Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Click. Share. Cyberwarfare. More than ever before, people are logging on, sharing posts, updating statuses, and posting picture after picture as social media offers a physically distant form of connection during the COVID-19 pandemic. But how is this rapid shift in media consumption and the information (and disinformation) that we share affecting democracy during an election year? For more than a...

Join us for a virtual conversation with Susan Eisenhower, who describes in How Ike Led the ways in which her grandfather, President Dwight Eisenhower, led America through a transformational time using strategic, principled leadership. Few people have made major decisions as momentous or varied as Eisenhower did. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare...

Jason Valadão has overcome numerous challenges—serving in the U.S. Navy as a flight officer during Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom and currently as a doctor of family and sports medicine, teaching and mentoring at several universities, including in the Department of Naval Science at the University of California, Berkeley (where he also spent three years as a faculty fellow and volunteer with...

NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. What started as a small group of families gathered around a kitchen table in 1979 has blossomed into the nation's leading voice on mental health. Today, it is an association of more than 500 local a...

Students: This program is for you! What do you want to tell or ask adults who are making the decisions that have changed your lives so dramatically over the past few months? Please join us for this free program to share your thoughts, questions, concerns and suggestions. Ever since the coronavirus shut down schools last spring, the national conversation has swirled around questions of whether and...

Is there really a method to the seemingly chaotic behavior of Donald Trump? Are his outbursts calculated distractions or just involuntary tantrums? What does President Trump hold more precious—the integrity of the nation or his own television ratings? CNN’s Jim Sciutto, sets out to answer these questions. According to Sciutto, President Trump’s foreign policy has not only undermined American value...

Immigration has been a hot-button issue for much of the past four years, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, major new restrictions on migration—legal and otherwise—came into force. Attorney Tammy Sumontha will discuss policy changes and their impacts on immigrants and their families. Sumontha, born and raised in Thailand, now practices law in San Diego, focusing on immigrants and U.S. immigration...

Few people know politics better than “Pod Save America” co-host and best-selling author Dan Pfeiffer. With the 2020 election fast approaching, Pfeiffer offers a candid look at the current state of our political landscape and explains how Democrats can dismantle Trumpist politics and take back the White House. According to Pfeiffer, conservatives have rigged American politics to drown out the voice...

Recent years have seen the incredibly rapid rise of Black rights movements that take a stand against police violence, a growing criminal justice system, and a widening racial wealth gap. As a journalist, civil rights activist, and co-founder of the Real Justice PAC, Shaun King is no stranger to activism in the face of opposition. King stands out for his long list of public service with past work i...

Over the past couple of decades, corporations have increased their control of nearly aspect of American life. Big technology platform monopolists like Facebook and Google, and life science companies like Bayer have a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen in the United States since the Gilded Age. Critics say that massive, multinational companies are evolving into political enti...

The active presence of federal troops in Portland, Oregon sparked an increase in violence and protests just as the mayor said things had been calming down. Now President Donald Trump is promising to send troops to other large cities, ostensibly to put down the violence but critics say it is an election ploy designed to trigger reaction from protestors and increase support from the president's base...

“You’re fired!” was Donald Trump’s iconic catch phrase for years as a reality TV personality. Now, President Trump’s poor approval ratings have led to a 4-year conversation on how to defeat him in November. In his new book You’re Fired, popular political strategist Paul Begala has a reply to this pressing issue for Democrats. Begala picks apart Trump’s politics and outlines how liberals and progre...

The New York Times bestseller Maybe You Should Talk to Someone takes readers into both Lori Gottlieb’s therapy office where she sees patients and her own therapist's office, where she lands after a crisis. But really the book is about the universal human condition. Gottlieb writes about topics that make people think differently about themselves and the world around them: love and loss, meaning and...

With a pandemic raging, an economy in trouble, racial justice galvanizing protestors nationwide, it's not a bad time to have a political roundtable, right? We'll discuss the latest political news with civility and good humor, and we invite you to be a part of this virtual experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In May 1969, Freeman was an anti-war pacifist working in Chicago as a draft counselor for a Quaker social action committee. She and a group of fellow activists broke into a Southside Chicago draft board, dragged 40,000 draft records out into the parking lot, and set them ablaze. Her federal trial began in May 1970, only a few days after four Kent State protestors had been killed by the National Gu...

If Republican Sunny Panyanouvong-Rubeck wins her election to be a judge in the North Carolina 26th Judicial District, she would become the first Lao-American judge in U.S. history. Join us for a conversation about politics, identifying with the GOP, and the issues that are impacting immigrants and communities of people of color. In 1981, her family was sponsored by a Baptist church when they arriv...

Our distinguished panel will discuss the ties between Israel, India and Berkeley, demonstrated in the Berkeley-based Magnes Collection of jewish Art and Life's beautiful collection of Indian Jewish artifacts. Deputy Consul General Zamir, who was previously stationed in Mumbai, will talk about his experiences there. The little known facts that Jews have lived in India for thousands of years and tha...

Robert Chesnut , in his book Intentional Integrity, offers a 6-step process for leaders to foster and manage a culture of integrity at work. He explains the rationale and legal context for ethics and practices, and he presents scenarios to illuminate the nuances of thinking deeply and objectively about workplace culture. His experience is based on his broad experience at Airbnb, EBay and other tec...

Join us to take on the responsibility to document, communicate and preserve our lives and our times for those who’ll live in tomorrow’s world. Using a legacy letter format, we’ll address our experience, learning and love in this pivotal moment in history. This program is designed for beginning as well as practiced writers. MLF ORGANIZER Denise Michaud NOTES: MLF: Grownups Learn more about your ad...

Perhaps nowhere is the worldwide erosion of democracy, fueled by social media disinformation campaigns, more starkly evident than in the authoritarian regime of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Journalist Maria Ressa places the tools of the free press—and her freedom—on the line in defense of truth and democracy, and as a result she has faced a series of lawsuits, most recently resulting in a...

Join San Francisco Pride and The Commonwealth Club for the latest edition of Lavender Talks, a moderated panel discussion emceed by Michelle Meow (host of "The Michelle Meow Show" and a former president of the SF Pride Board of Directors). On Thursday, July 30, panelists Imani Rupert-Gordon (executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights), Masen Davis (interim executive director of T...

Robert Reich is at the forefront of the progressive fight for higher worker wages, expanded health care and stronger unions. He argues that years of stagnant wages and volatile job markets show that the financial system is fixed and serving only a select few with enough money to control it. Reich shows how wealth and power have eviscerated the middle class and undermined democracy to its core. He...

From sports to politics, women are taught to conform themselves to the rules and dictates of a male-dominated world. Jennifer Palmieri, former White House communications director and the communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, reflects on her career to call out a societal infrastructure that not only subordinates women to men but also pits women against women. In...

The U.S. president has the power to end the world in minutes. Right now, no one can stop him. Since the Truman administration, America has been one “push of a button” away from nuclear war—a decision that rests solely in the hands of the president. Without waiting for approval from Congress or even the secretary of defense, the president can unleash America’s entire nuclear arsenal. Almost every g...

Just north of San Francisco lies Marin County, which like many California counties is facing a resurgence of COVID-19 cases just as the county was following its careful re-opening plan. Hospitalizations and deaths are up, and some aspects of the county’s re-opening have been halted, including the restarting of many businesses. Marin now finds itself on the state's watch list for additional protect...