City Arts & Lectures

Ezra Klein is a columnist and podcast host at The New York Times and the author of Why We’re Polarized. Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, host of the podcast Plain English and a news analyst with NPR.   Klein and Thompson’s new book Abundance is a call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic scarcity: from climate change to housing, education to healthcare. The history of the twenty-first century in America is one of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need.

Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.

On March 26, 2025, Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an onstage conversation with Manny Yekutiel, a Bay Area restaurant owner and political organizer. 

Today, we’ll listen to a conversation with four writers: journalist Michael Lewis, TV host and comedian W. Kamau Bell, novelist Dave Eggers and historian Sarah Vowell – all paying tribute to civil servants, government workers often un-recognized but essential to a functioning democracy. They were profiled in a series of articles in the Washington Post, all of which have been collected in a new book “Who is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service".  On March 19, 2025, the four contributors came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk about the government workers they profiled, what motivates public servants, and what the future might hold as the Trump administration slashes the federal workforce. 

Our guest today is poet, author, and meditator Diego Perez, better known by his pen name: Yung Pueblo. A popular voice in the self-improvement space, Pueblo is known for writing – in books and on social media – that focuses on personal development and healthy relationships. His newest book is How to Love Better: The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion.
On March 14, 2025, Yung Pueblo came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Forrest Hanson, host of the podcast Being Well.

Our guest today is writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, revered in her home country of Nigeria and in the United States, thanks especially to the popularity of her 2013 novel Americannah, a book that straddles the cultures of America and Nigeria and considers the challenges, status, and perceptions of Africans abroad. 

Since then, Adichie has continued to write fiction and essays on a range of issues, from identity, to grief, to the role of women. Her Ted Talk, “We Should All Be Feminists,” has been viewed by millions and heard by even more when Beyonce sampled a portion in the song, “Flawless.”  Adichie is also the author of the novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus, the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Notes on Grief, and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.

On March 7, 2025, Adchie came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to discuss her new novel, Dream Count, with Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of “Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us”, to be published in May 2025.

Laurie Woolever is a writer, cook, and former right-hand woman to the late Anthony Bourdain.  Woolever’s memoir “Care and Feeding” chronicles her journey through the food world as she navigated addiction, a cultural reckoning, and unexpected tragedy. The intensity of restaurant kitchens and the rock-and-roll lifestyle of celebrity chefs make the book a highly entertaining read, as do Woolever’s nuanced and tender reflections.  On March 3, 2025, Laurie Woolever spoke with Courtney Martin.