City Arts & Lectures

By City Arts & Lectures

Arts

What's City Arts & Lectures about?

Since 1980, City Arts & Lectures has presented onstage conversations with outstanding figures in literature, politics, criticism, science, and the performing arts, offering the most diverse perspectives about ideas and values. City Arts & Lectures programs can be heard on more than 130 public radio stations across the country and wherever you get your podcasts. The broadcasts are co-produced with KQED 88.5 FM in San Francisco. Visit CITYARTS.NET for more info.

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Abraham Verghese with Micha...

06.04.2023

Abraham Verghese is a best-selling novelist, and a physician whose focus on healing and empathy stands out in an era when technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. His novel Cutting for Stone is the story of twin brothers ...

City Arts & Lectures episodes:

06.04.2023 Abraham Verghese with Michael Krasny Abraham Verghese is a best-selling novelist, and a physician whose focus on healing and empathy stands out in an era when technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. His novel Cutting for Stone is the story of twin brothers ...
05.28.2023 Siddhartha Mukherjee Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, and The Laws of Medicine. Told in six parts and laced with his own experience as a researcher, doctor, and ...
05.21.2023 Laura Dern Actor Laura Dern has been captivating audiences since her breakout role in Blue Velvet in 1986. Since then, she’s appeared in dozens of films including Jurassic Park, Wild At Heart, Rambling Rose, The Last Jedi, Little Women, and Marriage Story, ...
05.14.2023 Michio Kaku This week, a conversation with theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku. Kaku is a co-founder of string field theory and he's one of today's most recognizable scientists appearing regularly on news programs, documentary films and as host of two ...
05.07.2023 Richard Mosse Richard Mosse is a photographer and filmmaker who’s documenting some of the world’s most significant environmental and humanitarian crises – and his work lies at the intersection between journalism and conceptual art. For his recent projects, Mosse used military-grade cameras ...
04.30.2023 Jeffrey Toobin and Jane Mayer The definitive account of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the tragic legacy of Timothy McVeigh, leading to the January 6 insurrection, comes from jourrnalist Jeffrey Toobin (The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,The Run of His ...
04.23.2023 Clint Smith and Terisa Siagatonu Poets Clint Smith and Terisa Siagatonu address issues like climate change, while also looking back at American history. Clint Smith is the author of the best-selling narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of ...
04.16.2023 Nita Farahany and Preet Bharara What is “cheating” in the era of generative AI and cognitive enhancers? What rights do we have against institutional misuse of AI and nanotechnology? These technologies have permeated everything from criminal justice to the future of work – and without ...
04.09.2023 Laurel Braitman and Samin Nosrat Laurel Braitman is the Director of Writing and Storytelling at The Medicine and the Muse Program at Stanford School of Medicine. There, she helps clinical students, staff, and physicians communicate more clearly and vulnerably – for their own benefit as ...
04.02.2023 Atul Gawande Atul Gawande is a surgeon and author who’s well-known for his clear and eloquent writing on medicine. He was a staff writer for “The New Yorker” magazine from 1998 until 2022, when President Biden appointed him to lead global health ...
03.26.2023 Jennifer Egan This week, our guest is Jennifer Egan, who writes with nuance on an astounding range of subjects and disciplines. Her novels include The Invisible Circus, Look at Me, and Manhattan Beach, That intellectual breadth also shows up in her journalism, ...
03.19.2023 Encore: Michael Pollan For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. His many acclaimed titles include ...
03.12.2023 Tsitsi Dangarembga & Angela Davis Tsitsi Dangarembga is a novelist, playwright, activist, and filmmaker. She is the author of the Tambudzai Trilogy, which traces the life of a rural girl from her childhood in colonial Zimbabwe to her adulthood in a country repressed by political ...
03.05.2023 Patrick Radden Keefe This week, we’ll dive into the curious world of criminals and crooks with journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the bestsellers Empire of Pain: The Secret of the Sackler Dynasty and ...
02.19.2023 Natalie Diaz and Hilton Als This week, our guest is poet Natalie Diaz in conversation with essayist and author Hilton Als. Natalie Diaz is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community and is the director of the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program, where ...
02.12.2023 Fran Lebowitz In a cultural landscape filled with endless pundits and talking heads, Fran Lebowitz stands out as one of our most insightful social commentators. Her essays and interviews offer her acerbic views on current events and the media – as well ...
02.05.2023 Telehealth with Jeremy A. Greene/In Search of Paradise with Pico Iyer This week, we have two in-studio conversations. First, Jeremy A. Greene, a doctor and professor at Johns Hopkins University, talks with Hannah Zeavin about his book “The Doctor Who Wasn’t There”. It traces the history and pitfalls of technology in ...
01.29.2023 Thao Nguyen and Samin Nosrat Songwriter, performer, and multi-instrumentalist Thao Nguyen is celebrated for her richly percussive music and her fiercely delivered vocals. She has released five albums with the band Thao & The Get Down Stay Down including the most recent, Temple, a powerful ...
01.22.2023 Nikole Hannah-Jones and Barry Jenkins with Jeff Chang This week – Jeff Chang talks to Nikole Hannah-Jones, one of today’s foremost investigative journalists. Her reporting on civil rights and racial justice, including school segregation, has earned her numerous awards, chief among them a Pulitzer Prize for her work ...
01.15.2023 Justice Stephen Breyer and Judge Charles Breyer This week, a conversation with two brothers, both distinguished members of the federal judiciary, Justice Stephen Breyer and his brother, Judge Charles Breyer. Stephen Breyer retired in summer 2022 after nearly 28 years as a member of the Supreme Court. ...
01.08.2023 Ottessa Moshfegh & Rachel Kushner Rachel Kushner is the author of novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. Her career-spanning book of essays The Hard Crowd, solidified her ...
01.01.2023 Encore: Richard Powers This week, our guest is Richard Powers. He’s the author of thirteen novels on everything from neuroscience, to artificial intelligence to the environment. His book, “The Overstory” earned him a Pulitzer prize in fiction. The Financial Times called it “A ...
12.25.2022 Encore: Jeremy Denk Our guest is Jeremy Denk, one of America’s foremost pianists. Winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, Denk is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and ...
12.18.2022 Kim Stanley Robinson Kim Stanley Robinson is widely recognized as one of the foremost living writers of science fiction. In The Ministry for the Future, Robinson imagines a near-future where climate change has wreaked havoc, from severe heat waves, to flooding, limited resources, ...
12.11.2022 Patti Smith Patti Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist who gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released numerous albums and books including her seminal record Horses, hailed as one of the ...
12.04.2022 Robert Reich Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is a popular professor at UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, and the author of eighteen books, including the bestsellers The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, The Common Good, Saving ...
11.27.2022 Encore: Jessica B. Harris and Samin Nosrat Dr. Jessica B. Harris is the preeminent authority on the culinary culture of the African Diaspora. Harris has spent over three decades studying African food and its migration. To understand the rich and complex flavors of African American cuisine requires ...
11.20.2022 Siddhartha Mukherjee Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, and The Laws of Medicine. Told in six parts and laced with his own experience as a researcher, doctor, and ...
11.13.2022 Jemele Hill Jemele Hill is the Emmy Award–winning former cohost of ESPN’s SportsCenter and 2018 NABJ Journalist of the Year. Hill is a contributing writer for the Atlantic, where she covers the intersection of sports, race, politics, and culture. She is also ...
11.06.2022 Anand Giridharadas Anand Giridharadas is the author of the international bestseller Winners Take All, The True American, and India Calling. His new book The Persuaders offers an insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens working to change minds, bridge divisions, ...
10.30.2022 Jane Fonda Actor and activist Jane Fonda has redefined herself again and again. Born into Hollywood royalty, she’s been an acclaimed actor, an anti-war activist, a fitness guru, and in her seventies and eighties, a comedic partner to actor Lily Tomlin in ...
10.23.2022 Behind Their Screens: What Teens are Facing (and Adults are Missing) As new information emerges about the impacts of social media and screens on young people, so do new strategies to guide and protect teens. Our guests, Harvard University researchers Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, set out to try and understand ...
10.23.2022 George McCalman This week, a conversation with artist George McCalman. His new book, “An Illustrated Black History”, features 145 Black artists, scientists, and public intellectuals whose enormous contributions to US history are in stark contrast with their frequent absence from the public ...
10.16.2022 Leila Mottley A native of Oakland, California, Leila Mottley uses her writing as a tool to call for social justice reform and advocate for victims of sexual violence. Her acclaimed poetry has appeared in Oprah Daily and The New York Times, and ...
10.09.2022 W. Kamau Bell and Kate Schatz For the millions of Americans asking “What can I do?” to dismantle white supremacy comes an answer: Do the Work! An Antiracist Activity Book. The revolutionary antiracism workbook by W. Kamau Bell and Kate Schatz addresses institutional racism in the ...
10.02.2022 Andrew Sean Greer Andrew Sean Greer’s novels include The Story of a Marriage, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, and a satire of the literary world, Less - which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2018. Now, he’s out with the followup, ...
09.25.2022 Andy Borowitz Andy Borowitz is an award-winning comedian and New York Times bestselling author. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from Harvard College, where he became President of the Harvard Lampoon. In 1998, he began contributing humor to The New ...
09.18.2022 Angela Garbes Angela Garbes’s first book, Like a Mother, looked at the science, myths, and inequities surrounding pregnancy and motherhood. Her latest book, Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, continues to examine obstacles and injustices faced by parents and other caregivers. In ...
09.11.2022 Dave Eggers Dave Eggers is the author of many books, including Zeitoun, What Is the What, and You Shall Know Our Velocity. In 2000, Eggers made his enormously popular literary debut with his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. His latest ...
09.04.2022 Mary Roach Mary Roach is the author of the books Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Gulp, Grunt, and Packing for Mars, all of which bring her distinctly funny voice to popular science subjects. Her new book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, combines little-known ...
08.28.2022 Keith Corbin This week, a story of transformation with Los Angeles chef and restaurateur Keith Corbin. Corbin grew up in Watts, his early years entangled in drugs and gangs. After serving time in one of California’s most notorious maximum security prisons, Corbin ...
08.21.2022 Salman Rushdie This week, we’re going into the City Arts and Lectures archives for highlights from the many times Salman Rushdie has come to San Francisco. Rushdie is the author of fifteen novels, including Victory City, which is expected to be published ...
08.14.2022 Mohsin Hamid Mohsin Hamid is the author of five novels, including The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Exit West. All display Hamid’s lyrical prose, his acute understanding of some of the most dire conflicts faced by ...
08.07.2022 Michael Pollan For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. His many acclaimed titles include ...
07.31.2022 Medicine and Injustice - Rupa Marya and Raj Patel This week, we look at the connection between the state of our bodies and the state of the planet, with physician Rupa Marya and journalist Raj Patel, Their new book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, draws on ...
07.24.2022 Crosstalk Part Two: Genre is Cancelled An encore of a two-part miniseries from 2020, in which past City Arts & Lectures guests talk across, among, and around one another. In the second half of Crosstalk, our guests discuss genre. What is a novel? What is autofiction? ...
07.17.2022 Crosstalk, Pt 1: Writing Identity An encore presentation from 2020: Crosstalk is a two-part series of compiled conversations between City Arts & Lectures guests from recent years discussing literary identity and the sometimes pleasurable, sometimes painful, act of writing. Guests include Ocean Vuong, Zadie Smith, ...
07.10.2022 An Expert's Guide to Sleep with Matt Walker A conversation on the science of sleep and how we can improve it for better health with Dr. Matt Walker. Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Center for Human Sleep ...
07.03.2022 Kim Stanley Robinson with Bill McKibben In The Ministry for the Future, science fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson imagines a near-future where climate change has wreaked havoc, from severe heat waves, to flooding, limited resources, and a global refugee crisis. It’s a terrifying set of circumstances. ...
06.26.2022 Amor Towles This week, a conversation with one of today’s most beloved and historically imaginative authors: Amor Towles. Towles earned wide critical acclaim and a loyal international audience with his 2016 novel, A Gentleman in Moscow. His new book, The Lincoln Highway, ...

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