Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

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Week to Week Politics Roundtable: Trump's First 100 Days May 01, 2025

Show notes

Join us for the late-April edition of our Week to Week political roundtable, as we check in on the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in his second term. We'll share some insight into the people, trends and topics driving the political news of the day.

Politics is a joint project; come early for a pre-program social hour with wine and light bites, then enjoy and learn as our panel of political experts—including Tim Anaya, Melissa Caen and Dan Schnur—explains what happened and what to expect, and answers your questions.

See other upcoming Week to Week political roundtables, as well as audio and video of past Week to Week programs.

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CLIMATE ONE: Congressman Jared Huffman: Live from SF Climate Week Apr 29, 2025

Show notes

Rep. Jared Huffman has represented California’s 2nd District — from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border — for over a decade. During that time, he has championed climate issues and fought to protect California’s public lands, prevent offshore drilling, pushed for financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels, and introduced legislation to tackle plastic pollution.

Now, turmoil in the federal government is putting all those protections at risk. Advocating for climate action is pretty challenging when terms like "climate change” are being erased from government websites. How can Rep. Huffman advance his climate agenda when those who hold the most power are going hard in another direction?

This conversation was recorded live as part of SF Climate Week 2025.

Guest:

Rep. Jared Huffman, U.S. Representative (D-CA 2nd District) and Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Committee

Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today.

For show notes and related links, visit our website.

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Jens Ludwig and Chief Bill Scott: The Unexpected Origins of Gun Violence Apr 29, 2025

Show notes

In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: Why does gun violence happen? And is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren’t what he expected. Unforgiving Places is Ludwig’s revelatory portrait of gun violence in America’s most famously maligned city.

Ludwig says his research disproves the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people; he says it shows most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while others don't, Ludwig says gun violence is more circumstantial—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches lead us to believe.

Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig’s immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including “countless hours spent in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald'ses,” Ludwig joins us with San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott to discuss his work in behavioral economics. As Ludwig says, progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the 10-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.

This program contains EXPLICIT language.

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California Youth Agenda Conference Apr 28, 2025

Show notes

The inaugural California Youth Agenda Conference is a convening designed by and for young people about climate change, mental health education, and reproductive rights. These issues were identified as being of top concern by 200 students throughout California who responded to our Youth Issues Survey in the fall of 2024.

Led by our Youth Advisory Committee, this half-day conference will feature inspirational keynote speakers, interactive sessions with expert panelists, and opportunities for students to network and collaborate. We will also be hosting an Action Lounge that will feature organizations and groups focused on youth empowerment, climate change, reproductive rights, and mental health education. Students will have the opportunity to learn more about the important work these groups are doing and how they can get involved during lunch and break times!

Keynote speakers:
Brianna Mullen, Founder of Education Justice Academy
Chris Badillo, Program Director of Education Justice Academy

Break-out rooms
Powering Change: Renewable Energy & Climate Action

Mina Fedor, YAC member, Junior at The College Preparatory School (Moderator)
Finn Does, organizer, environmental educator, and student at UC Berkeley
June Choi, PhD candidate in Earth System Science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Embracing Vulnerability: Building Emotional Strength

Mimi Tuden, YAC member, Junior at Berkeley High School (Moderator)
Chris Medina, Associate Marriage and Family Therapist at Camphortree Healing Collective
Antonio Hernandez, President of the Antioch Unified School District Board of Education

Breaking Barriers: Ensuring Access to Reproductive Health

Charley Matthews, YAC member, Junior at Miramonte High School (Moderator)
Stacy Cross, CEO of Planned Parenthood, Mar Monte
Yevanit Reschechtko, Senior Associate Communications Director at Ibis Reproductive Health

Please note that this event is for high school and middle school students. For any questions, please reach out via email.

This program is part of Creating Citizens, the civics education initiative at Commonwealth Club World Affairs.

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2025 Autonomous Vehicles & the City Symposium Apr 27, 2025

Show notes

As cities strive for safer streets and greener mobility, they face mounting challenges to navigating an increasingly complex global landscape. Political shifts are reshaping climate policies, market access, and the very definition of autonomy, as industry and government become more entwined. What does this mean for the future of urban transportation? The 2025 Autonomous Vehicles & the City Symposium brings together top innovators, policymakers, and urban planners to unpack these pressing issues. This year’s symposium will focus on vision zero and data – going beyond the technical aspects of AVs—to examine how they intersect with climate goals and public transit to create greener, more connected communities.

Opening Keynote by Kristin White, Google Transportation Industry Executive, ex-USDOT FHWA Administrator

Hosted by the University of San Francisco School of Management. In partnership with The Commonwealth Club of California.

For full program, please visit: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/video/2025-autonomous-vehicles-city-symposium

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Quế Mai: The Color of Peace in Vietnam 50 Years Later Apr 26, 2025

Show notes

Join us, as we remember the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, to hear the novelist and poet Quế Mai in conversation with Craig McNamara, whose father was Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense under both JFK and LBJ during the Vietnam war.

Quế Mai will discuss her poetry, the long-lasting impact of war on the Vietnamese, and how Vietnam has continued to change politically after the war. She will also focus on Vietnamese literary culture, its poetry and proverbs, and the various Vietnamese “ways of life” that have survived the violent chaos of several decades of war.

Having experienced the hardships of rural life first-hand in the 1970s and 1980s, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai has used her literary skills to travel the world with her stories. The Color of Peace, her new book of poetry, can be read as a travelogue of the route one can take to forgiveness, appreciation and extending one’s love for one’s own people and homelands to all of humanity.

Vietnam, with its more than 4,000 years of history and culture and its poetry-loving people, remains the passionate center of The Color of Peace. When read in the light of her international bestselling novels, The Mountains Sing and Dust Child, which have been translated into 27 languages, it provides her readers with a unique understanding of Vietnam’s past and present and a glimpse into its future.

Organizer: George Hammond

A Humanities 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.

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Elie Mystal: Ten Laws That Are Ruining America Apr 25, 2025

Show notes

Bestselling author, popular commentator, and former litigator Elie Mystal has long been critical of the U.S. Constitution. Now he focuses his ire on 10 laws that he says are causing way too much misery to millions.

In Bad Law, Mystal brings his trademark legal acumen and passionate snark to a takedown of 10 of what he considers the most egregiously awful laws on the books today. These are pieces of legislation that are making life worse rather than better for Americans and should be repealed completely.

On topics ranging from abortion and immigration to voting rights and religious freedom, he says Americans have chosen rules to live by that do not reflect the will of most of the people. With respect to the decision to make a law that effectively grants immunity to gun manufacturers, for example, Mystal writes, “We live in the most violent, wealthy country on earth not in spite of the law; we live in a first-person-shooter video game because of the law.”

But, as the man Samantha Bee calls “irrepressible and righteously indignant” and Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion calls “the funniest lawyer in America,” points out, these laws do not come to us from on high; we write them, and we can and should unwrite them.

Don’t miss Mystal at Commonwealth Club World Affairs as he visits all the hot-button topics in the country today.

This program contains EXPLICIT language.

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CLIMATE ONE REWIND: Staycation: All I Ever Wanted Apr 25, 2025

Show notes

Summer is coming soon, and for many that means vacation. While traveling far and wide can be an amazing experience, the carbon cost of traveling is significant. But what if we could rekindle a sense of awe in our own neighborhoods?

After years of extreme expeditions all over the world, adventurer Alastair Humphreys spent a year exploring the detailed local map around his home. His new book “Local” is an ode to slowing down, as well as a rallying cry to protect the wild places on our doorstep.

Guest:

Alastair Humphreys, Author; Adventurer

This episode also features field reporting from producers Austin Colón and Megan Biscieglia.

For show notes and related links, visit our website.

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Beyond Race: Richard Kahlenberg on Building Real Diversity at Our Colleges Apr 24, 2025

Show notes

Can a new class-based approach to college admissions produce economic and racial diversity alike—and greater fairness?

For decades America’s colleges and universities have been working to increase racial diversity. But Richard Kahlenberg argues that they have been using the wrong approach. He makes the case that class disadvantage, rather than race, should be the determining factor for how a broader array of people “get in.”

While elite universities claim to be on the side of social justice, the dirty secret of higher education is that the perennial focus on racial diversity has provided cover for an admissions system that mostly benefits the wealthy and shuts out talented working-class students. Kahlenberg says that by fixing the class bias in college admissions we can begin to rectify America’s skyrocketing economic inequality and class antagonism, giving more people a better place at the table as they move through life and more opportunity to “swim in the river of power.”

Kahlenberg, author of the new book Class Matters, has long worked with prominent civil rights leaders on housing and school integration. But his recognition of class inequality in American higher education led to his making a controversial decision to go over to the “other side” and provide research and testimony in cases that helped lead to the controversial Supreme Court decision of 2023 that ended racial preferences. That conservative ruling could, Kahlenberg says, paradoxically have a progressive policy outcome by cutting a new path for economic and racial diversity alike—and greater fairness.

This program is supported by the Ken & Jaclyn Broad Family Fund.

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Secretary of State Shirley Weber: From Educator to Politician Apr 22, 2025

Show notes

Secretary of State Shirley Weber had been a lifelong educator. For 40 years she had been a professor at San Diego State University, having been named a professor emerita of Africana studies and served as the president of the National Council for Black Studies. And then, in the fall of 2011, Weber decided to run for office.

Secretary Weber served first in the California State Assembly for nearly a decade, before Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to the position of secretary of state of California. So, why did a career educator decide to run for office?

Secretary Weber, in conversation with Creating Citizens’ Griffith Swidler, talks to an audience of Sacramento high school students about her path into politics. Weber details her upbringing, the people who influenced her, and how young people can lead us toward a less polarized America.

This program is part of Commonwealth Club World Affairs’ civics education initiative, Creating Citizens.

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