Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Fully electrifying our homes, cars and industries could cut the amount of total energy we need by half, says Saul Griffith, an entrepreneur, inventor and author of Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. This electric revolution would mean significantly scaling up our solar, wind and battery storage and reorienting the electric grid – but could also mean “thousands of dollar...

Our speakers, Rev. Norman Fong and Rev. James McCray, will discuss their direct hands-on experience in working to address the issue of equity and justice in community development, especially around building affordable housing, engaging community members for advocacy and support, and the broader issues of economic development connected to jobs and small business support. They will reflect on how th...

Brought to us by Fox News Chief Political Anchor Bret Baier, To Rescue the Republic is an epic history of Ulysses S. Grant—spanning from the battlefields of the Civil War to the violent turmoil of Reconstruction to the forgotten electoral crisis that nearly fractured a reunited nation. Desperate for bold leadership in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln turned to Ulysses S. Grant...

When a Silicon Valley entrepreneur developed a tax break intended as a way to incentivize the rich to invest in underserved communities, the idea was pushed into law with little scrutiny or fine-tuning and few safeguards against abuse. With an unbeatable pair of high-profile sponsors and deft political marketing, the Opportunity Zone became an unnoticed part of the 2017 Trump tax bill. In his new...

Mildred Harnack, born and raised in Milwaukee, was a Ph. D. candidate studying in Berlin in 1932 when the Nazis began their rise to power. Donner describes how her great-great-aunt Mildred began holding secret meetings in her apartment. Her small band of political activists grew into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin by 1940. Harnack recruited working-class Germans, helped Jews es...

Violence against Black people—both physical and psychological—has seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests in the summer of 2020. “After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy,” Charles Blow writes, “ it seems to me that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.” A New York Times op-ed columnist, Blow felt co...

As the devastating effects and tragic loss of life from COVID-19 persist 18 months after the global pandemic began, the world is desperate to end this public health crisis. As businesses across industries are rolling out varying degrees of vaccine, testing, and masking mandates, President Biden announced the requirement for federal workers, medium and large employers, and health-care staff to be v...

Join us for a conversation with Joe Weisberg, who makes the case in his new book, Russia Upside Down, that America's foreign policy toward Russia is failing, and we'll never fix it unless we rethink our entire relationship. Weisberg came of age in America in the 1970s and '80s as a Cold Warrior. He studied Russian in Leningrad, and then joined the CIA—just in time to watch the Soviet Union collaps...

Today's speakers, who are human rights activists as well as being business-oriented, will discuss why Bitcoin matters, especially in the Middle East region. Alex Gladstein, vice president of strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum, has connected many dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, philanthropists, policymakers and artists, to promote free and open societies. He has shared h...

Celebrated writer Susan Orlean visits The Commonwealth Club for the first time to discuss her new book, On Animals, a collection from her lifetime of musings, mediations and in-depth profiles about animals. Orlean, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is fresh off her last best-selling book, The Library Book, about the Los Angeles Public Library, which won numerous awards. Her new collection focuses...

People around the world have been experiencing unprecedented extreme weather events – raging wildfires, killer heatwaves and catastrophic floods. In August, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new Assessment Report, which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called “code red for humanity,” adding that alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable.  Against this...

Is intentional misgendering a crime? Should it be? How does it affect the person who is the subject of the treatment? In July 2021, a California district court struck down a provision of the LGBTQ Long-term Care Facility Residents' Bill of Rights that banned nursing home staff from "willfully and repeatedly" misgendering or using the wrong name to refer to a resident when they've been clearly info...

Dubbed the “most surprising” candidate, Andrew Yang made waves with a rousing 2020 presidential campaign. With his newfound platform, he advanced the prevalence of progressive concepts such as the Universal Basic Income (UBI), bringing them into mainstream discussion. A year later, Yang is more adamant than ever that the need for change is urgent and that we can rely on no one else other than ours...

Before Fiona Hill became a celebrated foreign policy expert and key witness in the 2019 impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump, she was a coal-miner's daughter from northern England in a town where the last of the coal mines had closed. Her father urged her to get out, saying “There is nothing for you here, pet.” Hill went on to study in Moscow and at Harvard and served under three Unite...

In his new book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, popular psychologist and author Steven Pinker explores the concept of collective rationality in society. Today, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding, yet we continue to produce fake news, medical quackery and conspiracy theories. Pinker explains this by rejecting the cynical cliché that humans are...

Standard treatment for obesity, based on a law of physics, assumes that all calories are alike, and that to lose weight one must simply “eat less and move more.” However, this prescription rarely works over the long term. According to the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of obesity, the metabolic condition of fat cells plays a key role in determining body weight. High intakes of processed carbohydrate r...

Monday, October 11 is 2021 National Coming Out Day. Join us for a screening of the Pixar short film Out plus fascinating conversation with a talented Pixar animator who directed Out and the filmmaker who produced Out. About the Speakers Steven Clay Hunter joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1997 and has worked as an animator on a number of Pixar’s most beloved films, including A Bug’s Life, Toy Stor...

From the congressman who led the first impeachment of President Trump, Adam Schiff’s Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could delivers a vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour. Prior to the 2016 election, congressman Schiff had been sounding the alarm over the threat posed by a global resurgence of autocracy. As he led the probe into Trump’s...

Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs our brains must do. Our hearing is always on. We can't close our ears the way we close our eyes. And yet we are quite adept at ignoring sounds that are unimportant. Nina Kraus explores what is going on in our brains when we hear a word, a chord, a meow, or a screech, and examines the partnership of sound and brain, showing how the processing of soun...

John Lithgow’s acclaimed acting career has seen him star in shows like “3rd Rock from the Sun” and “The Crown” and films such as Bombshell and The World According to Garp. In his newest collection of satirical poems and illustrations, Lithgow expertly tracks the dark and lyrical stories of 25 “American Scoundrels.” Join us as award-winning actor, author and illustrator John Lithgow presents the st...

In September 2019, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from 2,600 lawsuits for its role in fueling the U.S. overdose crisis. Author and activist Ryan Hampton served as the co-chair of the official creditors committee that acted as a watchdog during the process—one of only four victims to act as representatives of big insurance companies, hospitals, and pha...

Join us for an important intergenerational conversation with LGBTQ Asians and Pacific Islanders and their allies. Our panelists will share QTAPI stories and experiences of the dual pandemics of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19; their histories as Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States; their past and current roles in community organizing and the political process; as well as other issues that are...

The great creatives throughout history have been those who can ignite their own fire of innovation and ambition, but what is the flint that brings these sparks of creativity to life? And in a time of great uncertainty, why does creativity matter more than ever? As executive director of Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (commonly referred to as the d.school), Sarah Stein Greenberg is an...

How do we manage our own anxiety around an uncertain climate future – let alone help our children work through their feelings and fears? In his latest book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, internationally renowned Zen Master and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hahn argues that addressing the intersection of ecological destruction, rising inequality, racial injustice, and the lasting imp...

After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States has thrived on land violently taken away from Indigenous people. Settler historian Margaret Jacobs asks what reconciliation might mean in light of this haunted history. She argues that we have much to gain by learning from our history instead of denying it, even as she lays out the brutal legacy of systemic racial injustice...