City Arts & Lectures

PRX

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.

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.

Location:

United States

Genres:

Arts & Culture Podcasts

Networks:

PRX

Description:

Twitter:

@cityartssf

Language:

English

Website:

https://www.cityarts.net/

Episodes

Jennifer Egan and Jaron Lanier

5/15/2022

This week, a conversation between two accomplished multi-disciplinary minds - writer Jennifer Egan and computer scientist and artist Jaron Lanier. Egan won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Visit from The Goon Squad. Now, a decade later, she’s written a sort of sibling to that book. It’s called The Candy House and it imagines a technology that allows people to access every memory they’ve ever had, and give away those recollections in exchange for access to the memories of other...

Duration:01:13:08

Janelle Monáe, Yohanca Delgado, and George M. Johnson

5/8/2022

Musician, actor, and fashion icon Janelle Monáe has long been creating sci-fi worlds through her albums and performances. With her new short story collection The Memory Librarian, Monáe, along with a team of collaborators, expands on the Afrofuturistic world of one of her critically acclaimed albums, Dirty Computer. Dirty Computer introduced us to a world where people’s memories—a key to self-expression and self-understanding—could be controlled or erased by an increasingly powerful few. And...

Duration:01:09:57

Krista Tippett

5/1/2022

This week, our guest is Krista Tippett, host of the On Being podcast. Tippett started the program in 2003. It features conversations about faith, ethics and moral wisdom. Tippett often begins her interviews by asking guests what their relationship to faith was like growing up. It’s a prompt that grounds them in memory before Tippett takes the conversation into an expansive examination of their views on everything from their work, to how they see the world and what wisdom they can impart. On...

Duration:01:11:51

Lauren Groff

4/24/2022

Lauren Groff is a two-time National Book Award finalist and the author of four novels and two collections of short stories. The relatively young author gathered major attention for her novel Fates and Furies – from literary awards to a nod from President Barack Obama. Her newest novel, Matrix, imagines the life of Marie du France, a medieval writer who became France’s first woman poet. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere, and she was named one of...

Duration:00:59:00

Rachel Cusk

4/17/2022

Rachel Cusk is a writer of considerable range and depth, and her most recent works, dubbed the Outline Trilogy, embody a new and distinctive style. The novels take the form of a succession of monologues delivered not by the protagonist, but by the people she encounters. Little is revealed about a central character who serves principally as a conduit for others. The themes and questions that arise from those stories are weighty – as is Cusk’s choice to subvert traditional positions and form....

Duration:00:59:00

Azar Nafisi

4/10/2022

This week, our guest is author and academic Azar Nafisi. Her books include Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I’ve Been Silent About. Nafisi was born in Iran, and first came to the United States to study in the 1970s. After earning her Ph.D., she returned to her home country to teach at the University of Tehran, where in 1981, she was expelled for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil. Nafisi went back to teaching six years later, with a series of lectures that examined the role of...

Duration:01:04:05

Questlove and Boots Riley

4/3/2022

This week, we’re listening back to a conversation on creativity from 2018 with two artists whose work span multiple genres. Boots Riley is the leader of the radical funk/hip-hop band “The Coup,” and the director of the 2018 film “Sorry to Bother You.” Ahmir Khalib Thompson, better known as Questlove, is the drummer and joint frontman for The Roots, author of several books, and as of March 27, 2022 - an Academy Award-winning director. His debut film documentary Summer of Soul is about the...

Duration:01:14:24

Progressive Prosecuting: Chesa Boudin and Kim Foxx

4/3/2022

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was elected to office in 2020 after a campaign focused on improving public safety and reforming the criminal justice system. Kimberly M. Foxx is the first African American woman to lead the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office –the second largest prosecutor’s office in the country– with a vision for transforming the office into a fairer, more forward-thinking agency focused on rebuilding the public trust, promoting transparency, and being...

Duration:01:02:05

From the Archives: Madeleine Albright

3/27/2022

We’re celebrating the life of the late Madeleine Albright this week with an encore of her 2008 City Arts & Lectures appearance.. Madeleine Albright was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1937. She and her family were refugees who fled Nazi invaders, eventually emigrating to the US in 1948. Albright went on to earn 8 academic degrees, including both a master’s and doctorate from Columbia University. Her tenacity and flair for foreign policy led Bill Clinton to appoint her as the first female...

Duration:01:11:52

Jacob Ward

3/20/2022

Journalist Jacob Ward of NBC News talks about our growing reliance on artificial intelligence. His new book is “The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices, and How to Fight Back”. He draws on interviews with over 100 scientists, as well as his own reporting on behavior shaping technology. It’s both an investigation into the negative effects of artificial intelligence and a plan for combating them. On March 15, 2022, Jacob Ward talked with Lauren Schiller, host of the radio...

Duration:01:07:17

Jack Kornfield and Anne Lamott

3/13/2022

Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and was one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He is co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and a founding teacher of the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. Over the past 40 years, Kornfield has taught around the world, led International Buddhist Teacher meetings with the Dalai...

Duration:01:13:56

Jeremy Denk

3/6/2022

Our guest is Jeremy Denk, one of America’s foremost pianists. Winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, Denk is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and has recently appeared with ensembles including the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition to phenomenal technique, Denk brings a deep knowledge of music history and composition to his performances – and to his...

Duration:01:09:29

Dr. Paul Farmer

2/27/2022

This week, we’re celebrating the life of Dr. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist who dedicated his life to caring for the world’s poorest people. Farmer believed that addressing the social roots of illness was as important as treating its symptoms; so, in addition to direct care, he undertook advocacy work that significantly influenced public health approaches to diseases like tuberculosis, HIV, and Ebola. On May 23, 2013, Farmer spoke to Adam Hochschild about his nonprofit, Partners...

Duration:01:12:48

Stephen Breyer

2/20/2022

In January of 2022, after more than three decades on the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen G. Breyer announced that he’ll retire at the end of the current term, once his successor has been confirmed. Born in San Francisco, Breyer received a BA in philosophy from Stanford, attended Oxford as a Marshall Scholar, and earned his law degree from Harvard University. He was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1994 by President Clinton. Breyer is known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law,...

Duration:01:16:14

Wajahat Ali

2/13/2022

Wajahat Ali is a playwright and lawyer who writes and speaks on race, religion, politics, and social justice with insight and humor. He is the author of The Domestic Crusaders, the first major play about Muslim Americans post-9/11. In his new memoir, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American, Ali shares stories, both hilarious and poignant, of his experience growing up a Muslim Pakistani-American in an effort to inspire a new vision of...

Duration:00:58:17

Tongo Eisen-Martin

2/6/2022

Tongo Eisen-Martin is the current poet laureate of San Francisco. He is the author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes, published as part of City Lights’ Pocket Poet series, and someone’s dead already. Eisen-Martin is also an educator and organizer whose work centers on issues of mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings of Black people, and human rights. He has taught at detention centers around the country and at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, and is...

Duration:01:13:39

Billy Collins

1/30/2022

Billy Collins is one of the most popular contemporary poets. His 12 collections include “The Trouble With Poetry” and “The Rain in Portugal”. He’s known for conversational poems that welcome readers with humor, but often slip in profound observations on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself. Collins served two terms as the US Poet Laureate, from 2001 to 2003, and was New York State Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. On October 23, 2021, Billy Collins spoke with Steven Winn about...

Duration:01:05:06

Temple Grandin

1/23/2022

Temple Grandin is an author and speaker on both autism and animal behavior. She is a professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, and consults on both livestock handling equipment design and animal welfare. She is the author of many books on animal science and autistic experience, including the bestsellers Thinking in Pictures and Animals in Translation. Her new book, Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets For Helping Kids on the Spectrum, presents nine strengths-based mindsets necessary...

Duration:01:02:24

From the Archives: E. O. Wilson

1/16/2022

This week, we reach into the City Arts & Lectures archives for a conversation with E. O. Wilson. The biologist and author was the world’s leading authority on ants – but he was also often referred to as “the father of biodiversity”. In addition to significant scientific research, Wilson made major contributions to the public’s understanding of larger issues of science, nature, and conservation. He won the Pulitzer Price twice, for his books “The Ants” and “On Human Nature”. His other popular...

Duration:00:58:55

From the Archives: Wayne Thiebaud

1/9/2022

Painter Wayne Thiebaud is best known for his carefully studied still lifes of ordinary objects such as hot dogs, sweets, and lipsticks. It’s his cherry-topped cakes, lush with frosting, and brightly hued slices of pie that first come to mind for many of his fans. The pleasures of diners and dessert carts, rendered in thick paint, evoke a bygone era. But what could be misinterpreted as saccharine nostalgia is often cut through by a sort of sadness. The blue shadow around a plate … the...

Duration:01:11:34