Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Commonwealth Club of California
  • 3.7 (3)
  • Politics
  • Updated Daily

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. 3d ago

    The Fight Against AI-Powered Surveillance with EFF's Cindy Cohn and Adam Savage

    When the Pentagon formally designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” this March, the dispute put a spotlight on civil liberties concerns in the AI-era. Anthropic had reportedly hit an impasse with the Trump administration over the company’s push for guardrails banning the use of its Claude model to conduct mass surveillance. Anthropic’s CEO had called such surveillance a “red line” it would not cross. But where exactly should those lines be drawn, and who should draw them? Few people have spent more time thinking about those issues than Cindy Cohn, executive director of the San Francisco-based civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. Throughout her career, EFF’s executive director has been driven by a fundamental question: Can we still have private conversations if we live our lives online? Her new book, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, chronicles her battles to protect our right to digital privacy. Cohn weaves her own personal story with the history of the Crypto Wars, FBI gag orders, and the post-9/11 surveillance state. She describes how she became a seasoned leader in the early digital rights movement, as well as how this work serendipitously helped her discover her birth parents and find her life partner. Along the way, she also details the development of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which she grew from a ragtag group of lawyers and hackers into “one of the most powerful digital rights organizations in the world.” Cohn will be joined by Adam Savage, former co-host of the Discovery Channel show “Mythbusters,” to talk about the issues raised in her book, EFF’s work, and the emerging battle over AI surveillance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 8m

  2. 4d ago

    Safe Play: Creating Inclusion in Sport

    Pride House SF and Commonwealth Club World Affairs are proud to assemble three hour-long events designed to showcase the importance of celebrating self and sport. Using the backdrop of this summer’s global soccer event—and the significance of Bay Area representation on the world stage—each program will feature local experts convening around a designated theme. In our first program, meet leaders on and off the field who are changing sports and acceptance. Christina Jefferson is the first-ever senior director for inclusion & culture at the San Francisco 49ers. Jefferson leads inclusion and diversity efforts across the organization and created the team's internship program. She is also responsible for managing the team's recruitment and hiring activities and its internship and fellowship programs. Jefferson earned her B.S. from the University of Southern Indiana and her Master's in human resource management from Golden Gate University. Christina has been a coach for Resetting the Table since 2021, and is a member of several boards, including the chair of the Jews of Color Initiative, Repair the World, and Resetting the Table. She is also a 2025 Sports Business Journal Woman of Influence. Roscoe Mapps III is a strategist and social impact leader working at the intersection of sports, culture and systems change. As chief diversity officer for the San Francisco Giants in his eleventh season, he oversees diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across workforce, culture, business practices and community impact—focused on turning aspiration into execution and building systems where belonging is experienced, not just stated. Across a 25-year career spanning corporate talent, global advocacy, and civic leadership, he has consistently advanced equity through coalition-building, narrative change, and large-scale initiatives, including the Mission Rock development, which secured historic voter approval while embedding housing, workforce and economic inclusion commitments. Meghan O’Leary is the founding owner of LOVB San Francisco and Olympic rower. Meghan O’Leary is a two-time Olympian, founder, investor, and sports media professional with more than 20 years of experience helping leaders and teams perform under pressure, navigate transition and lead with purpose. A seven-year member of the United States Rowing National Team, she represented Team USA at the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, earning multiple World Championship and World Cup medals. A longtime advocate for athlete empowerment and gender equity, O'Leary served eight years on the US Rowing Board of Directors, helping shape the organization’s commercial strategy, governance and commitment to advancing equity and the growth of the sport. As an angel investor and startup advisor, she partners with early-stage founders and funds shaping the future of sports, media, healthtech and wellness. This program is made possible by the support of Pride House SF, San Francisco LGBT Center, Spikes and San Francisco 49ers.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 8m

  3. 5d ago

    Fake News for Good? Reporting from the Future to Save Democracy Today

    When the news moves faster than we can process it, how do we grasp what any of it actually means for our lives? And what happens when that overwhelming feeling isn’t accidental, but rather a deliberate political strategy (“flooding the zone”) designed to ensure that no issue of consequence can get the sustained attention it deserves? Strategic futurist Jason Tester has pioneered an answer—“speculative journalism,” a new form of what-if reporting on high-probability, high-stakes futures before they materialize. Through two novel projects created over the past year, Tester demonstrates how this approach can make abstract or hypothetical consequences feel urgent, visceral and deeply personal. His project One Big Beautiful Aftermath: Dispatches from Near-Future America translates the sprawling “One Big Beautiful Bill” into compelling human stories, revealing the legislation’s projected impacts on everyday Americans in the coming years. His other groundbreaking scenario, Insurrection: An American Future, has proved disturbingly prescient. Published in January 2025, months before federal forces were deployed to Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis, it depicts an eerily similar de facto military occupation of San Francisco’s streets. But creating photorealistic imagery of events that haven’t happened raises hard questions: When does “fake news for good” risk becoming just fake news? And who gets to decide? Join Jason in conversation with Michelle Meow to explore how speculative journalism can cut through information overload to strengthen democracy, the crucial role generative AI plays in telling these stories, the ethical red lines this work demands, and why reporting from tomorrow might be the most important journalism we can do today. About the Speaker Jason Tester is a strategic futurist and speculative designer whose work explores the human consequences of political, technological and social transformation. For more than two decades, he has used visual and immersive storytelling to make future possibilities more understandable and resonant for numerous companies, nonprofit organizations and governments around the world. A former research director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Tester is a leading figure in the field of speculative design and a fierce advocate for democratizing futurism. Based in San Francisco for more than two decades and deeply rooted in the city’s LGBTQ+ community, his work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and on MSNBC and CNN. See more  Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 8m
  4. Healing Ourselves and the Planet with Katharine Wilkinson and Uncle Pappy

    5d ago

    Healing Ourselves and the Planet with Katharine Wilkinson and Uncle Pappy

    When real and internal maps come up short, and the path ahead is uncertain, how do we find our way? In her new book⁠ “Climate Wayfinding⁠,” Dr. Katharine Wilkinson (co-founder of the All We Can Save Project) offers a compassionate and empowering guide for navigating through ache to action, doubt to possibility. Whether we’re steeped in climate or newly curious, we can look inward with care, outward with curiosity, and forward with courage to shape our unique contributions to healing the planet we call home.  In Florida, social media star Uncle Pappy blends his unique mix of philosophy, humor, and love of nature into his own brand of inspirational messages.  “I feel a moral imperative to nature to try to remind people of how incredible it is, and at the same time, I feel a moral imperative to people to remind them of how incredible nature is.”  Guests: Katharine Wilkinson, Author, “Climate Wayfinding;” Co-founder & Executive Director, The All We Can Save Project Blair Carlyle (aka Uncle Pappy), Instagram influencer; Law student For show notes, transcript, and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/podcasts Highlights: 00:00 – Intro 04:15 – Katharine Wilkinson’s climate journey 10:45 – Climate is big, global, multifaceted, yet impacts are close and intimate 17:45 – How to transform overwhelming grief into power, joy, and meaning 21:00 – Answering the question, “What can I do?” 29:15 – Reading of the poem “Equinox" by Tamiko Byer 33:00 – How Blair Carlyle, aka Uncle Pappy, pivoted to environmental subjects 36:15 – Carlyle’s Connection to the outdoors 40:00 – “Pappy is the realest version of me, the version I aspire to be” 45:00 – Carlyle on reaching people of all political beliefs, regardless of their climate views 53:30 – Climate One More Thing ********** 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 at ⁠patreon.com/ClimateOne⁠.  Ad sales by ⁠Multitude⁠. Contact them for ad inquiries at ⁠multitude.productions/ads⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 hr

  5. May 24

    Dion Lim: My Fight for Asian America

    February 24, 2020, started out like any other day for journalist and television anchor Dion Lim of San Francisco’s ABC News. Planning her pitches for the morning’s editorial meeting, she checked her Instagram account and saw a message from someone she didn’t recognize. Attached was a horrifying video in which men were beating and yelling racist slurs at an elderly Asian man who had been collecting cans in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. Lim felt compelled to investigate the story, help the man who “looked freakishly like my dad,” and bring the perpetrators to justice. Thus began Lim’s four-years-and-counting quest to bring attention to the appalling rise of anti-Asian hate and violence in America, which she chronicles in her new book. Featuring an emotional foreword by actress and outspoken anti-Asian harassment advocate Olivia Munn, Amplify! My Fight for Asian America (from Third State Books) brings readers on an eye-opening journey alongside Lim, who has unwittingly become a national hero for her relentless fight for Asian American visibility. Through deeply personal anecdotes about her own life as a Chinese American, exclusive interviews with survivors, activists, and historians, and incisive historical context, she provides the very first book to tackle one of the biggest political and social controversies of this century from the perspective of the AAPI community. Come meet Lim and hear her story. See more Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1 hr

  6. May 23

    ABC News' Martha Raddatz: The Hero Next Door, Stories of Patriotism and Purpose

    Martha Raddatz has seen the uncommon courage of service members and their families, and she has watched—in war zones and on the home front—as they have faced daunting odds and come out stronger. She asked veterans whose character and actions have impacted her deeply to relive their most challenging moments, so that others will know who they are and what they have done. In her new book The Hero Next Door, Emmy Award–winning ABC News journalist and bestselling author Martha Raddatz shares 10 stories of American warriors and their families, whose superhuman sacrifice and resilience—on and off the battlefield—show that true courage comes in many forms. She introduces readers to an air force rescue parajumper who put his life on the line to save a man whose fate would become entwined with his; a marine ambushed in Helmand whose life-changing injury forced him to take on a different kind of fight; a trailblazing F-18 fighter pilot flying missions over Syria; a combat surgeon who pioneered a new way of saving people with traumatic brain injuries and turned his world upside down to train doctors in Ukraine; an intelligence officer who forged a lifetime friendship with the man who saved him on 9/11; and two mothers whose love and sacrifices embody the ideal of selfless service. Some of these people were inspired to join the military by parents who served, and some left abusive families, determined to do better. Some joined when everyone was against it. They were there because they wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves. Raddatz says the qualities that made them shine on the battlefield gave them the strength to conceive of transformative second acts. The focus, mental resilience, and emotional fortitude kept them going through physical and emotional setbacks. They started companies to fill a need, created nimble nonprofits, and hunted for humor wherever they could find it. Most Americans don’t know these people. Join us as Martha Raddatz changes that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 4m

  7. May 22

    Why We Run: A Special AAPI Month Program

    Join us for a special AAPI Month program featuring prominent Bay Area Asian American elected officials. We'll hear from BART Board Director Janice Li, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, and San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee member Uma Rao Krishnan. What drives them in the ultra-competitive Bay Area political scene? What are their goals, and how do they go about achieving them? About the Speakers Janice Li was first elected to the BART Board of Directors in November 2018 and was re-elected in 2022. Li served as president of the Board in 2023, and as vice president in 2022. Janice was born in Hong Kong and moved to the U.S. at a young age. In 2013, Li moved to San Francisco and began working at the SF Bicycle Coalition. Li currently works at Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco-based organization that has led Asian American civil rights advocacy for over 50 years. She leads the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice, a local coalition that addresses hate and violence targeting Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through community-based programs. David Chiu is the city attorney of San Francisco, the first Asian American to lead one of the country’s top municipal law offices. Previously, he represented the half million residents of eastern San Francisco as a State Assemblymember for seven years. For six years, Chiu served as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Before holding elected office, he served as law clerk to Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a civil rights attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, a criminal prosecutor at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, Democratic Counsel to the U.S. Senate Constitution Subcommittee, and general counsel to a public affairs technology company. A founding member of API Equality, he also served as president of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area.Uma Rao Krishnan is a Gen Z activist, organizer, and engineer bridging the worlds of technology and politics. She holds a B.A. in computer science with a minor in public policy from UC Berkeley and is currently pursuing her Master's in data science there, with a focus on the tech-civics intersection. Krishnan is the co-founder and president of the SMC AAPI Alliance, an organization dedicated to empowering San Mateo County's AAPI community in civic engagement and political action, most recently leading Prop 50 mobilization efforts and anti-Trump actions, including No Kings, where she has served as emcee. First elected as an ADEM delegate at just 21 years old and the highest vote-getter in county history, she has since been re-elected twice and also serves as a member of the San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee and board member of the California Democratic AAPI Caucus.    See more  Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    57 min
  8. Fighting Fire with Fiery Passion: 2026 Goldman Prize Winners

    May 22

    Fighting Fire with Fiery Passion: 2026 Goldman Prize Winners

    The Goldman Environmental Prize is known as the Nobel for grassroots environmental champions, for good reason. Award-winners are earth defenders, often bucking entrenched systems and powerful interests in order to protect and restore the natural environments we all depend on. This week we feature conversations with two of the 2026 Goldman Prize winners:  Iroro Tanshi, a tropical conservationist and bat ecologist who rediscovered a species that hadn't been seen in half a century. When climate-amplified wildfire threatened to destroy her new find, she built a community movement to virtually eliminate the wildfire risk.  Sarah Finch, a tireless environmental advocate who spent years in English courts using planning law as a defense against the fossil fuel industry. She won a major UK Supreme Court ruling, a ruling that is already constraining oil, gas, and coal development across the country.   What can we learn about passion, persistence, and collaboration from these two advocates? Guests:  Iroro Tanshi, Tropical Conservationist Sarah Finch, Environmental Campaigner For show notes, related links, and episode transcript, visit https://climateone.org/podcasts Highlights: 00:00 Intro 03:01 Iroro Tanshi on Warri, Nigeria and the oil industry 05:37 Iroro Tanshi on becoming interested in bats and the forest 09:24 Iroro Tanshi on finding a bat species once thought extinct 14:03 Iroro Tanshi on when a wildfire tore through the research site 19:20 Iroro Tanshi on the wildfire risks of forests in equatorial Africa  20:50 Iroro Tanshi on working with the community to address the wildfires 23:01 Iroro Tanshi how to scale what she’s learned world-wide  24:40 Iroro Tanshi on what bats can teach people about being human 27:17 Sarah Finch on realizing the far reaching implication of her work 30:49 Sarah Finch on why the legal argument finally worked  34:42 Sarah Finch on getting the confidence to go after big oil  44:43 Sarah Finch on how a group of people can make a real difference  ********** 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 at ⁠patreon.com/ClimateOne⁠.  Ad sales by ⁠Multitude⁠. Contact them for ad inquiries at ⁠multitude.productions/ads⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    54 min
See All (2K)

Trailers

Ratings & Reviews

3.7
out of 5
3 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.

Information

You Might Also Like