Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

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Bing Gordon and Chloe Gordon: Everybody Wins Oct 27, 2026

Show notes

What can the billion-dollar secrets of game design teach people about building products better and making customers happier?
Video games are one of the biggest entertainment industry in the world—for a reason. Games tap into human psychology like nothing else. So how can we recreate the satisfaction we feel playing games in day-to-day life? How can we harness that feeling to grow better businesses?
These are the questions Bing Gordon has explored over his 40-year career in the technology industry. Affectionately known as the godfather of the video game world, his influence and canonized “gamification checklist” have shaped the games and companies people engage with every day: EA Sports, Farmville, The Sims, Amazon Prime, Zynga, Spotify, Audible, Twitch, Duolingo, and Cameo, to name a few.

Now, Bing and Chloe Gordon have published Everybody Wins, in which they dive into each of the eight core elements of his checklist, lessons extracted from a lifetime in games: “wow moments” (lead with unforgettable moments of exaltation); everybody wins (engineer wins to be frequent, evident and earned); invest and express (create opportunities for self-expression and recognition); session economics (make every session feel worth the time it took); social integration (prioritize integrating social connection, always); retention hacking (build “forever franchises” that delight and grow) game loops (design satisfying repetition); and quantify everything (measure achievements at the micro-level).

Join the Gordons at Commonwealth Club World Affairs to hear unforgettable stories of Bing’s storied career and hard-earned wisdom they say any business and anyone can implement for creating irresistible products and experiences.

About the Speakers

Bing Gordon is a video game man. He was the chief product officer for Kleiner Perkins, a consultant to Amazon, and an advisor and mentor to dozens of gaming and social-tech start-ups. Bing was co-founder, chief creative officer and long-time executive at Electronic Arts, from its founding in 1982 until his “retirement” in 2008.

Chloe Gordon is an LA-based director, writer and documentarian who explores the intersections of technology, storytelling and culture. Her career spans multiple media forms, including creating and writing Amazon’s first scripted comedy series for Twitch, “Two Joysticks and a Couch,” and working on 108 episodes of “Saturday Night Live,” which earned her a spot on Billboard’s 2015 TV Top Music Power Players list. Her portfolio spans narrative film, nonfiction and journalism, and the occasional viral article (“I Worked at Fyre Festival. It Was Always Going to Be a Disaster”). Chloe frequently collaborates with tech founders and investors to craft essays, investment theses, and narrative pieces for organizations, including Y Combinator, Uptake and Dwarfstar.

Our moderator, John Doerr, is an engineer, venture capitalist, and the chair of Kleiner Perkins. He is the author of bestsellers Measure What Matters and Speed and Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. For over 40 years, John has served entrepreneurs with ingenuity and optimism, helping them build bold teams and disruptive companies. He was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon and has helped to create more than a million jobs. A pioneer of Silicon Valley’s cleantech movement, he has invested in zero-emissions technologies since 2006. Outside Kleiner Perkins, John works with social entrepreneurs who are tackling systemic issues across climate, public health and education. In 2022, John and his wife Ann collaborated with Stanford University to launch its first new school in 70 years: The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

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Jessica Marie Alba: The Inner Work of Transforming a Region Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

Join us for this Transforming Our Region Member-led Forum program on personal change and place-based identity, featuring Jessica Marie Alba. Together, we will explore how to live in ways that catalyze systems change for a Bay Area where people and nature thrive.

Every systems change strategy eventually runs through a person. Land use, governance, education, and collaboration all depend on people with enough capacity to hold a long horizon. Yet many of us working on the region’s future are running on empty. We are quick to name the visible constraints, the lack of funding and the lack of political will, and slower to name the other one: our own depletion. In this session, Jessica Alba argues that our disconnection from place and from ourselves is not a personal failing or an accident of modern life. It is what our systems are built to produce. We are shaped to be useful rather than fully alive, and productive rather than present. Drawing on two decades in Bay Area transportation and civic leadership, she offers a grounded account of where she believes humanity is heading, what is already underway beneath the headlines, and why the personal layer is not a soft addition to systems change but its precondition.

In the interactive portion, participants will map their own place-based identity and leave with two commitments made out loud: one thing they will say yes to in the coming year, and one thing they will stop giving their energy to. Whether you lead an organization, work inside an agency, advocate in your neighborhood, or simply care where this region is going, you will leave with a clearer sense of where you stand and what you are here to do.

About the Speaker

Jessica Marie Alba is the founder of Warriors of Harmony, a forthcoming book and a growing movement about what it takes to live fully in a world at a threshold. After nearly 30 years in Sweden, Jessica has spent the past two decades deep in sustainable transportation, planning, and civic leadership across the Bay Area. She joined Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates in 2004 and became one of the firm’s leaders before moving to Stanford Transportation’s leadership team in 2017. From 2020 through the end of 2025, she served as a director on the San Francisco Bay Ferry Board, appointed by the speaker of the California State Assembly. She resigned from Stanford in May 2025 without a next role lined up, following an instinct she had learned to trust more than the plan. Her work now sits where civic leadership, systems thinking, and personal transformation meet.

A Transforming Our Region 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.

ORGANIZERMatt BiggarNOTES

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Tom Rosenstiel: How the Press Must Change to Save Democracy Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

Note: This podcast contains explicit language.

The crisis in journalism, says veteran journalist and media critic Tom Rosenstiel, reflects a crisis in American democracy. Faith in news outlets has dwindled, news deserts are expanding, and audiences are turning away from alarmist, partisan, and fragmented coverage.

In his new book The Next Journalism, Rosenstiel argues that the roots of journalism’s failure are intellectual, not just financial or technological. He outlines ten fundamental ways journalism must change to become more useful, trustworthy, and collaborative with the communities it serves.

From redefining news as a service rather than a product, to embracing transparency, to harnessing AI responsibly, Rosenstiel provides a bold, practical framework for rebuilding a press that empowers citizens instead of alienating them. With case studies, historical insight, and forward-looking ideas, this book offers journalists, policymakers, and readers alike a roadmap to ensuring democracy’s survival in the twenty-first century.

Tom Rosenstiel is a journalist, media critic, researcher, novelist, and professor. He is the author of seven influential nonfiction books, including The Elements of Journalism, and four novels. Rosenstiel has been a press critic for the Los Angeles Times, chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek, press critic for MSNBC, and director of media studies at the Pew Research Center. He also led the American Press Institute and now serves as Eleanor Merrill Professor on the Future of Journalism at the University of Maryland. His new book is The Next Journalism: How the Press Must Change to Serve Democracy.

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Annie Jacobsen: Biological War Oct 25, 2026

Show notes

A bio attack. A lab accident. A global pandemic. The collapse of human society.

Who else would want to explore the possibilities of biological warfare than Annie Jacobsen, investigative journalist and the best-selling author of Nuclear War? For her latest book, Biological War, Jacobsen interviewed dozens of experts in politics, governments, medicine, and the military to explore a scenario of bio warfare. She says it would only take days from the beginning of a global bio infection before we’d be in a battle for human existence. Is the infrastructure that was built to handle this very scenario up to the task?

How would people deal with a dystopic world with mass death, societal breakdown, violent insurrections, anarchy, and a plague-ravaged wasteland in place of modern civilization? Jacobsen lays out what would happen, providing a ticking-clock roadmap to the hours, days and weeks following the release of a biological agent, that serves as startling, forward-looking journalism in preparation for urgent societal upheaval.

Join us for special online-only program as Annie Jacobsen explores the unthinkable.

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Loubna Mrie: Defiance, A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria Oct 24, 2026

Show notes

In the Syria in which Loubna Mrie was a schoolgirl, loyalty was survival. Curiosity was blasphemy. Dissent was betrayal.

Like any good Alawite girl, every day at school, Loubna Mrie pledged allegiance to Hafez al-Assad. When she complained about memorizing his speeches for class, she was told to shorten her tongue—without the president, her family believed, the Alawites would be persecuted by the Sunni majority, as they had been for centuries before the Assads came to power. A girl’s role was to obey, not to question. Loubna’s father, a mercurial businessman with close ties to the Assad regime, ruled over his wife and daughters with absolute authority.

Then everything changed in 2011, when the pro-democracy uprisings of the Arab Spring reached Syria. Unable to suppress her curiosity, Loubna attended an anti-government protest. What she witnessed—the courage, the brutality, and the lies that followed—ignited something in her that would not be extinguished. She joined the resistance, risking her life by fearlessly proclaiming her Alawite heritage and, later, as a photojournalist documenting the war for Reuters and other outlets. Her defiance would come at a devastating cost: the loss of loved ones, her community, and ultimately her country. Leaving behind everything she knew, she would have to find a new home within herself.

She recounts all of this in her book Defiance—a finalist for this year's Kirkus Prize. She provides an account of one woman’s fight for freedom—against a father, a dictator, and the weight of inherited belief. From the streets of Aleppo to exile in New York City, it offers an electrifying portrait of moral courage in the face of authoritarianism and violence. Now she comes to San Francisco, where you can hear her describe what it means to wake up, to resist, and to become.

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The Gr8T Debate: The Race for San Francisco’s District 8 Oct 23, 2026

Show notes

San Francisco’s District 8, home to the Castro, Noe Valley, Glen Park, Diamond Heights, and the surrounding neighborhoods, will choose a new supervisor this November for the first time since 2018. With Supervisor Rafael Mandelman terming out, voters face a pivotal decision about who will carry the district’s voice to City Hall.

Commonwealth Club World Affairs and the San Francisco Democratic Party present "The Gr8T Debate," a live, one-hour debate featuring candidates Gary McCoy, Michael Nguyen and Darshini Patel. They’ll go head-to-head on the issues that matter most to District 8 residents: housing and affordability, public safety, small business recovery, homelessness and the drug crisis, and preserving the district’s LGBTQ+ history and culture.

Moderated by KQED’s Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos, co-hosts of "Political Breakdown," this is your chance to hear the candidates in their own words, compare their plans side by side, and decide for yourself before you mark your ballot.

Marisa Lagos is a correspondent for KQED’s California Politics and Government Desk and co-hosts the award-winning show and podcast, "Political Breakdown." At KQED, Lagos also conducts reporting, analysis and investigations into state, local and national politics for radio, TV, online and onstage. In 2022, she and co-host Scott Shafer moderated the only gubernatorial debate in California. In 2020, The Washington Post named her one of the top political journalists in California; she was nominated for a Peabody and won several other awards for her work investigating the 2017 California wildfires. She has worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Los Angeles Times. A UC Santa Barbara graduate, she lives in San Francisco with her two sons and husband.

Scott Shafer is the senior politics correspondent with the KQED Politics and Government desk. He is co-host of "Political Breakdown," the award-winning radio show and podcast with a personal take on the world of politics. Shafer came to KQED in 1998 to host the statewide "California Report." Prior to that he had extended stints in politics and government. He uses that inside experience at KQED in his, reporting, hosting and analysis for the politics desk. Scott recently completed a 5-part podcast titled "The Speaker," examining Rep. Nancy Pelosi's life and legacy. Previously he collaborated on "Political Breakdown" and on "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown," an eight-part series about the life and extraordinary political career of the former governor. For fun, he plays water polo and swims with the San Francisco Tsunami.

See more Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California.

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CLIMATE ONE: CEO of Nation’s Biggest Utility Talks Affordability, Fires, Outages, and Public Outrage Oct 23, 2026

Show notes

After PG&E pled guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the 2018 Camp Fire, Patti Poppe was brought on as the utility’s new CEO. Her stated mission: to fix it.

Now, rising electricity prices, repeated power outages, and the growing impact of climate change have put PG&E in the crosshairs of the public and legislators. Again.

This summer, California lawmakers rejected a bill that would have capped the utility’s liability if their equipment sparks another fire. In response. PG&E announced it would defer roughly $2 billion in capital investments planned for 2027 as it works to strengthen its finances and, in Poppe’s words, “reinvent” the company. That means plans to connect new housing projects, clean energy initiatives, and some technology upgrades may be put on hold.

In a climate-changed world, is the investor-owned utility model still sustainable? Are utilities putting too much emphasis on profits at the expense of maintenance? And how do utilities across the country balance the needs for affordability, reliability, and climate resilience?

Guests:

Patti Poppe, CEO, Pacific Gas & Electric

Ryan Reed, Co-Founder, FireGeneration Collaborative

Kyle Trefny, Seasonal wildland firefighter; Co-Founder, FireGeneration Collaborative

For show notes, transcripts, and related links, visit ⁠our episode page.⁠

00:00 – Introduction

03:30 – PG&E CEO on rising costs of electricity

06:50 – Is PG&E beholden to Wall Street instead of Main Street?

10:00 – Why the utility hasn’t put more power lines underground

12:00 – Poppe on how data centers could help normal ratepayers with lower costs

19:00 – Can the grid handle all this new demand from data centers and electrification?

20:45 – Wildfire risk and liability

27:30 – Customer outrage about power outages, more calls to break up PG&E

30:00 – How much would it cost for San Francisco to buy out PG&E

32:00 – Lightning round

40:00 – Ryan Reed and Kyle Trefny on history of wildfire and fire suppression

45:00 – Reed and Trefny on the work of FireGen Collaborative

49:00 – “Good fire” versus catastrophic, climate-fueled wildfires

57:00 – Climate One More Thing

On November 5 at 5:30 p.m., join Climate One and the Children & Nature Network for an evening with Richard Louv, author of the internationally bestselling Last Child in the Woods. Tickets are available at ⁠climateone.org/events⁠

Support Climate One by going ad-free! Subscribe to Climate One on ⁠Patreon⁠ for exclusive access to all future episodes, free of ads. ⁠Sign up today⁠.

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Katie Sanders: Ortiz’s War Oct 22, 2026

Show notes

Peter Ortiz’s path to becoming the most battle-decorated member of America’s first spy agency—and one of the most decorated Marines of World War II—was unlike any other. Born in New York and raised in both California and France, he was a merchant seaman, dude ranch manager, race car driver, lion tamer, circus performer, and Hollywood stuntman and actor. As a teenager, Ortiz ran away from boarding school to join the French Foreign Legion. He fought in North Africa against Saharan tribesmen, and on the front lines against the Germans in 1940, where he was badly wounded and captured. But he repeatedly escaped, one time fleeing a hospital train after assuming the identity of a dead soldier.

Arriving in the United States the day after Pearl Harbor, Ortiz immediately enlisted in the Marine Corps. Since he could speak French like a native, and get by in Arabic, German and Spanish, Ortiz was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—America’s World War II forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency—for special operations in North Africa and Europe.

In 1944, Ortiz parachuted into France on two top-secret Allied missions. Operating behind enemy lines, he traveled throughout Southeastern France—at times donning his Marine uniform—arming and training the Maquis, blowing up Nazi infrastructure, and aiding downed Allied airmen. Using many secret identities, including fashion designer and minor Vichy government official, he infiltrated Nazi gatherings and funneled intelligence about German positions back to OSS London ahead of D-Day. By the time he escaped across the Pyrenees, he was on the Gestapo’s most wanted list.

Two months after the Normandy landings, Ortiz parachuted back into the French Alps, this time with a team of Americans to drop more than 150 tons of supplies for the Maquis to fight with. When his six-man patrol was surrounded by more than 100 Germans in the village of Centron, Ortiz decided to surrender rather than have the furious Nazis annihilate the French villagers.

Join us to hear Katie Sanders discuss Ortiz’s highly decorated career as a Marine, fighting behind enemy lines during World War II, displaying extraordinary courage, resistance, and self-sacrifice.

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.

Organizer: George Hammond

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CLIMATE ONE: Kate Marvel on Fear, Wonder, and Leaving NASA Oct 16, 2026

Show notes

Climate scientist Kate Marvel made headlines this year when she publicly resigned from NASA, drawing coverage from Bloomberg to The New York Times. Marvel says her resignation wasn’t newsworthy on its own. What made it notable is that she was one of more than 10,000 Ph.D. scientists to leave the federal government during President Trump’s second term, part of what she calls a “mass nerd exodus.”

She is now senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown and author of “Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet.” Marvel argues that scientists need to stop hiding their feelings behind the data.

“When we pretend we don’t have emotions, that’s not making us more credible, because that’s lying,” she says. “You can feel a whole range of human emotions and still get the numbers right.”

Guests:

Kate Marvel, Senior climate scientist, Project Drawdown; author, “Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet”

Michael McPhaden, Senior oceanographer, University of Washington

For show notes, transcripts, and related links, visit ⁠ClimateOne.org⁠.

Highlights:

00:00:00 Intro

00:02:24 Kate Marvel on if leaving NASA was newsworthy

00:08:05 Kate Marvel on why science should be publicly funded

00:12:18 Kate Marvel on “emergency break” solution

00:15:01 Kate Marvel on why feelings are a major topic in her book

00:18:11 Kate Marvel on which emotion was hardest to write about

00:23:06 Kate Marvel on which emotion isn’t discussed enough

00:26:27 Kate Marvel on when she felt wonder

00:30:36 Kate Marvel on how to talk about climate change

00:33:28 Kate Marvel on why it’s not too late

00:37:18 Michael McPhaden on this year’s El Niño

00:39:40 Michael McPhaden on the hurricane season

00:41:06 Michael McPhaden on the Climate change and El Niño connection

00:46:12 Michael McPhaden on what people should look out for

******

On October 20 at 6 p.m. join us, in partnership with The Redford Center, for a screening of the short film In Earth We Trust, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker, the film’s central figure, and other faith leaders. Tickets available at ⁠climateone.org/events⁠

On November 5 at 5:30 p.m., join Climate One and the Children & Nature Network for an evening with Richard Louv, the internationally bestselling author of Last Child in the Woods. Tickets available at ⁠climateone.org/events⁠

Support Climate One by going ad-free! Subscribe to Climate One on ⁠Patreon⁠ for exclusive access to all future episodes, free of ads. ⁠Sign up today⁠.

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Miriam Pawel: The Making and Remaking of the University of California Oct 16, 2026

Show notes

Miriam Pawel returns to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to discuss the issues raised in her latest book, an epic history of the sweeping social impact of the world’s largest higher education institution, the University of California, and what it can teach us in a time of educational crisis.

Set apart by its founding mission to be an engine of upward mobility, the University of California system is a great American experiment that has endured in spite of fraught battles over access, funding and leadership.

Ever since the Civil War, the university has been at the nexus of nearly every public policy decision and social movement in the Golden State, from affirmative action to immigration to student protests. Pawel narrates the UC’s rise and resilience through the lens of those whose lives it has transformed—in particular, five pioneering graduates whose diverse paths underscore why UC remains, in the words of Berkeley graduate Joan Didion, “California’s best idea of itself.”

At a time of staggering inequality and uncertainty, as higher education faces unprecedented threats, that role has never been more crucial or more difficult. Pawel weaves the history of the inexorably linked school and state in all its drama, significance, and humanity, providing a clear-eyed analysis of the university’s roots with an incisive lesson, and a glimmer of hope, for our future.

ORGANIZERGeorge HammondNOTES

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