Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, against a backdrop of massive cultural shifts, violence and political upheaval, Natasha Lance Rogoff took on the challenge of creating a program that had never existed before, Ulitsa Sezam, a Russian version of Sesame Street.  This new children’s television program, produced by a Russian-American team, was designed to introduce children into the world of learning in a very joyful way. 

What started as an attempt to entertain and educate millions of children across the former U.S.S.R., encouraging tolerance and inclusion, spiraled into the astonishing true story of culture clashes shaping all aspects of production. On the set, the production team navigated conflicts about topics like diversity, class, and even the notion of encouraging children’s optimism about the future. Meanwhile, off the set, there were car bombings, assassinations of the show’s top broadcast partners, and hostile takeovers of the production studios. 

Muppets in Moscow is as much about the work that went into the show and how rewarding it was to bring such a popular American program to the former U.S.S.R., as it is about navigating the Russian television landscape in the 1990s and stretching the limits of freedom of expression in a society unaccustomed to such freedoms. 

While Ulitsa Sezam ended in 2007 along with many other independently produced programs shut down by Putin’s government, a generation of Russian children grew up watching it. The show’s history offers a valuable perspective of Russia and its people that remains relevant today. Join us as Natasha Lance Rogoff sheds light on the core values and beliefs that shaped Russia during this tumultuous period and the clashes that continue to play out today between Putin’s Russia and the West.

SPEAKERS

Natasha Lance Rogoff

Journalist; Television Producer; Filmmaker; Author, Muppets in Moscow

Leslie Dixon

Screenwriter; Film Producer—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 November 17th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard made headlines recently when he announced that he and his family had transferred their $3 billion stake in the storied outdoor gear company to a special purpose trust and nonprofit that would give away $100 million a year, specifically to environmental causes. Patagonia has a long history of donating at least one percent of its profits – and 100% of profits made on Black Friday – to grassroots environmental non-profits. Yet even with this massive gift, and Laurene Powell Jobs’ own recent $3.5 billion pledge, climate philanthropy still only accounts for a small fraction of all charitable giving. This Thanksgiving weekend, we look back to our 2016 interview with Yvon Chouinard and bring the story up to date with Inside Philanthropy’s Michael Kavate.

Guests:

Yvon Chouinard, Founder, Patagonia

Michael Kavate, Staff Writer, Inside Philanthropy

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

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We all need sleep to survive. It is essential to our physical and mental wellbeing and just as important as food, water and oxygen. So why do so many of us struggle to get a good night’s rest?

Dr. Aric Prather runs one of the world’s most successful sleep clinics and shares effective techniques that he uses to help his own patients achieve healing and restorative sleep.

Hear more about this powerful plan to improve your quality of sleep in just seven days.

NOTES

The Commonwealth Club is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our online programming.

SPEAKERS

Aric A. Prather

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco; Author, The Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest

Mark Zitter

Founder, Zetema Project; Member, Commonwealth Club of California Board of Governors—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 November 7th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Ramses the Great ruled Egypt more than 3,200 years ago, but he made sure we would still be talking about him today. He ruled for 67 years, probably starting on May 31st (III Season of the Harvest, day 27 to ancient Egyptians) in 1279 BC. He soon set about creating a new capital city in the Nile delta, where he had chariot, weapon and shield factories built. Not long thereafter he defeated the Sherden pirates who were seriously harassing sea traders in the Mediterranean, and “won” the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittites in the largest chariot battle ever fought. He also had enormous temples, obelisks and statues erected all over the New Kingdom, and ordered lots of gold objects.

Dozens of those objects are on display until February 12 at the de Young Museum in a state-of-the-art exhibit featuring the greatest collection of Ramses objects and Egyptian jewelry ever to travel to the United States. Along with colossal royal sculpture, the exhibit highlights recently discovered animal mummies and treasures from the royal tombs of Dahshur and Tanis. Visitors can also immerse themselves in multimedia productions that re-create moments from Ramses’s life or take a virtual tour of Abu Simbel and Nefertari’s tomb. The de Young’s ancient art curator, Renée Dreyfus, will share with us the stories of some of these art objects and how the de Young organized this outstanding and rare exhibit.

Egyptologist Rita Lucarelli will explain the evolution of the funerary beliefs of ancient Egyptian society from their origins in prehistory to the time of Ramses. She will draw on her scholarly work on the Book of the Dead to discuss the magical texts found in royal and elite tombs and how they compare to the "personal piety" or "popular religion" of the Ramesside period, about which there are many sources to draw upon from that well-documented society.

Among those documents is the earliest known peace treaty in world history—between Ramses II and Hattušili III, the Hittite king. It was recorded in two versions―one in Egyptian hieroglyphs and the other in Hittite using a cuneiform script. The two versions are nearly identical, but in the Hittite version the Egyptians are the ones who sue for peace, while in the Egyptian version the Hittites are the ones who sue for peace. Some things never change.

SPEAKERS

Renée Dreyfus

George and Judy Marcus Distinguished Curator, Curator in Charge, Ancient Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young / Legion of Honor

Rita Lucarelli

Associate Professor of Egyptology, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley; Faculty Curator of Egyptology, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley; Fellow, Digital Humanities in Berkeley

George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates—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 November 4th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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For decades, China’s ascension to power was promised to be peaceful, with the nation’s leaders adopting a restrained approach to foreign policy and reassuring the outside world of their non-combative intentions. What changed?

Susan L. Shirk provides a sobering, behind-the-scenes account of China’s transformation from fragile superpower to global heavyweight—threatening Taiwan, tightening its grip on Hong Kong, and openly challenging the United States for economic and military dominance.

Hear more about China’s future and what that could mean for the United States and the rest of the world.

SPEAKERS

Susan L. Shirk

Research Professor and Chair of the 21st Century China Center, The School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego; Author, Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise

Jane Perlez

Foreign Correspondent and Former Beijing Bureau Chief, The New York Times—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 November 3rd, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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As a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse reveals how special interest groups are using “dark money” to influence and control our courts.

In 2020, Sen. Whitehouse raised these alarming concerns during the Amy Coney Barrett hearing. He asserts that a group consisting of billionaires and corporations are using their wealth and power to back appointees and nominees that will advance a right-wing agenda and policies.

Hear more about these growing implications and what this ultimately means for the future of our country.

SPEAKERS

Sheldon Whitehouse

U.S. Senator (D-RI); Author, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court; Twitter @SenWhitehouse

In Conversation with Melissa Caen

Political Analyst; Attorney

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 November 7th, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Climate One has been at this year's UN climate summit, COP27, where one of the issues at the forefront of the conversation has been “loss and damage” – the idea that rich countries who have historically emitted the vast majority of climate-disrupting pollution should have to pay for the resulting suffering borne by those least responsible for the problem. At the same time, the whole world needs to drastically reduce its emissions and transition to clean energy – and that costs money, too.

When even wealthy countries struggle to meet self imposed goals to cut down on carbon pollution, how can developing countries, who are already suffering the effects of the climate crisis, fund their own moves to clean energy?

Guests: 

Bogolo Joy Kenewendo, UN Climate Change High-Level Champions’ Special Advisor, Africa Director

Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water

Alastair Marsh, Reporter, Bloomberg

Johnson Cerda, DGM Global

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As America faces another election as a deeply divided country, Steve Phillips has strong views on what the United States needs to do to strengthen its multiracial democracy. For Phillips, understanding why the country is so divided requires recognizing that many of our divisions are historic in nature, resulting in a contest between democracy and white supremacy that is still left unresolved after the Civil War. 

In his new book, How We Win the Civil War, Phillips pulls no punches on what he thinks the country must do to bridge its divides, particularly around issues related to race. Phillips advocates for increasing voter participation, ending what he says are racist immigration policies, and reviving the Great Society programs of the 1960s—all of them geared toward strengthening a new multiracial democracy and ridding our politics of white supremacy.

Join us for a powerful conversation on race, history, politics and finally overcoming our divisions.

SPEAKERS

Steve Phillips

Podcast Host, Founder, "Democracy in Color"; Author, How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good; Twitter @StevePtweets

In Conversation with Angela Glover Blackwell

Founder in Residence, PolicyLink

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 November 3rd, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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For Leslie Absher, secrecy is just another member of the family. Throughout childhood, her father's shadowy government job was ill-defined, her mother's mental health stayed off limits—even her queer identity remained hidden from her family and unacknowledged by Leslie herself.

In Spy Daughter, Queer Girl, Absher pursues the truth: of her family, her identity, and her father's role in Greece's CIA-backed junta. As a guide, Absher brings readers to the shade of plane trees in Greece, to queer discos in Boston, and to tense diner meals with her aging CIA father. As a memoirist, Absher renders a lifetime of hazy, shapeshifting truths in high-definition vibrance.

Infused with a journalist's tenacity and a daughter's open heart, this book recounts a decades' long process of discovery and the reason why the facts should matter to us all.

About the SpeakerLeslie Absher is a journalist and personal essay writer. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Salon, Ms., Greek Reporter, and San Francisco magazine. Her father joined the CIA when she was a baby and shortly after her family moved to Athens, Greece. Just in time for a coup. She spent years trying to learn what her Cold War father's role was in that event. Her memoir Spy Daughter, Queer Girl is about growing up with a spy and the cost of keeping secrets.She received a master's in education from Harvard, taught G.E.D. to high school dropouts, and currently teaches study skills and writing to middle school and high school students. She lives in Oakland with her comic book writer/artist wife.www.leslieabsher.com

NOTES

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

SPEAKERS

Leslie Absher

Journalist; Author, Spy Daughter, Queer Girl; Twitter @leslieabsher

Michelle Meow

Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—Co-host

John Zipperer

Producer and Host, Week to Week Political Roundtable; Vice President of Media & Editorial, The Commonwealth Club of California—Co-host

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 November 3rd, 2022 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Providing nutritious, safe and affordable food in the face of the Earth’s changing climate is an urgent global challenge. How can we produce enough food for everyone at the same time as improving our relationship with our environment? And can what we eat contribute to a more sustainable future for communities on the West Coast, across North America and around the world?

Join the conversation with Peter Dhillon, chairman of Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., and Steve Banwart, dean for global development at the University of Leeds, as they explore how we begin to tackle the tensions between climate change and food supply.

They’ll discuss how fostering closer collaboration and partnership between researchers, food producers, policymakers, communities and businesses worldwide will help us find pathways toward a radically different global food system—one that works with nature and adapts to our changing climate. They’ll also delve into how we challenge assumptions to break new ground in developing climate-smart, socially just solutions that will create a positive future for our people and planet.

As the first Canadian chairman of Ocean Spray, Peter Dhillon has experienced first hand what it takes to build a global plant-based cooperative that remains closely connected to first nation, indigenous and immigrant communities. As chair of the the British Columbia Food Security Task Force, he was also instrumental in providing recommendations to the Canadian government on agricultural development needed in the province, which relies heavily on imported produce from California.

Professor Steve Banwart is the dean for global development at the University of Leeds, and also the director of the Global Food and Environment Institute, which brings together leading scientists, engineers and social scientists working with universities, alumni, farmers and citizens around the world to find new solutions to enhance the future habitability of our planet.

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