Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

In 2001, when Madeleine Albright was leaving office as America’s first female secretary of state, interviewers asked her how she wished to be remembered. “I don’t want to be remembered,” she answered. “I am still here and have much more I intend to do. As difficult as it might seem, I want every stage of my life to be more exciting than the last.” So she has continued to write, teach, travel, give speeches, start a business, fight for democracy, help empower women, campaign for favored political candidates, and spend more time with her grandchildren. For nearly 20 years, Secretary Albright has been in constant motion. Her new memoir is blunt, intimate, funny, and serious. An excellent basis for a rare, candid visit with one of America’s most memorable and revered public figures. Join us to hear Secretary Albright's outlook on the world . . . past, present and post-COVID. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After decades spent trying to reach 100 million barrels of daily production, the oil industry is devastated from the sudden evaporation of demand. Renewables are also taking a big hit with projections that half of America’s solar workers will lose their jobs. Federal relief packages are bailing out airlines and public transportation, while excluding any help for clean energy. What are the energy impacts of the COVID-19 recession? How will this reshape use of renewables and hydrocarbons in the years to come? Join us for a conversation with Jason Bordoff, founding director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, Amy Harder, energy and climate change reporter at Axios, Scott Jacobs, CEO & co-founder of Generate Capital, and Julia Pyper, co-host of the Political Climate Podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andy Slavitt was brought in by the Obama administration to fix Healthcare.gov after a disastrous rollout and then asked to stay on to head Medicare and Medicaid. Since leaving government, he’s been one of the fiercest critics of the current administration’s efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and combat COVID-19. Yet his approach to changing health care and fighting the pandemic has been deliberately bipartisan, and he informally advises leading Republicans as well as Democrats. Slavitt teamed with former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb to propose a $46.5 billion plan for COVID-19 contact tracing and isolation and was lead author of an open letter entitled “Stay Home, Save Lives” signed by 16 top Republican and Democratic figures. Listen to one of our country’s savviest health professionals discuss what’s next for fighting the pandemic in a bipartisan fashion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ongoing pandemic has shown us what indiscriminate worldwide destruction looks like. A nuclear war would do infinitely more damage in a shorter time and recovery, if possible at all, would take years. Russia says it’s created hypersonic weapons. Kim Jung Un refuses to give up his nuclear program. Iran is enriching uranium. The current START treaty expires in February 2021. Join a seasoned panel to discuss what the United States and others can do at this crucial point in history to reduce weapons and decrease the chances of devastating war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can we stop repeating history? Sadly, the United States has had a long history of prejudice and racism against Asians and other marginalized communities in this country, starting before the Chinese Exclusion Act, to the Second World War Japanese-American incarceration, and the McCarthy witch hunting era in the Chinese-American community, through the Civil Rights Movement to the Vincent Chin murder and continuing to xenophobia targeting Muslims and the AMEMSA (Arab Middle Eastern Muslim South Asian) community. Join us for a discussion about how people can stop repeating history and end racism for all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Plouffe is one of the leading Democratic political strategists around. He led Barack Obama to victory in 2008 and remains one of his most trusted advisers. Following his public service, he worked for Uber as the senior vice president of policy and strategy before joining the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2017. A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump is Plouffe’s guide for the 2020 voter on how to make a difference. Plouffe draws on decades' worth of experience to coach voters on what they can do every day, from the comfort of their homes, to ensure Donald Trump’s defeat. His advice is simple: Change will only happen from action and direct dialogue from citizen to citizen. For those invested, Plouffe argues that the time to start is now. Join political strategist David Plouffe as he gives us a pragmatic and motivational guide on how to tackle the electoral road ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we confront the reality of a future that will be hauntingly different from today? Some authors are using fiction to create relatable narratives while sparing us from a deluge of sobering facts that can make audiences feel detached. The dystopian worlds in the films Mad Max and The Hunger Games do the same to both entertain and distance viewers from the realities of an increasingly destabilized climate. Can fiction give access to hopes and fears that we can’t handle in our daily lives? How are authors like Jenny Offill and Roy Scranton using stories that let readers experience climate change, while also keeping it at arms’ length? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes a marriage last? Iconic couple Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue crisscrossed the country and conducted intimate conversations with 40 celebrated couples whose marriages they’ve admired. Through these conversations, Marlo and Phil also reveal the rich journey of their own 40-year marriage. Marlo and Phil will share the practical and heartfelt wisdom from couples including like President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Al Roker and Deborah Roberts, and Sting and Trudie Styler. Marlo Thomas is an award-winning actress and national outreach director for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which was founded by her father Danny Thomas. Phil Donahue is a media pioneer who revolutionized the talk show format and won 20 Daytime Emmy Awards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tom Ammiano has made his impression on San Francisco since he first arrived and stepped off a Greyhound bus. A stand-up comedian, the first openly gay teacher in the city, activist and politician—he has been in the public eye for decades. Now Ammiano is telling his story in his new book, Kiss My Ass: My Trip Down the Yellow Brick Road Through Activism, Stand-up, and Politics. The book's title comes from his shouted comment to then-Goveror Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the book is filled with the "authenticity, poignant moments, wild tales and laughter" that have been a part of Ammiano's life in the city by the bay. ** This Podcast Contains Explicit Language ** Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now more than ever, loneliness is a growing public health concern as communities continue to require social distancing and self-isolation to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Because humans are social creatures, at the center of our loneliness is our innate desire to connect, forge lasting bonds, help one another, and share life experiences. In his new book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Dr. Murthy warns of the dangers of loneliness and the lasting impact it can have on our health. He will be joined by Dr. Lucy Kalanithi for a poignant conversation on his four key strategies to weather this epidemic during this difficult time and beyond. Dr. Murthy was appointed by President Barack Obama and served as the 19th surgeon general of the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us virtually as we discuss why twice in the last five elections the Electoral College vote has overridden the popular vote, creating a false impression of a country divided into red and blue states, when we are actually purple from coast to coast. In addition, millions of Americans always find that their votes didn't matter anyway, because only a handful of battleground states decide who becomes the next president. In this thoroughly researched and engaging call to arms, Jesse Wegman draws upon the history of the founding era, as well as information gleaned from 21st century Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, to make a powerful case for abolishing what he calls the antiquated and antidemocratic Electoral College. Wegman argues that we can at long last make every vote in the United States count―and restore belief in our democratic system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As COVID-19 cases top 1 million in America, the emerging data is clear: African Americans are being disproportionately affected by the crisis. Infection rates, hospitalizations and even number of deaths have revealed distinct gaps across lines of race and class. Why do these glaring disparities exist, and how can we use this data to combat systemic racism in the face of a global pandemic? American University’s Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and COVID Tracking Project co-founder Alexis Madrigal have joined forces to try to answer these important questions. Join INFORUM for this virtual event, where Kendi and Madrigal will walk us through their findings and reveal how this growing data can be used to provide a safer future for the African American community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a stressful time. We’re understandably anxious as we face a dangerous and unprecedented situation, and an uncertain future. Ordinarily, we would reach out to family, friends and co-workers for a supportive hug or gather together to talk things through. These are the natural ways we manage stressful situations. Yet during this time of the coronavirus, we have to be physically distancing from others. We want to make sure that our loved ones are safe, yet our mere presence can endanger them. We need to handle complex, unprecedented situations quickly and competently, yet our impulse may be toward panic, anxiety and therefore avoidance. Dr. Michael Tompkins, co-director of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy and assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Berkeley, specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders. He’ll spend an hour with us and share a few strategies that may help us to manage our anxieties more effectively. He'll lead us in a few exercises and answer questions we may have. MLF Organizer: Brad Berman MLF: Personal Growth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With COVID-19 shutting down urban areas, city dwellers from Los Angeles to New Delhi are getting a rare taste of clean air and blue skies. It is a glimpse of what net-zero cities might look like with transformed energy and transportation systems, minus the society-splintering pandemic. However, with a global recession on the horizon, critical programs to improve urban mobility and reduce emissions are on the sidelines. How are major cities like L.A., New York and Amsterdam implementing innovative sustainability projects to become net-zero? Will the recession impact funding for clean energy, infrastructure and bold action to address climate change? Join us with Lauren Faber O’Connor, chief sustainability officer for the city of Los Angeles, and Eva Gladek, founder and CEO of Metabolic, for a conversation on cities reaching for zero in a post-pandemic world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Please join The Commonwealth Club of California and UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities for the second in a series of dialogues on catastrophe, storytelling and the present moment. In “Climate Change and Sacred Groves,” Townsend Center scholar Sugata Ray will meet with visual artist Ranu Mukherjee to investigate the relationship between the natural world and the sacred realm, especially as it has developed in India over the last several centuries of civilization and the rise of the Anthropocene era. In his most recent book, Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata shows how a site-specific and ecologically grounded theology emerged in northern India in the wake of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), an epoch marked by climatic catastrophes across the globe. His interests dovetail in unexpected and compelling ways with Ranu’s visionary and captivating recent work, which positions the banyan tree as a meeting point between ecology and culture. Their conversation will be an opportunity for viewers to contemplate and rethink the role of art as it relates to contemporary concerns around climate, disease, human flourishing and the sacred. Sugata Ray is associate professor of South and Southeast Asian art in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His research and writing focus on climate change and the visual arts from the 1500s onward. Ray is the author of Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850 (2019); Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence (2019; coedited); and Ecologies, Aesthetics, and Histories of Art (forthcoming; coedited). Ranu Mukherjee is a visual artist who makes paintings, animations and large-scale installations. Her current work focuses on shifting senses of ecology, non-human agency, diaspora, migration and transnational feminist experience. Her most recent installation was presented at the ecologically focused 2019 Karachi Biennale; she has exhibited solo at the San Jose Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Asian Art Museum, and the de Young Museum. She is an associate professor in graduate fine art at the California College of the Arts. Mukherjee is represented by Gallery Wendi Norris. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Filmmaker H.P Mendoza found himself living in Japan when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He and his partner were given less than a day to uproot themselves and be evacuated to the United States. But Mendoza found himself on "Good Morning America" and on countless social media feeds when a video he made lampooning video conferences went viral. Once he was sheltering-in-place in San Francisco, he made another video, this time a birthday sing-a-long with dozens of his distant sheltering-in-place friends. Join us for this talk with a young filmmaker to learn more about his work, going viral in a good way, and coping with a pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alice Wu's new film The Half of It tells the coming-of-age story of smart but cash-strapped teen Ellie Chu, who agrees to write a love letter for a jock to his crush. Chu doesn't expect to become his friend—or fall for his crush. The film, scheduled for a May 1 release on Netflix, is the second film from writer/producer/director Wu. Join us for a conversation with Alice Wu and the film's star, Leah Lewis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a short 10 years, Instagram has grown from a simple idea for sharing photos to an application with over 1 billion monthly users and company growth that has surpassed many other tech giants. At the same time, this exponential success has been accompanied by a dramatic acquisition by Facebook in 2012 and the Instagram co-founders stepping down in 2018. Award-winning technology reporter Sarah Frier helps bring some clarity to the mysteries surrounding the tech giant in her book No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram. The Bloomberg reporter delivers stories taken from the Instagram influencers and celebrities that have helped drive the app to such rapid growth, the employees and executives who have watched from behind the scenes, and the founders of Instagram themselves who give insight into the growth and change of the service. Join INFORUM as Frier draws from her expertise in technology to navigate through this diverse cast of sources to paint a picture of how Instagram evolved to shape the online experience and fundamentally change how we engage with society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost every facet of human life. Schools, businesses and entire industries have effectively shut down overnight, citizens have been asked to stay at home and limit social interaction as long as they can, and essential workers are risking their health every day on the frontlines of this global crisis. Negative emotions like fear, stress, anxiety and depression are inevitable and can overwhelm even the most optimistic of people. What can we do to nurture our happiness during these unprecedented times? Dr. Dacher Keltner joins INFORUM to answer that question. Dr. Keltner is the professor behind the popular course "The Science of Happiness" at UC Berkeley and is the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center where he blends scientific research with human empathy to create a healthier society. Kelter will share stories, tips and resources to help listeners cope with issues like talking to your children about COVID-19, finding connection while social distancing, managing financial stress and much more. We will learn not only how to survive during this time of unrest, but how, together, we can thrive in it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

California was the first state to shelter in place, and the Bay Area began sheltering even earlier. While this appears to have reduced the rate of growth in COVID-19 cases, the nation’s largest state still is severely challenged by the global pandemic. Many hospitals are overcrowded, the numbers of patients in rural areas are increasing, hundreds of Californians have died, and many have lost both their jobs and their health-care coverage. How is the health-care system in the state responding? What are the health and financial implications for individual Californians? Three California health-care leaders whose organizations collectively impact millions of citizens will share what their organizations are doing to tackle the crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One day after the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, the worldwide Women’s March gathered people from all seven continents to send a bold message that women’s rights are human rights. It was one of the largest single-day protests in U.S. history, advocating for women’s rights, immigration reform, racial equality and more. In her new book, We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders, award-winning activist Linda Sarsour chronicles her intersectional experiences growing up as the daughter of immigrant parents, as a Muslim woman unshaken in her faith in a post 9/11 world, as a co-organizer of the Women’s March, and as a leader in the decades-long fight for justice. Join her, in conversation with internationally recognized organizer Alicia Garza, to learn about the power of mobilization and community when fighting for lasting change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

COVID-19 has been a national disaster. The impact has disproportionately affected minority and lower income Americans, who tend to have jobs that can’t be done from home and are less likely to have health-care coverage or access to medical care. That’s true in most crises, but this one is different. Anyone who fails to get tested or treated for COVID-19 risks getting others sick and delays economic recovery for all, regardless of socioeconomic status. How can safety-net hospitals, Medicaid providers, and health plans ensure that all Americans get the tests and health care they need during the pandemic? Will the current sentiment that "We’re all in this together" finally convince the public of the need for universal coverage? CEOs of two safety-net hospitals and the nation’s largest public option health plan will discuss how they’re handling the crisis, what they’re doing to reduce inequities, and the potential impact of the crisis on health care going forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Within weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has uprooted almost every fabric of American life. Workplaces have moved to remote or closed, cities have shut down, and the country has largely grounded to a halt. In a pivotal election year, more than a dozen states have postponed their primaries, campaigning has moved to the digital world, and individual civil liberties have been curtailed to prevent community spread. What effects will this have on America and the world’s democratic systems? Join our two experts as they break down our changing world. James Fallows has written for The Atlantic for more than 40 years, and his award-winning reporting has taken him through Asia, Europe and across the United States. Kori Schake is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and her distinguished career in government includes working at the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Security Council at the White House. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The COVID-19 recession is unfolding at historic speed and depth. New jobless claims reached 10 million in just two weeks, a record pace. Wall Street’s fear gauge closed at an all-time high in mid-March. Environmentally, though, the shutdown has come with some temporary benefits—decreased travel, cleaner water and a plunging demand for oil. But crashing the economy isn’t exactly a climate solution. How will the coronavirus recession reshape the economy and prospects for addressing climate in a post-pandemic world? How does this economic crisis compare to others in history? Join us for a conversation with Kathleen Day, finance lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and author of Broken Bargain: Banks, Bailouts, and the Struggle to Tame Wall Street; Amy Jaffe, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Matt Rogers, senior partner at McKinsey & Company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The root of the word health is whole. Two medical professionals with long careers in medicine, health and science will talk about a new system called HealthMedicine, which is integrative, holistic, preventative and person-centered. What would it look like to put care back into health care? Building communities that support healthy living is the goal of these two professionals. This is the first program in a series led by the Health & Medicine Member-led Forum of The Commonwealth Club. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pi Mai is the Laotian New Year (also known as Songkran). It is a time of renewal. But how are Lao, Thai, and Cambodian celebrants dealing with this holiday during a time of sheltering at home, closed businesses, and a raging pandemic? We'll talk with four community activists about New Years in the age of the coronavirus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across America, leaders and citizens alike across the country are asking the same question: How were we so unprepared? And how should we respond as a nation? Representative Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is working on getting answers and ensuring we’re better prepared for the next pandemic. In the last few weeks, Schiff and his congressional colleagues proposed a 9/11-style bipartisan commission to investigate the government’s response, determine if the administration ignored key warning signs, and help oversee how they spend the more than $2 trillion in relief funding. Join Schiff and Mother Jones Editor in Chief Clara Jeffery for a virtual conversation about missed warnings, the government’s response and where we go from here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The president says we are at war with the coronavirus. It’s a war we should fight to win. The economy is in the tank, and anywhere from thousands to more than a million American lives are in jeopardy. Most analyses assume that both the pandemic and the economic setback must play out over a period of many months. However, there is another option, one that simultaneously limits fatalities and gets the economy cranking again in a sustainable way. Dr. Harvey Fineberg believes if we establish six bold steps to mobilize and organize the nation, we can defeat COVID-19 by early June. The aim is not to flatten the curve—the goal is to crush the curve. Learn more about this forceful and focused campaign to eradicate COVID-19 in the United States. Fineberg has held several prominent positions over the course of his career, including dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, provost of Harvard University and president of the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the COVID-19 crisis grips America and the world, the daily counts of confirmed cases and deaths have become ubiquitous. But these two numbers paint an incomplete picture about how widespread the outbreak truly is. To provide a more detailed scope of the crisis, journalist Alexis Madrigal started the COVID Tracking Project. Madrigal and a team of data and science experts have spent hundreds of hours obtaining, organizing and publishing high-quality data breaking down the test numbers. The data report the number of positive and negative tests done at the national and state levels, as well as pending tests and deaths. Madrigal joins us to break down this important work and how data can help us better understand an invisible enemy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As California nears 25,000 cases of COVID-19, there have now been more than 1,800 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Santa Clara County, with a death toll of over 60. With a population of nearly 2 million, the number of COVID-19-related deaths per 100,000 residents is the highest rate of any of the Bay Area’s five most populous counties. How are Santa Clara's leaders handling this crisis and what steps will they take to handle pandemics in the future? Hear more from Santa Clara County officials. This program is free, though donations are strongly encouraged and appreciated. This program is part of The Commonwealth Club’s virtual series, addressing the myriad impacts of COVID19 on our community and society at large. It is supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and collaborative of local funders and donors. We are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example to support the Club during these uncertain times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Americans have grappled with coming to terms with the pandemic and its many effects on their lives—working from home, loss of income or job, homeschooling their children, worries about their own or their loved ones' health—some of them also have to worry about being attacked because of their race. Join us for a timely discussion of the discrimination, verbal abuse and even physical attacks directed at Asian-Americans as the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Commonwealth Club and Born This Way Foundation Invite you to a conversation focused on the intersection of kindness and mental health during these unprecedented times. In this conversation, moderated by Maya Smith, you'll hear from mental health experts, advocates and young people on the many ways the COVID-19 pandemic has uprooted our normality, how we can find ways to spread kindness while also focusing on our mental health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When institutional investors divest from fossil fuel companies does it have more than symbolic impact? Universities, pension funds and other asset managers have hopped on the divest–invest bandwagon. Critics say selling fossil fuel stocks just makes them cheaper for others to buy and doesn’t affect the financial health of oil and gas companies. Supporters say it’s a moral move that also makes financial sense because burning all the carbon on the balance sheets of listed energy companies will destroy human civilization as we know it. What’s the bottom line on divestment? What should you do with your portfolio? Join a conversation about financing the transition to a cleaner economy with Brian Deese, global head of sustainable investing at Black Rock, Lori Keith, portfolio manager at Parnassus Investments, Pratima Rangarajan, CEO of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, and Anne Simpson, director of board governance & strategy at CalPERS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a rare conversation with Janet Napolitano about the societal impact of COVID-19 on universities and the U.C. system in particular, as well as the implications for national security now and in the aftermath of the COVID crisis. Napolitano is the 20th president of the University of California and the first woman to serve in this role. She leads a university system of 10 campuses, five medical centers, three affiliated national laboratories, and a statewide agriculture and natural resources program. She also served as the U.S. secretary of homeland security from 2009 to 2013, as governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009, as attorney general of Arizona from 1998 to 2003, and as U.S. attorney for the district of Arizona from 1993 to 1997. Napolitano earned a B.S. degree (summa cum laude in political science) from Santa Clara University, where she was the university’s first female valedictorian. She received her law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. Notes This program is generously supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and a collaborative of local funders and donors. We are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example to support the Club during these uncertain times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s 2040, and you stroll into the Center for Mind Design where you can buy a variety of brain enhancements. How far do you want to go? The human calculator promises to give you savant-level mathematical abilities. The Zen garden can make you calmer and more efficient. Or you can buy “merge,” a series of enhancements that allow you to gradually augment and transfer mental functions to the cloud. This might all sound like science fiction, but Susan Schneider, a cognitive scientist and philosopher at the University of Connecticut and the NASA–Blumberg chair of astrobiology at the Library of Congress, says brain microchips and other techniques to integrate humans with artificial intelligence are under development. AI, she says, is revolutionizing the economy and will inevitably go inside the head as corporations attempt to allow us seamless access to our devices. Schneider addresses the implications of AI in our lives and how to ensure the science develops in a way that promotes human flourishing. MLF Organizer: Gerald Harris MLF: Technology & Society Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us virtually for a conversation with the engagingly clear Berkeley mathematics professor Edward Frenkel—a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Mathematical Society, the winner of the Hermann Weyl Prize in mathematical physics, and the author of Love & Math, an international bestseller that has been published in 19 languages. As a starting point for this conversation, we will take Pythagoras’s famous maxim “all is number.” Frenkel appears well-qualified to offer his opinion on this philosophical, perhaps even mystical, statement: he is one of the world leaders in the groundbreaking Langlands Program, considered by many as a kind of Grand Unified Theory of math and quantum physics. His work, Frenkel says, can help us find order in apparent chaos and point to something rich and mysterious lurking beneath the surface, glimpses of hidden structures underlying the Universe. Yet, Frenkel also sees limits to math’s ability to explain our lives. There are, of course, those who think math has no limits, that if only we knew all the right equations and algorithms, we could replicate life, or merge into an undying singularity. Frenkel disagrees with that, and moreover says that math itself can prove that it has inherent limitations. Join us as we ponder the big question: “What’s math got to do with it?” MLF Organizer: George Hammond MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

COVID-19 is challenging the U.S. health-care system in unprecedented ways. Hospitals are staggering under the burden of treating infected patients, doctors struggle to protect themselves while working overtime, and insurers weigh eliminating co-pays for testing and treatment as their expenses skyrocket. Hear top executives from among the country’s largest hospital systems, physician groups and health insurers describe the situations they’re facing and how they’re coping with our nation’s worst pandemic. Notes In association with The Zetema Project This program is free, though please consider making a donation during registration This program will be online only, and you must pre-register for a link to the program This program is generously supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and a collaborative of local funders and donors; we are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example to support the Club during these uncertain times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What can the spread of the coronavirus teach us about the spread of climate change? Both crises have global reach, invisible perpetrators, and require aggressive, early action for containment. But while an infectious disease is acute and deeply personal, the impacts of a changing climate are systemic and vague. Scientists point out that the coronavirus family—which includes COVID-19 and SARS—originated as an animal disease that can be passed along to humans. With increased human development encroaching into wildlife areas, should communities be preparing for more pandemics? A conversation on climate factors shaping human health with Brian Allan, associate professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Barbara Gottlieb, director of environment and health at Physicians for Social Responsibility. This program is generously supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and a collaborative of local funders and donors. We are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example to support the Club during these uncertain times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for an online conversation with one of the biggest names in science fiction—bestselling author John Scalzi. He has entertained millions of fans with his hugely popular Old Man's War series of books and other novels, earned himself two Hugo awards, and regularly engages and occasionally enrages the science fiction world with his lively blog on whatever.scalzi.com. Scalzi's newest novel, The Last Emperox, caps off his Interdependency trilogy that began with The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire. In this final volume, Emperox Grayland must pull out all of the stops to save as much of humanity as possible from the collapsing network that ties together the human worlds; she is opposed by forces who want to destroy her and could end up destroying human civilization in the process. Don't miss this discussion with the witty, outspoken and talented John Scalzi. This is an online program, presented free; donations are welcome and may be made during the registration process Purchase a signed copy of The Last Emperox from San Francisco's legendary SF bookstore Borderlands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all face difficulty and pain in life, and whether we are the perpetrators or the victims, we must all inevitably learn how to forgive and open up to healing. New York Times best-selling author Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt has experienced the often slow and thorny journey toward forgiveness, and she knows how the power of personal insight can illuminate the path of forgiveness. In her new book, The Gift of Forgiveness, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt helps people navigate the difficult path toward healing with first-hand accounts and experiences from her own life. Join her, in conversation with New York Times best-selling author Kelly Corrigan, to learn the power of forgiveness in finding peace and acceptance. This program is free, though we invite you to make a donation during registration ** This Podcast Contains Explicit Language ** Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The catastrophic, overwhelming challenges we are facing globally are manifesting locally—week by week, day by day, hour by hour. Cities are besieged. Economies are failing. Friends are dying. As the human toll creeps ever higher, it begins to feel as though our very humanity lies in the balance. How can we preserve it? Although the scale of the COVID-19 disaster is unprecedented, it is worth recalling that this is not the first time that human societies have faced catastrophic collapse. What can we learn from those who have come before us? The Commonwealth Club and UC Berkeley's Townsend Center for the Humanities invite you to take part in Catastrophe: Dialogues on Storytelling and the Present Moment, a series of conversations that will examine catastrophe and the essential role that stories play in helping us to face and survive catastrophe. Bringing together (remotely, of course) internationally known humanities scholars from UC Berkeley and prominent figures from the Bay Area arts community, this series is an opportunity to share knowledge and renew hope by discussing literary accounts of catastrophic change, ranging from Ancient Egypt to Bronze Age Troy and from Imperial Rome to colonial America. Please join Townsend Center scholar Ron Hendel and poet Matthew Zapruder to discuss the Book of Exodus. Ron and Matthew will look at and listen to the poetry at work in the Exodus account of the collapse of pharaoh’s Canaanite empire and the subsequent rise of Israel. Their conversation will bring the power of that poetry and the cultural memories embedded within it to bear on the precarious nature of our present moment. Ronald Hendel is the Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many books and articles on the religion, literature, and history of the Hebrew Bible, including The Book of Genesis: A Biography, and How Old is the Hebrew Bible? He is the general editor of The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition. Matthew Zapruder is the author of five collections of poetry, including Come On All You Ghosts, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Father’s Day (Copper Canyon, 2019), as well as Why Poetry, a book of prose. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a William Carlos Williams Award, a May Sarton Award from the Academy of American Arts and Sciences, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship in Marfa, TX. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is an Associate Professor at Saint Mary’s College of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the coronavirus spreads rapidly through the population, the United States is racing to provide test kits, develop a vaccine and find treatments. Meanwhile, we’re running dangerously low on supplies, ranging from ventilators and test reagents to gowns and N95 masks. When will we have the test kits we need? Can we develop a vaccine and identify treatments in time to contain the pandemic? Will we have enough ventilators to save patients and sufficient equipment to protect our providers? Three leading experts will share where we are today, where we are headed, and what it will take to get us there. In association with The Zetema Project This program is free, though please consider making a donation during registration This program will be online only, and you must pre-register for a link to the program This program is generously supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and a collaborative of local funders and donors; we are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example to support the Club during these uncertain times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us virtually for a conversation with Robert Hirst about the millions of words Mark Twain wrote but left behind for Hirst and his team to organize. The Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library started with a core collection transferred in 1949 to UC Berkeley by Clara, Mark Twain’s sole surviving daughter. For the last four decades, the ever-growing archive of original and photocopied documents, unpublished manuscripts and thousands of letters, as well as the editorial project to create a digital record of everything Mark Twain wrote, have both been under Hirst’s direction. That project included publishing Mark Twain’s complete autobiography in 2010, 100 years after he died—a century’s wait required by Twain’s desire to save his heirs from being lynched. Hear a great storyteller tell great stories about one of America’s greatest authors. MLF Organizer: George Hammond MLF: Humanities ** This Podcast Contains Explicit Language ** Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nuclear power - revive it or allow a slow death? Today, about a hundred nuclear plants provide 20 percent of America’s electricity. Once touted as a modern power source, nuclear fell out of favor after a series of major accidents – most notably those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. A handful of the plants that once dotted the landscape have been shuttered because they can’t compete with cheaper sources of power. By the end of the century, the industry was languishing. But the urgency of climate change causes some to advocate giving nuclear a new lease on life. A discussion about the health of the nuclear power industry today, and the 21 st century innovations that could point to a new path forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Through the adept facilitation of journalist Katie Hafner, the audience will hear directly from four expert panelists from four key service organizations that are helping to connect older adults at risk of social isolation. Village organizations, assisted living communities, phone line support services and senior centers are facing new challenges to support and connect at-risk older adults and disabled people in this time of social distancing and self-quarantine. Each of the four types of organizations is different. Learning how all four are working from different angles to meet the challenge of social isolation posed by this epidemic will give a sense of what is possible—and hopefully will generate ideas to open even more avenues for socialization. To bring it all together, Commonwealth Club president and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy will give us her family's firsthand perspective of living with her aging mother who suddenly finds herself separated from the groups and activities that would routinely bring connection and variety to her life. MLF Organizer: John Milford MLF: Grownups Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanks to the general shut-down and shelter-in-place orders, you're home—now what? We're talking with three TV and media critics about the television shows and movies that are worth your time. What classic movies should you watch? Where can you find them? Which TV series are worth binge viewing? What programs have you overlooked but now have the time to discover and enjoy? Join us for a fun and informative program to help us all get through these tough times. Notes This is a free program, but please consider supporting the Club during these uncertain times by making a donation at registration Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The vulnerability of certain populations to the coronavirus COVID-19 has been well publicized—everyone knows seniors and people with asthma, diabetes and certain other conditions are in the most danger from the virus. But less well-known is the virus' impact on LGBTQI communities. Join us for a discussion with experts about how this virulent disease impacts this community, and submit your questions for our speakers on our YouTube livestream. This is a free program, but please consider supporting the Club during these uncertain times by making a donation at registration This program is generously supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and a collaborative of local funders and donors. We are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example to support the Club during these uncertain times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few individuals are as uniquely qualified to provide insight about the coronavirus pandemic as physician Dr. Margaret Hamburg. She is the past commissioner of Public Health for the city of New York, and also the past commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, having served as the chief U.S. official responsible for approving new drugs. She also sits on the board of the organization Ending Pandemics. Dr. Hamburg will be in conversation from Washington, D.C. with Dr. Gloria Duffy, president and CEO of The Commonwealth Club. They will cover the prospects and timing for drug treatments for the coronavirus, how the virus and policies to stop its spread will affect New York, who predicted a pandemic and what advice they gave, and how the coronavirus spread and lessons to learn to prevent future pandemics. Dr. Hamburg is an internationally recognized leader in public health and medicine, and currently serves as foreign secretary of the National Academy of Medicine and chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative Bio Advisory Group. She previously served as assistant director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health. As foreign secretary of the National Academy of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Hamburg serves as senior adviser on international matters and is the liaison with other Academies of Medicine around the world. She is president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), as well as an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Hamburg earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School. Notes This program is generously supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and a collaborative of local funders and donors. We are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example to support the Club during these uncertain times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us virtually for a Monday Night Philosophy conversation with Kitty Ferguson about the life and scientific theories of Stephen Hawking, whom she first met in 1988. That encounter began her mid-life transition from being a professional singer, music teacher and Juilliard graduate to an explainer of difficult scientific concepts and Hawking’s biographer. We will also discuss her nine other books, which she wrote in the clearest possible manner, translating from the “language” of mathematicians, scientists, and other experts into the language of the rest of us, without dumbing down the ideas. There is nothing more Pythagorean than that combination of clarity, theoretical science and music, and Ferguson’s childhood and family life, even more than her formal education, prepared her well for merging all three talents. MLF Organizer: George Hammond MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us virtually for a conversation with Tamim Ansary about the patterns he sees in ancient civilizations and in current cultures derived from those historical developments. The four major rivers along which large-scale human civilizations began—the Nile, the Tigris–Euphrates, the Indus and the Huang He—each had characteristic traits that contributed to the underlying cultural assumptions our ancestors made about the nature of reality. Being who we are, mainly concerned with the world as seen through our own culture's eyes, for most of recorded history each major civilization has seen the other civilizations as peripheral players on this planet. Ansary shows how we have always been interconnected but that the speed at which that takes place in the 21st century has made many issues worldwide concerns requiring consensus on solutions, including climate change and the spread of deadly viruses. Ansary wants us to understand, in time, that each human civilization we have created mostly has points of similarity with every other civilization in our pursuit of happiness and that it is the points of cultural divergence that are truly peripheral. MLF Organizer: George Hammond MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices