City Arts & Lectures

This week, we're going into the archives for a conversation with Bruce Springsteen, recorded in 2016. The legendary rock star had just published his autobiography, Born To Run. It was later adapted into a Tony-award winning one-man-show, Springsteen on Broadway. On October 5, 2016, Springsteen came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Dan Stone about his life in rock and roll. Fans had travelled across the country for the chance to hear “The Boss” and the energy in the room was more stadium concert than book talk. The conversation still managed to be intimate and deeply personal, including Springsteen’s candid thoughts on failure and fame.

Alejandro Heredia is an Afro-Dominican working at the intersection of literature and activism. He immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic at the age of seven. His debut novel, Loca, explores migration, identity, and the queer experience.

On June 11, 2025, Heredia visited the KQED studios in San Francisco for a conversation with Poulomi Saha, an English professor and co-director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley.

Eve Ewing is a professor at the University of Chicago and the author of four books including Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism. It looks back on the history of America’s education system and offers a path forward by imagining public school as a public good. On July 7, 2025, Ewing spoke to Shereen Marisol Meraji, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.

We’re going back into the archives for a conversation with David Mitchell, recorded in 2021.  In novels like Cloud Atlas, and The Bone Clocks, Mitchell weaves together the supernatural and the natural. He’s also one of the most structurally inventive writers of our time, featuring multiple genres in a single book. 

 On May 8, 2021, Mitchell talked to Pico Iyer, whose books include Aflame, The Art of Stillness and The Half-Known Life: In Search of Paradise. What transpired was a nuanced examination of creativity by two formidable writers.

A conversation about the evolving world of psychedelics. While scientific breakthroughs continue to reshape our understanding of how these substances work, psychedelics are also at the center of debates about religious freedom, mystical experiences, politics, and how we treat mental health.

For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. His acclaimed books include How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire. Pollan co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

Gül Dölen is professor at UC Berkeley in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychology. Her research expertise and interests include behavioral and systems neuroscience, psychedelics, social behavior, evolution, synaptic plasticity, extracellular matrix, oxytocin and stroke, autism, PTSD, and addiction.

Indre Viskontas is a cognitive neuroscientist with the University of San Francisco and a faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has published groundbreaking work on the neural basis of memory and creativity, and co-hosts the podcast Inquiring Minds. Her past City Arts guests include Atul Gawande and Temple Grandin.