Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Rick Hasen: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics Apr 06, 2022

Show notes

Misinformation and disinformation, both domestic and international, have become global issues that are impacting elections and other aspects of geopolitics. These issues have become tremendously important in the United States, and as the country enters another election year, understanding the impact of these issues, and the role of technology and social media, is critical to a functioning democracy.

In this election year, with control of Congress at stake, what can be done consistent with the First Amendment to ensure that American voters can make informed election decisions and hold free elections amid a flood of virally spread disinformation and the collapse of local news reporting? How should American society counter the actions of people who use social media to undermine U.S. elections? What can we do to minimize disinformation campaigns aimed at suppressing voter turnout?

Elections expert Richard Hasen has some answers. In his new book Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics—and How to Cure It, Hasen provides a practical road map for controlling disinformation, embracing free speech, saving American elections, and protecting democracy. He provides insight into the current debates over free speech, censorship and Big Tech’s responsibilities.

Please join us for a discussion about ways to ensure Americans have access to the reliable information on which democracy depends.

SPEAKERS

Rick Hasen

Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California-Irvine; Author, Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics—and How to Cure It

In Conversation with Erwin Chemerinsky

Dean, University of California Berkeley Law School

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on March 29th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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States of Liberation: Gay Men in Cold War Germany Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

After the fall of Nazi Germany and the onset of the Cold War, gay men in the now-divided Germany underwent a historic change in their status and visibility and influence.

George Mason University history professor Samuel Clowes Huneke joins us to talk about this time of momentous transition. It's the subject of his first book, States of Liberation, which traces the paths of gay men in East and West Germany from the violent aftermath of the Second World War to the thundering nightclubs of present-day Berlin. Following a captivating cast of characters, from gay spies and Nazi scientists to queer politicians and secret police bureaucrats, Dr. Huneke tells the remarkable story of how the two German states persecuted gay men—and how those men slowly, over the course of decades, won new rights and created new opportunities for themselves in the heart of Cold War Europe. Relying on untapped archives in Germany and the United States as well as oral histories with witnesses and survivors, Huneke reveals that communist East Germany was in many ways far more progressive on queer issues than democratic West Germany.

Join us for an online discussion about the history of gender, sexual history, the law, and politics.

SPEAKERS

Samuel Clowes Huneke

Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Modern German History, George Mason University; Author, States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany

Michelle Meow

Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show" on KBCW/KPIX TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors; Twitter @msmichellemeow—Co-Host

John Zipperer

Producer and Host, Week to Week Political Roundtable; Vice President of Media & Editorial, The Commonwealth Club—Co-Host

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on March 24th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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A Conversation with Chairman of the National Governors Association Asa Hutchinson Apr 04, 2022

Show notes

The Commonwealth Club is pleased to welcome Asa Hutchinson, Republican governor of the state of Arkansas, and the current chair of the National Governors Association (NGA).

Governor Hutchinson will discuss the critical role he has played in workforce training, infrastructure and new economy jobs not only in his state, but also across the country, leading the bipartisan National Governors Association. The NGA works alongside governors in their efforts to restore public health and continue a robust, sustainable economic recovery. When he became chairman of the NGA last year, Hutchinson pledged “to build on the areas where Republicans and Democrats agree and work to remove the obstacles in Washington where we can.” As chairman, Hutchinson has focused on K–12 computer science education, promoting his state’s best practices, in addition to engaging other governors on their strategies for success, to help increase computer science literacy needed for the jobs of the future.

A dedicated public servant, Governor Hutchinson was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. In 1996, he won the first of three successive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. During his third term in Congress, President George W. Bush appointed him director of the Drug Enforcement Administration and later as an undersecretary in the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

His experience has established him as a national resource for his expertise on trade, energy, national security, and education. The governor has been invited to the White House several times to join discussions about health care, Medicaid and education issues.

The governor is the former co-chair of the Council of Governors and the former chairman of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, Southern States Energy Board, and the Southern Regional Education Board.

SPEAKERS

Asa Hutchinson

Governor of Arkansas; Chairman, National Governors Association

Scott McGrew

News Anchor, NBC Bay Area

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded Live In San Francisco March 28th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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CLIMATE ONE: Solar Flare-ups Apr 01, 2022

Show notes

Earlier this year, California regulators were set to propose significant changes to the incentives that drive rooftop solar installations. After widespread opposition from industry and climate advocates, the California Public Utilities Commission paused the effort. The issue centers on how much rooftop solar customers pay to use the grid and what rewards they get for selling their excess power.

But California is far from the only state where net metering is a hotly contested issue. While utility-scale projects may offer more bang for the buck in some contexts, rooftop solar offers distributed generation and a tool for resilience. This week, we explore the debate between rooftop and utility-scale solar.

Guests:

Adam Browning, Co-Founder and Executive Director Emeritus, Vote Solar

Bernadette Del Chiaro, Executive Director, California Solar and Storage Association

Tom Beach, Principal Consultant, Crossborder Energy

Emily Sanford Fisher, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, Sr. Vice President, Clean Energy, Edison Electric Institute

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A.J. Baime: White Lies Mar 31, 2022

Show notes

Bestselling author AJ Baime returns to The Commonwealth Club to discuss his biography of Walter F. White, a civil rights leader who often passed for white in order to investigate racist murders. White led a double life: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early 20th century, the other as a white newspaperman who covered lynching crimes in the Deep South at the height of racial violence.

Born mixed race, with very fair skin and straight hair, White was able to “pass” for white. He leveraged this ambiguity as a reporter, bringing to light the darkest crimes in America and helping to plant the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement. He was simultaneously a second-class citizen subject to Jim Crow laws at home and a widely respected professional with full access to the white world at work. His life was fraught with internal and external conflict—much like the story of race in America. Starting out as an obscure activist, White became a prominent civil rights leader, but until now a character study of White’s life and career in all its complexity has never been told.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

SPEAKERS

A.J. Baime

Author, White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret

In Conversation with Sheryl Davis

Executive Director, San Francisco Human Rights Commission

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on March 28th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Oded Galor: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality Mar 30, 2022

Show notes

Join us to discuss with economist Oded Galor his grand unifying theory to explain human flourishing and economic inequality. In a captivating journey from the dawn of human existence to the present, Galor offers an intriguing solution to two of humanity’s great mysteries. Why are humans the only species to have escaped (quite recently) the subsistence trap, allowing us to enjoy a standard of living that vastly exceeds all others? And why have we progressed so unequally around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today?

Immense in scope and packed with interesting connections, Galor explains how technology, population size, and adaptation led to a stunning “phase change” in human history a mere 200 years ago. But by tracing that same journey back in time and peeling away the layers of influence—colonialism, political institutions, societal structure, culture—he also arrives at an explanation of inequality's ultimate cause: those ancestral populations that enjoyed fruitful geographical characteristics and rich diversity were set on the path to prosperity, while those that lacked it were disadvantaged in ways still influential today.

As we face ecological crises across the globe, Galor concludes that gender equality, investment in education, and balancing diversity with social cohesion are the keys not only to our species’ thriving, but to its survival.

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

SPEAKERS

Oded Galor

Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics, Brown University; Founder, Unified Growth Theory; Author, The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality

In Conversation With George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates

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John Markoff: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand Mar 30, 2022

Show notes

Iconic counterculture icon Stewart Brand has been at the center of many of the social and cultural movements launched and nurtured in the Bay Area. Whether it be early computing, the Merry Pranksters and the hippies, the generation-defining Whole Earth Catalog, or the environmental movement, Brand has been at the center of them all. Yet many outside these movements only know him because Apple founder Steve Jobs quoted Brand's famous mantra—stay hungry, stay foolish—in a famous Stanford University commencement speech. Legendary science and technology writer John Markoff hopes to elevate an understanding of Brand's impact on our world.

In his new book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand, Markoff provides the first serious biography of Brand, his impact and his many contradictions. A blond-haired WASP with a modest family inheritance, Brand went to Exeter and Stanford and was an army veteran, but in California in the 1960s he became an artist and a photographer in the thick of the LSD revolution. While tripping on acid on the roof of his building, he envisioned how valuable it would be for humans to see a photograph of the planet they shared from space, an image that in the end landed on the cover of his Whole Earth Catalog, the defining publication of the counterculture. He married a Native American woman and was committed to protecting indigenous culture, which connected to a broader environmentalist mission that has been a through line of his life. He also was early to the promise of the computer revolution—nurtured in the pages and community of the Whole Earth Catalog—and helped define it for the wider world.

Please join us as Markoff discusses Brand's influential and remarkable California life and the impact he has had on millions of people.

NOTES

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

SPEAKERS

John Markoff

Writer-in-Residence, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; Author, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

Paul Saffo

Futurist; Consulting Associate Professor, Stanford University

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Lily Geismer: How Democrats Failed to Solve Inequality Play Mar 29, 2022

Show notes

Despite controlling two of the three branches of government in Washington, the Democratic Party is struggling with its identity and the policies it should emphasize, particularly when it comes to reducing inequality and poverty at a time of deep divisions in the United States.

For decades, the Republican Party has been known as the party of the rich: arguing for "business-friendly" policies like deregulation and tax cuts. But as our national and global economy confronts a crisis of inequality, some, like increasingly visible political historian Lily Geismer, question whether the Democrats are willing or able to take political risks to pursue policies that would help address or reduce poverty.

In her powerful new book Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality, Geismer shows how she feels the Democratic Party of the 80s and 90s—particularly during the height of the Clinton Administration years—furthered policy ideas that centered on helping the poor without asking the rich to make any sacrifices: "Doing well by doing good" was a popular theme. Social enterprise and micro-lending became big businesses, and private programs to promote democracy and equality abroad grew trendy. But as social programs in the private sector boomed, the structure of the government in the United States began to weaken, according to Geismer, contributing to a crisis that has now fully arrived. And the Democratic Party is divided about how to respond, leaving the poor without a true champion, and the public unsure where one of the country's two major parties stands on inequality.

Please join us for an important discussion about poverty, the Democratic Party politics that make it harder to address, and where we can go from here.

SPEAKERS

Lily Geismer

Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, Claremont McKenna College; Author, Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality

In Conversation with Dan Pfeiffer

Co-Host, "Pod Save America"; Author, Batting the Big Life: How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America (forthcoming); Twitter @danpfeiffer

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on March 23rd, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Marie Yovanovitch: Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Mar 29, 2022

Show notes

With war-ravaged Ukraine in the headlines every day, it’s more important than ever to hear from those with firsthand experience and an understanding of the complexities of the battle being waged there. Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch not only served as U.S. ambassador to Kyiv from 2016–2019 but also has intimate family connections to the region as the child of survivors of the Nazi and Soviet regimes.

Yovanovitch is a diplomat and author with more than three decades of service in the State Department, having served as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Ukraine, as well as senior advisor to the under secretary of state for political affairs. She is a diplomat in residence at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and was a target of a 2019 smear campaign from supporters of the former president during the Trump-Ukraine controversy. She would go on to be a key witness during the public hearings of the ensuing impeachment trial. Her life is a testimony to the importance of transparency, accountability and integrity in government.

In her new memoir, Lessons From the Edge, Yovanovitch reclaims her own narrative and recounts her childhood, immigration to the United States and journey up the ranks of the State Department. Coming from a family that faced poverty, violence and totalitarianism, she warns of the dangers corruption and democratic backsliding pose to our free society.

Join us as Yovanovitch offers her perspective on the current situation unfolding in Ukraine, and tells her inspiring story of strength, bravery and honesty in the face of controversy, reminding us of how precious democracy really is.

NOTES

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

SPEAKERS

Marie Yovanovitch

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine; Author Lessons From the Edge: A Memoir

In Conversation with Olga Oliker

Director, Europe and Central Asia Program, International Crisis Group

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CLIMATE ONE: Coping with COVID and Climate Fatigue Mar 25, 2022

Show notes

Since March 2020, the global community has grappled with an unprecedented pandemic. At first, most people were willing to do what it takes to keep themselves and others safe. Two years in, pretty much everyone feels exhausted by the effort and by the general anxiety of living with COVID. The global community simultaneously faces an even greater existential threat: climate change. For those fighting to stave off this slower-moving catastrophe, fatigue is a familiar feeling. What have we learned from two years of COVID disruption that can inform how we deal with climate fatigue?

Guests:

David Wallace-Wells, Editor-At-Large, New York Magazine

Britt Wray, Human and Planetary Health Fellow, Stanford University

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