Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Bozoma Saint John is no stranger to adversity, and when her husband Peter died of cancer, she made one big decision: to live life urgently. In her book The Urgent Life, she shares the highs and lows from her personal life and what she learned from these tragedies to build a life worth living even in times of darkness and brokenness. She offers a hopeful message about coping with loss and grief and...

Not long ago, it was said that “hydrogen is the fuel of the future - and always will be.” Now, with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law tagging $9.5 billion for developing a domestic hydrogen economy, this simplest of all elements is increasingly being discussed as a viable pathway for long-distance trucking, shipping, and hard-to-decarbonize industries like cement and steel. But how clean is clean...

A renowned scientist and environmental advocate looks back on a life that has straddled the worlds of science and politics. Acclaimed as a public scientist and as a spokesperson on pressing environmental and equity issues, Paul R. Ehrlich reflects on his life, from his love affair with his wife Anne, to his scientific research, public advocacy, and concern for global issues. Interweaving the range...

Numbers and mathematics were in use long before Pythagoras was born in the mid-sixth century BC, but few if any suspected that beyond practical use these were keys to unlock doorways to vast hidden knowledge. The discovery made by Pythagoras or his earliest followers—that there is pattern and order hidden behind the apparent variety and confusion of nature and that it is possible to understand it...

What, exactly, is a philosophy of life? Who needs it, and why? Noted philosopher Massimo Pigliucci will discuss these questions with us by focusing on one of the most influential philosophies of antiquity, stoicism. That philosophy, which underlies much of modern personal growth teaching, is experiencing a comeback in the 21st century for the simple reasons that it resonates with fundamentals of t...

Shannon K. O’Neil, the Nelson and David Rockefeller senior fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins us to discuss the issues raised in her new book The Globalization Myth: Why Regions Matter.  Dr. O’Neil will talk about how regionalization, not globalization, has been the biggest economic trend of the last 40 years, and why the United States should embrace deepen...

Join us for a lively and inspiring evening with longtime friends and fellow activists Danny Glover and Gus Newport. The Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake will moderate. The three men will share stories from organizing communities for more than 50 years and why they are dedicated to the development of what Martin Luther King, Jr., called The Beloved Community. The three men are dedicated to community developme...

The lack of affordable housing in the U.S. has contributed to a homelessness crisis and has forced people to move farther away from urban centers. Inevitably, that increases car travel and emissions. One solution is to increase density in areas where jobs and infrastructure exist to accommodate more people. But some aren’t comfortable with the idea of their neighborhoods growing, and building mult...

Frank Falzon investigated more than 300 murder cases during his 22-year career as a San Francisco homicide inspector using the radio call sign 5-Henry-7. The number 5 designated the Inspectors Bureau, Henry stood in for Homicide, and Falzon was inspector number 7. Working with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings, Falzon’s new memoir highlights his high-profile cases and the backstory o...

Food is often used as a means of retaining cultural identity and heritage. Learning about cuisines from various cultures allows us to understand others. With understanding can come acceptance and appreciation. This program brings together Bay Area chefs from various heritages. Soul food Chef Geoff Davis from Burdell, Mexican Chefs Enrique Soriano and Jazmin from Cocina del Corazon, and Indigenous...

Come out and celebrate the beginning of the 12th year of The Commonwealth Club's Week to Week Political Roundtable and social hour, which debuted this month 11 years ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Agriculture is responsible for around 11% of U.S. carbon emissions. And yet soil holds the potential for massive carbon sequestration. Conventional agriculture focuses more on crop productivity than soil health, relying on pesticides, fertilizer, and other practices that contribute to climate-changing emissions rather than reduce them. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack advocates for a federal...

Before the Second World War, transparent government was a proud tradition in the United States. After the war, the power to decide what could be kept secret proved too tempting to give up. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and secret laboratories to grow unchecked. Officials insist that only secrecy can keep us safe, but i...

Natalie Zeituny is a reality cosmologist and consciousness architect, clairvoyant, energy healer, mystic, generator of ensoulment and international speaker. She is dedicated to innovative applications of reality models that facilitate personal, social, and planetary transformation. As an information systems architect in 2002 she founded NZ Consulting, a management-consulting firm that has successf...

Creating Citizens Field Trip Series: #1, Not Too Young Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2022 was a banner year for climate – both in terms of climate-fueled disaster and historic federal investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and home electrification. The questions now: How will the programs be implemented ? How will the money be spent – and who will benefit? This week, we examine the coming trends in raw material prices, the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act, new investm...

Our homes are one of the most important contributors to a healthy aging experience. We are all so used to adapting to our environments. We make do with standards even though we all have different bodies and habits. That is easier when we are young, but in older age our homes should fit us like a glove. In this presentation, architect Susi Stadler, executive director of the Bay Area nonprofit At Ho...

High inflation, rising interest rates, sweeping tech layoffs, a crypto meltdown. The recent economic news has been less than encouraging, leading the International Monetary Fund to warn of “storm clouds” descending on the global economy. At the same time, GDP in the United States grew to more than $20 trillion in 2022. The Bay Area, largely thanks to tech, had the fastest growing economy in the Un...

When former Secretary of State George Shultz turned 100, he published a piece in the Washington Post on what he had learned over his long career. “Trust is the coin of the realm,” he wrote. “If it is present, anything is possible. If it is absent, nothing is possible.” Three U.S. presidents put their trust in Shultz’s abilities, including Ronald Reagan, who tasked him to improve Cold War relations...

Who cleans up and rebuilds our communities after floods, fires, and hurricanes? COVID redefined America's definition of “essential workers,” but many who help communities recover from climate disasters remain underpaid and overlooked.  In 2006, labor organizer Saket Soni got an anonymous call from an Indian migrant worker in Mississippi who had scraped together $20,000 to apply for the “opportunit...

Debbie Chinn's primary professional and volunteer career focus on philanthropic work—to heal our society and bridge our cultural differences—was seeded via a 13-generation saga across continents. Dancing in Their Light: A Daughter's Unfinished Memoir is a biographical conversation program exploring the research that bought forth her family’s experiences assimilating in the United States. It is a s...

The killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the mass protests that followed opened many Americans’ eyes to cases of police brutality and misconduct. But two decades earlier, a civil rights lawsuit against Oakland police brought some of the same issues into focus. The suit alleged that a band of rogue veteran police officers known as "The Riders" beat, kidnapped and planted drugs on Oakland...

Congresswoman Jackie Speier chose to close out her congressional career at the end of 2022 and did not seek another term. Her departure from Congress brings to an end a Bay Area political career that spans more than 40 years in elected office. She represented California's 14th District in the House of Representatives—which includes San Mateo County and a portion of San Francisco County—from 2008 t...

Pulitzer Prize-winner Ed Larson returns to The Commonwealth Club with a revealing look at how the twin strands of liberty and slavery were joined in the nation’s founding. New attention from historians and journalists has been raising pointed questions: Was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery? Was the Constitution a pact with slavery, or was it a landmark in the antislavery movement?...

When most of us think about using nature to remove carbon dioxide from the air, we think of trees. Yet blue carbon, a new name for storing carbon dioxide in coastal and marine ecosystems where it can no longer trap heat in our atmosphere, may have even greater potential. Salt marshes and mangroves have carbon-capturing capacity that may surpass that of terrestrial forests. Seagrasses, for example,...