2026

"In Search of a Common Cause: A Conversation with Krista Tippett and Navid Kermani" will feature two renowned thinkers discussing literature, politics, and spirituality in a free and open exchange. Krista Tippett, author and award–winning host of the renowned podcast On Being, has spent her career exploring the spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of life. Navid Kermani, one of Germany’s most acclaimed writers, has recently visited some of the world’s conflict zones, not as a political analyst, but as a literary observer. Their far-ranging conversation will touch on what it means to be a writer in a polarized world, how the concept of “the West” is changing, and how literature, poetry, and religion can foster solidarity in a fractured world. This thought-provoking conversation will be followed by a reception that continues the discussion.

Join us for a light reception in the Central Library's courtyard after the event!

This event will take place at the Mark Taper Auditorium at the Central Library, 630 W. Fifth St., Los Angeles, CA 90071. It is open to the public and free of charge. Please register here.

This program will be translated by a live ASL interpreter. For ADA accommodations, please call (213) 228-7430 at least 72 hours prior to the event.

Join us and the USC Max Kade Institute in the living room of the Thomas Mann House for a lecture by historian of science Andreas Mayer, research professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and currently visiting professor at the University of Southern California.

Since the foundation of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud has been a figure of enduring fascination and irritation alike. A vast “Freud industry” of biographies, novels, films, and television series has continuously returned to Freud’s life, often seeking to extract broader lessons from the Viennese physician’s personality and private experiences. The result is a contradictory image: Freud is both admired and idealized, while at the same time his ideas are often challenged by scrutinizing his personal life. This long-standing focus on Freud the person has shaped how the history of psychoanalysis is told.

In this insightful lecture, Andreas Mayer examines the historical and epistemic reasons for this fixation and asks how the history of psychoanalysis might be written beyond what he terms the “biographical illusion.”

In collaboration with Kyiv to LA, the Thomas Mann House presents Sliced Realities, a solo exhibition by Ukrainian artist-in-residence Zhanna Kadyrova. As part of an ongoing partnership supporting Ukrainian artists through a Los Angeles-based residency, this exhibition marks Kadyrova’s first solo presentation in the United States and coincides with the four-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Sliced Realities brings Kadyrova’s anti-war practice in dialogue with Thomas Mann, whose history of political resistance raises enduring questions about the role of art in times of crisis. Centered around the artist's fundraising project Palianytsia, the exhibition features artworks from her Anxiety, Refugee, and Russian Rocket series, which reveal the surreal experience of encountering the unfamiliar within the familiar. Presented one year after the devastating fires that ravaged the surrounding Pacific Palisades and neighboring Altadena, and four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this exhibition invites viewers to consider how art and resilience are intimately intertwined. Linking Mann’s anti-fascist radio addresses to Kadyrova’s recent bodies of work, Sliced Realities foregrounds the asterisks and annotations that emerge when creative practices are restructured as forms of resistance.