Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Join Paul Hawken, a renowned environmentalist and author, as he explores the paradox of carbon—an essential life-giving element often blamed for climate change. He advocates for a narrative shift from fear to appreciation of nature, urging collective action against environmental challenges. Hawken shares personal stories of human connection, resilience during civil rights marches, and even a surreal encounter with a council of animals, emphasizing our intricate ties to all living beings and the importance of biodiversity.

Alissa Wilkinson, a film critic for the New York Times and author focused on Joan Didion, analyzes Didion's profound influence on American culture. They discuss Didion's iconic storytelling and her ability to capture societal anxieties through cinematic narratives. Wilkinson highlights Didion’s complicated relationship with Hollywood, balancing commercial screenwriting and personal memoir. She also reflects on Didion’s legacy of grief and political evolution, revealing how personal narratives shape both art and cultural discourse.

Catherine Coleman Flowers has dedicated her life to fighting for the most vulnerable communities — people who have been deprived of the basic civil right to a clean, safe and sustainable environment. When she was first on Climate One in 2021, Flowers talked about growing up in Lowndes County, Alabama, and working to stem the raw sewage contaminating homes and drinking water in her county and beyond. In recognition of this work she was granted a MacArthur “Genius Award.” Now, she picks up the story, discussing her awareness of racialized disinvestment in the South, the work of the inaugural White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the impact of unfettered fossil fuel production nationwide.Guests:Catherine Coleman Flowers, Founder, Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ)Justin J. Pearson, State Representative, Tennessee General AssemblyOn Monday, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt and Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center, will speak with Climate One about the development of sustainably powered artificial intelligence. Tickets are on sale through our website.And on April 22 and 24, Climate One will once again be hosting a series of SF Climate Week events at The Commonwealth Club! Join us for conversations with environmental luminaries such as Margaret Gordon, Jenny Odell, Project Drawdown, Grist, and Abby Reyes. Tickets are on sale now.For show notes and related links, visit our website.Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for "Art of Survival," a vibrant celebration of Black culture and resilience—an evening of music, art and culture.This program acknowledges and honors the rich history of perseverance within the Black community through a captivating blend of poetry, song, visual arts and engaging discussions.Experience the powerful expressions of survival as talented artists and performers share their work, highlighting themes of strength, hope, and cultural identity. The session will feature stirring poetry that reflects personal and collective narratives, soul-stirring songs that uplift the spirit, and visual arts that document the diversity of the Black experience.A panel discussion will follow, bringing together thought leaders and creators to explore the artistic representation of survival in Black culture and the ongoing journey toward empowerment and equity.Join us in celebrating the artistry and resilience that has defined Black history, and discover how creativity serves as a vital tool for connection, healing and survival. This event promises to inspire and uplift, inviting everyone to reflect on the indomitable spirit of the Black community throughout history and beyond.Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming.See more Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California.Community partner:Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for the latest edition of our Week to Week political roundtable. We're two months into the new administration in Washington, new leadership in San Francisco and elsewhere. Join us for some insight into the people, trends and topics driving the political news of the day.Enjoy and learn as our panel of political experts explains what happened and what to expect, and answers your questions.See other upcoming Week to Week political roundtables, as well as audio and video of past Week to Week programs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why is the human brain so vulnerable to false beliefs and conspiracy theories despite evidence to the contrary? And what can be done to protect ourselves, our families, and society from our collective propensity to fall into these seductive traps?Dr. Joe Pierre, health sciences clinical professor at UCSF and a specialist in delusions and delusion-like beliefs, will be returning to the Club to discuss these issues with us. His first talk on the topic, a few years ago, was a sold-out, extremely informative success, so we asked him to return for a deeper look into the personal and societal effects of mistrust, misinformation, and motivated reasoning. Equally important, he is going to outline how we can avoid the pitfalls of acting on false beliefs, both as individuals and as a society.So if you've been puzzled by how "otherwise-intelligent" friends and relatives have fallen into the trap of a false belief, or if you're searching for a way to reach out to someone who has fallen for one, or if you're wondering how society can defend itself, join us for this event and discussion. We'll learn why "just the facts" doesn't usually work, and we'll learn how to view our ideological opponents with compassion while still vigorously defending society.Organizer: Eric Siegel A Personal Growth Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums.This program contains EXPLICIT language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1991–93, Mark Brzezinski was a Fulbright Scholar in newly post-communist Poland. Thirty years later he returned as the U.S. ambassador to Poland, a country embedded in the EU and NATO, and an ally deeply involved in providing support for Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of that country.Join us for an in-depth conversation with Brzezinski about Poland, Vladimir Putin, Ukraine, Germany, the European Union and more.Mark Brzezinski has worked in the private sector and in government positions. He previously was U.S. ambassador to Sweden, served on President Clinton’s National Security Council staff, worked in the law and capital management industries. He will be in conversation with Abraham Sofaer, the George P. Shultz Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs, Emeritus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A third of Americans say that they've skipped food, medicine, or something else to be able to afford their energy bills. Much of the increase in the cost of electricity is driven by rising demand from artificial intelligence and data centers, industrial onshoring and hotter temperatures. How does your electricity bill get calculated, and who’s in charge of setting those rates? Does public power serve consumers better than investor-owned utilities? And will rising electricity prices dampen the transition to cleaner sources of energy?Guests: Shelley Welton, Professor of Law and Energy Policy, University of Pennsylvania Severin Borenstein, Professor, Haas School of Business, UC BerkeleyKevin Miller, Reporter, Maine Public RadioOn March 24, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt and Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center, will speak with Climate One about the development of sustainably powered artificial intelligence. Tickets are on sale through our website.And on April 22 and 24, Climate One will once again be hosting a series of SF Climate Week events at The Commonwealth Club! Join us for conversations with environmental luminaries such as Margaret Gordon, Jenny Odell, Project Drawdown, Grist, and Abby Reyes. Tickets are on sale now.Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today.For show notes and related links, visit our website.Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard.Determined to not let her assault derail her goal of joining NASA after graduation, Nguyen opted for her rape kit to be filed under “Jane Doe.” But she was shocked to learn her choice to stay anonymous gave her only six months to take action before the state destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had two options: surrender to a law that effectively denied her justice, or fight for a change―not only for herself but for survivors everywhere.She comes to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to discuss the issues raised in her memoir of survival and hope, Saving Five, which braids the story of Nguyen’s activism―which resulted in Congress’s unanimous passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016―with a second imagined adventure, of Nguyen's younger selves as they―at ages 5, 15, 22, and 30―navigate through dramatic incarnations of the emotional stages of her path toward healing, not only from her rape but from the violent turmoil of her childhood.Nguyen did go on to work at NASA and other scientific institutions, and in 2024, private space company Blue Origin announced that Nguyen would be the first Vietnamese woman to fly into space on one of its upcoming missions.Additionally, Nguyen ignited the Stop Asian Hate movement and continues to help others through Rise, her civil rights accelerator. For her groundbreaking contributions she was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize and is a 2022 Time Woman of the Year.Our program will begin with an introduction by Rowena Chiu, a former assistant to Harvey Weinstein. In 1998, she was sexually assaulted by him at the Venice Film Festival, and was coerced into signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which silenced her for over 20 years. In 2017, a New York Times journalist came to her home and doorstepped her husband of over a decade, revealing information about the assault and NDA. Rowena was featured in the subsequent Timesinvestigation, but she insisted on remaining anonymous. In 2019, she finally broke her story on the NBC "Today" Show, live in front of 3 million viewers. Rowena's story has featured in both the book and the movie, She Said. She has given over 1,000 media interviews across four continents, for international news outlets such as: ABC, BBC, CBS, and NBC. She has testified at the House of Commons, the Massachusetts State House, and attended the State of the Union. She is writing a memoir, a novel, and a screenplay, in addition to working as a global #MeToo activist, advocating for the rights of those who are oppressed or voiceless, in churches, schools, universities and workplaces around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Has America ceased to be the land of opportunity? Many people here take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for 200 years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity.Join us as Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, argues that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in 19th-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan, to Jane Jacobs’ efforts to protect her vision of the West Village—has raised housing prices, deepened political divides, emboldened bigots, and trapped generations of people in poverty. Appelbaum says these problems have a common explanation: people can’t move as readily as they used to.They are, in a word, stuck.Applebaum will cut through more than a century of mythmaking, sharing the surprising story of the people and ideas that caused our economic and social sclerosis and laying out commonsense ways to get Americans moving again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices