Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Why We Run: A Special AAPI Month Program May 22, 2026

Show notes

Join us for a special AAPI Month program featuring prominent Bay Area Asian American elected officials.

We'll hear from BART Board Director Janice Li, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, and San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee member Uma Rao Krishnan. What drives them in the ultra-competitive Bay Area political scene? What are their goals, and how do they go about achieving them?

About the Speakers

Janice Li was first elected to the BART Board of Directors in November 2018 and was re-elected in 2022. Li served as president of the Board in 2023, and as vice president in 2022. Janice was born in Hong Kong and moved to the U.S. at a young age. In 2013, Li moved to San Francisco and began working at the SF Bicycle Coalition. Li currently works at Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco-based organization that has led Asian American civil rights advocacy for over 50 years. She leads the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice, a local coalition that addresses hate and violence targeting Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through community-based programs.

David Chiu is the city attorney of San Francisco, the first Asian American to lead one of the country’s top municipal law offices. Previously, he represented the half million residents of eastern San Francisco as a State Assemblymember for seven years. For six years, Chiu served as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Before holding elected office, he served as law clerk to Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a civil rights attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, a criminal prosecutor at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, Democratic Counsel to the U.S. Senate Constitution Subcommittee, and general counsel to a public affairs technology company. A founding member of API Equality, he also served as president of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area.
Uma Rao Krishnan is a Gen Z activist, organizer, and engineer bridging the worlds of technology and politics. She holds a B.A. in computer science with a minor in public policy from UC Berkeley and is currently pursuing her Master's in data science there, with a focus on the tech-civics intersection. Krishnan is the co-founder and president of the SMC AAPI Alliance, an organization dedicated to empowering San Mateo County's AAPI community in civic engagement and political action, most recently leading Prop 50 mobilization efforts and anti-Trump actions, including No Kings, where she has served as emcee. First elected as an ADEM delegate at just 21 years old and the highest vote-getter in county history, she has since been re-elected twice and also serves as a member of the San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee and board member of the California Democratic AAPI Caucus.

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

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CLIMATE ONE: Fighting Fire with Fiery Passion: 2026 Goldman Prize Winners May 22, 2026

Show notes

The Goldman Environmental Prize is known as the Nobel for grassroots environmental champions, for good reason. Award-winners are earth defenders, often bucking entrenched systems and powerful interests in order to protect and restore the natural environments we all depend on. This week we feature conversations with two of the 2026 Goldman Prize winners:

Iroro Tanshi, a tropical conservationist and bat ecologist who rediscovered a species that hadn't been seen in half a century. When climate-amplified wildfire threatened to destroy her new find, she built a community movement to virtually eliminate the wildfire risk.
Sarah Finch, a tireless environmental advocate who spent years in English courts using planning law as a defense against the fossil fuel industry. She won a major UK Supreme Court ruling, a ruling that is already constraining oil, gas, and coal development across the country.

What can we learn about passion, persistence, and collaboration from these two advocates?

Guests:

Iroro Tanshi, Tropical Conservationist

Sarah Finch, Environmental Campaigner

For show notes, related links, and episode transcript, visit https://climateone.org/podcasts

Highlights:

00:00 Intro

03:01 Iroro Tanshi on Warri, Nigeria and the oil industry

05:37 Iroro Tanshi on becoming interested in bats and the forest

09:24 Iroro Tanshi on finding a bat species once thought extinct

14:03 Iroro Tanshi on when a wildfire tore through the research site

19:20 Iroro Tanshi on the wildfire risks of forests in equatorial Africa

20:50 Iroro Tanshi on working with the community to address the wildfires

23:01 Iroro Tanshi how to scale what she’s learned world-wide

24:40 Iroro Tanshi on what bats can teach people about being human

27:17 Sarah Finch on realizing the far reaching implication of her work

30:49 Sarah Finch on why the legal argument finally worked

34:42 Sarah Finch on getting the confidence to go after big oil

44:43 Sarah Finch on how a group of people can make a real difference

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Otto Scharmer: Presencing, 7 Practices for Transforming Self, Society, and Business May 21, 2026

Show notes

This is a time of change, crisis and breakdown. But Otto Scharmer says that small “islands of coherence” are emerging, localized pockets of pioneering thought leaders taking action to beginning to catalyze what he calls multi-system transformation. He has produced a holistic guide to actions people can take, Presencing: 7 Practices for Transforming Self, Society, and Business, co-authored with Katrin Kaufer.
Scharmer and Kaufer outline 7 contributions they say can elevate our civilization: becoming aware, generative listening, dialogue and co-sensing, presenting, ecosystem leadership, co-creating across boundaries, and building unity.
Can these practices catalyze multi-system change and planetary healing? Find out for yourself when Otto Scharmer joins us in-person in San Francisco.
Bestselling author Scharmer is a senior lecturer at MIT and the founding chair of the Presencing Institute.

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PBS News Host William Brangham on the State of the News Media in a Time of Change May 20, 2026

Show notes

How does the news media navigate an environment of huge changes and challenges? How do news consumers get the news they need to be informed citizens? News organizations—for-profit and nonprofit, large and small, traditional and new media—are facing tremendous changes in business models, in reaching audiences, in political pressure, and in technology.
Get an inside look at the mission of the news media when William Brangham joins us at Commonwealth Club World Affairs headquarters. Brangham is an award-winning correspondent for the “PBS News Hour” and also serves as the host of “Horizons” from PBS News. Brangham has also reported extensively on the climate crisis, helping establish the “News Hour” as the clear leader in broadcast news. Brangham has also done considerable reporting on health, health care and pandemics. In addition to playing a central role in the News Hour’s Covid-19 coverage, his multi-part series about the fight against influenza won the 2020 News & Documentary Emmy Award for “Outstanding Science, Medical and Environmental Report.”
During his career, Brangham has also worked on video and television projects for The New York Times, ABC News, National Geographic and “Frontline.” Prior to joining the “News Hour,” he was a producer and correspondent for “Need to Know” on PBS, and before that, on “Bill Moyers Journal.”
Hear the inside scoop from a veteran journalist on the state of the news media in 2026.

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Axis of Instability: The U.S., Israel, Iran and the Gulf May 19, 2026

Show notes

What is the outcome of the escalating tensions between the United States, Israel, Iran and Gulf Arab nations?

Join us for a conversation on this timely topic, focusing on the shifting regional balance of power among key actors, their nuclear capabilities and impact on the future proliferation regime, and the outcome of their military and proxy warfare. Experts will analyze the impacts of joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran, the security of critical Gulf shipping lanes, domestic politics, and future scenarios for conflict escalation or stability.

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 Keynoush

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How to Increase Your Luck, with Stanford’s Tina Seelig May 17, 2026

Show notes

Much of what we call luck is the result of deliberate actions and consistent efforts. As Stanford Professor Tina Seelig shared in her popular TED Talk, luck is like the wind—constantly blowing, often unpredictable, and always in motion. To catch the winds of luck, she says you need to construct your sail by doing the internal work that sets the stage for success; recruit your crew by bringing others along; and hoist your sail by acting in ways that lead you closer to your goals. With these practical tools in hand, she says the winds of luck carry you toward the future you dream to live.

Her new book What I Wish I Knew About Luck is filled with memorable examples, personal anecdotes, and behavioral science research. You will learn:

how to stay steady in turbulent waters
how to sail past your limits
how to see problems as opportunities
how to build ladders to larger wins
how to clear clutter on your path to success
how to turn setbacks into stepping stones
how luck is amplified over the course of a lifetime

With her expertise on leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation, Dr. Seelig shares her ideas on how to see and seize opportunities, especially those hidden in plain sight. Opportunities are everywhere, waiting to be discovered!

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Benoit Denizet-Lewis: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation May 16, 2026

Show notes

On social media, in recovery meetings, through name-change petitions, deconversion blogs, and political conversion manifestos, we’ve been surrounded by stories of radical personal change. But what does it really mean to shed an old skin? Whose change narratives do we celebrate—and whose do we suspect are performance, reinvention as strategy, or even grift? Emerson College Professor Benoit Denizet-Lewis’s new book You’ve Changed offers a fresh and clarifying lens on how we arrived at this bewildering cultural moment marked by fractured truths, shifting identities, and a public dizzy in a world that seems to be changing too fast and not nearly enough.

Denizet-Lewis introduces us to an unforgettable array of people in flux—including psychedelic reality benders, sexual and gender transitioners, ideological shapeshifters, seemingly reformed murderers—as well as those working to engineer change: psychologists, neuroscientists, name-change specialists, even his own father, a breath and meditation teacher who once wrote a newsletter about “the art and science of transformation.” Intertwined with those portraits of change is Denizet-Lewis’s own reckoning—by turns painful, poignant, and hilarious—with his misfires and epiphanies. He shows us that profound, positive change is possible, but that it is rarely easy, linear or free of consequence.

Denizet-Lewis’s message is aimed at anyone who’s ever tried to become someone new, fix what felt broken, drag someone else into changing, or wondered whether real transformation is more than a myth.

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.

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CLIMATE ONE: Protest and Beyond: Annie Leonard On What You Can Do May 15, 2026

Show notes

Protest is the ultimate in equal-opportunity political action. As Annie Leonard, former executive director of Greenpeace USA says, "Making change is like laying a stone path across the garden. Peaceful protest may be every 4th or 8th or 200th stone; it helps us get where we want to go but also we need a lot of other stones too.” Leonard explores the history of protests in her new book “Protest: Respect It. Defend It. Use It.”

And while protest is the loudest and most visible tool, it’s only one of many ways to take action. Through community building, through civic engagement, through elected office, through corporate boardrooms, through churches and nonprofit agencies, there are countless paths to exercising power and promoting positive change. In this episode we hear from three leaders working in three different arenas, all toward the same goal.

Guests:

Annie Leonard, Environmental Activist, Author of “Protest: Respect It, Defend It, Use It”

Danielle Lee, Founder, Climate Action Club

James Coleman, City Councilor, South San Francisco

For show notes, transcript, and related links, visit ⁠climateone.org/podcasts⁠

Highlights:

00:00 – Intro

04:00 – Annie Leonard shares the story of the Section 504 sit-ins protest in San Francisco

06:30 – Different ways protest can be effective

08:30 – Leonard on why she puts her body on the line (gets arrested) during protests

16:00 – Leonard on the lawsuit Energy Transfer brought against Greenpeace USA over Standing Rock protests

22:00 – Protecting, defending, and using the right to protest

26:00 – Danielle Lee on organizing younger people around climate and environment

30:30 – Systemic versus personal action

37:00 – James Coleman on the decision to run for office as a tool for effective change

41:00 – Impact of local government

46:30 – How change actually happens

50:00 – Climate One More Thing

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A World on Fire- the perspective from China May 15, 2026

Show notes

There is an ancient saying in China, or perhaps a curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

We appear to be living right in the middle of very interesting times. From wars in Eastern Europe, to regime toppling in Latin America to the conflagration in the Middle East, the world appears to be on fire.

What does China make of these events? How is it affected, given that some of the actors involved on the other side of this administration’s actions are partners of China? Will these events delay or impede its rise to superpower status? And perhaps the most important question of all, how does it affect its relationship with the United States?

Helping us understand the Chinese perspective is noted scholar and commentator on U.S.-China policies Dr. Shao Yuqun. Dr. Shao Yuqun is the director of the Institute for Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macao Studies and senior research fellow of the Center for America Studies. She is frequently called upon to provide the U.S. perspective to a Chinese audience and the Chinese perspective in the United States.

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In Conversation with Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D. May 14, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian's new book, Food Is Medicine, is an urgent indictment of the food we eat, how it is making us sick, and the choices that led us here, and a call for a revolutionary new food system that can mend our health, economy and planet, from a world-renowned expert in nutrition, medicine and public policy.

The food we eat is making us sick, says Dr. Mozaffarian. In the United States and around the world, diet has become the leading cause of illness and premature death, from obesity and diabetes to heart disease and other chronic ailments. Advocates of healthier diets pin the blame on overeating, but the bigger issue is what we under-eat—the dearth of food that nourishes and heals. Harnessing the power of the right foods can do more than prevent illness; it can treat it, extending life while reducing the crippling cost of ill health to our communities and economy. Mozaffarian shows the way, from transforming our own diets to keep us healthy to getting the right foods from our farms, into our stores and onto our plates—all while eating plentifully and pleasurably.

A global authority on the front lines of nutrition science, medicine and public policy, Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H. draws on cutting-edge research to turn complex science into a clear, actionable program to end the health crisis in our homes and communities. Excavating the decisions that led to a broken food system, plagued by the harms of ultraprocessing and ruinous to the environment, he lays out how the meals we eat are damaging our bodies. He reveals the medicinal, healing power of ideal nutrition and introduces the innovators who are pioneering solutions—at the doctor’s office, in supermarkets, in the halls of Congress, and above all for individuals, to empower them to access the foods they need to live well.

Join us as Mozaffarian lays out a vision for a 21st century food system that will restore health, nourishment and equity without sacrificing convenience or choice. In the process, these solutions can revitalize our economy, and even help to heal our planet.

About the Speaker

Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H., is a cardiologist, public health scientist, and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. He has served in numerous advisory roles, including on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, and his work has been featured in an array of media outlets. Thomson Reuters named him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. A fourth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, he lives with his family in Massachusetts. Food Is Medicine is his first book.

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