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Dorothy Thompson was the first female head of a European news bureau, and a columnist and commentator whom Time magazine once ranked alongside Eleanor Roosevelt as the most influential woman in America. Rebecca West blazed a trail for herself as a journalist, literary critic, novelist and historian.

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When Carnegie Hall opened in 1891, New York was still an intensely Victorian commercial city, and rock-hewn neo-Romanesque and arts and crafts Queen Anne were the predominant styles. Elevators were sending buildings to unprecedented heights and middle class people were gingerly trying the brand-new idea of apartment house living. But McKim, Mead & White’s recently completed Villard Houses and their fantastic Madison Square Garden announced to New York that things were about to change.

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In the wake of the worst recession in recent history, pre-eminent economist Jeffrey Sachs argues that American capitalism will return to the brink of collapse if measures aren’t taken to fix it. Join us for this special evening as Professor Sachs, in conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin, argues that U.S. citizens must reach a consensus on government’s role in everyday life and on their basic values, and offers a bold and ambitious plan to change our economic system.

Since 1971, the U.S. dollar has not been convertible into anything except small change. Like every other modern currency, it derives its value from the perceived acumen of the government that prints it. But in this era of financial insecurity, is the soaring price of gold evidence that faith in this system has wilted? Experts debate the future of our monetary system: Should the United States return to the gold standard or should it carry on by printing dollars with each successive financial crisis?

When Barack Obama was elected President, people across the globe anticipated the coming of a new age of American liberalism and bipartisanship. Yet two years after his inauguration, the nation is experiencing a conservative resurgence of dramatic proportions. With Republicans consistently opposing the president’s main platforms and Democrats accusing the president of being too conceding, political disharmony is crippling the legislative process.

In his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt looked forward to a world in which everyone enjoyed four essential freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These values were central to both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who made it her personal mission to codify those rights in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Experts discuss the speech and its far-reaching influence, and also delve into this extraordinary couple’s influence on one another.