City Arts & Lectures

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.