Podcast
City Arts & Lectures
Hosted by City Arts & Lectures · EN
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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Shoshana von Blanckensee
Jun 29, 202500:33:51Tap to summarizeShoshana von Blanckensee is a novelist whose debut work, Girls Girls Girls, explores coming of age, queer identity, and San Francisco in the 1990s. It follows Hannah, a young queer Jewish woman, as she embarks on a cross-country journey with her high school girlfriend - in search of acceptance and a vibrant queer community.On June 13, 2025, Shoshana von Blanckensee visited the KQED studios in San Francisco for a conversation with Poulomi Saha, an English professor and co-director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley.
Transcribe →Shelley Sella
Jun 29, 202500:30:19Tap to summarizeShelley Sella is a board-certified OB-GYN who recently retired after decades as an abortion provider. Her book, Beyond Limits: Stories of the Third-Trimester Abortion Care, looks at one of the most highly politicized areas of medicine, upending many common myths about abortion care and the women who seek it. On May 21, 2025, Sella came to KQED studios in San Francisco to talk to Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist and the author of Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption.
Transcribe →Jacinda Ardern
Jun 22, 202501:13:12Tap to summarizeIn 2017, 37-year-old Jacinda Ardern was elected the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand, becoming the country’s youngest Prime Minister in more than 150 years and the youngest woman to serve as head of government anywhere in the world. She was first elected to Parliament in 2008 and left as Prime Minister in 2023. Her tenure as Prime Minister coincided with a tumultuous time in New Zealand, including a mass shooting, a volcanic eruption, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power, Ardern describes how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made political history and changed our assumptions of what a global leader can be - caring, empathetic, and effective.On June 9, 2025, The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans.
Transcribe →Ross Gay
May 11, 2025Tap to summarizeRoss Gay is a writer with a mission: to help readers explore the beautiful complexities of joy, gratitude, and delight. In his essays and poetry, Gay brings his overflowing kindness and relentless eye for details to community gardens, the lives of Black people, the artistry of basketball, and much more. He is the author of the poetry collections Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and Be Holding, and the essay collections The Book of Delights, Inciting Joy and The Book of (More) Delights.On May 2, 2025, Ross Gay came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to read from his work and talk with poet and editor Aracelis Girmay.
Transcribe →Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Apr 6, 2025Tap to summarizeEzra Klein is a columnist and podcast host at The New York Times and the author of Why We’re Polarized. Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, host of the podcast Plain English and a news analyst with NPR. Klein and Thompson’s new book Abundance is a call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic scarcity: from climate change to housing, education to healthcare. The history of the twenty-first century in America is one of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need.Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.On March 26, 2025, Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an onstage conversation with Manny Yekutiel, a Bay Area restaurant owner and political organizer.
Transcribe →Heather Cox Richardson
Sep 29, 2024Tap to summarizeEven before her explosively popular Substack Letters from an American, which has grown to more than two million subscribers since it began in 2019, historian Heather Cox Richardson was an important voice in discussions around post-Civil War American history. The author of seven books, Richardson’s writing has focused on race, economics, and political ideology, including the story of the Republican Party and the Wounded Knee Massacre. Most recently, she published the book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, a deep dive into how a small group of wealthy people pushed the government towards authoritarianism, and how understanding the real history of America’s most marginalized people can help us move back towards a real democracy. On September 19, 2024, Heather Cox Richardson came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with Steven Winn.
Transcribe →Calvin Trillin
Mar 17, 2024Tap to summarizeOur guest is Calvin Trillin. The journalist, humorist, poet, and novelist started his professional career in the early 1960’s at Time Magazine, and soon after became a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he continues to contribute. He also writes for The Nation. He is the author of 32 books, including memoir, novels, verse, and food writing. His new book,“The Lede: Dispatches From A Life in the Press”, collects writings about journalism and its practitioners. This conversation with writer Steven Winn was recorded at the studios of KQED in San Francisco on February 22, 2024. This was hardly Trillin’s first appearance on City Arts & Lectures - he’s been on our stage more than any other guest, a total of 19 times since his first appearance in 1982. So we close out this hour with excerpts from three of those programs that showcase some of Trillin’s many talents beyond serious journalism. Calvin Trillin began writing about regional food specialties during his travels as a reporter, and then in books like “American Fried” and “Alice, Let’s Eat”. In 2008, Trillin was joined by two distinguished women of the culinary world, former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl. and the founder of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, Alice Waters - to discuss one of his obsessions – Buffalo chicken wings. Calvin Trillin also developed a journalistic sideline that he describes as “Deadline Poet” and in 2012, he explained how that got started to Steven Winn. And finally, no Calvin Trillin City Arts & Lectures program would be complete without the story of the tic-tac-toe-playing chicken of New York’s Chinatown. In a 1998 appearance, Trillin introduced the chicken to actor and comedian Robin Williams and interviewer Wendy Lesser.
Transcribe →George Saunders
Oct 22, 2023Tap to summarizeThis week, George Saunders, a wildly inventive writer with an equally colorful background: Saunders worked as a geophysical prospector in Indonesia, a roofer in Chicago, and a doorman in Beverly Hills. Saunders’ short stories are often funny and frequently take place in a slightly futuristic, dystopian America. His novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” earned him the prestigious Man Booker Prize. On October 11th, 2023, George Saunders came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with KQED’s Alexis Madrigal.
Transcribe →Trevor Noah
Aug 30, 2020Tap to summarizeFrom the City Arts & Lectures archives, a conversation with Trevor Noah originally recorded November 21, 2016…. just following Donald Trump’s election. Noah is the host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” He first joined the show as a contributor in 2014 and succeeded Jon Stewart as host in 2015. Trevor Noah spoke in 2016 with Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder and president of Emerson Collective, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs, about growing up the son of a black South African mother and a white European father, in South Africa during one of the most turbulent times in the country’s history. They also discussed the role of comedy in speaking truth to corruption - and to process events taking place.
Transcribe →Rebecca Solnit and Britt Marling
May 31, 2020Tap to summarizeThis week, we present a conversation between two of today’s most incisive thinkers and creators. Rebecca Solnit is a writer, activist and public intellectual. Her broad curiosity has fueled over twenty books on topics ranging from the environment to feminism, literary criticism to social change. Brit Marling is best known as the star and creator of the television series, “The OA”. It’s just one among many projects Marling herself created as an alternative to narratives that diminish women’s worth, all too common in Hollywood. On May 11, 2020, Rebecca Solnit and Brit Marling spoke via video conference on the occasion of Solnit’s newly published memoir, “Recollections of My Nonexistence.”
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