Chicago Humanities Festival Audio & Video

America knows how to market itself, its products, and its ideas. For better or for worse, for richer or poorer, American marketing creativity, power, and prestige influence consumers the world over.

Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, argues that America is not immune from the authoritarian slide that has caused democracies in Europe and Latin America to collapse.

Novelist Ayelet Waldman despaired managing her mood disorder-and her husband and children were suffering too. Then she tried something new: 10 micrograms of LSD.

William Gibson, the forefather of "cyberpunk" science fiction, discusses genre, changing technology, and future trends in this streaming interview.

Melinda French Gates is a philanthropist, businesswoman, and global advocate for women and girls. She joins us to make the case that addressing gender equality is key to making life better for all (As she says, "If you want to lift a society up, invest in women").

A stunning departure-and compelling return. From Anne Rice, perennial best-selling author and inventor of the modern vampire genre, comes a chilling, hypnotic new novel.

For more than a decade, actor and author Alan Alda hosted PBS's Scientific American Frontiers, interviewing scientists from physicists to neuroscientists.

In advance of HAMILTON opening in Chicago, Pulitzer, Emmy, Tony, Grammy, Olivier and MacArthur "Genius" Grant award-winning actor and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda joined Chicago Tribune Theater Critic Chris Jones to discuss his life, inspiration, and past creative works.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has become one of the most powerful writers today. A staffer for "The Atlantic" and author of a memoir, "The Beautiful Struggle," he shares his stunning and evocative reflections on what it is like to inhabit a black male body in contemporary America.

Professor of economics at Yale University and co-creator of the Case-Shiller Index of U.S. home prices, Robert Shiller has written extensively on just how large a role belief plays in economic behavior.