Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Food loss and waste account for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and cost $1 trillion annually, according to the⁠ United Nations⁠. About a third of all food grown on the planet gets wasted, rather than eaten. In developing countries, waste usually occurs between the field and the store, due to poor infrastructure, lack of refrigeration, and broken supply chains. In rich countries, most waste happens after food reaches the store, where consumers don’t buy imperfect food – or buy too much and toss what they don’t get around to consuming. How much pollution, deforestation and starvation could be reduced if we got this problem under control? And how can new tech, including AI, be brought to bear on the problem? Guests: Matt Rogers, Co-Founder and CEO, Mill Industries; Co-Founder, Nest Page Schult, CEO, Topanga  Kayla Abe, Co-Owner, Shuggie’s David Murphy, Co-Owner and Chef, Shuggie’s For show notes, related links, and episode transcript, visit climateone.org/podcasts. Highlights: 00:00 – Int

Who gets excited about going to an office meeting? Who dreads them? Rebecca Hinds, Ph.D., is an organization expert who has helped Fortune 500 companies fix their fractured collaboration efforts, and she says that meetings are broken. They are relics from a bygone era of top-down hierarchies and factory-like procedures—designed to issue orders, flaunt power, and keep the hierarchy intact. In today’s digital, collaborate-or-bust era, this model isn’t just inefficient, she says it actively harms employees and organizations.  She drew on decades of research and stories from leading companies like Google, Salesforce, Pixar, YouTube, and Dropbox for her new book Your Best Meeting Ever. She provides a blueprint to transform meetings from monotonous, soul-crushing time sinks into powerful tools for collaboration. Her secret? Treat them like products. Using seven product design principles, she says you’ll turn your meetings into well-designed products that actually drive work forward and serve your most important us

“Takes All Kinds”—An American Public Affairs Discussion and Demonstration of Journalistic Theatre Actor and playwright Dan Hoyle and his director, celebrated director/actor Aldo Billingslea, provide an inside look at the creation of their widely acclaimed new solo performance piece “Takes All Kinds.” Dan’s blog reminds the viewer that  ”I’ll be disappearing into these different characters and stories and you’ll be glad to journey there with me. They’ve been traveling with me these last couple years. I think they’ll stay with you too.” With “Takes All Kinds,” Hoyle and Billingslea use journalistic theater and embodied storytelling to portray powerful, funny and complex people caught in the social and political currents roiling our society. They create portraits of everyday Americans through moving and funny true stories of American democracy: school board showdowns in Florida, grassroots organizers in Atlanta, barber shops in Las Vegas, deprogrammers of violent extremists in Missouri and more. In this most

Monday Night Philosophy focuses tonight on the political philosophical principles generated by George Hammond’s “Life is an Eternal Democracy” theory. His latest book, A Slightly Better Future: Short Term Fixes for America, Long Term Fixes for Democracy, details many incremental institutional improvements that could make democracies far more effective in the future. His ideas, based upon what we should have learned over the last 250 years, include a thoroughly revised democratic constitution, significantly redesigned political institutions, and several new forms of institutional checks and balances.  Fortunately, even amidst the current dismaying destruction of valued political norms, there remains a strong, sustaining undercurrent—the hope that all this institutional chaos will ultimately just remind us why compromise in the pursuit of consensus has been, and could continue to be, so productive in America’s political culture.  Join us to discuss political principles that are designed to promote a civilized

Join us to hear from renowned historian Frank Dikötter, who offers a commanding history recasting how communists seized power in China. In April 1927, soldiers and detectives descended upon the Russian Embassy in Beijing, revolvers drawn. An hour later, they emerged with a trove of documents, some of them partly damaged by Russians who had tried quickly to destroy them. In these singed and soggy papers was proof that Moscow, despite agreeing three years earlier not to “propagate communistic doctrines,” had, in fact, sent what amounts to millions in today’s dollars—along with shiploads of arms and advisors—to support nothing less than a revolution in China.  These findings are hardly ever mentioned by historians—until now. Dikötter says the history of modern China has long been framed as an organic enterprise, wherein Communists mobilized the “peasants,” took land from the rich and redistributed it to the poor. Drawing on the Beijing raid as well as several other overlooked archives, Dikötter's new book Red

Life is a use-it-or-lose-it situation, says our speaker. Shouldn't you try to spend it doing something you love? Venture capitalist Bill Gurley has set out to teach people his ideas for how to find your dream job and avoid a career you’ll regret.  For lots of young people, career paths feel like conveyor belts—the next test, the next application, the next college—without a pause to ask what they really want to do with their lives. After Gurley went to college, he landed a job at a famous tech company. A dream job, right? But he was bored, so he took a chance and leapt into the unknown, eventually finding his place in the world of venture capital.  Such a result is rare. He says nearly six in ten people would do things differently if they could start over. So how can you avoid career regret? What can people at the top of their fields teach you about loving what they do? Gurley has assembled six principles to flourish in your chosen career, and he has explained it all in his new book Runnin’ Down a Dream. Lea

The average American teenager spends 4.8 hours a day on social media—but what are the actual effects of all this screen time? How have online platforms shifted our ways of talking and thinking about society? About the nation? What should we do about it? Over the course of one day, students from three different Bay Area high schools are invited to question and sharpen their discourse skills while exploring these questions for themselves.  In the morning, speakers Myles Bess (Above the Noise, ONE Creator Lab) and Gabriela Nguyen (Appstinence) will engage with these topics and model respectful, productive dialogue, discussing their experiences and opinions to build an understanding of the issue, and each other. Students will engage in listening activities and evidence-based discussion groups covering news media, California privacy laws, and international attempts to address our changing world. This program is part of Creating Citizens, the civics education initiative at Commonwealth Club World Affairs. Learn

While we are continually being inundated with news about what the federal government is up to, and wondering what else is going on that we don’t know about, Miranda Spivack reminds us that most Americans are more likely to encounter the effects of government malfeasance or neglect closer to home—from their governors, mayors, town councils, school boards, police and prosecutors. Deals shrouded in darkness are regularly made at the state and local levels, the result of closed-door discussions between government officials and industry leaders without any scrutiny whatsoever from the public. As Spivack’s groundbreaking investigative reporting makes clear, residents are intentionally kept on the outside, struggling to get information about significant issues affecting their communities—from car crashes and dirty drinking water, to failing safety gear—until the backroom deals are done and it’s too late to challenge them effectively. Based on years of original reporting, Spivack tells the story of five “accidental

While the federal government has all but abandoned trying to address the climate crisis, cities around the world are stepping up. C40 is an international network of 97 cities representing 920 million people and 23% of the world’s economy. Almost three out of four of these cities have already peaked their emissions. Here in the U.S., Climate Mayors is a bipartisan network of nearly 350 municipal leaders, representing 48 states and more than 70 million Americans. How are cities innovating on reducing emissions, adapting to increasing climate risks, and — perhaps most importantly — sharing their knowledge? Episode Guests:  Eric Garcetti, C40 Ambassador for Global Climate Diplomacy; Former Mayor, Los Angeles  Kate Gallego, Mayor of Phoenix; Former Chair, Climate Mayors  For show notes, related links, and episode transcript, visit https://climateone.org/podcasts Highlights: 00:00 Intro 2:46 Eric Garcetti on his time as mayor of LA 9:45 Eric Garcetti on where cities are moving the needle 17:47 Eric G

AI-powered agents and robots are already technically capable of performing an increasing share of human work. So how can workers, managers and organizations adapt to the dramatic shift?  A new McKinsey Global Institute report offers a roadmap. While AI is transforming the workplace at unprecedented speed, people will remain essential for many tasks that are still beyond AI’s capabilities—and to supervise, manage and collaborate with the technology. In fact, the demand for workers with AI fluency has grown dramatically over the past two years. Work in the future will be a partnership between people, agents and robots.  Which skills are likely to be most—and least—impacted by automation? How can public institutions help by aligning education and training with emerging skill needs—from AI fluency to skilled trades—and widening access to opportunity? And what strategies can organizations adopt to help their workforce adapt? Join us for a conversation with report authors Alexis Krivkovich and Anu Madgavkar of Mc

As a public defender in California and New York, Emily Galvin Almanza became frustrated by an overburdened justice system focused on locking people up while having, she says, “essentially zero impact on the crime rate.” Time and again, she saw ordinary peoples’ lives upended by the court system. So she co-founded an organization, Partners for Justice, aimed at supporting and empowering public defenders. Now operating in more than 20 states, the group places advocates in public defenders’ offices to help clients find stable housing, employment and other services . . . and stay out of jail.  In her new book, The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America, Galvin Almanza draws on these first-hand experiences and the latest crime data to argue that institutional decisions, such as prosecutorial incentives, policing tactics, or even when a judge has lunch, can have disastrous impacts on people who find themselves in the judicial process.  She looks at h

The Reagan presidency marked a turning point in American political history, bringing in changes in voting allegiances, long-lasting economic and foreign policy shifts, and a new direction in the country’s political culture that lasted for decades. Now former Reagan aide Frank Lavin comes to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to share behind-the-scenes stories of the Reagan White House. Drawing on his new book Inside the Reagan White House: A Front-Row Seat to Presidential Leadership with Lessons for Today, Lavin includes a mix of personal stories, insights on the president, discussions of policy and historical events, and crazy, colorful anecdotes in his insider’s look at the Reagan presidency. The Reagan assassination attempt, the Gorbachev Reykjavik summit, Ollie North and the Contras, the 1988 Bush-Dukakis contest and other critical moments of the Reagan years are all covered.  Lavin also offers original insights into Reagan cabinet members and other top players, along with personal anecdotes, off-hand comm

Don’t miss out on an evening celebration of a philanthropic milestone and the exploration of an increasingly important development in the Arctic. Today, we are witnessing the emergence of a new ocean. For almost all of human history, the Arctic Ocean has been a frozen sea dominated by sea ice whose properties include the ability to reflect sunlight. It has played an essential role in regulating the climate well beyond the Arctic. Simply put, it has long served as Earth’s air conditioner. The changes in the Arctic Ocean are affecting many sectors, including global climate, of course, as well as conservation and environmental preservation, fisheries and aquaculture, other sea life, navigation, trade, tourism, renewable energy, marine biotech, green tech, vegetation, digital connectivity and infrastructure, and the 4 million people in five countries who live along the Arctic Ocean coastline including Indigenous peoples and their cultures. As the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation concludes its 25th year, we in

AI and emerging technologies are reshaping biopharma and redefining how science is built, scaled and valued. As the landscape shifts, the industry must confront critical questions about leadership, capital strategy and what innovation really looks like in the years ahead. Join us to hear inside perspectives from senior leaders across biopharma and technology on: What’s driving momentum at the intersection of tech and science Where unsolved challenges are creating the next wave of opportunity This event is designed for technology and life sciences leaders, investors and stakeholders who want to learn from peers, identify emerging opportunities, and understand how data and AI will shape the next phase of biopharma. Dress code (encouraged): Elevated business attire or cocktail wear. In celebration of Black History Month, MelanInScience and WeAre encourage attendees to wear skin tone-inspired shades to reflect the beauty and diversity of all complexions. Hosted by MelanInScience and WeAre. See more

There are scientific truths, religious truths, historical truths, mythical truths, and more. In our current swamp of misinformation, disinformation, truthiness, rewritten history, conspiracy theories, “fake news,” and bald-faced lies, how do we discern actual facts and truth? What is “truth,” anyway? The Declaration of Independence claims that “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” What about those “truths”? These questions are crucial if we’re to have a functioning democracy.  Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of the new book Truth, returns to our podium to tackle these issues with us. He will clarify the different kinds of truth, take us on an entertaining ride through some classic fallacies, and then show us how to figure out, within the context of the various types of “truth,” whether a particular “fact” is, in fact, factual.  So join us for an informative discussion and maybe a few enjoyable, and illuminating, experiential exercises in which we'll practice tackling

Humanities West explores Ansel Adams’ legendary six-decade career as a conservationist, teacher, musician and, above all, photographer, bringing you the stories behind the famous images to reveal the infectious enthusiasms, fervent battles, and bountiful friendships of a truly American original.  Two of Ansel Adams’ best friends, Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Weston, criticized him for being too involved with the world. They advised that his activism—for the environment, for the rights of American citizens, for the recognition of photography as a creative art—all came at a grave cost to his art. To be a serious artist, they agreed, one must focus only on one’s art. Ansel Adams proved them wrong. But too often, Adams’ photographs are appreciated only for their aesthetic appeal, without consideration of the social and political circumstances of their making.  On what would have been his 123rd birthday, how do we celebrate this great artist and American citizen? Mary Street Alinder and Dr. Jasmine Alinder will p

Rising electricity rates across the country are adding pressure to families and businesses already dealing with inflation in other aspects of their lives. Most Americans get their power from a utility that needs to turn a profit for its investors. And people are fed up with the status quo. “Across the country, the utilities have just gotten greedy and are asking for more than they need,” says Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.  Some communities are considering cutting out the profit motive for utilities, taking on the complicated and expensive prospect of moving to public power. But switching from an investor-owned utility to public power is an uphill battle. What are other strategies for reining in corporate greed and making electricity more affordable? Episode Guests: Kris Mayes, Arizona Attorney General Naveena Sadasivam, Investigative Reporter and Editor, Grist Carroll Fife, Councilmember, District 3, Oakland, California Jackson Kaspari, Director of Member Services, Community Power Coalition of

This fireside chat will feature the various major Democratic candidates running to be California’s next governor in conversation with Nancy Tung, who is currently serving as the chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, about the biggest issues facing the state of California.  This conversation is taking place as delegates from throughout California arrive in San Francisco for the Democratic Party Convention weekend. Delegates will be evaluating the candidates and casting their votes on whom to endorse for governor as part of our special CADEM coverage of the state convention.  Gubernatorial candidates will each have a 15-minute period to share their vision for the future of the Golden State one-on-one with Chair Nancy Tung. See more  Michelle Meow Show programs at Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are we in an AI-driven financial bubble? New York Times financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of a new book on the 1929 stock market crash, thinks so. "I just can’t tell you when, and I can’t tell you how deep," he has said. "But I can assure you, unfortunately, I wish I wasn't saying this, we will have a crash.” But other experts, notably Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, doesn’t think the AI boom is another dot-com bubble. “These companies … actually have business models and profits... So it’s really a different thing,” Powell said in October. So what’s the average consumer and investor to do? In Commonwealth Club World Affairs’ annual economic forecast, our experts will go beyond the hype and doomsaying to break down what it all means for your bottom line. Will the stock market continue to rally, or will there be a correction? How will tariff chaos and the immigration crackdown impact the economy? What can we expect with future interest rate cuts, and with President Trump’s efforts to influ

Incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up. In 2019, filmmakers visit an Alabama prison to film a revival meeting. Off camera, incarcerated men whisper a message: terrible things are going on here that are being kept secret from the public. This sparks an immersive 6-year investigation to discover the reality behind the walls of what the film calls “the nation’s deadliest prison system.”With unprecedented direct access, the filmmakers learn from incarcerated men about a suspicious and violent death. The story unfolds in real time, revealing it isn’t an isolated incident, and that the official version appears far from the truth. What follows is a shocking story of brutality, corruption, and a system in collapse. As the men fight for their own survival, they embark on a campaign of resistance, against all odds.Join us for a screening of the Oscar-nominated new documentary Alabama Solution, followed by a Q&A with director and producer Andrew Jarecki  This program contains EXPLICIT language. Learn mor