Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Former U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner Apr 23, 2021

Show notes

John Boehner spent nearly 25 years in Congress and served as the 53rd speaker of the House. During his time, his responsibility and decision making to preserve the American Dream was driven by the values of economic freedom and individual liberty.

When he announced his resignation, President Obama called to tell the outgoing speaker that he'd miss him. "Mr. President," Boehner replied, "yes you will." In his new memoir, On the House, Boehner recounts his experiences and shares what he learned from his years of public service.

Join us as former House Speaker John Boehner talks honestly about his colorful tales from the halls of power to broaden our perception of Washington’s political landscape.

Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language

SPEAKERS

John Boehner

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Former Representative (R-Ohio 8th District); Author, On the House: A Washington Memoir; Twitter @SpeakerBoehner

In Conversation with Melissa Caen

Attorney; Author; Political Analyst

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 April 20th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, with Julie Lythcott-Haims Apr 23, 2021

Show notes

What does it mean to be a “real adult”? As a former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and the New York Times-bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult and Real American, author Lythcott-Haims has spent her career helping young adults pursue their goals. In her new book Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, Lythcott-Haims provides compassionate and practical guidance on how to navigate the wonders and challenges of adult life, from finding a fulfilling career to gaining the confidence to understand what’s most important.

Join Lythcott-Haims at INFORUM to discuss how becoming an adult might seem scary, but the process can be exciting and rewarding.

Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language

SPEAKERS

Julie Lythcott-Haims

Author, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult

Darnell Moore

Author, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America—Moderator

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Noah Griffin: A Flashback to Old-Time Popular Radio Shows Apr 23, 2021

Show notes

Please join us for a Tuesday morning inspirational talk on old-time radio programs by Noah Griffin, a native San Franciscan, former television talk show host and former radio broadcast host for WJIB in Boston, and KFOG and KGO in San Francisco. Griffin's connection with radio stems back to when as a 6-year-old in 1952 he was given his first Hopalong Cassidy radio.

His presentation will be energizing and fascinating as he talks about the best and most popular of old-time radio shows of their day, from live nightclub shows to soap operas, detective and mystery shows, family sitcoms, and westerns. “Can you remember yours?”

The program is followed by Q and A.

MLF ORGANIZER: Robert Melton

SPEAKERS

Noah Griffin

Former Television Talk Show Host; Former Radio Broadcast Host, WJIB, KFOG, KGO

Robert Melton

Co-Chair, Commonwealth Club Arts Member-Led Forum; Curator, Farmer's Gallery, Commonwealth Club—Moderator

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 April 13th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America Apr 22, 2021

Show notes

Despite its historic role in American life, the U.S. Supreme Court has served a surprisingly impactful policymaking role in the United States over the past decade. Starting in 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until this March, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America's campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discrimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful, unelected body, now controlled by six Republican presidential appointees, sat at the center of American political life, a trend that will likely continue, with profound impacts on the country's political system and civic life.

Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what is likely to come from the Supreme Court in the coming years, particularly around significant divisive issues such as abortion and affirmative action. Equally important, Millhiser also explores the arcane decisions that the Court can use to fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something he believes is far less democratic by attacking voting rights, dismantling the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law.

Millhiser's new book, The Agenda, exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right. Please join us for an important conversation on the future of perhaps the most important institution in America life: the Supreme Court.

About the Speaker

Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. Before joining Vox, he was a columnist at ThinkProgress. He is the author of Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, published in 2015, and his writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, American Prospect and the Yale Law & Policy Review. He received his J.D. from Duke University and clerked for judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

SPEAKERS

Ian Millhiser

Supreme Court Correspondent, Vox; Author, The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America;Twitter @imillhiser

Melissa Murray

Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law Faculty Director, Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network, New York University

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 April 7th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Sabine Hossenfelder: Lost in Math Apr 22, 2021

Show notes

Join us for a virtual discussion with Sabine Hossenfelder, live-streamed direct from Frankfurt, Germany, about her concern that theoretical physicists have failed to make any major breakthroughs for more than four decades because they are obsessed with the goal that an accurate theory must be beautiful—at least to mathematicians.

Hossenfelder argues that when this belief in beauty becomes too dogmatic, it conflicts with scientific objectivity, and so may be interfering with our ability to understand black holes or why relativity theory and quantum mechanics have issues with each other. It may also be encouraging the pursuit of untestable string theory and supersymmetry explanations beyond what is scientifically useful (but which is still mathematically intriguing).

Hear why Hossenfelder is insisting, to the generation of theoreticians that preceded her, that progress will probably not be made until they conclude that physics isn’t math. It’s choosing the right math.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

SPEAKERS

Sabine Hossenfelder

Research Fellow, Superfluid Dark Matter Group, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies; Blogger, "Backreaction"; Author, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray

In Conversation with George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates

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Dr. John Torres: Guide to Surviving Everything Apr 22, 2021

Show notes

Dr. John Torres has spent his career fielding medical emergencies at home in the ER and abroad on humanitarian trips to Central and South America. As a U.S. Air Force veteran, he has been on the front lines of varying medical crises. As NBC News’ senior medical correspondent, he has spent the last year covering the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dubbed “Dr. Disaster,” Torres has all the knowledge of best practices in an emergency, and his new book Dr. Disaster’s Guide to Surviving Everything provides a need-to-know guide on disaster preparedness.

From avalanches and blackouts to pandemics and wildfires, Dr. Torres shares hacks and tips that could save your life or the life of someone around you. He tells you must-know practices such as the best place to sit on an airplane, how to start a fire with household items, and the first thing you should do every time you enter a shopping mall.

SPEAKERS

Dr. John Torres

Senior Medical Correspondent, NBC News/MSNBC; Author, Dr. Disaster’s Guide to Surviving Everything: Essential Advice for Any Situation Life Throws Your Way

In Conversation with Lenny Mendonca

Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors

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 April 14th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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CLIMATE ONE: Living with Climate Disruption Apr 22, 2021

Show notes

The impacts of climate change may come fast or slow. A wildfire amplified by drought may rip through a town in a matter of hours, or rising seas may take years to destroy a neighborhood. Health impacts may show up in months, or take the form of devastating cancer rates that rise over a decade. Regardless of speed or intensity, the climate emergency will impact us all. How do we live alongside climate disruption?

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

We have been nominated for a Webby!

Please give us your vote as the Best Science and Education Limited Series in the 25th Annual People's Voice Award below:

https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2021/podcasts/limited-series-specials/science-education

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Dr. Michio Kaku: The God Equation Apr 21, 2021

Show notes

When Isaac Newton established the laws of motion in 1687, he created a foundation of understanding that still guides physicists to scientific discoveries today. As studies evolve, scientists get closer to understanding the deepest mysteries of space and time. Once physicists can successfully combine theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, all forces in the universe will be recognized and tied into one. Physicist Michio Kaku seeks to document this epic journey of uniting theories of space in his new book The God Equation.

Dr. Kaku, once mentored by theoretical physicist Edward Teller, graduated summa cum laude and first in his physics class from Harvard University. Now, Dr. Kaku strives to continue Einstein’s search for a “theory of everything,” seeking to popularize science and unify the four fundamental forces of the universe—the strong force, the weak force, gravity and electromagnetism.

Join us as Michio Kaku talks about physics pioneers looking to understand the complexity of the universe.

SPEAKERS

Dr. Michio Kaku

Professor of Theoretical Physics, City College of New York; Author The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything; Twitter @michiokaku

Kara Platoni

Science Editor, Science, Wired.com—Moderator

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 April 16th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Alice Gu: The Rags to Riches Story of the Donut King Apr 21, 2021

Show notes

The real-life tale of Ted Ngoy, "the Donut King," is one of fate, love, survival, hard knocks, and redemption. It's the rags to riches story of a refugee escaping Cambodia, arriving in America in 1975 and building an unlikely multi-million-dollar empire baking America's favorite pastry, the donut. He sponsored hundreds of visas for incoming refugees and helped them get on their feet teaching them the ways of the donut business.

His life has been turned into the documentary The Donut King by award-winning filmmaker Alice Gu. A Los Angeles native, Gu began her career as a director of photography, working with renowned directors Werner Herzog, Stacy Peralta, and Rory Kennedy, among others. Her commercial clients for print and live action include TBWA/ Chiat Day, Media Arts Lab, Deutsche, Edelman, Berlin Cameron, Cole & Weber, Pereira & O’Dell, Doremus, Publicis, Beats by Dre, Laird Hamilton, ESPN, FIFA, NFL, NHL, NBA, the WSL, Apple, Peta, and the American Humane Association. Take Every Wave: the Life of Laird Hamilton made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, a documentary film directed by Academy Award nominated director, Rory Kennedy, and lensed by Alice Gu.

The Donut King is Alice’s feature directorial debut; it was slated to premiere in the canceled 2020 SXSW film festival. Despite the cancellation, the film won the Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Documentary Storytelling, as well as the One in a Million Award at the canceled 2020 Sun Valley Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at the Bentonville Film Festival. A feature-length documentary about the rise and fall of a Cambodian refugee turned donut tycoon, The Donut King is executive produced by Academy Award-winners Ridley Scott and Freida Lee Mock.

Join us for a discussion with Alice Gu.

SPEAKERS

Alice Gu

Filmmaker, The Donut King and Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton

Michelle Meow

Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW/KPIX 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 April 8th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Islam's Diverse History of Ideas Apr 20, 2021

Show notes

Join us for a virtual discussion with Mustafa Akyol, who takes us on a fascinating journey into Islam's diverse history of ideas, and argues that the next "Islamic Enlightenment" may be on the horizon.

Akyol diagnoses “the crisis of Islam” in the modern world and offers a way forward. Diving deeply into Islamic theology, and also sharing lessons from his own life story, he says Muslims lost the universalism that made them a great civilization in their earlier centuries. He demonstrates how values often associated with the Western Enlightenment―freedom, reason, tolerance and an appreciation of science―had Islamic ancestors that were cast aside, for political reasons, in favor of more dogmatic views. Akyol borrows lost visions from medieval Muslim thinkers, such as Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes), to show how they shared a strikingly modern worldview on a range of sensitive issues: human rights, equality for women, freedom of religion, or freedom from religion.

While frankly acknowledging the problems in the world of Islam today, Akyol offers a clear and hopeful vision for its future.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

SPEAKERS

Mustafa Akyol

Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; Contributing Opinion Writer, The New York Times; Author, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom and Tolerance

In Conversation with George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates

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