From sports to pop culture, geography to politics, we’ll test your knowledge of it all. Celebrate 5 years of Trivia with new questions, prizes, and anniversary surprises!

For those in their 20s and 30s

From Dan Rather, one of the most influential and award-winning journalists of our time, comes Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, the story of his event-filled career—and his insight on the future of America’s news media.

In this candid autobiography, Rather covers all the important moments of his career, including a frank accounting of his dismissal from CBS News,where he had worked for 44 years, one of the longest tenures of any evening news anchor.Rather also shares new insights into the Abu Ghraib scandal, the George W. Bush Air National Guard controversy, JFK’s assassination, and his personal politics, as well as inside stories about the top personalities he has interviewed or worked with over the course of his storied career.

Rather will be in conversation with Tom Bettag. Bettag, a broadcast journalist for 45 years, has been executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, ABC News Nightline with Ted Koppel, and CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley. He is currently a producer for NBC’s prime time magazine, Rock Center with Brian Williams.

In Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, the host of the Emmy Award-winning “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, argues that we’ve drifted away from America’s original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails.

Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today’s war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan’s presidency, the rise of executive authority, the outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, and the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us. Ultimately, she shows just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower political discourse. Book signing to follow.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion is an investigation into the origins of morality, which turns out to be the basis for religion and politics. The book is timely, explaining the American culture wars and refuting the “New Atheists,” as well as scholarly with its integration of insights from many fields.

Haidt argues that humans are descended from groups that outcompeted other groups, as well as from individuals who outcompeted their peers. We therefore have a dual nature: we are selfish as well as “hivish.” We love to lose ourselves in larger collective projects (hives), such as sports teams, political movements, and religious congregations.

Haidt is a professor in the Dept. of Psychology at UVA. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis and has presented at TED.

The March 14th event has been postponed to Wednesday, May 23rd. Click here for details.

From sports to pop culture, geography to movies, science to politics, we’ll test your knowledge of it all. Teams can be made up of 5 – 7 people.

For those in their 20s and 30s

In her November 2011 Atlantic cover story “All the Single Ladies,” Kate Bolick asserts:

“Recent years have seen an explosion of male joblessness and a steep decline in men’s life prospects that have disrupted the “romantic market” in ways that narrow a marriage-minded woman’s options: increasingly, her choice is between deadbeats (whose numbers are rising) and playboys (whose power is growing). But this strange state of affairs also presents an opportunity: as the economy evolves, it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family—and to acknowledge the end of “traditional” marriage as society’s highest ideal.”

The story quickly went viral, provoking a wide range of reactions, and became one of The Atlantic’s most-talked-about stories of the year. The conversation continues in this panel discussion with Bolick; Hanna Rosin, an Atlanticsenior editor and author of the upcoming book End of Men based on her story in the July/August 2010 issue of the Atlantic; and Garance Franke-Ruta, a senior editor at The Atlantic who oversees the Politics channel.

The 1960’s opened the door to expand women’s political, economic and social equality. And while historic advances have opened the door to tremendous gains, women continue to be disadvantaged by a lack of fundamental financial literacy which threatens their long term economic security.

Lori Weinstein, Executive Director of Jewish Women International, will lead an interactive conversation about the intersection between financial literacy, feminism, and Jewish values. She’ll share steps that young professional women can take to build their financial literacy.

For women in their 20s and 30s. And for the record, we love all bubbes everywhere.

Made possible by the generosity of The Lerner Family Foundation
Lerner Cohen Tanenbaum families

Like the late General and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Admiral Mike Mullen has spent his adult life pursuing and promoting peace while also taking up arms in the defense of his country. In the spirit of Rabin, he has frequently spoken about the dual role of the soldier as warrior and peacemaker. During his tenure, Admiral Mullen has brought military cooperation between Israel and the U.S. to unprecedented levels, and at the same time has advocated for diplomacy and economic and political development in creating conditions for peace.

Admiral Mullen joins The New York Times columnist David Brooks in an in-depth look at the role of the armed forces as a moral, cultural, and humanitarian force as part of the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital 6th Annual Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Lecture.

America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, Friedman and Mandelbaum analyze those challenges—globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation’s chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption—and spell out what we need to do now to rediscover America and rise to this moment.

They offer a way out of the trap into which the country has fallen, which includes the rediscovery of some of our most valuable traditions and the creation of a new, third-party movement. That Used to Be Us is both a searching exploration of the American condition today and a rousing manifesto for American renewal. Book signing to follow.