Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Frank Falzon investigated more than 300 murder cases during his 22-year career as a San Francisco homicide inspector using the radio call sign 5-Henry-7. The number 5 designated the Inspectors Bureau, Henry stood in for Homicide, and Falzon was inspector number 7. Working with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings, Falzon’s new memoir highlights his high-profile cases and the backstory of how his youth, his father’s death at a young age, and his early years as a patrolman shaped his career.

The Summer of Love and the heyday of the Haight-Ashbury flower power scene in the late 1960s mutated over the next two decades into a city under siege by serial killers, radical underground extremists, antiestablishment groups, gangs, and drug wars. Falzon investigated the Zebra murders of random white victims by extremist Black Muslims, Chol Soo Lee and the Chinatown gang murder, and the execution-style killing of prison reformer Popeye Jackson.

Falzon was the lead inspector in the November 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in City Hall by former city supervisor and former cop Dan White, whom Falzon had known since they were children. And in 1985 Falzon and his partner were the first to identify Richard Ramirez as the Night Stalker serial killer, resulting in his capture within 48 hours. Ramirez had murdered, raped, tortured, and terrorized dozens of people in Southern California and San Francisco for months.

Join Inspector Falzon and Duffy Jennings to discover the real detective work that went on behind the scenes back then ― and which has been reflected in so many articles, books and movies since then.

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Food is often used as a means of retaining cultural identity and heritage. Learning about cuisines from various cultures allows us to understand others. With understanding can come acceptance and appreciation.

This program brings together Bay Area chefs from various heritages. Soul food Chef Geoff Davis from Burdell, Mexican Chefs Enrique Soriano and Jazmin from Cocina del Corazon, and Indigenous Chefs Louis Trevino and Vincent Medina from Café Ohlone.

They will each tell their stories of their rich cultural heritage, explain the ingredients they use and why, and discuss other aspects of what they do. It’s going to be a fascinating evening!

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Come out and celebrate the beginning of the 12th year of The Commonwealth Club's Week to Week Political Roundtable and social hour, which debuted this month 11 years ago.

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Agriculture is responsible for around 11% of U.S. carbon emissions. And yet soil holds the potential for massive carbon sequestration. Conventional agriculture focuses more on crop productivity than soil health, relying on pesticides, fertilizer, and other practices that contribute to climate-changing emissions rather than reduce them. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack advocates for a federal initiative focused on supporting “climate smart” agriculture for commodity crops that comprise the bulk of what’s grown on American farms: corn, soybeans, wheat. Meanwhile, the restaurateur behind Zero Foodprint is working to create change from table to farm, by crowdsourcing funds from customers to support regenerative farming practices directly. 

Guests:

Tom Vilsack, Secretary, US Department of Agriculture

Jeremy Martin, Senior Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists

Anthony Myint, Executive Director, Zero Foodprint

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

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Before the Second World War, transparent government was a proud tradition in the United States. After the war, the power to decide what could be kept secret proved too tempting to give up. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and secret laboratories to grow unchecked. Officials insist that only secrecy can keep us safe, but its true costs have gone unacknowledged for too long.

Using the latest techniques in data science, Matthew Connelly analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really does not want us to know, but why. Culling this research and carefully studying a series of pivotal moments in recent history from Pearl Harbor to drone warfare, Connelly sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy—especially incompetence and criminality—and how the relentless accumulation of secrets makes it impossible to protect truly vital information.

Connelly elucidates the power of secrecy, the greed it enables, the negligence it protects, and the losses we sustain as citizens when our leaders cannot be held to account. His crucial examination of the self-defeating nature of secrecy and the dire state of our nation’s archives is a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving the past so that we may secure our future.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

SPEAKERS

Matthew Connelly

Professor of International and Global History, Columbia University; Author, The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets

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 February 9th, 2023 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Natalie Zeituny is a reality cosmologist and consciousness architect, clairvoyant, energy healer, mystic, generator of ensoulment and international speaker. She is dedicated to innovative applications of reality models that facilitate personal, social, and planetary transformation. As an information systems architect in 2002 she founded NZ Consulting, a management-consulting firm that has successfully advised corporations such as Apple, Yahoo and Safeway on how to meet corporate goals with technology solutions. As the founder of the Conscious Business Center, she is currently engaged in the creation of consciousness research ventures around the world.

She will be interviewed by Gerald Harris, chair of the Technology & Society Member-led Forum. They will cover her life story as well as her ideas about helping technologists direct their efforts toward the use and commercialization of technology for the enhancement of human potential and benefits for all of mankind.

MLF ORGANIZER

Gerald Anthony Harris

SPEAKERS

Natalie Zeituny

Author, Ensoulment, Discover Your Soul's DNA and Ensoulment, The Future of Reality

In Conversation with Gerald Anthony Harris

Chair, Technology & Society Member-led Forum, The Commonwealth Club of California

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 February 8th, 2023 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Creating Citizens Field Trip Series: #1, Not Too Young

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2022 was a banner year for climate – both in terms of climate-fueled disaster and historic federal investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and home electrification. The questions now: How will the programs be implemented ? How will the money be spent – and who will benefit? This week, we examine the coming trends in raw material prices, the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act, new investments in clean tech, tighter rules on pollution and western water negotiations.

Guests: 

Felicia Marcus, Visiting Fellow, Stanford University 

Nat Bullard, Senior Contributor, Bloomberg NEF, Bloomberg Green

Catherine Coleman Flowers, Vice Chair, White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council

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

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Our homes are one of the most important contributors to a healthy aging experience. We are all so used to adapting to our environments. We make do with standards even though we all have different bodies and habits. That is easier when we are young, but in older age our homes should fit us like a glove. In this presentation, architect Susi Stadler, executive director of the Bay Area nonprofit At Home With Growing Older, and Candiece Milford, board president of At Home With Growing Older, will present a new perspective on age-friendly design and offer concrete ideas for living better at home.

At Home With Growing Older is a nonprofit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area that seeks to improve the experience of aging by providing programming in support of the continued growth, connection and well-being of older adults. A wide variety of interdisciplinary forums and workshops inspire and empower individuals to prepare for, and adapt to, the changes of growing older, as well as to re-envision what it means to age well in their own homes and communities.

About the Speakers

Susi Stadler is an architect and social entrepreneur focused on shifting the perspective on aging, and she is an advocate for imaginative and human-centered design solutions for the later phases of life. For the past 20 years, an important emphasis of her architecture work has been to provide sustainable design solutions for the complex needs of aging that allow people to age with safety and delight, at home and in the world. Her most recent architecture project was the interior design for the Wallis Annenberg GenSpace in Los Angeles. Susanne speaks and writes regularly on the subject of age-friendly environments.

Candiece Milford has been in the field of retirement living for 17 years as a marketing director both at The Sequoias San Francisco and currently at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, a residence for people who are experiencing issues of aging and memory. She has previously spoken at The Commonwealth Club several times through the Grownups Forum on retirement living options both in the Bay Area and innovative housing solutions across the country. Having been a member of the At Home With Growing Older board for the past 6 years, she currently serves as board president.

MLF ORGANIZER

Denise M. Michaud

SPEAKERS

Candiece Milford

Board President, At Home With Growing Older

Susanne Stadler

MBA, M.Arch, Principal, Stadler & Architecture; Executive Director, Co-Founder, At Home With Growing Older

Denise M. Michaud

Chair Grownups Member-led Forum, The Commonwealth Club of California—Moderator

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 February 7th, 2023 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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High inflation, rising interest rates, sweeping tech layoffs, a crypto meltdown. The recent economic news has been less than encouraging, leading the International Monetary Fund to warn of “storm clouds” descending on the global economy. At the same time, GDP in the United States grew to more than $20 trillion in 2022. The Bay Area, largely thanks to tech, had the fastest growing economy in the United States, with GDP increasing 4.8 percent. The United States is at or near full employment. What does it all mean for workers, investors, and Americans’ pocketbooks? What impact are the Fed’s actions having?

Michael Boskin of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, will share his insights into the U.S. economy, productivity, the evolution of work and impact of tech, and whether we will tip into a recession. UC Berkeley’s Maurice Obstfeld, former chief economist at the IMF, will assess the ongoing impact of the war in Ukraine, China’s COVID woes, and other trends shaping the global economy.

Join us for The Commonwealth Club’s annual Walter E. Hoadley Bank of America economic forecast.This event is underwritten by Bank of America.

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