City Arts & Lectures

Abraham Verghese is a best-selling novelist, and a physician whose focus on healing and empathy stands out in an era when technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. His novel Cutting for Stone is the story of twin brothers in Ethiopia coming of age on the brink of the country’s revolution. That book remained on the NYT Bestsellers List for over two years. His newest novel, The Covenant of Water, tells much of the story of twentieth-century India through a single family. Verghese’s nonfiction books are My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story and The Tennis Partner. Abraham Verghese is Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the School of Medicine at Stanford University.

On May 11, 2023, Abraham Verghese came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by Michael Krasny, host of the Grey Matters podcast and former host of the award-winning KQED program Forum. Krasny is the author of Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life, Let There Be Laughter, and Spiritual Envy.

Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, and The Laws of Medicine. Told in six parts and laced with his own experience as a researcher, doctor, and a prolific reader, Mukherjee’s new book The Song of the Cell, tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher.  On November 10, 2022, Mukherjee came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an onstage conversation with Indre Viskontas, a cognitive neuroscientist who co-hosts the popular science podcast Inquiring Minds. This is an encore broadcast.

Actor Laura Dern has been captivating audiences since her breakout role in Blue Velvet in 1986. Since then, she’s appeared in dozens of films including Jurassic Park, Wild At Heart, Rambling Rose, The Last Jedi, Little Women, and Marriage Story, for which she won an Academy Award. Her television appearances include Enlightened, Twin Peaks: The Return and Big Little Lies. Her new book, Honey, Baby, Mine, co-written with her mother and fellow actor Diane Ladd, is a collection of intimate reflections, photos, family recipes, and other mementos. On May 7, 2023, Laura Dern came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater for an onstage conversation with Cheryl Strayed, the author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film - starring Laura Dern.

This week, a conversation with theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku. Kaku is a co-founder of string field theory and he's one of today's most recognizable scientists appearing regularly on news programs, documentary films and as host of two weekly radio programs, Exploration and Science Fantastic. In his latest book, Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything, Kaku suggests how powerful computers might eventually solve some of humanity's biggest problems from incurable disease to global warming and world hunger. On May 4th, 2023, Dr Kaku came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Caterina Fake, a serial entrepreneur, investor at Yes VC, and host of the upcoming podcast ingenious. Join us now for a conversation with Dr. Michio Kaku.

Richard Mosse is a photographer and filmmaker who’s documenting some of the world’s most significant environmental and humanitarian crises – and his work lies at the intersection between journalism and conceptual art. For his recent projects, Mosse used military-grade cameras to create detailed images from miles away. It’s a way to humanize his subjects and give new perspective on urgent issues. His new immersive video installation “Broken Specter” is on display at the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, where he came to the studios of KQED on May 2, 2023, to be interviewed by Steven Winn.