City Arts & Lectures

This week, our guest is Jeff Hiller. The veteran comedian and actor is hardly a newcomer, but it’s his recent role on the television series Somebody Somewhere that has finally brought him widespread recognition. In 2025, he earned an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for that performance. Hiller talks about the journey in his memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success.  Fans have appreciated his captivating and heartfelt humor for decades at stand-up shows; in theater performances including Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, The Tempest, and most recently the 2025 revival of Urinetown; and on television series like 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Community.

On May 8, 2026, Hiller came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk to Poulomi Saha about comedy, friendship, and success.  Saha is an English professor and the Co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley.  The evening was co-presented with San Francisco Public Library and a supporting non-profit, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

Demis Hassabis is an artificial intelligence researcher, scientist, and entrepreneur.  In 2010, he co-founded DeepMind, an AI research lab which is now part of Google. In 2024, Hassabis won a Nobel Prize for using AI to predict the 3D structure of proteins, critical for disease understanding and drug discovery.  He was also awarded a knighthood that year by King Charles III.

On April 20, 2026, Sir Demis Hassabis came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with author Sebastian Mallaby, who recently published a book about Hassabis’s work, The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence.  The two were interviewed on stage by journalist Emily Chang.

Rabbi Sharon Brous is a leading voice at the intersection of faith and justice in America. She is the founding and senior rabbi of IKAR, a trail-blazing Jewish community based in Los Angeles.  Brous’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.  Her new book is The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend our Broken Hearts and World. 

On April 23, 2026, Sharon Brous came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with john a. powell, another scholar helping forge connections across political, spiritual, and cultural differences.  Powell is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute and a Professor of Law and Professor of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong.

Ada Limón’s poems expertly combine brilliant observations of our complex world with a tender sincerity. As a two-term Poet Laureate of the United States, Limón focused on using poetry to connect us more strongly with the natural world. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, The Carrying; and Bright Dead Things.  Her newest book, Against Breaking, is an expanded version of her final talk as Poet Laureate - and a celebration of poetry’s ability to heal and connect us. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Limón was raised in Sonoma, California.  On April 14, 2026, Ada Limon came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with KQED host Alexis Madrigal, which was a co-presentation with Litquake.

This week, we’ve gone back into the City Arts & Lectures archives for a 2009 interview with the late conductor, composer, and pianist Michael Tilson Thomas. Tilson Thomas was the music director and conductor of the San Francisco Symphony from 1995 to 2020 - and stayed active as its music director emeritus until the last year of his life. He was known as a champion of contemporary American music - and an innovator in presenting symphonic music - even collaborating with heavy metal band Metallica. He received 12 Grammy Awards for the San Francisco Symphony’s recordings of Mahler, Prokofiev,  Stravinsky, and John Adams.  

In June of 2008 - Michael Tilson Thomas presented “The Thomashevskys - Music and Memories of a Life in the Jewish Theater” at Davies Symphony Hall.  This multimedia performance celebrated the life and work of his grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashevsky. He shares some of those stories in this program.  We’ll also hear him talk with culture critic Steven Winn about “Keeping Score” the PBS documentary series which he created and hosted...and about his work with the New World Symphony in Miami. 

In the years since this program was recorded on January 6, 2009 - Michael Tilson Thomas continued to lead the San Francisco Symphony - and guest conduct orchestras all over the world.  In 2021, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer - but continued to work and travel - and was able to take the podium at his 80th birthday celebration in 2025.  Michael Tilson Thomas died at his home in San Francisco on April 22, 2026.