Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

In August 2022, Congress passed the biggest piece of climate legislation in our nation’s history: The Inflation Reduction Act, which put $400 billion into boosting the transition to a clean energy economy over the next ten years. The IRA has spurred companies to announce nearly $110 billion of investment in new factories to build EVs, batteries and renewable energy facilities. That’s driving investments, reshoring of manufacturing, and real change.This week we check in on the impact of the IRA in the last 18 months. What impact has the IRA really had on US emissions so far? Has the IRA distributed money to fulfill its climate justice initiatives?Guests:Trevor Houser, Partner, Rhodium GroupDanny Kennedy, CEO, New Energy NexusBineshi Albert, Former Co-Executive Director, Climate Justice AllianceThis piece also includes a reported feature from Emily Jones of WABE in Atlanta and Grist.Climate One will be celebrating SF Climate Week with a series of programs featuring California and the San Francisco Bay Area’s leading voices in policy, climate justice, and business. The week will showcase interviews with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, State Senators Nancy Skinner and Scott Wiener, and California Environmental Justice Association’s Energy Justice Director Mari Rose Taruc, among others, about the challenges and opportunities facing the nation’s innovation capital when it comes to addressing climate change. On Tuesday, Climate One will also be hosting an Action Lounge, where attendees will be able to join local climate and environmental organizations, apply for green jobs, and receive guidance from climate career coaches. See you there!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. Join today for just $5/month.For show notes and related links, visit our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While tech titans bragged they would “move fast and break things,” Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news.She has been a fixture of the tech revolution, and her consistent scoops led Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg to once say: “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this.’”Now Swisher returns to talk about her new book, which is part memoir, part history and, most of all, a necessary recounting of tech’s most powerful players. She might know more inside tales than anyone else in Silicon Valley, and she’ll share the inside story of the Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.Despite tech’s many pitfalls, Swisher remains optimistic about its potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again.Hear more from the chronicler of the high-tech revolution.Note: This podcast contains explicit language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chip Conley’s "modern elder movement" leads us to ask how life can get better with age.Join us for a conversation about tools to adjust our attitudes and perspectives. Drawing from his new book, Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, Conley will seek to motivate us to think differently. We will learn about his practices such as building your own “birds of a feather” community, stepping off the treadmill, letting go of what no longer serves you and the freedom that it brings.Chip Conley is on a midlife mission. After disrupting the hospitality industry, first as the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second largest operator of boutique hotels in the United States, and then as Airbnb’s head of global hospitality and strategy, leading a worldwide revolution in travel, Conley co-founded MEA (Modern Elder Academy) in January 2018 in Baja California, Mexico.MLF ORGANIZERElizabeth Carney A Business & Leadership Member-led Forum program. Forums and chapters at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do we say to a grieving friend? So often we either freeze and do nothing or blurt a common condolence and come away wondering if we’ve been of any real help.Join Dana Lacy Amarisa, author of the engaging and insightful book, Condolences Pocket Guide: What to Say and Not to Say to Grievers, in her unique presentation that reveals the source of the gap between what we say and what sad folks need—and the steps for bridging that gap.Drawing from her personal journey of loss and two decades of studying condolences, Amarisa will guide us through her unique and refreshing three-step approach to offering true help to those who are grieving. Through anecdotes and practical tips, learn the four types of condolences to avoid, discover those in your life who might be experiencing misunderstood losses, and come away with the skills and confidence to offer genuine consolation to a grieving friend.Dr. Nate Hinerman's unique approaches to research and treatment intermingle both the philosophical and psychological in human suffering, dying, loss, grief, depression, and anxiety. It is just this compassionate, therapeutic rapport and involvement with individuals and community-based education that he brings to the engaging discussion segment of this presentation.MLF ORGANIZERDenise Michaud A Grownups Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of Commonwealth Club World Affairs, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humanities West completes its 2023–24 season by searching for the real Marcel Proust―featuring Adam Gopnik, who will give our first Vance E. Carney Memorial Lecture. Gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker for more than three decades and has often riffed poetic on Proust. From the September 17, 1990 issue: “. . . watching our building go co-op has been . . . a lot like the experience of reading Proust. You begin hopefully, you dream of new vistas of pleasure opening up before you, you think that your friends will think better of you for having done it . . . and then you get bogged down and the whole thing seems to go on forever.”From the June 14, 1999 issue: “As late as the nineteen-fifties, when most Americans already took it for granted that he was among the greatest of modern writers, a lot of people in France saw Proust as a slightly secondary figure―the way we might have seen a long-winded Scott Fitzgerald, or a Truman Capote who actually got his book written. In the past twenty-five years, though, all that has changed, and Proust has taken his deserved place among the French as at once the most magnanimous and the most exquisite of their novelists . . .”From the March 30, 2015 issue: “Everybody tries to climb Mt. Proust, though many a stiff body is found on the lower slopes, with the other readers stepping over it gingerly.” And from the May 3, 2021 issue: “If Proust, for Updike in the God-haunted nineteen-fifties, was the last Christian poet, we may see him now in more secular terms, as a writer who, perversely, sought serenity not in detachment and self-removal but in attachment and reattachment—a monk within a metropolitan monastery. 'Be here now' is the mystic’s insistence. 'Don’t be here now' is Proust’s material motto: be there then, again. Enjoy, emote, repeat, remember: there are worse designs for living.”Joshua Landy has also been writing and thinking about and teaching Proust for decades. He will explore several Proustian questions: How can we feel at home in the world? How can we find genuine connection with other human beings? How can we find enchantment in a world without God? Does an artist’s life shed light on her work? What can we know about reality, other people, and ourselves? When is not knowing better than knowing? Who are we really, deep down? And why does it matter to read about all this in a novel?Dora Zhang will focus on the famous Proust observation that "the only true voyage . . . would not be to visit new lands but to possess other eyes, to see the world with the eyes of another." In Proust’s novel the camera provides a crucial means for the narrator to step outside his habitual gaze and to possess other eyes, to look anew on familiar scenes and to see hidden truths therein. Zhang will explore this theme of estranging our vision by highlighting the role of photography in In Search of Lost Time.MLF ORGANIZERGeorge Hammond A Humanities 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.In association with Humanities West, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley.This program contains EXPLICIT content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a conversation about reducing violence in Oakland and how we can all work together to keep each other safe. Pastor Billy Dixon leads At Thy Word Ministries and is co-chair of the Board of Directors of Faith in Action East Bay. He is an Oakland native and the son of a pastor. Dixon joined the U.S. Navy before becoming a correctional officer for 28 years. Later he attended seminary at Southwest Bible College, and in 2010 he took over the church his father had founded, At Thy Word Ministries.Dr. Holly Joshi is the City of Oakland's chief of violence prevention. She has vast leadership experience and a track record of successfully implementing evidence-based, violence prevention and intervention strategies. Prior to taking on leadership of the Department of Violence Prevention (DVP), Dr. Joshi served as senior director at GLIDE, a nationally recognized center for social justice, dedicated to fighting systemic injustices, creating pathways out of poverty and crisis, and transforming lives. At GLIDE she led the Center for Social Justice, a department focused on improving housing access, community health and safety, and gender and racial equity.Taking on the leadership of the DVP is a homecoming for Dr. Joshi who worked for the city from 2001–2015, holding diverse investigative and leadership roles within the Oakland Police Department, including child exploitation unit supervisor, Internal Affairs Division investigator, crime reduction team investigator, public information officer, and chief of staff. In this work she was widely recognized for her expertise in gender-based violence, commitment to progressive policing, and collaborative relationships across the city.Captain Frederick Shavies is the acting captain of Ceasefire. He is an 18-year veteran with the Oakland Police Department and a graduate of the 283rd FBI National Academy. Captain Shavies is an Oakland native who is passionate about reducing violence in his community.See more  Michelle Meow Show programs at The Commonwealth Club of California.Produced in partnership with Fluid 510. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even before Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” brought climate change to the mainstream, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert was on the beat. Her reporting in the early 2000s culminated in her book “Field Notes from a Catastrophe,” which sounded the alarm on the causes and effects of global warming. Nearly 20 years later, Kolbert is still bringing the climate story to the public with her new book “H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z.” The book is told in bite size vignettes that paint a picture of our climate present, what the future may hold and where there may be space for hope. Guests: Elizabeth Kolbert, Journalist and AuthorMolly Wood, Climate Solutions Investor and PodcasterSister True Dedication, Zen Buddhist NunRev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., CEO, Hip Hop CaucusSupport 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. Join today for just $5/month.For show notes and related links, visit our website.Elizabeth Kolbert headshot copyright Elizabeth Kolbert Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Please join us as Dr. Adele Hayutin takes us on a world tour of population change and its dramatic consequences.Her talk will offer many surprises and insights, such as China’s dramatic demographic plunge Africa’s population explosion Where declining birth rates lead to shrinking workforces Where aging populations strain economic wellbeing Why immigration is key to ensuring continued economic growth How increasing women’s participation in the workforce will be critical globally Drawing on her recent book, New Landscapes of Population Change: A Demographic World Tour, Dr. Hayutin will explore the divergent changes ahead for the world, its subregions, and individual countries, and she will demonstrate the urgent need for strategies that address these momentous shifts. She will examine global population dynamics and illuminate how these forces will combine over the next few decades in ways that threaten economic security and political stability, offering us a window on the future.About the SpeakerAdele Hayutin, an Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, is a business economist specializing in comparative international demographics. Building on her experience in business and academia, Dr. Hayutin has developed an innovative comparative perspective that highlights surprising demographic differences across countries and illustrates the unprecedented speed and impacts of critical changes. Her recent book, New Landscapes of Population Change: A Demographic World Tour, illuminates the divergent changes ahead for the world.Dr. Hayutin was previously director of demographic analysis at the Stanford University Center on Longevity and chief economist at the Fremont Group. Hayutin received a BA from Wellesley College and holds an MPP and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California,Berkeley.MLF ORGANIZER: Frank PriceAn International Relations 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 your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why slow down as you get older?Caroline Paul has always filled her life with adventure: From mountain biking in the Bolivian Andes to pitching a tent, mid-blizzard, on Denali, she has never been a stranger to the exhilaration the outdoors can hold. Yet through it all, she has long wondered, Why aren’t women, like men, encouraged to keep adventuring into old age?Now she is sharing her quest to understand not just how to live a dynamic life in a changing body, but why she says we must. She dives deep into the current research on aging and highlights the results with the stories of women like 93-year-old hiker Dot Fisher-Smith, 80-year-old scuba diver Louise Wholey, 52-year-old BASE jumper Shawn Brokemond, 64-year-old birdwatcher Virginia Rose, and the many septuagenarian Wave Chasers who boogie board together in the San Diego surf. These women aren’t experts. But their experiences and the scientific studies that back them up offer important insight into our own physical and emotional health as we age, showing that growing older is no reason for women to sell themselves short. She’s chronicled it all in her new book Tough Broad, a high-spirited call for women to embrace the outdoors, not back away from it, in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond.Bring your taste for adventure and hear this New York Times-bestselling author share her funny, inspiring, deeply researched exploration into the science and psychology of the outdoors and our place in it as we age.MLF ORGANIZER: Denise MichaudA Grownups Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of Commonwealth Club World Affairs, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums.This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it time for a vision of a better internet with a playbook to build the future?The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a decentralized, democratic network of innovation, connection and freedom. In the past decade, it has fallen almost entirely under the control of a very small group of companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. In Read Write Own, tech visionary Chris Dixon argues that the dream of an open network for fostering creativity and entrepreneurship doesn’t have to die and can, in fact, be saved with blockchain networks. He separates this movement, which aims to provide a solid foundation for everything from social networks to artificial intelligence to virtual worlds, from cryptocurrency speculation—a distinction he calls “the computer vs. the casino.”With lucid and compelling prose—drawing from a 25-year career in the software industry—Dixon shows how the internet has undergone three distinct eras, bringing us to the critical moment we’re in today. The first was the “read” era, in which early networks democratized information. In the “read-write” era, corporate networks democratized publishing. We are now in the midst of the “read-write-own” era, sometimes called web3, in which blockchain networks are granting power and economic benefits to communities of users, not just corporations.Join us to hear Dixon share his message for internet users, business leaders, creators, entrepreneurs—anyone who wants to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going.Dixon founded and leads a16z crypto, a division of the firm that he has grown from $300 million in 2018 to more than $7 billion of committed capital dedicated to investing in crypto and web3 technologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices