Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

In the new short film from Pixar Animation Studios, Sanjay's Super Team, accomplished artist Sanjay Patel uses his own experience to tell the story of a young, first-generation Indian boy whose love for western pop culture comes into conflict with his family’s traditions. Come learn more about the film that was nominated for an Academy Award in the short films category.

In detail, he depicts the truth behind these hazards that are closer than we realize and suggests potential solutions for the government to take to keep Americans safe. As the 2016 presidential election quickly approaches, he believes Americans must turn their attention to these real and present dangers, and demand that the executive branch combat them with the seriousness and urgency they require.

Despite enormous sums spent on health care and extensive training of professionals, patients are largely dissatisfied with the service they receive. A growing body of evidence points to the human experience as a key driver for improved patient satisfaction, health outcomes and loyalty. How can we turn this around? What role can patients, with unprecedented access to health-care information, play in a system that historically has disempowered them? What is a realistic vision of a patient-centric system that delivers both medical care and compassionate health-care journeys? Dr. Bridget Duffy, the nation’s first chief experience officer at the Cleveland Clinic and the leader of the patient experience movement, has spent more than 20 years defining the components of an ideal healing environment. Relentless in her mission to fix this broken system, Dr. Duffy will share 10 ways to restore humanity, respect and trusted relationships in health care.

The years 1981 to 1989 were a time of economic crisis and recovery, American assertiveness abroad, and an engagement with the Soviet Union that moved in surprising directions, laying the groundwork for the end of the Cold War. Weisberg provides a bracing portrait of Reagan and the ideas that animated his political career, including his belief that nuclear weapons were immoral and ought to be eliminated, helping us understand why his presidency turned out to be so consequential.

So how do we change? Through research and experimentation, Rubin offers a framework of different strategies to fit our individual personalities. Rubin is the bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, with more than two million copies sold worldwide.

Architect and social entrepreneur Susi Stadler will help the audience discover the potential of our homes to adapt to our changing needs. She will teach us how, by demanding practical, creative and elegant solutions, to arrive at a different way of living in our homes by seeing age-friendly design as a way to enhance overall quality of life.

Dr. Perry has dealt first-hand with the changing nuclear threat and worked to mitigate it. He was one of the Silicon Valley’s early entrepreneurs, founding a company that pioneered digital technologies in the race to understand the Soviet nuclear missile arsenal. His expertise led to advising the government on national security, including an urgent summons in October 1962 asking him to serve on the secret team analyzing U-2 photos exposing the Soviet installation of nuclear armed missiles in Cuba. Perry’s appointment as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering in the late 1970s put him at the helm of crafting a defense strategy that would usher in the age of stealth, smart weapons, GPS, and sophisticated technologies and weaponry that changed the face of modern warfare. As secretary of Defense, Dr. Perry galvanized efforts to secure nuclear stockpiles inherited by former Soviet states and presided over the dismantlement of more than 8,000 nuclear weapons. Since then he has unrelentingly practiced a unique form of diplomacy that blends his warm personal relationships with officials in many countries with diplomatic initiatives focusing on the world’s most critical security hotspots, including North Korea, Iran, Russia and China. In 2007, Dr. Perry, George Shultz, Sam Nunn and Henry Kissinger together formed the Nuclear Security Project, to share the vision of a world free from nuclear weapons with urgent but practical steps that can be taken immediately to reduce nuclear dangers. To implement this imperative, Dr. Perry also founded the William J. Perry Project in 2013, educating a new generation of young people to understand the nuclear threat and work to eliminate it.

Donn Harris, executive and artistic director of Oakland School for the Arts and the chairman of the California Arts Council, is joined by science and technology leaders in talking about the future of STEAM at the center of transforming the 21st-century economy through research policy,education and workplace innovation.

Dr. Lewis' presentation draws on a values history approach developed at The Center for Medical Ethics and Mediation in San Diego, which examines the decision-making process and quality-of-life factors. It provides a way to shape and share health-care decisions with family and health-care providers, and to review or revise them as your health changes. It is a critical component of end-of-life choices.

Federal government officials and political campaign operatives based in Washington, D.C., are packing up and heading west to help tech companies navigate Washington’s complicated bureaucracy and to create new organizations that are working with politicians to tackle tough policy issues by approaching them with a tech-centric mindset. At the same time, the Bay Area’s top talent is being heavily recruited by political campaigns and the federal government to make our government more efficient and better prepared to serve the American people. Join us for a panel discussion with federal government and campaign officials-turned-tech-experts who will break down how the tech community is working to disrupt politics as usual in Washington by bringing the spirit of innovation that drives the Bay Area across the country to the halls of Congress and the West Wing.