Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Joan Didion opened The White Album (1979) with what would become an iconic line: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Today this phrase is deployed inspirationally, printed on T-shirts and posters, and used as a battle cry for artists and writers. But Didion had something much less rosy in mind: our tendency to manufacture delusions to ward away our anxieties whenever society seems to be spinning off its axis. And nowhere was this collective hallucination more effectively crafted than in Hollywood. Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion’s influence through the lens of American myth-making. As a young girl, Didion was infatuated with John Wayne and his on-screen bravado, and was fascinated by her California pioneer ancestry and the infamous Donner Party. The mythos that preoccupied her early years continued to influence her work as a magazine writer and film critic in New York, offering glimmers of the many stories Didion told herself that would eventually unravel. Wilkinson traces Didion’s journey f

Catherine Coleman Flowers has dedicated her life to fighting for the most vulnerable communities — people who have been deprived of the basic civil right to a clean, safe and sustainable environment.  When she was first on Climate One in 2021, Flowers talked about growing up in Lowndes County, Alabama, and working to stem the raw sewage contaminating homes and drinking water in her county and beyond. In recognition of this work she was granted a MacArthur “Genius Award.” Now, she picks up the story, discussing her awareness of racialized disinvestment in the South, the work of the inaugural White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the impact of unfettered fossil fuel production nationwide. Guests: Catherine Coleman Flowers, Founder, Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ) Justin J. Pearson, State Representative, Tennessee General Assembly On Monday, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt and Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Cen

Join us for "Art of Survival," a vibrant celebration of Black culture and resilience—an evening of music, art and culture. This program acknowledges and honors the rich history of perseverance within the Black community through a captivating blend of poetry, song, visual arts and engaging discussions. Experience the powerful expressions of survival as talented artists and performers share their work, highlighting themes of strength, hope, and cultural identity. The session will feature stirring poetry that reflects personal and collective narratives, soul-stirring songs that uplift the spirit, and visual arts that document the diversity of the Black experience. A panel discussion will follow, bringing together thought leaders and creators to explore the artistic representation of survival in Black culture and the ongoing journey toward empowerment and equity. Join us in celebrating the artistry and resilience that has defined Black history, and discover how creativity serves as a vital tool for connection,

Join us for the latest edition of our Week to Week political roundtable. We're two months into the new administration in Washington, new leadership in San Francisco and elsewhere. Join us for some insight into the people, trends and topics driving the political news of the day. Enjoy and learn as our panel of political experts explains what happened and what to expect, and answers your questions. See other upcoming Week to Week political roundtables, as well as audio and video of past Week to Week programs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why is the human brain so vulnerable to false beliefs and conspiracy theories despite evidence to the contrary? And what can be done to protect ourselves, our families, and society from our collective propensity to fall into these seductive traps? Dr. Joe Pierre, health sciences clinical professor at UCSF and a specialist in delusions and delusion-like beliefs, will be returning to the Club to discuss these issues with us. His first talk on the topic, a few years ago, was a sold-out, extremely informative success, so we asked him to return for a deeper look into the personal and societal effects of mistrust, misinformation, and motivated reasoning. Equally important, he is going to outline how we can avoid the pitfalls of acting on false beliefs, both as individuals and as a society. So if you've been puzzled by how "otherwise-intelligent" friends and relatives have fallen into the trap of a false belief, or if you're searching for a way to reach out to someone who has fallen for one, or if you're wondering

In 1991–93, Mark Brzezinski was a Fulbright Scholar in newly post-communist Poland. Thirty years later he returned as the U.S. ambassador to Poland, a country embedded in the EU and NATO, and an ally deeply involved in providing support for Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of that country. Join us for an in-depth conversation with Brzezinski about Poland, Vladimir Putin, Ukraine, Germany, the European Union and more. Mark Brzezinski has worked in the private sector and in government positions. He previously was U.S. ambassador to Sweden, served on President Clinton’s National Security Council staff, worked in the law and capital management industries. He will be in conversation with Abraham Sofaer, the George P. Shultz Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs, Emeritus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A third of Americans say that they've skipped food, medicine, or something else to be able to afford their energy bills. Much of the increase in the cost of electricity is driven by rising demand from artificial intelligence and data centers, industrial onshoring and hotter temperatures.  How does your electricity bill get calculated, and who’s in charge of setting those rates? Does public power serve consumers better than investor-owned utilities? And will rising electricity prices dampen the transition to cleaner sources of energy? Guests:  Shelley Welton, Professor of Law and Energy Policy, University of Pennsylvania  Severin Borenstein, Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Kevin Miller, Reporter, Maine Public Radio On March 24, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt and Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center, will speak with Climate One about the development of sustainably powered artificial intelligence. Tickets are on sale through our website. A

In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard. Determined to not let her assault derail her goal of joining NASA after graduation, Nguyen opted for her rape kit to be filed under “Jane Doe.” But she was shocked to learn her choice to stay anonymous gave her only six months to take action before the state destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had two options: surrender to a law that effectively denied her justice, or fight for a change―not only for herself but for survivors everywhere. She comes to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to discuss the issues raised in her memoir of survival and hope, Saving Five, which braids the story of Nguyen’s activism―which resulted in Congress’s unanimous passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016―with a second imagined adventure, of Nguyen's younger selves as they―at ages 5, 15, 22, and 30―navigate through dramatic incarnations of the emotional stages of

Has America ceased to be the land of opportunity? Many people here take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case. Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for 200 years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity. Join us as Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, argues that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in 19th-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and

Economic warfare has become the primary way the United States confronts international crises and counters rivals. Sometimes it has achieved spectacular success; other times, bitter failure. The result we live with today is a new world order: an economic arms race among great powers and a fracturing global economy. It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official and author of the new book Chokepoints, goes deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war. As Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Ayatollah Khamenei wreaked havoc on the world stage, mavericks within the U.S. government built a fearsome new arsenal of economic weapons, exploiting America’s dominance

If you find you're having unpleasant battles that create too much heat and too little light, or you're avoiding fraught discussions entirely, then come to this experiential event to learn the skill of nonviolent conflict management from Kazu Haga, the author of the acclaimed books Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse. Find out how to deal with conflict in a way that repairs and deepens relationships instead of breeding resentment and anger. Kazu Haga is one of the most experienced trainers of Kingian nonviolence, which is derived from the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He'll show us the framework and outline a few specific steps for defusing an argument in ways that we can put to immediate use in our lives. We'll practice a few exercises and come away with a solid start and a path to better relationships and leadership. Organizer: Eric Siegel   A Personal Growth Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are

Many people are convinced our lives, and all actions in the universe, are totally determined. One question remains: How did they make up their minds that that is true? One decent definition of the difference between mind and matter is that minds make decisions. Even if you decide to let someone else make all your decisions for you, that itself is a decision. Which you can revoke at will. Join us at Monday Night Philosophy to remind yourself (in the Platonic sense) that there are indeed many reasons to recover your own agency, to realize that you make decisions all the time that are not determined by—even if they are influenced by—outside forces, and to refresh your awareness of the inner control over your own life that everyone inherently possesses, whether they sense it or not, whether they feel it or not. Because when you have recovered your former certainty that you have free will, you will also understand that one of the most intriguing and ironic uses of our free wills are our always temporary decisions

This presentation by Dr. Descartes Li looks at some of the complexities and controversies about psychiatric diagnoses. It examines the DSM-5's "Harmful Dysfunction" definition, contrasting it with the NIMH's Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project. The lecture also discusses philosophical approaches to understanding mental illness, including reductionism, cultural relativism, emergentism, and mechanistic approaches to psychiatric diagnosis. Finally, it outlines four perspectives for viewing mental disorders: disease, dimensional, behavioral, and life story, advocating for a comprehensive approach to diagnosis. About the Speaker Dr. Descartes Li is professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, Weill Institute for Neurosciences. He currently serves as director of the UCSF Bipolar Clinic and the UCSF Electroconvulsive Therapy Service for the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He is a dedicated teacher in the School of Medicine and internationally. He is a member of the U

Please join us for a special film documentary screening and an intimate conversation with filmmaker Doug Harris and civil rights attorney John Burris.  The film, John Burris: The Godfather of Police Litigation, highlights Burris’s life, police brutality, and Burris’s high-profile cases: Rodney King's civil trial, the Oakland Riders case, the Oscar Grant case, Barry Bonds, Mario Woods and among others.  Filmmaker Doug Harris points out that the Burris film documentary “is very special—the majority of my previous biographical stories have been about people who are deceased, and this project has given me an opportunity to form a close bond with a living legend.” As Burris looks forward, he is “really working hard to pass the baton on to the next generation of attorneys to carry on this type of civil rights legal work.” Organizer: Robert Melton Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a nonprofit, nonpartisan civic forum. We welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our mission. An Art

Take a breath. Just breathe.  And then reserve your ticket for a special online-only talk with New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer, who will tell you all about what just went into your lungs. Zimmer will share the ideas that are in his new book Air-Borne, giving a fascinating, previously untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air—and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took more than two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus. Zimmer will lead us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. From the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, to Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbr

Who’s responsible for climate change? Fossil fuel companies would like us to believe it’s all of us as individuals (after all, BP invented the idea of the personal carbon footprint). But many large corporations bear at least as much of the blame. And for a decade or so, there was a push for every company to disclose its own emissions — a kind of corporate carbon footprint — and “sustainability” became the word of the day. But corporate shareholders demand profits, and managers are held accountable if they don’t deliver. Auden Schendler spent over 25 years running sustainability programs at Aspen One, the company that owns one of the highest-end resorts in the world. He argues that those pushing corporate sustainability programs are living a “big green lie.” Can capitalism be cleaned up from the inside? What should corporations and their sustainability managers do instead? Guests: Auden Schendler, Climate activist; Author, “Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul”  Mindy L

Since 1992, award-winning San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan has been covering homelessness and other major news stories. His coverage has included Willie L. Brown Jr., at 90 still one of the most influential politicians in the state. Both Fagan and Brown have insightful, candid views about homelessness and the personal, state and national resolve that will be required to end it. Now Kevin Fagan has written The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family and Second Chances, that will be published in February by Simon & Schuster. Fagan brings the abstract issue of homelessness to life, with compelling personal portraits of people experiencing it. HIs "straight up, savvy and realistic" book has been praised by reviewers. Throughout Mayor Brown's storied career, and Kevin Fagan's stories about it, homelessness has loomed large, as it has for all of us. In conversation at this event, Fagan and Brown will discuss the book, homelessness, and ways to humanize and mitigate it. About The

California has long reigned as the land of plenty, a place where the sun always shines and opportunity always beckons. Even prior to its statehood in 1850, it captured the world’s imagination. We think of bearded prospectors lured by the promise of gold. We imagine its early embrace of immigrant labor during the railroad boom as prologue to its diverse social fabric today. But what lies underneath the myths is far more complicated. Thanks to his extensive research, Michael Hiltzik uncovers the unvarnished truth about the state we think we know well. From the Spanish incursions into what became known as Alta California to the rise of Big Tech, the history of California is one of stark contradictions. In rich, previously overlooked detail, we see its earliest statesmen wreaking havoc among native peoples while racing to draft their own constitution prior to statehood. And gold-hungry settlers venturing into the Sierra foothills only to leave with little, while a handful of their suppliers turn themselves into

As artificial intelligence becomes an ever-present force in our lives, it’s clear that this technology is not going away. And as it continues to transform education, governance and civic engagement, one crucial aspect remains largely unexplored: how to develop informed, engaged citizens for a democracy shaped by artificial intelligence. This event brings together experts in artificial intelligence, democracy building, and civic education to explore how AI intersects with the ways people learn about democracy, government and civic responsibility. They will examine the potential benefits and risks of AI in shaping how citizens understand and interact with democratic processes in the digital age, as well as the shared responsibilities of all stakeholders—including AI developers, educators, and subject matter experts—in the vital work of cultivating informed and active citizens. Please join us as our panel explores these critical issues and offers insights and practical strategies for preparing future citizens i

Against a backdrop of political chaos in South Korea and more nuclear tests by North Korea, what might be in store for the divided peninsula in 2025? Could Donald Trump reconcile with "Little Rocketman," Kim Jong Un? Will proposed tariffs hurt South Korea or will there be carveouts for a U.S. ally and regional rival to China? Caught among the world’s largest powers—including China, Japan, Russia, and the United States—Korea’s fate has always been closely connected to its geography and the strength of its leadership and society. Join us for a captivating discussion with Dr. Victor Cha and Prof. Ramon Pacheco Pardo, authors of Korea: A New History of South and North, a groundbreaking book that offers fresh insights into one of the world’s most dynamic and complex regions. As Korea continues to shape global dynamics—from pop culture to North Korea’s support of Russia’s war in Ukraine—understanding the latest developments and the history of the Korean peninsula has never been more essential. A timely, can’t-mis