Parker Posey Talks with Michael Schulman
8:30 p.m., the Joyce Theater
From party girl to teacher’s pet, Parker Posey, named Time’s “Queen of the Indies” in 1997, has delighted audiences for three decades with her exasperated-quirky-girl zingers and her uncanny embodiment of indignance. Last year, in Mike White’s third season of “The White Lotus,” Posey sunk her teeth into the plummy accent and soul-subsuming wealth of a Southern princess turned ill-equipped matriarch. This fall, she appears in Martin McDonagh’s new movie, “Wild Horse Nine,” as the wife of a C.I.A. agent who’s been dispatched to Easter Island, played by Sam Rockwell. At the Festival, Posey joins the staff writer Michael Schulman to talk about her career as a sui-generis actress.
Critics at Large Live, Featuring Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz
8:30 P.M., the T. Rowe Price Theatre
Are you in need of some guidance? Do you feel lost, culturally, socially, or just generally? Never fear: your favorite trio of culture gurus are here to help. The Critics at Large podcast hosts come to you live with their special segment “I Need a Critic!,” dishing out advice that they may or may not be qualified to give. Chime in with your questions, concerns, gripes, and hopes, and be prepared to have your life changed for the better—or, at the very least, to laugh a lot.
Ann Patchett and Louise Erdrich Talk with Deborah Treisman
10 A.M., Webster Hall
Ann Patchett, the author of “Bel Canto” and, most recently, the Times best-seller “Whistler,” is the great conjurer of chosen families, crafting unlikely bonds between characters under duress. Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the award-winning author of “The Night Watchman” and a new collection of stories, “Python’s Kiss,” is the premier voice memorializing the severed ties of family and culture among Native peoples. Both authors have invested in their home communities as owners of a local bookstore: Erdrich’s Birchbark Books, in Minneapolis, and Patchett’s Parnassus Books, in Nashville. The New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman hosts the discussion.
The Future of A.I., Featuring Jill Lepore, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, and Andrew Marantz, with Joshua Rothman
10 A.M., the Joyce Theater
In early September, a former Anthropic employee said that the people building A.I. believe it could kill us all in less than ten years—a deeply unsettling proposition, especially for something that has already infiltrated our daily lives, in both obvious and invisible ways. Is that really where we’re headed? Is there any hope for regulation? And, if so, what will happen to all those chatbot boyfriends? The writers Jill Lepore, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Andrew Marantz, and Joshua Rothman will parse through questions such as these, contemplating what the future holds for a technology that, for better or worse, seems here to stay.
Michael Douglas Talks with Ariel Levy
12:30 P.M., Webster Hall
Gordon Gekko embodied the nineteen-eighties Zeitgeist when he said—as delivered by a slick, suspender-clad Michael Douglas, in perhaps his most iconic role, in “Wall Street”—“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Is it greedy to sustain a half-century career in Hollywood, win two Academy Awards, and receive A.F.I.’s Life Achievement Award? Maybe so, but then again Douglas also gives back, as a U.N. Messenger of Peace. You can read about it in his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride.” He speaks with the New Yorker staff writer Ariel Levy, who knows her way around an iconic octogenarian actor: she is Dustin Hoffman’s co-author for his forthcoming memoir, “Look at Me.”
Who Gets to Be an American?, Featuring Isabel Wilkerson, Jonathan Blitzer, and Jelani Cobb, with Michael Luo
12:30 P.M., the Joyce Theater
With an increase in ICE raids and violent arrests across the U.S., the topic of American identity is at the forefront of our political climate. What does it mean to be a part of this country, and how has that definition changed in recent years? Isabel Wilkerson, the author of “The Warmth of Other Suns” and “Caste,” joins the New Yorker writers Jonathan Blitzer and Jelani Cobb and executive editor Michael Luo for a roundtable discussion about the question of citizenship and the ways the Trump Administration has put its finger on the scale in the never-ending debate of belonging.