Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Addressing the climate challenge requires incremental and transformational change on both personal and systemic levels. That means altering our personal habits as citizens, consumers, employees and parents. At the same time, society needs to fundamentally modernize the food, transportation, building and energy systems. That mind-blowing amount of change is so daunting, it’s no wonder people want to skip away into the happy land of denial. How should we think about change — and how do our words shape our behavior? Where does change really begin? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a special online Week to Week political roundtable, in which we'll discuss the political impact of the coronavirus on local, state, and national communities. We'll also tackle other big political news of the moment, including the latest in the heated presidential primaries. How will it work? This program is presented via a video livestream. You will be able to submit questions for our panelists and watch the entire program, all from the comfort of your home or office. Before the program, we will email you a link to the program online. The program will begin at 6:30 p.m. Week to Week is now in its ninth year, and we're continuing our mission of discussing the biggest, most controversial and sometimes the surprising political issues with expert commentary by panelists who are smart, are civil and have a good sense of humor. Notes Because this is a virtual program, we won't have our usual member social hour beforehand, so feel free to pour yourself a glass of wine, put your feet up, and enjoy watchin

Steve Disselhorst's life has been consumed with the quest to create a family. As a Catholic boy raised in the Midwest, he grew up thinking he was straight and would marry a woman and have children. When he was confronted with his attraction to men and the eventual realization that he was gay, he gave up that dream of having a family. But the dream wouldn't die. Eventually he resumed his quest for a family and started the arduous journey toward partenthood. Steve Disselhorst is an expert in personal and professional leadership development and consulting for diversity, equity and inclusion. Come hear his story about his determination to become a father. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Combatting the coronavirus pandemic has quickly become a global health priority. Communities across the United States, including here in the Bay Area, are using a range of strategies to mitigate the spread of coronavirus. In its first program on the coronavirus crisis, The Commonwealth Club will feature two experts who will discuss why significant community interventions are so important and what must be done now. The program will feature the lead author of the well-publicized Journal of the American Medical Association article on how Taiwan has been so effective at reducing the spread of the coronavirus, and what communities in the United States can learn from this experience. This was a free program. Please consider supporting the Club during these uncertain times by making a donation on the Club website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a virtual conversation with Adam Hochschild, the award-winning author who has spent his literary life delving into the details of crises inflicted on ourselves by man's inhumanity to man, and our rising above such crises through passionate involvement to bring better ideas to bear upon our culture. We will discuss Hochschild's research into colonialism in the Belgian Congo, the unfounded hopes that World War I would end all wars, the painful outcome of the Spanish Civil War, the horrors of Stalin's follies, the unlikely triumph over legalized slavery, and another triumph over apartheid, plus the unlikely story of Rose Pastor Stokes, a Rebel Cinderella devoted to social justice. MLF Organizer: George Hammond MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Abby Ginzberg is a Bay Area original; her films highlight struggles of race and social justice. Her new film Waging Change is having its San Francisco premiere at the Castro Theatre on March 22. It features Saru Jayaraman (Chronicle Visionary of the Year), Lily Tomlin, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and Jane Fonda, who have been working tirelessly for One Fair Wage, a campaign to end the sub-minimum wage for tip workers (which is currently just $2.13 per hour). A Peabody award winner, Ginzberg's recent work includes And Then They Came for Us, about the connection between the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW II and the current Muslim travel ban; and Agents of Change, which examines the untold story of racial conditions on college campuses that led to a successful struggle for black studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years, scientists and politicians have been saying that the climate battle will be won or lost in the next decade. That narrative was boosted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which contends global emissions must be halved by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 to avoid climate catastrophe. Politicians moved quickly to incorporate the 2030 deadline into their speeches and advocates started using it in their fundraising pleas. After a tepid global response to a decades-long climate saga, urgent action is imperative—but does a 10-year deadline oversimplify the science and overall situation? What is the best way to communicate climate urgency in a way that mobilizes people at home and in the workplace? Join us for a conversation with Chris Field, faculty director at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, David Fenton, founder of Fenton Communications, and Renee Lertzman, climate engagement strategist and author. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crises pose a challenge to leaders as no other tests they confront can. Veteran journalist Kenneth Walsh offers a probing look at how presidents from FDR to Trump have dealt with the crises they faced. Delving into both domestic conflicts and international conflagrations, Walsh goes in search of lessons we can learn. His findings focus on the presidential attributes and skills that matter most in trying times. MLF ORGANIZER George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does solving climate change mean re-thinking old top-down approaches and embracing big change at high speed? A half-century after the first Earth Day, some environmental advocates argue it’s time to challenge some of our basic assumptions about climate action. In the new book A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future, editor and Yale law professor Dan Esty showcases innovative ideas designed to push the boundaries of possible climate solutions from leaders in industry, government, business, and land management. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a time of anxiety about the effectiveness of our national government, Rahm Emanuel believes local government offers a clear vision, for both progressives and centrists, of how to get things done in America today. In his new book, The Nation City, Emanuel, the former two-term mayor of Chicago and President Obama’s first White House chief of staff, offers a firsthand account of how cities, rather than the federal government, stand at the center of innovation and effective governance. Drawing on his own experiences in Chicago, and on his relationships with other mayors around America, Emanuel shows how cities are improving education, infrastructure, job conditions and environmental policy at a local level. Emanuel argues that cities are the most ancient political institutions, dating back thousands of years, and have reemerged as the nation-states of our time. Emanuel argues that mayors are accountable to their voters to a greater degree than any other elected officials and that progressives and centrists ali

We spend one third of our lives at work, whether it’s at a job we love or one we can’t wait to leave. As the job market shifts with the increase of automation and artificial intelligence, a flexible mindset is more important than ever. Stanford professor Bill Burnett (co-author of the No. 1 New York Times best seller Designing Your Life) believes we can transform our work experience by building and utilizing a designer mindset. He argues that much of our unhappiness and difficulty is caused by “dysfunctional beliefs” that limit our potential. In the forthcoming Designing Your Work Life, Burnett offer strategies on everything work related—from how to quit to how to get the job we want—and everything in between. Join INFORUM as Bill Burnett teaches us how design thinking can transform our experience of work and our outlook on life, without necessarily changing the job we have. NOTES Burnett photo by Michael Lionstar Note: This program contains explicit language Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.

Spacious and affordable homes used to be the hallmark of American prosperity. Today, however, punishing rents and the increasingly prohibitive cost of ownership have turned housing into the foremost symbol of inequality and an economy gone wrong. In the San Francisco Bay Area, fleets of private buses ferry software engineers past the tarp-and-plywood shanties where the homeless make their homes; according to New York Times journalist Conor Dougherty, this is ground zero for this crisis. The adage that California is a glimpse of the nation's future has become a cautionary tale. With propulsive storytelling and ground-level reporting, Dougherty chronicles America's housing crisis from its West Coast epicenter, peeling back the decades of history and economic forces that brought us here and taking readers inside the activist uprisings that have risen in tandem with housing costs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent feminist movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp have called out sexism. They have empowered women to become more aware and also raise more questions: How do we find common ground in the new world we are building? How do we keep the momentum going with individual power, structural power and the power of movements? How do we handle a real situation at work, which could affect our livelihoods? Join psychotherapist and professor Joanne Bagshaw, author of The Feminist Handbook, and Professor Kellie McElhaney, founder and executive director of the Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership, in a lively, engaging dialogue meant to educate, prompt inner reflection and inspire. Walk away with a plan to help change society for yourself, your community and future generations. MLF Organizer: Elizabeth Carney MLF: Business & Leadership Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his sophomore year of college, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple website to serve as a campus social network. The site caught on like wildfire, and soon students nationwide were on it. Today, the social network that Zuckerberg created in 2004 has grown far beyond its original iteration, larger and more powerful than anyone could have imagined. Facebook has grown into a tech giant, the largest social media platform and one of the most gargantuan companies in the world, with a valuation of more than $576 billion and almost 3 billion users across the globe. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in American daily life. And in light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing "fake news" accounts, the handling of its users' personal data and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO, never has the company been more central to the national conversation regarding the direction of the county's politics, economy and how individuals communicate with each other. There

Joseph S. Nye Jr. provides a concise, penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in U.S. foreign policy after World War II. Nye works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions: their intentions, the means they used and the consequences of their decisions. He also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches worked and which did not. Nye shows that each president was not fully constrained by the structure of the system and actually had choices. He further notes the important ethical consequences of nonactions, such as Truman's willingness to accept stalemate in Korea rather than use nuclear weapons. Most importantly, he points out that presidents need to factor in both the political context and the availability of resources when deciding how to implement an ethical policy and will need to do so even more in a future international system that presents not only great power competition from China and Russia but a host of transnat

Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter is renowned for strategy, innovation and leadership for change. Her insights guide leaders worldwide through teaching, writing and direct consultation to major corporations, governments and startup ventures. She is either the author or co-author of 20 books. Her breakthrough work with hundreds of successful professionals and executives, as well as aspiring young entrepreneurs, identifies the leadership paradigm of the future: the ability to “think outside the building” to overcome establishment paralysis and produce significant innovation for a better world. Kanter is convinced that positive change is possible, and she’ll discuss how that philosophy can have real impact on some of today’s biggest problems—from climate change to gun safety to inequality to racial issues. Come hear Kanter's advice on finding an innovative approach to improving both your life and the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On June 21, 1964, more than 20 Klansmen murdered three civil rights workers. The killings, in what would become known as the Mississippi Burning case, were among the most brazen acts of violence during the civil rights movement. And even though the killers’ identities, including the sheriff’s deputy, were an open secret, no one was charged with murder in the months and years that followed. It took 41 years before the mastermind was brought to trial and finally convicted for the three innocent lives he took. If there is one man who helped pave the way for justice, it is investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell. In his new book, Race Against Time, Mitchell takes readers on the twisting, pulse-racing road that led to the reopening of four of the most infamous killings from the days of the civil rights movement, decades after the fact. His work played a central role in bringing killers to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer, the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham and

Is there an answer to the widespread—and increasingly public—rise of racial extremism? Come learn about the white nationalist movement from someone who was a leader in it until he renounced racism and devoted his life to helping others leave it behind. Christian Picciolini went from leading neo-Nazi bands with names such as Final Solution and White American Youth to running a record store that only sold "white power" music. But he left that and led organizations to counter extremism domestically and abroad, and has become an award-winning television producer, speaker, author and peace advocate. Come learn the truth about "white power" movements and the inspiring story about how to leave them behind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a young officer in World War I, George Marshall's sterling reputation started forming when he planned and executed a nighttime movement of more than a half million troops from one battlefield to another, leading to the armistice. Between the world wars, he helped modernize combat training, restaffed the U.S. Army's officer corps with future leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton, and served as army chief of staff in the run up to Work War II, when his commitment to duty came face-to-face with the realities of Washington politics. Roll sets his biography of Marshall against the backdrop of five major conflicts—the two world wars, Palestine, Korea and the Cold War—and focuses on the nuances and ambiguities of Marshall's education in the use of military, diplomatic and political power while watching America emerge as a global superpower. Roll's conclusion could hardly be clearer: Principled leadership matters. MLF ORGANIZER George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities Learn more about your

Revelations about misconduct at the biggest startups and tech companies seem to saturate today’s news cycle—but it wasn’t always this way. In 2017, when penning her now famous 2,900-word blog post about the pervasive culture of sexual harassment at Uber, soon-to-be whistleblower Susan Fowler was stepping into uncharted territory. Her decision to share a blog post about her “very, very strange year at Uber” with the public would open the floodgates for women to share similar experiences of systematic sexual harassment in Silicon Valley and beyond. Fowler’s open letter not only led to the CEO’s ouster but it also caused a complete disruption of the status quo of workplaces, culminating in mass movements for women’s empowerment launched worldwide. In her new memoir, Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber, Fowler details how this courageous act was entirely consistent with her life so far—a life characterized by extraordinary determination, a refusal to accept things as they are