Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Ava Roy and We Players return to The Commonwealth Club to show highlights from their new adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which is being performed in Golden Gate Park from April 27 to the end of May.Roy will share clips and shots of their late April performances, and will also share how fond she is of both creatively adapting Alice and the interplay of logic and illogic in the looking-glass world we find ourselves in. She will also explain how We Players survived to tell the tale of being shut down in 2020 in the midst of rehearsals for an earlier adaptation of Alice—when the COVID pandemic struck. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cutting-edge technology is revolutionizing human origins research and changing the way we understand our uniquely human traits. In this lecture, Gordon P. Getty Award laureate Dr. Carol Ward will guide us through the process of finding fossils and using modern approaches to unlock their secrets.Dr. Ward specializes in studying the evolution of apes and early hominins, with a focus on the fossil record from East and South Africa, primarily Kenya. She co-leads the West Turkana Paleo Project, a paleontological fieldwork project in Kenya that aims to find fossil evidence of early hominins and their environments.Dr. Ward will be receiving The Leakey Foundation's Gordon P. Getty Award for her multidisciplinary research that significantly advances science related to human origins, evolution, behavior and survival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Seizing Opportunities to Ascend" is an event designed to celebrate and empower individuals of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) heritage.This event features keynote speakers Michelle MiJung Kim and Kathy Fang, who have both achieved great success in their respective fields; prominent AAPI journalist and media personality Michelle Meow will moderate the event. They will share their experiences and insights on how to seize opportunities and rise to the top. They will provide practical strategies for personal and professional advancement, kicking off AAPI Heritage Month by focusing on learning, empowerment, celebrating diversity, and allyship.Join us for this inspiring conversation and then join us for food, wine and community.About the SpeakersKathy Fang was born and raised in San Francisco, where she grew up in the kitchen of her family's popular restaurant, House of Nanking, before she opened Fang Restaurant with her father in 2009, where she is co-owner and chef. She stars in the Food Network series "Chef Dynasty: House of Fang." She has also appeared on "Beat Bobby Flay," "Cutthroat Kitchen," "Guy's Grocery Games" and is a two-time "Chopped" champion. In 2020, she published the Easy Asian cookbook. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California and studied at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School Los Angeles.Michelle MiJung Kim is a queer Korean American immigrant woman writer, speaker and activist. She is the award-winning author of The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change and co-founder of Awaken. She has been a lifelong social justice activist and currently serves on the board of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality. Her work has appeared on world-renowned platforms such as Harvard Business Review and The New York Times, and she was named LinkedIn’s Top Voice in Racial Equity and Medium’s Top Writer in Diversity. She lives in Oakland, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a preview of Saving the City, an upcoming documentary series that highlights successful and unsuccessful examples of urban development throughout the United States and Canada in an effort to create better places. The opening two episodes, which look at how we have gone about remaking cities from the City Beautiful movement at the turn of the 19th century until today to provide context for the rest of the series, are expected to be released this Fall. The focus is on downtowns and nearby neighborhoods, the most visible and visited parts of our cities.After watching Saving the City, you will never look at cities the same way again.MLF ORGANIZERGeorge HammondSPEAKERSRon BlatmanExecutive Producer, Saving the CityIn 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 April 25th, 2023 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter, activists have long sought to bring pressing issues into the public consciousness. Climate activism is no different. This past Earth Day spawned a new ripple of climate activism. Activists protested at the headquarters of BlackRock in New York City, smeared paint on the casing around an Edgar Degas statue and even tried to block the entrance of the White House Correspondents dinner in DC. But that’s not the only style of activism that’s happening. Some are working from within big institutions to effect change. So what actions really move the needle?Guests: Dana Fisher, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland Rose Abramoff, Earth Scientist and Climate Activist  Ilana Cohen, Lead Organizer, Fossil Fuel Divest HarvardFor show notes and related links, visit ClimateOne.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Week to Week, we're dedicated to the lively and informed discussion of politics—with a good sense of humor—as a platform for healthy involvement in the issues that drive our society. The Commonwealth Club's Week to Week Political Roundtable and social hour, now in its 12th year, will take a look at the politics of the day—the issues, the people, the trends affecting our political world.SPEAKERSJoe GarofoliSenior Political Writer, San Francisco Chronicle; Host, “It’s All Political on Fifth and Mission” Podcast; Twitter: @joegarofoliMarisa LagosPolitics Correspondent, KQED NewsJohn ZippererProducer and Host, Week to Week Political Roundtable; Vice President of Media & Editorial, The Commonwealth Club of California—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 May 24th, 2023 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the formal COVID-19 emergency comes to an end nationally and locally, a growing number of reports and investigative bodies are beginning to explore what went wrong and right with the country’s response to the COVID crisis. One of the most important is the COVID Crisis Group (CCG), a team of 34 experts and scholars that has tried to lay the groundwork for a National Commission on the Covid Pandemic. It is led by Phillip Zelikow, who was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission.With no national commission in sight, in late April, the CCG will release its first major investigative report, "Lessons from the Covid War," a nonpartisan and plainspoken look at the key choices made during the pandemic, what worked, what didn’t and what we could do better next time. The comprehensive investigative report tells the story of how America’s scientific knowledge has far outpaced the country’s ability to apply it in a crisis. The report shows how Americans can come together, learn hard truths, build on what worked, and prepare for global emergencies to come.Several high-profile local contributors to the report will speak on their new report and what else needs to be done to understand one of the greatest domestic crises the United States has faced in decades. These include Dr. Charity Dean, CEO, founder, and chairman of The Public Health Company; Dr. Robert Rodriguez, professor of clinical emergency medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital; Dr. David A. Relman, Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in Medicine, and professor of microbiology & immunology, and senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University; and our moderator, Dr. Emily Silverman, internal medicine physician and assistant volunteer professor of medicine, UCSF, and creator of The Nocturnists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Climate change is set to transform global agriculture, causing problems like flooding and new pests in some areas, while extending growing seasons in others. And the wine industry is no exception. Look no further than Napa and Sonoma, where vineyards are grappling with drought and wildfires. Meanwhile, bubbly makers in southern England are looking to benefit from the rising temperatures. Join us as Brian Freedman, author of the new book Crushed, looks at what global warming could mean for your favorite bottle of wine. He’ll be joined in conversation by winemakers from Larkmead, Iron Horse, and Kutch wineries, who will share firsthand experiences of how they are adapting to climate change. Join us for the conversation on the future of wine, and for a special wine tasting curated by our speakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hollywood has been slow to include climate in its stories. Executives fear it won’t sell – that it’s too overwhelming or depressing. Apple TV+ has just released the series Extrapolations, which revolves entirely around the climate crisis. But it’s an outlier. We ask writer, producer and director Scott Z. Burns – who also worked on the films Contagion and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth – and Anna Jane Joyner of the climate story consultancy Good Energy about why climate doesn’t play a more prominent role in scripted entertainment. Guests:Scott Z. Burns, Writer, Director, ProducerAnna Jane Joyner, Founder and CEO, Good EnergyFor show notes and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Passing the Torch” will unite two current California leaders with two students who are positioned to be future leaders, for a thought-provoking conversation about identity, age and citizenship in an ever-changing California. This event will feature the vice chair of the California Democratic Party, Betty Yee, and interim executive director of Emerge California, Libby Schaaf, plus two incredible UC Berkeley student activists, Issabella Romo, a Latina organizer fighting back against attempts to silence minority communities in Florida, and Owen Knapper Jr., an African American activist working to make higher education more accessible to BIPOC and nontraditional students. The speakers will dive into how their backgrounds shaped them into the leaders they are today and their thoughts on the future of California, and the discussion will provide space for advice to flow both ways from this intergenerational panel.This event is part of the Creating Citizens Speaker Series at UC Berkeley, a partnership between The Commonwealth Club, the Associated Students of the University of California Vote Coalition, and the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. The series gives UC Berkeley students and community members opportunities to listen to and ask questions of leading minds in politics, media and education as they learn how to become better, more involved citizens.NOTESThis program is part of The Commonwealth Club’s civics education initiative, Creating Citizens.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices