Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Author Katherine Blunt provides what is being called a "revelatory, urgent narrative with national implications," exploring the decline of California’s largest utility company that led to countless wildfires—including the one that destroyed the town of Paradise—and the human cost of infrastructure failure

Pacific Gas and Electric was a legacy company built by innovators and visionaries, establishing California as a desirable home and economic powerhouse. In California Burning, Wall Street Journal reporter and Pulitzer finalist Katherine Blunt examines how that legacy fell apart—unraveling a long history of deadly failures in which PG&E endangered millions of Northern Californians, through criminal neglect of its infrastructure. She says that as PG&E prioritized profits and politics, power lines went unchecked—until a rusted hook purchased for 56 cents in 1921 split in two, sparking the deadliest wildfire in California history.

Beginning with PG&E’s public reckoning after the Paradise fire, Blunt chronicles the evolution of PG&E’s shareholder base, from innovators who built some of California's first long-distance power lines to aggressive investors keen on reaping dividends. Following key players through pivotal decisions and legal battles, California Burning reveals the forces Blunt says shaped the plight of PG&E: deregulation and market-gaming led by Enron Corp., an unyielding push for renewable energy, and a swift increase in wildfire risk throughout the West, while regulators and lawmakers pushed their own agendas.

MLF ORGANIZER

Andrew Dudley

NOTES

SPEAKERS

Katherine Blunt

Reporter, The Wall Street Journal; Finalist, 2020 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting; Recipient, Gerald Loeb Award

Andrew Dudley

Co-Host and Producer, Earth Live; Chair, People & Nature Member-Led Forum, The Commonwealth Club of California—Moderator

We are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded live on September 12th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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From post-Watergate reforms, to the fall of the Soviet Union, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, 9/11 and the Iraq War, the Great Recession, the two Trump impeachment trials, and the January 6 insurrection, Senator Patrick Leahy has been at the heart of the discussion of the country's politics and direction for nearly half a century. In his memoir, The Road Taken, Senator Leahy gives a first-hand reflection of the historic events during his tenure.

Senator Leahy is the longest-serving U.S. senator and was first elected in 1974. He has held numerous committee appointments, including some of the most powerful in the Senate, including chair of Appropriations and a member of the Judiciary and Rules Committees. In the second Trump impeachment, Leahy became the first U.S. senator to preside over an impeachment trial.

Leahy gives the full narrative of his historic political career—from meeting Presidents Obama and Biden while they were still freshman legislators, to leading the way on Supreme Court nominations, to his cameos in five Batman movies. He also reflects on his time in Vermont and his passion for photography

Please join us for an intimate discussion with one of the country's most tenured lawmakers.

NOTES

This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

SPEAKERS

Senator Patrick Leahy

(D-VT), President Pro Tempore, U.S. Senate; Author, The Road Taken: A Memoir; Twitter @SenatorLeahy

In Conversation with Melissa Caen

Political Analyst; Attorney

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 14th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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In August, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. The IRA allocates around $370 billion over ten years to invest in renewable energy, make EVs more affordable, address climate inequities, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate the climate crisis. 

But like any law, the way the money is doled out matters, and the law’s implementation will ultimately determine its success. Some of the IRA money moves through state governments, including some that are outright hostile to the law. Consumers will have access to a suite of rebates and credits designed to electrify their lives, if they can get the necessary support to take advantage of them. How can government agencies, companies, investors and individuals take the law from words on a page to real functioning programs? 

Guests: 

Carla Frisch, Principal Deputy Director, Office of Policy for the U.S. Department of Energy 

Ryan Panchadsaram, Advisor to the Chairman at Kleiner Perkins 

Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, Berkeley Law

Dan Bowerson, Senior Director, Energy & Environment, Alliance for Automotive Innovation

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Fake news? Alternative facts? Overly hyped "breakthroughs"? Irreproducible scientific research results? Preprints? Gaslighting the medical literature? What to do?

Finding and trusting the best published primary medical literature is the answer. Our speakers for the 12th Annual Lundberg Institute Lecture at The Commonwealth Club, JAMA Editor in Chief Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo and BMJ Editor in Chief Kamran Abbasi, are among the premier guardians of that literature. Hear their advice, and then ask them your own questions about whom and what to trust—especially now when deciding which medical information is trustworthy has become so crucial and so confusing.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

SPEAKERS

Kamran Abbasi

M.D., Editor in Chief, BMJ (the British Medical Journal); Honorary Visiting Professor, Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College, London; Fellow, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Royal College of Physicians of London

Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo

M.D., Editor in Chief, JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association); the Lee Goldman, M.D., Endowed Professor of Medicine, and Chair, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCSF School of Medicine

George Lundberg

M.D., Editor in Chief, Cancer Commons; Editor at Large, Medscape; Executive Adviser, Cureus; Clinical Professor of Pathology, Northwestern University; President and Chair, The Lundberg Institute

George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates—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 12th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Author of That Is Not Your Mind: Zen Reflections on the Surangama Sutra, Robert Rosenbaum explores that question by taking forum participants on a magical journey through the Surangama Sutra based in a context of Zen practice.

Like the arts world, Surangama sutra is a springboard for exploring sensory experiences—sight, sound ,taste, smell, touch and the Buddhist “sixth sense” of mind or cognition. Rosenbaum presents witty, authentic and refreshing contemporary insights from neuroscience and psychology and anecdotes from his decades of teaching experience. Among arts-related insights shared is an appreciation for “musics of the mind" to intersect with ancient/perennial Buddhist wisdom and everyday human yearning.

MLF ORGANIZER

Anne W. Smith

SPEAKERS

Robert Rosenbaum

Ph.D., American Zen Teacher; Author, That Is Not Your Mind

Anne W. Smith

Ph.D., Co-Chair, Arts Member-led Forum, The Commonwealth Club of California—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 8th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Join us for a conversation about family, faith and responsibility, with Valerie Biden Owens and Dr. Gloria Duffy. Valerie Biden Owens is Biden Institute chair at the University of Delaware, campaign manager, political strategist, and New York Times best-selling author of Growing Up Biden.

Welcome remarks will be delivered by Paul J. Fitzgerald, S. J., president of the University of San Francisco, with introductions by Charles M. Collins, president emeritus of YMCA of San Francisco.

NOTES

This program is presented in partnership with the University of San Francisco.

SPEAKERS

Valerie Biden Owens

Chair, Biden Institute, University of Delaware

Welcome by Paul J. Fitzgerald

S. J., President, University of San Francisco

Introductions by Charles M. Collins

President Emeritus, YMCA of San Francisco

Dr. Gloria Duffy

President and CEO, The Commonwealth Club of California—Moderator

We are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded on September 12th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Is today’s America really the one the Founding Fathers envisioned? That is the question constitutional scholar Kermit Roosevelt asks, tracing the majority of American political sentiments from the modern day not back as far as the Revolution, but to the Reconstruction era.

Kermit Roosevelt is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the great-great grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He is an expert in constitutional law, national security, conflicts of law and civil liberties. His work has been published in the Virginia Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Columbia Law Review and he is the author of two historical novels examining themes of equality and civil liberty.

In his latest book, The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story, Roosevelt argues that America in the modern day is not the ideological descendant of the era of the Founding Fathers but that of Reconstruction and Abraham Lincoln. Examining the writings, history and political thought of America’s first century, he explains that many of the country’s core political beliefs, especially equality, originated in the Reconstruction era not as a return to the Founder’s vision but as a rejection of it.

Join us as Roosevelt rethinks how American history is viewed, and how the ideas underpinning the country have shifted in the past two centuries—and along with it, what it means to be American itself.

SPEAKERS

Kermit Roosevelt III

David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School; Author, The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story

In Conversation with David Spencer

Founder, SenSpa; Member, Commonwealth Club of California Board of Governors

We are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded Live on September 8th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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After a 20-year career as a tech reporter for CNET, the New York Times, and the public radio program Marketplace, Molly Wood has come to see the climate crisis as an engineering problem requiring an acceleration of investment. And so, after producing the acclaimed climate podcast “How We Survive” for Marketplace, she recently left that program to begin a new career in venture capital. Now, in conversation with Climate One Host Greg Dalton, Molly Wood explores the limits of media in changing human behavior and the role of capital in addressing the climate crisis, even while considering that capitalism itself may be incompatible with survival. 

Guests:

Molly Wood, Investor, Podcaster

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When people talk about the many attacks on Asian and Pacific Islander (API) people, they usually don’t talk about gay or queer people. These attacks have been going on for a long time, and seemingly nobody pays attention to it.

This special panel will highlight how these attacks are affecting the queer Asian community and how this silent violence is impacting their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It will also remove the veil of shame and secrecy around queerness that is experienced by many in the Asian diaspora.

NOTES

Thank you to our promotional partner, Openhouse Leadership Council on Queerness, Race, and Privilege.

SPEAKERS

Cecilia Chung

Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Evaluation, Transgender Law Center; Health Commissioner, San Francisco; Founding Producer, Trans March

Anjali Rimi

President and Co-founder, Parivar Bay Area; Member, Trans Advisory Committee, Office of Transgender Initiatives, San Francisco Mayor's Office

Morningstar Vancil

Activist; Artist; Co-founder, ForS/mWoC

Michelle Meow

Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—Co-host

John Zipperer

Producer and Host, Week to Week Political Roundtable; Vice President of Media & Editorial, The Commonwealth Club of California—Co-host

We are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded Live on February 8th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Oysters are one of humanity’s oldest foods and have great historical significance and current-day importance. For John Finger, founding partner and CEO of Hog Island Oyster Company, the shellfish are not only a vocation but a way of life. Finger is a marine biologist who has helped Hog Island become one of the premier producers of certified sustainable shellfish in the country. And Finger's work at Hog Island has never been more important.

Today, health, science, technology and climate change all combine to elevate the importance of the oyster and oyster farming to society. The marine equivalent of the canary in the coal mine, oysters are giving scientists a better understanding of rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification, and signaling the need for new scientific and technological solutions, if these and other shellfish are to thrive into the future.

There has never been a better time to return to The Commonwealth Club! Come join this special member-led forum event with John Finger to talk about the importance of oysters in the 21st century.

MLF ORGANIZER

Robbie Kilpatrick

SPEAKERS

John Finger

Founding Partner and CEO, Hog Island Oyster Company

Robbie Kilpatrick

Member, Board of Governors, The Commonwealth Club of California; Chair, Health and Medicine Member-Ledw

We are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded live on September 7th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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