Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Commonwealth Club of California
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Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.

  1. 14H AGO

    Constructive Conflict, Fierce Vulnerability: How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable

    If you find you're having unpleasant battles that create too much heat and too little light, or you're avoiding fraught discussions entirely, then come to this experiential event to learn the skill of nonviolent conflict management from Kazu Haga, the author of the acclaimed books Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse. Find out how to deal with conflict in a way that repairs and deepens relationships instead of breeding resentment and anger. Kazu Haga is one of the most experienced trainers of Kingian nonviolence, which is derived from the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He'll show us the framework and outline a few specific steps for defusing an argument in ways that we can put to immediate use in our lives. We'll practice a few exercises and come away with a solid start and a path to better relationships and leadership. Organizer: Eric Siegel   A Personal Growth 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 4m

  2. 1D AGO

    George Hammond: How Can We Be Sure We Have Free Will?

    Many people are convinced our lives, and all actions in the universe, are totally determined. One question remains: How did they make up their minds that that is true? One decent definition of the difference between mind and matter is that minds make decisions. Even if you decide to let someone else make all your decisions for you, that itself is a decision. Which you can revoke at will. Join us at Monday Night Philosophy to remind yourself (in the Platonic sense) that there are indeed many reasons to recover your own agency, to realize that you make decisions all the time that are not determined by—even if they are influenced by—outside forces, and to refresh your awareness of the inner control over your own life that everyone inherently possesses, whether they sense it or not, whether they feel it or not. Because when you have recovered your former certainty that you have free will, you will also understand that one of the most intriguing and ironic uses of our free wills are our always temporary decisions to believe that we don’t have it. Organizer: George Hammond   Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming. 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. 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

    1h 17m

  3. 2D AGO

    The Validity of Psychiatric Diagnosis: What’s in a Name?

    This presentation by Dr. Descartes Li looks at some of the complexities and controversies about psychiatric diagnoses. It examines the DSM-5's "Harmful Dysfunction" definition, contrasting it with the NIMH's Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project. The lecture also discusses philosophical approaches to understanding mental illness, including reductionism, cultural relativism, emergentism, and mechanistic approaches to psychiatric diagnosis. Finally, it outlines four perspectives for viewing mental disorders: disease, dimensional, behavioral, and life story, advocating for a comprehensive approach to diagnosis. About the Speaker Dr. Descartes Li is professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, Weill Institute for Neurosciences. He currently serves as director of the UCSF Bipolar Clinic and the UCSF Electroconvulsive Therapy Service for the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He is a dedicated teacher in the School of Medicine and internationally. He is a member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators. Organizer: Patrick O'Reilly   A Psychology 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 17m

  4. 2D AGO

    Celebrating Black History Month with a Special Film Documentary: 'John Burris: The Godfather of Police Litigation'

    Please join us for a special film documentary screening and an intimate conversation with filmmaker Doug Harris and civil rights attorney John Burris.  The film, John Burris: The Godfather of Police Litigation, highlights Burris’s life, police brutality, and Burris’s high-profile cases: Rodney King's civil trial, the Oakland Riders case, the Oscar Grant case, Barry Bonds, Mario Woods and among others.  Filmmaker Doug Harris points out that the Burris film documentary “is very special—the majority of my previous biographical stories have been about people who are deceased, and this project has given me an opportunity to form a close bond with a living legend.” As Burris looks forward, he is “really working hard to pass the baton on to the next generation of attorneys to carry on this type of civil rights legal work.” Organizer: Robert Melton Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a nonprofit, nonpartisan civic forum. We welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our mission. An Arts 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. 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

    59 min

  5. 3D AGO

    Carl Zimmer: Air-Borne

    Take a breath. Just breathe.  And then reserve your ticket for a special online-only talk with New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer, who will tell you all about what just went into your lungs. Zimmer will share the ideas that are in his new book Air-Borne, giving a fascinating, previously untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air—and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took more than two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus. Zimmer will lead us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. From the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, to Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. Meet the long-forgotten pioneers of aerobiology, including William and Mildred Wells, who tried for decades to warn the world about airborne infections, only to die in obscurity. Zimmer also chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of airborne biological weapons designed to spread anthrax, smallpox and an array of other pathogens. Breathtaking, isn’t it? In Association with Wonderfest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 12m
  6. Is ESG BS?

    5D AGO

    Is ESG BS?

    Who’s responsible for climate change? Fossil fuel companies would like us to believe it’s all of us as individuals (after all, BP invented the idea of the personal carbon footprint). But many large corporations bear at least as much of the blame. And for a decade or so, there was a push for every company to disclose its own emissions — a kind of corporate carbon footprint — and “sustainability” became the word of the day. But corporate shareholders demand profits, and managers are held accountable if they don’t deliver. Auden Schendler spent over 25 years running sustainability programs at Aspen One, the company that owns one of the highest-end resorts in the world. He argues that those pushing corporate sustainability programs are living a “big green lie.” Can capitalism be cleaned up from the inside? What should corporations and their sustainability managers do instead? Guests: Auden Schendler, Climate activist; Author, “Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul”  Mindy Lubber, CEO, Ceres On March 24, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt and Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center, will speak with Climate One about the development of sustainably powered artificial intelligence. Tickets are on sale through our website. And on April 22 and 24, Climate One will once again be hosting a series of SF Climate Week events at The Commonwealth Club! Join us for conversations with environmental luminaries such as Margaret Gordon, Jenny Odell, Project Drawdown, Grist, and Abby Reyes. Tickets are on sale now. 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 just $5/month. 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

    1h 5m

  7. 5D AGO

    The Lost and the Found: Personal Insights on Homelessness

    Since 1992, award-winning San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan has been covering homelessness and other major news stories. His coverage has included Willie L. Brown Jr., at 90 still one of the most influential politicians in the state. Both Fagan and Brown have insightful, candid views about homelessness and the personal, state and national resolve that will be required to end it. Now Kevin Fagan has written The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family and Second Chances, that will be published in February by Simon & Schuster. Fagan brings the abstract issue of homelessness to life, with compelling personal portraits of people experiencing it. HIs "straight up, savvy and realistic" book has been praised by reviewers. Throughout Mayor Brown's storied career, and Kevin Fagan's stories about it, homelessness has loomed large, as it has for all of us. In conversation at this event, Fagan and Brown will discuss the book, homelessness, and ways to humanize and mitigate it. About The Speakers Willie Brown was a two-term mayor of San Francisco, legendary speaker of the California State Assembly and is widely regarded as one of the most influential African-American politicians of the late 20th century. Brown has been at the center of California politics, government and civic life for more than five decades.  Kevin Fagan is a longtime, award-winning reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. He has been nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize, and won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice in Journalism and the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. During his career, he has covered homelessness, the 9/11 terror attacks, serial killers, California’s wildfires, and most recently the Nima Momeni trial. Organizer: Ian McCuaig   A Social Impact 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 16m

  8. 6D AGO

    Michael Hiltzik: Golden State—The Making of California

    California has long reigned as the land of plenty, a place where the sun always shines and opportunity always beckons. Even prior to its statehood in 1850, it captured the world’s imagination. We think of bearded prospectors lured by the promise of gold. We imagine its early embrace of immigrant labor during the railroad boom as prologue to its diverse social fabric today. But what lies underneath the myths is far more complicated. Thanks to his extensive research, Michael Hiltzik uncovers the unvarnished truth about the state we think we know well. From the Spanish incursions into what became known as Alta California to the rise of Big Tech, the history of California is one of stark contradictions. In rich, previously overlooked detail, we see its earliest statesmen wreaking havoc among native peoples while racing to draft their own constitution prior to statehood. And gold-hungry settlers venturing into the Sierra foothills only to leave with little, while a handful of their suppliers turn themselves into millionaire railroad magnates. Wars erupted over water as Los Angeles boomed, and early efforts to tame the vast landscape created a haven for fossil fuel extraction and environmental conservation alike. Hollywood politicians stoked fears, contributing to a centuries-long tradition of anti-Asian violence. And, quite remarkably, both legal redlining and free higher education took root at the same time. Hiltzik brings a fresh critical eye to his historical accounts—from the Spanish conquistadors to the Gold Rush to the state’s meteoric rise as a tech powerhouse and bulwark of progressivism—demonstrating why California has left an indelible mark on the United States and the world. Organizer: George 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.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 5m
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4.5
out of 5
64 Ratings

About

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.

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