Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

If you’re a climate-conscious person, you likely already know some of the main ways you can reduce your contribution to greenhouse gasses: buy less, eat less meat, ride your bike. But there are other, less obvious methods we don’t always think of: voting, having climate conversations, engaging with your local government, changing where your money is invested. And while our role as individuals does matter, we’re more powerful when we work together in collective action. 

Guests: 

Jon Foley, Executive Director, Project Drawdown

Eliza Nemser, Executive Director, Climate Changemakers

This episode also features excerpts from Cory Booker, Anna Lappé, Frances Moore Lappé, Saul Griffith, Monique Figueiredo, Jonathan Chapman, Jennifer Anderson, Tanya Gulliver Garcia, Vernon Walker, Abrar Anwar, Slater Jewell-Kemker, Kyle Gracey and Alec Loorz.

🎟️ Join Climate One live in San Francisco on December 9 for our celebration of 2024 Schneider Award Winner Leah Stokes! Tickets are on sale now.

Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today for just $5/month.

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Join us for a lively conversation with a lauded chef operating at the top of his game, triumphantly returning to his roots and sharing a lifetime of recipes that capture the flavor and energy of Egypt.

Growing up in a Middle Eastern household gave Michael Mina an innate understanding of how to cook with spice and use acidity to amp up flavors. But when he started working in restaurants, Mina went out of his way to cook everything but the Egyptian food he had grown up with. His family had left Cairo for the United States when he was two years old, and he felt the need to assimilate to thrive.

Decades later, after making his name as a technique-driven California chef and opening dozens of acclaimed restaurants, Mina looked back to what got him excited to cook in the first place: dishes like his mom’s ta’ameya, or Egyptian falafel, and tables heavy with dips and spreads at family barbecues. Thus began years of travel back to Egypt and a new story in his cuisine.

He’ll draw on stories from his new book My Egypt, taking us to contemporary Cairo and Alexandria to share the foundations of Egyptian cooking and hospitality, from the traditional breakfast of ful medames to the streetside meal of baladi bread stuffed with spiced hawawshi.

Hungry to learn more? Join us in-person or online.

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

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California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. Recently, however, it has also become ground zero in the new “lithium gold rush”—the race to power the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage market. The immense quantities of lithium lurking beneath the surface have led to predictions that the region could provide a third of global demand. But who will benefit from the development of this precious resource?

Join us as Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, authors of the new book Charging Forward, show that the questions raised by Lithium Valley lie at the heart of the “green transition.” They weave together movement politics, federal policy, and autoworker struggles, stressing that getting the lithium out from under the earth is just a first step: the real question is whether the region and the nation will get out from under what they say has been the environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and racial injustice that have been as much a part of the landscape as the Salton Sea itself.

What happens in Lithium Valley, the authors argue, will not stay there. This tiny patch of California is a microcosm of the broad climate challenges we face; Benner and Pastor argue that understanding Lithium Valley today is the key to grasping the future of our economy and our planet.

About the Speakers

Chris Benner is the director of the Institute for Social Transformation and the Everett Program for Technology and Social Change at UC Santa Cruz, where he is also the Dorothy E. Everett Chair in Global Information and Social Entrepreneurship and a professor of environmental studies and sociology. He has co-authored five books with Manuel Pastor, including Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn From America’s Metro Areas and Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Manuel Pastor is the director of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California, where he is also a distinguished professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity. He is the inaugural holder of the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change. He has co-authored five books with Chris Benner, including Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future. Pastor is also the author of State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future. He lives in Los Angeles.

Organizer: Andrew Dudley



A People & Nature Member-led Forum program. Forums and chapters at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of Commonwealth Club World Affairs, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums.

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Democrats have historically relied on the Latino vote, but recent elections have called that loyalty into question. In fact, despite his vociferous anti-immigrant rhetoric and controversial border policies, Trump won a higher percentage of the Latino vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Now, journalist Paola Ramos pulls back the curtain on these voters, traveling around the country to uncover what motivates them to vote for and support issues that many liberals believe are at odds with their self-interest.

From underdog GOP candidates, January 6th insurrectionists, evangelical pastors and culture war crusaders, Ramos met people aiming to influence this rightward shift. Ramos explores how tribalism, traditionalism, and political trauma within the Latino community has been weaponized to radicalize and convert voters who, like many of their white counterparts, are fearful of losing their place in American society.

She met Monica de la Cruz, a Republican congresswoman from the Rio Grande Valley who won on a platform centered on finishing “what Donald Trump started” and pushing the Great Replacement Theory; David Ortiz, a Mexican man who refers to himself as a Spaniard and opposed the removal of a statue of a Spanish conquistador in New Mexico; Luis Cabrera, an evangelical pastor pushing to “Make America Godly Again;” Anthony Aguero, an independent journalist turned border vigilante; and countless other individuals and communities that make up the rising conservative Latino population.

Join us in-person or online to hear from an award-winning journalist who will share her deeply reported exploration of how one of America's most powerful and misunderstood electorates may come to define the future of American politics.

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We're entering the final days of the 2024 presidential election, but a lot can change in a few weeks.

Historically, several presidential contests have been upended in October. Coined the "October Surprise," for decades candidates have been tested at the finish line... and many have faltered.

In 2016, the "Comey Letter" damaged Hillary Clinton's favorability, and in 2020, Hunter Biden's discovered laptop threatened to derail Joe Biden. In both of these elections, Donald Trump was trailing in the polls-as he is now with Kamala Harris-so could a last-second surprise ensure victory for Trump?

On Tuesday, October 15, join us for a panel conversation about the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election, and what our political experts expect to see on election day, November 5.

We'll hear from Rachel Bitecofer, political scientist, pollster, and election forecaster turned political strategist; Jonathan M. Metzl, professor of sociology and psychiatry and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University; and Tara Setmayer, cofounder and chief executive officer of The Seneca Project, who will join Ray Suarez to discuss the state of the race.

This program contains EXPLICIT language.

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In the last two decades, China has made big commitments to renewable energy — and it’s delivered. Last year, China installed more solar panels than the U.S. has in its history. 

Solar panel exports increased 38%, and lower prices have all but killed solar manufacturing in the U.S. and EU. Chinese company BYD recently surpassed Tesla as the world's largest EV maker — with cars at just a fraction of the cost. This has leaders in the West fretting about competition, but isn’t this good news for the planet? How do we balance competition with global climate progress?

Guests: 

Emily Feng, International Correspondent, NPR

Alex Wang, Professor, UCLA School of Law; Co-Director; Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

James Sallee, Professor, Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley

🎟️ Join Climate One live in San Francisco on December 9 for our celebration of 2024 Schneider Award Winner Leah Stokes! Tickets are on sale now.

Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today for just $5/month.

For show notes and related links, visit our website.

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Don’t miss our "Women in the Workplace" 10-year anniversary panel event, celebrating a decade of progress and the path ahead. Join us as we reflect on women's gains and setbacks across industries and look forward to new opportunities.

Against a backdrop of pivotal social moments over the past decade, including the #MeToo movement and the historic candidacy of the first major party presidential female nominee, how is the pursuit for equitable workplace policies, the talent pipeline, equal representation and pay parity advancing? Jumping off from the 2024 benchmark annual report on "Women in the Workplace" by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org, this conversation will explore the latest developments in the diverse experiences of women in workplaces across the United States. Moving beyond corporate diversity rhetoric, our panel of leaders will analyze real-world data and share authentic experiences to lay bare the reality from the C-suite to the first rungs of the career ladder.

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Professional risk takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us a lot about navigating the uncertainty of the 21st century, says statistician and analyst Nate Silver. He embedded himself within the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman and many others and now comes to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to share insight into a range of issues that affect everyone, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.

In his bestselling book The Signal and the Noise, Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in his riveting new book On the Edge, Silver investigates "The River"—those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape and dominate so much of modern life. The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset—including the flaws in their thinking—is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today.

There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse group: high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For these people, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale.

Join us in-person or online as Silver takes you behind the scenes from casinos to venture capital firms to the FTX inner sanctum to meetings of the effective altruism movement

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Join us as marketing research expert and political pollster Josh Libresco returns to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to provide us with insights into political polls and how they successfully — and sometimes not so successfully — predict American elections.

Libresco will explain how political polling has changed in 2024 to account for both the changing profile of American voters and the increasing challenges of getting people to agree to be interviewed. He will also review where we stand as Election Day 2024 approaches — both for the presidential race and for important statewide races in California.

Organizer: George Hammond

A Humanities Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums.

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Before being named President Trump’s secretary of commerce in 2017, Wilbur Ross had already earned a reputation as the “King of Bankruptcy” over his 55-year career on Wall Street. Often working on high-profile bankruptcies such as Pan Am and Texaco, Ross helped restructure more than $400 billion in assets, and was named among Bloomberg’s 50 most influential people in global finance. After coming to Washington, Ross faced equally tough challenges, yet survived in his post for all four years. 

Now Ross shares the story of how he got to the top and stayed there, as he relates in his new book Risks and Returns: Creating Success in Business and Life. He rose from humble beginnings in North Bergen, New Jersey, applied simple principles with strict discipline, and ultimately Ross’s strategies and dealmaking skills led to relationships with King Charles, Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, the Rothschild family, Steve Wynn, Lakshmi Mittal, Mike Milken, and many other famous personalities. Ross will also share his experiences with President Trump in the Oval Office.

So whether you’re interested in Ross’s experiences as John Lennon’s neighbor in the legendary Dakota apartment building, celebrating with Sir Richard Branson on his private island, or his tumultuous time in Washington, come hear a candid reflection of a life lived at the pinnacle of Wall Street, New York, and Palm Beach society, and the Trump administration.

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