The Chicago Humanities Festival ( CHF ) 30th anniversary fall series will include MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in addition to writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and New York Times investigative reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.
"Rachel Maddow in Conversation" will take place Saturday, Oct. 12, 7:30-8:45 p.m., at the Arie Crown Theater, 2301 S. Lake Shore Dr. Maddow will address how people can and must curb the power of the oil industry, for, as she warns: "Democracy either wins this one, or disappears." In her book Blowout, she traces how the greed of the oil industry has corrupted the world, causing disasters both environmental and political, including, Maddow says, the Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Coates, author of the National Book Award-winning Between the World and Me, will speak at UIC Forum, 725 W. Roosevelt Rd., on Wed., Oct. 2, at 7 p.m. Coatesthe author/journalist who restarted a national conversation about reparationswill discuss his debut novel, The Water Dancer, about one man's flight to freedom from slavery.
In addition to his non-fiction work, Coates has written comics for Marvel, including Black Panther and Captain America.
On Tuesday, Oct. 15, at First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, 77 W. Washington St., at 7 p.m., Kantor and Twohey will discuss the story behind their investigation into Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Their reporting, which revealed Weinstein's decades of sexual abuse, manipulation and cover-up, resulted in his eventual prosecution and brought the reality of the #MeToo movement to millions of people around the world.
Before these events, CHF will host Creative Chicago: Art and the City. Taking place Saturday, Sept. 14, at Venue Six10, 610 S. Michigan Ave., the free, day-long program of panel discussions and interactive experiences will pick up a key question from last year's Creative Chicago: Interview Marathon, asking "What does Chicago need?" and answering it through the lens of arts and creativity in this city.
On Sunday, Sept. 22, the Terra Foundation for American Art and CHF will celebrate the release of a new publication documenting the 2018 Creative Chicago Interview Marathon. The book is a compilation of the interviews conducted by Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, with such Chicago creatives as Eve Ewing and the late Stanley Tigerman.
See ChicagoHumanities.org .