Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Franca Viola made #MeToo history in 1966. When she was 18, she refused to go along with a centuries-old forcible marriage custom in Sicily. Having endured kidnap and rape, she publicly defied the expectation that she would marry the rapist in order to “restore her broken honor.” A social uproar occurred throughout the island and beyond. Two decades later, with little more than the memory of the article she had read, author Natalie Galli traveled to Palermo to search for Viola. Galli wanted to know: What had become of this courageous girl who had defied an ancient tradition? Galli recounts the riveting events after Viola pressed charges with the police: Franca was publicly taunted whenever she appeared on the street, Mafia-orchestrated bullying threatened her entire family, and her own relatives pleaded with her not to break the Sicilian code of silence. Throughout her search for the enigmatic Viola, Galli shares her own poignant and hilarious observations about a vibrant culture steeped in contradictions and paradoxes. Does Galli succeed in locating the elusive protofeminist? Join us for Galli's odyssey and find out. MLF ORGANIZER NAME George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities

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Whether it was the invention of the radio at the beginning of the 20th century or the advent of smartphones in the mid-to-late 2000s, technological revolutions have fundamentally shaped the era with which they are associated. Yet, according to Susan Hockfield, technological advances are only the half of it. It is instead the combination of technological innovation with biological research that are producing and will produce the most revolutionary products and technological advances of our time. Her new book, The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution, describes some of the most exciting developments in this field, including mind-reading bionic limbs, cancer-detecting nanoparticles, virus-built batteries and protein-based water filters. What is even more impressive is the fact that many of these technologies were the result of Hockfield’s own foresight and tenacity. As the first female president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hockfield was a key advocate for interdisciplinary research and breaking down borders between fields. Join us for an optimistic conversation about how these living machines may help us overcome some of the greatest humanitarian, medical and environmental challenges of our time.

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For a decade, Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) India program has advanced clean energy and public health solutions while fighting climate change. As India, the world's largest democracy, prepares to vote in its general election, the country’s clean energy future remains a central question. Will India achieve its ambitious climate goals and successfully fight air pollution? What does India's rapid development mean for the rest of the world? What are the business opportunities to engage with India and clean energy? Join our experts for a discussion about India's climate actions, progress on climate commitments under the Paris Agreement and the transition to a low-carbon economy. Today, India stands at the crossroads of development and the future. At the same time, clean energy and energy efficient solutions are more critical than ever before. With its fast-growing economy, rapid urbanization and employment growth, India is skyrocketing, increasing energy and providing electricity to rural communities and addressing long-time poverty. Join us for this very important program about India at the crossroads as it debates clean energy and energy-efficient demands and solutions. MLF Organizer: Ann Clark MLF: Environment & Natural Resources

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The Green New Deal is shaking up climate politics in Washington. The resolution’s ambitious clean energy goals are championed by several leading Democrats — but are criticized by Republicans for being costly and unrealistic. With an increasing number of Green New Deal alternatives being put forward by Democrats, the pressure is on Republicans to propose an actionable climate plan of their own. Is there such a thing as a bipartisan climate solution? Join us for a conversation with two Republicans and a Democrat about the politics of energy leading up to the 2020 campaign.

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Julia Flynn Siler’s new book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, is a revelatory history of the trafficking of young Asian girls—a practice that flourished in San Francisco during the first century of Chinese immigration (1848–1943)—and the "safe house" on the edge of Chinatown that became a refuge for those seeking their freedom. Starting in 1874, the brick house at 920 Sacramento Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown served as a home and gateway to freedom for thousands of enslaved and vulnerable young Chinese women and girls—a pioneering “rescue mission.” Known then as the Occidental Mission Home, it survived earthquakes, fire, bubonic plague and violence directed against its occupants and supporters—a courageous group of female abolitionists who fought the slave trade in Chinese women. Donaldina Cameron was the indomitable leader of the home for over 37 years. In 1942, the home was renamed Cameron House, and it still serves the Asian-American community today, offering a range of social services and youth programs. With compassion and an investigative historian's sharp eyes, Siler relates how the women who ran the house defied contemporary convention and anti-Chinese prejudices. These women occasionally even broke the law by physically rescuing children from the brothels where they worked or snatching them off the ships that were smuggling them in, helping bring the exploiters to justice. Siler has also uncovered the stories of many of the girls and young women who came to the Mission and the lives they later led. Sometimes these women became part of the home's staff themselves, including Tien Wu, who became Donaldina Cameron’s translator and aide. Siler will talk about this remarkable story of an overlooked part of our history—a story that still resonates today. This is the tale of immigrants overcoming great difficulties with the aid of sympathetic Americans. MLF ORGANIZER NAME Lillian Nakagawa

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Annie Jacobsen is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and investigative journalist whose work revolves around government secrets. She has published books on a range of topics, including what really goes on inside Area 51; Operation Paperclip, which brought Nazi scientists to America; and government-funded research projects on extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis. Her latest book delves into one of the most infamously covert agencies in the country: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins is an unprecedented look inside the Special Activities Division of the CIA, one of the most effective black operations in the world. Through interviews with 42 men and women who served in covert CIA operations, she delivers a shocking exposé of U.S. covert operations with the pace and novelistic skill of a thriller. Join us for an insider’s view on this controversial and understandably obscure component of American foreign policy and the political, ethical and legal quandaries that have come with it.

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Monday Night Philosophy and almost all physicists agree that quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a not-so-scientific brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. That is why, even though it is a mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, the Copenhagen interpretation has endured, with Bohr's students vigorously protecting his legacy, and the physics community favoring practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo has almost always meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists such as John Bell, David Bohm and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. Join us—first for the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for seeking truth, and then for reexamining the littered trail of half-understood research results in the never-discarded quest for answering the fundamental questions that can be summed up as: “What is real?” MLF Organizer: George Hammond MLF: Humanities

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Suicide and mental health are hard subjects—so Crisis Text Line leveraged the power of the data it collects to help their counselors determine the best way to talk about the topics with those in need. The nonprofit, founded in 2013 by CEO Nancy Lublin, has provided a free text-based and human-driven service to support those experiencing mental health stress, gathering data points from more than 75 million text messages sent and maximizing the impact of their information to better train counselors and support their community. Its innovative and data-driven methodology for tackling hard conversations can also be applied to more than the mental health space, including to Lublin’s latest venture: Loris.ai. Lublin’s entire career has focused on initiatives addressing social issues, and she founded Dress for Success and Do Something prior to Crisis Text Line. With her technology lens on big challenges, she continues to iterate on innovative mechanisms and creative solutions to sticky problems. At INFORUM, she’ll be joined in conversation by DJ Patil, head of technology at Devoted Health and former U.S. chief data scientist in the Obama administration, to dig into the power of data to effect change. Come curious! ** This Program Contains Explicit Language **

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“It’s the social divides that cause health divides.” Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, comes to this conclusion in his new book, Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health. Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world, yet they lead shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries. Galea's book is a call for a new framing of American health care, in which socioeconomic factors take on a larger role in the conversations about public health. While not obvious at first glance, Galea explains how the American fixation on medicine and symptom-focused health care misses the point—we should be preventing these medical issues in the first place. Join us for a conversation on how socioeconomic factors ultimately decide who gets to be healthy and who does not, and how we can invest in structural changes to build a healthier America for the future.

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Across the globe, democratic governance is under assault. The rise of populism in the West, and the rise of China in the East, have stirred a rethinking of how democratic systems work—and how they failed their citizens by not addressing the dislocation of globalization and the rapid disruption of technological change. Yet, despite the increasing attention paid to the impact of globalism and digital capitalism, few concrete solutions that use technology and apply the realities of globalization have been offered to close the stark divide between the haves and the have-nots. Little has been done to repair the damaged social contract in countries around the world. The Berggruen Institute, the innovative California think tank, is answering this challenge with their new book, Renovating Democracy. Berggruen Institute founders Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels challenge us to conceive of an alternative framework for governance. To truly renovate our global systems, the authors argue for empowering participation without populism by integrating social networks and direct democracy into the system. They outline steps for harnessing globalization through positive nationalism at home while advocating for global cooperation—specifically with a Chinese partnership—to create a viable rules-based world order. In a special Saturday appearance at The Commonwealth Club, just weeks before critical elections in Europe where populists are pushing for more power, Berggruen, Gardels and Berggruen Institute board member Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, will discuss this new approach to governance and why such a forward-looking approach is so critically needed.

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