This week, our guest is Richard Powers. He’s the author of thirteen novels on everything from neuroscience, to artificial intelligence to the environment. His book, “The Overstory” earned him a Pulitzer prize in fiction. The Financial Times called it “A Great American Eco-Novel.” His latest book is called “Bewilderment”, and it also deals with environmental catastrophe. It’s the story of a widowed father and his son, and their journey into the wilderness.  On April twenty-fifth, 2022, Richard Powers came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to neuroscientist Indre Viskontas. Mutual admirers, the two had much to discuss, from the cognitive basis of creativity to our relationship with the natural and digital worlds.

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 people. Technology’s dystopian potential is something scientist Jaron Lanier has given a lot of thought to… Lanier is a composer, artist, and a pioneer in the field of virtual reality. He’s both developed new technologies, as well as taken a critical approach to them – particularly in his research into their social impacts and political ramifications. Lanier’s books include You Are not A Gadget, and Who Owns the Future. On April 18, 2022, Jaron Lanier and Jennifer Egan sat down to talk to one another about the relationship between fiction and consciousness, and technology’s impacts - both good and bad.

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 whether human, A.I., or something in-between, citizen’s lives and sentience were dictated by those of the New Dawn, who’d convinced themselves they had the right to decide fate—that was, until Jane 57821 remembered and broke free. On April 24, 2022, Monáe came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to appear in conversation with one of the Memory Librarian collaborators, short story writer Yohanca Delgado, and George M. Johnson, whose memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue, has been banned in a recent wave of censorship of books dealing with themes like race and gender identity.

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 April 23, 2022, Tippett came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Pico Iyer, another uncommonly thoughtful host. Iyer is the author of numerous books, including one on his friend, the Dalai Lama, and The Art of Stillness, a beautiful investigation of the benefits of quiet contemplation and travel to “nowhere.

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 Granta’s 2017 Best Young American Novelists. On April 12, 2022, Lauren Groff came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk about Matrix with Isabel Duffy.  The two also discussed the utterly unique way in which Groff writes her novels.  After copious research, she writes a complete first draft, tosses that away without reviewing it, writes a new draft, and repeats the process again. With Matrix, she went through eight full drafts before arriving at the final version.

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.  On April 8, 2019, Rachel Cusk came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with Steven Winn about her unconventional work and its reception. 

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 Western literature and culture in Iran after the 1979 revolution. She returned to the United States in 1997 to advocate on behalf of Iran’s intellectuals, youth, and especially young women. Her new book Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times examines some of the most probing questions of our time through the works of Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin, and more. On March 31, 2022, Azar Nafisi talked to Steven Winn at the studios of KQED in San Francisco.

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 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. It features performances by music legends like Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, and others. On April twenty-first, 2018, Questlove and Boots Riley came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to host Carvell Wallace.

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 proactive in making all communities safe. On March 22, 2022, the two spoke with Lara Bazelon about what it looks like to be a progressive prosecutor. They addressed data about crime rates, the misleading notion that progressives aren’t interested in convicting criminals, tensions between prosecutors and the police force, and formative childhood experiences that led each of them to work in criminal justice reform.

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 Secretary of State. During her tenure, Albright concentrated on a bipartisan approach to foreign policy, which made her remarkably popular both at home and abroad. Albright died on March 23, 2022, at the age of 84. On October 13, 2008, Madeleine Albright came to the Herbst Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by Roy Eisenhardt.  She had just published “Memo to the President-Elect”.