City Arts & Lectures

This week, we’re celebrating the life of architect Frank Gehry, with a conversation recorded in 2015. Widely regarded as one of the most influential designers of the last century, the Canadian-born architect was known for his use of bold shapes and unconventional building materials like titanium, stainless steel, and even chain-link.  Among his most famous projects are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.  Frank Gehry died on December 5, 2025, at the age of 96. In this program, recorded on October 15, 2015, at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, Gehry talks with his biographer, Paul Goldberger.   Goldberger spent ten years as an architecture critic for the New York Times, where he won the Pulitzer Prize, and 13 years on the staff of The New Yorker.  Goldberger’s book on the life and work of Frank Gehry is “Building Art”. 

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. 

Why do people cooperate with one another when they have no (selfish) motivation to do so? Why do we hold onto possessions of little value? And why is the winner of an auction so often disappointed? Hear Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler and his co-author, Alex Imas, discuss these questions, examined in their book The Winner’s Curse, with Michael Lewis.Richard H. Thaler received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He is a distinguished service professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, coauthor of Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Cass Sunstein) and the author of Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics. Alex O. Imas is a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Among his honors are the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Review of Financial Studies Rising Scholar Award, and the Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award. Previously, he was an assistant professor of behavioral economics at Carnegie Mellon University.Michael Lewis is known for his meticulous research on far-reaching subjects—from the top-secret world of high-frequency trading (Flash Boys), to baseball (Moneyball), to behavioral economics and the friendship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (The Undoing Project), to an account of a band of medical visionaries trying to avert Trump’s calamitous response to the COVID-19 outbreak (The Premonition), to the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby (Going Infinite). Most recently, he authored Who Is Government?, with contributions from W. Kamau Bell, Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggers, and others.On November 21, 2025, Thaler and Imas visited the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by Michael Lewis.

This week, our guest is Padma Lakshmi. As host of shows like Taste the Nation and Top Chef, Lakshmi champions cooks and eaters from across cultures. She’s the author of several cookbooks –  including her newest, Padma's All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste the Nation and Beyond – and the memoir Love Loss and What We Ate. Lakshmi’s passion for social justice causes, as well as her deep appreciation for food, are both reflected in her active social media presence. On November 17, 2025, Lakshmi came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk – and laugh – with comedian and broadcaster W. Kamau Bell.

This week, our guest is Salman Rushdie. Over the course of six decades, Rushdie has made a profound impact on literature and free speech. He is the author of fifteen novels, including Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses, two short story collections, and six works of nonfiction, most recently, his memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.On November 16, 2025, Rushdie came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Poulomi Saha about some of the impacts of the attack he suffered in 2022, and how the themes in his newest story collection, The Eleventh Hour, connect to his past work.

This week, our guest is Richard Misrach — one of the most influential voices in contemporary photography. His work appears in major museum collections around the world, and his innovative approach to large-scale color photography has influenced generations of artists. Since the 1970s, his work has merged aesthetics and activism, often depicting human impact on the environment. In series like Desert Cantos, Petrochemical America, and most recently, Cargo, rich colors and tranquil landscapes belie the ecological disasters that exist below the surface.  On November 11, 2025, Misrach came to the KQED studios to talk to Steven Winn about his newest project – photographs of cargo ships into and from the Port of Oakland taken from 2021-2025, on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work is collected in a new book, Cargo, featuring an introduction by his longtime friend and frequent collaborator Rebecca Solnit.

This week,  an encore of our 2023 conversation with legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog. He’s made over 70 movies – most of them documentaries like Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and Grizzly Man. Herzog’s style is so distinctive that his films are recognizable practically from the moment they start. His techniques can be controversial too, when it comes to his unusual casting, and his own presence in the stories he’s telling. On October 21, 2023, Herzog came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Caterina Fake about filmmaking and writing, including his new memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All.

This week, our guest is Susan Orlean, the author of The Orchid Thief, The Library Book, and On Animals. Whether exploring the eccentric world of orchid collectors, untangling the mystery of a devastating fire at the Los Angeles Public Library, or examining animal-human relationships, she brings humor, curiosity, and humanity to all the stories she writes.Her new book, Joyride, is a collection of essays that highlights her fascination with the remarkable details of everyday life.On October 6, 2025, Susan Orlean joined us at the KQED studios to speak with Steven Winn about storytelling, obsession, and what continues to inspire her writing after more than three decades chronicling the world’s oddities for The New Yorker.

This week, our guest is Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial news reporter at The New York Times, and co-anchor of Squawk Box on CNBC. His new book is 1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History. It’s an in depth look at America’s most famous financial event, and Sorkin believes there are major parallels to today’s market. On October 18, 2025 Sorkin came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with Patrick Collison, founder of the payments processing platform Stripe.

 This week, our guest is Jelani Cobb, Dean of Columbia Journalism School and one of today’s most important public intellectuals.  As a staff writer for The New Yorker, Cobb brings his deep knowledge of American history to contemporary subjects, particularly government and politics. His new book, “Three or More is a Riot”, combines narrative journalism, criticism and profiles that examine race and culture.  On October 16, 2025, Jelani Cobb came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to john a. powell, founder and director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley. 

Daniel Handler’s sardonic sense of humor and deep pathos have engaged readers across genres for over twenty-five years. Handler’s best known for his series of children’s books A Series of Unfortunate Events under the pen name Lemony Snicket).  His books published under his own name include Why We Broke Up, We Are Pirates), and the memoir, And Then? And Then? What Else? which has just been published in paperback. Andrew Sean Greer’s six works of fiction include the bestsellers The Story of a Marriage, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Less (which earned him the Pulitzer Prize), and Less is Lost. On October 8, 2025, Daniel Handler and Andrew Sean Greer took to the stage of the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, for a program they call “Paragraphs on Ice!” in which they dissect paragraphs written by other notable authors. It was a lesson in the art of writing – and the art of close reading. 

Author and cultural critic Jeff Chang's new book is “Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America”.  The world’s most celebrated martial artist and one of the best-known action stars ever, Bruce Lee is a global icon.  Born in San Francisco in 1940, Lee spent his childhood in war-ravaged Hong Kong, where he began his acting career in its emerging film industry.  When he returned to the US at the age of 18, Lee studied philosophy and drama, and taught martial arts to major Hollywood actors before becoming a star himself.  On September 25, 2025, Jeff Chang talked to journalist, podcaster, and educator Shereen Marisol Meraji about his biography of Bruce Lee and his role in Asian American culture. 

This week, the story behind one of the country’s premier dining destinations, Russ & Daughters.  What began as a pushcart in 1904 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is now an internationally-renowned retail operation, with three shops, a restaurant, and a mail-order business that delivers traditional Jewish foods nationwide.  Russ & Daughters’ specialty is “appetizing” – smoked and cured salmon, pickled herring, bagels, cream cheese, and more.  Running the business today are Josh Russ Tupper and Niki Russ Federman, fourth-generation torchbearers of their family’s legacy.  On September 5, 2025, they visited the KQED studios in San Francisco to talk to writer Rebecca Handler, about growing up in the family business and what it takes to keep it alive, and their new cookbook “Russ & Daughters, 100 Years of Appetizing”. 

Arundhati Roy’s internationally best-selling novels include The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.  Her nonfiction works engage elegantly and passionately with class and power, among other issues.  Roy’s new memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, examines her childhood in Kerala, India, and a mother whose commitment to justice and education made her a powerful force in the community – but whose volatility made for a challenging family life that included emotional abuse. On September 19, 2025, Arundhati Roy came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to read from her memoir and hold an on-stage conversation with journalist Deepa Fernandes. 

Our guest today is Bill McKibben, an activist and author at the forefront of the movement to address the climate crisis, even as far back as 1989, in his book “The End of Nature.” A legendary leader in the environmental movement, he’s the founder of 350.org, the first global climate change campaign, and Third Act, a group that mobilizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice. On September 15, 2025, McKibben came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to journalist and author Lauren Markham, about his new book, Here Comes the Sun. In it, McKibben offers solar solutions to some of the biggest impacts of climate change. 

Our guest today is Samin Nosrat, chef, cookbook author, and television host. Along with her immense technical know-how, Nosrat is known for her nurturing and humorous approach to making food. Her first book, Salt Fat Acid Heat, is a guide to the basic principles of cooking, later adapted into a Netflix series. Her new book is Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love.On September 13, 2025, Nosrat came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Hrishikesh Hirway, creator of the Song Exploder podcast, and the co-host of Home Cooking, a podcast he and Nosrat began during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and continue today.

Our guest today is Mary Roach, a science writer who’s often drawn to taboo, or simply squeamish subjects, like sex, cadavers, or the digestive process. In books like Stiff, Bonk, Gulp, and Packing For Mars, Roach teaches her readers about the human body as well as basic – and not so basic – scientific concepts. It’s science through storytelling – and humor. On July 28, 2025. Roach came to KQED’s studios in San Francisco to talk about her new book, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy, with journalist Alexis Madrigal, the co-host of KQED’s Forum.

We’re going back into the archives for a conversation with theoretical physicist Brian Greene, recorded in 2017. Greene is widely recognized for his groundbreaking discoveries in the field of super string theory, and he’s a rarity in the scientific world – famous outside of academia, thanks to his ability to make some of physics’ most complex concepts — including Quantum Mechanics and supersymmetry — understandable to non-scientists. His best-selling books include “The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos” and “The Elegant Universe.”  On February 23, 2017, Greene came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater to talk to Alexis Madrigal, a journalist and author who’s now co-host of KQED’s Forum. 

This week…. An encore of our 2019 program with Jeff Tweedy, founding member of the band Wilco, in conversation with writer George Saunders. It’s been over thirty years since Wilco formed. The seminal alt-country band still performs together while Tweedy contributes to other projects too, recording solo albums and behind the scenes as a producer and songwriter for the iconic soul and gospel singer Mavis Staples. He’s also the author of several books, including the memoir Let’s Go, So We Can Get Back.On January 11, 2019, Tweedy came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with the writer George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo. 

This is an encore presentation of a 2022 broadcast.  Patti Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist who gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released numerous albums and books including her seminal record Horses, hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time; Just Kids, a beautifully crafted love letter to her lifelong friend, the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; and M Train, a collection of essays about memory, loss, and the simple pleasures of everyday life. Her new book, A Book of Days, is an intimate view into Smith’s life, particularly as it played out during the pandemic, and it features over 365 of her own photographs. The brilliantly idiosyncratic visual book features a year’s worth of images and reflections that chart Smith’s singular aesthetic—inspired by her wildly popular Instagram. Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.  On November 28, 2022, Patti Smith came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with novelist Michael Chabon.