City Arts & Lectures

 This week, our guest is Elizabeth Pryor – a professor of history at Smith College, whose work focuses on the histories of race and slavery in the United States. Pryor’s memoir, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me, is about growing up as the Black Jewish daughter of comedian Richard Pryor. It also traces the painful evolution of the N-word from the era of slavery to today –...

 This week, our guest is Lena Dunham, best known as the creator of Girls, an HBO series about a group of 20-somethings that one critic called “a generational event.” Her most recent television series, Too Much , is about a New Yorker who moves to London to find her way out of heartbreak. On May 17, 2026, Dunham came to the SGT to talk about her memoir, Famesick, with her close friend, journalist M...

José Andrés is widely recognized for both his culinary achievements – including two Michelin stars, and 40 restaurants worldwide – and his humanitarian work. As the founder of World Central Kitchen, Andrés has fed tens of millions of people across dozens of crises. The model is uncommonly nimble and effective; rather than warehousing aid, Central Kitchen activates local restaurants and cooks on th...

Ben Rhodes is a writer on U.S. and global politics. A contributor to the New York Times and MSNOW , and co-host of Pod Save the World , Ben has authored two New York Times bestsellers - After the Fall and T he World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House . His latest book, All We Say , is a sweeping look at the battle over American identity and the questions, “What does it mean to be American...

This week, our guest is Boots Riley, an Oakland-based filmmaker and founding member of the seminal hip hop group, The Coup. Like his music, Riley’s films are politically charged, tackling subjects like capitalism, racism, and class. His debut film, Sorry to Bother You and television series I’m A Virgo showcased a surrealist style, sci-fi tropes and comedy. His hyperkinetic energy is on display aga...

NOTE: This is a PODCAST-ONLY program - the titles and contents of Adam Mansbach's books have NOT been bleeped!   Adam Mansbach is a novelist, screenwriter, humorist, and cultural critic, as well as the author of the “children’s books” Go the F*** to Sleep and You Have to F***king Eat, and F***, Now There Are Two of You . His other books include Rage Is Back , The End of the Jews , and Angry Black...

This week, a conversation about children’s literature with author Mac Barnett and illustrator Jon Klassen. Barnett is National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and the author of numerous children's books including “Sam and Dave Dig a Hole” and “Extra Yarn”. Jon Klassen worked on films like Kung Fu Panda and Coraline, before he decided to create books, like the best-selling Hat Trilogy. Kla...

This week, our guest is Jeff Hiller. The veteran comedian and actor is hardly a newcomer, but it’s his recent role on the television series Somebody Somewhere that has finally brought him widespread recognition. In 2025, he earned an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for that performance. Hiller talks about the journey in his memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year...

Demis Hassabis is an artificial intelligence researcher, scientist, and entrepreneur.  In 2010, he co-founded DeepMind, an AI research lab which is now part of Google. In 2024, Hassabis won a Nobel Prize for using AI to predict the 3D structure of proteins, critical for disease understanding and drug discovery.  He was also awarded a knighthood that year by King Charles III. On April 20, 2026, Sir...

Rabbi Sharon Brous is a leading voice at the intersection of faith and justice in America. She is the founding and senior rabbi of IKAR, a trail-blazing Jewish community based in Los Angeles.  Brous’s work has been featured in the New York Times , Los Angeles Times and Washington Post .  Her new book is The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend our Broken Hearts and World .  On April 23, 2026, Sharo...

Ada Limón ’s poems expertly combine brilliant observations of our complex world with a tender sincerity. As a two-term Poet Laureate of the United States, Limón focused on using poetry to connect us more strongly with the natural world. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, The Carrying; and Bright Dead Things.  Her newest bo...

This week, we’ve gone back into the City Arts & Lectures archives for a 2009 interview with the late conductor, composer, and pianist Michael Tilson Thomas. Tilson Thomas was the music director and conductor of the San Francisco Symphony from 1995 to 2020 - and stayed active as its music director emeritus until the last year of his life. He was known as a champion of contemporary American musi...

Emma Straub plays many roles as a leader in the literary world: independent bookstore owner, award-winning novelist, and children’s book author, to name a few. Straub is a Guggenheim Fellow, a New York Times best-seller, and the owner of Brooklyn’s Books Are Magic, where she helps celebrate our vibrant literary world through countless readings and events. Straub’s new novel, American Fantasy , has...

Over the past forty years, Gina Gershon has remained a beloved actress while constantly pushing herself as an artist, adding to her astonishing and diverse resumé. Since her small, breakout performance in Pretty in Pink , Gershon has been best known for her roles in movies (including Bound, Showgirls, Face/Off, The Insider ) and television (including Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Riverdale, Curb Your Enthus...

This program originally aired in 2022.  Lauren Groff is a two-time National Book Award finalist and the author of four novels and two collections of short stories.   Her 2022 novel, Matrix, imagines the life of Marie du France, a medieval writer who became France’s first woman poet. On April 12, 2022, Lauren Groff came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk about Matrix with Isab...

This program was originally aired in June 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 in Ethiopia coming of age on the brink of the country’s revolution. That book remained on the NYT Bestsellers List...

This week, our guest is Michael Pollan, author of ten books including "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "How to Change Your Mind". Since the 1980s, Pollan has captivated readers on an array of topics, from the consequences of what we eat, to the history and contemporary use of psychedelics. Now, he’s turned his eye towards what might be his biggest subject yet: consciousness. In his new book, "A World...

This is an encore of a program originally broadcast in July 2024.   Since their foundational philosophical critique of gender and sexuality, Gender Trouble , Judith Butler has been a singularly important contributor to our contemporary understanding of those categories, including what it can mean to be queer.  Butler’s revolutionary cultural influence and constant drive towards better understandin...

This is an encore of a program originally distributed in 2024. Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and author, and one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals working today. In books like Sapiens , Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century , Harari examines topics like the future of humanity, and the connections between biology, myth, and power.  His latest book is Nex...

Sally Mann is one of the most significant American photographers of the late 20th and 21st centuries. Over a career spanning more than four decades, Mann has explored childhood, family, memory, mortality, and the passage of time, often through experimental and historic photographic processes. From At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (1988), a nuanced study of girls on the cusp of adolescence, to h...

This is an encore presentation of a program originally aired in November of 2024.  In this program, two novelists who've created visions of a future after significant climate change...talk about whether their fiction can help shape reality.  Across his life, Richard Powers has been driven by an insatiable curiosity for humans and the world around us. This has led him from budding scientist to awar...

Legendary activist Marsha P. Johnson was one of the most remarkable figures in LGBTQ+ history – central to the Stonewall Riots and the gay liberation movement at large. Her remarkable life story is captured in a new biography by artists and filmmaker Tourmaline. Tourmaline is an award-winning artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist whose work is dedicated to Black trans joy and freedom. She is a T...

The work of acclaimed photographer Meghann Riepenhoff examines our relationship to nature and time, both in subject-matter and process. In projects like Litoral Drift, a series of cameral-less cyanotypes, Rieopenhoff makes use of natural elements like water and sediment. Her art is intentionally vulnerable to weather conditions like wind, and her interest in environmental degradation as well as th...

This is an encore presentation of a program first broadcast in 2023.  In 2000, Jhumpa Lahiri’ s debut short story collection, The Interpreter of Maladies , won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Lahiri has gone on to write other critically acclaimed books, including The Namesake , Unaccustomed Earth , and The Lowland . Her collection Roman Stories centers around...

We’re going back to the archives for a 2019 conversation with Meg Wolitzer, whose best-selling books include The Interestings and The Ten-Year Nap. Wolitzer brings readers deep into the lives of her characters, and her clear prose, is infused with sharp observations about group dynamics and ambition. A feminist thread runs throughout all of her work, particularly in her novel “The Wife,” a satiric...