Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

ACLU’s Cecillia Wang: Defending Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in Hostile Times Nov 23, 2025

Show notes

Join Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU, to hear the latest on the organization’s legal strategy to defend civil rights and civil liberties, including the ACLU’s cases against the Trump administration.

Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, the ACLU has filed more than 77 lawsuits on issues ranging from birthright citizenship, ideologically targeted immigration arrests and detentions, racial profiling by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, discrimination against transgender Americans, and termination of federal scientific research grants on disfavored topics such as COVID vaccines or gender and racial disparities in health outcomes.

"Win or lose, it matters when we stand up in court to fight for freedom, due process, and the basic notion that the president is not above the law," Wang has said.

The first woman and the first woman of color to serve as the ACLU’s top lawyer, Wang was formerly director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy and its Immigrant Rights Project.

This on-stage conversation will explore:

Current controversies in constitutional law, civil rights and civil liberties, and where our country—and the Bay Area—stand in historical context
How the upcoming Supreme Court term could impact civil rights
What ordinary citizens can do to help protect our rights and freedoms and U.S. democracy

Join us for this compelling conversation with one of the leaders on the national front lines of fights over immigration, abortion, voting rights, transgender rights and more.

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Week to Week Politics Roundtable and Social Hour: November 17, 2025 Nov 21, 2025

Show notes

The shutdown is over, more Epstein news has dropped, Nancy Pelosi has given notice, and the November election is still reverberating. As the year winds down and we head into the holiday season, let's take stock of the state of politics in the Bay Area, California, and nationally.

Join us for the Week to Week political roundtable. Learn more about the people, trends and topics driving the political news of the day.

Enjoy and learn as our panel of political experts explains what happened and what to expect, and answers your questions.

See other upcoming Week to Week political roundtables, as well as audio and video of past Week to Week programs.

This program contains EXPLICIT language.

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CLIMATE ONE: Joe Manchin: Coal, Climate, and ‘Common Sense’ Nov 21, 2025

Show notes

Joe Manchin grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia, the grandson of a miner and the son of a small-town grocer. His worldview was shaped by a place where energy isn’t an abstract policy debate; it’s the identity of the community and vital for economic survival. Manchin was portrayed as a bit of a villain in liberal circles for his role in blocking or slowing down Biden-era policy goals, including climate policy. Yet he was also the architect of the biggest climate legislation the country has ever enacted: the Inflation Reduction Act.

Now, in the midst of the Trump administration dismantling climate policy and basic political norms, Manchin is calling for a return to compromise and “common sense.”

Episode Guests:

Joe Manchin, Former US Senator, West Virginia

Thomas Ramey, Commercial and Nonprofit Solar Evaluator, Solar Holler

For show notes and related links, visit ⁠ClimateOne.org⁠

Highlights:

00:00 - Intro

05:27 - Joe Manchin on his first senate run

10:42 - Joe Manchin on Build Back Better

19:26 - Joe Manchin on how the Inflation Reduction Act was written

22:51 - Joe Manchin on the dismantling of the IRA

27:21 - Joe Manchin on the effects of climate

31:02 - Joe Manchin on West Virginia’s transition to clean energy

37:10 - Joe Manchin on the state of the country

38:10 - Joe Manchin on how to make the country better

42:56 - Joe Manchin on working together

44:20 - Thomas Ramey on growing up in West Virginia

50:08 - Thomas Ramey on how he talks about solar energy

*******

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CLIMATE ONE: Reports from COP30: Climate Talks in the Amazon Nov 14, 2025

Show notes

The UN climate convention known as COP30 is now underway in Brazil. As the nations of the world gather to discuss their efforts to rein in climate disruption, the facts are clear: we’re not doing enough, fast enough, to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Climate-fueled disasters are increasingly impacting nearly every part of the world.

And in Belém, Brazil, near the heart of the Amazon rainforest where the conference is being held, organizers have promised that Indigenous voices will play a bigger role than in the past. They’ve also billed this as an “implementation COP” where past promises will be turned into action. What practical steps can we hope countries achieve in this year’s negotiations?

Episode Guests:

Ilana Seid, Permanent Representative of Palau to the United Nations; Chair, Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)

Davi Neustein, Sustainability Consultant; Advisor to Marcelo Behar, COP30 Special Envoy

Deborah Sanchez, Director, CLARIFI (Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative), Rights and Resources InitiativeFor show notes and related links, visit ⁠ClimateOne.org⁠.

Highlights:

00:00 - Intro

00:30 – Voters responding to energy and affordability in most recent election

02:00 – COP30 is happening in Brazil, opening remarks by UN leaders

07:00 – Major items on the COP30 agenda

10:30 – Davi Neustein on deliberate choice to hold COP30 in Belém

14:00 – Brazil can speak to Global South and Global North

19:00 – Neustein’s hopes for the COP30 action agenda

21:30 – Weeks before COP, Brazil approved new oil drilling in Amazon

27:00 – Ilana Seid shares climate impacts to her home nation of Palau

29:30 – What an “implementation” COP means

35:30 – Is there a need for a new narrative around climate change?

42:00 – Deborah Sanchez shares story of securing land rights for her community

47:00 – Example of a project funded through CLARIFI (Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative)

51:00 – How COP goal of elevating Indigenous voices is working out in reality

55:00 – What can we learn from the Amazon and how its managed

56:30 – Climate One More Thing

*****

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Justice Anthony Kennedy: Life, Law, and Liberty Nov 11, 2025

Show notes

When President Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988, few could have expected that he would not only serve for 30 years but would also author landmark opinions on such contested issues in American society as abortion, gay rights, and free speech. At the ideological center of an increasingly divided court, Kennedy became the swing vote on many of the Roberts Court’s 5–4 decisions following the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor. He said his principles never wavered; “The cases swing, I don’t.”

That role earned him the monicker “The Decider” by Time magazine. He is the 15th longest-serving Supreme Court justice in American history. But what judicial philosophy guided his time on the bench? How did he keep his judgments separate from his political and religious beliefs? He says it is all owed to a fundamental conviction that neutral principles must drive the decision and an unyielding commitment to the rule of law.

Join us for a live discussion in San Francisco with retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy to learn about his life—beginning in Sacramento, California, and taking him to the center of power in Washington, D.C.—and his approach to the rule of law. These are topics he explores in his new book Life, Law, and Liberty, and you can hear firsthand at Commonwealth Club World Affairs.

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Julia Ioffe: A Feminist History of Modern Russia Nov 10, 2025

Show notes

How was the history of Russia made by its women through the cataclysms of revolution, war, idealism, and defeat? Join us for an engaging tour of Russia through the lives of its women.

Journalist Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union in 1990. She wouldn’t return for nearly two decades, and when she did, she found a country significantly changed. The Soviet Union had tried to portray itself as being on the vanguard of world feminism; today, Russia presents itself as the last bastion of conservative Christian values. How did that happen? What happened to the women of the Soviet era, who served as doctors, engineers and scientists? How, she asks, did they get replaced with women who are just desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home mothers?

It's a topic she explores in her new book Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy. From her own great grandmothers, who were physicians, to Lenin’s lover, who was a feminist revolutionary, to the hundreds of thousands of young Soviet women to fought in the Second World War to the millions of single mothers who repopulated the devastated country—and onward to Pussy Riot and Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Ioffe reveals the failure of the social experimentation of the Soviet era and how it paved the way for the revanchist policies of Vladimir Putin.

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.

This program contains EXPLICIT language.

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NYT’s Kenneth Vogel Exposes the Shadowy World of Foreign Lobbying in D.C. Nov 09, 2025

Show notes

Join us for a special program that goes inside Washington’s murky foreign lobbying industry and reveals the world of the politically connected and powerful Americans who get rich working on behalf of brutal dictators, corrupt oligarchs, and global arms dealers. New York Times investigative reporter Kenneth P. Vogel has used exclusive sources, thousands of documents, and on-the-ground reporting to reveal the people, places, and deals involved in this usually unseen billion-dollar industry.

It's a world of big money, fast cars, pricey cigars and flashy watches. The business of currying favor and influencing U.S. foreign policy on behalf of foreign powers is nothing new, though lately it has attracted more controversy and attention due to some of the outsized characters who rose to prominence during Donald Trump's first term in the White House.

Among them is Robert Stryk, who dresses like a cowboy, failed at several businesses before bluffing his way into relationships in Washington and around the world, amassed wealth, influence, and a reputation for taking deals no one else would touch. Rudy Giuliani, once known as “America’s Mayor,” found his star rising again under Trump; Giuliani leveraged his position as Trump’s personal lawyer into deals with foreign interests who saw him as a direct line to the president. And then there's Hunter Biden, son of a future president and no stranger to the business, having capitalized on his father’s connections since the elder Biden’s days as a senator and vice president.

Don't miss this conversation with Vogel, who relates these stories and more in his new book Devils' Advocates: The Hidden Story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden, and the Washington Insiders on the Payrolls of Corrupt Foreign Interests.

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Jimmy Wales: The Seven Rules of Trust Nov 08, 2025

Show notes

In an age defined by disinformation, division, and deepening suspicion, one question looms large: How do we rebuild fundamental trust in one another?

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales offers an answer in his new book, The Seven Rules of Trust—a sweeping and deeply reflective look at how one of the internet’s most improbable success stories came to be. What began as a scrappy experiment built by strangers is now one of the most utilized sources of information, viewed 11 billion times in just the English language edition alone.

Wales says one of the first challenges the site faced was getting internet strangers to trust one another. There had to be an expectation of civility and fairness—and that others would be acting with good intentions. There had to be trust, and that’s something that needed to be cultivated, maintained, and scaled in communities across the globe.

How did Wikipedia do it? And how did Wikipedia leverage that trust to help it become an authority globally at the same time the public’s trust in so many institutions faded?

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Jimmy Wales as he explores what it takes to build institutions—and relationships—that last. In an era hungry for truth and connection, this dialogue offers a rare glimpse into the power of trust as a foundation for progress.

This program contains EXPLICIT language.

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CLIMATE ONE: Environmental Peacebuilders Working in the Midst of War Nov 07, 2025

Show notes

Fossil-fueled climate disruption is driving political instability around the world. The relationship between climate disasters and conflict are well-established — and also complicated. Even in war-torn regions like Israel and Palestine, people work across political and ethnic divides to address humanitarian and climate crises. The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies has helped bring together Israelis, Palestinians, Moroccans, and Jordanians to study and tackle shared environmental challenges. How does climate disruption reshape cross-border relations? And can climate cooperation become a force for peace?

Episode Guests:

Peter Schwartzstein, Environmental Journalist; Climate Security Researcher

Fareed Mahameed, Assistant Director, Center for Transboundary Water Management, Arava Institute for Environmental Studies

Liana Berlin-Fischler, Associate Director, Center for Applied Environmental Diplomacy, Arava Institute for Environmental Studies

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

Highlights:

12:42 Peter Schwartzstein on seeing the link between climate and violence

21:02 Peter Schwartzstein on the importance of governance

22:56 Peter Schwartzstein on better governance examples

27:17 Peter Schwartzstein on the danger of climate induced violence in the US

31:13 Peter Schwartzstein on new paths for cooperation

36:49 Liana Berlin-Fischler on moving to Israel

37:59 Fareed Mahameed on “fixing the world”

42:16 Fareed Mahameed on being compelled to help

47:05 Fareed Mahameed on figuring out what a community needs most

51:30 Liana Berlin-Fischler on the Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza project

***** 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.

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Joyce Vance: Giving Up is Unforgivable Nov 04, 2025

Show notes

Is this the beginning of a countermovement to Project 2025?
Join us as legal expert Joyce Vance diagnoses our country’s democratic ills and offers a prescription of citizen action as a cure. Vance’s message is a call to action, based on placing our current crisis in historical context and coming up with a vision for what to do next. Despite what she says has been a continued erosion of democratic norms, she remains optimistic and hopeful, even acknowledging the daunting challenges ahead. She’ll explain the legal context, the political history, and the practical reasons behind the rule of law and why it still matters. And she’ll share things you can do—big and small—to right the balance.
Because, as she writes in her Substack columns, we’re all in this together.
Vance is a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama; she is an MSNBC legal analyst, a distinguished visiting lecturer in law at the University of Alabama School of Law, and the co-host of the “#SistersInLaw” and “Café’s Insider” podcasts. October 21, 2025 sees the publication of her first book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy.

NOTE: This podcast contains explicit language.

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