City Arts & Lectures

Our guest today is Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her books include Half of a Yellow Sun, The Thing Around Your Neck, and the 2013 novel Americannah, whose popularity propelled Adichie to literary stardom. Like Adichie herself, Americannah straddles the cultures of America and Nigeria, considering the status and perceptions of Africans abroad as well as what happens when they return to their home countries.  This month, Adichie will publish a new novel, Dream Count. As we look ahead to that, and Adichie’s upcoming visit to City Arts & Lectures, we’re re-broadcasting this 2014 conversation with her friend and fellow writer Dave Eggers.

Nate DiMeo is the creator and host of The Memory Palace, a podcast about people from America's past whose names might not be familiar, but whose lives changed the course of history. The show’s episodes take the form of short, evocative essays, rich with detail and emotion. DiMeo’s stories don’t just describe historical events - they encourage listeners to imagine how people actually felt and experienced them at the time. On January 24, 2025, Nate DiMeo talked to Gretchen Sisson in the studios of KQED about The Memory Palace podcast, and its recently published book version.

Kevin Fagan is an award-winning journalist who recently retired from the San Francisco Chronicle. For his decades-long coverage of homelessness, Fagan spent extensive time on the streets, getting to know the people he reported on, and the paths their lives took. But his journalism didn’t just draw just from those encounters – it was also shaped by his own experience of homelessness as a young man. On January 24, 2025, Fagan came to the KQED studios in San Francisco to talk to Gretchen Sisson about his book “The Lost and the Found”. 

We’re celebrating the life of Cecile Richards with a re-broadcast of a portion of her 2018 appearance for City Arts & Lectures. Richards was a national leader for women’s rights and social and economic justice. Richards, the daughter of legendary Texas Governor Ann Richards, started her career as a labor organizer.  She went on to serve as Deputy Chief of Staff to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then as the President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund for over a decade. She was twice named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.  Cecile Richards died on January 20, 2025.  This program was recorded on April 11, 2018, when Richards joined KQED's Mina Kim at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco to discuss her newly published memoir, Make Trouble.

John Mills is the CEO and Co-Founder of Watch Duty, an app that alerts users to nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts. The app’s “reporters”  – many volunteers – include journalists, wildfire experts, and former fire service workers monitoring scanners, live video, and other data in order to provide up to the minute information. The app includes interactive maps that allow users to track evacuation zones and shelter locations. Recently, Watch Duty became the #1 downloaded free app on the Apple App store due to s surge in users during the Los Angeles wildfires.

On January 27, 2025, John Mills talked to Alexis Madrigal about how he developed the app and its non-profit mission.