Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Axis of Instability: The U.S., Israel, Iran and the Gulf May 19, 2026

Show notes

What is the outcome of the escalating tensions between the United States, Israel, Iran and Gulf Arab nations?

Join us for a conversation on this timely topic, focusing on the shifting regional balance of power among key actors, their nuclear capabilities and impact on the future proliferation regime, and the outcome of their military and proxy warfare. Experts will analyze the impacts of joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran, the security of critical Gulf shipping lanes, domestic politics, and future scenarios for conflict escalation or stability.

A Middle East 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.

OrganizerBanafsheh Keynoush

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How to Increase Your Luck, with Stanford’s Tina Seelig May 17, 2026

Show notes

Much of what we call luck is the result of deliberate actions and consistent efforts. As Stanford Professor Tina Seelig shared in her popular TED Talk, luck is like the wind—constantly blowing, often unpredictable, and always in motion. To catch the winds of luck, she says you need to construct your sail by doing the internal work that sets the stage for success; recruit your crew by bringing others along; and hoist your sail by acting in ways that lead you closer to your goals. With these practical tools in hand, she says the winds of luck carry you toward the future you dream to live.

Her new book What I Wish I Knew About Luck is filled with memorable examples, personal anecdotes, and behavioral science research. You will learn:

how to stay steady in turbulent waters
how to sail past your limits
how to see problems as opportunities
how to build ladders to larger wins
how to clear clutter on your path to success
how to turn setbacks into stepping stones
how luck is amplified over the course of a lifetime

With her expertise on leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation, Dr. Seelig shares her ideas on how to see and seize opportunities, especially those hidden in plain sight. Opportunities are everywhere, waiting to be discovered!

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Benoit Denizet-Lewis: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation May 16, 2026

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On social media, in recovery meetings, through name-change petitions, deconversion blogs, and political conversion manifestos, we’ve been surrounded by stories of radical personal change. But what does it really mean to shed an old skin? Whose change narratives do we celebrate—and whose do we suspect are performance, reinvention as strategy, or even grift? Emerson College Professor Benoit Denizet-Lewis’s new book You’ve Changed offers a fresh and clarifying lens on how we arrived at this bewildering cultural moment marked by fractured truths, shifting identities, and a public dizzy in a world that seems to be changing too fast and not nearly enough.

Denizet-Lewis introduces us to an unforgettable array of people in flux—including psychedelic reality benders, sexual and gender transitioners, ideological shapeshifters, seemingly reformed murderers—as well as those working to engineer change: psychologists, neuroscientists, name-change specialists, even his own father, a breath and meditation teacher who once wrote a newsletter about “the art and science of transformation.” Intertwined with those portraits of change is Denizet-Lewis’s own reckoning—by turns painful, poignant, and hilarious—with his misfires and epiphanies. He shows us that profound, positive change is possible, but that it is rarely easy, linear or free of consequence.

Denizet-Lewis’s message is aimed at anyone who’s ever tried to become someone new, fix what felt broken, drag someone else into changing, or wondered whether real transformation is more than a myth.

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming.

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.

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CLIMATE ONE: Protest and Beyond: Annie Leonard On What You Can Do May 15, 2026

Show notes

Protest is the ultimate in equal-opportunity political action. As Annie Leonard, former executive director of Greenpeace USA says, "Making change is like laying a stone path across the garden. Peaceful protest may be every 4th or 8th or 200th stone; it helps us get where we want to go but also we need a lot of other stones too.” Leonard explores the history of protests in her new book “Protest: Respect It. Defend It. Use It.”

And while protest is the loudest and most visible tool, it’s only one of many ways to take action. Through community building, through civic engagement, through elected office, through corporate boardrooms, through churches and nonprofit agencies, there are countless paths to exercising power and promoting positive change. In this episode we hear from three leaders working in three different arenas, all toward the same goal.

Guests:

Annie Leonard, Environmental Activist, Author of “Protest: Respect It, Defend It, Use It”

Danielle Lee, Founder, Climate Action Club

James Coleman, City Councilor, South San Francisco

For show notes, transcript, and related links, visit ⁠climateone.org/podcasts⁠

Highlights:

00:00 – Intro

04:00 – Annie Leonard shares the story of the Section 504 sit-ins protest in San Francisco

06:30 – Different ways protest can be effective

08:30 – Leonard on why she puts her body on the line (gets arrested) during protests

16:00 – Leonard on the lawsuit Energy Transfer brought against Greenpeace USA over Standing Rock protests

22:00 – Protecting, defending, and using the right to protest

26:00 – Danielle Lee on organizing younger people around climate and environment

30:30 – Systemic versus personal action

37:00 – James Coleman on the decision to run for office as a tool for effective change

41:00 – Impact of local government

46:30 – How change actually happens

50:00 – Climate One More Thing

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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

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A World on Fire- the perspective from China May 15, 2026

Show notes

There is an ancient saying in China, or perhaps a curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

We appear to be living right in the middle of very interesting times. From wars in Eastern Europe, to regime toppling in Latin America to the conflagration in the Middle East, the world appears to be on fire.

What does China make of these events? How is it affected, given that some of the actors involved on the other side of this administration’s actions are partners of China? Will these events delay or impede its rise to superpower status? And perhaps the most important question of all, how does it affect its relationship with the United States?

Helping us understand the Chinese perspective is noted scholar and commentator on U.S.-China policies Dr. Shao Yuqun. Dr. Shao Yuqun is the director of the Institute for Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macao Studies and senior research fellow of the Center for America Studies. She is frequently called upon to provide the U.S. perspective to a Chinese audience and the Chinese perspective in the United States.

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In Conversation with Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D. May 14, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian's new book, Food Is Medicine, is an urgent indictment of the food we eat, how it is making us sick, and the choices that led us here, and a call for a revolutionary new food system that can mend our health, economy and planet, from a world-renowned expert in nutrition, medicine and public policy.

The food we eat is making us sick, says Dr. Mozaffarian. In the United States and around the world, diet has become the leading cause of illness and premature death, from obesity and diabetes to heart disease and other chronic ailments. Advocates of healthier diets pin the blame on overeating, but the bigger issue is what we under-eat—the dearth of food that nourishes and heals. Harnessing the power of the right foods can do more than prevent illness; it can treat it, extending life while reducing the crippling cost of ill health to our communities and economy. Mozaffarian shows the way, from transforming our own diets to keep us healthy to getting the right foods from our farms, into our stores and onto our plates—all while eating plentifully and pleasurably.

A global authority on the front lines of nutrition science, medicine and public policy, Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H. draws on cutting-edge research to turn complex science into a clear, actionable program to end the health crisis in our homes and communities. Excavating the decisions that led to a broken food system, plagued by the harms of ultraprocessing and ruinous to the environment, he lays out how the meals we eat are damaging our bodies. He reveals the medicinal, healing power of ideal nutrition and introduces the innovators who are pioneering solutions—at the doctor’s office, in supermarkets, in the halls of Congress, and above all for individuals, to empower them to access the foods they need to live well.

Join us as Mozaffarian lays out a vision for a 21st century food system that will restore health, nourishment and equity without sacrificing convenience or choice. In the process, these solutions can revitalize our economy, and even help to heal our planet.

About the Speaker

Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H., is a cardiologist, public health scientist, and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. He has served in numerous advisory roles, including on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, and his work has been featured in an array of media outlets. Thomson Reuters named him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. A fourth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, he lives with his family in Massachusetts. Food Is Medicine is his first book.

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Doris Kearns Goodwin: An Unfinished Love Story May 13, 2026

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Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of America’s best known and most popular historians, having told the stories of great American leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, and others. Now, she delves into her own life and the time she spent with her late husband, Richard Goodwin, to draw out fresh perspectives on many of the central figures of the 1960s.

The Goodwins were married for 42 years. Richard Goodwin helped design LBJ’s Great Society and was a close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Dorris Kearns was a 23-year-old graduate student when she was selected as a White House Fellow; she would work directly for President Johnson and later assisted on his memoir. The couple saw the momentous policies and movements of the 1960s from the inside, and they debated the achievements and failures of the leaders they served, and discussed just how much progress was made and promises left unfulfilled.

Drawing on their lives—not to mention more than 300 boxes of letters, diaries, documents and memorabilia Richard Goodwin had saved for more than five decades—Doris Kearns Goodwin produced her latest book, An Unfinished Love Story. The exploration of those boxes and her shared history with her husband gave them both an opportunity to reassess some of the towering figures of the time: John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and especially LBJ, who greatly impacted both of their lives.

Join us as Doris Kearns Goodwin returns to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to share her unexpected discoveries, fresh appraisals, and the hope that the youth of today will carry forward “this unfinished love story with America.”

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Former US Diplomat Robert Malley on Why the Israeli Palestinian Peace Process Failed, and What's Next for Gaza May 12, 2026

Show notes

On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters killed more than 1,100 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages, prompting an Israeli response that has in turn taken tens of thousands of lives and devastated the Gaza Strip. Why did this happen, and can anything be done to grant peace and justice to Israelis and Palestinians alike?
In their new book Tomorrow Is Yesterday, veteran negotiators Robert Malley and Hussein Agha offer a personal and bracing perspective on how the hopes of the Oslo Peace Process became the horrors of the present. Drawing on their experience advising U.S. presidents (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) and the Palestinian leadership (Arafat and Abbas), and their participation in secret talks over decades, Malley and Agha offer candid portraits of leading figures and an interpretation of the conflict that exposes the delusions of all sides. They stress that the two-state solution became a global goal only when it was no longer viable; that U.S. officials preferred technical schemes to a frank reckoning with the past; that Hamas’s onslaught and Israel’s war of destruction were not historical exceptions but historical reenactments; and that the gaps separating Israelis and Palestinians have less to do with territorial allocation than with history and emotions.
Join Robert Malley to hear about the issues raised in the book and the latest political developments in the region.

*NOTE: This podcast contains explicit language.

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Italianity Program and Wine Tasting May 11, 2026

Show notes

Italy’s vineyards stretch from Alpine peaks to volcanic islands, from rolling Tuscan hills to sun-drenched coastlines. Each glass of Italian wine carries not only the flavor of its land but also the imprint of centuries of tradition, community and culture.

Join us for an exploration of that flavor and soul. Andrea Lonardi, one of Italy’s most respected winemakers and agronomists, and a rare Master of Wine, teamed up with acclaimed wine journalist Jessica Dupuy to create Italianity, a book that traces the cultural thread that united Italy’s native grapes and the people who cultivate them.

From the misty hills of Piedmont and the Alpine slopes of Alto Adige to the volcanic soils of Sicily and the olive groves of Tuscany, Lonardi and Dupuy came face-to-face with the landscapes, families, and traditions that make Italian wine unlike anything else on earth. Join us to hear their tales of unforgettable encounters, cultural reflection, and stories of the Italian wine world, and learn why they say Italian wine is more than a beverage: it is history and heritage, innovation and resilience, the rhythm of the seasons, the joy of the table, and a way of seeing beauty in the everyday

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Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Christophers’: Film Screening Plus Discussion on Art Forgery May 09, 2026

Show notes

In Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, The Christophers, the children of a once famous artist hire a forger to complete some unfinished, long ago abandoned canvases so they’ll have an inheritance when he dies.

Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) was once a star of London’s 1960s and ‘70s pop art explosion, but he hasn’t painted in decades and has been broke for years. His two estranged children (James Corden, Jessica Gunning), desperate for an inheritance, hire Lori, an art restorer and former forger (Michaela Coel), to pose as a prospective assistant in order to access eight unfinished canvases Julian has buried deep in storage. Her plan is to complete them, then return them to storage, where they are to be “discovered” upon Julian’s death.

Join us for this special screening of Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers. After the film, a panel of experts will explore the past, present and future of art forgery—as well as the creative process in general.

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