Lectures

This series, which is broadcast on KALW 91.7 FM on Thursday afternoons at noon, features many of the remarkable artists and thinkers who continue to speak at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

We are always working to update this page so that it more accurately reflects the current broadcast season. We also invite you to visit our Podcast channel where new JCCSF lectures (Binah broadcasts included) are added regularly.

Andrei Condrescu
Broadcast date: 9 September 2010
Record date: 11 January 2010
Romanian-born author and radio commentator Andrei Condrescu writes that his adopted city of New Orleans, especially post-Katrina, is "a city that steadfastly refuses to conform." His new book, The Posthuman Dada Guide, is "an impractical handbook for practical living in our post-human world."

Karen Armstrong
Broadcast date: 16 September 2010
Record date: 25 September 2009
One of the world’s leading commentators on religious affairs, Karen Armstrong has written more than 20 books on Islam, Judaism, Christianity and on her own years in a convent and spiritual awakening. Her book, The Case for God, explores the lengths humans will go to in search of a sacred experience called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah or Dao.

Michael Pollan & Dean Ornish
Broadcast date: 23 September 2010
Record date: 8 December 2009
Michael Pollan says that instead of food, we’re consuming “edible food-like substances,” and that the Western diet has traded food for nutrients and common sense for confusion. Learn what Pollan offers as a simple solution to eating well. Pollan is joined in conversation by Dr. Dean Ornish, who is founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito.

Reza Aslan
Broadcast date: 30 September 2010
Record date: 22 April 2010
The Jihadists who attacked the U.S. on 9/11 were fighting a cosmic war. According to author and commentator Reza Aslan, by adopting the same polarizing rhetoric in the so-called War on Terror, the U.S. is fighting a war that can’t be won. Aslan argues that we must strip this ideological conflict of its religious connotations and address the grievances that fuel the Jihadist movement.

Christopher McDougall - Born to Run
Broadcast date: Thursday, October 7
Record date: Tuesday, September 14
For centuries the reclusive Tarahumara Indians practiced techniques allowing them to run hundreds of miles without rest. Journalist Christopher McDougall learned their secrets and shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.

Rebecca Solnit
Broadcast date: Thursday, October 14
Record date: Thursday, September 16
One of San Francisco’s most provocative writers, Rebecca Solnit explores major disaster. In her newest book, A Paradise Built in Hell, she discovers people’s capacity to rise to the occasion with creativity and courage so profound that they remember the calamity with joy.

NPR’s Scott Simon
Broadcast date: Thursday, October 21
Record date: Tuesday, September 21
The Peabody Award-winning Scott Simon reveals the story of his daughter’s adoption in his book, Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other.

Yiyun Li
Broadcast date: Thursday, October 28
Record date: Monday, September 20
The New Yorker recently named Bay Area writer Yiyun Li one of the ‘Top 20 Fiction Writers Under 40.’ Set in 1970s China, her debut novel, The Vagrants, follows the people of a small town after the harrowing execution of a young woman, a former Red Guard counterrevolutionary.

The Quiet Heroism of Rick Hodes
Broadcast date: Thursday, November 4
Record date: Sunday, October 10
Dr. Rick Hodes arrived in Africa twenty-eight years ago to help victims of famine, never expecting to call this third-world continent home. In one of the world’s poorest regions, he cared for the sickest children and adopted five of them. His remarkable story is both humbling and inspirational.

A. S. Byatt
Broadcast date: Thursday, November 11
Record date: Monday, October 18
A.S. Byatt may be the patron saint of bookworms. In her novels, including the Booker Prize-winning Possession: A Romance, reading and writing often prove to be matters of life and death. This master of the written word sheds insight on her life, her work and how her characters are invented.

David Grossman
Broadcast date: Thursday, November 18
Record date: Wednesday, October 20
One of Israel’s most acclaimed authors, David Grossman, returns to the JCCSF with the novel that is considered his masterpiece. To the End of the Land is a rich imagining of a family in love and a wrenching illustration of the cost of war.

Moisés Kaufman in conversation with Tony Taccone
Broadcast date: Thursday, November 25
Record date: Thursday, October 21
Moisés Kaufman is founder of Tectonic Theater Project and is also creator of The Laramie Project about the reaction to the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. Hear Tony Taccone, artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theater, in conversation with this groundbreaking playwright and director.

Mr. Good Enough: The Provocative Lori Gottlieb
Broadcast date: Thursday, December 2
Record date: Monday, October 25
Lori Gottlieb, author of Marry Him, defends her controversial perspective on dating, marriage and achieving romantic happiness. The book grew out of her 2008 article in The Atlantic, in which she said the unthinkable: women should stop searching for Prince Charming and settle for Mr. Good Enough.

An Evening with Michael Caine
Broadcast date: Thursday, December 9
Record date: Tuesday, November 16
From his humble upbringing in poverty-stricken Sussex, England, Sir Michael Caine went on to make more than 70 films and be knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Combined with juicy, offbeat anecdotes about life among Hollywood’s glitterati, he expresses surprise and delight that the last several decades have been filled with great roles.

‘Mad Men’ Creator Matthew Weiner
Broadcast date: Thursday, December 16
Record date: Wednesday, October 13
Matthew Weiner is the creator and executive producer of the award–winning Mad Men, an AMC original series, now in its fourth season. He was also executive producer and writer on The Sopranos, the critically acclaimed HBO series. Hear Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle in conversation with one of the most creative and trend-setting minds in television.

Cakewalk with Kate Moses
Broadcast date: Thursday, December 23
Record date: Monday, November 1
Author Kate Moses’ insatiable appetite for sugar was the key ingredient to surviving a tumultuous sixties-era childhood. Raised by an emotionally stunted, sometimes cruel father and an erratic, frustrated-artist mother, Moses found refuge in the kitchen.

Mary Roach - Packing for Mars
Broadcast date: Thursday, December 30
Record date: Tuesday, December 14
What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Can the human body survive a bailout at 4,000 mph? Best-selling author Mary Roach explores the irresistibly strange prospect of space travel and life without gravity and takes us on an entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.