Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Dating in the digital age has never been more complicated. Nancy Jo Sales, a New York Times-bestselling author and journalist, found herself at the center of the addictive and corporate world of online dating after she downloaded Tinder. She wasn’t alone; in a 2015 Vanity Fair article, Sales shared stories from millennials who use dating apps on a near-constant basis, transforming physical attract...

CNN’s Jake Tapper is one of the most respected people in news today. As CNN’s chief Washington anchor and co-host of “State of the Union,” Tapper has sat down with presidents, covered inaugurations, and continues to interview senators, dignitaries and newsmakers week in and week out. In his new novel The Devil May Dance, Tapper continues the story started in his previous bestseller, The Hellfire C...

From activism to political campaigns to corporate advertising, the power of music and images is undeniable. So how can the arts inspire and advance the climate conversation?  For more than three decades, Shepard Fairey’s work has provoked thought and controversy in the art and political spheres. Now, with a public weary of climate charts and apocalyptic images of melting glaciers and emaciated pol...

Best-selling author Mark Shaw returns to The Commonwealth Club to discuss his latest book, Collateral Damage, in his ongoing investigative research into the connections between the mysterious deaths of motion picture screen siren Marilyn Monroe, President John F. Kennedy, and "What’s My Line?" TV star and crack investigative reporter Dorothy Kilgallen. Shaw argues that if Robert Kennedy had been p...

In response to high risks of suicide, substance abuse, depression and victimization among LGBTQ adolescents, new emphasis is being placed upon the role that family support plays in reducing LGBTQ children's risks and strengthening their families. in May, the Family Acceptance Project (FAP) at San Francisco State University released a series of eight new Asian-language posters to share critical inf...

President Abraham Lincoln announced the end of slavery in 1862, but it wasn’t until two and a half years later on June 19, 1865, that the news finally reached enslaved people in Texas. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Texas native Annette Gordon-Reed chronicles the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have end...

The way people conceptualize mental illness, and how they talk about it, differs around the world. A new book—Nobody's Normal, by George Washington University Professor of Anthropology Roy Richard Grinker—examines the ways in which culture and historical contexts have shaped our beliefs, stigma and social norms around mental health. In conversation with journalist and Divergent Mind author Jenara...

The global COVID-19 pandemic has revealed more clearly the huge health and health-care disparities between groups that are closely linked with social, economic and/or environmental disadvantage. Disparities occur across many dimensions, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation—what are termed social determinants of health. Man...

Understanding the tragic issue of slavery and its ongoing historical impact on the country has been a critical part of America's recent reckoning on race. The Atlantic's Clint Smith has been one of the country's leading writers on this essential but complex topic for the past several years. In one of the most anticipated books of the year, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Sl...

The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million people across seven states. Lake Mead has fallen to its lowest level since it was filled in the 1930s, which could trigger the first stage of real water cutbacks. For years, “much of the discussion in the Colorado River Basin has been who gets the next drop,” says journalist Luke Runyon. “The conversation very recently has shifted to who ha...

Dr. Jen Gunter, the outspoken and digitally savvy Bay Area doctor who has been called "the world's most famous gynecologist" returns to The Commonwealth Club for what should be a fun discussion on her new book, The Menopause Manifesto, with television comedian Samantha Bee. Dr. Gunter, who has made waves with her fierce advocacy of women's health, saw great success with her previous book, The Vagi...

One of President Biden’s first acts in office was to extend the New START Treaty with Russia. Concluded in 2010, the treaty cut the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia in half. It was set to expire on February 5, 2021, and is now in force for another five years. That treaty—which is holding back a new nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia—was negotiated by R...

The Nobel laureate Otto Warburg was widely regarded in his day as one of the most important biochemists of the 20th century. As a Jewish homosexual living openly with his male partner, Warburg represented all that the Third Reich abhorred. Yet Hitler and his top advisors dreaded cancer, and protected Warburg in the hope that he could cure it. Apple demonstrates how Warburg's midcentury work may we...

Over the last few decades, San Francisco has experienced radical changes with the influence of Silicon Valley, tech companies and more. Countless articles, blogs and even movies have tried to capture the complex nature of what San Francisco has become, a place millions of people have loved to call home, and yet are compelled to consider leaving. In the new book The End of the Golden Gate, 25 accla...

Join us for a virtual discussion, live-streamed direct from Berlin, Germany, with Heino Falcke, the German astrophysicist, about his research into the nature of black holes. His new book A Light in the Darkness is the story of how the first photographic evidence of black holes was achieved by Falcke in April 2019, and what its significance for humanity might be. Falcke wrestles with the ways in wh...

In 1968, San Francisco made history when, as a result of the student strike at San Francisco State University, the country’s first ethnic studies department was born. Over the years, community advocates have continued to find inadequacies in educational programs for students, citing a lack of inclusion of instructional materials for the teaching of history and culture regarding diverse population...

Disasters are inherently inevitable in life. We cannot predict the next earthquake, wildfire, financial crisis, war or pandemic, but we can predict how to handle each situation better. Unexpected calamities have happened all throughout human history, yet even in the 21st century we are ill-prepared to recover from them. In the new book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, popular historian Niall Fer...

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...

As attacks on Asian Americans repeatedly make the news, there is also a bigger story to tell: What the challenges of the future are, and how Asian Americans will help America be more competitive in this brave new world. Join this insightful discussion with prominent Asian American leaders not only about the history of Asian Americans in the United States, but about what Asian Americans are contrib...

In 2021, as we begin to emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic, the country continues to grapple with well-publicized incidents of police violence against Black Americans, a wave of anti-API discrimination and violence, and spreading political and other attacks on the transgender, gender nonconforming and intersex communities. In response to these harrowing realities, The Commonwealth Club and T...

Bloomberg's Brad Stone is one of the country's leading experts on the global commerce company Amazon. His bestselling book from a decade ago, The Everything Store, gave one of the most detailed pictures of Amazon’s unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos. His coverage in Bloomberg Businessweek has helped shaped our understanding of the internet giant. Since Stone's first book...

Former congresswoman Jane Harman says America has used the same tactics to solve defense and intelligence issues since the end of the Cold War. She says many of these strategies haven't worked and that the United States has become too self-satisfied as the lone superpower of global politics. Harman further says that many nations no longer defer to America as they once did. In her new book Insanity...

The COVID-19 global pandemic has shined a bright light on our medical system unlike perhaps any other time in this country's history. For more than a year now, we have seen how the daily work of making important, even life-and-death decisions is frequently made harder by factors and variables outside the control of an individual doctor and patient. Meanwhile, even before the pandemic, hospitals an...

In the Bay Area, as elsewhere, the coronavirus and its economic fallout have hit hardest the very same people who were on the economic margins before the pandemic, including Black, Latinx, low-wage workers, and immigrant communities (especially undocumented workers). For our region to recover, and thrive, racial equity must be at the forefront of our recovery efforts. In this program, San Francisc...

Over the past several years, questions about the stability of America's democratic system have been raised by experts in many fields, from across the political spectrum. After years of polarization, the United States has become highly divided, and there is a widespread loss of confidence in our very form of government and civic order. A movement for a renewed focus on civics and history education...