Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

With dazzling illustrations, sumptuous recipes, and its own curated playlist, Bryant Terry’s sixth book, Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora, is a feast for the senses. Terry, a renowned vegan culinary innovator, returns to dive into the depth and breadth of Black foodways spanning nations and time. Black Food celebrates both the creations and creators, pairing heartwarming stories of generational traditions with the soul-filling foods at the center of them. From tropical Afro-Caribbean dishes like jerk chicken to beloved Nigerian jollof rice and further on to southern sweet potato pie, this book is an ode to the African diaspora’s influence on food and culture. At INFORUM, Bryant Terry will share the stories, people, places and ingredients that make Black food the diverse and divine cuisine it is today. SPEAKERS Bryant Terry Chef; Author, Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora Anjali Menon Vice President, IfOnly; Member, INFORUM Advisory Board 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 October 20th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As president of One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, Saru Jayaraman has fought for a reimagining of tipped industries. She argues that at just $2.13 an hour, what tipped-wage workers are paid is unlivable on its own and that, unsurprisingly, the people in these jobs are often society's most vulnerable: undocumented, BIPOC, and women workers who already make cents on the dollar of their white male counterparts. In place of the 30-year-old subminimum wage, Jayaraman has worked tirelessly to realize a fair living wage for these essential workers. In the wake of COVID-19, she says it is more obvious than ever that changes need to be made if we want to keep everyone’s head above water. Jayaraman’s message is unwavering—our drivers, delivery workers, servers and nail technicians deserve to have a livelihood. At INFORUM and alongside service industry experts Chef Dominique Crenn and Angela Glover Blackwell, Jayaraman will lay out what changes need to be made and how we can achieve a fair, livable wage for everyone in our communities. SPEAKERS Angela Glover Blackwell Founder in Residence, PolicyLink; Host, "Radical Imagination" Podcast Dominique Crenn Chef and Owner, Atelier Crenn Saru Jayaraman President, One Fair Wage; Co-Founder, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United; Director, Food Labor Research Ctr., UC Berkeley; Author, Behind the Kitchen Door, Forked: A New Standard for American Dining, & One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America 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 October 18th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some might say that Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods were destined to meet. Poor, a professor of photography at CSU Sacramento, was volunteering with the Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison when she met Woods, who was serving a 31-year-to-life sentence. The two bonded over a love of storytelling and with no formal experience, began a podcast together where they showcase the realities of life in prison while detailing the path of their fateful friendship. Their upcoming book, This Is Ear Hustle, shares its name with their well-received podcast, which has gone on to become a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize and is in its seventh season. The book avoids the overtly political and instead delves into the richness of humanity found even behind the bars of the prison system. With candor, the authors showcase the unlikely inspiration found in stories of the incarcerated. At INFORUM Earlonne Woods—whose sentence was commuted in 2018—and Nigel Poor will take our stage in downtown San Francisco to help our audiences become “ear hustlers'' themselves, eavesdropping on the tales of resilience, forgiveness and the lives that exist behind some of America’s most well-guarded doors. This program will be moderated by Piper Kerman, author of The New York Times bestseller Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison. Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language SPEAKERS Nigel Poor Visual Artist; Co-Creator and Co-Host, "Ear Hustle" Podcast; Co-Author, This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life Earlonne Woods Co-Creator and Co-Host, "Ear Hustle" Podcast; Co-Author, This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life Piper Kerman Author, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison—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 October 25th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many nations have a national poet, whose poetry helps carve out their own unique cultural niche in human civilization. Italy has enjoyed many literary geniuses for over two millennia, but still looks to one man the most: Dante. Like major poets in other cultures, Dante’s influence on the Italian language can hardly be overstated. The Divine Comedy was the first major work of literature to leave Latin behind in favor of Italian, and it remains the world standard of poetic excellence. Dante’s fertile imagination also inspired artists, writers and theologians, making him almost as influential about the afterlife as he is linguistically. Join Humanities West in person at The Commonwealth Club, or via livestream, to celebrate the 700th Anniversary of Dante’s death—which ironically occurred not that many months after he completed his speculations about post-death possibilities—with a two-hour, three-lecture Dante feast: • Timothy Hampton on "Dante After Dante: the Forms of Memory." Though there were many "in the know" about the achievement of Dante's great poem during his lifetime, his vast influence on Italian poetry and world literature was uneven in the centuries following his death. In some areas of artistic creation—for example, in the painting of Botticelli—Dante was powerfully present. In other areas (poetry, philosophy, literary criticism) his influence was definite, but diffuse and oblique. This lecture will speak about the ways in which Dante's work did and didn't shape Italian and European culture in the early modern period. • Kip Cranna on "Dante at the Opera: From the Divine Comedy to a Comic Puccini Delight." In "The Inferno," part one of The Divine Comedy, Dante introduces the condemned sinner Gianni Schicchi, consigned to the Eighth Circle of Hell along with others guilty of fraud. His crime: impersonating the deceased Buoso Donati to falsify Buoso's will for his own benefit. Dante personally knew the Donatis (he was married to one), and therein lies an intriguing tale of medieval Florentine society. The story of this fraudulent will and the legend surrounding it became the inspiration for the famed composer Giacomo Puccini's only comic opera. After outlining the Dante-Puccini connection, San Francisco Opera's Dramaturg Emeritus Kip Cranna will present brief video highlights from the opera Gianni Schicchi, including the ever-popular aria "O mio babbino caro." • Marisa Galvez on "Dante Before Dante Become Dante." In retrospect it almost seems like Dante invented Italian literary culture, but he arrived on the Italian literary scene as a love poet—an admirer of courtly love and the troubadour traditions which had begun a century earlier in Occitania, and had spread to Italy, Spain and then most of Europe. Dante defined the troubadour lyrics as rhetorical, musical and poetical fiction — which is also a good description of The Divine Comedy. NOTES MLF: Humanities Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language. SPEAKERS Kip Cranna Dramaturg Emeritus, San Francisco Opera Marisa Galvez Professor of French and Italian, and by Courtesy, of German Studies and Comparative Literature; Faculty Director, Structured Liberal Education, Stanford University Timothy Hampton Aldo Scaglione and Marie M. Burns Distinguished Professor of French and Comparative Literature; Director, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley George Hammond —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 October 22nd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join this important discussion to learn how the White House is forming critical partnerships across sectors to fight anti-Asian hate crimes, moving forward the administration's Build Back Better Agenda to rebuild the economy, and ensuring the advancement of the Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AA and NHPI) communities. Attendees will have the opportunity to identify issues the AA/NHPI communities may want to prioritize and ask questions. Erika Moritsugu was appointed in April by President Biden to serve as deputy assistant to the president and AA/NHPI senior liaison. She engages with AA and NHPI communities and leaders on issues such as advancing safety, justice, inclusion, and opportunity through a whole-of-government approach to racial justice. She previously served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental relations at the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Secretary Julián Castro and was the first-ever Senate deputy legislative director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On Capitol Hill, she served as senior representative of Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. She also worked for Senator Daniel K. Akaka of Hawai‘i and at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In the nonprofit sector, Moritsugu managed two teams at the National Partnership for Women & Families for economic justice and congressional relations, advancing workforce and health policies through a gender equity and race equity lens. She also led the Government Relations, Advocacy and Community Engagement team at the Anti-Defamation League. Moritsugu attended Brandeis University, the College of William and Mary, and George Washington University Law School. She will be in conversation with Dion Lim, anchor/reporter for ABC 7 Television News in San Francisco. NOTES In partnership with SFCAUSE (Community Alliance for Unity, Safety & Education) , San Francisco. SPEAKERS Erika Moritsugu Deputy Assistant to the President and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander White House Senior Liaison In Conversation with Dion Lim Anchor/Reporter, ABC 7 News in San Francisco 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 September 24th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a virtual conversation with Fritjof Capra to discuss the evolution of his thought. In the late 1950s Capra read the work of Werner Heisenberg, a founder of quantum mechanics, and quickly intuited connections between the discoveries of quantum physics and the traditions of Eastern philosophy. The result was his bestselling book, The Tao of Physics. His synthesis, which dispensed with the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton in favor of a systemic, ecological one, has provided him with a different perspective on the life sciences, ecology and environmental policy. Six decades later, Fritjof Capra remains at the crossroads of physics, spirituality, environmentalism and systems theory. Organized thematically and chronologically, the essays in Patterns of Connection document his revolutionary and far-reaching intellectual journey. MLF ORGANIZER George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities SPEAKERS Fritjof Capra Author, Patterns of Connection In Conversation with George Hammond Author, Conversations With Socrates 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 October 21st 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fully electrifying our homes, cars and industries could cut the amount of total energy we need by half, says Saul Griffith, an entrepreneur, inventor and author of Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. This electric revolution would mean significantly scaling up our solar, wind and battery storage and reorienting the electric grid – but could also mean “thousands of dollars in savings in every household, every year.” President Biden wants half the cars sold in the US to be electric by 2030. And automakers are increasingly putting money and marketing muscle behind EVs. When Ford announced its all-electric F-150, it sent a powerful jolt through the transportation industry. Pre-orders for the F-150 Lightning surpassed 100,000 within three days, signalling that EVs are no longer just for kale-eating coastal elites. Note: Ford Motor Co. is among Climate One’s sponsors. This program was underwritten in part by ClimateWorks Foundation. For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Guests: Saul Griffith, author, Electrify: An Optimist Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future Cynthia Williams, Global Director, Sustainability, Homologation and Compliance, Ford Motor Co. Sara Baldwin, Director of Electrification Policy, Energy Innovation Josh Nassar, Legislative Director, United Auto Workers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our speakers, Rev. Norman Fong and Rev. James McCray, will discuss their direct hands-on experience in working to address the issue of equity and justice in community development, especially around building affordable housing, engaging community members for advocacy and support, and the broader issues of economic development connected to jobs and small business support. They will reflect on how these issue exist in San Francisco and in cities around the country. Join us for a timely discussion on equity and justice in the development of cities. About the Speakers Rev. Norman Fong has worked full-time in the nonprofit arena in San Francisco Chinatown for more than 3 decades. He has served as a pastor, the deputy director of programs at Chinatown Community Development Center, and now as executive director of Chinatown CDC. Besides being an ordained Presbyterian minister, Fong is the co-founder of the Jest Jammin Band, which has been playing classic soul/R&B/Motown music for 45 years. Dr. James McCray, Jr., is semi-retired after 38 years of service in local churches and to their surrounding community, and now joyously living as a son, husband, father and grandfather in his beloved San Francisco. He says he is joyful first for the blessing of being a “cancer survivor.” Joyful also, because of the marriage to Gail Jackson McCray, a practicing attorney in our city. In the last 10 years, a surprising new venture has come along—the development of affordable housing through the building of a locally based community development corporation, as executive director of Tabernacle Community Development Corporation (TCDC). MLF ORGANIZER Gerald Harris NOTES MLF: Technology & Society SPEAKERS Rev. Norman Fong Former Executive Director, Chinatown Community Development Center, focused on addressing the issues poverty, housing and small businesses in Chinatown Rev. James McCray Executive Director, Tabernacle Community Development Corp., a developer of affordable housing in San Francisco with a focus on slowing the city's out-migration of African Americans Gerald Harris President, Quantum Planning Group; Chair, Technology & Science Member-Led Forum, The 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 October 21st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brought to us by Fox News Chief Political Anchor Bret Baier, To Rescue the Republic is an epic history of Ulysses S. Grant—spanning from the battlefields of the Civil War to the violent turmoil of Reconstruction to the forgotten electoral crisis that nearly fractured a reunited nation. Desperate for bold leadership in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln turned to Ulysses S. Grant, appointing him lieutenant general of the Union Army, precipitating their victory within a year. Four years later, as president of the United States, Grant rose to the challenge of Reconstruction by advancing its agenda and aggressively countering the Klu Klux Klan. When the contested presidential election of 1876 produced no clear victory, it was Grant who forged the painful compromise that saved the fragile nation, but tragically pushed the Civil Rights movement even further down the road. In this book, Baier dramatically reveals Grant’s palpable and essential influence on the United States as it suffered through a severe period of internal division. Join us as Bret Baier brings contemporary resonance and fresh detail to the life of one of America’s most legendary leaders. NOTES This program is part of The Commonwealth Club's Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. SPEAKERS Bret Baier Chief Political Anchor for Fox News Channel, Anchor and Executive Editor, "Special Report with Bret Baier"; Author, To Rescue the Republic: Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876 Melissa Caen Attorney; Political Analyst—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 October 20th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a Silicon Valley entrepreneur developed a tax break intended as a way to incentivize the rich to invest in underserved communities, the idea was pushed into law with little scrutiny or fine-tuning and few safeguards against abuse. With an unbeatable pair of high-profile sponsors and deft political marketing, the Opportunity Zone became an unnoticed part of the 2017 Trump tax bill. In his new book Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age, bestselling author David Wessel follows the money—starting from this Opportunity Zone initiative—to see who profited from the plan that was supposed to spur development of blighted areas and help people out of poverty. His findings? The Las Vegas Strip, the Portland (Oregon) Ritz-Carlton, and the Mall of America. In other words, lucrative areas where the wealthy can place their money profitably and avoid capital gains taxes. Wessel provides vivid portraits of the proselytizers, political influencers, consultants, real estate dealmakers and individual money-seekers looking to take advantage of this opportunity. He looks at the cities in which the Opportunity Zone initiatives have failed, as well as a few where they have succeeded, and offers a lesson on how a better-designed program might have helped more left-behind places. Join us as David Wessel, offers an in-depth analysis of the bill he faults with keeping the rich richer—revealing the gritty reality of a system tilted in favor of a few while leaving many out in the cold. SPEAKERS David Wessel Senior Fellow and Director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, Brookings Institution; Author, Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age; Twitter @davidmwessel In Conversation with Lenny Mendonca Former Chief Economic and Business Advisor, State of California; 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 October 19th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mildred Harnack, born and raised in Milwaukee, was a Ph.D. candidate studying in Berlin in 1932 when the Nazis began their rise to power. Donner describes how her great-great-aunt Mildred began holding secret meetings in her apartment. Her small band of political activists grew into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin by 1940. Harnack recruited working-class Germans, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated on leaflets that denounced Adolf Hitler and called for revolution. At night her co-conspirators would slip those leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms and phone booths. When World War II began, Harnack became a spy, providing top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her planned escape to Sweden, she was arrested by the Gestapo. A Nazi military court sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler personally overruled that sentence and ordered her execution. On February 16, 1943, Mildred Harnack, the only known American member of the German resistance, was guillotined. Donner draws on extensive archival research in Germany, Russia, England, and the United States, as well as on newly uncovered documents in her family's archive, to tell Harnack's story. She has woven those letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors’ testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into an epic story of moral courage. SPEAKERS Rebecca Donner Author, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler In Conversation With George Hammond Author, Conversations With Socrates 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 September 7th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Violence against Black people—both physical and psychological—has seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests in the summer of 2020. “After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy,” Charles Blow writes, “ it seems to me that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.” A New York Times op-ed columnist, Blow felt compelled to write a new story for Black Americans, one that involves a succinct, counterintuitive and impassioned correction to the myths that have for too long governed our thinking about race and geography in America. The Devil You Know is a grand exhortation to generations of a people, proposing nothing short of the most audacious power play by Black people in the history of this country. Join us as Charles Blow offers a road map to true and lasting freedom. SPEAKERS Charles Blow Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times; Author, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto; Twitter @CharlesMBlow In Conversation with Melissa Murray Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law; Co-host, "Strict Scrutiny" Podcast; Twitter @ProfMMurray 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 October 19th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the devastating effects and tragic loss of life from COVID-19 persist 18 months after the global pandemic began, the world is desperate to end this public health crisis. As businesses across industries are rolling out varying degrees of vaccine, testing, and masking mandates, President Biden announced the requirement for federal workers, medium and large employers, and health-care staff to be vaccinated. Working together and partnering with government and community leaders, the private sector plays a role in helping to close the vaccination gap in our workforce and communities. What can the business community do to stop this pandemic? What is the private sector’s role in helping keep our communities safe? How are organizations responding to local, state and federal mandates? What processes are working and not working? What will it take to return to a strong and stable economy? Join a panel of business leaders across industries discussing opportunities to address this public health crisis and how we can work together to end it. NOTES This program is generously supported by our partner Kaiser Permanente. SPEAKERS Greg A. Adams Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Kaiser Permanente Brett Hart President, United Airlines Molly Moon Neitzel CEO, Molly Moon Homemade Ice Cream Stephen Parodi Executive Vice President, The Permanente Federation; National Infectious Disease Leader, Kaiser Permanente Jim Wunderman President and CEO, Bay Area Council Raj Mathai News Anchor, NBC Bay Area—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 October 18th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a conversation with Joe Weisberg, who makes the case in his new book, Russia Upside Down, that America's foreign policy toward Russia is failing, and we'll never fix it unless we rethink our entire relationship. Weisberg came of age in America in the 1970s and '80s as a Cold Warrior. He studied Russian in Leningrad, and then joined the CIA—just in time to watch the Soviet Union collapse. Less than a decade later, though, a new Cold War broke out. Russia had changed in many of the ways that America hoped it might. It had become more capitalist, more religious, more open to Western ideas. But U.S. sanctions crippled Russia's economy, and Russia's internet-based retaliations have exacerbated our own political problems. Weisberg says the old paradigm—America, the free capitalist good guys, fighting Russia, the repressive communist bad guys—simply doesn't apply anymore. But we've continued to act as if it does. Weisberg asks hard questions about our foreign policy and attempts to understand what Russia truly wants. He concludes that we are fighting an enemy with whom we have few if any serious conflicts of interest, we are fighting this unnecessary war with ineffective and dangerous tools, and our approach is not working anyway. With our own political system in peril, and continually being buffeted by Russian attacks, he argues that we need a new framework. Urgently. Weisberg makes it clear what the stakes are and lays out the foundation for a new American foreign policy for dealing with Russia. NOTES MLF: Humanities SPEAKERS Joe Weisberg Television Writer; Creator, "The Americans"; Former CIA Officer; Author, Russia Upside Down In Conversation with George Hammond Author, Conversations With Socrates 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 October 21st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's speakers, who are human rights activists as well as being business-oriented, will discuss why Bitcoin matters, especially in the Middle East region. Alex Gladstein, vice president of strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum, has connected many dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, philanthropists, policymakers and artists, to promote free and open societies. He has shared his views at MIT, Stanford, BBC, the European Parliament, the U.S. State Department, and other venues. He is the singularity expert at Singularity University and advises Blockchain Capital. Fadi Elsalameen, who was born in Hebron, is a critic of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and has received death threats for his pro-democracy and anti-corruption work. He is a graduate of Seeds of Peace, a successful businessperson, and has also shared his views at many leading institutions, including The Commonwealth Club of California. SPEAKERS Fadi Elsalameen M.S., International Relations and Economics; Adjunct Senior Fellow, American Security Project Alex Gladstein Chief Strategy Officer, Human Rights Foundation; Co-Author, The Little Bitcoin Book Jonathan Curiel Author—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 October 18th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Celebrated writer Susan Orlean visits The Commonwealth Club for the first time to discuss her new book, On Animals, a collection from her lifetime of musings, mediations and in-depth profiles about animals. Orlean, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is fresh off her last best-selling book, The Library Book, about the Los Angeles Public Library, which won numerous awards. Her new collection focuses on a range of creatures—the household pets we dote on, the animals we raise to end up as meat on our plates, the creatures who could eat us for dinner, and the various tamed and untamed animals we share our planet with that are central to human life. Since the age of six, Orlean has been fascinated by stories about animals, and her new book brings forward a lifetime of writing about cross-species connections. How humans interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets and naturalists for ages. Come hear one of America's most gifted writers discuss why she is so passionate and curious about the subject. SPEAKERS Susan Orlean Staff Writer, The New Yorker; Author, On Animals Julia Flynn Siler Journalist; Author, The White Devil's Daughters 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 October 14th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People around the world have been experiencing unprecedented extreme weather events – raging wildfires, killer heatwaves and catastrophic floods. In August, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new Assessment Report, which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called “code red for humanity,” adding that alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable. Against this backdrop, delegates from across the globe are set to convene for the international climate summit known as COP26, where they’re expected to hammer out commitments to reduce carbon emissions in hopes of avoiding the worst impacts of climate disruption. Six years on from the Paris agreement, is there finally enough urgency to turn ambition and promises into action? For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Guests: Kate Larsen, Director, International Energy & Climate, Rhodium Group Albert Cheung, Head of Global Analysis, Bloomberg NEF Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Climate Justice Activist, Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines Carlon Zackhras, Marshall Islands youth climate activist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is intentional misgendering a crime? Should it be? How does it affect the person who is the subject of the treatment? In July 2021, a California district court struck down a provision of the LGBTQ Long-term Care Facility Residents' Bill of Rights that banned nursing home staff from "willfully and repeatedly" misgendering or using the wrong name to refer to a resident when they've been clearly informed of the preferred name or pronoun. That provision, known as the "pronoun provision," was ruled to be an infringement on free speech, with one of the judges writing that "misgendering may be disrespectful, discourteous and insulting, and used in an inartful way to express an ideological disagreement with another person's expressed gender identity," but the First Amendment "does not protect only speech that inoffensively and artfully articulates a person's point of view." Advocates for LGBTQ seniors, and especially for transgender and gender nonconforming seniors, have called the decision alarming. Openhouse, a San Francisco-based LGBT senior housing, community and services organization, states "Misgendering can be harmful to a resident, particularly as it relates to feelings of safety, acceptance and isolation." California State Senator Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco) said "It’s never OK to intentionally and repeatedly misgender a transgender person. This isn’t a matter of political opinion; it’s straight-up harassment." Join us for a live-stream discussion among advocates and professionals working with transgender and nonconforming seniors about the impact of the ruling and proposals for what to do next. SPEAKERS Eric Carlson Directing Attorney, Justice in Aging; Author, Long-Term Care Advocacy and 25 Common Nursing Home Problems — and How to Resolve Them Richelle Slota Author, Stray Son and Captive Market: Commercial Kidnapping Stories from Nigeria Dr. Kathleen Sullivan Ph.D.; Executive Director, Openhouse Michelle Meow Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—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 October 14th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dubbed the “most surprising” candidate, Andrew Yang made waves with a rousing 2020 presidential campaign. With his newfound platform, he advanced the prevalence of progressive concepts such as the Universal Basic Income (UBI), bringing them into mainstream discussion. A year later, Yang is more adamant than ever that the need for change is urgent and that we can rely on no one else other than ourselves to bring it to fruition. In his upcoming book Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, Yang emphasizes once more the cumulative and mounting pressures like job automation that already threaten what he argues is an antiquated system. He says that only daring measures can bring us back from the brink of becoming a failed democracy. At INFORUM, Andrew Yang will once more lay out his vision for an American future that is modern, sustainable and serves its constituents. Hoping to defy creeping stagnation, he extends a call to action to every American citizen. The message? "Now or never." Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language. SPEAKERS Andrew Yang Entrepreneur; Political candidate; Author, Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy Vikrum Aiyer Deputy Director, ACLU National Political Advocacy Department; Member, INFORUM Advisory Board—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 October 13th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before Fiona Hill became a celebrated foreign policy expert and key witness in the 2019 impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump, she was a coal-miner's daughter from northern England in a town where the last of the coal mines had closed. Her father urged her to get out, saying “There is nothing for you here, pet.” Hill went on to study in Moscow and at Harvard and served under three United States presidents. But in both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. Her new book, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century, draws on her own journey out of poverty and her unique perspective as a policymaker to warn that America is on the brink of socioeconomic collapse and an authoritarian swing that could rival modern Russia. In her powerful and deeply personal account, Hill reveals why expanding opportunity for desperate and forgotten Americans is the only long-term hope for our democracy. Join us as she reflects on her own experience and expertise to analyze the future of American democracy. NOTES This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. SPEAKERS Fiona Hill Former Senior Director for Europe and Russia, National Security Council; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Author, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century In Conversation with Ellen Nakashima National Security Reporter, The Washington Post 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 October 12th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his new book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, popular psychologist and author Steven Pinker explores the concept of collective rationality in society. Today, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding, yet we continue to produce fake news, medical quackery and conspiracy theories. Pinker explains this by rejecting the cynical cliché that humans are simply irrational, arguing instead that the rational pursuit of self-interest, sectarian solidarity, and uplifting mythology can add up to crippling irrationality in a society. Over time, humans have discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and set out the benchmarks for rationality itself. But despite our sensible thinking in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, he says we often fail to take advantage of the reasoning we’ve discovered over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and optimal ways to update beliefs and commit to choices individually and with others. Pinker asserts that a society that is collectively rational depends on objectivity and truth—and that this kind of thinking leads to better individual choices and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Join Steven Pinker and Lara Bazelon as they delve into his new book and reveal how today’s society, in all its complexity, is formed by our collective human nature. The Commonwealth Club thanks the Ken & Jackie Broad Family Fund for its partnership. SPEAKERS Steven Pinker Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; Author, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters; Twitter @sapinker In Conversation with Lara Bazelon Professor of Law and Director of Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs, University of San Francisco 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 October 12th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Standard treatment for obesity, based on a law of physics, assumes that all calories are alike, and that to lose weight one must simply “eat less and move more.” However, this prescription rarely works over the long term. According to the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of obesity, the metabolic condition of fat cells plays a key role in determining body weight. High intakes of processed carbohydrate raise insulin levels and program fat cells to store too many calories, leaving too few for the rest of the body. Consequently, hunger increases, and metabolic rate slows in the body’s attempt to conserve energy. From this perspective, calorie-restricted, low-fat diets amount to symptomatic treatment, destined to fail for most people. Instead, a dietary strategy aiming to lower insulin secretion promises to increase the effectiveness of long-term weight management and chronic disease prevention. David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., is an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and professor of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. For more than 25 years, Dr. Ludwig has studied the effects of dietary composition on metabolism, body weight and risk for chronic disease—with a special focus on low glycemic index, low carbohydrate and ketogenic diets. Described as an “obesity warrior” by Time magazine, Dr. Ludwig has fought for fundamental policy changes to improve the food environment. He has authored more than 200 scientific articles and presently serves as an editor at the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and The BMJ. Dr. Ludwig is author of the number-one New York Times bestseller Always Hungry? Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently. MLF ORGANIZER Patty James SPEAKERS David S. Ludwig M.D., Ph.D., Endocrinologist and Researcher, Boston Children’s Hospital; Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Professor of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health Patty James M.S., N.C. Nutritionist; Chef; Author—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 October 12th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monday, October 11 is 2021 National Coming Out Day. Join us for a screening of the Pixar short film Out plus fascinating conversation with a talented Pixar animator who directed Out and the filmmaker who produced Out. About the Speakers Steven Clay Hunter joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1997 and has worked as an animator on a number of Pixar’s most beloved films, including A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo. He was an animation supervisor on The Incredibles, WALL•E and Brave. Recently, he helped bring to life the characters Hank from Finding Dory (for which he won the 2013 VES award) and Duke Caboom from Toy Story 4. Most recently, Hunter made his directorial debut with the SparkShort Out on Disney+, which was shortlisted for an Oscar Nomination this past year. In addition, Out is nominated for a GLADD award. Prior to coming to Pixar, Hunter worked for Walt Disney Animation on many projects, including Fantasia 2000 and Hercules. He first learned computer animation at Industrial Light & Magic on Casper the Friendly Ghost. Max Sachar is a San Francisco-based filmmaker and film producer, and for the past 15 years he has worked at Pixar Animation Studios on critically acclaimed short & feature films, including Coco, Incredibles 2, Wall-E, Toy Story 3, and Lou. Most recently, Sachar produced Pixar’s 2020 Academy Award Shortlisted film Out (written and directed by Steven Clay Hunter). As producer, he worked creatively with the director to help navigate the story and visual development, while also focusing on casting, staffing all art and technical teams, and making strategic decisions around the schedule and budget. In addition to his work at Pixar, Max is a co-director and cinematographer for Concept o4 films, where he has helped created several award winning dance films. During what’s left of his free time, Max spends as much time in the outdoors with his fiancé and 2 pups, and roaming the streets of his hometown, San Francisco, camera in hand. SPEAKERS Steven Clay Hunter Director, Out, Pixar; Animator, Pixar Animation Studios; Twitter @BubbleOfThunder Max Sachar Filmmaker, Pixar Animation Studios; Producer, Out; Co-Director and Cinematographer, Concept o4 Films Michelle Meow Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW 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 October 11th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the congressman who led the first impeachment of President Trump, Adam Schiff’s Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could delivers a vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour. Prior to the 2016 election, congressman Schiff had been sounding the alarm over the threat posed by a global resurgence of autocracy. As he led the probe into Trump’s Russia- and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power, he came to the conclusion that the biggest threat to American democracy came from within—arguing that Trump’s presidency has so weakened our institutions and compromised the Republican Party that the danger will remain for years to come. From being a prosecutor to a congressman known for bipartisanship to a liberal lighting rod and archenemy of the president, Adam Schiff tracks his own path to meeting the crisis he argues is severely imperiling America: the dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. Join us as congressman Adam Schiff deepens our understanding of authoritarianism in the Trump administration and warns that, even after his defeat, the unleashed forces of autocracy remain as potent as ever. SPEAKERS Adam Schiff U.S. Representative (D-CA); Author, Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could In Conversation with Marisa Lagos Correspondent for California Politics and Government, KQED; Twitter @mlagos 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 October 14th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs our brains must do. Our hearing is always on. We can't close our ears the way we close our eyes. And yet we are quite adept at ignoring sounds that are unimportant. Nina Kraus explores what is going on in our brains when we hear a word, a chord, a meow, or a screech, and examines the partnership of sound and brain, showing how the processing of sound drives many of the brain's core functions. Our hearing brain interacts with what we know, with our emotions, with how we think, with our movements, and with all our other senses. Auditory neurons make calculations at one-thousandth of a second. Hearing is the fastest of our senses. Sound also plays an unrecognized role in both healthy and hurting brains. Kraus explores the power of music for healing as well as the destructive power of noise on the nervous system. She traces what happens in the brain when we speak another language, have a language disorder, experience rhythm, listen to birdsong, or suffer a concussion. Join us as Kraus explores how our deep engagement with sound leaves a fundamental imprint on who we are. NOTES MLF: Humanities SPEAKERS Nina Kraus Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Communication Sciences, and Otolaryngology, Northwestern University; Author, Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World In Conversation with George Hammond Author, Conversations With Socrates 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 October 7th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Lithgow’s acclaimed acting career has seen him star in shows like “3rd Rock from the Sun” and “The Crown” and films such as Bombshell and The World According to Garp. In his newest collection of satirical poems and illustrations, Lithgow expertly tracks the dark and lyrical stories of 25 “American Scoundrels.” Join us as award-winning actor, author and illustrator John Lithgow presents the stories of both long-forgotten figures and the bad actors of today. SPEAKERS John Lithgow Actor; Author and Illustrator, A Confederacy of Dumptys: Portraits of American Scoundrels in Verse Melissa Caen Attorney; Political Analyst—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 October 7th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In September 2019, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from 2,600 lawsuits for its role in fueling the U.S. overdose crisis. Author and activist Ryan Hampton served as the co-chair of the official creditors committee that acted as a watchdog during the process—one of only four victims to act as representatives of big insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmacies. Though Hampton originally believed that holding Purdue to account would be enough to right the scales of justice, he soon came to learn that, no matter what the media said, Purdue did not do this alone. Hampton argues they were in fact aided and abetted by the very systems that were supposed to protect Americans. Unsettled: How the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Failed the Victims of the American Overdose Crisis is Ryan Hampton’s look into what happened behind closed doors—the story of a broken system that failed to protect people over profits, and let millions of lives be destroyed by the opioid crisis. From Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings to the company’s eventual restructuring and the evasion of true accountability, Unsettled is also the untold story of how a group of determined ordinary people tried to see justice done against the odds and in the face of brutal opposition from powerful institutions. Join us for Ryan Hampton’s inside account of Purdue Pharma’s role in the overdose crisis—and for a chilling exposé of those who circumvented justice. SPEAKERS Ryan Hampton Addiction Recovery Advocate; Author, Unsettled: How the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Failed the Victims of the American Overdose Crisis; Twitter @RyanForRecovery In Conversation with Beth Macy Journalist; Author 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 October 6th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for an important intergenerational conversation with LGBTQ Asians and Pacific Islanders and their allies. Our panelists will share QTAPI stories and experiences of the dual pandemics of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19; their histories as Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States; their past and current roles in community organizing and the political process; as well as other issues that are part of the current cultural and political shifts and relevant to the experiences of QTAPI individuals. Meet the Speakers Ignatius Bau was the HIV prevention program coordinator at the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum in the mid-1990s, and served as a member of the President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and advisory groups about HIV/AIDS for the federal Office of Minority Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes for Health. He also has served on the board of directors for the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance Community HIV Project, Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center, National Minority AIDS Project, and Funders for LGBTQ Issues. Cecilia Chung is the senior director of strategic initiatives and evaluation at Transgender Law Center, a health commissioner of San Francisco and an internationally recognized civil rights leader in the LGBT and HIV community. Chung has served as the co-chair of GNP+ and is currently a member of the WHO Advisory Council of Women Living with HIV. Vince Crisostomo is a gay Chamorro (Pacific Islander) long-term HIV/AIDS survivor who believes in the healing power of community and has dedicated more than 30 years to HIV/AIDS activism and LGBTQ communities. He is passionate about bringing health care to all and social justice equity to people of every sexual identity, HIV status, gender, race and age. Crisostomo is SFAF’s director of aging services and previously managed the Elizabeth Taylor 50 Plus Network for long-term HIV survivors. He co-chaired the HIV & Aging Work Group and was an active member of the Mayor’s Long-Term Care Coordinating Council. Crisostomo has led a number of grassroots HIV advocacy and LGBTQ organizations in the United States and overseas. He was executive director of the Coalition of Asia Pacific Regional Networks on HIV/AIDS, founded the Pacific Island Jurisdiction AIDS Action Group, and served as a United Nations NGO delegate for the Asia Pacific. In 2019, having won the popular vote, he was community grand marshall for San Francisco Pride. In July 2021, he was appointed to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s LGBTQI+ Advisory Committee. NOTES This is a free program; any voluntary donations made during registration will support the production of our online programs. A complimentary lunch will be provided before the program for in-person attendees. The Commonwealth Club thanks Gilead Sciences, Inc. for its generous support of The Michelle Meow Show. Program presented in partnership with GAPA Theatre, The Connection at the San Francisco Community Health Center, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and The Commonwealth Club of California. This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. SPEAKERS Ignatius Bau Former HIV Prevention Program Coordinator, Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum; Former Member, President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS Cecilia Chung Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Evaluation, Transgender Law Center; Health Commissioner, San Francisco Vince Crisostomo Director of Aging Services, San Francisco AIDS Foundation Michelle Meow Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—Host and 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 October 6th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The great creatives throughout history have been those who can ignite their own fire of innovation and ambition, but what is the flint that brings these sparks of creativity to life? And in a time of great uncertainty, why does creativity matter more than ever? As executive director of Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (commonly referred to as the d.school), Sarah Stein Greenberg is an accomplice to dazzling ingenuity. In her debut book, Creative Acts for Curious People, Stein Greenberg taps into her close ties with bold thinkers and confident doers, providing readers with the ultimate mechanisms to get creative juices flowing. Straight from the cognitive toolkits of Google’s chief evangelist or renowned choreographers, Stein Greenberg lays out practices for mindful observation, intuitive connecting and much much more. The more than 80 exercises, while lighthearted, require a thoughtfulness and intentionality meant to give readers their very own eureka moment. At INFORUM, Sarah Stein Greenberg will piece together the puzzle that is design. She shares not only tools but anecdotes and personal experiences in which she illustrates the roadmap that shows how to revitalize curiosity and in turn putting that curiosity into action. This conversation will be moderated by Laura Holson of The New York Times. SPEAKERS Sarah Stein Greenberg Executive Director, Stanford d.school; Author, Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Way Laura Holson Writer, The New York Times 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 October 6th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we manage our own anxiety around an uncertain climate future – let alone help our children work through their feelings and fears? In his latest book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, internationally renowned Zen Master and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hahn argues that addressing the intersection of ecological destruction, rising inequality, racial injustice, and the lasting impacts of a devastating pandemic requires us to strengthen our clarity, compassion, and courage to act. “The power of zen and the power of mindfulness is that it roots us in the present moment so we can be alert to what is going on, we can be responsive, we can be the master of our mind and awareness in any given situation,” including climate disruption, says Sister True Dedication, contributor and editor of Thich Nhat Hahn’s book. Psychotherapist Leslie Davenport, author of All the Feelings Under the Sun: How to Deal With Climate Change, provides thoughtful, practical exercises to help young readers process their feelings about climate change. For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Guests: Sister True Dedication, Zen Buddhist nun, editor of Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Zen and the Art of Saving The Planet Leslie Davenport, author, Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change; All the Feelings Under the Sun: How to Deal With Climate Change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States has thrived on land violently taken away from Indigenous people. Settler historian Margaret Jacobs asks what reconciliation might mean in light of this haunted history. She argues that we have much to gain by learning from our history instead of denying it, even as she lays out the brutal legacy of systemic racial injustice to Indigenous people. Jacobs also explains how early attempts at reconciliation were only successful in further robbing tribal nations of their already reduced land holdings and forcing their children into abusive boarding schools. True reconciliation, she insists, can only emerge through Indigenous leadership and sustained relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people rooted in specific places and histories. In the absence of an official apology and a federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a movement for transformative reconciliation is unofficially underway that puts Indigenous land rights, sovereignty, and values at the forefront. With historical sensitivity and an eye to the future, Jacobs urges people to face the past and learn from it, and once they have done so, to redress past abuses. MLF ORGANIZER George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities SPEAKERS Margaret Jacobs Professor of History and Director, The Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln; Author, After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands In Conversation with George Hammond Author, Conversations With Socrates 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 October 6th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., has been one of the most visible commentators on the public health crisis. His insights and writings have helped shaped some of the country's understanding of the public health impacts of the pandemic since early in 2020. As the country continues to battle the pandemic—especially the emergent delta variant of the coronavirus—Gottlieb will visit the Club for the first time to discuss his new book, Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic. Gottlieb's new book outlines how the United States must prepare for future pandemics by learning from the mistakes made handling the COVID-19 outbreak, which has caused one of the greatest public health tragedies in American history. Gottlieb outlines his efforts in the early 2000s to develop a “Pandemic Influenza Plan” to ready the United States for the threat of a global pandemic, and how short the country came up when it was time to mount an effective response to the novel coronavirus. Further, Gottlieb identifies the early reasons why the United States was so underprepared for the pandemic, from failing to enlist the private sector in large-scale manufacturing of testing supplies and medical equipment to resolutely sticking to the narrative that COVID would go away on its own. As the United States heads into a critically important fall and winter that will determine whether we will finally end the pandemic, Gottlieb's book comes at a critical time. Please join us for a timely talk with a true expert on the pandemic about what we have learned so far, and what we must do to succeed in the months and years ahead. SPEAKERS Scott Gottlieb M.D., Former Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration; Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Author, Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic Mark Zitter Chair, The Zetema Project; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—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 October 5th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Leading up to the recent Tokyo Olympics. athletes Annet Negesa of Uganda and Maximila Imali of Kenya both had their Olympic dreams crushed because of rules set by the track and field global governing body, World Athletics. They are just two—of many—elite women athletes who have been told their natural testosterone levels, if not lowered through medication or surgery, disqualify them from competition at the highest levels of sport. Join us for an in-depth conversation about intersex biology and the history of sex testing in women’s athletics ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. About the Speaker In February 2021, Eliza Anyangwe became the editor of As Equals, CNN’s ongoing gender inequality project. She began her career working for nongovernmental organizations Action Against Hunger and then the Pesticide Action Network, where she was Organic Cotton Officer, but has spent more than a decade in media, working for The Guardian, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and most recently The Correspondent, where she was managing editor. The Guardian Opinion series she commissioned and wrote for, a "Week in Africa," was longlisted for a One World Media award. In 2016, Eliza founded The Nzinga Effect, a media project focused on telling the stories of African and Afro-descendant women, and delivered that work through partnerships with organizations such as The Serpentine Galleries and The British Council. In 2018 she was awarded a development reporting grant by the European Journalism Centre to tell stories about the African women breaking taboos and carving out space to talk about sex and sexuality. Eliza has written for The Independent, Financial Times, Al Jazeera and Open Democracy; has appeared on broadcast programs, including "Newsnight," "BBC World Service," PRI’s "The World," and the podcast "Our Body Politic"; and has spoken at events, among them SXSW, D&AD Festival, The Google News Initiative Summit, the International Journalism Festival, Africa Utopia, The Web We Want Festival and the Next Einstein Forum. Eliza is a contributing author to Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century, published by Routledge. SPEAKERS Eliza Anyangwe Journalist; Editor, As Equals, CNN Gender Inequality Project; Twitter @elizatalks; Instagram @Elizatookthis Michelle Meow Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW 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 October 4th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On July 14, 2021, lesbian feminist Sally Miller Gearhart passed away at the age of 90. In 1973, she had become the first out lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position when she was hired by San Francisco State University, where she helped establish one of the country's first women and gender study programs. In her long life, she was a teacher, feminist, science fiction writer and political activist. Join us for a special program in tribute to her; we will also reveal exclusive clips from a documentary now in production on Sally Gearhart's life. A complimentary lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language SPEAKERS Deborah Craig Documentary Director and Producer, including "A Great Ride" and Sally Jörg Fockele Filmmaker, Executive Producer and Television Director/Producer, including "Queer Eye," Sally Melanie Nathan Executive Director, African Human Rights Coalition Ondine Rarey Filmmaker; Writer and Editor, including A Portrait of Female Desperation and Sally Michelle Meow Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show" on KBCW and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—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 September 30th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Please join us for a lively and intimate discussion on the Judy Chicago: Retrospective exhibit, which is currently showing at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. The discussion is presented by the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco Docent Victoria Kirby. Adding to the conversation will be Debra Reabock, a Bay Area visual artist and photo philanthropist. Judy Chicago is a trailblazer and leader of the feminist art moment. Kirby's talk will explore Chicago’s full body of works, from her early forays into minimalism to her current work that addresses mortality and environmental issues. Judy Chicago: A Retrospective is organized on the heels of the 40th anniversary of the first showing of The Dinner Party in San Francisco and in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the women’s right to vote in the United States. How fitting a tribute to an artist who has spent a lifetime fighting for social justice and female expression. The discussion will be followed by Q&A. Have your questions ready. NOTES MLF: Arts MLF ORGANIZER Robert Melton SPEAKERS Victoria Kirby Docent, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco Debra Reabock Visual Artists; Photo Philanthropist Robert Melton Co-chair, Arts Member-Led Forum; Curator, Farmer Gallery—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 September 28th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Within the next two decades, Kai-Fu Lee says, artificial intelligence will become the defining development of the 21st century, making aspects of daily human life today virtually unrecognizable. AI will revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbioses. It will challenge the social and economic order by creating brand-new forms of communication and generating unprecedented wealth. AI is at its tipping point, and if our society doesn’t prepare for both the exciting and possibly perilous pathways ahead, we will lose the ability to control our collective future. In their new book AI 2041, Kai-Fu Lee, bestselling author and former president of Google China, teams up with Chen Qiufan to create an image of what a world with artificial intelligence will look like in 20 years. In 10 gripping short stories, the authors introduce readers to an array of eye-opening concepts, such as the rogue scientist in Munich who uses AI technologies in a revenge plot that endangers the world. Or the teenage girl in Mumbai who rebels when AI’s crunching of big data gets in the way of romance. Through these stories, Lee and Qiufan draw on the ominous possibilities of autonomous weapons and human bias in smart technology as well as the incredible liberating power of artificial intelligence and its unprecedented ability to strengthen societal connections. Kai-Fu Lee is the CEO of Beijing-based Sinovation Ventures and the co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Council at the World Economic Forum. Formerly the president of Google China, Lee was also a senior executive at Microsoft, SGI and Apple. Join us as Kai-Fu Lee delves into the intriguing future of artificial intelligence. SPEAKERS Kai-Fu Lee Ph.D., CEO, Sinovation Ventures; Co-author, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future In Conversation with Rumman Chowdhury Ph.D., CEO and Founder, Parity AI n 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 September 28th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the era of big tech, groundbreaking technological innovation has given rise to an increasingly efficient and methodical society. But these advances are not without consequence, as unbounded technological growth demands control over how we work, think, consume and communicate. Our panelists say too many have accepted biased algorithms, job-displacing robots, and surveillance-based capitalism as an inexorable cost of innovation, giving a powerful few the reins over our evolving society. Technologists, the venture capitalists who fund them, and the politicians who allow for this unregulated growth have stepped into the seat of power, often prioritizing technological optimization and efficiency over fundamental human values. System Error, authored by three Stanford professors, offers an alternative to this dystopian vision of a world controlled by big tech. Armed with the combined knowledge of philosopher Rob Reich, a leading thinker at the intersection of technology and ethics, political scientist and former Obama staffer Jeremy Weinstein, as well as the director of Stanford’s undergraduate computer science program Mehran Sahami, System Error reveals how big tech can be held to account for the power it wields over our society. Join us as professors Reich, Weinstein and Sahami uncover the gripping reality of big tech and explain how we can chart a new path forward to control technology before it controls us. About the Speakers Rob Reich is the director of Stanford University’s Center for Ethics in Society; co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and associate director of its new Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; and co-author of System Error:Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot. Mehran Sahami is a professor of computer science at Stanford University; former senior research scientist at Google; and co-author of System Error:Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot. Jeremy M. Weinstein is a professor of political science at Stanford University; former deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former director for development and democracy on the White House National Security Council staff during the Obama Administration; and co-author of System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot. SPEAKERS Rob Reich Director, Stanford University’s Center for Ethics in Society; Co-author, System Error:Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot Mehran Sahami Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University; Co-author, System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot Jeremy M. Weinstein Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Co-author, System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot Levi Sumagaysay Tech Reporter, MarketWatch—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 September 27th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The transition from President Donald J. Trump to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is one of the most tumultuous periods in recent American history. Robert Costa and his co-author Bob Woodward have taken on the task of documenting the transition in a never-before-seen way in their new book, Peril. With material ranging from secret orders to transcripts of phone conversations from the Trump and Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and more, Peril is the story about changes, a first inside look into Biden’s presidency, and the unique challenges that face the new administration. Join Costa he as analyzes this intense period in history as well as the overall landscape of American politics in 2021. SPEAKERS Robert Costa National Political Reporter, The Washington Post; Co-Author, Peril In Conversation with Scott Shafer Senior Editor, KQED’s Politics and Government Desk; Twitter @scottshafer 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 October 7th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve experienced yet another summer of record wildfires in the western U.S., endangering lives, displacing communities, and sending unhealthy smoke across the nation. The science is clear: human-caused climate change is making lands more conducive to burning, and we are increasingly living in flammable landscapes. Forest experts say there are tools to help reduce the risk of catastrophic fires, keep forests alive as valuable carbon sinks and make communities more resilient to megafires. But we may also have to become accustomed to more fire – and smoke – in our lives. How can we better live with fire, including using it as a tool, rather than always fighting it? For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Guests: Stephen Pyne, author, The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next Susan Husari, member of the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection Chad T. Hanson, author, Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate Jaime Lowe, author, Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The best venture capitalists look around corners, and at Top Tech Trends, some of the best VCs will share what they see. The event will be highlighted by a lively panel discussion with investors from Bessemer, Greylock, HSBC Ventures and Mayfield offering their top picks for below-the-radar trends. We'll also hear from one of the most provocative tech investors in the business: Cathie Wood of Ark Invest, with her 1 million Twitter followers and bullish views on the future of technology. NOTES In partnership with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group Foundation's California Center for Innovation. SPEAKERS Ore Adeyemi Managing Director and Global Head, HSBC Invest Navin Chaddha Managing Director, Mayfield Byron Deeter Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners Sarah Guo General Partner, Greylock Cathie Wood CEO/Chief Investment Officer, ARK Invest Candy Cheng Senior Correspondent, Insider—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 September 29th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What has caused the recent international resurgence of xenophobia? Looking for clues, psychiatrist and historian George Makari started out in search of the idea’s origins. He discovered that while the fear and hatred of strangers may be ancient, the notion of a dangerous bias called "xenophobia" arose not that long ago. Coined by late-nineteenth-century doctors and political commentators, and popularized by an eccentric stenographer, xenophobia emerged as a popular cultural concept alongside Western nationalism, colonialism, mass migration, and genocide. Makari chronicles the concept’s rise, from its popularization and perverse misuse to its spread as an ethical principle in the wake of the Holocaust, and then on to its sudden reappearance in the twenty-first century. He investigates xenophobia’s evolution through writers like Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus and Richard Wright, and innovators like Walter Lippmann, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon. Weaving together history, philosophy and psychology, Makari also offers insights into related ideas such as the conditioned response, the stereotype, projection, the authoritarian personality, the other, and institutional bias. Makari offers a unifying paradigm for comprehending more clearly how xenophobia, other irrational anxieties and contests over identity sweep through cultures and lead to the dangerous divisions so prevalent today. MLF ORGANIZER George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities SPEAKERS George Makari Director, DeWitt Wallace Institute; Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College; Author, Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia In Conversation with George Hammond Author, Conversations With Socrates 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 September 29th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Black Lives Matter and Stop AAPI Hate movements, among others, have brought international attention to widespread social injustices that have been ignored by society for far too long. As a result, many individuals have been inspired to make positive changes toward a safer and more inclusive world. But pursuing equity and justice can be a complex and confusing undertaking. Good intentions do not necessarily lead to good outcomes. Inspiration can easily be derailed by feelings of confusion, the trap of performative allyship, and misguided attempts to take action. When it comes to helping instead of harming, the hardest part can often be figuring out where to begin. Michelle MiJung Kim will unpack hot button issues—cancel culture, inclusive language, representation, and more—in a way that is accessible to people regardless of their current understanding of inclusive practices. Join us for an in-depth conversation Michelle MiJung Kim, followed by a book signing for her new tome, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change. SPEAKERS Michelle Mijung Kim Author, The Wake Up; Co-founder and CEO, Awaken Michelle Meow Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW 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 September 28th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is the secret sauce behind The Commonwealth Club’s 500-plus annual programs? George Dobbins has led the Club’s programming effort for more than 22 years, responsible for the production of more than 9,000 forums. Sadly for the Club, he will retire on September 30, 2021. Dobbins has seen all the trends in public issues and public debate over the past two decades. He has dealt with myriad politicians, kings, princes, scientists and celebrities, recently ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci to Rep. Liz Cheney. He has handled it all with diplomacy, tact and inspired leadership. Please join us on September 28 at 12:30 p.m., in-person at the Club or online, as Club CEO Gloria Duffy debriefs George Dobbins on his role of the past 22 years, and he tells a few behind-the-scenes stories that will both keep us laughing and underline the wisdom and care with which he has handled his important position. SPEAKERS George Dobbins Vice President of Programs, The Commonwealth Club of California In Conversation with Dr. Gloria Duffy President and CEO, The Commonwealth Club of California 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 September 28th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past two decades, no industry has had a greater impact on the world than the tech industry, born and bred in California's Silicon Valley. And perhaps few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than the enigmatic tech investor and entrepreneur, Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and tech leader has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing the tech industry and countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, particularly during the Trump administration. But despite his power, no public figure might be quite so mysterious as Thiel. In the first major biography of Thiel, reporter Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of Thiel's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thinker to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investments in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Eric Schmidt. Chafkin's book, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power, explores the extent to which Thiel has sought to have influence far beyond California's tech industry, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker and supporting conservative political candidates, including Donald Trump in 2016. To understand Silicon Valley and its impact, particularly on American political and civic life, an understanding of Thiel is a critical piece of the puzzle. Please join us for an important discussion on this critical player in the tech industry and American life. The discussion will be led by Brad Stone, best known for chronicling another enigmatic tech mogul, Amazon's Jeff Bezos. SPEAKERS Max Chafkin Features Editor and Technology Reporter, Bloomberg Businessweek; Author, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power Brad Stone Senior Executive Editor, Global Technology, Bloomberg News; Author, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire 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 September 27th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it? Join us for a conversation with Dr. Laura Murphy, who will join us live from the United Kingdom to talk about the fascinating story of Freedomville, a town founded by slaves in India. Millions of people today are still enslaved, and nearly 8 million of them live in India, more than anywhere else. Murphy reveals the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh who founded their own town of Azad Nagar―Freedomville―after staging a rebellion against their slaveholders. International organizations championed it as a non-violent "silent revolution" that inspired other villagers to fight for their own freedom. But Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery who spent years researching and teaching about Freedomville, found that there was something troubling about Azad Nagar's success. Freedomville's enormous struggle to gain and maintain liberty shows us how realistic radical change is, and how a global construction boom is deepening and broadening the alienation of impoverished people around the world. About the Speaker Laura T. Murphy is professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. She is the author of The New Slave Narrative: The Battle over Representations of Contemporary Slavery, Survivors of Slavery: Modern-Day Slave Narratives and Metaphor and the Slave Trade in Western African Literature. Her work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the British Academy, the National Humanities Center, and the Department of Justice. SPEAKERS Laura Murphy Professor of Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery, Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, Sheffield Hallam University (UK); Author, Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt; Twitter @LauraTMurphy Michelle Meow Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW 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 September 23rd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With her first book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, trained clinical psychologist Mary L. Trump focused a spotlight on their family's complex history to explain how her uncle became a historically disruptive national figure. The book was a international bestseller, appearing in the midst of a heated presidential election and providing deep insight into the nation's 45th president. Now in The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal, Mary Trump examines America's national trauma, rooted in our history but dramatically exacerbated by the impact of current events and the Trump administration's divisive policies. She says that our failure to acknowledge this, let alone root it out, has allowed it to metastasize. Whether the trauma manifests itself in rising levels of rage and hatred, or hopelessness and apathy, the stress of living in a country people feel they no longer recognize has affected millions. It’s a collective PTSD that a new leader alone cannot fix. Mary Trump explores how our current trauma is the logical outcome of the stories we tell ourselves, the myths we embrace, and the lies we perpetuate. Trauma shapes us in ways we may not be aware of, and will always do so unless we face what has happened to us, what we’ve done to ourselves, what we’ve done to each other. She says an enormous amount of healing must be done to rebuild our faith in leadership, and our hope for this nation, and it starts with the reckoning. Mary L. Trump holds a Ph.D. from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University, and has taught graduate courses in trauma, psychopathology and developmental psychology. SPEAKERS Mary Trump Psychologist; Author, The Reckoning In Conversation with Molly Jong-Fast Editor at Large, The Daily Beast Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker Journalists; Authors In Conversation with Yamiche Alcindor Host, "Washington Week," PBS 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 September 26th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mary Roach wants to let us in on a secret: The greatest number of repeat criminal offenders are outside, all around us, and you’ve probably even seen some today—animals. It has only been three centuries since animals had to stand trial for their misconduct, in a court of law, with legal representation. Yes, really. In her newest book, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, the science enthusiast turned writer deep-dives into human-animal conflict. As human land consumption creeps further into the natural habitats of these so-called troublemakers, it becomes more pressing to realize a symbiotic coexistence. The question becomes: Who is in the wrong, animals living according to their instincts or the humans that increasingly police them? To answer this question, Roach trots the globe from the Himalayas to Vatican City making friends with rats and foes with a macaque. Ultimately she reaches the conclusion that there is true, untamed hope for working with rather than against our critter counterparts. At INFORUM Roach will regale us with stories as wild as they are true, such as her foray into rat-bait taste testing. Further she will serve as our safari-guide in the conversation of how to bring outdoor and indoor worlds together safely and justly at a time when this work is needed most. This conversation is moderated by Kara Platoni, Wired's science editor SPEAKERS Mary Roach Author, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law Kara Platoni Science Editor, Wired—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 September 21st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite her identity as an evangelical, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe doesn't accept global warming on faith; she crunches the data, analyzes the models, and helps engineers, city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts. In her new book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, Hayhoe argues that when it comes to changing hearts and minds, facts are only one part of the equation. “The biggest problem we have is not the people who willfully decide to reject 200 years of basic science,” she says. “The bigger problem is the number of people who say, ‘it's real’ but they don’t think it matters to them.” Hayhoe says we need to find shared values with others to drive conversations and collective action on climate disruption. Guest: Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy; author, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mass movements of summer 2020 brought together millions and compelled museums across the country to confront their own legacies with urgency and openness. Director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco Jay Xu will share how the museum navigated these challenges while endeavoring to transform the 55-year-old museum into a 21st century experience accessible and welcoming to all. Through an ever-growing contemporary art collection, investment in accessible digital technologies, a new pavilion helping to reenergize Civic Center, and an expansive look at what it means to be a culturally specific museum during a surge in anti-Asian racism, Xu will talk about his team’s efforts to inspire and connect audiences from around the world—with art as well as with each other. The discussion will be moderated by Deborah Clearwaters, director of education and interpretation at the Asian Art Museum. NOTES MLF: Asia-Pacific Affairs SPEAKERS Dr. Jay Xu Barbara Bass Bakar Director & CEO, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco Deborah Clearwaters Director of Education and Interpretation, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco—Moderator Introduction by Jim Brown 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 February 11th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A fundamental challenge of our health-care system is the enhancement of cognition for millions of people who suffer from psychiatric and neurological conditions. Despite 70 years of global effort in attempting to identify molecules deliverable as pills to accomplish this goal, we have largely failed to deliver truly effective, accessible and low-side-effect treatments for cognitive impairments associated with medical conditions, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD and dementia. It is important to be aware that for thousands of years we humans have been creating experiences to enhance the quality of our lives and support our mental health. However, this approach has largely been marginalized as “alternative” and has not been embraced within the core of mainstream medicine. Dr. Adam Gazzaley will describe his mission to develop and validate experiences as medicine by integrating neuroscience-guided design, invention and experimentation. In this talk, he will discuss his invention of a closed-loop video game that has now become the first FDA-cleared video game for any medical condition, and the first digital treatment for ADHD. He will share how the next generation of experiential medicine will incorporate advances in artificial intelligence, sensory immersion, virtual reality, multimodal physiological recordings and noninvasive electrical brain stimulation. He will conclude with a deep dive into his newest undertakings to explore the intricacies and possibilities of one of man’s oldest experiential medicines—psychedelics. Dr. Adam Gazzaley obtained an M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, completed neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania and postdoctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the David Dolby Distinguished Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco and the founder and executive director of Neuroscape, a translational neuroscience center at UCSF engaged in technology creation and scientific research. MLF ORGANIZER Patty James NOTES MLF: Health & Medicine SPEAKERS Dr. Adam Gazzaley M.D., Ph.D., David Dolby Distinguished Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco; Founder and Executive Director, Neuroscape Patty James M.S., N.C. Nutritionist; Chef; Author—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 September 22nd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices