Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Tech gadgets surround us each day, and to entrepreneur and innovator Tony Fadell, each of them has a fascinating story, full of determination and ingenuity, of how they came to be. Having led the teams that developed the iPod, iPhone and Nest Learning Thermostat and drawing from 30 years of experience in the field, Fadell believes that anyone can learn how to be a better business leader by examining the hidden stories behind the devices that make up our lives.

Tony Fadell is an engineer, inventor and author who was responsible for co-designing three of Time magazine’s “50 most influential gadgets of all time.” Having decades of experience at Silicon Valley giants such as Apple and Google, Fadell has authored more than 300 patents and invested in or advised at several hundred start-up companies.

In his latest book, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making, Fadell retells chapters of his journey from a designer to an executive, using them as case studies to illustrate effective leadership and problem solving in a competitive environment. Fadell provides a captivating, fast-paced encyclopedia of business strategy.

Join us live as Fadell retells the surprising stories behind many of our most familiar products, and the wisdom they have to share.

SPEAKERS

Tony Fadell

Co-inventor, the iPod and iPhone; Founder of Nest Labs; Principal at Future Shape LLC; Author, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Work; Twitter @tfadell

In Conversation with John Markoff

Former Technology Reporter, The New York Times, Writer-in-Residence, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; Author, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand; Twitter @markoff

Note: This program contains some EXPLICIT language

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 May 11th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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The loss of a loved one can be overwhelming. Grief can impact us tremendously, both mentally and physically. How do we endure grief? Can we simply forget, or "get over it?"

In her new book, Marin County clinical psychologist Dr. Mary Lamia explains the science behind bereavement, from emotion to the persistence of memory, and shows people how to understand and adapt to death as a part of life. The book aims to expand our understanding of bereavement, placing it in alignment with how emotions work. Using numerous case examples and personal vignettes, Dr. Lamia's latest work helps people recognize the ways in which emotions are connected to memories and influence our experiences of loss. Dr. Lamia demonstrates how negative emotional responses experienced in grief often follow experiences with positive emotional memories.

Please join us for a powerful conversation on understanding and overcoming grief.

MLF ORGANIZER

Patrick O'Reilly

SPEAKERS

Dr. Mary Lamia

Clinical Psychologist; Professor, Wright Institute; Author, Grief Isn't Something to Get Over: Finding a Home for Memories and Emotions After Losing a Loved One

Michael Krasny

Former Host, "Forum," KQED

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 May 101th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Join us at The Commonwealth Club for a conversation with CNN's John Avlon about Abraham Lincoln’s plan to secure a just and lasting peace after the Civil War. The implementation of Lincoln's vision was cut short by his assassin, but Lincoln's hopes still inspired future American presidents—and Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. General Lucius Clay, the architect of the post-WWII German occupation, explained that his decisions were guided by thinking what “kind of occupation would the South have had if Abraham Lincoln had lived.”

As the tide of the Civil War finally turned in the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln visited the troops on the front lines, seeing combat up close, meeting liberated slaves, and comforting wounded soldiers, both Union and Confederate. The power of Lincoln’s personal example was enhanced by his use of humor, logic and scripture to depolarize bitter debates. Balancing moral courage with moderation, Lincoln believed that decency could be the most practical form of politics, but he also understood that people are more inclined to listen to reason when it is presented from a position of strength. Ulysses S. Grant’s famously generous terms of surrender to General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox that April were a direct expression of Lincoln's belief that a soft peace should follow a hard war.

Avlon shows how Lincoln’s character informed his commitment to unconditional surrender followed by a magnanimous peace. Even during the Civil War, when he was surrounded by reactionaries and radicals, Lincoln refused to back down from his belief that there is more that unites us than divides us. But he also understood that peace needs to be waged with as much intensity as war—an understanding that Avlon says remains relevant today, for both our domestic and our foreign policies.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

SPEAKERS

John Avlon

Senior Political Analyst and Anchor, CNN; Author, Lincoln and the Fight for Peace

In Conversation with John Boland

President Emeritus, KQED; Vice Chair, 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 May 5th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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As COVID-19 spread around the world, so did government censorship. The Infodemic lays bare not just the use of old-fashioned censorship, but also how “censorship through noise” enhances the traditional means of state control (such as jailing critics and restricting the flow of information) by using a flood of misinformation to overwhelm the public with lies and half-truths.

Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney, who have been defending press freedom and journalists’ rights worldwide for many years as the directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, chart the onslaught of COVID censorship—beginning in China, but spreading through Iran, Russia, India, Egypt, Brazil, and even the White House. Increased surveillance in the name of public health, the collapse of public trust in institutions, and the demise of local news reporting all contributed to make it easier for governments to hijack the flow of information. Using vivid characters and behind-the-scenes accounts, Simon and Mahoney show how, under the cover of a global pandemic, governments have undermined freedom and taken ever more authoritarian control—a new political order that may be one of the legacies of this disease.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

SPEAKERS

Robert Mahoney

Deputy Executive Director, the Committee to Protect Journalists; Co-Author, The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free

Joel Simon

Fellow, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia Journalism School; Co-Author, The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free

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 May 5th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Paul Holes takes us through his memories of a storied career as a cold case investigator and provides an insider account of some of the most notorious cases in contemporary American history, including the hunt for the Golden State Killer, Laci Peterson’s murder, and Jaycee Dugard’s kidnapping. This is also a revelatory profile of a complex man and what makes him tick: the drive to find closure for victims and their loved ones, the inability to walk away from a challenge—even at the expense of his own happiness.

Holes opens up the most intimate scenes of his life: his moments of self-doubt and the impact that detective work has had on his marriage. This is a story about the gritty truth of crime-solving when there are no flashbulbs and “case closed” headlines. It is the story of a man and his commitment to cases and people who might otherwise have been forgotten.

Come meet Paul Holes and go behind the scenes of an expert cold case investigator.

NOTES

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

SPEAKERS

Paul Holes

Retired Cold Case Investigator; Author, Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases; Twitter @PaulHoles

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 May 5th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Russ Feingold became a household name co-authoring the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, more commonly known as McCain-Feingold. It’s the only major piece of campaign finance reform legislation passed into law in decades. Today he is using his experience navigating the levers of power to tackle alarming biodiversity loss and the worsening climate crisis. Feingold believes, “The threats posed to people from the destruction of nature are just as serious as those posed by climate change.” 

Guests: 

Russ Feingold, President of the American Constitution Society, former Senator from Wisconsin

Jean Su, Energy Justice Director and Senior Attorney, Center for Biological Diversity

Dan Farber, Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment, University of California, Berkeley

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With the attack on Ukraine well underway, political thinker Yascha Mounk recently admitted in The Atlantic that, “We stand at the beginning of a new era of naked power politics.” The Russian invasion is not simply an assault on a neighboring country motivated by strained ethnic relations or security concerns, but it is an assault on the democratic values and political system espoused by Ukraine. It is the latest setback in a “democratic recession” now entering its 16th consecutive year, according to Freedom House. “In 2021, the number of countries moving away from democracy once again exceeded the number of countries moving toward it by a big margin.” Why is this happening and what can be done to reverse this global trend?

Yascha Mounk argues that democracy has long struggled to embody both equality and diversity, and despite the challenges past and present facing democratic institutions, he believes that with ambition and vision, there is still reason to be hopeful.

Yascha Mounk is a German-American political scientist, author, and associate professor of practice at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. His works have appeared in The New York Times, Politico and the Journal of Democracy. His works have included assessments of American democracy, the dangers of nationalism and ethnic relations in democratic settings.

In The Great Experiment, Mounk argues that the struggle of free countries to be both diverse and equal in their political systems is the greatest experiment of our time and essential to the continuation of democracy. While this feat is unprecedented, he contends, understanding the past and underlying conditions that have led to division and social injustices is critical to avoiding them in the future, and he writes that we should have genuine hope in humanity’s ability to accomplish it.

Join us as Mounk explores the long and complicated history between democracy, equality and diversity, and explains that with a bold vision as our guiding light, we can harmoniously celebrate our differences without letting them divide us.

SPEAKERS

Yascha Mounk

Founder, Persuasion; Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University; Contributing Editor, The Atlantic; Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; Author, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure; Twitter @Yascha_Mounk

In Conversation with Steven Saum

Editor, WorldView Magazine

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 May 3rd, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Journalist Anya Zoledziowski joins us for an inside look at the struggle of LGBTQ people in Ukraine as that country struggles with the Russian invasion. She has reported on a group of Gen Z students who are working around the clock to smuggle HIV and gender-affirming medications to people who desperately need it and are stuck in Ukraine. Russian forces have targeted civilian health care infrastructure as part of their invasion, but so far these students have managed to coordinate five deliveries into Ukraine with dozens of boxes of HIV medication and hormones for trans people.

Don't miss this online talk about helping the struggling population of Ukraine.

About the Speaker

Anya Zoledziowski is an award-winning staff reporter at Vice World News. Her reporting focuses on a wide range of social justice issues, including Indigenous affairs, race, politics, sex worker rights, and the disproportionate harm experienced by racialized communities in the climate crisis. She graduated from the University of British Columbia Master of Journalism program in 2018, and has since won multiple awards for her investigative reporting delving into hate crimes targeting Indigenous women at the hands of transient workers who move into “man camps,” temporary housing units near resource extraction sites. She also won the CAJ Reconciliation Award in 2021 for her Indigenous affairs reporting. Prior to working at Vice, she was with CBC, the now-defunct StarMetro Calgary, and many freelance assignments.

SPEAKERS

Anya Zoledziowski

Staff Reporter, Vice World News; Twitter @anyazoledz

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

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 May 5th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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During the early days of the political and medical panic of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Deborah Birx was at the center of the storm. Appointed as the White House coronavirus response coordinator despite heavy distrust from the inner circles of the Trump administration, Dr. Birx, a seasoned diplomat, physician and political administrator, found herself facing the greatest public health crisis in a generation, with a mercurial and unpredictable president who made implementing an coordinated and consistent government response a daily challenge. She also amassed critics outside the White House as the pandemic grew.

In her new book Silent Invasion, Dr. Birx recounts how she balanced skepticism from the West Wing, bitter partisanship and media speculation with delivering the fastest vaccine ever created, reform of the public health system and the power of public health interventions in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Giving a candid look at how the pandemic developed and her role in convincing President Trump to see the danger COVID posed to the country, Dr. Birx gives a sobering and comprehensive view of the ongoing pandemic, and provides advice on how to prevent another pandemic from tearing apart American society.

Join us as Dr. Birx retells her frantic battle to reform a broken federal response to the pandemic into one that could protect American lives, and gives a look to the future of the ongoing battle against COVID-19.

SPEAKERS

Dr. Deborah Birx

Former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator and Coronavirus Task Force Member; Senior Fellow, The Bush Institute; Author, Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It's Too Late

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 May 3rd, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Going from a childhood in the impoverished Louisville West End to being the youngest black lawmaker in Kentucky, success stories like State Rep. Charles Booker’s continue to cross political divides to inspire a nation. Facing poverty, systemic injustice and a strongly Republican political establishment, many lessons can be learned from Booker’s determination and strength to rise to the Kentucky legislature.

Charles Booker represented part of Louisville in Kentucky’s House of Representatives from 2019 to 2021, winning the Democratic primary against six other candidates. Having grown up facing poverty, hunger and the loss of family members from gun violence, Booker’s journey to public office saw him complete law school despite financial struggles, receiving an unlikely appointment to the Fish and Wildlife Commission, and then win a competitive election for a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives and go on to run to represent Kentucky in the United States Senate.

In his new book, From the Hood to the Holler: A Story of Separate Worlds, Shared Dreams, and the Fight for America's Future, Booker unpacks his unlikely journey to give commentary on social and economic systemic injustice and a vision of how to provide racial equity to America’s least fortunate members. He contends that as tensions and divisions grow, these interventions are not only effective, but urgently needed.

Join us as Booker tells a tale of grit, determination and hope in the darkest of circumstances, and sheds light on how we can make a brighter future for all.

NOTES

This program is part of The Commonwealth Club's Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

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