Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Jeff Jarvis: The Age of Print and the Internet Aug 02, 2023

Show notes

As a technology, print at its birth was as disruptive as the digital migration of today. Now, as the internet ushers us past print culture, Jeff Jarvis offers an overview of important lessons from the era we leave behind.

Jarvis traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital present. He tracks Western industrialized print to its origins; explores its invention, spread, and evolution; as well as the bureaucracy and censorship that followed. Additionally print gave rise to the idea of the mass—mass media, mass market, mass culture, mass politics, and so on—that came to dominate the public sphere.

Hear more about this complex and compelling history of technology and power and the lasting impact it has today.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

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Sex and Relationships in the Post-Pandemic Digital Age Aug 01, 2023

Show notes

Sex. Friendship. Love . . . . How have the pandemic and digital life changed these? What has been lost? What will slowly return? And what changes have actually been good for us?

Above all, what can we do to thrive in this new environment? What works well for meeting new people, for maintaining close relationships, and—yes—for finding romance and love in this new world of post-pandemic and digital life?

For more than 75 years, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University has been a trusted source for scientific knowledge and research on critical issues in sexuality and relationships. They are the American pioneers in studies of human sexual behavior since issuing the groundbreaking Kinsey Reports in 1948 and 1953, and continuing to this day.

Today, we are fortunate that Dr. Justin Garcia, executive director of the Kinsey Institute and scientific advisor to Match.com, can visit with us to discuss what he has learned about this new environment, answer our questions, and help guide us onto a successful path.

Let's explore this brave new world of digital life together in this online discussion.

MLF ORGANIZER

Eric Siegel

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SEA Filmmaker Showcase: Screening and Discussion Jul 31, 2023

Show notes

And our moderator, Toni Wang, is a Shanghai-born independent artist and producer whose background spans IT/consulting, web management, and music. She is a co-host for SEA Creatives, a collective of Southeast Asian filmmakers and artists in Los Angeles and an advocate for AAPI representation in media. In addition to several feature film projects in development, she has helped to produce a handful of short films as well as the indie feature A Great Divide, starring Ken Jeong, which opened the 2023 Bentonville Film Festival. Learn more at toniwang.com.

The Films and Filmmakers

Apartment 605 (length 7:02): Miké is interrupted by the loud sound of the apartment buzzer. Over the course of a conversation with a stranger separated by the building's intercom, we learn of the connection they have with the owner of the apartment, Miké's estranged father.

Full Service (length 10:01): When an Indonesian woman is invited to her cousin's engagement party, she decides to hire an escort to keep her aunties, and their persistent questions about her dating life, off her back.

Astonishing Little Feet (length 8:58): Afong Moy, the first documented Chinese woman to come to the United States, realizes the men who separated her from her family only have interest in profiting off the peculiarities of her bound feet.

Soul Food (length 21:28): A mother and daughter must reconcile the love and hurt in their relationship before time runs out in a place between our world and the next.

This program contains explicit content.

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Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Joel Christian Gill: Stamped from the Beginning - A Graphic History Jul 30, 2023

Show notes

Racism has persisted throughout history—but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it.

Award-winning historian Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and comic artist Joel Christian Gill reveal how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing some of the ugly forces that shape it.

Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America is an educational and comprehensive look at how people can learn from the past to work toward a most equitable and antiracist future.

NOTE: This program contains explicit content.

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Adam Schiff: Road to the Senate 2024 Jul 29, 2023

Show notes

Congressman Adam Schiff gained national prominence for his role as the lead prosecutor in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Now, the Los Angeles Democrat is running for the U.S. Senate seat for California long held by Dianne Feinstein, who will not seek re-election.

A former chair of the House Intelligence Committee and member of the select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, Schiff says that Californians “need a fighter in the U.S. Senate who has been at the center of the struggle for our democracy and our economy.” He has also pledged to make the environment a centerpiece of his campaign.

Schiff returns to The Commonwealth Club as part of our “Race to the Senate 2024” series of candidate forums. Come meet the candidate in person before you cast your vote for California’s next U.S. senator.

This program contains explicit language.

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CLIMATE ONE: Building a Better Battery Supply Chain with JB Straubel and Aimee Boulanger Jul 28, 2023

Show notes

Batteries are a critical part of the transition away from fossil fuels. From electric vehicles to grid scale storage for wind and solar, demand for batteries is expected to grow 500% by 2030. In order to meet that demand, we’re going to need a lot more batteries. And while companies like JB Straubel’s Redwood Materials are building capacity for recycling, for now that means a lot more mining. How do we build a battery supply chain that meets demand and reduces harm?

This episode is underwritten by ClimateWorks.

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Sen. Amy Klobuchar: The Joy of Politics Jul 27, 2023

Show notes

During the past few years, as our country has faced unprecedented challenges, Senator Klobuchar has been in the room where it happens—at the debate podium during one of the most critical presidential elections in U.S. history and in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when insurrectionists stormed the building.

Additionally, during this time Sen. Klobuchar faced personal difficulties, including her husband’s battle with COVID-19, her own cancer diagnosis, and her father’s death.

In her new book The Joy of Politics, Sen. Klobuchar reflects on these past few years and what continues to drive her to live with improbable joy and resilience. She also reveals what it’s really like working in Washington DC and her concerns about the state of American democracy.

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Social Impact Strategies: Jacob Harold's 'The Toolbox' and Why It Matters Jul 26, 2023

Show notes

Jacob Harold, author of The Toolbox: Strategies for Crafting Social Impact, tells us that “there are no easy solutions. Instead there are tools.” Jacob’s book is an essential guide for anyone trying to improve our world. In it, Harold offers clarity and inspiration to leaders at all levels. Beautifully designed and executed, The Toolbox features 36 diagrams, 22 stories, 17 poems, nine tools, five equations, and one goal: a better world.

Joining us for a one-hour fireside chat to dig through The Toolbox is Steven LaFrance, founder of Learning for Action, who will engage Harold in discussion about how The Toolbox can be applied to benefit nonprofits—and other organizations—you care about.

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UCSF's Monica Gandhi: Navigating a Post-Pandemic World Jul 26, 2023

Show notes

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, UCSF's Dr. Monica Gandhi became one of the most prominent public health experts in the country. National and local political leaders, health professionals and media often turned to Dr. Gandhi for her thoughts and recommendations on how to handle the constantly shifting dynamics and demands of the pandemic.

Dr. Gandhi has now put her thoughts together into a new book, Endemic, which aims at reckoning with the country's present condition: comprehending and living with a new respiratory disease and how to face the coming variants and next pandemic with reason, science, understanding, courage and compassion. With her trademark straight talk and honesty, Dr. Gandhi discusses where we have been, where we find ourselves now, and how we ought to manage the virus in the coming years.

Dr. Gandhi's book couldn't be better timed, as the world must learn to live with a virus that has become “endemic." As Dr. Gandhi notes, our current moment requires a shift in both mindset and policy. She lays out a 10-point plan that she says will serve to best guide us today and into our future; she offers a guide for many still confused by inconsistent mandates and policies.

Please join us for a conversation with one of the Bay Area's top public health leaders about a virus we will be dealing with the rest of our lives.

NOTES

Dr. Gandhi was honored along with her UCSF colleagues for their work on the pandemic at the Commonwealth Club's 2021 Distinguished Citizen's Gala.

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The Young Hubert Humphrey: Fighter for Civil Rights Jul 24, 2023

Show notes

This July is the 75th anniversary of the critical 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, during which Hubert Humphrey, then the mayor of Minneapolis, gave a stirring and surprisingly successful speech asking the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights and to ending segregation. This caused the southern Dixiecrats to walk out and to run Strom Thurman for president—in order to teach the Democrats a lesson. But Truman's upset win over Dewey, caused in no small part by a surge of support from Black voters in northern cities, taught the Democrats a totally different lesson, and set the stage for Truman's desegregation of the military. That led to Brown v. Board of Education and the Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950s, and to the civil rights legislation that LBJ, with the help of his Vice President Hubert Humphrey, pushed through Congress in the 1960s.

Freedman presents a revisionist and riveting look at the American politician whom history has judged a loser because his vice presidency ended in disgrace during the Vietnam War, partially due to the chaos surrounding the also contentious 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago—after which Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon.

Yet Humphrey played a key leadership role in the greatest social movement of the 20th century. Freedman explores Humphrey’s early life, from a remote, all-white hamlet in South Dakota to the political heights of Minnesota, as he tackles its notorious racism and anti-Semitism and solidifies his role as a national champion of multiracial democracy. His allies in that struggle include a Black newspaper publisher, a Jewish attorney, and a professor who had fled Nazi Germany. His adversaries are the white supremacists, Christian Nationalists, and America Firsters of mid-century America—one of whom tried to assassinate him.

Celebrating one of the often overlooked landmarks of civil rights history, Freedman illuminates the early life and enduring legacy of the man who helped bring it about.

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