Upcoming
CPS Lecture #163: lara love hardin on the many lives of mama love
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 6:30 PM - Sign Up Here!
Haight Ashbury District, San Francisco
“Once you start reading, be prepared, because you won’t want to stop.” —Oprah Winfrey
No one expects the police to knock on the door of the million-dollar two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards.
Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She finds that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes, and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly learns the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder and acquires the nickname “Mama Love,” showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.
When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with the Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, and prove to herself that she is more good than bad, among other essential lessons.
The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.
OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.
CPS Lecture #164: jessica lahey on the addiction inoculation
Saturday, April 26, 2025 at 6:30 PM - Sign Up Here!
Haight Ashbury District, San Francisco
Jessica Lahey was born into a family with a long history of alcoholism and drug abuse. Despite her desire to thwart her genetic legacy, she became an alcoholic and didn’t find her way out until her early forties. Jessica has worked as a teacher in substance abuse programs for teens, and was determined to inoculate her two adolescent sons against their most dangerous inheritance. All children, regardless of their genetics, are at some risk for substance abuse. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, teen drug addiction is the nation’s largest preventable and costly health problem. Despite the existence of proven preventive strategies, nine out of ten adults with substance use disorder report they began drinking and taking drugs before age eighteen.
The Addiction Inoculation is a comprehensive resource parents and educators can use to prevent substance abuse in children. Based on research in child welfare, psychology, substance abuse, and developmental neuroscience, this essential guide provides evidence-based strategies and practical tools adults need to understand, support, and educate resilient, addiction-resistant children. The guidelines are age-appropriate and actionable—from navigating a child’s risk for addiction, to interpreting signs of early abuse, to advice for broaching difficult conversations with children.
“Hard and tremendously important conversations are at the core of The Addiction Inoculation. But thanks to Jessica Lahey’s wit, compassion, and beautiful writing, reading it feels like having those conversations with your most entertaining friend who also happens to be an expert in substance abuse research, education, and child development.”
— David Epstein, bestselling Author of The Sports Gene and Range
CPS Lecture #165: david i. sandberg on brain and heart
Tuesday, May 27, 2025 at 6:30 PM - Sign Up Here!
Haight Ashbury District, San Francisco
A warm and brilliant memoir that captures the medical and emotional intensity of pediatric neurosurgery.
In this moving, unflinching, and inspiring book, Dr. David Sandberg, an internationally renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, brilliantly combines his deep scientific and medical knowledge with raw emotion and unforgettably powerful stories of courage and love. The brain is the most complicated and perplexing of our organs, and it is also the one that makes us human. When it comes to a child's brain, the hearts of those who love them become inextricably linked to that story.
In Brain and Heart, Dr. Sandberg describes the joy, heartbreak, uncertainty, and physical and emotional challenges that come with performing brain surgery on children. What makes this book different from previously published medical memoirs is Dr. Sandberg’s unique honesty about what goes through his mind when he makes the most complex choices with life-changing consequences. While most medical memoirs focus largely on the patient perspective, Dr. Sandberg allows readers access to his private thoughts when making agonizing decisions—from giving the worst news imaginable to facing very scary surgical complications.
"This book takes you into the operating room to see some of humanity’s most important and most difficult work up close. In the tradition of Atul Gawande and Paul Farmer, it’s about much more than healthcare—it’s a mirror on the human condition and a map toward more caring connections. It will leave you with a deeper sense of compassion and a renewed sense of hope.”
- Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and Hidden Potential
CPS Lecture #166: emily ye on “not fitting the age mold: occupational age stereotypes predict workplace age discrimmination”
Friday, September 26, 2025 at 6:30 PM - Sign Up Here!
Haight Ashbury District, San Francisco
Although abundant evidence suggests that age stereotypes contribute to workplace age discrimination, little work has examined the effects of occupational age stereotypes. Drawing from prototype matching theory, we propose that worker-occupational age mismatch (i.e., older workers in young-typed occupations and younger workers in old-typed occupations) predicts increased recognition of workplace age discrimination. In an archival study of age discrimination lawsuits filed over five years, we provide support that older workers in young-typed occupations are more likely to have successful age discrimination claims than those in old-typed occupations.
Emily Ye is a PhD Candidate in Organizational Behavior at New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Her research interests broadly surround understanding how different social identities and stereotypes, particularly related to age and gender, influence attitudes and behavior toward individuals in organizations and the broader society. She has published work with her faculty collaborators, Professors Lisa Leslie and Michael North, in the Current Opinion in Psychology journal and the third edition of the Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination. Currently, Emily is working on projects exploring the effects of occupational age stereotypes on worker outcomes, investigating attitudes toward large age-gap romantic relationships, understanding how women manage gender stereotypes in the workplace, and discovering the effects of perceived age in the workplace. Prior to graduate school, Emily graduated from Amherst College and worked as an Analyst for dQ&A, the diabetes market research company.
About
CPS Lectures is a free discussion series that takes place every few months in San Francisco. It is a program of the nonprofit The diaTribe Foundation. The series honors the memory of Cyril Patrick Shaughnessy, Jr., Kelly's father, who died in late 2002 and loved discussions and learning.
RSVP required for this free event. You will be given a chance to donate to our nonprofit, The diaTribe Foundation, when you register - this is completely optional. Thank you to all those who have given to date, which has been very generous and has helped enormously to offset the cost of drinks and food, occasional air tickets to speakers, and low-key management of the event.
If you RSVP yes and have to cancel, please do so within 24 hours of our event.