(Photo by nevermindtheend)

The president-elect is, like, a smart guy who doesn’t need those pesky intelligence briefings. His new hometown, meanwhile, is struggling to wrap its collective mind about, well, WTF is going to happen now.

Todd Kliman doesn’t know—no one does. That hasn’t stopped the conversation from whirring at the weekly Shabbat dinners he hosts or in chats with neighbors. What does this mean? How did this happen? What’s going to happen now?

To explore such dizzying questions, Kliman is gathering a panel of distinguished speakers each week in Petworth for a series appropriately titled “WTF Now?!”

“People are writing pieces left and right, and writing with the kind of certainty that’s expected in the media, but nobody knows,” says Kliman, who stepped down as a food critic at Washingtonian in the spring and has been working on a book, freelancing, curating talks, and consulting, among other things, since then. “That’s partly why I want to do this—in a real authentic, explanatory way, a searching way. We don’t know, but we can speculate.”

Kliman had been talking to restaurateur Paul Ruppert about doing some kind of salon-style series since the summer. After the election, there was no longer any question about what it would be about.

“This is a city where people want to talk about things and get to the bottom of things,” Kliman says. “The idea for this was born of despair.”

So he has assembled a lineup of speakers to get the conversation going—a cross between a town hall and a salon—at a community space above Slim’s Diner called Third Floor. The first is tonight (and already sold out), featuring Slate’s political correspondent Jamelle Bouie, economics professor Tyler Cowen, philosophy professor Firmin DeBrabander, and poet Sarah Browning. Next week is a slate of historians, and additional talks are in the works.

“These are scholars and historians who have deep knowledge and have really immersed themselves in some of the areas we’re talking about,” Kliman says. “They’re not experts on Trump—they can’t be—but given their backgrounds, they can possibly help us understand what this is and where we are headed for.”

The goal isn’t to walk away with an action plan or even certain answers, but to bring people together and work through the mounting questions. “I want people to feel unencumbered and engaged with one another and folks in the audience,” Kliman says. “This is a little live experiment.”

The first event is sold out, but tickets ($10) for the next two talks can be purchased here and here. They take place on Mondays at 4200 9th St. NW from 7-9 p.m.