Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

In the second Commonwealth Club showcase of The Adachi Project, members of the San Francisco Public Defender's Office and its partners from Even/Odd Films and Compound will present their short film "From Inside" to amplify the voices and experiences of people who were inside San Francisco County Jail during the early days of the pandemic. The Young Women's Freedom Center will also join the discuss...

A recent poll shows that in 2021, for the first time, a majority of Americans personally felt the effects of climate change. But has that growing awareness translated into action?  This week, Climate One hosts Greg Dalton and Ariana Brocious review the top climate stories of the year – from Joe Biden’s climate agenda to the extreme weather events so many experienced, to the recent international cl...

Despite California’s leadership role in the technology industry, the digital divide continues to impact many Golden State communities as it has since the rise of the internet over two decades ago. While some progress has been made on the issue over the past decade, the digital divide continues to separate the haves and have-nots, and many people still do not understand the magnitude of the problem...

As one of the most prominent drag performers today, Alaska is no stranger to fame. But Alaska’s story is more than her success as both a runner-up and winner in two different seasons of "RuPaul’s Drag Race," as well as her high-profile relationship and the equally public breakup that ended it. In her new book—My Name’s Yours, What’s Alaska?—Alaska goes beneath her glamorous surface to reveal a nev...

China is rapidly connecting Hong Kong, Macao and nine cities in Guangdong Province into a regional finance, technology, manufacturing and tourism hub of 86 million people. Over the next decade, this Greater Bay Area (GBA) will mature into a global showcase for China’s economic model, “One Country-Two Systems” integration, and Belt and Road development strategy. GBA hopes to partner with comparable...

The Trump family is one of the most talked about families in the United States. Donald Trump's presidency elevated that and helped put them on an international stage that brought the family to the forefront of the world. Over the last half decade, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston has provided the American people with fascinating insight into the financial world of one of Ame...

This forum will explain how the assets of seniors and people with disabilities are often drained in order to pay the fees of a variety of attorneys in probate conservatorship proceedings. With vague or nonexistent rules and a lack of accountability, judges are making ad hoc and often arbitrary orders requiring conservatees and proposed conservatees to pay unreasonable or excessive legal fees. Not...

Climate change science isn’t taught accurately — or equally — across the country. Investigative reporter Katie Worth dug into textbooks and talked with dozens of children and teachers to find out why. In her book, Miseducation: How Climate is Taught in America, Worth unpacks the influence of the fossil fuel industry, state legislatures and school boards on school curricula in their effort to sprea...

Clinical trials represent the primary means to test new drugs before they become approved by the FDA for sale and marketing as a standard of care. The purpose of these trials is to test the safety and efficacy of new drugs and their combinations. Clinical trials must be performed with the highest ethical standards and must include geographically, genetically and socio-economically diverse populati...

Join us to learn more about America’s modern culinary history told through the lives of seven pathbreaking chefs and food writers. Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around the globe? Award-winning author Mayukh Sen has produced a group biography about seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. His book Taste Makers stre...

Take an illuminating literary voyage around the globe, without any Covid restrictions to hamper your travels, using classic and modern works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them. David Damrosch explores how our idea of the world has been shaped by 80 exceptional books, following an itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, via authors from Woolf...

In March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peace Corps returned more than 7,000 volunteers to the United States from the countries around the world where they were based. There have been many discussions and conferences advocating for changes in the structure, mission, and goals of the Peace Corps as it celebrates the 60th year since its founding by President John F. Kennedy. The Peace Corps...

Brad Erickson, departing long-time Theatre Bay Area executive director, introduces top new Bay Area artistic leaders. They will challenge each other and viewers about repertory, risks, delights and post-COVID theatre-making. What's changed in the theatre producing community? What will (re)fill those seats? MLF ORGANIZER Anne W. Smith NOTES MLF: Arts In Association with Theatre Bay Area. SPEAKERS S...

During the current production of San Francisco Opera's Fidelio (October 14–30, 2021) at San Francisco's recently reopened War Memorial Opera House, there is an arts display about struggle and liberation. As part of the opera's ancillary events, the display relates to the Arts in Corrections programs with prisoners at San Quentin. Moderator Cole Thomason-Redus will share exhibit and production visu...

President Biden recently signed the biggest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history into law. To be sure, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act got pared down significantly from what was first put on the table, but the final measure still contains five times more money for projects aimed at mitigating the climate crisis than the best legislation the Obama administration could get through...

As the devastating effects of climate change take hold around the world, young people are demanding action from global leaders and, increasingly, taking action themselves. Ask a teenager or young adult which issues they think are most pressing in the world today, and climate will often top the list. One of the goals of our Creating Citizens initiative is to provide a forum for youth to meet and le...

Over the past four years, the United States Supreme Court has seen drastic changes to its members, from the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett. At the end of the 2019–20 term, followers of the Supreme Court noted that a new "center" of the court was holding under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts. By the end of the 2020–21 term, much about the nation's...

Veteran journalist Jonathan Karl has known and covered Donald J. Trump longer than any other White House reporter. And during that time, he has been praised, taunted and branded an enemy of the people by President Trump himself.  So possibly nobody is in a better position to tell the story of the shocking final chapter of the Trump show than Karl. In his new book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Tru...

Ever have a difficult conversation about climate? Pretty much everyone has. Knowing all the facts and figures only goes so far when talking to someone who just doesn’t agree. So how do we break through the barriers? Scientists trained to present information in a one-way lecture format face a particular challenge: they first need to unlearn old habits. “Everybody's trying to figure out ‘how do we m...

For more than 30 years, Michael Eric Dyson has played a prominent role in the nation as a public intellectual, university professor, cultural critic, social activist and ordained Baptist minister. He has presented a rich and resourceful set of ideas about American history and culture. Now, for the first time, he brings together the various components of his multihued identity and eclectic pursuits...

Welcome to Hearts and Minds—A QTAPI Community Conversation Series, Session Three: FTAPIs—The Personal and the Political. Join us for an intergenerational panel discussion of QTAPI (queer and trans Asian Pacific Islander) people discussing and sharing stories of their personal involvement in politics and community organizing. The Asian and the Pacific Islander communities are not monoliths unto the...

Mary C. Daly is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She returns to The Commonwealth Club for a much-anticipated discussion on how to approach monetary policy amidst the uncertainty of an economy still struggling to overcome the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since taking office in October 2018, Dr. Daly has committed to making the San Francisco Fed a more communi...

In her new book, A Hole in the Clouds, Maryles Casto shares how, as part of the dramatic economic growth of Silicon Valley, she built her travel business from a $1,500 startup to a $200 million company, serving the needs of the tech industry. She describes how advice from key industry pioneers—such as Intel’s Andy Grove and Robert Noyce and V.C.s William Bowes and Irwin Federman—contributed to her...

In 2015, delegates from 196 nations entered into the legally binding treaty on climate change known as the Paris Agreement, which set a goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2 and preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.” Yet in August of this year, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new assessment report that starkly illust...

Our distinguished, diverse panel will discuss the Abraham Accords, which began a new era of cooperation between the broader Middle East region and Israel, and inspired the development of entities such as the Sharaka Project. (Sharaka means "partnership" in Arabic.). The project was founded by young leaders in order to turn the vision of people-to-people peace into a reality and encourage citizen d...