Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Lynne Cheney knows the office of the presidency in a way very few do. As the wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, she had a front row seat to the stresses, successes and sorrows shouldered by our nation’s top leaders. With her knowledge of the office and passion for American history, she has written a new book, The Virginia Dynasty, about the first four Virginian presidents and the legacy they left behind. She paints a vivid picture of the nation building efforts of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe both as individual leaders and as a team. Cheney writes about their strengths and valor but also explicates the many complexities and contradictions of their legacies as slave owners working to create a country built on ideals of “liberty and justice for all.” Join us to hear from bestselling author and former Second Lady of the United States Lynne Cheney about the history of how our nation came to be through presidential leadership and where she believes it is going now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a virtual conversation with award-winning author Adam Hochschild about Rebel Cinderella, his new book that draws on Rose Pastor Stokes’s diary, dueling memoirs, letters, newspaper accounts and government surveillance reports to unearth the rich, overlooked life of a social justice campaigner. Stokes played a dramatic role in the struggle for labor equality and women’s rights, but is now forgotten. Rose Pastor arrived in New York City in 1903, a Jewish refugee from Russia who had worked in cigar factories since she was 11. Just two years later she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of a legendary New York high society family. Their union of rich and poor, native-born and immigrant, gentile and Jew, made them America’s most improbable couple, whose Socialist Party friends included Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, John Reed, Margaret Sanger, Jack London, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Stokes became a renowned radical orator, advocating for the rights of labor and in favor of birth control, earning her notoriety as “one of the dangerous influences of the country” from President Woodrow Wilson. But in a way no one foresaw, her too-short life would end in the same abject poverty with which it began. MLF ORGANIZER George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for the latest in the Lavender Talks series, presented with San Francisco Pride and exploring a wide range of topics of interest to the LGBTQ world. In this program, we explore the role the "kink" subculture plays in the larger LGBTQ community. Join us for a discussion with some local kink community leaders about body positivity, inclusion and exclusion, and different attitudes toward desire. How do issues of age discrimination, conforming and nonconforming presentation, racism and more get addressed by and within the kink subculture? There might be some surprising answers, as we look at the state of the kink in the age of pandemic, economic crisis, and racial justice. Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language. In association with San Francisco Pride Made possible by the generous support of Gilead and Comcast Gilead Pride Alliance and Comcast And thanks to San Francisco Pride Legacy Partners: Bud Light Hilton San Francisco Union Square KPIX 5 CBS Bay Area Kaiser Permanente Genentech Gilead GLBT Historical Society KBCW TV Parc 55 San Francisco Smirnoff Recology T–Mobile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

H.R. McMaster is one of the most celebrated modern military leaders in America. His achievements include serving as a captain during the Gulf War, being responsible for fighting the Iraqi insurgency during the war in Iraq, writing the widely-read book Dereliction of Duty, and most recently serving as national security advisor under President Donald Trump. In his new book, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, McMaster argues that American foreign policy has been misconceived, inconsistent and poorly implemented since the end of the Cold War. He describes efforts to reassess and fundamentally shift policies while he was national security advisor. And he provides a clear pathway forward to improve strategic competence and prevail in complex competitions against our adversaries. His book draws on McMaster’s long engagement with these issues, including 34 years of service in the U.S. Army with multiple tours of duty in battlegrounds overseas and his 13 months as national security advisor in the Trump White House. Join us for a conversation with Lt. General H.R. McMaster as he calls for Americans and citizens of the free world to transcend the vitriol of partisan political discourse, better educate themselves about the most significant challenges to national and international security and work together to secure peace and prosperity for future generations. Part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his new book A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son, comedian and actor Michael Ian Black shares his personal reflections on what it means to be a man. Equal parts memoir and advice book, A Better Man is a tender letter to Black’s college-bound son, Elijah. In it, he hopes to teach him and other young men what a healthy relationship to masculinity looks like as they enter the many confusing chapters of adulthood. Black returns to INFORUM to discuss the complex nature of gender politics and how teaching men to be compassionate and vulnerable would benefit society as a whole. Tune in to hear Black dissect masculinity, its impact on the world and how men can become better people. Part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Erin Brockovich was vaulted into national recognition in 2000, after the eponymous movie starring Julia Roberts made her a water activism icon. Famous for her focus on contamination, Brockovich says there is a larger threat facing water’s very existence: climate change, and the impact it has on dwindling freshwater supplies, longer droughts and hotter weather. Superman isn’t coming to protect our water or environment, writes Brockovich in her latest book — and neither are corporations, politicians or the “gutted” EPA. How can individuals and communities take collective action to safeguard our environment and our resources? What are today’s leading activists doing to create change that lasts? Join us for a conversation on speaking truth to power with Erin Brockovich, author of Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Discussions of immigration can feel not just deeply impersonal, particularly at the national level, but even negligent of the human cost of harsh immigration policies. In her new book, Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in America, journalist Maria Hinojosa shares a personal account of America’s greater immigration crisis. Hinojosa discusses her perspective through her upbringing on Chicago’s South Side, her early reporting on immigration detention camps and her varied experiences as the host of NPR’s "Latino USA" radio program. An Emmy award-winning journalist and a leading voice in the Latinx community, Hinojosa brings her more than 30 years of experience in journalism to her crucial perspective on this urgent issue. Join Hinojosa at INFORUM, where she will discuss how the problems facing America’s immigration system are not accidental, but the result of years of broken governance. This conversation will be moderated by Jacqueline Martinez Garcel, CEO of the Latino Community Foundation. Note: This program contains explicit language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a virtual conversation with Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman, two of America's leading constitutional scholars, about the issues surrounding the freedom of religion clauses in the Bill of Rights. Views on the proper relationship between the state and religion have been deeply divided throughout American history. But with the recent changes in the composition of the United States Supreme Court, First Amendment law concerning religion might shift dramatically if the wall separating church and state continues to be thinned out. Chemerinsky and Gillman defend a robust view of both First Amendment religion clauses and work from the premise that the establishment clause was precisely worded to make the federal government strictly secular, not allowing any special exemptions for religious people from neutral and general laws that others must obey. Chemerinsky and Gillman provide both a pithy primer on the meaning of the religion clauses and a broad-ranging indictment of the Supreme Court's misinterpretation of them in recent years, arguing that a separationist approach is most consistent with the concerns of the founders who drafted the Constitution and with the needs of a religiously pluralistic society in the 21st century. MLF ORGANIZER George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few have dominated the podcast arena like Guy Raz. Raz co-created National Public Radio’s "How I Built This," "Wow in the World" and "TED Radio Hour." From program intern to podcast virtuoso, Raz has worked in many capacities at the broadcast media organization with highly successful results—his podcasts garner more than 19 million downloads per month. It’s no surprise why, as his programs welcome thought-provoking guests in a format that combines narrative storytelling with insightful advice. In his new book, How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs, Raz shares highlights and lessons from the more than 200 entrepreneurs he’s interviewed as host for "How I Built This." From planning a timeline for corporate development to making a good idea profitable, Raz has insights galore to share at INFORUM from more than four years’ worth of episodes. This conversation will be moderated by Aarti Shahani, an NPR contributor in Silicon Valley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in all industries and made lasting business and human impact. Silicon Valley and Bay Area companies have, in many ways, been ahead of the curve and the center of attention for continued innovation. Hear from business leaders from leading Bay Area companies, large and small, on how they are building the business resiliency to outmaneuver uncertainty and thrive in the new world that has demanded rapid business changes; the role of technology and the cloud in maximizing employee and customer engagement and productivity; gaining or regaining brand and organizational trust; and more. Join us for an interactive panel discussion and live Q&A. Meet our panelists: Sally Gilligan is the chief information officer and head of strategy for Gap Inc., overseeing the company’s corporate strategy team and technology organization that serves as the engine that drives retail, e-commerce and global enterprise technology for millions of customers. Gilligan has been with Gap Inc. for more than 16 years, serving in a variety of roles in the organization with a focus on process and economic optimization. Prior to serving as CIO, she served as senior vice president of product operations and supply chain strategy, leading a global team responsible for building and deploying capabilities to enable the end-to-end, demand-based operating model. Sally holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Chicago. Everett Harper is the CEO and co-founder of Truss. Truss builds software and infrastructure to help companies and public agencies scale and modernize digital services. They apply expertise in human-centered design, engineering, product, infrastructure, and security to clients such as healthcare.gov, Nuna and DOD-Transcom, enabling them to deliver impactful, sustainable products and services to more than 20 million customers and end users. Harper graduated from Stanford University (MBA, M.Ed) and Duke University (BSEE, Biomedical Engineering), where he was an A.B. Duke Scholar. Karen Mangia is vice president of customer and market insights at Salesforce, engaging current and future customers around the world to discover new ways of creating success and growth together. She serves on the company’s Work from Home Taskforce, where she is helping the company’s 50,000+ worldwide employees to better adapt to a work-from-home environment. She holds a B.S. degree in international business and a Masters in Information and Communication Sciences, both from Ball State University, as well as an Associates Degree in Hospitality Administration from Ivy Tech. Scott Bowden is managing director, software and platforms industry lead for North America, at Accenture. In this role, Bowden is focused on supporting a diverse portfolio of platform companies to innovate and operationalize for long-term success. This includes supporting rapid customer expansion, protecting customer and user communities, and equipping a growing workforce with the technology and process tools to be successful. A key facet of Bowden’s responsibilities is to develop Accenture’s S&P industry thought leadership, build employees’ industry skills and foster collaboration across Accenture’s businesses supporting the S&P industry. Over his career with Accenture, Bowden has worked with U.S. and international clients across industries, including consumer products, publishing, high tech, software and platforms. He has most recently led Accenture’s efforts in enabling new economy hyper growth companies from pre-IPO unicorns to post-IPO profitable enterprises. Bowden received a Bachelor of Science in industrial economics from Union College with a minor in mathematics and philosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices