Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

San Francisco Culture: Lost, Found or Reimagined? Jul 24, 2026

Show notes

San Francisco has long been a city of dreamers, artists, innovators and cultural pioneers—a global epicenter of creativity, innovation and social change. From its modern origins during the Gold Rush to the Beat Generation, the Summer of Love, Silicon Valley and the AI revolution, each generation has shaped its own version of the city while wondering whether the San Francisco they love is disappearing.

As San Francisco experiences a new wave of growth and renewed optimism, it also faces rising costs, changing neighborhoods and mounting financial pressures on arts and cultural institutions. Many are asking: What defines San Francisco culture today, and who gets to shape its future?

Through personal stories, spirited debate, and audience engagement, we’ll explore what has endured, what has changed, and how artists, community organizers, small businesses, and social media creators are documenting, preserving and reinventing the city.

Is San Francisco culture lost, found or reimagined?

The answer may depend on who you ask.

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CLIMATE ONE: How Do I Say This… Jul 24, 2026

Show notes

It’s becoming increasingly clear that how we talk about climate change matters as much as the science or policy itself. The words we use carry weight, and climate communicator Susan Joy Hassol says specific word choices, like “heat-trapping pollution” rather than “greenhouse gases,” can cut through polarization and help messages resonate with a wider range of people. Equally important is listening to what people and communities need to better handle the impacts from climate disruption.

And different audiences need different approaches. For example: adults can help children process climate fear and grief without overwhelming them by offering age-appropriate honesty paired with validation of their emotions. Good communication can be one of the most effective forms of climate action.

Guests:

Robin Cooper, Co-Founder and President, Climate Psychiatry Alliance

Elizabeth Yeampierre, Attorney; Executive Director, UPROSE

Susan Joy Hassol, Director, Climate Communication

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction

2:14 Robin Cooper on climate related mental health issues young people have

5:16 Robin Cooper on how adults can help young people in their lives

12:22 Robin Cooper on having multiple conversations with young people about climate

15:57 Robin Cooper on next steps after identifying climate anxieties in young people

19:46 Elizabeth Yeampierre on what it took to get Sunset Park Solar going

29:33 Elizabeth Yeampierre on building community trust and listening

31:40 Elizabeth Yeampierre on working with other communities

36:11 Susan Joy Hassol on not using the phrase “climate change”

39:52 Susan Joy Hassol on the phrase “natural disasters”

46:11 Susan Joy Hassol on dealing with hostility when discussing climate

For show notes, related links, and episode transcript, visit our ⁠⁠⁠⁠episode page⁠⁠⁠⁠ at climateone.org

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Join Climate One for an electric conversation on September 1 at 6 p.m. between PG&E CEO Patti Poppe and California State Senator Scott Wiener about energy affordability, outages, and whether cities like San Francisco are ready to break up with the investor owned utility model. Tickets available at ⁠climateone.org/events⁠

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Melissa Murray: Understanding the US Constitution Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

The U.S. Constitution is often at the center of debates about rights and wrongs and public policies in this country, but how many people have actually read it? How many have thought about it? How many understand it?

Join us as bestselling author and popular law professor Melissa Murray shares with us her look at the country’s founding legal document—a document that still guides our judges, lawyers, lawmakers and executives nearly a quarter millennium later. Murray has spent a lot of time demystifying laws for people, something she does as a contributor to MSNOW, on her podcast “Strict Scrutiny,” and in articles and books, including her most recent, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader.

With the Supreme Court and its interpretations central to the continuation of the republic, come see Murray act as an expert guide for reading and understanding the U.S. Constitution.

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Dusty Baker: A Memoir in Baseball and Life Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

Join us in-person or online as legendary baseball player and manager Dusty Baker explores his extraordinary career, one filled with invaluable lessons on perseverance, leadership, and how to live life meaningfully on the field and off.
Dusty Baker walked with baseball legends and became one himself. After he signed with the Braves in 1968 at the age of 19 (against his father’s wishes), no less than the great Hank Aaron promised to take Baker under his wing. Mentored by Aaron, Orlando Cepeda and Willie Mays, Baker became a premier hitter, helping take the Dodgers to a World Series victory in 1981. Along the way he spent 10 seasons as the manager of the San Francisco Giants from 1993-2002. He would later lead the Houston Astros to a championship in 2002.
Baker has been respected by generations, and has come to embody the spirit of the sport. He explores this in his new book Crossroads, which delves into the mind of one of baseball’s mavericks: a curious, inquisitive thinker whose deep interest in the worlds of music, wine and the simpler joys of life charts a journey of success, struggle, faith and perseverance.

Don’t miss this chance to hear from a true American original, who counts among his friends presidents and dignitaries, bluesmen and artists.

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Joanna Stern: I Am Not a Robot Jul 22, 2026

Show notes

We keep being told that artificial intelligence is going to help us do just about everything. Make us healthy. Personally tutor each student. Run our businesses efficiently. Make our decisions. Even fold our laundry. As a result, we would have hours of additional free time, and our AI machines would make discoveries previously unimaginable for humankind.

What does that really mean? Will AI really make things better?

To find out, award-winning journalist Joanna Stern let AI run her life for one year. The results were both funny and unsettling, and she reported what happened in her new book I Am Not a Robot. Stern used AI tools and robots to do her household chores, manage her health, and transport her family on its vacation. If she needed a decision made or a task done, she let AI take the lead. The results were not what you’d expect, and Stern has produced an AI guide for ordinary people and gets around the hype and jargon that clutters our AI discussions.

Humankind is only a few years into the AI Age, but you can join us in-person—or virtually, like an AI agent—to get Joanna Stern’s lessons on what to expect and what it means for you.

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Manoush Zomorodi and Melissa Painter: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

Screens—all the time, everywhere, it seems. We sit at our desks facing screens, hold meetings over screens, answer email after email on them. You’ve heard about the mental health harms of screens, but what about the physical ones? Headaches, back pain, restless sleep, and rising rates of preventable disease. Manoush Zomorodi, host of the TED Radio Hour, says technology is breaking us down, and she comes to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to share her investigation into how our digital lives are changing the way we think, learn and feel.

It’s a topic she explores in her new book Body Electric. From breath and eyesight to blood pressure, posture, and productivity, she says science has shown how small shifts—not “digital detoxes”—can make us healthier, and all we need is five minutes.

Melissa Painter, founder and CEO of Breakthru, will be joining Manoush Zomorodi. Painter is a pioneer in human-embodied intelligence, spatial computing, and kinetic literacy, working to redefine how we interact with technology to protect human health and cognitive performance. Her work bridges the gap between emergent technology and the physical self, creating practical avenues for embodied practices in an increasingly sedentary, screen-saturated world.

This program contains EXPLICIT language.

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Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II Jul 20, 2026

Show notes

In her new book Safe Passage, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Evelyn Iritani reveals one of World War II’s little-known diplomatic triumphs—the rescue of nearly 3,000 Allied civilians held by Japan in two exchanges at sea—and the high price that was paid by the thousands of innocent men, women and children, mostly of Japanese descent, who were traded to a country that was no longer, and may never have been, their home. Sojourners and immigrants, diplomats and thrill-seekers, storytellers and proselytizers. Uprooted by a conflict of someone else’s making, this eclectic mix of humanity from both sides of the Pacific found themselves on a voyage across war-torn waters that would transform them in surprising, often tragic, and sometimes inexplicable ways.

In the fall of 1943, during some of the Pacific theater’s bloodiest battles, the United States and Japan pulled off a diplomatic coup: the exchange of civilians caught on the wrong side of the battlefield after Pearl Harbor. Nearly 1,500 Allied civilians trapped in Asia, mostly Americans, sailed through dangerous waters to an Indian port city, where they were traded for an equivalent number of Japanese immigrants and their families sent from the Americas. The fate of the more than 10,000 Americans left behind rested on the success of this endeavor.

In Safe Passage, Iritani reveals the herculean efforts of the American diplomat James Keeley to engineer these wartime exchanges despite great resistance from within and outside his government; the shipboard conflicts among passengers, including missionaries, revelers, and sharp-tongued journalists; and the moral compromises involved in securing their safe passage. Faced with too few bodies to trade and desperate to free Americans from perilous conditions, the United States uprooted and repatriated Japanese citizens of Latin America, sometimes against their will, while Japanese imprisoned in camps, many of them American citizens, were forced to choose between expulsion to a war zone or an uncertain future behind barbed wire. The result is a revelatory account of the hurdles to pursuing humanitarian action in wartime.

About the Speakers

Evelyn Iritani is an author, historian and former reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Los Angeles Times, where her reporting garnered numerous awards, including the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series she coauthored on Wal-Mart. She also authored the book An Ocean Between Us: The Changing Relationship of Japan and the United States Told in Four Stories from the Life of an American Town.

Moderator Amanda L. Tyler is a professor of constitutional law at UC Berkeley Law School and author or contributor to numerous books and articles, including co-author with the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg of Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life’s Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union. Recent article topics include the American and British approaches to internment of citizens during World War II and their lessons for today.

An Asia-Pacific Affairs 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: Lillian Nakagawa

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Dr. Jennifer Grandis: Why Women Can't Get Ahead in Science and Health Care Jul 19, 2026

Show notes

Women continue to face systemic barriers in medicine and science, despite decades of progress. What is happening?

In Harsh Medicine, Dr. Jennifer R. Grandis draws on decades of experience as a physician-scientist, mentor and leader to expose how deeply gender bias is embedded in the structures of academic medicine and scientific research. Through rigorous analysis, real-world case studies, and personal insight, she argues that policies, funding systems, promotion practices and cultural norms continue to disadvantage women at every stage of their careers.

Although she focuses on academic medicine and science research labs, there are wider implications. Many women, no matter what their profession or circumstances, might see themselves in these pages. Dr. Grandis, who has experienced sexual harassment in her own workplaces, knows reporting on the problems is only half of the equation, and she offers resources and solutions to give readers hope that we still might be able to “shock the system” and effect great change in the workplace, making it more egalitarian for women and men alike.

In association with Wonderfest.

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AI for Good: In Climate, Health and Investing Jul 18, 2026

Show notes

When should artificial intelligence supplant human intelligence? And when should human intelligence lead? For climate action, for impacts on health, for investing and portfolios, where can AI tools multiply productivity—and what situations cause a quality assurance minefield?

Learn from innovators around the world (from Europe to Oceania to the Americas) when and how AI tools bring new value, expand audiences—and where human intelligence and empathy is still required, and how we all can benefit.

We will delve into how AI can improve the expansion and sustainability of food systems, which can also enhance climate justice, and access to nutrition for low-income communities.

Wine Sponsor: Bonterra Organic Wines

A Business & Leadership 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: Elizabeth Carney

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Ben Rhodes: All We Say, The Battle for American Identity Jul 18, 2026

Show notes

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide?

Americans have debated those questions for 250 years. The issue of what it means to be an American shaped the compromises in the Constitution and the arguments we’ve been having ever since—spawning abolitionism, secession, and civil war; populism, mass migration, and global leadership; movements for reform and the backlashes to them.

Former Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes has examined the speeches of 15 people that shaped and reflected the argument Americans have been having from our founding to the present day’s heated divisions.

Rhodes has traced the history of our battle over identity. The result is a revealing portrait of America itself: a nation divided between two stories—one of inheritance, power, and exclusion; the other of equality, striving, and belonging. Drawing on a decade writing for Barack Obama, Rhodes also shows us how words can redirect a nation, what makes a speech enduring, and why oratory is a unique form of persuasion in American democracy.

From Benjamin Franklin’s call for compromise at the Constitutional Convention, to Alexander Stephens’ case for white supremacy as the cornerstone of the Confederacy; from Martin Luther King’s dream of true equality to Donald Trump’s rallying cry against democracy itself, these speeches remind us that history is a living argument. At a time when American identity—and truth—is contested, Rhodes comes to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to offer a fresh and powerful look at who we really are and who we could still become.

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