Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

For the past 4 weeks, people have been planning and discussing how they can bring together communities to address constitutional and human rights violations impacting the immigrant community.  Join us on May 20, 6 p.m., at Commonwealth Club World Affairs headquarters in downtown San Francisco. This emergency town hall discussion on the immigration crisis will feature a coalition of community leaders working on this issue, including Immigrant Defenders Law Center—the attorneys of Andry Jose Hernández Romero. Following welcome remarks by Mawuli Tugbenyoh, acting executive director of the Human Rights Commission, and Maceo Persson, SF Pride Board member, you'll hear from our lineup of speakers for our town hall discussion.  See more  Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California. This program made possible by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carbon dioxide is a big deal. It’s responsible for more than half of global heating. But what about the other half? There’s actually good news here: Nearly half of the temperature increases driving climate disasters come from super pollutants that don’t stay in the atmosphere for nearly as long as carbon dioxide. Methane, for example, is about 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over 20 years. But it only stays in the atmosphere for a fraction of the time. So if we can put the brakes on methane and other super pollutants, we can put the brakes on warming.  Guests: Ilissa Ocko, Senior Climate Scientist, Spark Climate Solutions  David Kanter, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, New York University  Millie Chu Baird, Vice President, Office of the Chief Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund  For show notes and related links, visit our website. 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.Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Capehart is a fixture of the American media scene. You find him hosting weekends on MSNBC. He talks politics with David Brooks on “PBS Newshour.” He is a columnist for The Washington Post. But long before he reached this level of visibility, he spent years trying to find his place in a world that didn’t seem to know what he was. He grew up without his father, dealt with issues of race and identity even as they changed around him, was told he was either too smart or not smart enough, and even that he was either too Black or not Black enough. It was an internship at "The Today Show" that changed his fortunes and set him on the path to achieving his dreams. In his new memoir, Yet Here I Am, Capehart relates his journey to find his place as a gay, Black man, dealing with family, facing his fears, failing and succeeding along the way. Join us for an in-depth talk with a leading media voice and learn about how he found his voice and his place in modern America. * Note: This podcast may contain explicit language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for an intriguing look at muscle power—and the surprising ways muscle can reveal what we’re capable of. Bonnie Tsui, author of On Muscle, will be joined by filmmaker Paige Bethmann and the subject of Bethmann’s documentary, Ku Stevens. Her film, Remaining Native, tells the story of 17-year-old runner Stevens who made a 50-mile run through the Nevada desert to remember the route his great-grandfather took to escape from a boarding school. Tsui will draw on a blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal narrative to examine not just what muscles are but what they mean to humans. Muscles allow our heart to beat, food to move through our bodies, blood to circulate, even babies to leave the womb. We might not think of our muscles unless they are sore or we are working out. But they connect us with just about everything we do. A Grownups 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. OrganizerDenise Michaud  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us in San Francisco May 30 for an important program commemorating the Vietnam War and Cambodian genocide. The program begins at 6, but arrive early, because from 5–6 p.m. we will be featuring a special pop-up exhibit in the lounge outside the auditorium. Then we'll have our panel discussion, and a performance. See more  Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s so much hard and heavy news out there right now, climate related and not. It feels like decades of progress is being lost. But — good news! — there are many solutions that can be deployed right now. This week we’re featuring conversations with three big thinkers who are bringing those solutions to light and showing why — even when times seem at their worst — they have no room for doom.  Award-winning environmental journalist Alan Weisman traveled the world to highlight possible paths out of the climate crisis. Marine biologist and policy expert Ayana Elizabeth Johnson asks us to focus on the question, “What if we get it right?” And climate activist Bill McKibben wants to activate seniors because, “If you have reached the age where you have hair coming out your ears, you probably have structural power coming out of your ears.”  Guests:  Alan Weisman, Author, “Hope Dies Last” Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Marine Biologist; Author, “What if We Get it Right?”Bill McKibben, Founder, 350.org and Third Act 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

“What the world saw at Joe Biden’s one and only debate was not an anomaly—it was not a cold, it was not someone who was under or overprepared, it was not someone who was just a little tired. It was the natural result of an 81-year-old man whose faculties had been diminishing for years. Biden, his family, and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify trying to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years.”—Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, in Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again The 2024 presidential election was one of the most consequential elections in American history, yet it could have unfolded in a very different manner. President Joe Biden, who stepped down late in the campaign to make way for his younger vice president Kamala Harris, could have made that decision months earlier. Instead, surrounded by fierce defenders, Biden waited until the nominating conventions were already underway. Two of America’s most respected journalists, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, have chronicled the behind-closed-doors actions and private conversations of those in Biden’s circles of family and advisers, revealing a more serious decline in the president’s mental acuity than was told to the American people—until they saw it for themselves in the one and only debate between Biden and Donald Trump in June 2024. Biden and his closest advisers were convinced that only he could prevent a second Trump presidency, Tapper and Thompson say, something they feared so much the lied to themselves and others about the president’s condition and limitations. It’s a story Tapper and Thompson share in their new book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. They heard from White House staffers at all levels, congressional leaders and Cabinet members, governors, donors and Hollywood figures. They say President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seems shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless—a desperate bet that went bust—and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a panel discussion focused on addressing food insecurity in California, with an emphasis on CalFresh reform. CalFresh is the state-run food stamps program that assists low- or no-income individuals and households to purchase nutritious food, also known federally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Inefficiencies in the CalFresh system have become evident in the billions of dollars in unused federal benefits, as well as in comparison to other states that have achieved 100 percent SNAP participation among eligible individuals through strategic policy changes.  A new state law, AB 518 (Wicks and Jackson), mandates the development of a methodology to estimate CalFresh participation rates, identify eligible but unenrolled Californians, and create outreach strategies to maximize participation; but the bill is only a starting point to addressing the program’s shortcomings.  Join us for a wider discussion on the impacts of food insecurity as momentum builds for legislative action to enhance the program’s efficiency. We’ll also examine the successful models of other states’ systems and bring awareness to food insecurity’s long-term negative impacts, particularly for marginalized communities.  This program is co-hosted with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and followed by a reception. A 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. Presented by CalFresh Reform Coalition and SF Marin Food Bank. OrganizerRobert Melton  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trailblazing AI journalist Karen Hao comes all the way from Hong Kong to San Francisco to discuss the issues raised in her new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Hao tackles the hard-hitting questions many people are afraid to face about the disruptive power of artificial intelligence and the forces driving its rapid ascent. A longtime AI insider with unparalleled access to OpenAI and its key players, Hao has spent years investigating the industry’s hidden costs—human, environmental, and geopolitical. As a journalist whose award-winning work has been cited by Congress and featured in leading publications such as The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and MIT Technology Review, she has become one of the most authoritative voices on AI today. Now Hao pulls back the curtain on the tech arms race reshaping our world in real time. From the breakneck rise of OpenAI and its Faustian bargain with Microsoft to the global supply chains powering AI’s insatiable appetite for data, energy and human labor, she reveals the staggering scale of the industry’s ambitions—and its consequences. With exclusive behind-the-scenes insights, including the dramatic firing and reinstatement of Sam Altman (a highly public corporate drama that began just days after Altman talked AI ethics on the Commonwealth Club stage), Hao will discuss not just a corporate saga but a crucial examination of the future of power, technology and society itself. Join us for this urgent and thought-provoking conversation about the past, present, and future of AI—what’s at stake, who stands to gain, and who is being left behind.   Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming. 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 Joshua Knowles, a physician-scientist at Stanford, Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist, and Robert Lustig, an emeritus professor of pediatrics at UCSF, as they delve into the fascinating world of cholesterol. They discuss cholesterol's essential functions, the different types like HDL and LDL, and the evolution of testing methods. The trio also explores the role of triglycerides, the misconceptions surrounding statins, and the complexities of managing cholesterol, shedding light on how diet and genetics influence heart health.