Commonwealth Club of California Podcast
KQED
The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.
The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.
Location:
San Francisco, CA
Networks:
KQED
Description:
The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.
Twitter:
@cwclub
Language:
English
Contact:
The Commonwealth Club of California 595 Market Street 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 415-597-6700
Website:
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/
Episodes
Max Fisher: Social Media and the Havoc on Our Minds
10/5/2022
Do we really understand the reach and impact that social media has on our lives? We all have a vague sense that social media can be bad for our minds, for our children, and for our democracies. Yet that doesn't stop us from constantly using it. New York Times investigative reporter Max Fisher looks at how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. Fisher tracks the evolution of free speech to hate speech...
Jann Wenner: The Rolling Stone Generation
10/4/2022
Jann Wenner has had an outsized impact on Bay Area history, music, popular culture and the world of magazines. In 1967, with the founding of Rolling Stone magazine in San Francisco, Wenner not only created the "bible of the counterculture," he helped catalyze a generation of young people into a force that would go on to transform the politics and lifestyles of much of the country. In his deeply personal new memoir, Like a Rolling Stone, Wenner vividly describes an epoch of cultural change...
Duration:00:56:30
Michelle Wilde Anderson: Reimagining Wealth Equity in America
10/2/2022
Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Some of these discarded places are rural. Others are big cities, small cities, or historic suburbs. Some vote blue, others red. Mostly, their governments are just broke. Stanford Law School Professor Michelle Wilde Anderson says that 40 years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, high-poverty cities and...
Duration:01:06:53
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser: The Donald Trump White House Years
10/1/2022
From its chaotic beginning to the violent finale, the Trump presidency was filled with moments ranging from the unthinkable to the deadly serious. That has continued until these past several weeks, and the man at the center of all of this could announce he is running for president again. That makes understanding his presidency even more important today. Veteran journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser chart the ambitious and lasting history of the Trump presidency, drawing on unprecedented...
Duration:00:58:07
Who Is Cleopatra?
9/30/2022
From 41BC to September 2022, the persona of Cleopatra has been modeled as an archetype of female power and beauty. Yet—as with most tellings of history—her story has been mostly written by men who never knew her. Providing another context, in concurrence with John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra premiere, San Francisco Opera’s Diversity, Equity and Community department presents a panel of women arts leaders to ask and answer: In the struggle for equal rights, who is Cleopatra? [mis]judged,...
Duration:01:04:25
CLIMATE ONE: Risky Business: Underinsured Against Climate Disaster
9/30/2022
In recent years, hundreds of thousands of people in high-risk disaster areas across the US have been dropped from their insurance policies, leaving them both physically and financially vulnerable. At the same time, premiums have sky-rocketed, making insuring homes and businesses out of reach for many. And federal insurance and relief programs have come under scrutiny for payouts that contribute to inequality. The insurance industry wasn’t set up to account for climate change, which is...
Duration:00:56:01
Sean Carroll: Understanding Space, Time and Motion
9/29/2022
Physics offers deep insights into the workings of the universe that many find mysterious, complex and confusing. Theoretical physicist and "Mindscape" podcast host Sean Carroll breaks down some of the most mind-boggling concepts in his newest book The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion. Join us for an online discussion to learn more about the wonders of modern physics and the multidimensional landscape it covers—from black holes to quantum mechanics and more. NOTES In...
Duration:01:05:52
Mark Bergen with Shishir Mehrotra and Emily Chang: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination
9/28/2022
What’s the last video you watched on YouTube? Across the world, people view more than a billion hours of video on YouTube every day. This digital platform created the attention economy that forever changed how we consume information and entertainment. Everyone knows YouTube. And yet virtually no one knows how it really works. Mark Bergen’s Like, Comment, Subscribe reveals the inside story of YouTube’s revolutionary technology and business model. Bergen offers a deep account of how the...
Duration:01:06:14
Iuliia Mendel: President Zelenskyy, Ukraine's Battle for Democracy, and What It Means for the Rest of the World
9/27/2022
When Iuliia Mendel got the call telling her she had been hired to work for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she had no idea what was to come. Mendel had a front row seat to many of the key events and meetings between President Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin, and other European leaders preceding the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. She saw firsthand President Zelenskyy’s efforts to transform Ukraine into a vibrant and prosperous European democracy. As the war in Ukraine continues, Mendel...
Duration:00:58:03
Monkeypox: The Response and What's Next
9/26/2022
In May 2022, an outbreak of monkeypox, a viral disease, was confirmed. It quickly spread from the United Kingdom to many countries around the world. Everyone is able to contract monkeypox, but its most rapid spread so far has been through men who have sex with men with new or multiple partners. How has the LGBTQ community responded? What is the current state of the disease's spread? What treatments are available? What medical or behavioral measures can be taken for prevention of infection?...
Duration:01:10:46
Josh Chin and Liza Lin: China and the Era of Digital Surveillance
9/25/2022
An alarming new reality is emerging in China, where a new kind of political control is being waged through the optimization of technology. Journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin describe the journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. They reveal a future that is already underway―a new society engineered around the power of data and digital surveillance. Hear more about what could be at stake for the rest of the world. SPEAKERS Josh Chin Deputy Bureau Chief in...
Duration:01:06:55
California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America's Power Grid
9/24/2022
Author Katherine Blunt provides what is being called a "revelatory, urgent narrative with national implications," exploring the decline of California’s largest utility company that led to countless wildfires—including the one that destroyed the town of Paradise—and the human cost of infrastructure failure Pacific Gas and Electric was a legacy company built by innovators and visionaries, establishing California as a desirable home and economic powerhouse. In California Burning, Wall Street...
Duration:01:00:46
Senator Patrick Leahy: My Life in Politics
9/23/2022
From post-Watergate reforms, to the fall of the Soviet Union, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, 9/11 and the Iraq War, the Great Recession, the two Trump impeachment trials, and the January 6 insurrection, Senator Patrick Leahy has been at the heart of the discussion of the country's politics and direction for nearly half a century. In his memoir, The Road Taken, Senator Leahy gives a first-hand reflection of the historic events during his tenure. Senator Leahy is the longest-serving U.S....
Duration:01:03:10
CLIMATE ONE: The Inflation Reduction Act Passed. Now What?
9/23/2022
In August, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. The IRA allocates around $370 billion over ten years to invest in renewable energy, make EVs more affordable, address climate inequities, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate the climate crisis. But like any law, the way the money is doled out matters, and the law’s implementation will ultimately determine its success. Some of the IRA money moves through state governments, including some that are outright...
Duration:00:54:48
How to Decide Which Medical and Health Information You Should Trust
9/21/2022
Fake news? Alternative facts? Overly hyped "breakthroughs"? Irreproducible scientific research results? Preprints? Gaslighting the medical literature? What to do? Finding and trusting the best published primary medical literature is the answer. Our speakers for the 12th Annual Lundberg Institute Lecture at The Commonwealth Club, JAMA Editor in Chief Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo and BMJ Editor in Chief Kamran Abbasi, are among the premier guardians of that literature. Hear their advice, and then...
Duration:01:03:41
That Is Not Your Mind!
9/21/2022
Author of That Is Not Your Mind: Zen Reflections on the Surangama Sutra, Robert Rosenbaum explores that question by taking forum participants on a magical journey through the Surangama Sutra based in a context of Zen practice. Like the arts world, Surangama sutra is a springboard for exploring sensory experiences—sight, sound ,taste, smell, touch and the Buddhist “sixth sense” of mind or cognition. Rosenbaum presents witty, authentic and refreshing contemporary insights from neuroscience and...
Duration:01:03:56
Valerie Biden Owens: Family, Faith and Responsibility
9/20/2022
Join us for a conversation about family, faith and responsibility, with Valerie Biden Owens and Dr. Gloria Duffy. Valerie Biden Owens is Biden Institute chair at the University of Delaware, campaign manager, political strategist, and New York Times best-selling author of Growing Up Biden. Welcome remarks will be delivered by Paul J. Fitzgerald, S. J., president of the University of San Francisco, with introductions by Charles M. Collins, president emeritus of YMCA of San Francisco. NOTES...
Duration:01:06:26
Kermit Roosevelt III: The Nation That Never Was
9/17/2022
Is today’s America really the one the Founding Fathers envisioned? That is the question constitutional scholar Kermit Roosevelt asks, tracing the majority of American political sentiments from the modern day not back as far as the Revolution, but to the Reconstruction era. Kermit Roosevelt is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the great-great grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He is an expert in constitutional law, national security, conflicts of law and civil...
Duration:01:06:24
CLIMATE ONE: Molly Wood on Tech, Money and Survival
9/16/2022
After a 20-year career as a tech reporter for CNET, the New York Times, and the public radio program Marketplace, Molly Wood has come to see the climate crisis as an engineering problem requiring an acceleration of investment. And so, after producing the acclaimed climate podcast “How We Survive” for Marketplace, she recently left that program to begin a new career in venture capital. Now, in conversation with Climate One Host Greg Dalton, Molly Wood explores the limits of media in changing...
Duration:00:51:41
Queer and Trans People in the AAPI Movement
9/16/2022
When people talk about the many attacks on Asian and Pacific Islander (API) people, they usually don’t talk about gay or queer people. These attacks have been going on for a long time, and seemingly nobody pays attention to it. This special panel will highlight how these attacks are affecting the queer Asian community and how this silent violence is impacting their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It will also remove the veil of shame and secrecy around queerness that is experienced...
Duration:01:07:13