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....
Mar 09, 2025•33 min
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 MacKe...
Mar 09, 2025•52 min
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 Franci...
Mar 02, 2025•1 hr 2 min
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 presidenti...
Feb 23, 2025•1 hr 12 min
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 t...
Feb 16, 2025•1 hr 7 min
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...
Feb 10, 2025•33 min
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 abo...
Feb 10, 2025•36 min
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 ...
Feb 02, 2025•26 min
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 Appl...
Feb 02, 2025•36 min
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 lan...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 6 min
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 toute...
Jan 19, 2025•2 hr 31 min
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 sug...
Jan 12, 2025•1 hr
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 h...
Jan 05, 2025•1 hr 4 min
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...
Dec 29, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Robert Sapolsky - Encore
Dec 22, 2024•1 hr 1 min
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 , wa...
Dec 15, 2024•1 hr 15 min
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!. O...
Dec 08, 2024•1 hr 15 min
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-J...
Dec 01, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s first book, The Undocumented Americans , was hailed as not only a radical experiment in creative nonfiction, but also an important, complex portrait of the lives of undocumented people. Villavicencio melds stark memoir with wide ranging essays, conducting meticulous research through traveling around the country to meet “people who’ve paid a steep price for the so-called American Dream.” Her debut was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics ...
Nov 24, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Yotam Ottolenghi is a celebrated chef and bestselling cookbook author. He is the restauranteur and chef-patron of six London-based Ottolenghi delis, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants. He is the author of ten bestselling and multi-award-winning cookbooks, including his latest, "Comfort". Ottolenghi has been a weekly columnist for the Guardian (UK) for over sixteen years and is a regular contributor to The New York Times . His commitment to the championing of vegetables, as well as ingredie...
Nov 17, 2024•1 hr 21 min
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 award-winning author, from Bangkok to the Netherlands, and has helped him win a Pulitzer Prize and a Macarthur Genius Grant. Powers is best known for his novels, including The Gold Bug Variations , named a Time Book of the Year, The Echo Maker , which received a National Book Award, and The Overstory , which received a Pulitzer Prize. Powers’ f...
Nov 10, 2024•1 hr 23 min
Spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph and dancer Wendy Whelan discuss their remarkable new hybrid performance piece “Carnival of the Animals”, which addresses, among other things, the siege of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, through the lens of Camille Saint-Saens’ 1886 musical composition. Marc Bamuthi Joseph conceived and wrote the piece, and performs the spoken word portions, and Wendy Whelan performs the dance portions, which are choreographed by Francesca Harper. Marc Bamuthi Joseph is ...
Nov 03, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Our guest today is Ta-Nehisi Coates, an outspoken voice on issues of race and racism. Coates was catapulted to fame after the publication of his book-length essay “Between the World and Me”. His new book, “The Message”, features essays that intertwine his first trip to Africa, the banning of his books in South Carolina, and his experiences traveling to Palestine. On October 23, 2024, Coates came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with Daniel Sokatch, CE...
Oct 27, 2024•58 min
Since the publication of his first book The Tipping Point , Malcolm Gladwell has garnered influence and fame through his fascinating analyses of our world. The New York Times Book Review wrote that “in the vast world of nonfiction writing, Malcolm Gladwell is as close to a singular talent as exists today.” A Guggenheim fellow, and a finalist for both the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle award, Gladwell’s books reveal his endless interests and insights, from the influence of o...
Oct 20, 2024•1 hr 18 min
Our guest today is Judge David S. Tatel. A former civil rights attorney, Judge Tatel has served for nearly 30 years on America’s second-highest court, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. It’s where many of American jurisprudence’s most crucial cases are resolved – or teed up for the US Supreme Court. Tatel has presided over some of the most important trials in recent decades, adjudicating on major issues like the First Amendment, voting rights, and the environment. David Tat...
Oct 13, 2024•1 hr 4 min
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 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks, from the Stone Age to AI. On October 1, 2024, Yuval Harari appeared at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to...
Oct 06, 2024•1 hr 21 min
Even 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: Not...
Sep 29, 2024•2 hr 33 min
This week, we'll hear an encore broadcast of a 2016 appearance by Steve Silberman, a technology reporter whose work helped change the public perception of autism - and popularize the concept of neurodiversity. Silberman’s 2015 book “Neurotribes - The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity” uncovered a “secret history” of autism. Silberman also found surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years. Steve Silberman died on August 29, ...
Sep 22, 2024•1 hr 24 min
Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed as the 116th Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 2022. She earned both her undergraduate and law degrees with honors from Harvard University, before serving as a clerk for three federal judges, including Justice Stephen Breyer, whose seat on the Supreme Court she would ultimately go on to take. Jackson's career spans both the private and public sectors, including serving as Vice Chair and Commissioner of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and ...
Sep 15, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Our guests today are Daniel Handler and Sarah Manguso. Daniel Handler has written dozens of books – from adult novels like “The Basic Eight” and “Why We Broke Up”, to picture books and other collaborations with visual artists. But, he’s best known as the author of “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” Handler wrote the best-selling children’s novels – 13 in total – under the pen name Lemony Snicket. On July 24, 2024, Handler came to the KQED Studios in San Francisco to talk to his friend and fellow ...
Sep 08, 2024•1 hr 10 min
