City Arts & Lectures

Our guest today is poet, author, and meditator Diego Perez, better known by his pen name: Yung Pueblo. A popular voice in the self-improvement space, Pueblo is known for writing – in books and on social media – that focuses on personal development and healthy relationships. His newest book is How to Love Better: The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion. On March 14, 2025, Yung Pueblo came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Forrest Hanson, host of the podcast Being Well.

Our guest today is writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, revered in her home country of Nigeria and in the United States, thanks especially to the popularity of her 2013 novel Americannah, a book that straddles the cultures of America and Nigeria and considers the challenges, status, and perceptions of Africans abroad. Since then, Adichie has continued to write fiction and essays on a range of issues, from identity, to grief, to the role of women. Her Ted Talk, “We Should All Be Feminists,” has been viewed by millions and heard by even more when Beyonce sampled a portion in the song, “Flawless.” Adichie is also the author of the novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus, the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Notes on Grief, and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. On March 7, 2025, Adchie came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to discuss her new novel, Dream Count, with Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of “Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us”, to be published in May 2025.

Laurie Woolever is a writer, cook, and former right-hand woman to the late Anthony Bourdain. Woolever’s memoir “Care and Feeding” chronicles her journey through the food world as she navigated addiction, a cultural reckoning, and unexpected tragedy. The intensity of restaurant kitchens and the rock-and-roll lifestyle of celebrity chefs make the book a highly entertaining read, as do Woolever’s nuanced and tender reflections. On March 3, 2025, Laurie Woolever spoke with Courtney Martin.

Melissa Clark is the author of more than 30 cookbooks, and a writer at the New York Times, where she appears in a weekly cooking video series. She’s known for her passionate, but casual, approach to cooking, and her love of anchovies. Emily Weinstein is the editor-in-chief of NYT Cooking and Food whose latest book is “Easy Weeknight Dinners”. On February 10, 2025, Melissa Clark and Emily Weinstein came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater to be interviewed by San Francisco Chronicle food critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan.

Our guest today is Neko Case. The iconic alt-country musician is a founding member of the indie-rock band The New Pornographers. She’s also released numerous records on her own, featuring music from multiple genres. Now, she’s published a memoir about her poverty-stricken childhood, and the way art and a connection to nature have served as guides throughout her life. It’s called "The Harder I Fight The More I Love You". On February 8, 2025, Case came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to poet, essayist and critic Hanif Abdurraqib.

Our guest today is Jeffrey Toobin, bestselling author and CNN legal commentator. Toobin is well known for his ability to illuminate the complexities of our judicial system, and he’s covered some of the country's most sensational news stories … from the O.J. Simpson trial, to Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Clinton, to Martha Stewart's legal battles. His newest book is called The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy. It’s about what many consider the most controversial presidential pardon in American history - Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon – and its profound implications for our current political landscape, including the ways that Presidents Biden and Trump have exercised their executive power. On February 19, 2025, Toobin came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater to talk to lawyer and legal scholar Lara Bazelon.

Our guest today is Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her books include Half of a Yellow Sun, The Thing Around Your Neck, and the 2013 novel Americannah, whose popularity propelled Adichie to literary stardom. Like Adichie herself, Americannah straddles the cultures of America and Nigeria, considering the status and perceptions of Africans abroad as well as what happens when they return to their home countries. This month, Adichie will publish a new novel, Dream Count. As we look ahead to that, and Adichie’s upcoming visit to City Arts & Lectures, we’re re-broadcasting this 2014 conversation with her friend and fellow writer Dave Eggers.

Nate DiMeo is the creator and host of The Memory Palace, a podcast about people from America's past whose names might not be familiar, but whose lives changed the course of history. The show’s episodes take the form of short, evocative essays, rich with detail and emotion. DiMeo’s stories don’t just describe historical events - they encourage listeners to imagine how people actually felt and experienced them at the time. On January 24, 2025, Nate DiMeo talked to Gretchen Sisson in the studios of KQED about The Memory Palace podcast, and its recently published book version.

Kevin Fagan is an award-winning journalist who recently retired from the San Francisco Chronicle. For his decades-long coverage of homelessness, Fagan spent extensive time on the streets, getting to know the people he reported on, and the paths their lives took. But his journalism didn’t just draw just from those encounters – it was also shaped by his own experience of homelessness as a young man. On January 24, 2025, Fagan came to the KQED studios in San Francisco to talk to Gretchen Sisson about his book “The Lost and the Found”.

We’re celebrating the life of Cecile Richards with a re-broadcast of a portion of her 2018 appearance for City Arts & Lectures. Richards was a national leader for women’s rights and social and economic justice. Richards, the daughter of legendary Texas Governor Ann Richards, started her career as a labor organizer. She went on to serve as Deputy Chief of Staff to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then as the President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund for over a decade. She was twice named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. Cecile Richards died on January 20, 2025. This program was recorded on April 11, 2018, when Richards joined KQED's Mina Kim at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco to discuss her newly published memoir, Make Trouble.

John Mills is the CEO and Co-Founder of Watch Duty, an app that alerts users to nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts. The app’s “reporters” – many volunteers – include journalists, wildfire experts, and former fire service workers monitoring scanners, live video, and other data in order to provide up to the minute information. The app includes interactive maps that allow users to track evacuation zones and shelter locations. Recently, Watch Duty became the #1 downloaded free app on the Apple App store due to s surge in users during the Los Angeles wildfires. On January 27, 2025, John Mills talked to Alexis Madrigal about how he developed the app and its non-profit mission.

Our guest is Ada Limón, the current United States Poet Laureate. Limon has published six books of poetry, including The Carrying, The Hurting Kind, and Bright Dead Things. Limon says that poetry isn’t just meant to be read – it’s meant to be read out loud - and this program also includes her reading several poems. On February 22, 2024, Limón came to The Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Alexis Madrigal about the ways in which the natural world inspires her work – from the landscape of her youth in Sonoma County, California, to Kentucky, where she lives today. This program originally aired in March 2024.

Before his novel Erasure was adapted into the hit film American Fiction, Percival Everett was already one of the literary world’s most acclaimed talents, appreciated for his inimitable characters and storylines, as well as his uncommon variety of genres. Since Everett’s first novel in 1983, he has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, for Telephone, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for The Trees. His newest novel, James, is a reimagining of Huckleberry Finn, and has already been touted as “a canon-shattering great book.” Cord Jefferson made his feature writing and directorial debut with American Fiction, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His television credits include Watchmen, The Good Place, Succession, Station Eleven, Master of None, and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. On June 3, 2024, Cord Jefferson and Percival Everett came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed by Jelani Cobb. This program was originally heard in June of 2024.

Our guest today is Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at UC San Francisco who studies abortion and adoption. Her new book, “Relinquished”, is the culmination of a decade-long study in which Sisson interviewed mothers from across the country who had given their children up for adoption. Sisson examines the myths and realities associated with these mothers – for example, only 14% are teenagers. But the majority live in poverty - over half have an income of less than $5,000 a year, and some experts suggest up to 20% are homeless. On February 6, 2024, Gretchen Sisson came to the studios of KQED in San Francisco to talk about “Relinquished” with Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and the author of "Ambitious Like A Mother". This program was originally heard in February of 2024.

Our guest today is john a. powell, an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties. He’s the former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and currently Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California. powell’s new book is a guide to fostering connections in today’s fragmented society - what powell calls “bridging.” The book includes powell’s personal story of isolation and eventual connection with his own family. On December 9, 2024, john a. powell came to the KQED studios in San Francisco to talk with Courtney Martin about "The Power of Bridging; How to Build a World Where We All Belong". NOTE: powell prefers to use lower case in writing his name.

Our guest is Rachel Kushner. Her writing includes novels like The Mars Room and The Flamethrowers, and essays on everything from prison abolition to art theory and motorcycle racing. Her fourth novel, Creation Lake, is Kushner’s take on noir. It follows a young woman infiltrating a French anarchist collective. On December 12th, 2024, Kushner came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Jonah Wiener, a culture journalist and contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. The conversation was wide-ranging, from her research process, to her travels in France, and her opinions on the Tesla Cybertruck.

Robert Sapolsky - Encore

Since his 2016 debut poetry collection The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, Hanif Abdurraqib’s writing has earned him numerous accolades as a poet, essayist, and music critic. Easily moving from emotionally riveting examinations of Black identities to academic explorations of punk scenes to analyses of contemporary popular artists, Abdurraqib’s work is full of uninhibited curiosity, revolutionary honesty, and a singular intelligence. His first essay collection, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a best book of 2017 by NPR, Pitchfork, the Los Angeles Review, and Esquire. His new memoir, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, traces his relationship with basketball while uncovering how we decide who is deserving of success. On April 3, 2024, Hanif Abdurraqib came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with Shereen Marisol Meraji. Meraji is a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism, and a founder of NPR’s award-winning podcast Code Switch.

Since 1978, when her very first cartoon appeared in The New Yorker Magazine, Roz Chast has been chronicling modern life’s anxieties and absurdities. Neurotic characters with frizzy hair and mouths agape sit on sofas or walk along New York sidewalks worrying, observing, and making us laugh. Her more than a dozen books include Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?, a memoir about her parents aging, and a collaboration with Steve Martin called The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!. On November 2, 2023 Chast came to The Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to share stories from her newest book, I Must Be Dreaming.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning journalist known for her groundbreaking work on the history and legacy of slavery, including school segregation and educational inequality. In 2020, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on “The 1619 Project”. A series of articles for a special issue of the New York Times Magazine. It was part of an initiative to reframe American history by centering the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans. On November 22, 2024, Nikole Hannah-Jones came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Key Jo Lee of the Museum of the African Diaspora. A new edition, “The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience” which incorporates art and photography, had been published a few weeks before.