Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Who is Donald Trump? In her highly anticipated new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman chronicles his life from his rise in New York City to the White House.Join us as Haberman discusses what she learned during interviews with hundreds of sources as well as numerous interviews over the years with Donald Trump himself, a man she says is both a complicated and often contradictory historical figure who pushed American democracy to the brink.This is an important political event you won’t want to miss.SPEAKERSMaggie HabermanSenior Political Reporter, The New York Times; Author, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America; Twitter @maggieNYT(Haberman will be participating remotely)In Conversation with Tim MillerWriter-at-large, The Bulwark; Author, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell; Twitter @timodcIn 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 February 18th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the last several years, the COVID-19 global pandemic has helped illustrate to the nation that we are only as healthy as those who are most vulnerable among us. Disparities impacting a person’s health ultimately also impact the health of our larger society. Many of these disparities have deeply rooted causes that stem from unjust policies and programs across the country. This session in our Humankindness and Health Justice series will focus on social justice as a form of health justice, addressing these deeply rooted issues and beliefs that created downstream impacts on the health of our communities. Join us for a conversation on ways to start identifying and ending challenges that foster disparities in our communities. The conversation will feature the Honorable Willie L. Brown, Jr. former California assembly speaker, mayor of San Francisco, and long-time social justice advocate. Also joining in on the conversation is Dawn Porter, award-winning and Emmy-nominated social justice documentarian. Moderating the discussion will be Janet Reilly, co-founder and board president of Clinic by the Bay, a free, volunteer-powered health clinic for the working uninsured in San Francisco and San Mateo counties. NOTESThis program is part of the Humankindness & Health Justice series, generously underwritten by CommonSpirit Health Foundation.SPEAKERSWillie L. Brown, Jr.Former California Assembly Speaker, Mayor of San FranciscoDawn PorterEmmy-Nominated Social Justice AdvocateJanet ReillyCo-Founder and Board President, Clinic by the Bay In 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 October 19th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam Hochschild returns to The Commonwealth Club with his revelatory new account of a pivotal but neglected period in American history: World War I and its stormy aftermath, when bloodshed and repression on the home front nearly doomed American democracy.The nation was on the brink. Angry mobs burned Black churches to the ground and chased down pacifists and immigrants. Well over a thousand men and women were jailed solely for what they had written or said, even in private. An astonishing 250,000 people joined a nationwide vigilante group—sponsored by the Department of Justice.This was America during and after the Great War: a brief but appalling era blighted by torture, censorship, and killings. Hochschild brings to life this troubled period, which stretched from 1917 to 1921, through the interwoven tales of some well-known characters, like the sphinxlike Woodrow Wilson and the ambitious young bureaucrat J. Edgar Hoover, and of other less-familiar characters, like the fiery antiwar advocate Kate Richards O’Hare and the outspoken Leo Wendell, a labor radical who was frequently arrested and wholly trusted by his comrades—but who was in fact Hoover’s star undercover agent.A groundbreaking work of narrative history, American Midnight recalls these horrifying yet inspiring four years, when some brave Americans strove to keep their fractured country democratic, while ruthless others stimulated toxic currents of racism, nativism, red-baiting and contempt for the rule of law—poisons that all feel ominously familiar today.MLF ORGANIZERGeorge HammondSPEAKERSAdam HochschildHistorian; Lecturer, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley; Author, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten CrisisIn 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 October 13th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last year, drug-related overdoses killed more people than COVID-19 in San Francisco, and Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin. Fentanyl and COVID-19 have only fueled our overdose crisis. While addressing this might seem overwhelming, we can respond in practical and evidence-based ways.Come learn how we can address this crisis with solutions that might surprise you from San Francisco General Hospital's Addiction Care Team director. How can M&Ms help stem the crisis? What is a patient navigator? How do we change the experience of people who use drugs in the hospital? Dr. Marlene Martin will address these issues.Our speaker, Dr. Marlene Martin, M.D., is an associate professor of clinical medicine at UCSF and a hospitalist at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Martin is the director of addiction initiatives for the UCSF Latinx Center of Excellence and founded and directs the Addiction Care Team (ACT), an interprofessional consultation service that provides compassionate person-centered care focused on harm reduction, evidence-based treatment, and linkage to care for emergency department and hospitalized patients with unhealthy substance use. Dr. Martin is passionate about improving health-care systems and reducing inequities for people with substance use disorders and Latinx individuals through innovation and interprofessional collaborations, including community partnerships.MLF ORGANIZERPatrick O'ReillySPEAKERSMarlene MartinAssociate Professor of Clinical Medicine, UCSF; Hospitalist, San Francisco General Hospital; Director of Addiction Initiatives, UCSF Latinx Center of Excellence; Founder and Director, Addiction Care Team (ACT)Patrick O'ReillyPh.D., Clinical Psychologist; Assistant Clinical Professor, UC San Francisco; Chair, Member-Led Psychology Forum—ModeratorIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded Live on October 11th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women are breaking through the tired and hurtful stereotypes of aging to better reflect who they are, how they live, and what they want as they age.Who hasn't heard the stereotypes about women of a "certain age?" That's the age when women become invisible, irrelevant, undesirable, asexual, unhinged, dried-up, hormonal messes. It's when women quickly slide into fragility and become forgetful, passive, weak, feeble, debilitated, disabled, dependent and depressed. Or so the story goes. Not only are those outdated narratives sexist and ageist, they are also damaging to women's physical, emotional, financial, romantic and sexual health. It's time to change them.In Not too Old for That, Vicki Larson helps change the narrative about being a woman at midlife and older. She questions what we've been told aging would be like and encourages us to instead ask ourselves, What do we want it to be like? And how can we get there? She says the key is to be curious, open-minded, and intentional about the ways we are becoming our future selves. We have an opportunity to create new narratives of aging as a woman, ones that value women at all stages of life, not just youth, and it starts with us.Once the stereotypes that have held women back are broken down, she says women can move past them and rather than feel helpless as the years add up, they can discover and tap into just how much agency they have. She believes that not only will her approach help to create a less ageist, less sexist, more-inclusive future, it will release our daughters and all young women from a similar future.About the SpeakerVicki Larson is a longtime award-winning editor, writer and columnist at the Marin Independent Journal. She is author of Not Too Old for That: How Women are Changing the Story of Aging and co-author of The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels, named a Best Book of 2014 by PopSugar. A resident of Marin County, her writing can be found in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Aeon and AARP's The Ethel, among other publications.MLF ORGANIZERDenise MichaudNOTESA Grownups Member-Led Forum (MLF) 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.SPEAKERSVicki LarsonJournalist; AuthorEric SiegelChair, Personal Growth Member-led Forum, The Commonwealth Club of California—ModeratorIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded live on October11th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for an online conversation with the author of a striking and remarkable literary memoir about one family’s transformation, with almost all of them embracing their queer identities. It might sound like a sitcom plot, but for Jessi Hempel, it's a true story.Jessi Hempel was raised in a picture-perfect, middle-class American family. But the truth was far from perfect. Her lawyer-father was constantly away from home, traveling for work, while her stay-at-home mother became increasingly lonely and erratic. Growing up, Jessi and her two siblings struggled to make sense of their family, their world, their changing bodies, and the emotional turmoil each was experiencing.By the time Jessi reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. Yet coming out was just the beginning, starting a chain reaction of other personal revelations and reckonings that caused each of them to question their place in the world in new and ultimately liberating ways.Don't miss this timely talk.About the SpeakerJessi Hempel is a senior editor at large at LinkedIn and host of the Webby-nominated podcast "Hello Monday." For almost 20 years, she has been writing and editing features and cover stories about the most important people and companies in technology. Most recently, she was the head of editorial for Backchannel and a senior writer at Wired. Earlier in her career, she was a senior writer for Fortune, where she co-chaired Fortune’s Aspen tech conference. Before that, Hempel wrote for BusinessWeek, and Time Asia. She has appeared on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNBC, addressing the culture and business of technology. Hempel is a graduate of Brown University and received a Master’s in Journalism from U.C. Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn.NOTESThis program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.SPEAKERSJessi HempelAuthor, The Family Outing; Twitter @jessiwritesMichelle MeowProducer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—Co-hostJohn ZippererProducer and Host, Week to Week Political Roundtable; Vice President of Media & Editorial, The Commonwealth Club of California—Co-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 October 13th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Twenty of the world’s richest countries – mostly in the Global North – are responsible for 80 percent of the carbon pollution that’s driving extreme weather and supercharging natural disasters. Yet poorer countries in the Global South are experiencing climate-induced disasters first and worst. Wealthier and whiter countries in the Global North are being hit by climate disruption as well, but they also have more resources to adapt. We talk with two award-winning journalists, one from each hemisphere, about covering climate change in their part of the world and bridging the disconnect that exists between North and South.Guests: Lauren Sommer, Reporter, NPRLagipoiva Cherelle Jackson, Reporter for The Guardian, Host of An Impossible Choice. For show notes and related links, visit ClimateOne.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From microwaves to missiles, smartphones to the stock market, our world is increasingly dependent on microchip technology. According to Chris Miller, microchips are the new oil, a critical resource that defines the current state of military, economic and geopolitical power. At the heart of the decades-long battle over control of this technology are the United States and China, two superpowers engaging in a war that puts America’s economic prosperity at risk. In Chip War, Miller provides a comprehensive analysis of the semiconductor chip and its impact on national security and international economics. Tracing the global history of microchips, he recounts the fascinating events that enabled the United States to perfect the chip design, and the role that faster chips played in America’s Cold War victory over the Soviet Union. As Miller reveals, the United States once dominated advancements in microchips, but now, China is investing billions into a chip-building initiative to bridge the gap, leading to a power competition that will define the world’s geopolitical future.Join us as Miller explains the high stakes history of the computer chip and ongoing battle between the United States and China that is shaping the modern world.NOTESIn association with the Asia Pacific Affairs member-led forum.This program is generously supported by the Jackson Square Partners Foundation.SPEAKERSChris MillerAuthor, The Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical TechnologyIn Conversation with Niall FergusonMilbank Family Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Senior Faculty Fellow, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard UniversityIn 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 October 16th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since 18th century and pre-Constitution America, libraries have been a public space, a central repository where books could be borrowed, read and returned—a long defended democratic ideal of the public library. The nonprofit Internet Archive, founded in 1996, was built to be both the library of the Internet and the library on the Internet—a grand repository of knowledge. Its mission: universal access to all knowledge through the networked reach of the Internet, which allows the Archive to serve as a loc­­­al library for users with a browser anywhere.During the global COVID pandemic closures of public libraries and schools in 2020, the Internet Archive created the National Emergency Library  to provide digitized books to students and the public. This changed the one book/one person model of lending. Subsequent lawsuits and responses have led to current federal court cases, led by major publishers, contending that controlled digital lending means “willful mass copyright infringement.” Countersuits filed and championed by the Archive propose that such an argument presents “obstacles to the free flow of information” and the guarantee of pubic library lending access.To explore these issues, join us for a conversation with Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, which now preserves more than 99 unique petabytes of data—the books, web pages, music, television and software of our cultural heritage, working with more than 950 library and university partners to create a digital library accessible to all. Kahle created the Internet's first publishing system, called the Wide Area Information Server, later selling the company to AOL. He also co-founded Alexa Internet, which helps catalog the web; he sold it to Amazon.com. The Archive's Wayback machine is one of the most popular Internet websites.MLF ORGANIZERAnne W. SmithSPEAKERSBrewster KahleFounder and Digital Librarian, Internet Archive; Twitter @brewster_kahleAnne W. SmithCo-Chair, Arts Member-Led Forum, The Commonwealth Club of California—ModeratorIn 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 October 6th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new Netflix miniseries Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is one of the streaming service's most popular hits all around the world, telling the horrific story of the serial killer who preyed upon young men from 1978 to 1991.Join us for a discussion of how racism and xenophobia played a role in the Jeffrey Dahmer case. Some of his victims might be alive today if police had listened to Glenda Cleveland, the neighbor who tried to warn police about Dahmer. We'll also explore representation, authenticity, and why it matters in telling traumatic stories.About the SpeakersNicole Childress: Nicole was with her cousin Sandra Smith, who is the daughter of the late Glenda Cleveland, when they found one of Jeffery Dahmer's victims. They called police—who then returned the victim back to Dahmer. Childress, a.k.a. Cola Styles, is the CEO of Beauty Intellect and the author of Cola Styles: The Good, Bad & Ugly. She calls herself a true expert on faith, hair, hair composition, hair maintenance and creativity. She is the proud mother of three kids and grandmother of eight. She says "passions, patience, and knowing GOD, has kept me sane in my journey of good, bad and ugly."Khetphet (KEM-pet) Phagnasay (Pah-YAH-sy) goes by the nickname KP; he is a Lao-American actor, director, producer and stuntman who has a recurring role as Sounthone Sinthasomphone, father of a victim, in the Netflix Dahmer series. He has also worked on God is an Astronaut, Demon Fighter, Street of Hope, Hollywood Road Trip, and many more productions. He has an extensive experience on stage portraying the king in The king and I, Song Liliang in M.Butterfly, Puck in Midsummer Night, Dr. Sun Yet Sen in Sun Yat Sen: The Mouth of a Dragon, and other roles. He has travelled oversea to Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China as a performer. KP was born in Laos in 1971came to the United States as a refugee in 1980s, as the result of the Vietnam War conflict. He grew up in Oswego, Ilinois, and then Waianae, Hawai'i, before settling in Clovis/Fresno, California. He earned his B.A. in Theatre Arts from California State University, Fresno, and continued his higher education in Asian theatre focusing on acting from University of Hawaii, Manoa.SPEAKERSNicole Childressa.k.a. Cola Styles, CEO, Beauty Intellect; Author, Cola Styles: The Good, Bad & UglyKP PhagnasayActor, Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (Netflix); Director; Producer; StuntmanMichelle MeowProducer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—Co-hostJohn ZippererProducer and Host, Week to Week Political Roundtable; Vice President of Media & Editorial, The Commonwealth Club of California—Co-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 October 6th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices