Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

According to the latest IPCC Assessment Report, we’re currently on course for at least 3°C (5.4°F) of warming by 2100 even if all of the voluntary Paris Agreement emissions pledges are fulfilled. Clearly the world needs to do more to reduce emissions. But what if that’s still not enough?Solar geoengineering – such as putting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of the sun’s heat from reaching the earth – could be one tool to slow warming temporarily. But it has become so politically fraught that even research into the subject is contentious. Who decides who should control our atmosphere? And what global governance structures should be put in place before any experimentation begins?This program is generously underwritten in part by the Laney and Pasha Thornton Foundation.For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcastsGuests:Janos Pasztor, Executive Director, Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, former Assistant Secretary General, United Nations Sheila Jasanoff, Professor of science and technology studies, Harvard Kennedy SchoolAlbert Lin, Professor, University of California Davis School of Law David Keith, Professor of applied physics and public policy, Harvard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alyssa Milano’s renowned career is characterized by one success after another. If you don’t know her from one of her many TV or movie roles since her debut at age seven, then it's undoubtedly her activism in politics and the #MeToo movement that has put her on the radar. Milano’s life — being raised in the limelight of celebrity and being in the rooms others dream of — has given her unmatched insight into parts unknown. At the same time Milano is a wife, a mother of two (plus many animals), and has strived to maintain a sense of normalcy despite her powerful, star-turned-humanitarian persona. From within this unique well of knowledge comes Milano’s new book Sorry Not Sorry, a series of both unimaginable and wildly relatable tales from a life’s worth of playing many roles, including herself. At INFORUM, Milano will give an insider peek into the head that wears many hats — sharing relationship advice, tales borne from stardom, and a generous dose of humor. Sincere, striking and welcomingly blunt, Milano’s stories are sure to charm time and time again.SPEAKERSAlyssa MilanoActor; Activist; Author, Sorry Not SorryAmber TamblynActor; Director; Author; Founder & Global Leadership Board Member, Time's UpNote: This program contains EXPLICIT languageIn 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 28th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is only one room that bears witness to marriages, divorces, adoptions, and criminal proceedings—the courtroom. Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell has sat in this room and dedicated nearly five decades of her life to putting justice back into the justice system. As the first African American female judge to serve on the Superior Court in northern California and a trailblazer in many other respects, her years on the bench have put her, in the most literal terms, front and center to the societal microcosm that is the courtroom.In her debut book Her Honor: My Life on the Bench . . . What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It, Judge Cordell gives an inside look into a judge's chamber. She shares real stories of the trials and tribulations involved in making life-changing, sometimes life-or-death decisions. Further, she presents hard-earned knowledge on the cracks in the system and how we can repair them with institutional accountability and equitable reconfigurations.At INFORUM Judge Cordell will detail a career that has been steadfast and powerful in its advancement of LGBTQ+ rights, police accountability, and elevating of BIPOC communities. She will draw on stories both heartwarming and painful to shed light on the good and bad in a system that she says should, must, and will serve all.This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.SPEAKERSLaDoris CordellJudge (Ret); Author, Her Honor: My Life on the Bench...What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change ItIn Conversation with Lara BazelonProfessor of Law and Director of Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs, University of San FranciscoIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded live in San Francisco on October 27th, 2021 at the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many families don’t expect that dementia will be a factor in financial decisions, but it is more common than we think. The challenge is that people can start having trouble managing their finances years before being diagnosed with dementia. Our expert panel delves into this subject so you will recognize when a loved one's capacity is declining and what to do about it.They will explain a dementia diagnosis, the implications of this condition on our planning abilities, and suggestions on how to create an advance directive with this outcome in mind.They will also discuss how families can navigate their financial matters, with their advisors, if faced with the unexpected issues of dementia. They will share some examples of the best practices of individuals and families who successfully prepare for the possibility of dementia, and share some pitfalls of not planning ahead for this increasingly common experience. The concept of having or losing the capacity for financial decision-making is vague to most people. Yet it is understandable when you know the legal components of financial capacity.The concept of preparing for a loss of capacity can be a scary thing to face. Yet it can be comforting to learn the definite ways to manage your financial affairs, so they can be handled in your best interests and in line with your values and expectations.SPEAKERSCatherine A. MadisonM.D., Founding Director, Ray Dolby Brain Health Center, California Pacific Medical CenterGretchen HollsteinCFP, Senior Wealth Advisor and Managing Director, Litman Gregory Wealth ManagementNatalie OhCLU, Insurance Professional, Taran Insurance AdvisoryDenise MichaudChair, Grownups 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 27th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dubbed the social justice manifesto, Until I Am Free, by author Keisha N. Blain, is a unique opportunity to hear about life from the perspective of a working, impoverished and disabled Black woman. Blain, an award-winning historian, details the life and accomplishments of Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights activist too often forgotten in the narrative of racial justice. Defying the layers of marginalization that threatened to hush her powerful words, Hamer is held by Blain in the same esteem as her contemporaries Rosa Parks and MLK. Through Blain, Hamer’s message is given new life in an age where the same issues remain pertinent.At INFORUM Blain will peel back the layers of Fannie Lou Hamer—layers that ostensibly would have taken power away from her but instead became the very source from which she drew it. This conversation will be moderated by Aimee Allison, founder and president of She the People.SPEAKERSKeisha N. BlainPh.D., Historian; Associate Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh; President, African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS); Author, Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to AmericaAimee AllisonFounder and President, She the People—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 26th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With dazzling illustrations, sumptuous recipes, and its own curated playlist, Bryant Terry’s sixth book, Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora, is a feast for the senses. Terry, a renowned vegan culinary innovator, returns to dive into the depth and breadth of Black foodways spanning nations and time.Black Food celebrates both the creations and creators, pairing heartwarming stories of generational traditions with the soul-filling foods at the center of them. From tropical Afro-Caribbean dishes like jerk chicken to beloved Nigerian jollof rice and further on to southern sweet potato pie, this book is an ode to the African diaspora’s influence on food and culture.At INFORUM, Bryant Terry will share the stories, people, places and ingredients that make Black food the diverse and divine cuisine it is today.SPEAKERSBryant TerryChef; Author, Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African DiasporaAnjali MenonVice President, IfOnly; Member, INFORUM Advisory BoardIn 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 20th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As president of One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, Saru Jayaraman has fought for a reimagining of tipped industries. She argues that at just $2.13 an hour, what tipped-wage workers are paid is unlivable on its own and that, unsurprisingly, the people in these jobs are often society's most vulnerable: undocumented, BIPOC, and women workers who already make cents on the dollar of their white male counterparts. In place of the 30-year-old subminimum wage, Jayaraman has worked tirelessly to realize a fair living wage for these essential workers. In the wake of COVID-19, she says it is more obvious than ever that changes need to be made if we want to keep everyone’s head above water.Jayaraman’s message is unwavering—our drivers, delivery workers, servers and nail technicians deserve to have a livelihood. At INFORUM and alongside service industry experts Chef Dominique Crenn and Angela Glover Blackwell, Jayaraman will lay out what changes need to be made and how we can achieve a fair, livable wage for everyone in our communities.SPEAKERSAngela Glover BlackwellFounder in Residence, PolicyLink; Host, "Radical Imagination" PodcastDominique CrennChef and Owner, Atelier CrennSaru JayaramanPresident, One Fair Wage; Co-Founder, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United; Director, Food Labor Research Ctr., UC Berkeley; Author, Behind the Kitchen Door, Forked: A New Standard for American Dining, & One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in AmericaIn 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 18th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some might say that Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods were destined to meet. Poor, a professor of photography at CSU Sacramento, was volunteering with the Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison when she met Woods, who was serving a 31-year-to-life sentence. The two bonded over a love of storytelling and with no formal experience, began a podcast together where they showcase the realities of life in prison while detailing the path of their fateful friendship. Their upcoming book, This Is Ear Hustle, shares its name with their well-received podcast, which has gone on to become a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize and is in its seventh season. The book avoids the overtly political and instead delves into the richness of humanity found even behind the bars of the prison system. With candor, the authors showcase the unlikely inspiration found in stories of the incarcerated.At INFORUM Earlonne Woods—whose sentence was commuted in 2018—and Nigel Poor will take our stage in downtown San Francisco to help our audiences become “ear hustlers'' themselves, eavesdropping on the tales of resilience, forgiveness and the lives that exist behind some of America’s most well-guarded doors.This program will be moderated by Piper Kerman, author of The New York Times bestseller Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison.Note: This program contains EXPLICIT languageSPEAKERSNigel PoorVisual Artist; Co-Creator and Co-Host, "Ear Hustle" Podcast; Co-Author, This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison LifeEarlonne WoodsCo-Creator and Co-Host, "Ear Hustle" Podcast; Co-Author, This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison LifePiper KermanAuthor, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison—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 25th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many nations have a national poet, whose poetry helps carve out their own unique cultural niche in human civilization. Italy has enjoyed many literary geniuses for over two millennia, but still looks to one man the most: Dante. Like major poets in other cultures, Dante’s influence on the Italian language can hardly be overstated. The Divine Comedy was the first major work of literature to leave Latin behind in favor of Italian, and it remains the world standard of poetic excellence. Dante’s fertile imagination also inspired artists, writers and theologians, making him almost as influential about the afterlife as he is linguistically.Join Humanities West in person at The Commonwealth Club, or via livestream, to celebrate the 700th Anniversary of Dante’s death—which ironically occurred not that many months after he completed his speculations about post-death possibilities—with a two-hour, three-lecture Dante feast: • Timothy Hampton on "Dante After Dante: the Forms of Memory." Though there were many "in the know" about the achievement of Dante's great poem during his lifetime, his vast influence on Italian poetry and world literature was uneven in the centuries following his death. In some areas of artistic creation—for example, in the painting of Botticelli—Dante was powerfully present. In other areas (poetry, philosophy, literary criticism) his influence was definite, but diffuse and oblique. This lecture will speak about the ways in which Dante's work did and didn't shape Italian and European culture in the early modern period. • Kip Cranna on "Dante at the Opera: From the Divine Comedy to a Comic Puccini Delight." In "The Inferno," part one of The Divine Comedy, Dante introduces the condemned sinner Gianni Schicchi, consigned to the Eighth Circle of Hell along with others guilty of fraud. His crime: impersonating the deceased Buoso Donati to falsify Buoso's will for his own benefit. Dante personally knew the Donatis (he was married to one), and therein lies an intriguing tale of medieval Florentine society. The story of this fraudulent will and the legend surrounding it became the inspiration for the famed composer Giacomo Puccini's only comic opera. After outlining the Dante-Puccini connection, San Francisco Opera's Dramaturg Emeritus Kip Cranna will present brief video highlights from the opera Gianni Schicchi, including the ever-popular aria "O mio babbino caro." • Marisa Galvez on "Dante Before Dante Become Dante." In retrospect it almost seems like Dante invented Italian literary culture, but he arrived on the Italian literary scene as a love poet—an admirer of courtly love and the troubadour traditions which had begun a century earlier in Occitania, and had spread to Italy, Spain and then most of Europe. Dante defined the troubadour lyrics as rhetorical, musical and poetical fiction — which is also a good description of The Divine Comedy. NOTESMLF: HumanitiesNote: This program contains EXPLICIT language.SPEAKERSKip CrannaDramaturg Emeritus, San Francisco OperaMarisa GalvezProfessor of French and Italian, and by Courtesy, of German Studies and Comparative Literature; Faculty Director, Structured Liberal Education, Stanford UniversityTimothy HamptonAldo Scaglione and Marie M. Burns Distinguished Professor of French and Comparative Literature; Director, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, BerkeleyGeorge Hammond—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 22nd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join this important discussion to learn how the White House is forming critical partnerships across sectors to fight anti-Asian hate crimes, moving forward the administration's Build Back Better Agenda to rebuild the economy, and ensuring the advancement of the Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AA and NHPI) communities. Attendees will have the opportunity to identify issues the AA/NHPI communities may want to prioritize and ask questions.Erika Moritsugu was appointed in April by President Biden to serve as deputy assistant to the president and AA/NHPI senior liaison. She engages with AA and NHPI communities and leaders on issues such as advancing safety, justice, inclusion, and opportunity through a whole-of-government approach to racial justice.She previously served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental relations at the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Secretary Julián Castro and was the first-ever Senate deputy legislative director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On Capitol Hill, she served as senior representative of Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. She also worked for Senator Daniel K. Akaka of Hawai‘i and at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.In the nonprofit sector, Moritsugu managed two teams at the National Partnership for Women & Families for economic justice and congressional relations, advancing workforce and health policies through a gender equity and race equity lens. She also led the Government Relations, Advocacy and Community Engagement team at the Anti-Defamation League.Moritsugu attended Brandeis University, the College of William and Mary, and George Washington University Law School.She will be in conversation with Dion Lim, anchor/reporter for ABC 7 Television News in San Francisco.NOTESIn partnership with SFCAUSE (Community Alliance for Unity, Safety & Education) , San Francisco.SPEAKERSErika MoritsuguDeputy Assistant to the President and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander White House Senior LiaisonIn Conversation with Dion LimAnchor/Reporter, ABC 7 News in San FranciscoIn 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 September 24th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices