Rejecting the stylized self-consciousness that characterizes so much contemporary poetry, Kay Ryan chooses instead to write poetry accessible to a broad audience, coloring her poems with sly humor and dramatic imagination. Treat yourself to an evening with this renowned Bay Area poet.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:09 — 25.7MB)

Michael J. Sandel is one of the most popular professors at Harvard. Thousands of students pack into his Justice course on moral and political philosophy. Adapting his famous course for the road, Sandel discusses great philosophers from Aristotle to John Stuart Mill and raises questions about individual rights, the claims of community, equality and law.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:59 — 26.1MB)

Michael Bishop, the Nobel Prize-winning Chancellor of UC San Francisco, and KQED host Michael Krasny discuss The Future of Cancer at JCCSF’s Kanbar Hall. Bishop will focus on the cutting edge of cancer research and treatment, including the short- and long-term strategies that are emerging to combat the genetic malfunction at the root of cancer.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:01 — 25.6MB)

A prominent Kabbalah scholar, Moshe Idel discusses the role of magic in Jewish mysticism, the use of amulets and incantations, and the persistence of the Jewish magical tradition in contemporary Israeli society. In conversation with Nathaniel Deutsch of UC Santa Cruz.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:43 — 26.0MB)

One of Israel’s most celebrated poets, Agi Mishol discusses her work and her growing up in Israel as the child of Holocaust survivors.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:56 — 24.7MB)

Translator, novelist and performer Wex follows his witty and erudite Born to Kvetch with Just Say Nu, a colorful, uncensored guide to the idiomatic use of Yiddish in such areas as madness, fury, driving, mob Yiddish, insults and thirteen designations for the human rear.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:01 — 24.3MB)

Neil Shubin, the scientist who made the groundbreaking discovery of the “fish with hands,” takes us on a lively, thoroughly engrossing chronicle of evolutionary history that unearths the often startling secrets behind why we look the way we do.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:02 — 26.1MB)

Short-story writer and novelist Max Apple is known for the comic intelligence of his work. In his first collection to appear in 20 years, Apple presents stories that are funny, off-the-wall inventive and down-to-earth intelligent

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:12 — 23.4MB)

The author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges returns with The Ministry of Special Cases, about the Jewish community in Buenos Aires on the eve of Argentina’s 1976 military coup.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:26 — 24.9MB)

Experience an inspiring lecture by this bestselling author of For One More Day, an upcoming primetime special which poses the question: “What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:54 — 27.0MB)