Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

No elemental force has done more to shape life on this planet than water, from originating the earliest forms of life, to sculpting our landscapes, to determining patterns of human civilization. Humans have tried to control water for thousands of years, and access to this precious resource has caused conflict and also unlikely partnerships. In an era defined by climate disruption, the control, access, and quality of water will continue to determine our ability to survive and thrive. How can we ensure a future where clean water exists for all who need it – including the ecosystems we depend on – and navigate the challenges of too little or too much? Guests: Peter Gleick, co-founder, The Pacific Institute; author, “The Three Ages of Water” Contributor: Luke Runyon, Managing Editor & Reporter, Colorado River Basin, KUNC Radio For show notes and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few drugs in history have generated as much controversy as MDMA—or held as much promise, according to some. Once vilified as a Schedule I substance that would supposedly eat holes in users’ brains, MDMA (also known as Molly or Ecstasy) is now being hailed as a therapeutic agent that could transform the field of mental health and outpace psilocybin and ketamine as the first psychedelic approved for widespread clinical use. Award-winning science journalist Rachel Nuwer separates fact from fantasy, hope from hype, in the drug’s contested history and still-evolving future. Hear more as Nuwer explains the cultural and scientific upheaval that is rewriting our understanding of our brains, our selves, and the space between. This program contains EXPLICIT content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia. It begins with mild memory loss and progresses to more severe effects, in some cases leading to the loss of the ability to carry on a conversation or respond to the surrounding environment. According to the CDC, in 2020, 5.8 million Americans were living with Alzheimer's; the number of people living with the disease doubles every five years beyond the age of 65; and as many as 14 million people in the United States are projected to have Alzheimer's by the year 2060. The disease and its impact can be experienced in different ways in different communities. Join us live as television host Michelle Meow leads a discussion with health experts and Alzheimer's advocates. They'll discuss Alzheimer's awareness, caregiving and the API stigma, filial piety, a personal caregiving story, LGBTQ caregiving and family dynamics, early detection, and brain health. This is a free event—your chance to learn more about this disease affecting millions of people. NOTES The Michelle Meow Show thanks Kaiser Permanente for its support of independent LGBTQ media producers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year millions of tourists from around the world come to California to see our famous redwoods. Yet few understand how unlikely it is that these last groves of giant trees still stand at all. Activist Greg King examines how investors and a growing U.S. economy drove the timber industry to cut down the giant redwoods on all but four percent of the original 2-million-acre redwood ecosystem. The land grab began in 1849, when a “green gold rush” of migrants came to exploit the legendary redwoods that grew along the Russian River. Several generations later, in 1987, Greg King discovered and named Headwaters Forest—at 3,000 acres the largest ancient redwood habitat remaining outside of parks—and then led the movement to save this grove. After a decade of one of the most dramatic and violent environmental campaigns in U.S. history, the state and federal governments finally protected Headwaters Forest in 1999. The Ghost Forest explores the mystery of what it was about this unique Northern California forest that was both so spectacular and yet so enticing as fuel for economic growth that it inspired a life-and-death struggle. Few but loggers and surveyors ever saw such magnificent trees, ancient sentinels that, like ghosts, have informed Greg King’s understanding of the world, and have inspired him to tell the story of their discovery and their exploitation, and to protect them against those determined to cut them down. MLF ORGANIZER Andrew Dudley NOTES A People & Nature 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. This program contains EXPLICIT content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our food and agricultural systems are helping fuel the climate emergency. But climate isn’t the only harm; these systems also impact local economies, human dignity, and animal welfare. The upcoming Farm Bill presents an opportunity to infuse more climate-smart practices in American agriculture, which accounts for about 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But doing so involves confronting industrial practices that focus on short-term gains and commodity subsidies that have deep support in both parties. Senator Cory Booker has a plan to address our broken food system. He introduced legislation that would challenge large industrial beef and pork packagers and tilt the balance of power in our industrial agriculture system, giving family farmers, ranchers, and workers a better deal. But what chance do these elements have of passage? And what other options are there for decreasing the concentration of power in Big Ag? Guest: Cory Booker, United States Senator, New Jersey Contributor: Elizabeth Rembert For show notes and related links, visit ClimateOne.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Del Bonta will share how Shiva’s Many Dances and the celebrated ‘Nataraja’ pose is a culmination of how the ultimate depiction of Shiva’s essence evolves over time in a dynamic conception among the Hindu trinity of gods (the Trimürti). Del Bonta creates an engaging aspect of one of the Hindu trinity gods, reflecting on how the iconic image of Shiva Nataraja the "Lord of Dance" illustrates a creative and destructive power over eons of time. Shiva’s nature as both male and female is also a constant theme. Shiva manifests many other forms suggestive of power and mythological stories of dance or in prayers. It's but a tiny introduction to a major dance visualization heritage. Teacher and curator Dr. Robert Del Bonta's work has been presented in exhibition venues such as San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Mills College, Notre Dame de Namur University, Art Passages in San Francisco and New York City, Portland Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He has lectured widely at museums and institutions in the United States, and published numerous articles and exhibition catalogue contributions on South Asian art with thematic focus largely on Indian art of the Jainas. MLF ORGANIZER Anne W. Smith and George Hammond Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Six years ago, Richard Rothstein’s important book, Color of Law, made a powerful case that direct and indirect government action and policies at the federal, state and local levels had caused segregation and the resulting social problems throughout the United States. The book was a best seller and significantly influenced discussions of the systemic impact of segregated communities on a range of outcomes in education, health and workforce participation. It stands as one of the most important recent books on residential segregation published in the past few decades. What that book did not do was provide enough solutions for citizens to pursue to address the legacy of state-sanctioned segregation. In their new book, Just Action How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law, Rothstein and housing policy expert Leah Rothstein provide a blueprint on how to address segregation for concerned citizens and community leaders. The new book describes dozens of tangible strategies the Rothsteins say readers and supporters can undertake in their own communities to make their commitment real and create tangible change that might finally challenge residential segregation and help address the legacy of America's profoundly unconstitutional past. The Rothsteins provide a tool kit for activism and advocacy, with myriad real-life examples from communities, groups and individuals that have confronted segregation-related challenges from legal, real estate, banking, and commercial development standpoints. They also counter misconceptions about the consequences of integration and make their case for closing the wealth gap that has made homeownership unaffordable for many middle-class Americans, particularly African-Americans. Please join us for a critical conversation about how people can be empowered to address the legacy of state-sanctioned segregation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a child, Sarafina El-Badry Nance spent nearly every evening with her father gazing up at the flickering stars and pondering what secrets the night sky held. The daughter of an American father and Egyptian mother, Sarafina dreamed of becoming an astronomer. But it wasn’t long before she was told, both explicitly and implicitly, that girls just weren’t cut out for math and science. In a field that sees few women and women of color, Sarafina reflects on the obstacles that she faced to pursue her passion for the cosmos. Join us for an in-depth talk with astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who cleans up and rebuilds our communities after floods, fires, and hurricanes? COVID redefined America's definition of “essential workers,” but many who help communities recover from climate disasters remain underpaid and overlooked. In 2006, labor organizer Saket Soni got an anonymous call from an Indian migrant worker in Mississippi who had scraped together $20,000 to apply for the “opportunity” to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina. The caller was only one of hundreds lured into Gulf Coast labor camps, surrounded by barbed wire, and watched by armed guards. Since then, the frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters has only increased – and disaster recovery has become big business. How are the lives of people displaced by disasters intertwined with those helping to rebuild? Guests: Saket Soni, Founder and Director, Resilience Force Daniel Castellanos, Director Of Workforce Engagement, Resilience Force For show notes and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Extreme heat kills more people per year than any other climate disaster. It preys on the poor, exacerbates racial inequalities, and there is a growing body of evidence that shows women and girls are increasingly susceptible to heat-health effects. Globally, women and girls represent 80% of climate refugees. They are more likely to be displaced, suffer violence and die in natural disasters. As temperatures rise, children’s test scores decrease, gender violence increases, and miscarriage rates go up. But preventing heat deaths is possible. From Europe to Africa, Chief Heat Officers throughout the world are implementing projects to make cities more climate-adaptive. Guests: Kathy Baughman McLeod, Director, Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center; Senior VP, Atlantic Council Eleni Myrivili, Global Chief Heat Officer, UN Habitat Eugenia Kargbo, Chief Heat Officer, Freetown, Sierra Leone Freelance piece from Hellen Kabahukya on mud wattle construction in Uganda For show notes and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Please join us for clips and conversation with three award-winning Bay Area women documentary filmmakers. These women are changing the way we see our world through their important work. They will share their process of making the films, choosing, and developing their subjects as we view a clip from each of their latest films. They will also discuss the challenges they have faced as women in the industry and in getting their films funded and distributed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Food is more than just sustenance or nourishment. Food brings us together and connects us to family, history, migration and beyond. Perhaps no one understands this better than food columnist Illyanna Maisonet, who has spent years documenting her family’s Puerto Rican recipes and preserving the island’s disappearing foodways through rigorous research. Maisonet was the first Puerto Rican food columnist in the continental United States. Her San Francisco Chronicle column, “Cocina Boricua,” was dedicated to safeguarding traditional Puerto Rican recipes and exploring food throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora. Maisonet’s cookbook, Diasporican, provides a visual record of Puerto Rican food, ingredients and techniques. She shares deeply personal recipes—some even passed down from her grandmother and mother—that trace the island’s flavor traditions to the Taino, Spanish, African, and even United States’ cultures that created it. Shaped by geography, immigration and colonization, these dishes reflect the ingenuity and diversity of their people. Join as we celebrate and learn more about the essence of Puerto Rican culture and cuisine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a time of existential crisis, Pakistanis continue to believe that infusing the right "Islamic" spirit into the population will somehow see it through. Critics say that experience shows otherwise. Pakistanis—both religiously orthodox and liberal—believe that the founder of Pakistan had a game plan for the state after it came into being in 1947. There was none. Nationalist Hindus imagine India was populated in ancient times by a Hindu nation whereas nationalist Muslims tie Pakistan's origin with pre-existing Muslim identity and the first Muslim invader arriving on Indian soil. Historical evidence refutes both. The author will discuss these and other myths that are widely held in Pakistan as well as in India. Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from MIT and is also a prominent anti-nuclear activist. His earlier book was Confronting the Bomb: Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out. As an advocate for science and reason in Islam, his first book was Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, which included a foreword by the physics Nobel Prize winner Abdus Salam. As a science popularizer, Hoodbhoy received the UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize. Earlier he had received the Burton Award for Electronics and the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics. He is also a recipient of the Joseph A. Burton Award from the American Physical Society, is a sponsor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and was included among the top 100 global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine in 2011. Hoodbhoy’s newest project is The Black Hole, a community center in Islamabad for nurturing science, art, and culture. It houses an auditorium for speakers who would otherwise go unheard, a library, and a science lab for children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Ambroz is a living testament to the power of hope, strength and perseverance in overcoming some of life’s greatest challenges. Ambroz’s childhood was a harrowing tumult of poverty, homelessness and hunger as he, his siblings, and his mentally ill, abusive mother survived on the streets of New York. His subsequent experience in the foster system as a young gay man was similarly marked by neglect and abuse until he finally found stability. In his recent memoir, A Place Called Home, Ambroz vividly describes his story of survival and ultimately life success. Today, Ambroz is a law school graduate, a leading advocate for child welfare, and a national voice for improved foster care and homelessness policies. He is a head of Community Engagement (Southern California & Western U.S. Region) at Amazon, and has been recognized by former President Obama as an American Champion of Change. Please join us for a conversation with an inspirational person who is using his lived experience to help build a more humane and compassionate nation, and how you can too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lawyer, author, professor and Supreme Court expert Stephen Vladeck—author of the new book The Shadow Docket—exposes the Court’s increasing reliance on secretive judicial processes that permit typically public hearings and discussions to occur behind closed doors. Having argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court himself, Vladeck explains how the Court’s expanded use of the “shadow docket” has enabled cryptic late-night rulings that leave the public without explanation for decisions affecting everything from immigration to COVID vaccine mandates. A University of Texas law professor and CNN’s lead Supreme Court analyst, Vladeck joins us to talk about the important issues raised in his book as well as the biggest cases facing the Court this term. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Land use, pollution and the climate crisis are driving what may be the largest mass extinction event since the dinosaurs. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that the planet has seen an average 68% drop in mammal, bird, fish, reptile and amphibian populations since 1970. In order to help address species collapse, over 190 countries – signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Biodiversity – recently agreed to an ambitious new plan, called 30x30, which aims to conserve 30% of the world’s land and waters by 2030. Will the framework be enough to bring biodiversity back from the breaking point? This episode is supported in part by Resources Legacy Fund. Guests: Tanya Sanerib, International Legal Director, Center for Biological Diversity Ian Urbina, Director and Founder, The Outlaw Ocean Project Jennifer Tauli Corpuz, Managing Director of Policy, Nia Tero For show notes and related links, visit ClimateOne.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent advances in artificial intelligence are raising hopes of a U.S. productivity boom by automating mundane tasks, improving decision-making, and opening up new business models and opportunities. At the same time, many workers are skeptical, fearing that the new tools may make them obsolete. What impact will AI have on businesses and employees in the long and short term? And how can we be more productive while also ensuring that the benefits will be distributed equally? A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute, "Rekindling Productivity for a New Era," sheds light on these questions. The study examines which sectors and geographic regions, such as California, have been the most innovative and productive, and what it took to achieve that success. "To unlock value from truly new technology, firms must reconfigure how they work, often over sustained periods, as they tinker with processes and workers adapt their skills," the report finds. The study also argues that maintaining the status quo is not an option. U.S. productivity has been lagging since 2005, averaging 1.4 percent a year, compared to the post-World War II average of 2.2 percent. Bringing productivity up to its historical average could add an additional $10 trillion to the U.S. GDP over the next 10 years, amounting to an extra $15,200 per U.S. household. We'll talk with McKinsey's Olivia White about how to fix the U.S. productivity engine in a way that benefits everyone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 21st century, technology dominates all aspects of our lives. With the advent of artificial intelligence, some believe we are at a critical moment with our ability to control the very technology that humans built. And the decisions we make now will likely shape our society's progress on a range of variables in the future. According to economist and global thinker Simon Johnson, a thousand years of historical and contemporary evidence makes one thing clear: societal progress for all depends on the choices we make about technology. In his new book Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, Johnson explores the history and economics of major technological transformations up to and including the latest developments in artificial Intelligence. He finds that new ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of the elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity for society. Johnson demonstrates that the path of technology was once—and may again be—brought under control if we make the right choices. The tremendous computing advances of the last half century can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few tech leaders, which characterizes much of the world of technology today. Will this change, and what is our role? Hear more as Johnson addresses these critical questions about the power of technology and its influence on societal progress. NOTES This program is generously supported by the Jackson Square Partners Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many on the left say that the growing climate crisis is the inevitable result of unbridled capitalism – industries seeking profits above all else. In “The Big Myth,” Naomi Oreskes (who brought us “Merchants of Doubt”) points to a concerted effort from American business groups to propagate the myth that only markets free of government regulation can generate prosperity and protect political freedom. “If we actually had appropriate regulations, appropriate rules of the road, we wouldn't be in this position of having to beg corporate leaders not to destroy the planet,” Oreskes says. This myth has grown so pervasive that American citizens now put more faith in CEOs than in religious leaders, according to David Gelles, author of “The Man Who Broke Capitalism.” What should be done to change the narrative? Guests: Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science, Harvard David Gelles, Reporter, The New York Times Kate Khatib, Co-Director, Seed Commons For show notes and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Please join The Commonwealth Club for an evening with the leaders of the Buck Institute, one of the country's leading research organizations on aging. We'll hear from the leader of the Buck Institute on "Healthspan," then enjoy an in-person wine and cheese reception. "Healthspan" is the period of life in which an individual is healthy and free from chronic disease. Interventions that promote healthy aging, such as diet and exercise, can help increase healthspan and reduce the burden of age-related diseases. Dr. Eric Verdin will discuss his efforts and those of his colleagues at the Buck Institute in helping to advance our understanding of aging and develop new strategies for promoting healthy aging and extending healthspan. Eric Verdin, MD, is the president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, a pioneering biomedical research institute dedicated to aging and age-related disease. A native of Belgium, Dr. Verdin received his Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Liege and completed additional clinical and research training at Harvard Medical School. He has held faculty positions at the University of Brussels, the National Institutes of Health, and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Dr. Verdin is also currently a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2016 Dr. Verdin established his laboratory at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging to study the relationship between aging and the immune system. He is an elected member of several scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He also serves on the advisory council of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health. There will be a post-program reception for all attendees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices