City Arts & Lectures

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.