Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Making the necessary changes to address climate disruption will take massive collective action. But sometimes, a single individual can make an extraordinary difference. At age nine, Nalleli Cobo, suffering headaches, heart palpitations, nosebleeds, and body spasms, became an activist, driven to fighting to shut down the local oil well responsible for her ailments. Separately, Marjan Minnesma brought a historic lawsuit holding the Dutch government accountable for its failure to protect its citizens from climate change. For these activists, addressing climate disruption isn’t just about preventing future harm, it’s about instigating change now. 

Guests: 

Nalleli Cobo, Cofounder, People Not Pozos

Marjan Minnesma, Founder, Urgenda Foundation

For show notes and related links, visit ClimateOne.org.

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"Told with candor and grace, this is a joyous reminder to be kind to yourself." —Actor and author Kai Penn on I Have Something to Tell You

Today, Chasten Buttigieg is readily known by his unusual last name as the husband of former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. But as a child, growing up in a rural, conservative Michigan town, he knew he was unusual for another reason: He was gay.

He kept that part of himself hidden for a long, painful time, but with the support of his loved ones, he eventually came out and learned the rewards of being true to himself. Finding acceptance and self-love can seem like a tremendous challenge, but it's never impossible. With honesty, courage and warmth, Chasten uses the young adult adaptation of his memoir to relay his experience about growing up in America and embracing his identity, while inspiring young people across the country to do the same.

Join us live and in-person in San Francisco as Chasten Buttigieg discusses his life and the issues raised in his book I Have Something to Tell You—For Young Adults.

Chasten Gleeman Buttigieg grew up in Traverse City, Michigan. He is a teacher and advocate, and lives with his husband Pete, their two children, and their two rescue dogs. This is his second book.

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Justin Jones is an activist and community organizer in Nashville representing Tennessee's 52nd district. This April, Jones made national headlines and sparked debate on race, representation and activism after he was expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives for leading a gun control protest on the House floor. Just four days after his expulsion, the Metropolitan Nashville Council unanimously voted to reinstate Jones to his seat.

Please join us on the UC Berkeley campus for a conversation between Representative Jones and Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of PolicyLink and Professor of Practice at the Goldman School of Public Policy. Presented in partnership with the Associated Students of the University of California Vote Coalition, the Goldman School, and the Fisk University Alumni Association, this promises to be a powerful and wide-ranging discussion about activism, gun violence, race and democracy.

This event is part of the Creating Citizens Speaker Series at UC Berkeley, a partnership between The Commonwealth Club, the ASUC 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.

SPEAKERS

Justin Jones

Tennessee State Representative (D-Nashville)

Angela Glover Blackwell

Founder, PolicyLink—Moderator

This program was recorded via video conference on May 12th, 2023 at The University of California Berkeley by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Amy Westervelt has made a career out of exploring the underbelly of the oil industry through complex and compelling storytelling. Through her investigative series Drilled, including her latest season Light Sweet Crude, focused on the new wave of oil colonialism, Westervelt dives deep into the true crimes of the fossil fuel industry’s biggest players, including their misinformation and PR campaigns about the climate emergency, their unfair dealing and record of environmental disasters. Her narrative podcasts shine a light on stories oil companies would rather keep in the dark, and on those individuals who try to hold them accountable. 

Guest:

Amy Westervelt, Investigative Journalist; Executive Producer, Critical Frequency Podcast Network

For show notes and related links, visit https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts

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Kevin Kelly co-founded Wired magazine in 1993 and served as its executive editor for its first seven years. Prior to that, he helped launch The Well, a pioneering online service in 1985, and was publisher and editor of an offshoot of The Whole Earth Catalog. He co-chairs the board of the Long Now Foundation, a membership organization that champions long-term thinking and responsibility to future generations. In these endeavors and more, Kelly has become an icon to early generations of technology workers. But, as a futurist, he is also interested in sharing his wisdom with younger generations just entering the workforce.

On his 68th birthday, Kelly wrote down for his young adult children some things he had learned about relationships, business, and life that he wished he had known earlier. To his surprise, he had more to say than he thought, so he continued composing these short passages of guidance until he had more than 400 of them. He has now compiled these inspirational concepts into a book, Excellent Advice for Living.

Kelly’s bits of advice cover a broad range of subject matter, and each statement is meant to be a memorable prompt for an action one could take. Many of them are about right living, good conduct, and civility. There is advice on setting ambitious goals, forgiveness and gratitude, taking responsibility for mistakes, optimizing generosity, and cultivating awareness, compassion and creativity.

While his book is aimed primarily at young people, and in particular at young professionals, it's message could speak to anyone at any stage of life. Please join as a Bay Area trendsetter shares wise, practical and optimistic life advice—something all of us could us right now.

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Ava Roy and We Players return to The Commonwealth Club to show highlights from their new adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which is being performed in Golden Gate Park from April 27 to the end of May.

Roy will share clips and shots of their late April performances, and will also share how fond she is of both creatively adapting Alice and the interplay of logic and illogic in the looking-glass world we find ourselves in. She will also explain how We Players survived to tell the tale of being shut down in 2020 in the midst of rehearsals for an earlier adaptation of Alice—when the COVID pandemic struck.

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Cutting-edge technology is revolutionizing human origins research and changing the way we understand our uniquely human traits. In this lecture, Gordon P. Getty Award laureate Dr. Carol Ward will guide us through the process of finding fossils and using modern approaches to unlock their secrets.

Dr. Ward specializes in studying the evolution of apes and early hominins, with a focus on the fossil record from East and South Africa, primarily Kenya. She co-leads the West Turkana Paleo Project, a paleontological fieldwork project in Kenya that aims to find fossil evidence of early hominins and their environments.

Dr. Ward will be receiving The Leakey Foundation's Gordon P. Getty Award for her multidisciplinary research that significantly advances science related to human origins, evolution, behavior and survival.

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"Seizing Opportunities to Ascend" is an event designed to celebrate and empower individuals of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) heritage.

This event features keynote speakers Michelle MiJung Kim and Kathy Fang, who have both achieved great success in their respective fields; prominent AAPI journalist and media personality Michelle Meow will moderate the event. They will share their experiences and insights on how to seize opportunities and rise to the top. They will provide practical strategies for personal and professional advancement, kicking off AAPI Heritage Month by focusing on learning, empowerment, celebrating diversity, and allyship.

Join us for this inspiring conversation and then join us for food, wine and community.

About the Speakers

Kathy Fang was born and raised in San Francisco, where she grew up in the kitchen of her family's popular restaurant, House of Nanking, before she opened Fang Restaurant with her father in 2009, where she is co-owner and chef. She stars in the Food Network series "Chef Dynasty: House of Fang." She has also appeared on "Beat Bobby Flay," "Cutthroat Kitchen," "Guy's Grocery Games" and is a two-time "Chopped" champion. In 2020, she published the Easy Asian cookbook. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California and studied at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School Los Angeles.

Michelle MiJung Kim is a queer Korean American immigrant woman writer, speaker and activist. She is the award-winning author of The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change and co-founder of Awaken. She has been a lifelong social justice activist and currently serves on the board of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality. Her work has appeared on world-renowned platforms such as Harvard Business Review and The New York Times, and she was named LinkedIn’s Top Voice in Racial Equity and Medium’s Top Writer in Diversity. She lives in Oakland, California.

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Join us for a preview of Saving the City, an upcoming documentary series that highlights successful and unsuccessful examples of urban development throughout the United States and Canada in an effort to create better places. The opening two episodes, which look at how we have gone about remaking cities from the City Beautiful movement at the turn of the 19th century until today to provide context for the rest of the series, are expected to be released this Fall. The focus is on downtowns and nearby neighborhoods, the most visible and visited parts of our cities.

After watching Saving the City, you will never look at cities the same way again.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

SPEAKERS

Ron Blatman

Executive Producer, Saving the City

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 April 25th, 2023 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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From the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter, activists have long sought to bring pressing issues into the public consciousness. Climate activism is no different. This past Earth Day spawned a new ripple of climate activism. Activists protested at the headquarters of BlackRock in New York City, smeared paint on the casing around an Edgar Degas statue and even tried to block the entrance of the White House Correspondents dinner in DC. But that’s not the only style of activism that’s happening. Some are working from within big institutions to effect change. So what actions really move the needle?

Guests: 

Dana Fisher, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland 

Rose Abramoff, Earth Scientist and Climate Activist  

Ilana Cohen, Lead Organizer, Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard

For show notes and related links, visit ClimateOne.org.

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