See what’s streaming on CHQ Assembly this October! 

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CHQ Assembly’s October 2023 Lineup 

In October, we’re highlighting the 2023 Summer Assembly theme “Games: A Celebration of Our Most Human Pastimes.”

Games, in all their forms, share one common trait: Philosopher Bernard Suits once said that “playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” Watch Chautauqua’s lecturers Will Shortz, Scott Simon, Tara VanDerveer, Kristopher Alexander, Rex Lyons, Rabbi Michael Shire, Jaycee Holmes, Joseph C. Cyrulik, Lakisha R. Lockhart, Percival Everett, and Vasudha Narayanan as they explore our capacity for self-created delight and how we rise to the surmountable challenges of our own making through games.

If you aren’t a member, visit assembly.chq.org to sign up today! 

Notable Lectures

Scott Simon

 

One of America’s most admired writers and broadcasters, National Public Radio’s Scott Simon has reported from all 50 states and every continent. He has covered 10 wars, hundreds of campaigns, sieges, natural disasters, civil wars, scandals — and his fair share of sporting events. The host of “Weekend Edition Saturday” and a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs, Simon joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series on Independence Day to reflect on what the stories of touchstone moments in the world of sports have meant in American history, and how sports can bring people together. 

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Will Shortz

 

Described by New York Magazine as a “philosopher of puzzles,” Will Shortz is the world’s only academically accredited puzzle master, having designed his own major program at Indiana University which led to his one-of-a-kind degree in enigmatology — the study of puzzles. The puzzle master for NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” since the program’s start in 1987, and crossword editor of The New York Times since 1993, Shortz closes Chautauqua’s week on “Games: A Celebration of Our Most Human Pastime” by sharing his favorite crosswords and puzzle makers, how crosswords are created, their curious history, and his lifelong passion for puzzles.

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Tara VanDerveer

 

The all-time winningest coach in women’s college basketball and winningest active coach in men’s and women’s Division 1 basketball , Tara VanDerveer has cemented herself as one of the top coaches in the history of sport, both collegiately and internationally, and is a member of both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2011) and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame (2002). VanDerveer has led her Stanford teams to three NCAA Championships (1990, 1992, 2021), one of four coaches in the history of the sport to win three titles. She’s advanced the Cardinal to 14 NCAA Final Four appearances, 25 Pac-12 regular-season titles, 15 Pac-12 Tournament crowns and 34 trips to the NCAA Tournament. She also won a gold medal as the coach of USA Basketball at the 1996 Olympic Games. VanDerveer is a five-time national coach of the year (1988, 1989, 1990, 2011, 2021) and 17-time Pac-12 Coach of the Year, accumulating an impressive 1,186-265 (.817) record in her 44 years as a collegiate head coach and a 1,034-214 (.829) record over 37 seasons at Stanford. Tara is a lifetime Chautauquan. 

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Lakisha R. Lockhart

 

The Rev. Dr. Lakisha R. Lockhart is a mother, wife, daughter, sister, former Zumba instructor, Womanist and coolest auntie around. She believes in the power of play, movement, aesthetics, and creative arts in life and in theology, using the body as a locus for theological reflection. She is a consultant, executive secretary for the Religious Education Association, and in her professorial role as Assistant Professor of Christian Education at Union Presbyterian Seminary she is not only a teacher, but a facilitator, rope jumper, game-player, advocate and catalyst for critical consciousness and engagement in educating in faith and actually living into that faith through various spiritual and artistic practices.

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Percival Everrett

 

Winner of the 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, Dr. No is the latest novel from the prolific, genre-bending, experimental writer, Percival Everett. 

Dr. No, which borrows its title from the early James Bond story and subsequent film, tells the “unhinged” story of a brilliant professor of mathematics, Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means “nothing” in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for “nothing.” His parents, he says, were mathematicians and believed that two negatives yielded a positive.) He is an expert on nothing. That is to say he is an expert, and his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it.

Watch all these lectures and more, exclusively on CHQ Assembly.