Coming up Wednesday May 6th - Ruth Franklin shares details about her new book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank

LISTEN to today's show

A revealing biography of Anne Frank, exploring both her life
and the impact of her extraordinary diary.

Finalist, 2025 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

“With sensitivity and assiduous research, [Franklin] constructs a vivid cultural history that advocates for a reevaluation of Frank.”―New Yorker, “Best Books of the Year”

“Trenchant. . . . An essential look at the diarist’s legacy.”―Publishers Weekly

In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929–1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust.

Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary―its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world. Writing alongside Anne rather than over her, Franklin explores the day-to-day perils of the Holocaust in the Netherlands as well as Anne’s ultimate fate, restoring her humanity and agency in all their messiness, heroism, and complexity.

With antisemitism once again in the news, The Many Lives of Anne Frank takes a fresh and timely look at the debates around Anne’s life and work, including the controversial adaptations of the diary, Anne’s evolution as a fictional character, and the ways her story and image have been politically exploited. Franklin reveals how Anne has been understood and misunderstood, both as a person and as an idea, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today’s hyperpolarized world.

Joining Janeane on Wednesday May 6th - Danielle Crittenden talks about her forthcoming book, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother's Journey Through the Unthinkable

“A little masterpiece.”

—Tina Brown

DISPATCHES FROM GRIEF

A MOTHER’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE UNTHINKABLE

By Danielle Crittenden

LISTEN to today's show

Crittenden’s words ring with truth, love, clarity, and courage.

—Andrew Solomon, National Book Award–winning author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon


With grace and clarity, Danielle Crittenden explains how it is possible to go on living in an altered world…Readers will find consolation, hope, and insight, as well as sadness and sorrow.

—Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gulag, Twilight of Democracy, and Autocracy, Inc.


A profound and powerful look into the human condition.

—David Brooks, New York Times columnist and bestselling author of The Second Mountain



A moving and intimate expression of pain—Kirkus

See accompanying companion piece in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/05/david-frum-miranda-daughter-grief/677815/

Written with the narrative power that has made Danielle Crittenden one of our most incisive observers of family and culture, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable (May 4, 2026, Infinite Books) stands as both a singular portrait of loss and a universal exploration of love’s aftermath. It will speak to anyone who has loved deeply, lost profoundly, and wondered how to continue when continuation seems impossible.

On a February morning, Danielle Crittenden’s world cleaved in two: the life before her daughter Miranda was found dead in her Brooklyn apartment, and the life after. In this luminous memoir, Dispatches from Grief, Crittenden maps the territory of profound loss with the clarity of a foreign correspondent filing reports from a country no parent ever wishes to visit.

With unflinching honesty and unexpected grace, she chronicles not just the shattering impact of a child's death, but the strange afterlife of grief itself—the way it infiltrates grocery stores and social media, transforms old friendships and forges new ones, and ultimately reshapes the mourner as fundamentally as it has reshaped the world.

Here is grief in all its terrible specificity: the police call that changes everything, the surreal task of choosing a burial dress, the well-meaning friends who offer advice about “stages” that don't exist. But here too is love in its most distilled form—a mother’s meditation on a daughter who commanded dinner tables at twelve, who once interviewed Dick Cheney with a child’s notebook, who transformed from a precocious girl into a sparkling young woman living her dreams in New York.

Crittenden brings a journalist’s eye to the landscape of loss, coining the perfect term for those who try to explain grief to the grieving (“griefsplaining”), finding dark comedy in a hotel clerk's relentless cheerfulness, and discovering that C.S. Lewis told more truth about mourning in seventy-three pages than a library of self-help books. She writes of joining what she calls “the alternative universe”—parents who have lost children—and of the terrible wisdom its members share.

For those walking through their own valleys of grief, this book offers not false comfort but true companionship. For those who love someone who is grieving, it provides a window into a world that can only be understood from within. And for all readers, it serves as a reminder that our time with those we love is both more precious and more precarious than we dare imagine.




# # # # # #
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Danielle Crittenden is a journalist, author, and former host of the podcast The Femsplainers, known for her incisive and original commentary on women, family, and modern life. In addition to writing a popular monthly newsletter on Substack, her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and more. She is the author of four previous books, including What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, praised by Vanity Fair as the work of “one of the most important new thinkers about women and family.” Born in Toronto, she now lives in Washington, D.C. and Wellington, Ontario with her husband, journalist David Frum.

Duran Duran at BeachLife Festival: Legacy, Live Music, and Why Their Sound Still Hits Today

DURAN DURAN RELEASE NEW SINGLE

‘FREE TO LOVE’ FT. NILE RODGERS

TO PERFORM SINGLE ON JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29

NORTH AMERICAN WEST COAST RUN STARTS MAY 1

LISTEN | WATCH
‘FREE TO LOVE’ FT. NILE RODGERS

NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES
05/01 - BeachLife Festival – Redondo Beach, CA
05/02 - Fontainebleau, Las Vegas, NV
05/06 - Fontainebleau, Las Vegas, NV
05/08 - Fontainebleau, Las Vegas, NV
05/09 - Fontainebleau, Las Vegas, NV


BeachLife Festival in Redondo on Friday features DURAN DURAN’s headlining set on Friday night. The global music icons will have an extraordinary set of hits and just debuted their absolutely electrifying new single “FREE TO LOVE” Ft. Nile Rodgers. Watch the Top of the Pops-inspired music video HERE and check out their live performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night HERE.


An uplifting, high-energy track built around a euphoric groove, ‘Free To Love’ features and was co-written by the legendary Nile Rodgers. The new single delivers an explosive strain of cyber-funk-fun, immediate and built for the dancefloor, while carrying a message of positivity, openness and love in the face of a very divided world. Listen to it HERE.

Global music icons Duran Duran today unveil their first new music of 2026 with ‘Free To Love,’ the brand new single featuring longtime collaborator Nile Rodgers. The song, which is accompanied by a Jonas Åkerlund-directed music video starring British broadcaster and personality Clara Amfo – made in association with Italian luxury perfumer Xerjoff - comes just days before they embark on a run of west coast headline dates and a late-night performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, before returning to Europe and the UK, where they will headline London’s BST Hyde Park for the second time, on July 5th.

An uplifting, high-energy track built around a euphoric groove, ‘Free To Love’ features and was co-written by the legendary Nile Rodgers. The new single delivers an explosive strain of cyber-funk - fun, immediate and built for the dancefloor, while carrying a message of positivity, openness and love in the face of a very divided world.


Introducing ‘Free To Love’, Simon Le Bon said:
"Free To Love is disco for the 2020's. It's up-beat & up-tempo; it's about freedom; it's about loving the modern world instead of hating it, and that is something we need right now. Be free! Be free to love!”



Nick Rhodes added:
"Every time we plug in and play with Nile, the electricity he generates could light up a whole city. We share a common belief that music is a force for good and something that brings positive energy into the world. 'Free to Love' is our call to all the people out there who want peace, hope and understanding to prevail. An anthem for freedom, which is the most valuable currency we have, and something that should be truly and freely available for everyone, everywhere. 'Free to Love' has a simple message, there is nothing more important than freedom and love. We certainly need a lot more of both in the world right now.”



‘Free to Love’ is the latest in a long line of Duran Duran x Nile Rodgers collaborations that first began with a remix of the iconic #1 smash single, ‘The Reflex’ more than four decades ago.



Speaking about their latest work, Nile Rodgers said:
“True love is free and unconditional. My love for Duran Duran, and what our music together has always been about, is the love we share for our song's deepest meanings. Whatever chaos is going on outside, inside the studio we're free to love our peace.”



The high energy music video for ‘Free To Love’ is directed by the legendary Jonas Åkerlund ((Madonna, Beyoncé, Metallica, Lady Gaga), with fashion direction and costume design by Bea Åkerlund, and stars Clara Amfo introducing Duran Duran and Nile Rodgers before a spectacular retro music show-style performance.



Speaking about the creation of the new music video, Jonas Åkerlund said:
"Working with Duran Duran again, it’s clear the instinct is still there: they don’t just make music — they build a visual world around it. Always bold, always pushing for more, and with Nile Rodgers involved, that creative energy just gets even better.”


The video is made in association with Italian luxury perfumer Xerjoff, whose NeoRio fragrance (which was co-created by the band) provides both the inspiration and visual language for the film. The clip is a natural next chapter in a creative partnership that has been quietly building for the past year. It began on the set of the band’s 'Black Moonlight' music video, the song that shares its name with the first of their two Xerjoff scents, and has since grown into a genuine friendship and creative dialogue that has surpassed anything anyone could have imagined. Where 'Black Moonlight' found its companion in the nocturnal mystery of that first fragrance, 'Free To Love' speaks directly to the spirit of NeoRio — luminous, euphoric and built for exactly this kind of energy, its four vividly coloured bottles a visual blueprint for the warmth and technicolour atmosphere Åkerlund brings to life on screen.

Sergio Momo, Founder of Xerjoff, said: "What began on the set of the ‘Black Moonlight’ music video has grown into one of the most creatively fulfilling journeys of my career. Duran Duran approach music in the same way we approach perfume: with a desire to transport people into entirely different worlds. Seeing NeoRio come to life in 'Free To Love' feels like the perfect next step, and exactly what this collaboration has always been about."

Duran Duran are one of the most successful and influential bands in pop history. With well over 100 million records sold worldwide, the Birmingham-formed group has soundtracked generations with a peerless arsenal of hits including "Rio", "Hungry Like the Wolf", "Girls on Film", and "Ordinary World". Long time band mates Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Roger Taylor are known for their electrifying live performances and pioneering synth-pop sound. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees continue to prove why they are enduring music royalty with sold-out tours and critically acclaimed releases, including their sixteenth studio album, 2023’s Halloween themed Danse Macabre, which became their 10th UK Top 5 album.

Live, the band remain unstoppable, selling out arenas across the UK and North America during their Future Past Tour, before embarking on a prestigious multi-night Las Vegas residency at the Fontainebleau, preceded by a headline slot at California’s Beachlife Festival, and followed by a month-long run through Europe that includes their second performance at London’s BST in Hyde Park.



[PHOTO CREDIT: STEPHANIE PISTEL



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For all media inquiries, please contact:
HIGH RISE
Alexandra Baker | Alexandra@highrisepr.com
Melissa O’Toole | Melissa@highrisepr.com
Jamie Sward | Jamie@highrisepr.com


ABOUT DURAN DURAN:
Duran Duran are one of the most successful and influential bands in pop history. With well over 100 million records sold worldwide, the Birmingham-formed group has soundtracked generations with a peerless arsenal of hits including "Rio", "Hungry Like the Wolf", "Girls on Film", and "Ordinary World”. Long time band mates Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Roger Taylor are known for their electrifying live performances and pioneering synth-pop sound. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees continue to prove why they are enduring music royalty with sold-out tours and critically acclaimed releases, including their sixteenth studio album, 2023’s Halloween themed Danse Macabre, which became their 10th UK Top 5 album.

Coming up April 29th at 9:30am - Taj Frazier, Professor of Media Arts and Culture, USC Annenberg and Perry B. Johnson, Lecturer, USC Annenberg & Co-Director, The Sound of Victory - talk about LA's Music Scene Unpacked in PBS SoCal's 'OUTSIDE THE LYRICS' Season 2.

OUTSIDE THE LYRICS hosts,
Robeson Taj Frazier, PhD and Perry B. Johnson, PhD.

LISTEN to today's show 

PBS SoCal’s OUTSIDE THE LYRICS Explores  LA’s Subcultures Bridging Music and Creativity  Premieres on YouTube Channel March 17.

New four-episode season of OUTSIDE THE LYRICS dives into the vast subcultures of Los Angeles, including basketball at Venice Beach, Japanese-inspired listening bars and graffiti art. Watch to see how music, fashion, culture and identity all weave together to distinguish this dynamic city.


New episodes will roll out weekly on PBS SoCal’s YouTube channel starting with today's premiere and will be available to stream for free on the PBS app and on pbssocal.org.



PBS SoCal’s OUTSIDE THE LYRICS Explores

LA’s Subcultures Bridging Music and Creativity

Premieres on YouTube Channel March 17

Season Two Spotlights Conversations with Artist Patrick Martinez,

Stones Throw Records Co-Founder DJ Peanut Butter Wolf and more



OUTSIDE THE LYRICS hosts, Robeson Taj Frazier, PhD and Perry B. Johnson, PhD. 

https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/outside-the-lyrics



Select programming will also be available to stream on PBS.org and the free PBS App.

Members of PBS SoCal get extended access with PBS Passport.



Los Angeles, Calif. – March 17, 2026 – PBS SoCal, Southern California’s flagship PBS organization, announced today the second season of OUTSIDE THE LYRICS. Hosted by Robeson Taj Frazier, PhD, writer, multimedia producer and professor of media arts and culture at University of Southern California (USC), and Perry B. Johnson, PhD, music scholar, cultural historian and lecturer at USC.

The series is presented in association with USC Annenberg's Institute for Difference and Empowerment in the Arts (IDEA), which explores the redemptive and transformational capacities of media, the arts and culture.


The second season explores Los Angeles’ rich subcultures and their intersection with music through the people who shape them. In four locally produced episodes, they explore the history of basketball at Venice Beach, LA's listening bars and spaces inspired by Japanese kissaten culture, graffiti and visual art, and the powerful intersection of fashion, music and identity. New episodes will roll out weekly on PBS SoCal’s YouTube channel starting today on Tues., March 17 and will be available to stream for free on the PBS app and on pbssocal.org.



Visual Arts – Tues., March 17 – “Off the Wall”

Artist Patrick Martinez sits down with Robeson Taj Frazier to discuss how his origins as a graffiti writer in East LA continue to shape his artistic vision of Los Angeles. Explore how the bold aesthetics, techniques, materials and perspectives of hip hop and graffiti inform Martinez's now internationally-acclaimed artwork, offering a unique lens on the city's diverse communities and landscapes.



Basketball – Tues., March 24 – “Hooper’s Paradise”

Perry B. Johnson joins Nick Ansom, founder of Veniceball, Venice Basketball League and Hoopbus, to explore the intersection of basketball and music. She uncovers how the courts are a crossroad for athleticism, creativity and community. From streetball’s rhythms to the beats that soundtrack the game, discover how Venice Beach has fostered a unique cultural ecosystem where sports and music collide.



Fashion – Tues., March 31 – “Change Clothes”

Robeson Taj Frazier and Perry B. Johnson examine the relationship between fashion and music with two LA innovators. Designer/stylist Brea Stinson discusses working with popular artists, while GRAY founder Brandon Gray reveals how his upbringing in South Los Angeles influences his custom designs for celebrities. Discover how personal history and identity merge in the city's fashion-music dialogue.



Listening Communities – Tues., April 7 – “Deep Listening”

Robeson Taj Frazier and Perry B. Johnson explore the rise of listening spaces in Los Angeles, tracing their roots to Japanese kissaten culture. At Gold Line, Stones Throw Records founder, DJ Peanut Butter Wolf shares his vision for bars that bring people together through sound. At the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, an evening with In Sheep’s Clothing and Temporal Drift reveals the power of collective music appreciation and the cultural traditions that inspire LA's contemporary listening spaces.



For more information, follow us on social at @pbssocal



About PBS SoCal

PBS SoCal uses the power of public media for good, strengthening the civic fabric of Southern California and providing our community with an essential connection to a wider world. As a local, donor/member-supported non-profit organization, PBS SoCal is available to stream on the PBS app and the PBS Kids App and reaches nearly 22M viewers across 7 Broadcast channels — including 2 primary channels, PBS SoCal and PBS SoCal Plus and 5 digital subchannels. With a commitment to make content available anytime and anywhere for free, PBS SoCal offers programming that reflects the diversity of Southern California and showcases the full schedule of beloved and trusted PBS content spanning Education, News, Environment and Arts & Culture. PBS SoCal also sparks the sharing of ideas at in-person cultural events and community conversations as well as prepares children for kindergarten and beyond by bringing bilingual, hands-on learning experiences to the community for free.


About IDEA

IDEA explores the redemptive and transformation capacities of media, the arts, and culture, with specific attention to what they illuminate about identity, difference, and power. We organize and facilitate media, critical theory, and art-based interdisciplinary education, research, and programming. Learn more about us at: https://annenberg.usc.edu/research/idea



About Perry B. Johnson
Perry B. Johnson, Ph.D., is a music scholar, cultural historian and producer of several public-facing music and humanities projects. Her primary research and practice focus on music, popular culture and American cultural histories, with an emphasis on archives, public scholarship, power, identity and belonging. Johnson is at work on the manuscript for her first solo monograph, a cultural history of sexual misconduct in America’s popular music industries.

With this project, Johnson interrogates the framing of incidents of misconduct to track how the sector’s historically grim collage of abuse is structurally, institutionally and ideologically produced and sustained by traditional and social media.

At USC, Johnson teaches in the Annenberg School of Communication. Her courses for the Spring 2026 term include COMM 384: Interpreting Popular Culture and COMM 360: Los Angeles: Communication and Culture. Johnson is also the producer of Arts Talk, the official podcast of the USC Arts Now initiative.

Johnson is the associate producer and co-host of the second season of Outside the Lyrics, an award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary series from PBS that explores Los Angeles’ rich subcultures and their intersection with music through the people who shape them.

In her collaborative work, Johnson is co-founder and co-director of The Sound of Victory (SOV) (with Dr. Courtney M. Cox, University of Oregon), an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to exploring the historic relationship between music/sound and sport. SOV examines how identity, political economy and cultural mythology operate across the intertwined fields of sport and music/sound and analyzes the connected histories of these global spheres of entertainment through multimedia projects, original scholarship and public programming.


As part of this work, Johnson is co-editor of the forthcoming volume, The Sound of Victory: Music, Sport, and Society (September 2026, NYU Press), an interdisciplinary collection that joins international scholars, journalists and practitioners to critically examine the relationship between music/sound and sport through engagement with key moments, movements, figures and events. Together, Johnson and Cox are also working on their second book project, a nuanced cultural history of the NFL’s Super Bowl halftime show, which explores this ritualized entertainment spectacle as a distinctive American production.

Currently, Johnson is co-curating Playing Beyond the Field, a three-part SOV series taking place spring 2026 at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville with the support of the Vanderbilt Sports & Society Initiative. Playing Beyond the Field explores the dynamic relationship between music and sport, with a particular focus on Nashville’s robust African American musical and sporting legacies.

Johnson also co-hosts and produces the Sounding Off podcast, an SOV audio series that highlights the voices of athletes, artists, DJs and public intellectuals working at the intersection of music/sound and sport. Episodes highlight conversations with such interlocutors as writer/poet, cultural critic and MacArthur Fellow Hanif Abdurraqib; baseball historian and sportswriter Shakeia Taylor; Los Angeles Dodgers’ DJ Severe; WNBA player Sydney Colson; and NFL Super Bowl XLVI champion Spencer Paysinger, filmmaker and director Walter Thompson-Hernández, among many others.

In her production work, Johnson has produced and organized events at The Getty Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Hammer Museum, La Brea Tar Pits, The Ebell of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles’ historic Palace Theatre, Regent Theater, and more.

Johnson received her Ph.D. in communication from USC Annenberg, where she had a graduate affiliation in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies and was a research fellow with The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center. Prior to returning to USC Annenberg, Johnson was a postdoctoral fellow and instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, with a joint appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Media at Risk and the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication.
About Robeson Taj Frazier

About Robeson Taj Frazier
Robeson Taj Frazier is a USC professor of communication, arts and humanities curator, and Emmy-nominated producer of docuseries and documentary film. His intellectual, research, and creative practice explore American and Afrodiasporic political and expressive cultures, with a specific focus on intellectual histories and contemporary examples of political activism, media arts, subcultural and vernacular traditions, and cross-cultural contact in local and global contexts. 

He is the author (w/ Ben Caldwell) of the award-winning book, KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Ark of Ben Caldwell (Angel City Press, 2023), and The East is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination (Duke University Press, 2014). He is the host and executive producer of the award-winning PBS productions, Hip Hop and the Metaverse, and Outside the Lyrics, and producer of the documentary film, It’s Yours: A Story About Hip Hop and the Internet (dir. Marguerite de Bourgoing, 2019). He is also the executive director of IDEA (USC’s Institute for Difference and Empowerment in the Arts), an arts and culture-driven center that facilitates interdisciplinary education, research, programming, and cultural/media productions.



Where to Watch: “Episodes are available on PBS SoCal’s YouTube channel and to stream for free on the PBS app and on pbssocal.org/outsidethelyrics.”

Easy Honey is bringing their nostalgic brand of indie folk rock to BeachLife Festival this weekend to celebrate the release of their fantastic new EP Plaid (out this Thursday, 4/30). Songwriter, singer and guitarist Selby Austin joins us!

LISTEN
to today's show

ABOUT EASY HONEY

Easy Honey is a Charleston, SC based indie rock band that infuses its singer-songwriter folk roots with an original mix of nostalgic East Coast surf-rock. Originating at The University of The South: Sewanee over a cooler filled with freshman year college punch, the dynamic of this group is one of their strongest elements, existing with an electricity and a true sense of comradery both on and off stage. The tremendous creative power between the band’s members Selby Austin (vocals, guitar), Darby McGlone (vocals, guitar), Charlie Holt (drums, vocals) and Webster Austin (bass, vocals) is on full display in their versatile new EP, Plaid (out April 30 via Third Brother Records), which they wrote and recorded over a three-day session at an isolated cabin in snowy Marble, Colorado. 

Mixed with a steady sheen by the legendary Tony Hoffer (Beck, Phoenix, The Kooks, Air, M83), the rapid-fire five-song set deepens their beachy indie-pop style with vibrant new colors as they serve up witty melodies, catchy, relatable hooks and raucous yet sentimental lyrics about love, wistfulness and life’s big moments. Easy Honey, like so many of their mutual rock heroes, cut their teeth on the road and have built a devoted following of daydreamers and night seekers through extensive touring and sold-out gigs. 

Just like their live shows, which have taken them to audiences nationwide, their influences remain all over the map and pull from the classic rock and power-pop staples of their parents’ record collections (Big Star, Neil Young), up through '90s alt heroes Blind Melon as well as indie tunesmiths like Dr. Dog. No matter if they’re harmonizing next to a beach bonfire or exploring the rhythmic twists of a funky riff on stage, their music inevitably pulls you closer with an open-armed, all-are-welcome spirit. For more info, please visit www.easyhoneymusic.com.





Katie Leggett

PRESS HERE

138 W. 25th Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10001

katie@pressherepublicity.com

Event : Youth Mental Wellbeing: A Youth-Led Design Lab on Brain Health, the Arts and AI May 01, 2026

On the first day of Mental Health Awareness Month — as California’s landmark Prop 1 Mental Health Accountability Act takes effect — UCLA’s Semel Institute Teen Advisory Council, well-known artists dedicated to community healing, SoCal youth organizations and OpenAI Academy will convene the people who can actually solve this: young Californians themselves.


Youth Mental Wellbeing: A Youth-Led Design Lab on Brain, Arts & AI is a first-of-its-kind participatory symposium at UCLA’s Luskin Conference Center bringing together youth leaders, artists, mental health experts, policymakers and AI technologists around a single animating principle: Youth lead. Adults support. AI assists.World-class artistic performances for 600 youth and adult allies showing that music, creativity, and cultural expression are not soft additions to mental health—they are the science.

Three panels of California’s most influential voices in government, mental health, technology, and philanthropy interspersed with the performances— present not to speak at young people, but to listen and be accountable to what they produce
Three simultaneous breakout tracks —Arts & Mental Wellbeing, and AI & Youth Mental Health, and Neuroscience of Brain Health – where young people don’t attend panels, they run them

A live Youth Design Sprint in partnership with OpenAI Academy, where youth use AI tools in real time to co-author a California Youth Wellbeing Blueprint — concrete demands, named actors, actionable timeline

This is a conference by youth, for California’s future.

The findings from May 1st will not go into a binder. They will travel — to the CA Behavioral Health Commission, to OpenAI’s community deployment strategy, and through a strategic arc that runs to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art grand opening, Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium, and the LA 2028 Olympics. All in support of youth agency in crafting a mental wellbeing system.

California is the pilot. The world is watching.

Co-sponsors: UCLA Semel Institute Teen Advisory Council, UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Next Gen Advisory Board, Healthsperian, OpenAI Academy, Charles Drew University’s Arts and Healing Initiative, Brotherhood Crusade, Social Justice Learning Institute, TGood Lab

Learn more about the agenda and how to register:
Youth Mental Wellbeing: A Youth-Led Design Lab on Brain Health, the Arts and AI – Semel Institute

Here's the schedule for BEACHLIFE Festival '26!

 

BeachLife Festival | Live Music Festival | Redondo Beach, CA, USA

BeachLife Festival | Live Music Festival | Redondo Beach, CA, USA