Why do humans sleep?  What is sleep’s evolutionary basis? And what is really going on while we sleep?  This week, we broadcast a conversation with cognitive neuroscientist Matthew Walker, talking to Indre Viskontas, originally recorded in 2015.  Walker is an expert in sleep science, and his research reveals that every tissue in the body and every process within the brain is enhanced as we sleep – and impaired when we’re not sleeping enough.  His research also examines the effects of stress, medications, and alcohol on sleep, and the ways we can improve our sleeping habits.

Dr. Carl Hart is a neuroscientist and psychologist at Columbia University whose research focuses on the effects of psychoactive drugs on the brain.   He’ll talk about his positions on recreational drug use, which continue to spark controversy and are often at odds with others in his field. Hart’s latest book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, draws on decades of research and his own personal experience to argue that the criminalization and demonization of drug use, rather than drugs themselves, has been a scourge on America and reinforced this country’s enduring structural racism.  Hart is also the author of High Price, and co-author of the textbook Drugs, Society and Human Behavior.  On January 27, 2021, Carl Hart spoke with Lara Bazelon, a professor of law at the University of San Francisco.

This week, a conversation with filmmaker Cheryl Dunye.  Dunye first emerged in the 1990’s as part of the “Queer New Wave”, and much of her work explores questions of race and gender, using her own experience as a lens.  Her debut feature film, “The Watermelon Woman”, is now considered a classic of queer cinema, and her style – a mixture of documentary aesthetic and fictive elements – has earned the term “Dunyementary”.  Her films, including a collection of her documentary shorts, were recently added to the Criterion Channel. More recently, Dunye has directed television shows including “Dear White People”, “Queen Sugar”, and “Lovecraft Country”.  On November 16, 2020, Cheryl Dunye talked with Ra Malika Imhotep, in a conversation co-presented with the Criterion Channel.

  We’ve long admired Gabriel Byrne for his nuanced performances in films like The Usual Suspects, Miller’s Crossing, and Dead Man, and the television series In Treatment, for which he won a Golden Globe. Byrne’s thoughtful, understated acting style is reflected in his writing.  His new memoir, Walking with Ghosts, far from a celebrity tell-all, is an exquisite portrait of an Irish childhood and a remarkable journey to Hollywood and Broadway success. The book follows Byrne from his childhood in the outskirts of Dublin, to seminary in England where he hopes to become a priest, to his growing interest in theater and poetry in 1960’s Dublin. Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame. On January 12, 2021, Gabriel Byrne talked to Stephen Winn via videoconference. 

This week, a conversation with two veteran political opinion researchers about the future of polling. They’ll explore to what extent election outcomes can accurately be anticipated. Many believe the predictions before our last two presidential elections were misleading. How much validity is there to that belief? And can polling evolve to better serve us? We’ll hear from Peter Hart and Neil Newhouse, two veteran pollsters from different ends of the political spectrum.

This week, we are presenting an encore of a 2017 conversation with Dr. Robert Sapolsky. Sapolsky is a primatologist and neurologist with a unique gift for storytelling.  Oliver Sacks called him “one of the best scientist-writers of our time”.  Sapolsky has spent decades studying primate behavior.  One of his most consuming fascinations is how humans are both the most violent species on earth – as well as the most altruistic, cooperative, and empathetic. That paradox, and the factors behind it, are the subject of his most recent book “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst”.  On May 22, 2017, Robert Sapolsky talked with psychology professor Dacher Keltner at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco. 

This week, a conversation with two of the creators of Ear Hustle, the first podcast created and produced in prison. The show features stories of the daily realities of life inside California’s San Quentin State Prison, shared by those living it. Ear Hustle was launched in 2017; at the time, Earlonne Woods was an inmate at San Quentin. His sentence was commuted in 2020.  Now, Woods co-hosts the podcast from outside the prison walls, along with Nigel Poor, a well-respected photographer whose work teaching inside prison changed the focus of her practice.  Today, Poor spends the majority of her time focused on, and working alongside, the incarcerated. On November 19, 2020, Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor.spoke with Alexis Madrigal about the making of the latest season of Ear Hustle.

Thomas Keller is the first and only American chef to have two Michelin Guide three-star-rated restaurants, The French Laundry and per se, both of which continue to rank among the best restaurants in America and the world. He is also the author of The French Laundry Cookbook, Bouchon, Under Pressure, Ad Hoc at Home, Bouchon Bakery, and his new book The French Laundry, Per Se. On October 26, 2020, Keller spoke with food journalist Amanda Hesser, co-founder and CEO of Food52.  They discussed diversity in restaurant kitchens, the difference between influence and inspiration in the culinary world, and the post-pandemic future of the industry.

In the past year, journalists have been out in the streets covering racial reckoning and protest.  Inside newsrooms – which are overwhelmingly white – media organizations are beginning to confront inequity in their own ranks.  When journalism is mostly led by a privileged class of white men, what does that mean for the kinds of stories that get covered, missed, or undervalued? On November 20, 2020, in a co-production with the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, cultural critic, comedian, and CNN docu-series host W. Kamau Bell joined graduate student Chan’Cellore Makanjuola for a conversation about race, storytelling, and the future of journalism.

Crosstalk is a two-part series of compiled conversations between City Arts & Lectures guests from the previous three years, discussing literary identity and the sometimes pleasurable, sometimes painful, act of writing. Guests include Ocean Vuong, Zadie Smith, Marlon James, Ottessa Moshfegh, Tommy Orange, Eileen Myles, Rebecca Solnit, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.