Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Taste Makers—Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food Dec 09, 2021

Show notes

Join us to learn more about America’s modern culinary history told through the lives of seven pathbreaking chefs and food writers.

Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around the globe? Award-winning author Mayukh Sen has produced a group biography about seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. His book Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes.

Mayukh Sen―a queer, brown child of immigrants―reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration and gender, Sen challenges the way people look at what’s on their plate―and the women whose labor, overlooked for so long, makes those meals possible. He'll be joined on our virtual stage by Alicia Kennedy, author of the popular newsletter "From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy" and a forthcoming book on eating ethnically.

SPEAKERS

Reem Assil

Chef; Owner, Reem’s California and Reem’s California Mission

Alicia Kennedy

Writer; Author, "From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy" Newsletter; Twitter @aliciakennedy

Mayukh Sen

Author, Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America: Twitter @senatormayukh

Michelle Meow

Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show" on KBCW/KPIX TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors; Twitter @msmichellemeow—Co-Host

John Zipperer

Producer and Host, Week to Week Political Roundtable; Vice President of Media & Editorial, The Commonwealth Club—Co-host

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 December 2nd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Around the World in 80 Books Dec 07, 2021

Show notes

Take an illuminating literary voyage around the globe, without any Covid restrictions to hamper your travels, using classic and modern works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them. David Damrosch explores how our idea of the world has been shaped by 80 exceptional books, following an itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel Prize–winners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan, and Olga Tokarczuk.

To chart the expansive landscape of world literature today, Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds: the world of their personal experience and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, hard-bitten crime fiction as well as haunting works of fantasy, and the formative tales that introduce us as children to the world we’re entering. Taken together, these 80 books offer us fresh perspectives on enduring problems, from the social consequences of epidemics to the rising inequality that Thomas More designed Utopia to combat, as well as the patriarchal structures against which many heroines have to struggle—from the work of Murasaki Shikibu a millennium ago to Margaret Atwood today.

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

SPEAKERS

David Damrosch

Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature, and Chair of Comparative Literature Department, Harvard University; Director, Harvard’s Institute for World Literature; Author, Around the World in 80 Books

George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates

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The New Peace Corps: An interview with the Acting Director Dec 07, 2021

Show notes

In March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peace Corps returned more than 7,000 volunteers to the United States from the countries around the world where they were based.

There have been many discussions and conferences advocating for changes in the structure, mission, and goals of the Peace Corps as it celebrates the 60th year since its founding by President John F. Kennedy. The Peace Corps is passionate about working to strengthen the impact of its mission both at home and abroad as well as promoting diversity and inclusion to enhance the relativity and substance of its work.

The Peace Corps, a government agency, is headed by Carol Spahn, the acting director. Currently, the mission of the Peace Corps is to promote world peace and friendship through community-based development and cross cultural understanding through three important core goals: building local capacity, sharing America with the world, and bringing the world back home.

Glenn Blumhorst is the president of the National Peace Corps Association ,which is a mission-driven social impact non-government organization that encourages and celebrates lifelong commitment to Peace Corps ideals and assists the Peace Corps.

Please join us as we discuss what the future of the Peace Corps will look like.

SPEAKERS

Carol Spahn

Acting Director, Peace Corps

Glenn Blumhorst

President, National Peace Corps Association

Frank Price

Vice Chair, Commonwealth Club International Relations Member-Led Forum—Moderator

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(Re)Filling Those Seats: California Theatre Challenges Dec 03, 2021

Show notes

Brad Erickson, departing long-time Theatre Bay Area executive director, introduces top new Bay Area artistic leaders. They will challenge each other and viewers about repertory, risks, delights and post-COVID theatre-making.

What's changed in the theatre producing community? What will (re)fill those seats?

MLF ORGANIZER

Anne W. Smith

NOTES

MLF: Arts

In Association with Theatre Bay Area.

SPEAKERS

Sean San Jose

Artistic Director, Magic Theatre

Johanna Pfaelzer

Artistic Director, Berkeley Repertory Theater

Khalia Davis

Artistic Director, Bay Area Children's Theatre

Tim Bond

Artistic Director, Theatreworks

Brad Erickson

Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area

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 December 1st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Artists, San Quentin and San Francisco Opera’s 'Fidelio' Dec 03, 2021

Show notes

During the current production of San Francisco Opera's Fidelio (October 14–30, 2021) at San Francisco's recently reopened War Memorial Opera House, there is an arts display about struggle and liberation. As part of the opera's ancillary events, the display relates to the Arts in Corrections programs with prisoners at San Quentin.

Moderator Cole Thomason-Redus will share exhibit and production visuals at the meeting. Cole is educational content curator in the Department of Diversity, Equity and Community at San Francisco Opera.

Artist Carol Newborg has said that the role of art in prison to help people heal and change confirms for her the necessity of art to life. For the past decade she has been the organizer of exhibitions and public panels and readings at the William James Association.

San Francisco Opera singer Erin Neff is dedicated to advocating for incarcerated women in the California prison system.

MLF ORGANIZER

Anne W. Smith

NOTES

MLF: Arts

In association with San Francisco Opera.

SPEAKERS

Erin Neff

Singer; Stage Director; Voice Instructor; Advocate for incarcerated women

Carol Newborg

Artist; Exhibition and Public Panels/Readings Organizer, William James Association

Cole Thomason-Redus

Educational Content Curator, Department of Diversity, Equity & Community, San Francisco Opera—Moderator

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 25th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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CLIMATE ONE: What the Infrastructure Deal Means for Climate Dec 03, 2021

Show notes

President Biden recently signed the biggest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history into law. To be sure, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act got pared down significantly from what was first put on the table, but the final measure still contains five times more money for projects aimed at mitigating the climate crisis than the best legislation the Obama administration could get through. What did it take to get 19 Republican senators (not to mention Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) to vote with the Democrats? And with the states being given great latitude over how to spend the money, will the billions available for highways negate any positive climate impacts?

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts

Guests:

Carla Frisch, Principal Deputy Director, Office of Policy, U.S. Department of Energy

Sasha Mackler, Executive Director, The Energy Project, Bipartisan Policy Center

Beth Osborne, Director, Transportation for America

Michael Grunwald, journalist, author, The New New Deal

Support our work: climateone.org/donate

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Climate + Justice: Young Activists Speak Out Dec 02, 2021

Show notes

As the devastating effects of climate change take hold around the world, young people are demanding action from global leaders and, increasingly, taking action themselves. Ask a teenager or young adult which issues they think are most pressing in the world today, and climate will often top the list.

One of the goals of our Creating Citizens initiative is to provide a forum for youth to meet and learn from peers and civic leaders about the complex and often controversial issues that are important to them. So it is with special pride that we present a panel of young climate activists discussing their own work and the power of youth to address the climate crisis and issues of racial and social injustice around the world.

SPEAKERS

Samir Chowdhury

Founder and Executive Director, Youth Climate Action Team, Inc.

Vanessa Nakate

Author, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis

Zaria Romero

Climate Generation Delegate, COP26; Junior, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Darren Zook

Professor, Global Studies and Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

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Linda Greenhouse: The Supreme Court at the Brink Dec 02, 2021

Show notes

Over the past four years, the United States Supreme Court has seen drastic changes to its members, from the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett. At the end of the 2019–20 term, followers of the Supreme Court noted that a new "center" of the court was holding under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts. By the end of the 2020–21 term, much about the nation's highest court had changed, reflecting a conservative supermajority enabled by jurors nominated by President Donald Trump. Many observers of the court expect these shifts to continue and deepen, making this past year a critical pivot point in the history of the Supreme Court, and American politics as a whole.

In her new book, Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitizer Prize winner and one of the best-known chroniclers of the Supreme Court of her generation, explores the end of the 2020–21 term for the court, the changes that have occurred in the past year, and what the future holds for the court in these increasingly partisan times. Greenhouse covers everything from the death of Justice Ginsburg to the rise of Justice Comey Barrett, from the pandemic to the disputed 2020 election, putting the happenings around the Supreme Court at the center of the country's partisan political disputes.

Please join us for an important conversation on the U.S. Supreme Court and its increasing role in American society with a writer who knows the court and its politics as well as anyone in America.

SPEAKERS

Linda Greenhouse

Contributing Op-Ed Writer, The New York Times; Clinical Lecturer in Law, Senior Research Scholar in Law, Yale Law School; Author, Justice on the Brink

In Conversation with Lara Bazelon

Professor of Law and Director of Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs, University of San Francisco

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 November 30th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Jonathan Karl with Martha Raddatz: The Final Act of the Trump Show Nov 30, 2021

Show notes

Veteran journalist Jonathan Karl has known and covered Donald J. Trump longer than any other White House reporter. And during that time, he has been praised, taunted and branded an enemy of the people by President Trump himself.

So possibly nobody is in a better position to tell the story of the shocking final chapter of the Trump show than Karl. In his new book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl takes us behind the scenes of some of the darkest days in American history and shares what happened during the final weeks of the Trump presidency, the aftermath that followed, and what it means for the future of the Republican Party.

SPEAKERS

Jonathan Karl

Chief White House Correspondent and Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News; Author, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show; Twitter @jonkarl

In Conversation with Martha Raddatz

ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and Co-Anchor of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”; Twitter @MarthaRaddatz

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 November 17th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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CLIMATE ONE: REWIND Finding the Heart to Talk About Climate Nov 26, 2021

Show notes

Ever have a difficult conversation about climate? Pretty much everyone has. Knowing all the facts and figures only goes so far when talking to someone who just doesn’t agree. So how do we break through the barriers? Scientists trained to present information in a one-way lecture format face a particular challenge: they first need to unlearn old habits.

“Everybody's trying to figure out ‘how do we move past this idea that just arming people with facts will lead to a better world,’ right, because we’ve just seen that that’s absolutely not true,” says Faith Kearns, author of Getting to the Heart of Science Communication.

Kearns argues that we all need to move from an “information deficit” model of communication – where it’s assumed that the audience simply needs more information – to a relational model, where the science communicator does as much listening as talking in order to first find empathy and common ground.

Guests:

Faith Kearns, author, Getting to the Heart of Science Communication

Katerina Gonzales, doctoral research fellow, Stanford University

Support our work: climateone.org/donate

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