Our guest is Calvin Trillin.  The journalist, humorist, poet, and novelist started his professional career in the early 1960’s at Time Magazine, and soon after became a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he continues to contribute.  He also writes for The Nation.  He is the author of 32 books, including memoir, novels, verse, and food writing.  His new book,“The Lede: Dispatches From A Life in the Press”, collects writings about journalism and its practitioners.  This conversation with writer Steven Winn was recorded at the studios of KQED in San Francisco on February 22, 2024. This was hardly Trillin’s first appearance on City Arts & Lectures - he’s been on our stage more than any other guest, a total of 19 times since his first appearance in 1982.  So we close out this hour with excerpts from three of those programs that showcase some of Trillin’s many talents beyond serious journalism.  Calvin Trillin began writing about regional food specialties during his travels as a reporter, and then in books like “American Fried” and “Alice, Let’s Eat”. In 2008, Trillin was joined by two distinguished women of the culinary world, former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl. and the founder of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, Alice Waters - to discuss one of his obsessions – Buffalo chicken wings.   Calvin Trillin also developed a journalistic sideline that he describes as “Deadline Poet” and in 2012, he explained how that got started to Steven Winn. And finally, no Calvin Trillin City Arts & Lectures program would be complete without the story of the tic-tac-toe-playing chicken of New York’s Chinatown.  In a 1998 appearance, Trillin introduced the chicken to actor and comedian Robin Williams and interviewer Wendy Lesser.

Throughout every era of digital technology, from the dot com bubble to artificial intelligence, journalist Kara Swisher has been a key figure in understanding the rapid growth in Silicon Valley, whether reporting for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and other major outlets, or as co-host of the podcast Pivot. Swisher is founder of the All Things Digital conference and the technology news website Recode, and the author of three books, including her new memoir, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. On March 7, 2024, Kara Swisher came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by one of the technology leaders she frequently covers – Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.

Ada Limón, the United States Poet Laureate, discusses how the natural world inspires her poetry, including writing a poem for a NASA spacecraft. She emphasizes the importance of reading poetry aloud and shares her poetic journey from Sonoma County to Kentucky, reflecting on landscapes and seasons.

Our guest today is Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at UC San Francisco who studies abortion and adoption. Her new book, “Relinquished”, is the culmination of a decade-long study in which Sisson interviewed mothers from across the country who had given their children up for adoption. Sisson examines the myths and realities associated with these mothers – for example, only 14% are teenagers. But the majority live in poverty - over half have an income of less than $5,000 a year, and some experts suggest up to 20% are homeless. On February 6, 2024, Gretchen Sisson came to the studios of KQED in San Francisco to talk about “Relinquished” with Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and the author of "Ambitious Like A Mother".

This week, a pair of studio conversations with the authors of recently published books. First, New Yorker writer Nick Romeo talks about his new book "The Alternative: How To Build a Just Economy" with Courtney Martin. It examines how people around the world are reshaping economies and businesses to be more equitable and ethical. Then, poet Kaveh Akbar talks with Corey Antonio Rose about his debut novel "Martyr". It centers around a young Iranian-born American coping with grief, addiction, and family drama.

This week, we reach into the archives for a 2009 appearance by the late A. S. Byatt.  The author and critic published 11 novels, 6 collections of short stories, and 9 volumes of short stories, as well as editing the Oxford Book of English Short Stories and several other anthologies.  Byatt’s best-known novel, Possession, won the Booker Prize and was made into a film; the book she discusses in this City Arts & Lectures appearance, The Children’s Book, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  In 1999, she was made a Dame of the British Empire for her contributions to English literature.  On October 26, 2009, A. S. Byatt came to the Herbst Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by poet Robert Hass.

This week, we present an encore of our 2016 conversation with songwriter and musician Paul Simon. Simon has been the recipient of many honors and awards including 12 Grammy Awards, three of which (“Bridge Over Troubled Water”, “Still Crazy After All These Years” and “Graceland”) were albums of the year. In 2003 he was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as half of the duo Simon and Garfunkel. He is in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Simon and Garfunkel and as a solo artist. He was a recipient of The Kennedy Center Honors in 2002 and was named as one of Time Magazine’s “100 People Who Shape Our World” in 2006. In 2007, Mr. Simon was awarded the first annual Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. On June 6, 2016, Paul Simon came to the Nourse Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with Dave Eggers, after performing at the Greek Theater in Berkeley on June 3 and 4.  His album “Stranger to Stranger” had been released that same week.  Paul Simon’s latest work, “Seven Psalms” came out in 2023.

Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Benjamin Moser is the author of biographies of Susan Sontag and Claire Lispector. He’ll talk to us about his most recent book, The Upside-Down World: Meetings with Dutch Masters. It’s about the lives of artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer, as well as lesser known figures of the Dutch Golden Age. It’s a coming of age story too; Moser spent twenty years working on the book. He was interviewed on January 18, 2024, arts critic and journalist Steven Winn interviewed Moser in the studio.

Our guest is Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB-GYN and pain medicine physician.  Gunter’s work both as a clinician and a writer, is aimed at helping women understand and care for their bodies.  That includes countering a large amount of misinformation about women’s health - which she does with great wit on social media.  Her books include “The Vagina Bible”, “The Menopause Manifesto” and her newest, “Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation”.  On January 9, 2024, Jen Gunter came to the studios of KQED in San Francisco to talk with Indre Viskontas. 

Our guest is renowned neuroscientist and primatologist Robert Sapolsky.  He’s spent his career investigating behavior across the animal kingdom, including humans.  In books like The Trouble With Testosterone and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Sapolsky translates decades of research into fascinating stories and lessons accessible to non-scientific audiences. His latest book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works—the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. On January 3, 2024, Sapolsky joined Caterina Fake for a conversation recorded at the studios of KQED in San Francisco.