Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Join us virtually for a conversation with Professors Mettler and Lieberman about the social trends that have often threatened our democracy. They have identified four major threats: political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power. And they have drawn lessons from five serious crises: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. Each of these crises could have profoundly―even fatally―damaged the American democratic experiment. But what is most alarming now is that all four threats exist simultaneously―in the midst of a viral pandemic. This convergence could be cause for despair, but history provides valuable lessons about how democracy was eventually strengthened―or weakened―in the past. By revisiting how earlier generations of Americans faced similar threats to our constitutional principles, we can see more clearly what led us to today, and then chart a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing our democracy. MLF ORGANIZER G

Miami might be the poster child of rising waters in the United States, but further inland, states are grappling with torrential flooding that is becoming the new norm. Last year, flooding in the southeast killed 12 people and caused $20 billion in damages. This year’s rains have already driven Mississippi into a state emergency, and Missouri is bracing itself with a levee system still in disrepair from last year’s storms. Can infrastructure like floodplains, wetlands, and engineered barriers save riverside states from their new, saturated norm? How are communities adapting to a changing, wetter climate in some of the most conservative parts of the country? Guests: Julia Kumari Drapkin, CEO and founder of ISeeChange Ed Kearns, chief data officer at First Street Foundation Martha Shulski, director of the Nebraska state climate office Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since 1931, the California Book Awards have honored the exceptional literary merit of California writers and publishers. Each year a select jury considers hundreds of books from around the state in search of the very best in literary achievement. This year, we will be saluting the winners virtually. The California Book Awards have often been on the vanguard, honoring previously unknown authors who go on to garner national acclaim. John Steinbeck received three gold medals—for Tortilla Flat in 1935, In Dubious Battle in 1936 and The Grapes of Wrath in 1939. Award winners in recent years include Adam Johnson, Jared Diamond, Karen Fowler, Kay Ryan, Bill Vollman, Joyce Maynard, Andrew Sean Greer, Yiyun Li, Adrienne Rich, Chalmers Johnson, Richard Rodriguez, Michael Chabon, Philip Levine, Rebecca Solnit, Galen Rowell, Jonathan Lethem, Peter Orner and Kevin Starr. Join us for this special celebratory event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Death—it is the most human experience and yet the topic humans run away from at every opportunity. Why is this? What if we reimagined what death means to each of us personally and collectively as a society? Columbia University physician Dr. L.S. Dugdale sets out to answer these questions and change the approach to death in her new book, The Lost Art of Dying. Dr. Dugdale’s long career in medicine has forced her to become intimate with death in a way very few are, as she is often tasked with guiding her patients through their final phase. Her unique position has gifted her with a new perspective on death that she now hopes to share with the world. She says death is something that we as a culture should celebrate, not be frightened of—but in order to die well, we must first live well. By recovering our sense of finitude, confronting our fears, accepting how our bodies age, and involving our communities in end-of-life care, we can discover what it means to both live and die well. Join us for an honest and soulfu

Today we are on the brink of a much-needed transformative moment for health care. The U.S. health care system is designed to be reactive instead of preventive. The result can be diagnoses that are too late and outcomes that are far worse than our level of spending should deliver. In recent years, U.S. life expectancy has been declining. Fundamental to realizing better health, and a more effective health-care system, is advancing the disruptive thinking that has spawned innovation in Silicon Valley and throughout the world. That's exactly what Stanford Medicine has done by proposing a new vision for health and health care. In Discovering Precision Health, Lloyd Minor and Matthew Rees describe a holistic approach designed to set health care on the right track: keep people healthy by preventing disease before it starts and personalize the treatment of individuals precisely, based on their specific profile. MLF ORGANIZER Patty James NOTES MLF: Health & Medicine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm

Join artist and journalist Dana King as she interviews two scholars who traveled on the Club’s trip, “On the Road to Freedom: Understanding the Civil Rights Movement” in March of 2020. The group spent time in Jackson, Little Rock, Memphis, Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery. Hear about key events and people involved in the movement, and what it means for these young women in terms of what is happening today and their vision for the future. NOTES In partnership with Cinnamongirl Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Long before the coronavirus began disrupting America’s trillion-dollar meat industry, lab-grown proteins were upending the way we consume chicken, pork and beef. With an environmental footprint far smaller than traditional animal agriculture, are cell-cultured and plant-based meat products—now on the menus of major chains like Burger King—still the future of food? Will food science and tech help us make better-informed decisions for our bodies and the planet, or do we need to get back to basics? Join us for a conversation on the future of food with Sophie Egan, author of How to Be a Conscious Eater: Making Food Choices That Are Good for You, Others, and the Planet, and Chase Purdy, author of Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech’s Race for the Future of Food. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us to learn about individuality, finding your voice amidst a sea of homogeneity, and the triumph of intellect over the ideologue. Local filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine explore these themes in their new film Boys State, airing on Apple TV+ beginning August 14. Boys State is a political coming-of-age story, examining the health of American democracy through an unusual experiment: a thousand 17-year-old boys from across Texas gather to build a representative government from the ground up. High-minded ideals collide with low-down dirty tricks as four boys of diverse backgrounds and political views navigate the challenges of organizing political parties, shaping consensus, and campaigning for the highest office at Texas Boys State—governor. In a primarily conservative setting, part of what makes the two prominent progressive participants—Steven and René—so extraordinary is their ability to self-advocate, their perseverance and their drive. The Boys State program epitomizes the real-world experience o

BlueSky initiative supports mental health for middle- and high school students in California by providing additional mental health clinicians in schools, training teachers on the signs of mental health issues, and empowering students with in-person and online mental health support resources. With schools now shuttered and distance learning part of the norm because of COVID-19, educators, mental health specialists ,and others are pivoting to address the need virtually. Join us for a special program to learn more about this important initiative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a rare visit with one of America's most trusted medical figures and leading experts on infectious disease, and take advantage of this unique opportunity to ask your questions directly. Dr. Fauci was appointed director of NIAID in 1984. He oversees an extensive portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika....and of course, COVID 19. He has advised six presidents on domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world. Dr. Fauci is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest honor given to a civilian by the president of the United States) and the National Medal of Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Images of dancers or sculptures don’t leap to mind with the mention of climate change. But artists are increasingly using the carbon conundrum as a creative lens, using their mediums to design cultural moments that bring people together. Storytellers and artists are reaching people on a deeper and more emotional level than the cerebral facts and charts often used to shape the climate narrative. Can art reach and activate people on climate in new and compelling ways? How can art convey the joy of nature and the grief of how humans are destroying it? Join us for a conversation about art, beauty and humanity in the age of climate disruption with celebrated choreographer Alonzo King, whose new dance is inspired by the beauty and tragedy unfolding in the Arctic. The world premier will be held in San Francisco later this year. Also joining is senior curator Nora Lawrence, whose 2018 exhibition at New York's Storm King Art Center, Indicators: Artists on Climate Change, was one of the first major museum exhibitions t

Science has given us a realistic picture of what Earth will look like with uninhibited levels of climate change: increased extreme weather events, crippled economies and a world where those with the least are the hardest hit. What would a radically re-envisioned future look like? What solutions do we need to replace tomorrow’s doom-and-gloom projections with thriving cities, renewed political consciousness, equitable societies and carbon-free economies? Join us with climate journalist and The Future Earth author Eric Holthaus and Project Drawdown Vice President Katharine Wikinson for a conversation on reimagining our role in creating climate solutions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Haven't had the opportunity for adventurous travel recently? Then join us for a virtual conversation with remote travel writer Sophy Roberts, direct from London, about her first book: The Lost Pianos of Siberia. Although Siberia’s story is usually one of exile, penal colonies and unmarked graves, there is another tale to tell about one of our planet's harshest landscapes. Dotted throughout this remote land are many pianos―grand instruments created during the boom years of the 19th century, as well as humble, Soviet-made uprights. These pianos bear witness to the enthusiasm with which Russians have taken to piano music ever since Catherine the Great's westernizing influences introduced it to Russian culture. Follow Roberts as she tracks pianos and their histories through a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history—from the piano that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Sovie

Few people can reflect as deeply on the politics of political life like Katie Hill, a former U.S. representative for California’s 25th congressional district. She ran for Congress before turning 30 and won her seat in November 2018 as a Democrat, beating a 26-year Republican incumbent. Her win, along with many others that year, was part of a larger turning of the tides in American politics — one centered around young women who were determined to lead change. Then, a mere 11 months later, Hill experienced a major sex scandal that ultimately resulted in her untimely resignation. In her new book, She Will Rise: Becoming a Warrior in the Battle for True Equality, Hill recounts the complicated details of her story and the extreme sexism and abuse she faced at the hands of the highly invasive media. Join her at INFORUM, where she will share her experience with the longstanding double standard of sex and gender in politics, and how we can all play a part in dismantling these systems. Learn more about your ad choices

It's a stressful time, and it's difficult even for those with a naturally sunny personality to maintain the mood they want. So what about those of us who are coping with unwanted sadness, depression or irritability? And why does stigma still make it difficult to openly discuss these experiences? We have therefore asked Dr. Stephen Hinshaw, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California Berkeley and of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco, to join Dr. Brad Berman, M.D., for an hour of Q&A to discuss your questions about managing the sadder moods at this time of COVID-19. Learn how taking even small steps can help you to improve your mood, outlook and perhaps even help you feel more hopeful. Just write your questions on the chat channel during the talk, and we will forward them to Drs. Hinshaw and Berman anonymously for their answers. Our previous discussion about anxiety with Dr. Michael Tompkins used a similar format, and it was extremely successful. There were great questi

No one doubts that there is some corruption in America, as there is in every other country. But in her latest book, Sarah Chayes contends that the United States is showing symptoms distressingly similar to those of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, as Chayes defines it, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: to maximize returns for network members. Chayes shows how corrupt systems are organized, how they enforce the rules so their crimes are rarely punished, how they are overlooked and downplayed—shrugged off with a roll of the eyes—by the richer and better educated, and how they shape our government, affecting all levels of society. Chayes also reviews the historical trends involved, beginning with the titans of America's Gilded Age (Carnegie, Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan), the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal, and Joe

In late 1976, Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a man without a political future: defeated in his nomination bid against a sitting president of his own party, blamed for President Gerald Ford’s defeat, too old to make another run. Four years later, the former California governor would win the White House and expand a conservative revolution begun with Barry Goldwater that continues to impact the country’s politics today. Reagan’s comeback was fueled by an extraordinary confluence: fundamentalist preachers and former segregationists reinventing themselves as militant crusaders against gay rights and feminism; business executives uniting against regulation in an era of economic decline; a cadre of secretive “New Right” organizers deploying state-of-the-art technology, bending political norms to the breaking point—and Reagan’s own unbending optimism, his ability to convey unshakable confidence in America as the world’s “shining city on a hill.” Backed by a reenergized conservative Republican base, Reagan ran on the

Join us for a virtual conversation between Alan Mikhail and Adam Hochschild about Mikhail's new book, God's Shadow. Although long neglected in European-centric world histories, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power and enlightened pluralistic rule. At the height of their authority in the 16th century, the Ottomans, with military dominance and monopolies over trade routes, controlled more territory and ruled over more people than any other world power of the time, forcing Europeans out of the Mediterranean and to the New World. Mikhail recasts this Ottoman history by retelling it through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470–1520). Born to a concubine, the fourth of his sultan father’s 10 sons, Selim's charisma and military prowess―as well as the guidance of his mother Gülbahar―allowed him to claim power in 1512 and then nearly triple the empire's territory, building a governing structure that lasted into the 20th century. Selim also fostered religious diversity, enco

What happens when wilderness meets wealth in the most iconic parts of the country? Teton County, Wyoming, is famous for pristine outdoors, recreation, ranching and land stewardship. It also leads the country in per capita income, with residents averaging a quarter of a million dollars annually. This massive accrual of wealth comes with far-reaching consequences for income inequality and the environment. How are public and private land interests competing in the American West? Can conservation and recreation coalesce in a way that is inclusive of all communities? Join us for a conversation with Justin Farrell, associate professor of sociology at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and author of Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West; Dina Gilio-Whitaker, American Indian studies lecturer at California State University, San Marcos; and Diane Regas, president and CEO of The Trust for Public Land. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi

As 2020 continues to challenge our way of life, young people are facing the brunt of this unrest. COVID-19 is quickly defining this era, but issues such as racial inequity, economic disparity, historic unemployment rates and the fast-approaching presidential election are also informing Generation Z’s worldview. How are young people processing the government’s role in this crisis? What is the current state of civics education in the United States and, most important, what can we do to make sure youth are civically engaged during this time of uncertainty and into the future? INFORUM and The Commonwealth Club's education initiative, Creating Citizens, have gathered a panel of experts in civics education and youth engagement to discuss how we can continue to educate young people on the structures that impact their lives, and how we can make sure they are an active part of political decision making. Join Generation Citizen’s Scott Warren, IGNITE National’s Sara Guillermo, Kidizenship's Amanda Little and iCivics’ A