Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

In yet another case of reality trumping its popularization as entertainment, Ann Burgess tells the vivid story of her role in the creation of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (very thinly veiled on the long-running "Criminal Minds" series as its Behavioral Analysis Unit)—a role that transformed the way the FBI studies, profiles, and catches serial killers.

With reported cases of sexual assault and homicide rising in the 1970s and 1980s, the FBI created a specialized team—the “Mindhunters”—to track down America's most dangerous criminals. Dr. Burgess's pioneering research on sexual assault and trauma soon caught their attention, and steered her right into the middle of a chilling serial murder investigation in Nebraska. Over the next two decades she helped identify, interview and track down dozens of notoriously violent offenders, including Ed Kemper ("The Co-Ed Killer"), Dennis Rader ("BTK"), Henry Wallace ("The Taco Bell Strangler"), and Jon Barry Simonis ("The Ski-Mask Rapist"). As one of the first women trailblazers at the FBI, Burgess knew she was expected to crack under pressure—to recoil in horror. But she was determined to protect potential victims at any cost.

Burgess provides deep insights into the minds of deranged criminals, and of their victims, and paints a revealing portrait of the FBI on the brink of a seismic scientific and cultural reckoning. She also directly confronts the age-old question that plagues every criminal justice system: “What drives someone to kill, and how can we stop them?”

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

SPEAKERS

Ann Burgess

Professor, Boston College Connell School of Nursing; Forensic and Psychiatric Nurse; Worked with the FBI for over two decades; Author, A Killer By Design: Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind

Steven Constantine

Co-Author, A Killer By Design: Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind

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 January 20th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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In her new documentary In the Same Breath, director Nanfu Wang recounts the origin and spread of the novel coronavirus from the earliest days of the outbreak in Wuhan to its rampage across the United States. In a deeply personal approach, Wang, who was born in China and now lives in the United States, explores the parallel campaigns of misinformation waged by leadership and the devastating impact on citizens of both countries. Emotional first-hand accounts and startling, on-the-ground footage weave a revelatory picture of cover-ups and misinformation while also highlighting the strength and resilience of the health-care workers, activists and family members who risked everything to communicate the truth.

Note: This is a discussion about the documentary; this is not a screening of the film. In the Same Breath is currently available on HBO Max.

Join us for an online conversation with Nanfu Wang.

SPEAKERS

Nanfu Wang

Director, In the Same Breath and One Child Nation

Michelle Meow

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

John Zipperer

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

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on January 20th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Korea and Japan are two of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet. In September 2021, the Korean National Assembly passed legislation mandating carbon neutrality by 2050, becoming the 14th country to legislate commitments to reduce carbon emissions. Earlier in May 2021, Japan’s parliament passed an amendment to Japan’s framework climate law to legally enshrine the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 previously announced by its prime minister.

What are their policies for achieving their goals? How will technology and innovations help achieve their goals?

Join us to hear experts from Korea and Japan discuss these important subjects as the world addresses ways to meet their climate change targets.

MLF ORGANIZER: Lillian Nakagawa

SPEAKERS

Dr. Sung Woo Kim

Head of the Private Environment & Energy Research Institute, Kim & Chang, Seoul, Korea; member of the Carbon Neutrality Committee under the Presidential Office of the Republic of Korea

Dr. Kenji Yamaji

President, Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (in Tokyo, Japan)

Dr. Stephanie A. Siehr

Professor, Environmental and Energy Programs, University of San Francisco; Affiliate, China Energy Group, Energy Technologies Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—Moderator

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Strategies for rapidly and inexpensively identifying neurological/psychiatric weakness and distortion—combined with genomics and increasingly more sophisticated chemical analyses of blood and other body fluids—now provide us with simple, scalable strategies for delineating specific aspects of preclinical stages of neurological and psychiatric disorders. In parallel, we have an increasing understanding of how to engage the plastic brain in ways that reverse those weaknesses and distortions on a path to neurological normalcy. The word for broadly achieving such renormalization is prevention—or in already diagnosed patients, cure—two goals that up to now have rarely been achieved in brain-targeted medicine. This scientific explosion foretells a rapid transformation from a treatment-based to prevention-based brain medicine era.

Dr. Michael Merzenich is an emeritus UCSF professor who is broadly recognized for his seminal research in the science of neuroplasticity, and for his team’s efforts to translate this research into improvements in brain performance and organic brain health in normal and in variously struggling child and adult populations. He also led a UCSF team that developed the modern cochlear implant. Merzenich has published several hundred papers in prestigious scientific journals; been awarded nearly 70 U.S. patents; with UCSF’s permission, co-founded 3 companies focused on the translation of this research for human benefit; and has received many international prizes and awards for his teams’ ground-breaking research.

MLF ORGANIZER: Robert Lee Kilpatrick

SPEAKERS

Dr. Michael Merzenich

Ph.D., Professor (Emeritus), UCSF; CSO, Posit Science

Robert Lee Kilpatrick

Ph.D., Chair, Health & Medicine Member-Led Forum—Moderator

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The year 2020 was one of galvanizing unrest, finally bringing to mainstream attention countless racial and social injustices that have plagued American society for centuries. Many activists have become prominent figures in the historical struggle for equal rights, but not nearly enough of them have gotten this attention. During his virtual visit, the Reverend Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader and politician, will join us to tell their stories.

In his new book, Righteous Troublemakers: Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America, Sharpton delves into the everyday lives of extraordinary activists from the past and present. Further, he provides personal details from the frontlines of 2020’s heightened racial activism—offering his readers a nuanced account of the stories many could only follow from device screens. At INFORUM, Sharpton will leave his audience inspired to drive change in the name of truth and justice.

SPEAKERS

Al Sharpton

Host, MSNBC's "PoliticsNation"; Baptist Minister; Author, Righteous Troublemakers: Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America

In Conversation with Sheryl Davis

Executive Director, San Francisco Human Rights Commission

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 January 19th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Corporate pledges of reaching net zero carbon emissions have quickly become commonplace. Critics argue that such pledges are mere greenwashing, and even if pledges are fulfilled, the balance sheets usually utilize carbon offsets, which can be of questionable quality and accountability. Proponents of corporate net zero pledges say we’ll never get to net zero emissions without corporate action, and pledges represent legitimate ramping up of ambition and commitment. How can consumers, investors and policy leaders distinguish between stalling and increased ambition? Can third party auditors hold companies accountable?

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The gap between the rich and the poor has grown dramatically, stock prices are trading far above what many consider justified by actual corporate profits, corporate debt in America is at an all-time high, and this debt is being traded by big banks on Wall Street, leaving them vulnerable—just as they were during the mortgage boom. Middle-class wages have barely budged in a decade, and consumers are buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt. If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. However, Christopher Leonard is here to tell you otherwise.

In his new book, The Lords of Easy Money, Leonard goes into shocking detail about how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the one man who tried to warn us. He says this will be the first inside story of how we really got here—and why we face a frightening future.

Join us as Christopher Leonard takes us through the world of the Federal Reserve, and why you should be alarmed.

SPEAKERS

Christopher Leonard

Business Reporter; Author, The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy

In Conversation with Lenny Mendonca

Former Chief Economic and Business Advisor, State of California; Director Emeritus, McKinsey & Company

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 January 18th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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According to a very recent report from the U.S. Surgeon General, "the challenges today’s generation of young people face are unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate. And the effect these challenges have had on their mental health is devastating." The Surgeon General suggests that, as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and start recovering and rebuilding, we have an opportunity to approach the mental health of our children and youth with a more comprehensive, more fulfilling and more inclusive vision.

NOTES

This program is part of our series on mental health, dedicated in memory of Nancy Friend Pritzker, with support from the John Pritzker Family Fund.

SPEAKERS

Saun Toy Trotter

Director, School-Based Services, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland

Nicole Bush

Associate Professor, Psychiatry, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences; Lisa and John Pritzker Distinguished Professor of Developmental and Behavioral Health

William Martinez

Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences

Petra Steinbuchel

Director, Psychiatry, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland

Rani Sindledecker

8th-Grade student

Katie Albright

CEO, Safe & Sound

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 January 13th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Join us to hear David Bodanis make a fresh, detail-rich argument that the most productive way to lead is to be fair to others. Conventional wisdom is that "nice guys finish last," but maybe that just means that too many nice guys are too conventional. And it probably does not mean that one has to be a bully, schooled in Machiavellian tactics, to succeed.

The Art of Fairness reveals how it was fairness, applied with skill, that led the Empire State Building to be constructed in barely a year. And how the same techniques transformed a quiet English debutante into an acclaimed guerrilla fighter. In 10 vivid profiles featuring pilots, presidents, and even the producer of "Game of Thrones," Bodanis demonstrates that the path to greatness doesn't require crushing displays of power or a tyrannical ego. With surprising insights from across history, including the downfall of the very man who popularized the phrase “nice guys finish last,” Bodanis charts a refreshing and sustainable approach to cultivating integrity and influence.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

SPEAKERS

David Bodanis

Author, The Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency in a World Gone Mean

In Conversation with George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates

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Join us to discuss with James Porter our ongoing fascination with Homer—the man and the myth. The poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey was revered as a cultural icon in antiquity and remains millennia later a figure of lasting influence. But his identity is shrouded in questions about who he was, when he lived and whether he was an actual person, a myth or merely a shared idea. Whatever his source, Homer is a cultural invention nearly as distinctive and important as the poems attributed to him.

Porter follows the cultural history of the idea of the great poet and of the obsession that is reborn every time Homer is reimagined. Offering novel readings of texts and objects, the idea of Homer is elucidated from its origins to its most recent imaginings in literature, criticism, philosophy, visual art and classical archaeology. Porter explores the many sources of Homer’s mystique and their cultural impact, starting with the first recorded mentions of his name in ancient Greece.

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

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

SPEAKERS

James Porter

Irving Stone Professor of Literature, University of California, Berkeley; Author, Homer: The Very Idea

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 January 13th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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