In this episode of Library Talks, C Pam Zhang sits down with Padma Lakshmi to discuss her latest novel Land of Milk and Honey, which tells the story of climate disaster and a young chef discovering pleasure at the end of the world.

Zhang is the winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, a Booker Prize nominee, and a finalist for numerous other prizes, including the the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Zhang’s writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree and a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow.

Padma Lakshmi is an Emmy-nominated producer, television host, food expert, and a New York Times best-selling author and one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People (2023).

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond’s latest book, Poverty, by America, reimagines the American debate on poverty, making an original and ambitious argument about why it persists here: because too many of us benefit from it.

In this episode of Library Talks, Desmond speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliot to discuss his new ways of thinking around this morally urgent, uniquely American problem—and imagines practical, achievable solutions for making poverty disappear.

Acclaimed scholar and writer Alondra Nelson leads a discussion on the transnational impacts of artificial intelligence and the need for global collaboration. Speakers include Karen Kornbluh, Maria Ressa, Olatunbosun Tijani, Tim Wu