Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Life is everywhere. From birds in the sky to bushes on the ground to the humans who surround our everyday lives. We assume life is easily identifiable, yet as scientists learn more about the living world, they find life to be a difficult word to define. In his new book Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, acclaimed scientific author Carl Zimmer seeks to answer one of biology’s greatest questions: What is life? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts—whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.Life’s Edge explores lab experiments attempting to create life, poses questions of what life is like in our grand universe, and offers insight into scientific developments shaping the way we understand living beings. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up.Join us as Carl Zimmer explores life and investigates why scientists have struggled to define the boundaries of the word.SPEAKERSCarl ZimmerColumnist, The New York Times; Author, Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be AliveIn Conversation with Rachel BeckerEnvironment Reporter, CalMattersIn 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 March 10th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This program will feature four vitamin D researchers who will discuss the evidence they generated and/or collected showing that vitamin D has important health benefits.Carole Baggerly, CEO of GrassrootsHealth.net, will outline the findings of health outcomes of more than 10,000 participants in their studies who take vitamin D supplements, measure their vitamin D levels every six months, and report any health changes. She will also discuss the evidence that vitamin D reduces risk of COVID-19. Dr. Carol L. Wagner will present results from studies of high-dose vitamin D supplementation of pregnant and nursing women, such as significantly reduced risk of preterm delivery. Professor Joan M. Lappe will discuss her clinical trials on vitamin D and calcium on prevention of cancer. William B. Grant, Ph.D., director of the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center in San Francisco, will moderate the discussion.MLF ORGANIZERRobert Lee KilpatrickNOTESMLF: Health & MedicineSPEAKERSCarole A. BaggerlyFounder and Director, Grassrootshealth.netCarol L. WagnerM.D., Professor, Pediatrics Department, College of Medicine, Medical University of South CarolinaJoan M. LappePh.D., R.N., Professor and Associate Dean, College of Nursing Research, Creighton UniversityWilliam B. GrantPh.D., Founder and Director, Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center; Vitamin D ResearcherIn 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 March 9th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monday Night Philosophy asks (on a Tuesday afternoon): What are we doing here? And answers: We are pursuing desires — because we are pursuing happiness, and happiness results from fulfilling a desire. But since unhappiness results whenever we don’t fulfill a desire, and since that happens so often, individual life is sometimes seen as a perilous journey, a valley of tears, or even a worthless endeavor, to be escaped via the nothingness of Nirvana, or by retreating to Heaven, or by merging with Oneness.So what’s wrong with this picture? Just as right after a divorce, when it is common to forget all about the fun and enjoyment which came before, we lack perspective. We forget our judgment is untrustworthy in despair. So let’s step back, as philosophers love to do, and see how much more intelligently we could 1) pick which desires to pursue before we pursue them, 2) pick which motives to favor, and which to discard (because our motives are our deeper desires), 3) sort out our conflicting desires so we don’t face certain unhappiness, and 4) make contingent any desires that are dependent for their fulfillment on sources outside our control. And then see how much more happiness, and how much less unhappiness, we would experience.Because the only way to get everything you want in life is to be very clever about what you want.MLF ORGANIZERGeorge HammondNOTESMLF: HumanitiesSPEAKERSGeorge HammondAuthor, Rational IdealismIn 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 March 9th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A healthy constitutional democracy requires a citizenry that has the knowledge, skills and desire to participate in it. The United States is incredibly polarized, and we now have a citizenry and electorate that are poorly trained to meet the modern challenges we are facing. One major reason? The country has disinvested in history and civic education. For example, at the federal level, we spend approximately $50 per student per year on STEM fields and approximately 5 cents per student per year on civics.A lack of consensus about the substance of history and civics education—what and how to teach—has been a major obstacle to maintaining excellence in history and civics education in recent decades. In response to this critical moment, The Commonwealth Club is pleased to support a new effort, Educating for American Democracy, a significant new initiative to provide tools to make civics and history a priority so we as a country can rebuild our civic strength. This education-based special program will focus on this new effort with three participants who participated in the development of the project.Educating for American Democracy is an unprecedented, cross-ideological effort to provide guidance for excellence in civic and history education for all K–12 students—and to enhance the way in which the subjects are taught in schools so they generate prepared, informed and engaged citizens. The project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education through a grant to iCivics, Harvard University, Tufts University and Arizona State University.A national network of more than 300 scholars, educators and practitioners from ideologically and demographically diverse backgrounds have collaborated to create a roadmap and accompanying documents that provide suggested educational strategies and content for history and civics at every grade level—along with strategies for implementation in schools—so every state and district can fit the needs of their own, different communities. States and local school districts can use the roadmap to transform the way they teach civics and history so it meets the needs of today’s diverse 21st century K–12 student body.The roadmap is not a national curriculum, nor is it a mandate. It is a series of guidelines that states and districts may opt to use. It is committed to providing instructional strategies and content for all learners to ensure that excellent history and civic learning opportunities are delivered equitably throughout the country.Last year, at the beginning of the pandemic, The Commonwealth Club launched its own civics education effort, Creating Citizens, with founding support from the Koret Foundation. This program is part of that growing effort.NOTESPart of The Commonwealth Club's Creating Citizens initiative.SPEAKERSPaul CarreseFounding Director, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State UniversityMichelle HerczogCoordinator III, History-Social Science, Los Angeles County Office of EducationKent McGuireProgram Director, Education, William and Flora Hewlett FoundationEmma HumphriesPh.D., Chief Education Officer, iCivics; Deputy Director, CivXNow—ModeratorIn 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 March 5th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just two months into 2021, deadly winter temperatures left millions of Texans without water and power. Meanwhile, California is preparing for another year of intense drought, and Wall Street millionaires are moving their remote work to Florida, ground zero for flooding and sea-level rise.“We think about the Earth as a system,” says Marshall Shepherd, director of Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia, “so we can't understand climate change unless we understand changes in the Arctic, or in the ocean circulations, or in the biosphere, and so forth.”“Hope or waiting and seeing is no longer a valid risk mitigation strategy."Guests:Katharine Mach, Associate Professor, Marine Ecosystems and Society, University of MiamiMarshall Shepherd, Director, Atmospheric Sciences, University of GeorgiaFor complete show notes, visit our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Expanding health-care coverage has been a long, tumultuous process in the United States, but at its core, citizens want one thing: affordable, accessible health care. In 2010, the federal government passed the Affordable Care Act, the most expansive piece of legislation advocating for health-care accessibility since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. This policy, however, continues to divide the public as leaders from both political parties envision two conflicting futures for a nationalized health-care system.In his new book, The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage, HuffPost correspondent Jonathan Cohn offers a compelling history of how Obamacare came to be, why it looks like it does, and what it’s meant for average Americans. For decades, political leaders have debated what’s wrong with our current health-care system and what should be done to fix it. Drawing from interviews, diaries, emails and memos, Cohn takes readers through the history of health-care reform and the dysfunction those changes have left in their wake.Join us for a comprehensive look at one of the most impactful and controversial pieces of legislation in the past few decades.SPEAKERSJonathan CohnSenior National Correspondent, HuffPost; Author, The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal CoverageIn Conversation with Anthony WrightExecutive Director, Health Access CaliforniaIn 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 March 4th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is the status of extremism in America? Are there more extremists or are they more emboldened? Why is it happening now and what can be done?The Anti-Defamation League is a leading anti-hate organization. Founded in 1913 in response to an escalating climate of antisemitism and bigotry, its timeless mission is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all. Today, ADL continues to fight all forms of hate with the same vigor and passion. ADL is a global leader in exposing extremism and delivering anti-bias education, and is a leading organization in training law enforcement. ADL is the first call when acts of antisemitism occur. ADL’s ultimate goal is a world in which no group or individual suffers from bias, discrimination or hate. MLF ORGANIZERPatrick O'ReillyNOTESMLF: PsychologySPEAKERSSeth BryskCentral Pacific Regional Director (Northern California, Utah, and Hawai'i), Anti-Defamation League; Former Regional Director (Los Angeles), AJCPatrick O'ReillyPsychology MLF ChairIn 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 March 2nd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is your Commonwealth Club week in review. Hear what you missed this week, and what we’ve got lined up for you next week. We’re always adding new programs - check out commonwealthclub.org/online for all of our upcoming events. If you haven’t already - please consider becoming a member of the Club. Enjoy exclusive discounts and access to special programs all while knowing your contributions directly support our many public programs and civic initiatives.Visit commonwealthclub.org/special, for special rates on memberships.Thanks for your support and as always - thanks for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"I grew up in a place where I was not meant to exist—a place where my identity as a gay male was contrary to Middle Eastern culture, standards and faith. I grew up in a home filled with dysfunction and strife. I carried the weight of all of that on my shoulders, . . . but if you carry a weight constantly, eventually you become stronger." —Harma HartouniHarma Hartouni was born into an Armenian Orthodox Christian family in Los Angeles, but when he was 1 month old, his family moved to Iran, where he was raised. While there, he was involved in an accident, breaking both legs and requiring a 12-month recovery. When he moved back to Los Angeles, he came out as a gay man. Today, he is a self-made entrepreneur, owner of a real estate company with hundreds of agents and more than $1 billion in sales volume in 2019. He is married and lives in Los Angeles with his husband (an executive at Disney), three children, three dogs and two turtles.Join us for an in-depth conversation with Hartouni to discuss his life, troubles and perseverance, and success, which he reveals in his new book Getting Back Up: A Story of Resilience, Self-Acceptance and Success.NOTESThank you to Pacific Fertility Center for its support of The Michelle Meow Show.SPEAKERSHarma HartouniEntrepreneur; Author, Getting Back Up: A Story of Resilience, Self-Acceptance and SuccessMichelle MeowProducer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW/KPIX TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors; Twitter @msmichellemeow—Co-HostJohn ZippererProducer and Host, Week to Week Political Roundtable; Vice President of Media & Editorial, The Commonwealth Club—Co-HostIn 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 March 4th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a virtual conversation with Dennis Rasmussen to discuss the surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson each came to despair for the future of the nation they had created.Although Americans tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. Many eventually concluded that America’s constitutional experiment was an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Rasmussen argues that the founders’ pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington despaired because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America’s constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and Rasmussen explores why Madison remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not.As much as Americans today may worry about their country’s future, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings. And yet we are still here, having recently survived yet another attempted assault on our political institutions. Join us to find out some of the reasons why.MLF ORGANIZERGeorge HammondNOTESMLF: HumanitiesSPEAKERSDennis RasmussenProfessor of Political Science, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University; Author, Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's FoundersIn Conversation with George HammondAuthor, Conversations With SocratesIn 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 March 3rd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices