Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

The recent March for Our Lives nationwide protests against gun violence, led by teenage survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, were some of the largest youth protests since the Vietnam War. But young people have been fueling social change in America for decades, from the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests to the undocumented youth and Black Lives Matter movements. Twenty-two million American teens will turn 18 by the 2020 election, giving youth tremendous power during a critical moment in our nation’s history. What will the future look like under their leadership? When we create space for young people, support their advocacy and listen to their voices, they speak truth to power and we all stand to win. That’s why, for this event, we’re handing them the microphones. Join some of the Bay Area’s brightest young leaders as they discuss the issues they care about, the policies they’re working to change and the tools and strategies they’re using to grow their movements. Notes This panel is proudly sponsored by the Bay Area Leads Fund of the San Francisco Foundation. It is the latest in the foundation’s series on People, Place and Power.

Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots and remote control. When his first breakthrough ― alternating current ― pitted him against Thomas Edison’s direct-current empire, Tesla’s superior technology prevailed. Although penniless later in life, he never stopped imagining. In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the Internet, death-ray weapons and interstellar communications. Drawing on letters, technical notebooks and other primary sources, Munson pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental habits of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind. Strikingly handsome and impeccably dressed, Tesla spoke eight languages and could recite entire books from memory. Yet his most famous inventions were not the product of fastidiousness or linear thought, but of a mind fueled by both the humanities and sciences. He conceived the induction motor while walking through a park, reciting Goethe’s Faust, and then worked tirelessly to offer electric power to the world, to introduce automatons that would reduce life’s drudgery, and to develop machines that might one day abolish war. MLF ORGANIZER NAME George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities

According to celebrated author and sociologist Michael Eric Dyson, 1963 was a defining year for the civil rights movement in the United States – universities in the South were integrated, four young girls were killed in a church bombing, and a quarter of a million Americans marched on Washington to hear Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. That same year, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sought out cultural leaders like James Baldwin, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, psychologist Kenneth Clark and activist Jerome Smith to explain the rage that threatened to engulf America. According to Dyson, every fundamental argument about race in America was heard in that room. Fifty-five years after this historic year, the tense intersection of conflict between conscience and politics – between morality and power – in addressing race continues on with Black Lives Matter. In his new book What Truth Sounds Like, Michael Eric Dyson confronts a difficult situation directly: whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured racial landscape in this country. Dyson believes the future of race – and of democracy itself – hangs in the balance. Michael Eric Dyson is an Op-Ed Columnist for The New York Times and professor of Sociology at Georgetown University. He has authored numerous books on black culture and both the history and future of race relations in the United States.

Review of Results and Analysis from a Bay Area Perspective Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy is the seminal publication on charitable giving in the United States. For over 60 years, fundraisers, nonprofit leaders, donors and volunteers, scholars, and other individuals who work in or with the charitable sector have counted on Giving USA to provide the most comprehensive charitable giving data available. First published in 1956, Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy is the longest-running, most comprehensive report on philanthropy in the United States. At this event, conducted in association with CCS Fundraising, Foundation Center West and The Commonwealth Club, local philanthropic and nonprofit leaders will review national, exclusive data pertaining to Bay Area giving, with a special focus on trends in tech philanthropy. Philanthropic giving—whether to hospitals, universities, the arts or local nonprofits—impacts the lives of all citizens and determines a range of services available in our communities now and in the future.

Do you live somewhere that might actually benefit from climate change? Rising temperatures and seas will produce losers and winners. Some parts of the world will see more moderate weather and economic gains, while others are already seeing sagging property prices and economic losses. But higher temperatures are more than just an economic issue.

As enormous wealth continues to be created in Asia, the region’s ultra-high-net-worth individuals are turning their hand to philanthropy. But their path continues to manifest quite differently from the United States and Western Europe. Drawing upon exclusive interviews with ultra-high-net-worth individuals and case studies of successful social initiatives, this talk will examine why and how Asia’s traditional and newer philanthropists are giving. Dr. Shapiro is the founder and chief executive of the Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society, a nonprofit incorporated in Hong Kong in 2014. In addition to Pragmatic Philanthropy, Dr. Shapiro edited The Real Problem Solvers, a book about social entrepreneurship in America. She is a regular speaker on issues related to Asian philanthropy, social innovation and social entrepreneurship in Asia. Dr. Shapiro holds a doctorate from Stanford University and Masters degrees from Harvard University and George Washington University. NOTES In association with The Asia Society of Northern California

Join INFORUM for Pride Month and a conversation about the intersectionality of faith, sexuality, blackness and gender with author Darnell L. Moore, as he discusses his new memoir, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America. This will be an empowering and insightful evening that you won’t want to miss, moderated by Hana Baba and Leila Day, hosts of "The Stoop" podcast. Darnell L. Moore is regarded as “one of the most influential black writers and thinkers of our time,” centering his work largely around the topics of liberation, self-love and tolerance. Moore is an embodiment of resilience, having endured traumas such as narrowly escaping being burned alive at 14 years old by homophobic neighborhood children, suffering a near-fatal heart attack at 19 years old, and enduring poverty and brutality in his childhood home. Today, Moore is an award-winning writer and activist, a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement and a champion of justice. His writing centers around anti-racist, feminist, pro-queer of color and anti-colonial thought and has taken him to The Huffington Post, Ebony Magazine and many other publications. Moore is also a renowned scholar in black Christian thought and has spoken at Harvard Divinity School and been a visiting scholar at the Yale Divinity School and Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University. Part of the Good Lit Series, underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation In association with San Francisco Pride

The Doomsday Clock debuted in 1947 on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ very first magazine to convey the urgent need to avoid nuclear war. Today, more than 70 years later, the iconic clock is globally recognized and has been called “the most powerful piece of information design in the 20th century.” The clock is currently set at 2 minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to midnight since 1953. Rachel Bronson is the president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, where she oversees the publishing programs, the management of the Doomsday Clock, and a growing set of activities around nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, climate change and emerging technologies. Before joining the Bulletin, she served at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and as senior fellow and director of Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Come for an enlightening discussion on how what we can all do to prevent the Doomsday Clock from ticking forward.

One in ten older Americans is impacted by scams, frauds or elder abuse each year. Every day brings another way that scam artists, abusers and fraudsters have invented to separate you from your retirement funds. Whether by email, social media, phone or other means, the creativity of these bad actors is matched only by their malicious intent. Learn how to spot the risk factors that make someone vulnerable to scams, and learn what you can do to avoid them. From 2000–2007, Twomey ran a local multi-disciplinary Consortium for Elder Abuse Prevention in San Francisco. Before that, she spent 11 years at AARP and, among other things, ran their National Guardianship Monitoring Project. Mary's interest in aging and elder justice issues was kindled when her grandparents came to live with her family when she was a child. She has a Master’s degree in Social Work with a concentration in gerontology. MLF ORGANIZER NAME Denise Michaud NOTES MLF: Grownups

Monday Night Philosophy returns to Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay and the greatest philosopher of the Renaissance, who is often imagined to be a solitary figure, lost in his library, writing to himself. However, his understanding of the practice of philosophy and the cultivation of the self were deeply social and tied to the give and take of debate and disputation among friends. Hampton's talk—his "conversation"—will focus on one of Montaigne's greatest essays, "On the Art of Conversation." It will place the essay in Montaigne's thought, and in the tradition of "philosophical conversation" that underpins the humanist tradition in the European West. Conversation with and about the essay will be welcome. MLF ORGANIZER NAME George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities