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Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

KQED

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.

Location:

San Francisco, CA

Networks:

KQED

Description:

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.

Twitter:

@cwclub

Language:

English

Contact:

The Commonwealth Club of California 595 Market Street 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 415-597-6700

Episodes

Mental Health and Communities of Color: From Stigma to Solutions

3/16/2021
Experts widely report that mental health treatment in Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities is severely lacking. Cultural differences and misunderstandings lead to diagnostic problems and hesitancy to seek treatment. The National Alliance on Mental Illness found that Black adults are more likely to report persistent symptoms of emotional distress than white adults, yet only one in three Black Americans who needs support gets it. Latinx, Asian and Indigenous people similarly...

Duration:01:08:34

Commonwealth Club Week in Review for March 12, 2021

3/15/2021
This is your Commonwealth Club week in review. Hear what you missed this week, and what we’ve got lined up for you next week. We’re always adding new programs - check out commonwealthclub.org/online for all of our upcoming events. If you haven’t already - please consider becoming a member of the Club. Enjoy exclusive discounts and access to special programs all while knowing your contributions directly support our many public programs and civic initiatives. Visit...

Duration:00:07:53

The Political Reality of Climate Action

3/15/2021
True to his campaign promise, President Biden dove right into the climate crisis on Day One, signing a stack of executive orders that signaled his determination. But how effective are they? “Executive orders, I think, are often very splashy when they're introduced, and they get a lot of attention,” notes Axios reporter Ben Gemen. “I think the better way to look at an executive order is sort of firing a starting gun for an extraordinarily long race.” But while he faces certain blowback from...

Duration:00:50:52

Liftoff: Inside the Historic Flights that Launched Elon Musk's SpaceX

3/13/2021
Hear the dramatic inside story of the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX—and Elon Musk—from a shaky startup into the world's leading-edge rocket company. In 2006, SpaceX—a brand-new venture with fewer than 200 employees—rolled its first, single-engine rocket onto a launch pad at Kwajalein Atoll. After a groundbreaking launch from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the Falcon 1 rocket designed by Elon Musk’s engineers rose into the air for approximately 30 seconds. Then its engine...

Duration:01:05:42

Norma Kamali: Age with Power

3/12/2021
At 75, Norma Kamali looks—and acts—nearly half her age. Join us for a conversation with Kamali, who will share her lessons on authentic beauty, timeless style, career-building, fitness and health through personal stories, worldly insight, and actionable advice designed to help women of every age create their happiest, healthiest, most successful and fulfilling lives. The secret, she writes in her first book I Am Invincible, is learning to age with power: Embracing a healthy lifestyle and...

Duration:01:04:51

Carl Zimmer: What It Means to Be Alive

3/12/2021
Life is everywhere. From birds in the sky to bushes on the ground to the humans who surround our everyday lives. We assume life is easily identifiable, yet as scientists learn more about the living world, they find life to be a difficult word to define. In his new book Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, acclaimed scientific author Carl Zimmer seeks to answer one of biology’s greatest questions: What is life? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged...

Duration:01:00:57

Healthy Society Series: The Health Benefits of Vitamin D and Solar UVB

3/11/2021
This program will feature four vitamin D researchers who will discuss the evidence they generated and/or collected showing that vitamin D has important health benefits. Carole Baggerly, CEO of GrassrootsHealth.net, will outline the findings of health outcomes of more than 10,000 participants in their studies who take vitamin D supplements, measure their vitamin D levels every six months, and report any health changes. She will also discuss the evidence that vitamin D reduces risk of...

Duration:00:58:54

George Hammond: Intelligent Desiring

3/11/2021
Monday Night Philosophy asks (on a Tuesday afternoon): What are we doing here? And answers: We are pursuing desires — because we are pursuing happiness, and happiness results from fulfilling a desire. But since unhappiness results whenever we don’t fulfill a desire, and since that happens so often, individual life is sometimes seen as a perilous journey, a valley of tears, or even a worthless endeavor, to be escaped via the nothingness of Nirvana, or by retreating to Heaven, or by merging...

Duration:01:10:53

Educating for American Democracy

3/10/2021
A healthy constitutional democracy requires a citizenry that has the knowledge, skills and desire to participate in it. The United States is incredibly polarized, and we now have a citizenry and electorate that are poorly trained to meet the modern challenges we are facing. One major reason? The country has disinvested in history and civic education. For example, at the federal level, we spend approximately $50 per student per year on STEM fields and approximately 5 cents per student per...

Duration:01:04:42

Temperature Check: Science, Texas, and Climate Chaos

3/10/2021
Just two months into 2021, deadly winter temperatures left millions of Texans without water and power. Meanwhile, California is preparing for another year of intense drought, and Wall Street millionaires are moving their remote work to Florida, ground zero for flooding and sea level rise. “We think about the Earth as a system,” says Marshall Shepherd, director of Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia, “so we can't understand climate change unless we understand changes in...

Duration:00:50:59

Jonathan Cohn: The Battle for Obamacare and Universal Coverage

3/9/2021
Expanding health-care coverage has been a long, tumultuous process in the United States, but at its core, citizens want one thing: affordable, accessible health care. In 2010, the federal government passed the Affordable Care Act, the most expansive piece of legislation advocating for health-care accessibility since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. This policy, however, continues to divide the public as leaders from both political parties envision two conflicting futures for a...

Duration:01:08:13

The State of Extremism in America

3/9/2021
What is the status of extremism in America? Are there more extremists or are they more emboldened? Why is it happening now and what can be done? The Anti-Defamation League is a leading anti-hate organization. Founded in 1913 in response to an escalating climate of antisemitism and bigotry, its timeless mission is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all. Today, ADL continues to fight all forms of hate with the same vigor and passion. ADL is...

Duration:00:54:56

Commonwealth Club Week in Review for March 5, 2021

3/6/2021
This is your Commonwealth Club week in review. Hear what you missed this week, and what we’ve got lined up for you next week. We’re always adding new programs - check out commonwealthclub.org/online for all of our upcoming events. If you haven’t already - please consider becoming a member of the Club. Enjoy exclusive discounts and access to special programs all while knowing your contributions directly support our many public programs and civic initiatives. Visit...

Duration:00:07:17

The Other American Dream: How a Gay Immigrant Fought to Live His Truth and Found Success

3/5/2021
"I grew up in a place where I was not meant to exist—a place where my identity as a gay male was contrary to Middle Eastern culture, standards and faith. I grew up in a home filled with dysfunction and strife. I carried the weight of all of that on my shoulders, . . . but if you carry a weight constantly, eventually you become stronger." —Harma Hartouni Harma Hartouni was born into an Armenian Orthodox Christian family in Los Angeles, but when he was 1 month old, his family moved to Iran,...

Duration:01:05:00

Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders

3/5/2021
Join us for a virtual conversation with Dennis Rasmussen to discuss the surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson each came to despair for the future of the nation they had created. Although Americans tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. Many eventually concluded that...

Duration:01:10:00

Dr. Euan Ashley: The Genome Odyssey

3/4/2021
Thanks to developments in genetic medicine, for the first time we have the ability to predict our genetic future, to diagnose and prevent disease before it begins, and to decode what it really means to be human. Since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, the possibilities for genetic medicine have only grown. But what does the human genome and genome sequencing mean for citizens today, and what will it mean for health care over the next several decades? In his new book, The Genome...

Duration:00:59:35

The Case for Keto

3/3/2021
Based on 20 years of investigative reporting and interviews with 100 practicing physicians who embrace the keto lifestyle as the best prescription for their patients' health, Gary Taubes puts the ketogenic diet movement in the necessary historical and scientific perspective. He makes clear the vital misconceptions in how we've come to think about obesity and diet (no, he says, people do not become fat simply because they eat too much; hormones play the critical role) and uses the collected...

Duration:01:02:43

Building an Anti-Racist Classroom

3/3/2021
Of the many inequities brought to light by COVID-19, the disparities that BIPOC students face in the American education system have proven to be the most complex. Creating an inclusive and anti-racist educational experience that helps students achieve their full potential is made even more difficult in the virtual classroom. To provide their expertise on equitable education, four education leaders will speak at INFORUM on the challenges and opportunities offered by online schooling. They are...

Duration:01:10:59

Fnnch and the Honey Bears: Street Art for All

3/2/2021
If you have walked, biked, or driven around San Francisco during the pandemic, you have most likely seen them: multi-colored illustrations of honey bears painted onto the boards covering closed shops and other businesses. Did you know that masks bearing (forgive the word) the honey bear have raised more than $125,000 for local restaurants to prepare meals for people in need? Now is your opportunity to meet fnnch, the elusive artist behind the honey bear. Wearing a mask—he likes to keep his...

Duration:01:05:09

Daughters of Kobani: Kurdish Women Warriors Against Islamic State

3/1/2021
Find out what Hillary and Chelsea Clinton liked so much about The Daughters of Kobani—so much that they acquired the book's TV rights for their new production company, HiddenLight. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, the New York Times best-selling author of Ashley's War and other books, is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and partner at Shield AI, a tech company focused on national security. Lemmon—who regularly appears on CNN, PBS, MSNBC,NPR, etc.—will discuss her latest...

Duration:01:00:40

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