Evan Osnos

One of America’s preeminent political journalists, Evan Osnos, has spent the past 25 years in the hot spots that shape our world today: Washington, China, Ukraine, and the Middle East. With unique levels of depth and access, he has published books on Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Xi Jinping — going behind the scenes to clarify the most urgent issues in business, politics, and foreign affairs. A sought-after guest on television and radio, he is the consummate storyteller, sifting the most revealing anecdotes and facts from a complicated world, to give audiences a renewed sense of clarity and control in a time of uncertainty. Among his most popular speeches, his tour of global hotspots goes inside the White House, the halls of Chinese leadership, and to the frontlines of Ukraine and Israel, to give audiences an up-to-the-minute sense of what’s happening in the world and what it means for us.

How did Americans become so divided — and how will we stitch ourselves back together? For all the attention paid to Washington, the deeper roots of our political mood lie elsewhere. Consider that in 1968, the average sound bite on a network news broadcast was more than sixty seconds; by 2004, it had shrunk to less than eight seconds. Or, consider the fact that air rage is more common on American airplanes in which the passengers need to walk through the first-class cabin on their way to coach. In this fascinating, non-partisan presentation, rich with anecdotes and surprising research, National Book Award-winning author Evan Osnos explores America’s divides, and efforts to repair them, connecting us to stories of those who are advancing community and prosperity in the 21st century.

Despite five decades in American public life, Biden remains indistinct in the eyes of many Americans. As recently as 2012, nearly a third of those polled in South Carolina could not name the sitting vice president. In the 2020 primary, even days before he secured the Democratic nomination, many Americans assumed his campaign was in its final moments. Then, almost immediately, the pandemic made a conventional campaign impossible — and forced Americans to weigh one of the most consequential choices of a lifetime through a limited window. Evan Osnos of The New Yorker has interviewed Biden repeatedly since 2014. In this intimate portrait, Osnos takes you inside Biden’s thinking on foreign affairs, economics, and negotiation. Based on interviews with the 46th president and with more than a hundred others, including former President Barack Obama, this is a window into Biden’s worldview, calculations, and inner circle.

Starbucks is opening a new store in China, on average, every fifteen hours, and TikTok is redefining American social media — even as tensions build over Taiwan, cyber hacking, and threats to global public health. For the first time in a generation, the world has entered an era dominated by two superpowers — but, unlike rivals in the Cold War, the U.S. and China are also entwined on an unprecedented scale. What do people in the corridors of power in Beijing and Washington really say to one another about the future? How are companies, consumers, and global citizens charting a path to thrive? In this presentation, one of our preeminent analysts of foreign affairs and U.S. politics combines deep knowledge with up-to-the-minute insights to assess the new global balance of power. Are China and America on a collision course, or can we find common ground? What does each side misperceive about the other? An engaging narrative analysis of the players and the issues.

A deep, anecdotally rich dive into the ambitions, tastes, and values of the men and women at the heart of China’s rise. They are consumers, students, and parents; nationalists and liberals and libertarians; Christians, Communists, and Taoists — By 2025, China’s wildly diverse middle class will be more than twice the size of America’s entire population. How are they remake our world?