Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Michael Gerhardt: The Laws of Presidential Impeachment Mar 08, 2024

Show notes

President Joe Biden is being threatened with impeachment by the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives. His predecessor, Donald Trump, was twice impeached by a Democratic-led House. Three presidents earlier, Bill Clinton was impeached. No president has ever been removed from office as the result of an impeachment, but it continues to be a high-profile way to go after the president of the United States.

But what exactly is impeachment? Why is it included in the U.S. Constitution? How does the process work?

Constitutional scholar Michael Gerhardt offers a comprehensive, nonpartisan, and up-to-date explanation of the Constitution’s various mechanisms for holding presidents accountable for misdeeds real and imagined. He is the author of the new book The Law of Presidential Impeachment, which draws on a lifetime of scholarly research, as well as Gerhardt’s unique experience as a witness and consultant in the impeachment trials of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

Join us as Gerhardt offers new perspectives on impeachment, arguing that it cannot be properly understood in a vacuum, but must instead be viewed in the context of its coordination with such other mechanisms as criminal prosecutions, censure, elections, congressional oversight, and the Fourteenth and Twenty-Fifth Amendments.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Duhigg: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection Mar 07, 2024

Show notes

Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In his new book Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and storytelling skills to show how people can learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.

Duhigg says communication is a superpower, and the best communicators understand that whenever we speak, we’re actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What’s this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). If you don’t know what kind of conversation you’re having, you’re unlikely to connect. "Supercommunicators" know the importance of recognizing—and then matching—each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen. He says that our experiences, our values, our emotional lives—and how we see ourselves and others—shape every discussion, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work. Learn why some people are able to make themselves heard, and to hear others, so clearly.

From the writers’ room of "The Big Bang Theory" to the couches of leading marriage counselors, Duhigg will show how to recognize these three conversations—and teach the tips and skills needed to navigate them more successfully.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mayor London Breed: The State of San Francisco Mar 06, 2024

Show notes

San Francisco Mayor London Breed returns to The Commonwealth Club World Affairs for a state-of-the-city program, taking stock of the city’s present and looking forward to its future. What can the city do to spur downtown revival? How can it reduce the problems of fentanyl, homelessness, and crime?

She’ll also share her thoughts on ballot measures facing voters in the March elections, including Proposition C (making it easier to convert office properties into housing), Proposition E (expanding the ability of police to pursue suspects), Proposition F (identifying and requiring treatment for drug abuse disorder among people receiving cash assistance).

Breed, elected in 2018, is the city’s 45th mayor and its first Black woman mayor. She was born and raised in San Francisco. Before she became mayor, Breed served as a member and president of the city’s Board of Supervisors.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

'Island in Between': Taiwan Film Screening and Discussion Mar 05, 2024

Show notes

The rural Taiwanese outer islands of Kinmen sit merely 2 miles off the coast of China. Kinmen attracts tourists for its remains from the 1949 Chinese Civil War. It also marks the frontline for Taiwan in its escalating tension with China.

Filmmaker S. Leo Chiang weaves lyrical vignettes of tourist visits and local life with his own narrative as someone negotiating ambivalent personal bonds to Taiwan, China, and the United States. Island in Between explores the uneasy peace in these islands, and contemplates Taiwan's uncertain future. The film was recently nominated for an Academy Award in the documentary short category.

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

This program contains EXPLICIT CONTENT.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oakland Forum: How Leaders Are Building Communities in Oakland Mar 04, 2024

Show notes

Join us for a new Commonwealth Club experience as we launch the first of our new series of Oakland Forums, taking place at Fluid 510 in downtown Oakland.

In our inaugural program, we're featuring Oakland leaders discussing building community in this time of serious challenges facing Oakland and other big cities.

About the Speakers

Darin Balaban is a self-taught visual artist with a focus on painting, multimedia pieces, and large-scale murals. He is considered to be part of the new-wave "post-vandalism" movement, which blurs the line between street art tropes and contemporary abstraction. Balaban's art practice has led him to exhibit in multiple galleries and lead large-scale projects domestically.

Shirley Gee is a managing partner at Angel Plus, LLC, a trusted validation firm of later stage, start-up corporations in anticipation of capitalization. Gee is an active Accredited Investor; chair of the Life Science Committee; a member of Technology Transfer Committee; and team lead for due diligence specializing in life science, medical devices, IOT, clean technology and renewal and alternative energy.

Joe Hawkins is a noted Oakland-based community organizer, LGBTQ advocate, nonprofit executive, event producer, and social entrepreneur. Hawkins first came to national prominence as one of the first gay men to ever appear as a guest on the iconic Oprah Winfrey talk show during the early 90's, defending his right to parent his son as an out gay man. He is a co-founder and former co-chair of Oakland Pride and was voted Grand Marshall of both the San Francisco and Oakland Pride Parades. He worked as a founding program member and CEO of OpNet Community Ventures, one of America's first high-tech training programs, launched in 1995, for low income youth and youth of color in San Francisco. Hawkins was regional director for Innovative Housing, a shared housing nonprofit for low-income families and individuals in Marin County. He worked as the director of administration at AIDS Project of the East Bay (APEB), served on the Ryan White Planning Council and was a founding organizer of the East Bay AIDS Walk. In 2017, Joe co-founded and is the CEO of the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center.

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

Produced in partnership with Fluid 510.

THIS PROGRAM CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the Road to Freedom: Through the Eyes of Young Leaders Mar 03, 2024

Show notes

Join Club Travel and Cinnamongirl, Inc. to hear a fresh and vibrant conversation between three amazing young people—two scholars and their mentor—who traveled on the Club’s trip “On the Road to Freedom: Understanding the Civil Rights Movement” in October 2023. The group spent time in Jackson, Little Rock, Memphis, Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery.

Hear about key events and people involved in the movement, and what it means for these young women in terms of what is happening today, their vision for the future, and for themselves.

In partnership with Cinnamongirl Inc.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Belonick: Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic Mar 01, 2024

Show notes

Strongly held values can stabilize a society. They can also splinter it. Paul Belonick explores the moral paradoxes of republican Rome and describes how aristocrats engaged in "performative politics," aggressively seeking self-advancement with a competitiveness that fueled the expansion of an empire. At the same time, Roman orators and authors emphasized the need for self-control, moderation and temperance. Scholars have long suggested that this moral obsession with self-control was merely a social marker of aristocratic status, but Belonick argues that the Roman focus on self-control was responsible for solidifying their peculiarly competitive, semi-formal government.

As conflicts arose in Rome over how to apply these cultural values to novel circumstances, competitors saw each other as desecrating republican principles and therefore as targets to be eradicated. Belonick presents a fresh perspective on the republic’s collapse, by illustrating both sides of this Roman paradox: how values of self-control legitimized the Romans' competition and supported their fluid social structure and political institutions—but then tore the Republic apart.

Join us, at a time when almost no one even mentions restraint, to rediscover how the values associated with restraint can both stabilize and de-stabilize political systems.

MLF ORGANIZER: George Hammond

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.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CLIMATE ONE: What More Can I Do? Mar 01, 2024

Show notes

If you’re a climate-conscious person, you likely already know some of the main ways you can reduce your contribution to greenhouse gasses: buy less, eat less meat, ride your bike.

But there are other, less obvious methods we don’t always think of: voting, having climate conversations, engaging with your local government, changing where your money is invested. And while our role as individuals does matter, we’re more powerful when we work together in collective action.

Guests:

Jon Foley, Executive Director, Project Drawdown

Eliza Nemser, Executive Director, Climate Changemakers

This episode also features excerpts from Cory Booker, Anna Lappé, Frances Moore Lappé, Saul Griffith, Monique Figueiredo, Jonathan Chapman, Jennifer Anderson, Tanya Gulliver Garcia, Vernon Walker, Abrar Anwar, Slater Jewell-Kemker, Kyle Gracey and Alec Loorz.

📞 Have you moved within the United States for climate-related reasons? Tell us about it!

For the chance to have your climate migration story shared on Climate One, give us a call at 650 382-3869. Please keep your voicemail under two minutes and include your name and contact information so we know how to reach you if we decide to feature your story.

For show notes and related links, visit our website.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Week to Week Political Roundtable: February 22 Feb 27, 2024

Show notes

It's the 12th anniversary of the Week to Week political roundtable! Come celebrate with us.

The courts are issuing rulings on presidential contenders and ballots; primaries and caucuses are underway, Congress just completed one of its least productive years in history, San Francisco is voting on mayors and propositions—how will we ever think of anything to talk about on this program?

As usual with Week to Week, our panelists will discuss the latest political developments in an informed, civil (and fun) manner.

Join us for a whole new year of lively political discussion at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Pursuit of Happiness: Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center Feb 26, 2024

Show notes

What did “the pursuit of happiness” mean to our nation’s founders and how did that famous phrase become the foundation of our democracy?

The Declaration of Independence identifies “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. In a new book, National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton—to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives.

By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen uncovers how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with the enslavement of African Americans—though the Virginians betrayed their own principles on that issue.

Join us as Rosen not only elucidates the meaning of the Declaration’s famous phrase, but also takes us on a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, providing a deep, rich and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.

MLF ORGANIZER: George Hammond

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected