City Arts & Lectures

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 the vice president and artistic director for social impact of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. He was formerly chief of programs and pedagogy at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Wendy Whelan is a longtime dancer and now the associate artistic director with New York City Ballet. They have performed “Carnival of the Animals” in several locations around the US, and will bring the production to New York City in March 2025. On October 28, 2024, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Wendy Whelan spoke with critic and author Steven Winn at the studios of KQED in San Francisco.

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, CEO of the New Israel Fund, an organization committed to equal justice for all inhabitants of Israel.

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 our unconscious on our decisions, to what lies behind the rise and fall of everything from crime to epidemics. Gladwell’s writings made him a New York Times bestseller for five books, and created the term “Gladwellian perspective” to describe the numerous authors, and people, who are influenced by Gladwell In the fall of 2024, Gladwell returns to the ideas of his debut book, and his following rapid rise to fame, in Revenge of the Tipping Point. With two decades of experience as an author, public figure, and widely known thinker, Gladwell brings a new and intimate eye to his classic text. On October 13, 2024, Malcolm Gladwell came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an onstage conversation with Caterina Fake.

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 Tatel has been blind for the last 50 of his 80-plus years. On September 16, 2024, Judge David Tatel spoke with Gretchen Sisson about his new book “Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice”. He began their conversation by talking about how his father’s profession as a scientist, laid the foundations for his career in the law.

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 talk to technology journalist, author, and podcaster Kara Swisher.

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: 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.

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, 2024, at the age of 66. This conversation with Roy Eisenhardt was recorded at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco on March 28, 2016.

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 as an assistant federal public defender. On September 10, 2024, Jackson came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to University of California, Berkeley Professor john a. powell on the occasion of her just-published memoir, Lovely One. The book traces her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation as the first Black woman ever to sit on the Supreme Court.

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 writer Sarah Manguso. Both Handler and Manguso had recently published new works - Handler's is a memoir titled “And Then? And Then? What Else?” Sarah Manguso’s newest book is a novel called "Liars".

Ann Patchett is best known for her award-winning novel Bel Canto, “a book that works both as a paean to art and beauty and a subtly sly comedy of manners” (New York Times). She is also the author of the novels The Patron Saint of Liars, The Dutch House, Commonwealth, and the non-fiction books Truth and Beauty and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Her new novel, Tom Lake, is about the lives parents lead before their children are born, the choices we make that inform who we become, and what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. Patchett lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is co-owner of Parnassus Books, a popular independent bookstore. On September 8, 2023, Ann Patchett came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by writer and critic Steven Winn. This program was originally broadcast on September 17, 2023.

This week, our guest is David Brooks. As an Op-Ed contributor to The New York Times, Brooks writes about subjects ranging from politics and foreign affairs, to cultural trends and spirituality. Brooks started as a humorist, penning satires for his college paper, before becoming a film critic and then a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. You can see him regularly on the PBS Newshour. He’s also the author of bestselling books like Bobos in Paradise and The Social Animal. Like several of his more recent books – including The Second Mountain – his newest is more personal in nature. It’s called How To Know A Person, and it’s a guide to fostering deeper relationships, at home, in the workplace, or elsewhere. On November 18th, 2023, David Brooks came to The Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, to talk to Steven Winn about what it means to really see each other. This program was originally broadcast on December 23, 2023.

Long before he directed Wicked, In The Heights, or the groundbreaking film Crazy Rich Asians, Jon M. Chu was a movie-obsessed first-generation Chinese American helping at his parents’ Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley and forever facing the cultural identity crisis endemic to children of immigrants. Growing up on the cutting edge of twenty-first-century technology gave Chu the tools he needed to make his mark at USC film school and to be discovered by Steven Spielberg, but he soon found himself struggling to understand who he was. In Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen, Chu questions what it means when your dreams collide with your circumstances - and how it’s possible to succeed even when the world changes beyond all recognition. Writer, actor, comedian, and rapper Nora Lum, aka “Awkwafina,” is best known for her roles in Crazy Rich Asians (directed by Jon M. Chu), The Farewell, for which she was the first Asian American to win a Golden Globe award for best actress in a musical or comedy, and Ocean’s 8. In 2020, Awkwafina wrote and executive produced the Comedy Central series Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens, in which she plays a fictionalized version of herself.

Journalist and podcaster Carvell Wallace regularly contributes to the New York Times Magazine, and has written cover profiles for Rolling Stone, GQ, and Esquire. His intimate, often heartbreaking essays address everything from the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, to the connections between cowboy poetry and forgotten histories of Black people, to the possibility that his mother would have wanted an abortion. Wallace’s new memoir, Another Word For Love, looks back on his own life, from experiencing homelessness with his mother to raising two teenagers in a disturbingly violent and precarious world. In 2019, Wallace co-wrote The Sixth Man with Andre Iguodala of the Golden State Warriors. On May 16, 2024, Carvell Wallace came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by artist and visual journalist George McCalman, whose books include Illustrated Black History.

Best known for her 2022 novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin has moved across many genres and topics, writing young adult novels, dystopian speculative fiction, and stories centered around video games, all exploring modern technology, slut-shaming, and the oppression of women. She has written for The New York Times Book Review and NPR, and received an Independent Spirit Award Nomination for Best First Screenplay for the feature film Conversations with Other Women. As Zevin’s career has continued to expand, she has become a stronger voice for the rights of women and the power of fiction, celebrating independent bookstores and young authors. On June 25, 2024, Gabrielle Zevin came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an onstage conversation with writer Rebecca Handler.

Our guest is writer and philosopher Chloe Cooper Jones, author of the memoir Easy Beauty. Jones was born with sacral agenesis, a rare congenital condition that affects her gait and her stature. In Easy Beauty, she details how that informs her experience of the world – and delivers a powerful philosophical examination of how society thinks about beauty. Jones is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2000 for her profile of Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the killing of Eric Garner, as well as in 2023 for Easy Beauty. On April 26, 2024, Jones came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an onstage conversation with Catherine Lacey.

Victoria Chang is the author of 8 books of poetry, including “Obit” and “Barbie Chang”, a work of creative nonfiction, and two children’s books. Her newest collection of poems is called “With My Back to the World.” It’s inspired by the art and writing of Agnes Martin, a painter who was an influential part of the abstract art movement beginning in the 1950s. On May 31, 2024, Chang came to the KQED studios in San Francisco to talk to Steven Winn about her creative process and some of the themes in her new collection, including feminism, mental illness, and creative expression.

Serj Tankian, lead singer of the heavy metal band “System Of A Down.” Tankian founded the group in 1997, releasing five studio albums, three of which debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200. His solo career also includes work as a painter, composer and filmmaker. The musician’s new book is called Down with the System: A Memoir (of Sorts).On July 21st, 2024, Tankian came to the KQED studios in San Francisco to talk to Zack Ruskin about music and activism – particularly his work in support of Armenia, his ancestral homeland.

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 understandings of our world guarantee that they will remain a widely read canonical writer for decades to come. In recent years, Butler’s theoretical and activist work on gender performance and nonviolence has placed them in conversations around transgender rights, Black Lives Matter, and the Occupy Movement. Their forthcoming book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, examines why recent authoritarian governments and transexclusionary feminists have focused so much of their energy and ire on gender. On June 13, 2024, Judith Butler came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater to be interviewed on stage by Poulomi Saha, the co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley.

Artist Kara Walker has investigated race, gender, sexuality, and violence through her installations, paintings, silhouettes, and films. Walker’s art has won awards and is collected by museums around the world. Her work with stereotypes and the history of racial violence has pushed viewers to confront the continuing violence against Black people in America. With beloved writer Jamaica Kincaid, winner of the American Book Award, Walker is publishing An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children, a brilliant collection of essays and illustrations revealing the beauty of the natural world and the terrible history of colonialism. In July 2024, SFMOMA is releasing a site-specific installation by Walker, focusing on the global loss due to COVID-19, trauma, and technology. On June 6, 2024, Kara Walker came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by New Yorker staff writer Doreen St. Félix.

Author and creator Miranda July isn’t bound by medium nor by expectations. From films like Me and You and Everyone We Know and Kajillionaire, to books like No One Belongs Here More Than You and The First Bad Man, to an iPhone app that reroutes text messages to strangers, July’s powers of creativity and observation are wise, surprising, and always delightful. Her second novel, All Fours, is the story of a woman’s artistic cross-country quest that has already won praise from George Saunders, Emma Cline, and Vogue for its intimacy, humor, and boundary defying freedom. On May 23, 2024, Miranda July came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by Anna Sale, host of the podcast Death, Sex & Money.