens of studies find that people fail to realize how kind, generous, and open-minded others really are. Cynical thinking deepens social problems: when we expect the worst in people, we often bring it out of them.
We don’t have to remain stuck in this cynicism trap. Through science and storytelling, Jamil Zaki, Ph.D. (FAN ’19), director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory and author of the new book Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, imparts the secret for beating back cynicism: hopeful skepticism—thinking critically about people and our problems, while honoring and encouraging our strengths. Far from being naïve, hopeful skepticism is a precise way of understanding others that can rebalance our view of human nature and help us build the world we truly want.
Zaki will be in conversation with Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery at Stanford University, as well as a research associate at the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya. His books for non-scientists include Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping; Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst; and most recently, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net Jessica Calarco, Ph.D
2024-09-30 19:00 | Zoom
Monday, September 30, 2024, 7:00 PM, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net, a FAN webinar featuring Jessica Calarco, Ph.D. in conversation with Heidi Stevens.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/CalarcoFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Holding It Together from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Calarco and Stevens that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
“Holding It Together is both an authoritative indictment of current and past US social policy and an empathetic, unsettling portrait of American motherhood.” – Jennifer Breheny Wallace, FAN ‘23
America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this tour de force, acclaimed sociologist Jessica Calarco, Ph.D. lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo.
Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net draws on five years of research in which Calarco, a sociologist and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, surveyed over 4,000 parents and conducted more than 400 hours of interviews with women who bear the brunt of our broken system. Tracing present-day policies back to their roots, Calarco reveals a systematic agreement to dismantle our country’s social safety net and persuade citizens to accept precarity while women bear the brunt. She leads us to see women’s labor as the reason we’ve gone so long without the support systems that our peer nations take for granted, and how women’s work maintains the illusion that we don’t need a net.
Calarco’s research focuses on education, families, and health decision-making. She is interested in the structures of power and privilege that maintain socioeconomic, racial, and gender inequalities in these settings, as well as the role that qualitative methods can play in uncovering these mechanisms.
Calarco will be in conversation with Heidi Stevens, Director of External Affairs for the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health, and creative director for Parent Nation, an initiative of the TMW Center. Prior to joining TMW, Stevens worked at the Chicago Tribune for 23 years, where she wrote a daily column called “Balancing Act.” She maintains a weekly nationally syndicated column. Stevens also serves as a FAN board member.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts Oliver Burkeman
2024-10-07 19:00 | Zoom
Monday, October 7, 2024, 7:00 PM, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, a FAN webinar featuring Oliver Burkeman in conversation with Daniel Pink (FAN ’18, ’22).
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/BurkemanFANWebinar
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY! FAN is giving away hundreds of copies of Meditations for Mortals to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page.
“I follow Oliver Burkeman’s personal, literary, and journalistic adventures into wisdom with admiration and exhilaration. Now he brings us a ‘retreat of the mind’ in a very special book. We should all read this, preferably in the company of others―for the sake of our aching world as well as the state of our souls.” — Krista Tippett (FAN ’16)
Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts offers a powerful new way to act on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls “imperfectionism.” It helps us tackle challenges as they crop up in our daily lives: our finite time, the lure of distraction, the impossibility of doing anything perfectly.
How can we embrace our nonnegotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? How do we shed the illusion that life will really begin as soon as we can “get on top of everything”? Reflecting on quotations drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman, the New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, explores a combination of practical tools and daily shifts in perspective. The result is a life-enhancing and surprising challenge to much familiar advice―and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.
To be read either as a four-week “retreat of the mind” or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.
Burkeman will be in conversation with Daniel Pink (FAN ’18, ’22), the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several provocative, bestselling books about business, work, creativity, and behavior, including The Power of Regret; When; To Sell Is Human; Drive; and A Whole New Mind.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future
2024-10-09 19:00 | Zoom
Wednesday, October 9, 2024, 7:00 PM, Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future, a FAN webinar featuring Carissa Carter and Scott Doorley in conversation with Liz Gerber, Ph.D.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/CCSDFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Assembling Tomorrow from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Carter, Doorley, and Gerber that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
We live in an era of runaway design where the possibilities of new technologies—like generative AI and synthetic biology—are near limitless, but so are the perils. Even the most well-intentioned and transformative innovations can go haywire, jeopardizing our work and our world. In Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future, a provocative and deeply hopeful new manifesto, Carissa Carter and Scott Doorley, the Academic and Creative Directors at the Stanford d.school, pair speculative fiction with practical guidance to show how to build a world worth living in rather than one that tears us apart.
Assembling Tomorrow grapples with the future of technology, ecology, biology, work, politics, food, parenting, interpersonal relationships, and more. From the effects of social media to the uncertainty of AI and the consequences of climate change, the outcomes of our creations ripple across our lives, and we are now at a critical moment where we must consider: What does a thriving future look like? How could we design it thoughtfully and creatively if we were tasked with doing so? The book is poised to redefine the discourse on design and innovation, offering a roadmap for creating a future that we can all proudly inhabit.
Assembling Tomorrow is the highly anticipated capstone for a 12-book series on design from Stanford’s d.school. Over the past few years, FAN has hosted events in support of d.school books Creative Acts for Curious People, You Need a Manifesto and Design for Belonging.
To be read either as a four-week “retreat of the mind” or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.
Co-authors Carter, a designer, geoscientist, and the academic director at the d.school, and Doorley, a writer, designer, and the creative director at the d.school, will be in conversation with Liz Gerber, Ph.D. (FAN ’13, ’16), a professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University, co-director of Northwestern’s Center for Human Computer Interaction + Design, and faculty founder of Design for America.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Leaders as Futurists: Cultivating Civic Imagination for a Dynamic World Lisa Kay Solomon
2024-10-17 19:00 | Zoom
Thursday, October 17, 2024, 7:00 PM, Leaders as Futurists: Cultivating Civic Imagination for a Dynamic World, a FAN webinar featuring Lisa Kay Solomon in conversation with Liz Gerber, Ph.D.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/LKSolomonFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Webinar attendees are invited to join a free “Ask Me Anything” AFTERHOURS event hosted by Solomon and Gerber that will start immediately after the webinar. This is an excellent opportunity for leaders looking for guidance on how to infuse futures thinking and civic imagination into community events and strategic conversations. The registration link for this After-Hours event will be posted in chat several times during the main webinar.
In today’s politically charged climate, we are inundated with a pervasive narrative of division, discord, and polarization. Yet many Americans long for a more positive, unified future, and are willing to do the work necessary to make it a reality. Leaders in schools, organizations, and corporations are uniquely positioned to inspire hope, encourage action, and actively shape the civic landscape we want for ourselves, our children, and future generations.
Join a FAN special session on harnessing the power of “futures thinking” and civic imagination with Lisa Kay Solomon, Futurist in Residence at Stanford University’s d.school. Drawing from her bestselling book Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversation that Accelerate Change, popular classes like “Inventing the Future,” and award-winning civic initiatives such as The Futures Happening and The Team’s civic tailgating program for student athletes, Solomon will share creative strategies to foster imaginative, joyful, and resilient cultures in our schools, communities, and families.
Solomon will explore what we can learn about shaping our future from unexpected sources – from Sesame Street’s Elmo to the powerful fandom movements of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, and sports legends from the WNBA and USA Olympians. She will also share her new Futures Happening playbook designed to help school and community leaders transform current challenges into flexible opportunities for civic innovation and community building.
Solomon will be in conversation with Liz Gerber, Ph.D. (FAN ’13, ’16), a professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University, co-director of Northwestern’s Center for Human Computer Interaction + Design, and faculty founder of Design for America.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Twenty-Four Seconds from Now ... An Evening with Jason Reynolds
2024-10-18 19:00 | Evanston Township High School Auditorium, 1600 Dodge Ave, Evanston, IL, 60201
Friday, October 18, 2024, 7:00 PM, Twenty-Four Seconds from Now: An Evening with Jason Reynolds, Evanston Township High School Auditorium, 1600 Dodge Ave., Door 6, Evanston, IL 60201.
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY of Twenty-Four Seconds from Now at the event, while supplies last. No registration required.
“Reynolds astounds in a sweetly hilarious story of two Black teens preparing to take a huge first step in their relationship. In frank stream-of-consciousness prose, Reynolds rewinds the teens’ heartfelt romance to showcase its development in reverse: 24 hours before, Neon was avoiding his homework by scrolling through videos he’d recorded of his classmates. And 24 days earlier, Neon was strolling the neighborhood with Gammy and the family dog, Denzel Jeremy Washington. As events roll backward, Neon has conversations with numerous richly wrought supporting characters, including his effervescent musician friend Dodie and his open and loving sister Nat, all of whom regale Neon with their thoughts on sex and love (with varying degrees of embarrassment and enlightenment for Neon). Sex-positive messaging encourages vulnerability in personal exploration as well as open conversations about bodily autonomy and consent. Authentically tapping into the way teens think, Reynolds delivers a mighty exaltation to Black love in this moving story of one boy’s growth and the community that fosters it.” – Publishers Weekly Starred Review
FAN is thrilled to host #1 New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds in celebration of his first YA romance, Twenty-Four Seconds from Now … A LOVE Story. The book has received high praise in advance of publication for its “tender, sweet, wholesome” story that shows a “refreshingly different side to male sexuality.”
Reynolds will do a dramatic recitation of the first chapter of the book from memory and then have an in-depth discussion with the audience. Afterwards, he will pose for pictures with audience members.
Reynolds is a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a Kirkus Award winner, a Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors. He’s also the 2020–2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely), When I Was the Greatest, The Boy in the Black Suit, Stamped, As Brave as You, For Every One, the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu), Look Both Ways, Ain’t Burned All the Bright, and Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded but not live streamed and will be available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Polostan: An Evening with Neal Stephenson
2024-10-21 19:00 | The Book Stall, 811 Elm St., Winnetka, IL, 60093
Monday, October 21, 2024, 7:00 PM, Polostan: An Evening with Neal Stephenson, The Book Stall, 811 Elm St., Winnetka, IL 60093.
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY of Polostan at the event. SPACE IS LIMITED — REGISTRATION REQUIRED: https://bit.ly/StephensonFANEvent
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of thirteen previous critically acclaimed works of fiction, including Termination Shock and Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson delivers the first part of an epic new historical trilogy that illuminates the origins of the Atomic Age with Polostan: Volume One of Bomb Light. Centered around an extraordinarily intrepid, resourceful, and lively protagonist with roots in both America and Russia, the novel spans two continents and many of the seminal events of the early twentieth century as Stephenson weaves a spellbinding tale of social and economic upheaval, revolution, espionage, invention, sport, and romance.
As The Atlantic has recently observed, “Perhaps no writer has been more clairvoyant about our current technological age than Neal Stephenson. His novels coined the term metaverse, laid the conceptual groundwork for cryptocurrency, and imagined a geoengineered planet. And nearly three decades before the release of ChatGPT, he presaged the current AI revolution.”
Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . . Was the Command Line. He is also the coauthor, with Nicole Galland, of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. His works of speculative fiction have been variously categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, maximalism, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. In his fiction, he explores fields such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science.
Born in Fort Meade, Maryland (home of the NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum), Stephenson comes from a family comprising engineers and hard scientists he dubs “propeller heads.” He holds a degree in geography and physics from Boston University, where he spent a great deal of time on the university mainframe.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded but not live streamed and will be available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World Allison Pugh, Ph.D.
2024-10-23 19:00 | Latin School of Chicago, 59 W. North Blvd, Chicago, IL, 60610
Wednesday, October 23, 2024, 7:00 PM, The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World, Latin School of Chicago, Wrigley Theatre, 59 W. North Blvd., Chicago, IL 60610.
No registration required. Book sale and signing at the event.
“Digital systems are rapidly replacing human beings because, we are told, they are more efficient and less biased. The Last Human Job offers a refreshingly novel criticism of this logic, spotlighting the vital connective tissue created by human interaction that machines cannot possibly replicate.” – Dorothy Roberts, Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work has never been more uncertain, and even jobs requiring high levels of human interaction are no longer safe. The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other in these settings is valuable and worth preserving.
Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions—from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers—Allison Pugh, Ph.D. develops the concept of “connective labor,” a kind of work that relies on empathy, the spontaneity of human contact, and a mutual recognition of each other’s humanity. The threats to connective labor are not only those posed by advances in AI or apps; Pugh demonstrates how profit-driven campaigns imposing industrial logic shrink the time for workers to connect, enforce new priorities of data and metrics, and introduce standardized practices that hinder our ability to truly see each other. She concludes with profiles of organizations where connective labor thrives, offering practical steps for building a social architecture that works.
Vividly illustrating how connective labor enriches the lives of individuals and binds our communities together, The Last Human Job is a compelling argument for us to recognize, value, and protect humane work in an increasingly automated and disconnected world.
Pugh, professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, will be in conversation with Nick Hatzis, MD, a board-certified general and child and adolescent psychiatrist and medical director of Meridian Psychiatric Partners’ Child & Adolescent Division.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded but not live streamed and will be available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It's Up to You to Do It) Lindsey Cormack, Ph.D.
2024-10-30 19:00 | Zoom
Wednesday, October 30, 2024, 7:00 PM, How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It’s Up to You to Do It), a FAN webinar featuring Lindsey Cormack, Ph.D. in conversation with Heidi Stevens.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/CormackFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of How to Raise a Citizen from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Cormack and Stevens that will start immediately after the webinar. AND: FAN will gift a second copy of the book to After-Hours guests! Details on the webinar registration page.
The numbers don’t lie. American civic knowledge is alarmingly low, and many people dread talking about politics—often choosing to avoid the subject altogether. Studies continue to reveal how little Americans know about their government. Young voters are the least likely to be registered to vote, and the least likely to turn out. Civics instruction receives the lowest number of K-12 classroom hours out of any subject, and it shows – AP US Government & Politics has one of the lowest average scores each year out of all AP classes offered in high schools. But Lindsey Cormack, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and director of the Diplomacy Lab at Stevens Institute of Technology, argues that all is not lost for the next generation of Americans.
In her new book, How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It’s Up to You to Do It), Cormack shows how engaging with children about our political system at a young age can help to better prepare them to engage with and understand politics and be catalysts for change. She argues that we all bear a little responsibility for our children’s lack of understanding about these subjects; our political system is a complicated one to understand, our society has an aversion to talking about politics, and our schools are stretched.
Cormack will be in conversation with Heidi Stevens, Director of External Affairs for the University of
Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health, and creative director for Parent Nation, an
initiative of the TMW Center. Prior to joining TMW, Stevens worked at the Chicago Tribune for 23 years,
where she wrote a daily column called “Balancing Act.” She maintains a weekly nationally syndicated
column. Stevens also serves as a FAN board member
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me Glory Edim
2024-11-01 19:00 | Zoom
Friday, November 1, 2024, 7:00 PM, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me, a FAN webinar featuring Glory Edim in conversation with Natalie Y. Moore.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/EdimFANWebinar
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY! We are giving away copies of Gather Me to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page.
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”—Toni Morrison, Beloved
For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.
Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older, she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, Edim found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.
Edim’s new book, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me, is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.
Edim will be in conversation with Natalie Y. Moore, an award-winning journalist and author and senior lecturer and director of audio programming at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land Rebecca Nagle
2024-11-11 19:00 | Zoom
Monday, November 11, 2024, 7:00 PM, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land, a FAN webinar featuring Rebecca Nagle in conversation with Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Ph.D. (Lumbee).
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/NagleFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of By the Fire We Carry from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Nagle and Brayboy that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
In July 2020, nearly 200 years after the lands of Eastern Oklahoma were promised to Native Americans, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma reaffirmed the reservation of the Muscogee Nation, resulting in the largest restoration of tribal land in our nation’s history. This history-changing case started in a surprising place: a small-town murder and the decades-long death penalty appeal of the convicted man. In By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land, Rebecca Nagle, an award-winning reporter and citizen of Cherokee Nation, uses the case as a springboard for the larger story of the long fight for tribal sovereignty in Eastern Oklahoma. Her in-depth reportage becomes personal as Nagle uncovers the complicated role her own forebears played in the removal of her tribe from their ancestral lands. She delves into the whitewashed story of “The Trail of Tears” that forcibly removed 80,000 Indigenous peoples living east of the Mississippi and sent them into exile. It is a story of greed, corruption, and lawlessness, as well as historic acts of Indigenous resistance.
Nagle’s original podcast about the case, This Land, topped the podcast charts, reaching number two on iTunes with millions of downloads, and won a Webby Award for best Documentary Series. Nagle was awarded the American Mosaic Journalism Prize and nominated for a Peabody for her reporting and writing. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Guardian, USA Today, Teen Vogue, and the Huffington Post.
Nagle will be in conversation with Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Ph.D. (Lumbee), dean of Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Education and Social Policy. A member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association, Brayboy’s research focuses on intersecting knowledge systems that illuminate the ways that institutional structures simultaneously hinder and enable the success of underserved students, staff, and faculty. His research also explores the ways that culture and cultural practices mediate and support Indigenous student learning, community self-determination, and tribal nation building.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation Tom McGrath
2024-11-12 19:00 | Zoom
Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 7:00 PM, Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation, a FAN webinar featuring Tom McGrath in conversation with Rachel Slade.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/McGrathFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Triumph of the Yuppies from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by McGrath and Slade that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
Brimming with lively and nostalgic details, award-winning journalist and author Tom McGrath’s new book Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation charts Boomers’ transformation from hippy idealists in the late 1960s to careerists in the early 1980s, and details how marketers, the media, and politicians pivoted to appeal to this influential new group. Yuppie values had an undeniable impact on the worlds of fashion, food, and fitness, as well as affecting the broader culture— from gentrification and an obsession with career success to an indulgent materialism. Most significantly, the me-first mindset typical of Yuppieness helped create the largest income inequality in a century.
By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies—the elite, uber-educated faction of the Baby Boom generation—had become a cultural punchline, but amidst their preoccupation with money, work, and the latest status symbols, came a serious redefinition of American culture that continues to have profound ramifications decades later.
McGrath was the editor-in-chief of Philadelphia magazine, as well as chief content officer of Metro Corp., the parent company of Philadelphia and Boston between 2010 and 2020. Under his leadership, the magazines won more than fifty awards for editorial excellence. He is also the author of the newsletter Common Ground, which explores issues related to politics, culture, and the economy.
McGrath will be in conversation with Rachel Slade, the former executive editor of Boston magazine. She is the author of two books: the award-winning Into the Raging Sea, about the sinking of the container ship El Faro; and 2024’s Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the USA (and How It Got That Way). Slade’s editing and writing have won national awards in civic journalism, reporting, reader service, and criticism. She was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship for the fall of 2024.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] You Are Not Alone for Parents and Caregivers: The NAMI Guide to Navigating Your Child's Mental Health Christine M. Crawford, MD, MPH
2024-11-18 19:00 | Zoom
Monday, November 18, 2024, 7:00 PM, You Are Not Alone for Parents and Caregivers: The NAMI Guide to Navigating Your Child’s Mental Health, a FAN webinar featuring Christine M. Crawford, MD, MPH in conversation with Tramaine Presley, Psy.D., LCPC, LMHC.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/CrawfordFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of You Are Not Alone for Parents and Caregivers from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Drs. Crawford and Presley that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
A growing number of children and teens in the U.S. are struggling with mental health conditions, but parents, teachers, and other caregivers are often at a loss when concerns arise for their own child. Are your preschooler’s constant tantrums typical for their age, or an indication of a developmental difficulty? Is puberty or depression to blame for your pre-teen’s challenging behavior? Is my child in the wrong school, or being influenced by the wrong friends? Am I a bad parent or teacher, or am I overreacting? What exactly should I do?
In You Are Not Alone for Parents and Caregivers: The NAMI Guide to Navigating Your Child’s Mental Health, child psychiatrist and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) associate medical director Christine M. Crawford, MD, MPH provides a comprehensive, compassionate, and practical resource for anyone concerned about a child’s mental health. Drawing on her own clinical experience and guidance from leading experts, Dr. Crawford provides a lens through which to understand the many complex factors affecting children’s mental health. Analyzing young people from preschool to high school, she shares insights into how mental health conditions may manifest at different ages, what kind of interventions may be necessary, and what to do to help kids thrive. Throughout, the book channels the collective wisdom of the NAMI community. Parents, caregivers, and young people themselves share personal stories about their paths to recovery, ensuring readers know that they are not alone.
Dr. Crawford will be in conversation with Tramaine Presley, Psy.D., LCPC, LMHC, the director of Child, Adolescent, and Family Services at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. Dr. Presley has worked with children, adults, and families across a variety of clinical settings: private practice, community mental health, residential, schools, college campus, and hospitals.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

[FAN] Above the Noise: My Story of Chasing Calm DeMar DeRozan
2024-11-19 19:00 | Zoom
NEW DATE! Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 7:00 PM, Above the Noise: My Story of Chasing Calm, a FAN webinar featuring DeMar DeRozan in conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib (FAN ’21, ‘24).
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/DeRozanFANWebinar
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY! We are giving away copies of Above the Noise to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page.
“As men, and especially Black men, we don’t talk about our mental health enough. We struggle to admit when things aren’t okay, even when it’s obvious to everybody around us. I’ve seen how toxic that can become. I’ve experienced it myself, keeping everything under wraps until your head and heart are full of fire and rage.” – DeMar DeRozan
DeMar DeRozan, six-time NBA All-Star, has been called a “basketball savant” (ESPN) and “the best closer in the NBA” (GQ)—but when he went public with his depression, it sparked a conversation that reached far beyond the court. By breaking the stigma of speaking out, he added a new, seldom-heard voice to the mental health dialogue: a successful Black male athlete, openly naming his pain and advocating for others to do the same.
Now it’s time to tell the full story. Born and raised in Compton, DeRozan was no stranger to hardship—living in poverty, losing friends to gang violence. In worn-out school gyms and community centers, fueled by hunger and a desire to prove himself, he started to rise, but doubts followed. In Above the Noise: My Story of Chasing Calm, DeRozan opens up about his proudest triumphs and the times he felt so weighed down he couldn’t get out of bed. He reflects on what it took to make a name for himself in a new country after getting drafted by the Toronto Raptors, the pressure of playing with veteran athletes as a twenty-year-old rookie, and the pain of losing role models.
From a scared, angry kid to a confident father of five, DeRozan traces his journey to basketball stardom and the forces that honed him into the player—and the slowly healing person—he is today. It will encourage anyone who has ever felt alone in their struggles and inspire people to rise above the noise and speak their truth.
DeRozan will be in conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib (FAN ’21, ’24), New York Times bestselling poet, essayist, cultural critic, and 2021 MacArthur Fellow. FAN hosted Abdurraqib in 2021 in support of his award-winning book A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, and also for his most recent book, 2024’s There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature Alan Lightman, Ph.D.
2024-12-03 19:00 | Zoom
Tuesday, December 3, 2024, 7:00 PM, The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature, a FAN webinar featuring Alan Lightman, Ph.D. in conversation with Dacher Keltner, Ph.D.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/LightmanFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of The Miraculous from the Material from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Lightman that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
Nature is capable of extraordinary phenomena. Standing in awe of those phenomena, we experience a feeling of connection to the cosmos. For acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, Ph.D., just as remarkable is that all of what we see around us—soap bubbles, scarlet ibises, shooting stars—are made of the same material stuff and obey the same rules and laws. This is what Lightman calls “spiritual materialism,” the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview.
Pairing 36 beautiful, full-color photos evoking some of nature’s most awe-inspiring phenomena with accessible and lyrical personal essays, The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature explores the fascinating science underlying the natural world. Why do rainbows make an arc? Why does a particular waterfall at Yosemite National Park sometimes glow like it’s on fire? How does a hummingbird fly? The world has so many things to marvel at—and the science is just as fascinating.
Lightman’s imagination travels from the world of atoms and molecules to the animal kingdom, from places like Ha Long Bay, Vietnam and the Grand Canyon out to the solar system and beyond, illuminating the majesty of the cosmos and the remarkable science behind it. The Miraculous from the Material is a stunning, soaring ode to the beauty and wonder around us.
Lightman will be in conversation with Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. (FAN ’16, ’23), professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab, and faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. His research focuses the biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, and beauty, as well as power, social class, and inequality. Keltner is the author of The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, as well as the bestseller Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and The Compassionate Instinct. His latest book is 2023’s Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions Michael Norton, Ph.D.
2024-12-04 19:00 | Zoom
Wednesday, December 4, 2024, 7:00 PM, The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions, a FAN webinar featuring Michael Norton, Ph.D. in conversation with Sam Sommers, Ph.D.
REGISTER: www.bit.ly/NortonFANWebinar
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT with BOGO: Attendees who purchase a copy of The Ritual Effect from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Norton and Sommers that will start immediately after the webinar. AND: FAN will gift a second copy of the book to After-Hours guests! Details on the webinar registration page.
Our lives are filled with repetitive tasks meant to keep us on track—what we come to know as habits. Over time, these routines (like brushing your teeth or putting on your right sock first) tend to be performed automatically. But when we’re more mindful about these actions—when we focus on the precise way they are performed—they can instead become rituals. Shifting from a “habitual” mindset to a “ritual” mindset can convert ordinary acts from black and white to Technicolor.
Think about the way you savor a certain beverage, the care you take with a particular outfit that gets worn only on special occasions, the unique way that your family gathers around the table during holidays, or the secret language you enjoy with your significant other. To some, these behaviors may seem quirky, but because rituals matter so deeply to us on a personal level, they give our lives purpose and meaning. For his new book, The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions, Michael Norton, Ph.D. (FAN ’16), the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, draws on a decade of original research to show that rituals play a role in healing communities experiencing a great loss, marking life’s major transitions, driving a stadium of sports fans to ecstasy, and helping us rise to challenges and realize opportunities.
Norton’s research focuses on behavioral economics and well-being, with particular attention given to
happiness and spending, income inequality, and the IKEA effect. He is the co-author of Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending, and his “How to Buy Happiness” TED Talk has been viewed over 4 million times.
Norton will be in conversation with award-winning social psychologist Sam Sommers, Ph.D., Professor and Chair in the Department of Psychology and director of the Racial Equity and Diversity Lab at Tufts University.
This event is suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.
