Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Ben Davis: Can Can Francisco Become The Florence of a New Renaissance? Oct 04, 2026

Show notes

Join us for a conversation with Ben Davis, creator of the Bay Lights and City of Awe, and founder of the San Francisco nonprofit Illuminate, and Garry Tan, president and CEO of Y Combinator.

San Francisco might be the most important city in the world right now. The arc of human consciousness is being defined here. Artificial intelligence is racing forward on fear as much as ambition, which makes it inherently reckless. Davis, founder of the San Francisco nonprofit Illuminate, believes the antidote is culture. He has declared San Francisco the “City of Awe”—that rare blend of beauty and terror the moment demands.

Y Combinator’s Garry Tan—whose firm has funded much of the AI wave and who has spent years personally invested in San Francisco’s own civic future—joins Davis to explore where imagination and acceleration meet, and what public art can teach an industry built on speed. San Francisco’s destiny, Davis argues, isn’t to inspire the world through the technology it creates, but through how we choose to live: the civilization we build around living, working and visiting here.

Will this era, and what comes next, be defined by technology or by humanity? Can this next wave of wealth become an unprecedented wave of shared fruit—on our streets, in our parks, in our open and shared spaces?

ORGANIZERRobert Melton

NOTES

An Arts 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.

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Women Empowering Women #3: Creating Financial Abundance Oct 02, 2026

Show notes

Join us for the third event in the popular Women Empowering Women series: Creating Financial Abundance. The evening focuses on fiscal management, budgeting, investment strategies, and resources so women in the arts can take charge of their financial futures and build a foundation for long-term security and wealth.

We’ll hear from:

Regina Tsai, Schwab Certified Financial Planner and Wealth Strategist
Sheila Cunningham, executive coach, teacher and workshop trainer
Victoria Veedell, San Francisco-based landscape painter

Our moderator will be Debra Reabock, Women Empowering Women MLF chair.

The Women Empowering Women series was created by NCWCA (Northern California Women's Caucus for Art) and presented at the Commonwealth Club. This is a series encouraging women and their supporters to embrace challenges and create pathways for achievement.

After the panel, there will be an interactive discussion followed by a light reception.

About the Speakers

Regina Tsai, is a Schwab Certified Financial Planner and Wealth Strategist who has been a senior wealth advisor since 2017. As a core member of a Schwab Wealth Advisory Team, her process is to get to know you and your family’s financial situation and offer guidance on strategies that fit your specific needs. To help align your portfolio’s asset allocation with your goals, she provides periodic investment recommendations along with insights from the Schwab Center for Financial Research and her team of Schwab specialists. Regina works closely with your financial consultant to help you develop a personalized wealth management strategy and build a customized portfolio that complements both your short- and long-term goals.

Sheila is an executive coach, teacher and workshop trainer for business owners, managers and entrepreneurs. Her focus is on practical tools that give her clients a solid grasp of financials, organizational management, and sales process to increase profits and profitability. Sheila’s career has been spent studying successful and unsuccessful businesses as a reporter and editor at BusinessWeek magazine, a buy-side equity analyst at investment firms and 10 years as an entrepreneur. She has a BA in economics from Bryn Mawr College and an MBA in finance from NYU. Sheila is trustee and treasurer of the Mechanics’ Institute and a member of the Financial Women of San Francisco.

Victoria Veedell is a San Francisco-based landscape painter whose work explores the emotional memory of place through light, atmosphere, and color. Her paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Triton Museum, Olive Hyde Gallery, Maturango Museum, Chico Art Center, Aerena Galleries, James Baird Gallery (Canada), and the Sakai Museum (Japan). She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Director's Choice Award at the Triton Museum of Art, and has been selected for prestigious artist residencies in Greece, Iceland, Finland, Japan, India, Canada, Vermont, Virginia, and California.

Our moderator Debra Reabock is the chair of Commonwealth Club World Affairs' Women Empowering Women member-led forum. She is an architectural photographer and photo philanthropist, and is the outreach chair of the Northern California Women Caucus for Art (NCWCA).

In partnership with NCWCA (Northern California Women's Caucus for Art) and the Schwab Corporation,

A Women Empowering Women and Arts 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: Debra Reabock

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CLIMATE ONE: How Can Cities Be Green and Affordable? Live from NY Climate Week Oct 02, 2026

Show notes

New York sets some of the country's most ambitious climate goals, from slashing emissions to bracing for rising seas. But living in the city is freaking expensive. So what does it take for NYC to be affordable and climate-conscious?

In collaboration with Grist, we put that question to the city’s chief climate officer, a Grist reporter, and a grassroots leader during New York Climate Week. Listen as we discuss the places where climate, decarbonization, and affordability collide – and the ways people are working to make life better for New Yorkers while keeping both costs and carbon down.

Guests:

Daphany Rose Sanchez, Executive Director, Kinetic Communities Consulting

Jake Bittle, Staff Writer, Grist

Louise Yeung, NYC Chief Climate Officer

Jonathan Gilmour, Co-Executive Director, The Impact Project

Highlights:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:02:10 Jake Bittle on New York delaying climate goals

00:03:53 Daphany Rose Sanchez on the impact of delaying climate goals

00:05:31 Daphany Rose Sanchez on what’s missing in the affordability conversation

00:08:12 Jake Bittle on the affordability and climate connection

00:11:13 Daphany Rose Sanchez on the projects she’s excited about

00:14:37 Louise Yeung on the ability to address climate and affordability

00:18:25 Louise Yeung on the role of a public utility advocate

00:21:57 Louise Yeung on the battery-powered food cart pilot program

00:29:50 Louise Yeung on the challenge of implementing policy citywide

00:34:32 Louise Yeung on the headwinds facing climate work

00:37:23 Jonathan Gilmour on what motivated him to host community climate gatherings

00:40:34 Jonathan Gilmour on what people talked about at the community gatherings

00:43:21 Jonathan Gilmour on preserving climate data

00:48:38 Jonathan Gilmour improving the climate data that was preserved

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

***

Join us on October 14 at 6 p.m. for a conversation with PG&E CEO Patti Poppe on energy affordability, outages, and public outrage. Tickets available at ⁠climateone.org/events⁠

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

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.

Ad sales by ⁠Multitude⁠. Contact them for ad inquiries at ⁠multitude.productions/ads⁠

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Building Community Through Network Leadership Sep 30, 2026

Show notes

Join us for this lively Transforming Our Region forum program on network leadership and building community, featuring Jane Wei-Skillern. Together, we will explore how to collaborate in ways that catalyze systems change for a Bay Area where people and nature thrive.

Strong communities are built not just through programs and organizations, but through relationships, trust, and shared leadership. In this highly interactive program, participants will explore key principles of network leadership and learn practical approaches for strengthening collaboration across individuals, organizations, and sectors to catalyze systems change. Through facilitated small-group discussions, participants will experience firsthand how networks create value by connecting people, sharing resources, and mobilizing collective action. Whether you are leading an organization, community initiative, or volunteering in your community, this session will provide tools and insights to help cultivate stronger, more resilient communities across our region.

About the Speaker

Jane Wei-Skillern is a senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a recognized thought leader on network leadership and social impact. She has spent more than two decades researching and advising leaders, organizations, foundations, and collaboratives on how to achieve greater impact through networks rather than through organizational growth alone. She is a former faculty member at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard Business School. Jane's work has helped shape the field of network leadership by demonstrating how trust, reciprocity, shared purpose, and distributed leadership enable groups to accomplish what no single organization can achieve independently. She works with practitioners around the world to strengthen collaborative capacity and advance systems-level change.

ORGANIZERAnne Smith & Matt Biggar

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The Battle of Titans: Saudi Arabia vs. Iran Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

Join us this evening for a deep-dive military and geopolitical program analyzing the decades-long regional cold and hot wars, proxy conflicts, and strategic power struggles for dominance in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

At the heart of this analysis lies their relationship with the United States, which is a linchpin of the Saudi-Iranian conflict and the solution to ending it.

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 KeynoushNOTES

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Rightsizing for Your Next Chapter Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

A desire to simplify, an upcoming move, a remodel, and general overwhelm are among the many reasons we are called to rightsize our lives. The things that occupy our closets and shelves have all sorts of memories and hopes attached to them. Those same things can also be obligations or burdens. Deciding what to shed and how to go about it can be overwhelming in its own way.

That’s where life organizer Debra Baida comes in. For close to 20 years, she has been empowering and guiding people through their life transitions. She is an empathic facilitator with a focus on making the paring-down process as navigable and sustainable as possible. Creating space while simultaneously holding space are among her superpowers. Deb is also a go-to resource for donating and rehoming unwanted items. Keeping useful things out of landfill is essential to her work ethic.

About the Speakers

Debra Baida is a life organizer and founder of Liberated Spaces, which she opened in 2007 after two decades working as a picture editor. Her award-winning company has been a San Francisco Green Business since 2008 and became the fifth certified Green Business Innovator in California in 2018. Deb has been a featured guest on KQED’s Forum and a presenter at Stanford d.school. She appeared in a "PBS Newshour" story about San Francisco’s zero-waste goals. Her organizing tips have been included in media outlets including Reader’s Digest, Food Network, San Francisco Chronicle, and Homes & Gardens (UK).

Nigel Poor is an artist and podcaster whose work explores the ways people leave behind evidence of their existence. In 2011, Nigel got involved with San Quentin State Prison as a volunteer teacher for Mount Tamalpais College. In 2017, she co-founded the prison-based podcast, "Ear Hustle," a Pulitzer Prize finalist and two-time Peabody Award nominee. Her work as a visual artist has been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in museum collections, including the SFMOMA and the M.H. deYoung Museum. Nigel is a professor of photography at California State University, Sacramento. She’s the author of The San Quentin Project, published by Aperture, and co-author of This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life.

ORGANIZER Denise M. Michaud

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Alex Wagner: The Steal Sep 27, 2026

Show notes

For critics of the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, much attention and ire is focused on the new justices appointed by President Donald Trump. But journalist Alex Wagner says the key president to note is Ronald Reagan, whose 1980 election marked a distinct right turn for American governance.

Wagner, host of Crooked Media’s “Runaway Country,” says Reagan’s election marked the return to power of the conservative right after many decades on the fringes: Tax cuts, aggressive foreign policy, and law and order would soon become the cornerstones of Reagan’s agenda. But, behind the scenes, a select group of administration officials and ideological allies had their eyes set on something much more valuable: an institution with the power to shape the country’s legal, cultural and existential identity, long after any presidential term ended.

Wagner says California’s own Ed Meese, an Alameda County district attorney, lawyer and aide to Reagan from his days as governor, knew exactly what he had to do to seize the Supreme Court: get as many judges on the bench as possible, and make sure they were as conservative as he was on issues like abortion rights, taxes and criminal justice. Working in parallel to achieve the same goal were a band of fellow true believers: Paul Weyrich, a firebrand organizer; Joe Coors, the beer magnate whose fortune funded many of Weyrich’s efforts; and Robert Bork, the towering legal intellect of the right and an important mentor to a few young law students starting a new organization called The Federalist Society.

By the end of the decade, these men would change the face of the American judiciary forever. Join us as Wagner draws on the work in her new book The Steal to go into the closed-door meetings, public nomination hearings, and back rooms of American political power to reveal the story behind one of the most significant moments in American history, and how it affects us to this day.

This content has EXPLICIT language.

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Recipe for Impact: How Sunnydale Market’s Social Enterprise Model Works Sep 26, 2026

Show notes

What happens when community knowledge, nonprofit purpose, business expertise, and long-term philanthropy come together to solve a basic neighborhood need?

San Francisco’s Sunnydale Market offers a compelling and nutritious answer.

Created in response to residents’ love of neighborhood, and their need for fresh and affordable groceries, the Sunnydale Market is catalyzed by community voices, the nonprofit 18 Reasons, and the for-profit Bi-Rite Family of Businesses. The Sunnydale Market partnership finds its home in a larger redevelopment made possible by Mercy Housing, Related Companies, and HOPE SF.

It is important that this partnership is made financially possible by a long-term commitment from Crankstart. Crankstart funding covers core operating costs so that fresh groceries can be offered to the Sunnydale community at wholesale cost. Sunnydale Market will anchor a thriving neighborhood hub, provide new and better jobs, and attract customers and visitors to Sunnydale to boost other neighborhood businesses and groups.

The Social Impact Forum will ask whether this promising model can create a market that will endure and that can be replicated elsewhere, while also considering community ownership and intergenerational wealth creation as important reference points in the broader social-enterprise landscape.

You’re invited to be part of this warm group discussion, and exchanging ideas with others over the subsequent community reception, with food and beverages provided by Bi-Rite.

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Francis Fukuyama: In the Realm of the Last Man Sep 26, 2026

Show notes

Francis Fukuyama, a leading public intellectual—including repeated popular appearances at the Club—is well-known for his significant, bestselling works of political philosophy and history. Now, for the first time, he examines his own political and intellectual evolution across five transformative decades.

In his new memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man, Fukuyama invites us to follow him from the circle of students around the conservative intellectual Allan Bloom at Cornell, into the halls of power in Washington and at the RAND Corporation, and into private conversations with world leaders from Muammar Qaddhafi to China’s powerful elite. Fukuyama touches on his family’s story, including his relatives’ internment during World War II along with other Japanese Americans. And, in surprisingly personal terms, he reflects on the experiences that led him to reevaluate his own thinking, most notably his dramatic public break with the neoconservative movement over the invasion of Iraq.

Join us as Francis Fukuyama returns to the Commonwealth Club World Affairs stage to share his look at his own personal history as political history―the story of a life that illuminates the troubled fate of democracy and liberalism over the last 50 years. Returning to and developing the concepts that have been central to his work―recognition, thymos, trust, identity, human nature, institutions, and the Last Man―Fukuyama brings the depth and richness of personal experience and pathbreaking scholarship to illuminate the crises of the 21st century.

Come see how a major thinker grapples in real time with the convulsions of history—and looks ahead to our possible future.

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Emily Wilson, Translotor of the Iliad and the Odyssey: Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea Sep 25, 2026

Show notes

Emily Wilson, whose translations of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad have captured a generation’s imagination, joins us virtually to explore the complicated terrain of reading and writing about the ancient past. Drawing on 20 years of scholarship and teaching, Wilson reviews the difficult choices that translators must make, the pleasures of finding new solutions to old problems, and the inevitable frustrations of never fully capturing what is in the original work.

Ranging from the politics of Helen of Troy to the obscenities of Aristophanes, from Roman imitations of Greek models to contemporary debates over “foreignizing” and “domesticizing” styles, Wilson examines how modern norms of gender, sexuality, violence, humor and power complicate our readings of ancient works. And how, even though translation always risks denaturing what is unique and strange about the ancient world, it continues to enrich our understanding of it.

In Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, Wilson has created an introduction to the wonders of Greek and Roman literature, an invitation to encounter ancient cultures anew, and a manifesto for the value of translation in a rapidly changing world.

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