Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

As one of the most prominent drag performers today, Alaska is no stranger to fame. But Alaska’s story is more than her success as both a runner-up and winner in two different seasons of "RuPaul’s Drag Race," as well as her high-profile relationship and the equally public breakup that ended it. In her new book—My Name’s Yours, What’s Alaska?—Alaska goes beneath her glamorous surface to reveal a never-before told account of her unique life story. From humble beginnings as a small-town kid studying at theater school to her larger-than-life vibrance as one of drag’s most influential stars, Alaska’s perseverance over her struggles regarding the expression and discovery of her queerness is an inspiring story for the LGBTQIA+ community and beyond. At INFORUM, Alaska will bring the journey detailed in her new visual memoir to life. In doing so, she will provide motivation and representation for those belonging to communities who are too often unheard and underrepresented in the media and in popular culture. Whether y

China is rapidly connecting Hong Kong, Macao and nine cities in Guangdong Province into a regional finance, technology, manufacturing and tourism hub of 86 million people. Over the next decade, this Greater Bay Area (GBA) will mature into a global showcase for China’s economic model, “One Country-Two Systems” integration, and Belt and Road development strategy. GBA hopes to partner with comparable regions worldwide, including the San Francisco Bay Area, in areas such as clean energy, health care, mobility and fintech. A new report by the Bay Area Council and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council assesses the commercial opportunities and political obstacles amid U.S.-China tensions. Join the sponsors of the report for a deeper dive into the report's findings. About the Speakers Sean Randolph is senior director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, where he served as president & CEO from 1998-2015, and manages its science affiliate the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium (BASIC). Randolph previou

The Trump family is one of the most talked about families in the United States. Donald Trump's presidency elevated that and helped put them on an international stage that brought the family to the forefront of the world. Over the last half decade, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston has provided the American people with fascinating insight into the financial world of one of America's most influential families. Johnston talks about the financial life of the Trump Family in his new piece of work, The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family. This new book details the aspects of the Trump family's finances during the four years Donald Trump spent in office, leaving no details out, to give you the complete picture. Join us as David Cay Johnston offers an inside look into the financial world of the Trump family. SPEAKERS David Cay Johnston Co-Founder, DCReport.org; Author, The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family;

This forum will explain how the assets of seniors and people with disabilities are often drained in order to pay the fees of a variety of attorneys in probate conservatorship proceedings. With vague or nonexistent rules and a lack of accountability, judges are making ad hoc and often arbitrary orders requiring conservatees and proposed conservatees to pay unreasonable or excessive legal fees. Not only are they required to pay the fees of lawyers appointed to represent them, they are forced to pay the fees of lawyers representing other parties in the case: petitioner, temporary conservator, guardian ad litem, objector, public guardian, or permanent conservator. Judges in conservatorship cases are supposed to be conserving the assets of adults who find themselves entangled in these proceedings. Courts know how to conserve assets when they want to or are required to. For example, there are strict procurement rules to follow when courts plan to spend money from the judicial branch budget. Specific guidelines must

Climate change science isn’t taught accurately — or equally — across the country. Investigative reporter Katie Worth dug into textbooks and talked with dozens of children and teachers to find out why. In her book, Miseducation: How Climate is Taught in America, Worth unpacks the influence of the fossil fuel industry, state legislatures and school boards on school curricula in their effort to spread confusion and misinformation about the climate crisis.  Some organizations skip the textbook battle entirely and try to reach children directly through assemblies and social media. How do teachers navigate these dynamics in the classroom? How can we ensure our children are learning to be engaged, educated and climate-aware citizens? For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts  Guests: Katie Worth, investigative journalist, author, Miseducation: How Climate is Taught in America Lea Dotson, Campaigner, Action for the Climate Emergency Ann Reid, Executive Director

Clinical trials represent the primary means to test new drugs before they become approved by the FDA for sale and marketing as a standard of care. The purpose of these trials is to test the safety and efficacy of new drugs and their combinations. Clinical trials must be performed with the highest ethical standards and must include geographically, genetically and socio-economically diverse populations. Trials provide completely free care for all participants, ensuring that any patient can participate. However, the vast majority of cutting-edge trials are performed in elite academic tertiary care centers, requiring patients not living in the immediate vicinity to undergo burdensome travel and long stays away from home. The Guardian Research Network was developed to address these issues by bringing novel trials to community health systems where most patients are treated, effectively democratizing clinical trial access. A new digital approach was developed to consenting patients, and collecting and reporting clin

Join us to learn more about America’s modern culinary history told through the lives of seven pathbreaking chefs and food writers. Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around the globe? Award-winning author Mayukh Sen has produced a group biography about seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. His book Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes. Mayukh Sen―a queer, brown child of immigrants―reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration and gender, Sen challenges the way people look at what’s on their plate―and the women whose labor, o

Take an illuminating literary voyage around the globe, without any Covid restrictions to hamper your travels, using classic and modern works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them. David Damrosch explores how our idea of the world has been shaped by 80 exceptional books, following an itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel Prize–winners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan, and Olga Tokarczuk. To chart the expansive landscape of world literature today, Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds: the world of their personal experience and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, hard-bitten crime fiction as well as haunting works of fantasy, and the formative tales that introduce us as children to the world we’re entering. Taken together, the

In March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peace Corps returned more than 7,000 volunteers to the United States from the countries around the world where they were based. There have been many discussions and conferences advocating for changes in the structure, mission, and goals of the Peace Corps as it celebrates the 60th year since its founding by President John F. Kennedy. The Peace Corps is passionate about working to strengthen the impact of its mission both at home and abroad as well as promoting diversity and inclusion to enhance the relativity and substance of its work. The Peace Corps, a government agency, is headed by Carol Spahn, the acting director. Currently, the mission of the Peace Corps is to promote world peace and friendship through community-based development and cross cultural understanding through three important core goals: building local capacity, sharing America with the world, and bringing the world back home. Glenn Blumhorst is the president of the National Peace Corps Associat

Brad Erickson, departing long-time Theatre Bay Area executive director, introduces top new Bay Area artistic leaders. They will challenge each other and viewers about repertory, risks, delights and post-COVID theatre-making. What's changed in the theatre producing community? What will (re)fill those seats? MLF ORGANIZER Anne W. Smith NOTES MLF: Arts In Association with Theatre Bay Area. SPEAKERS Sean San Jose Artistic Director, Magic Theatre Johanna Pfaelzer Artistic Director, Berkeley Repertory Theater Khalia Davis Artistic Director, Bay Area Children's Theatre Tim Bond Artistic Director, Theatreworks Brad Erickson Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on December 1st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the current production of San Francisco Opera's Fidelio (October 14–30, 2021) at San Francisco's recently reopened War Memorial Opera House, there is an arts display about struggle and liberation. As part of the opera's ancillary events, the display relates to the Arts in Corrections programs with prisoners at San Quentin. Moderator Cole Thomason-Redus will share exhibit and production visuals at the meeting. Cole is educational content curator in the Department of Diversity, Equity and Community at San Francisco Opera. Artist Carol Newborg has said that the role of art in prison to help people heal and change confirms for her the necessity of art to life. For the past decade she has been the organizer of exhibitions and public panels and readings at the William James Association. San Francisco Opera singer Erin Neff is dedicated to advocating for incarcerated women in the California prison system. MLF ORGANIZER Anne W. Smith NOTES MLF: Arts In association with San Francisco Opera. SPEAKERS Erin Neff S

President Biden recently signed the biggest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history into law. To be sure, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act got pared down significantly from what was first put on the table, but the final measure still contains five times more money for projects aimed at mitigating the climate crisis than the best legislation the Obama administration could get through. What did it take to get 19 Republican senators (not to mention Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) to vote with the Democrats? And with the states being given great latitude over how to spend the money, will the billions available for highways negate any positive climate impacts? For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts  Guests: Carla Frisch, Principal Deputy Director, Office of Policy, U.S. Department of Energy  Sasha Mackler, Executive Director, The Energy Project, Bipartisan Policy Center Beth Osborne, Director, Transportation for America Michael Grunwald, jo

As the devastating effects of climate change take hold around the world, young people are demanding action from global leaders and, increasingly, taking action themselves. Ask a teenager or young adult which issues they think are most pressing in the world today, and climate will often top the list. One of the goals of our Creating Citizens initiative is to provide a forum for youth to meet and learn from peers and civic leaders about the complex and often controversial issues that are important to them. So it is with special pride that we present a panel of young climate activists discussing their own work and the power of youth to address the climate crisis and issues of racial and social injustice around the world. SPEAKERS Samir Chowdhury Founder and Executive Director, Youth Climate Action Team, Inc. Vanessa Nakate Author, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis Zaria Romero Climate Generation Delegate, COP26; Junior, University of Wisconsin-Madison Darren Zook Profe

Over the past four years, the United States Supreme Court has seen drastic changes to its members, from the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett. At the end of the 2019–20 term, followers of the Supreme Court noted that a new "center" of the court was holding under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts. By the end of the 2020–21 term, much about the nation's highest court had changed, reflecting a conservative supermajority enabled by jurors nominated by President Donald Trump. Many observers of the court expect these shifts to continue and deepen, making this past year a critical pivot point in the history of the Supreme Court, and American politics as a whole. In her new book, Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitizer Prize winner and one of the best-known chroniclers of the Supreme Court of her generation, explores the end of the 2020–21 term for the court, the changes that have occurred in the past year, and what the future holds for the court in these increasingly partisan time

Veteran journalist Jonathan Karl has known and covered Donald J. Trump longer than any other White House reporter. And during that time, he has been praised, taunted and branded an enemy of the people by President Trump himself.  So possibly nobody is in a better position to tell the story of the shocking final chapter of the Trump show than Karl. In his new book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl takes us behind the scenes of some of the darkest days in American history and shares what happened during the final weeks of the Trump presidency, the aftermath that followed, and what it means for the future of the Republican Party. SPEAKERS Jonathan Karl Chief White House Correspondent and Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News; Author, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show; Twitter @jonkarl In Conversation with Martha Raddatz ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and Co-Anchor of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”; Twitter @MarthaRaddatz In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are c

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 move past this idea that just arming people with facts will lead to a better world,’ right, because we’ve just seen that that’s absolutely not true,” says Faith Kearns, author of Getting to the Heart of Science Communication.  Kearns argues that we all need to move from an “information deficit” model of communication – where it’s assumed that the audience simply needs more information – to a relational model, where the science communicator does as much listening as talking in order to first find empathy and common ground. Guests: Faith Kearns, author, Getting to the Heart of Science Communication Katerina Gonzales, do

For more than 30 years, Michael Eric Dyson has played a prominent role in the nation as a public intellectual, university professor, cultural critic, social activist and ordained Baptist minister. He has presented a rich and resourceful set of ideas about American history and culture. Now, for the first time, he brings together the various components of his multihued identity and eclectic pursuits. Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America dives into how Black people were forced to entertain white people in slavery, have been forced to entertain the idea of race from the start, and must find entertaining ways to make race an object of national conversation. Most of this work will be new to readers, a fresh light for many of his long-time fans, and an inspiring introduction for newcomers. Join us as Michael Eric Dyson takes us through his new work, and offers insight into the role of African American culture in American culture. SPEAKERS Michael Eric Dyson Distinguished University Professor of African

Welcome to Hearts and Minds—A QTAPI Community Conversation Series, Session Three: FTAPIs—The Personal and the Political. Join us for an intergenerational panel discussion of QTAPI (queer and trans Asian Pacific Islander) people discussing and sharing stories of their personal involvement in politics and community organizing. The Asian and the Pacific Islander communities are not monoliths unto themselves, so no program can possibly speak to the breadth of diversity and uniqueness in those communities. But we will explore certain moments in the panelists' own personal histories and lived experiences as they reflect on questions such as: What got them involved in API and/or LGBTQ issues? Was there a specific moment that moved you to become involved? Who were your mentors? How has your involvement changed from when you started? What is the most rewarding aspect of this work? And more. SPEAKERS James Coleman Member, South San Francisco City Council Valli Kalei Kanuha Ph.D., Teaching Professor and Assistant Dean f

Mary C. Daly is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She returns to The Commonwealth Club for a much-anticipated discussion on how to approach monetary policy amidst the uncertainty of an economy still struggling to overcome the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since taking office in October 2018, Dr. Daly has committed to making the San Francisco Fed a more community-engaged bank that is transparent and responsive to the people it serves. She works to connect economic principles to real-world concerns and concentrates on monetary policy, labor economics, and increasing diversity within the economics field. Dr. Daly began her career with the San Francisco Fed in 1996 as an economist specializing in labor market dynamics and economic inequality. She went on to become the bank’s executive vice president and director of research. She currently serves on advisory boards for the Center for First-generation Student Success and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at S

In her new book, A Hole in the Clouds, Maryles Casto shares how, as part of the dramatic economic growth of Silicon Valley, she built her travel business from a $1,500 startup to a $200 million company, serving the needs of the tech industry. She describes how advice from key industry pioneers—such as Intel’s Andy Grove and Robert Noyce and V.C.s William Bowes and Irwin Federman—contributed to her perspective on business, and offers invaluable lessons on her strategies that helped the business to thrive despite being in an industry threatened by extinction. She describes how her business success then led her to champion community and cultural organizations. When Maryles Casto left her family’s sugar plantation in the Philippines in 1959 and moved to the United States as a new bride, she brought with her a love for travel and the stellar customer-service experience she’d gained as a flight attendant for Philippine Airlines. She never imagined she’d be building a business from scratch in an unfamiliar country.