Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Brad Erickson, departing long-time Theatre Bay Area executive director, introduces top new Bay Area artistic leaders. They will challenge each other and viewers about repertory, risks, delights and post-COVID theatre-making.

What's changed in the theatre producing community? What will (re)fill those seats?

MLF ORGANIZER

Anne W. Smith

NOTES

MLF: Arts

In Association with Theatre Bay Area.

SPEAKERS

Sean San Jose

Artistic Director, Magic Theatre

Johanna Pfaelzer

Artistic Director, Berkeley Repertory Theater

Khalia Davis

Artistic Director, Bay Area Children's Theatre

Tim Bond

Artistic Director, Theatreworks

Brad Erickson

Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area

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 December 1st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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During the current production of San Francisco Opera's Fidelio (October 14–30, 2021) at San Francisco's recently reopened War Memorial Opera House, there is an arts display about struggle and liberation. As part of the opera's ancillary events, the display relates to the Arts in Corrections programs with prisoners at San Quentin.

Moderator Cole Thomason-Redus will share exhibit and production visuals at the meeting. Cole is educational content curator in the Department of Diversity, Equity and Community at San Francisco Opera.

Artist Carol Newborg has said that the role of art in prison to help people heal and change confirms for her the necessity of art to life. For the past decade she has been the organizer of exhibitions and public panels and readings at the William James Association.

San Francisco Opera singer Erin Neff is dedicated to advocating for incarcerated women in the California prison system.

MLF ORGANIZER

Anne W. Smith

NOTES

MLF: Arts

In association with San Francisco Opera.

SPEAKERS

Erin Neff

Singer; Stage Director; Voice Instructor; Advocate for incarcerated women

Carol Newborg

Artist; Exhibition and Public Panels/Readings Organizer, William James Association

Cole Thomason-Redus

Educational Content Curator, Department of Diversity, Equity & Community, San Francisco Opera—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 October 25th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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President Biden recently signed the biggest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history into law. To be sure, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act got pared down significantly from what was first put on the table, but the final measure still contains five times more money for projects aimed at mitigating the climate crisis than the best legislation the Obama administration could get through. What did it take to get 19 Republican senators (not to mention Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) to vote with the Democrats? And with the states being given great latitude over how to spend the money, will the billions available for highways negate any positive climate impacts?

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Carla Frisch, Principal Deputy Director, Office of Policy, U.S. Department of Energy 

Sasha Mackler, Executive Director, The Energy Project, Bipartisan Policy Center

Beth Osborne, Director, Transportation for America

Michael Grunwald, journalist, author, The New New Deal

Support our work: climateone.org/donate

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As the devastating effects of climate change take hold around the world, young people are demanding action from global leaders and, increasingly, taking action themselves. Ask a teenager or young adult which issues they think are most pressing in the world today, and climate will often top the list.

One of the goals of our Creating Citizens initiative is to provide a forum for youth to meet and learn from peers and civic leaders about the complex and often controversial issues that are important to them. So it is with special pride that we present a panel of young climate activists discussing their own work and the power of youth to address the climate crisis and issues of racial and social injustice around the world.

SPEAKERS

Samir Chowdhury

Founder and Executive Director, Youth Climate Action Team, Inc.

Vanessa Nakate

Author, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis

Zaria Romero

Climate Generation Delegate, COP26; Junior, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Darren Zook

Professor, Global Studies and Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

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 December 1st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Over the past four years, the United States Supreme Court has seen drastic changes to its members, from the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett. At the end of the 2019–20 term, followers of the Supreme Court noted that a new "center" of the court was holding under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts. By the end of the 2020–21 term, much about the nation's highest court had changed, reflecting a conservative supermajority enabled by jurors nominated by President Donald Trump. Many observers of the court expect these shifts to continue and deepen, making this past year a critical pivot point in the history of the Supreme Court, and American politics as a whole.

In her new book, Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitizer Prize winner and one of the best-known chroniclers of the Supreme Court of her generation, explores the end of the 2020–21 term for the court, the changes that have occurred in the past year, and what the future holds for the court in these increasingly partisan times. Greenhouse covers everything from the death of Justice Ginsburg to the rise of Justice Comey Barrett, from the pandemic to the disputed 2020 election, putting the happenings around the Supreme Court at the center of the country's partisan political disputes.

Please join us for an important conversation on the U.S. Supreme Court and its increasing role in American society with a writer who knows the court and its politics as well as anyone in America.

SPEAKERS

Linda Greenhouse

Contributing Op-Ed Writer, The New York Times; Clinical Lecturer in Law, Senior Research Scholar in Law, Yale Law School; Author, Justice on the Brink

In Conversation with Lara Bazelon

Professor of Law and Director of Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs, University of San Francisco

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 30th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Veteran journalist Jonathan Karl has known and covered Donald J. Trump longer than any other White House reporter. And during that time, he has been praised, taunted and branded an enemy of the people by President Trump himself. 

So possibly nobody is in a better position to tell the story of the shocking final chapter of the Trump show than Karl. In his new book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl takes us behind the scenes of some of the darkest days in American history and shares what happened during the final weeks of the Trump presidency, the aftermath that followed, and what it means for the future of the Republican Party.

SPEAKERS

Jonathan Karl

Chief White House Correspondent and Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News; Author, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show; Twitter @jonkarl

In Conversation with Martha Raddatz

ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and Co-Anchor of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”; Twitter @MarthaRaddatz

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, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Ever have a difficult conversation about climate? Pretty much everyone has. Knowing all the facts and figures only goes so far when talking to someone who just doesn’t agree. So how do we break through the barriers? Scientists trained to present information in a one-way lecture format face a particular challenge: they first need to unlearn old habits.

“Everybody's trying to figure out ‘how do we move past this idea that just arming people with facts will lead to a better world,’ right, because we’ve just seen that that’s absolutely not true,” says Faith Kearns, author of Getting to the Heart of Science Communication. 

Kearns argues that we all need to move from an “information deficit” model of communication – where it’s assumed that the audience simply needs more information – to a relational model, where the science communicator does as much listening as talking in order to first find empathy and common ground.

Guests:

Faith Kearns, author, Getting to the Heart of Science Communication

Katerina Gonzales, doctoral research fellow, Stanford University

Support our work: climateone.org/donate

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For more than 30 years, Michael Eric Dyson has played a prominent role in the nation as a public intellectual, university professor, cultural critic, social activist and ordained Baptist minister. He has presented a rich and resourceful set of ideas about American history and culture. Now, for the first time, he brings together the various components of his multihued identity and eclectic pursuits.

Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America dives into how Black people were forced to entertain white people in slavery, have been forced to entertain the idea of race from the start, and must find entertaining ways to make race an object of national conversation.

Most of this work will be new to readers, a fresh light for many of his long-time fans, and an inspiring introduction for newcomers. Join us as Michael Eric Dyson takes us through his new work, and offers insight into the role of African American culture in American culture.

SPEAKERS

Michael Eric Dyson

Distinguished University Professor of African American & Diaspora Studies, College of Arts & Science, and of Ethics & Society, Divinity School, and NEH Centennial Chair at Vanderbilt University; Author, Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America

In Conversation with Lauren Sanders

Journalist

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 16th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Welcome to Hearts and Minds—A QTAPI Community Conversation Series, Session Three: FTAPIs—The Personal and the Political.

Join us for an intergenerational panel discussion of QTAPI (queer and trans Asian Pacific Islander) people discussing and sharing stories of their personal involvement in politics and community organizing.

The Asian and the Pacific Islander communities are not monoliths unto themselves, so no program can possibly speak to the breadth of diversity and uniqueness in those communities. But we will explore certain moments in the panelists' own personal histories and lived experiences as they reflect on questions such as: What got them involved in API and/or LGBTQ issues? Was there a specific moment that moved you to become involved? Who were your mentors? How has your involvement changed from when you started? What is the most rewarding aspect of this work? And more.

SPEAKERS

James Coleman

Member, South San Francisco City Council

Valli Kalei Kanuha

Ph.D., Teaching Professor and Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, University of Washington

Sammie Ablaza Wills

Community Organizer; Outgoing Executive Director, APIENC

Willy Wilkinson

M.P.H., Writer; Public Health Consultant; Cultural Competency Trainer; Author, Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency

Michelle Meow

Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show" on KBCW/KPIX TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors; Twitter @msmichellemeow—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 16th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Mary C. Daly is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She returns to The Commonwealth Club for a much-anticipated discussion on how to approach monetary policy amidst the uncertainty of an economy still struggling to overcome the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since taking office in October 2018, Dr. Daly has committed to making the San Francisco Fed a more community-engaged bank that is transparent and responsive to the people it serves. She works to connect economic principles to real-world concerns and concentrates on monetary policy, labor economics, and increasing diversity within the economics field. Dr. Daly began her career with the San Francisco Fed in 1996 as an economist specializing in labor market dynamics and economic inequality. She went on to become the bank’s executive vice president and director of research. She currently serves on advisory boards for the Center for First-generation Student Success and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She has also served on the advisory boards of the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Rehabilitation Research and Training, the Institute of Medicine, and the Library of Congress.

Dr. Daly earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, a master’s degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. She also completed a National Institute of Aging post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern University. A native of Ballwin, Missouri, Dr. Daly now lives in Oakland, California, with her wife Shelly.

SPEAKERS

Mary C. Daly

President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Lenny Mendonca

Former Chief Economic and Business Advisor, Director of the Office of Business and Economic Development, State of California; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors

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 16th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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