Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

“The will of the people,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1801, “is the only legitimate foundation of any government.” But that foundation is crumbling.

Join us as journalist Ari Berman describes what he calls a decades-long effort by reactionary white conservatives to undermine democracy and entrench their power―and the movement to stop them.

The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy today: a blatant disregard for the will of the majority. But this crisis didn’t begin or end with Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Through voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, dark money, the takeover of the courts, and the whitewashing of history, Berman says reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift. He has followed these efforts, chronicling how a wide range of antidemocratic tactics interact with profound structural inequalities in institutions like the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to threaten the survival of representative government in America.

Some counter-majoritarian measures were deliberately built into the Constitution, but Berman says they have metastasized to a degree that the Founding Fathers could never have anticipated, undermining the very notion of “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Don’t miss his talk on the long history of the conflict between white supremacy and multiracial democracy that has reached a fever pitch today―while also telling the inspiring story of resistance to these regressive efforts.

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Plastics are everywhere. And while we’ve known for a long time that plastics and our environment aren’t a good mix, it's becoming apparent that they’re massive climate polluters too. The production of plastics alone produces about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. After what is often a single use, the resulting waste continues releasing the greenhouse gasses ethylene and methane as it breaks apart. 

Yet, as petrochemical companies pay lip service ending fuel production, they are pouring resources into plastics production. How do we wrap up our reliance on plastics?

Guests: 

Diane Wilson, Founder and Director, San Antonio Bay Waterkeeper

Jane Patton, U.S. Fossil Economy Campaign Manager, Center for International Environmental Law 

Susannah Scott, Professor of Chemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara 

Alexis Jackson, Ocean Policy and Plastics Lead, California Chapter, The Nature Conservancy 

It's time for our annual spring appeal! At Climate One, we believe in the power of open conversations to drive positive change. Through our thought-provoking discussions and interviews, we strive not only to raise awareness of climate issues and solutions, but to also empower individuals — like each of our valued listeners — to take tangible steps toward a more sustainable future. 

You can show your support for Climate One by contributing to our spring fundraising campaign.

For show notes and related links, visit our website.

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As usual with Week to Week, our panelists will discuss the latest political developments in an informed, civil (and fun) manner.

See other upcoming Week to Week political roundtables, as well as audio and video of past Week to Week programs.

This program contains EXPLICIT content.

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The Philippines has traditionally been seen as a gateway to Southeast Asia and a strong ally of the United States in the Pacific. The country’s natural beauty and endowment have attracted many to its shores but have brought opportunities and challenges to the nation as well.

Learn about its continued march toward economic development and as an archipelagic nation in a sea of warring interests, as we engage Philippine Consul General in San Francisco Neil Ferrer in a discussion.

MLF ORGANIZER: Kalidip Choudhury

An Asia-Pacific Affairs Member-led Forum program. Forums and chapters 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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After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on most measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt says the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt offers a clear call to action. Join us as he describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

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How can young voters navigate a divided political landscape? Should we be afraid of this upcoming election cycle? Is our democracy falling apart? How can we save it?

The events of January 6, 2021, epitomized the destructive effects of extreme polarization in politics. As we move into our next election cycle, where the two leading presidential candidates are once again Joe Biden and Donald Trump, many young voters are facing—and fearing—existential questions about our democracy, in what experts say is the United States’s most divided political landscape ever.

“Are We Too Polarized to Govern?” presents accomplished Gen Z leaders who are working to foster bipartisan solutions to the toxic polarization that is causing so much anxiety for young people. The program will be led by UC Berkeley Political Science Professor Darren Zook and will feature Alia Braley, Cal Ph,D, candidate and author of the recent article, “Why Voters Who Support Democracy Participate in Democratic Backsliding”; Alexandra Leal Silva, associate at California Common Cause and host of the podcast “Democracy Is”; and Saanvi Arora, UC Berkeley student and director at the Youth Power Project. Panelists will discuss how and why we can exist and communicate in a diverse civil society and explore ways that young people can use their power to overcome political divides to strengthen and rebuild our democracy for the next generation.

This event is part of the Creating Citizens Speaker Series at UC Berkeley, a partnership between Commonwealth Club World Affairs, the Associated Students of the University of California Vote Coalition, and the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. The series gives UC Berkeley students and community members opportunities to listen to and ask questions of leading minds in politics, media and education as they learn how to become better, more involved citizens. We look forward to welcoming community members and students from around the Bay Area to participate in this riveting conversation and to join us for future programs in the Creating Citizens Speaker Series.

This program is part of The Commonwealth Club’s civics education initiative, Creating Citizens.

This program contains EXPLICIT content.

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Would you even have time to duck and cover?

There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States.

Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

In her new book Nuclear War: A Scenario, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made.

Join us as Jacobsen returns for a new Club program examining the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch.

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The Golden State has staked much of its reputation on its green credentials, with state leaders touting its role on the leading edge of global and national climate progress. But California is falling behind in meeting its ambitious emission targets, and has been criticized for over-relying on emerging clean energy technologies that may not bear out.

At the same time, the state is at increasing risk from severe wildfires, epic floods and other impacts worsened by burning fossil fuels. What can the nation learn from California’s attempts to mitigate climate disruption?

Guests:

Scott Wiener, California State Senator

Nancy Skinner, California State Senator

Liane Randolph, Chair, California Air Resources Board

Mari Rose Taruc, Energy Justice Director, California Environmental Justice Alliance

Eleni Kounalakis, Lieutenant Governor, California

Jennifer Barrera, President & CEO, California Chamber of Commerce

It's time for our annual spring appeal! At Climate One, we believe in the power of open conversations to drive positive change. Through our thought-provoking discussions and interviews, we strive not only to raise awareness of climate issues and solutions, but to also empower individuals — like each of our valued listeners — to take tangible steps toward a more sustainable future. 

You can show your support for Climate One by contributing to our spring fundraising campaign.

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How can we reimagine the justice system to support restoration instead of retribution?

Our panelists believe the American criminal justice system cannot reduce its dependence on mass incarceration until we confront our impulse to punish in ways that are excessive, often wildly disproportionate to the harm caused. Instead, our panel will explore the transformative power of second chances, including those who have benefited from them—and those who advocate to ensure our system provides them.

Prompting this discussion is the publication of a series of essays, Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration, that trace how a maze of local, state and federal agencies have contributed to mass incarceration and deterred attempts at reform.

Kevin McCracken from The Last Mile, Michael Mendoza, and Ken Oliver from the Checkr Foundation will join L.B. Eisen from the Brennan Center for Justice and retired Judge LaDoris Cordell for a thoughtful conversation on the second chances their organizations are providing and efforts to reform the existing criminal justice system.

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What is a textualist, and why does that judicial philosophy dominate the current U.S. Supreme Court?

Join us for a special online event as recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer gives us his provocative analysis that deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Supreme Court’s supermajority and makes his case for a better way to interpret the Constitution. Textualists claim that the right way to interpret the Constitution and statutes is to read the text carefully and examine the language as it was understood at the time the documents were written.

This, however, is not Justice Breyer’s philosophy, nor has it been the traditional way to interpret the Constitution since the time of Chief Justice John Marshall. Justice Breyer recalls Marshall’s exhortation that the Constitution must be a workable set of principles to be interpreted by subsequent generations. Most important in interpreting law, says Breyer, is to understand the purposes of statutes as well as the consequences of deciding a case one way or another. He illustrates these principles by examining some of the most important cases in the nation’s history, among them the Dobbs and Bruen decisions from 2022 that he argues were wrongly decided and have led to harmful results for our country.

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