Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

From activism to political campaigns to corporate advertising, the power of music and images is undeniable. So how can the arts inspire and advance the climate conversation? 

For more than three decades, Shepard Fairey’s work has provoked thought and controversy in the art and political spheres. Now, with a public weary of climate charts and apocalyptic images of melting glaciers and emaciated polar bears, we explore how the arts can provoke a more productive conversation with Fairey and Grammy-nominated hip hop artist Mystic.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Best-selling author Mark Shaw returns to The Commonwealth Club to discuss his latest book, Collateral Damage, in his ongoing investigative research into the connections between the mysterious deaths of motion picture screen siren Marilyn Monroe, President John F. Kennedy, and "What’s My Line?" TV star and crack investigative reporter Dorothy Kilgallen.

Shaw argues that if Robert Kennedy had been prosecuted for what Shaw calls his complicity in the death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, his campaign against Mafia leaders as attorney general would have been sidetracked, and so there would have been no reason for Bobby’s Mafia enemies to assassinate his brother JFK in 1963. There would also have been no reason for them to kill media icon Dorothy Kilgallen, since it was her explosive investigation into JFK’s death that led to the famous reporter’s death in 1965.

Hear the details of Shaw's latest research, and send in your questions during the live-stream discussion.

MLF ORGANIZER

George Hammond

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

SPEAKERS

Mark Shaw

Author, Collateral Damage: The Mysterious Deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Kilgallen and the Ties that Bind them to Robert Kennedy and the JFK Assassination

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 June 10th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In response to high risks of suicide, substance abuse, depression and victimization among LGBTQ adolescents, new emphasis is being placed upon the role that family support plays in reducing LGBTQ children's risks and strengthening their families. in May, the Family Acceptance Project (FAP) at San Francisco State University released a series of eight new Asian-language posters to share critical information from FAP’s peer-reviewed studies and family support work to help prevent suicide and other serious health risks and to promote well-being for AAPI LGBTQ children and youth.

Join us for a conversation with FAP's director and two parents of AAPI LGBTQI children.

About the Speakers

Marsha Aizumi is an author, speaker, educator and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. She serves on the PFLAG National Board and is co-founder and former president of PFLAG San Gabriel Valley Asian Pacific Islander. She and her son, Aiden, have spoken to more than 250 organizations, corporations and universities around the United States, and Marsha has spoken in China and Japan. She helped to develop the Family Acceptance Project Asian language posters. Marsha and her son, Aiden, co-wrote, Two Spirits, One Heart, a memoir that chronicles her journey with her transgender son from shame, sadness, and fear to pride, joy, gratitude, and hope.

Clara Lee is a proud Korean mother of a bisexual/queer son with trans experience. She is the founder of the API Rainbow Parents of PFLAG NYC chapter, which supports LGBTQ individuals and families of Asian heritage, fosters intergenerational dialogue, and addresses culture-specific needs of the Asian and Pacific Islander community. Lee also serves on the board of PFLAG NYC and is a co-founder of Korean American Rainbow Parents, a network of Korean parents and family with LGBTQ loved ones.

Caitlin Ryan, Ph.D., ACSW, is a clinical social worker, educator and researcher who has worked on LGBTQ health and mental health for more than 40 years and whose work on LGBTQ health has shaped policy and practice for LGBTQ and gender diverse children and youth. She directs the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University—a research, education, intervention and policy project—that helps ethnically, racially and religiously diverse families to support their LGBTQ children. Dr. Ryan and her team conducted the first research on LGBTQ youth and families and developed the first evidence-based family support model that helps families and caregivers to decrease rejection and health risks and to increase family acceptance to promote well-being for LGBTQ children and youth. This includes developing research-based guidance resources, including FAP’s multilingual Healthy Futures posters and “Best Practice” resources for suicide prevention with LGBTQ youth.

SPEAKERS

Marsha Aizumi

Co-founder and Former President, PFLAG San Gabriel Valley Asian Pacific Islander; Co-Author, Two Spirits, One Heart; Speaker; Advocate

Clara Lee

Founder, API Rainbow Parents of PFLAG NYC Chapter; Co-founder, Korean American Rainbow Parents

Caitlin Ryan

Ph.D., ACSW, Clinical Social Worker; Educator; Researcher; Director, Family Acceptance Project, San Francisco State University

Michelle Meow

Producer and Host, "The Michelle Meow Show," KBCW/KPIX and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—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 June 10th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Abraham Lincoln announced the end of slavery in 1862, but it wasn’t until two and a half years later on June 19, 1865, that the news finally reached enslaved people in Texas.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Texas native Annette Gordon-Reed chronicles the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.

Her new book On Juneteenth provides the context and reminder that the fight for equality is still ongoing in our country.

SPEAKERS

Annette Gordon-Reed

Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard University; Author, On Juneteenth; Twitter @agordonreed

In conversation with Judge LaDoris Cordell

(Ret); Twitter @judgecordell

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 June 9th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The way people conceptualize mental illness, and how they talk about it, differs around the world. A new book—Nobody's Normal, by George Washington University Professor of Anthropology Roy Richard Grinker—examines the ways in which culture and historical contexts have shaped our beliefs, stigma and social norms around mental health.

In conversation with journalist and Divergent Mind author Jenara Nerenberg, Grinker will share what families, doctors, and everyday people can do to create a more welcoming and accepting society. Through his research in Africa, Asia and the United States, and with stories from hunter gatherers to family physicians, there are lessons to be learned that challenge the very notion of "normal" to begin with.

Grinker is also the editor-in-chief of Anthropological Quarterly and the author of Unstrange Minds.

MLF ORGANIZER

Robert Lee Kilpatrick

NOTES

MLF: Health & Medicine

SPEAKERS

Roy Richard Grinker

Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, George Washington University; Editor-in-Chief, Anthropological Quarterly; Author, Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness

In Conversation with Jenara Nerenberg

Author, Divergent Mind; Journalist, University of California, Berkeley; Founder, The Neurodiversity Project

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 June 10th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The global COVID-19 pandemic has revealed more clearly the huge health and health-care disparities between groups that are closely linked with social, economic and/or environmental disadvantage. Disparities occur across many dimensions, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation—what are termed social determinants of health. Many disparities in health are rooted in inequities in the opportunities and resources needed to be as healthy as possible.

The term health equity is used widely by professionals to talk about how to eliminate such disparities, but there is no common understanding of what it means. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments, and health care.”

This program will explore how the concept of health equity can help us to understand how to create a society that supports health for all people, and in so doing transforms the health of our nation.

MLF ORGANIZER

Robert Lee Kilpatrick

NOTES

MLF: Health & Medicine

SPEAKERS

Anand Shah

M.D., M.S., Vice President of Social Health, Kaiser Permanente

Noha Aboelata

M.D., Founder and CEO, Roots Community Health Center

Cyrell Roberson

M.A., Ph.D. Candidate in School Psychology, University of California, Berkeley; Founder, Jubily, Inc.

Robert Lee Kilpatrick

Ph.D., Chair, Health and Medicine Member-Led Forum, The Commonwealth Club of California; President and CEO, Health Innovation for People, Inc.

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 June 8th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Understanding the tragic issue of slavery and its ongoing historical impact on the country has been a critical part of America's recent reckoning on race. The Atlantic's Clint Smith has been one of the country's leading writers on this essential but complex topic for the past several years. In one of the most anticipated books of the year, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, Smith explores how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history and ourselves.

In Smith's first work of nonfiction, the author takes readers through a national tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not. In this unique way, Smith explores the legacy of slavery and its vivid imprint on centuries of American history. He describes Confederate Army cemeteries, former plantations, modern-day prisons, and other historical sites, showing how our past continually connects with the present, and helping us understand how slavery is remembered and misremembered—and why it matters to all Americans today.

In this conversation, Smith will be joined by Brittany Packnett Cunningham, a young emerging leader at the intersection of culture, justice and policy. Brittany serves as an NBC News and MSNBC contributor and host of "Undistracted," an intersectional news and justice podcast. Brittany is the founder and principal of Love & Power Works, a full-service social impact and equity agency.

Please join us for this critically important conversation on history, memory and how it connects with the present.

SPEAKERS

Clint Smith

Staff Writer, The Atlantic; Author, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Brittany Packnett Cunningham

Contributor, NBC News and MSNBC—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 June 3rd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million people across seven states. Lake Mead has fallen to its lowest level since it was filled in the 1930s, which could trigger the first stage of real water cutbacks.

For years, “much of the discussion in the Colorado River Basin has been who gets the next drop,” says journalist Luke Runyon. “The conversation very recently has shifted to who has to use less.”

In the midst of long-term drought, warming temperatures and decreasing runoff, water managers are gearing up for the next round of negotiations to divvy up the Colorado River’s supply in the future. Tribal water users are hoping to have a bigger say in those basin-wide negotiations, and to finally correct an historic injustice by ensuring universal access to clean water for tribes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Jen Gunter, the outspoken and digitally savvy Bay Area doctor who has been called "the world's most famous gynecologist" returns to The Commonwealth Club for what should be a fun discussion on her new book, The Menopause Manifesto, with television comedian Samantha Bee.

Dr. Gunter, who has made waves with her fierce advocacy of women's health, saw great success with her previous book, The Vagina Bible. The Menopause Manifesto takes on stubborn myths and misunderstandings about menopause in Dr. Gunter's traditional fashion: hard facts, real science, fascinating historical perspective, expert advice, and strong doses of humor. As the book notes, the only thing predictable about menopause is its unpredictability. Factor in widespread misinformation, misogyny, a lack of research, and the culture of shame around women's bodies, and it's no wonder women are unsure what to expect during the menopause transition and beyond. Dr. Gunter believes women (and men) should be educated on what's to come with menopause years in advance of it happening rather than the current practice of leaving people on their own with bothersome symptoms and too much conflicting information.

Join us for what is sure to be a frank, funny, and unique discussion!

About the Speakers 

Dr. Jen Gunter is an internationally bestselling author, obstetrician, and gynecologist with more than three decades of experience as a vulvar and vaginal diseases expert. Her New York Times and USA Today bestselling book, The Vagina Bible, has been translated into 19 languages, and The Guardian calls her "the world's most famous—and outspoken—gynecologist." The recipient of the 2020 NAMS Media Award from The North American Menopause Society, she is a columnist for The New York Times and the star of "Jensplaining," a CBC video series that highlights the impact of medical misinformation on women.

Samantha Bee is the host of the Emmy Award-winning "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee," the first late-night satire show hosted by a woman. Previously, she was the longest-serving correspondent on "The Daily Show," and she served as co-creator and executive producer of "The Detour." She is the author of the essay collection I Know I Am, But What Are You? and has been featured in Time 100: The Most Influential People. Recently, Bee and "Full Frontal" launched the successful #MailedIt campaign to help save the United States Postal Service and also launched a podcast titled "Full Release."

In association with INFORUM and Marin Conversations.

This program is part of our Marin Conversations series, spotlighting the thought-leadership of the North Bay, and is presented with support from Relevant Wealth Advisors.

SPEAKERS

Dr. Jen Gunter

M.D., OB/GYN and Pain Medicine Specialist; Author, The Menopause Manifesto; Twitter @DrJenGunter

Samantha Bee

Comedian; Host, "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee," TBS; Twitter @iamsambee

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 June 2nd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of President Biden’s first acts in office was to extend the New START Treaty with Russia. Concluded in 2010, the treaty cut the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia in half. It was set to expire on February 5, 2021, and is now in force for another five years. That treaty—which is holding back a new nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia—was negotiated by Rose Gottemoeller, former U.S. under secretary of state and former deputy secretary general of NATO.

But now, what comes next—in arms control and in dealing with Russia? Fueled by petro-rubles, a stronger economy has enabled the Russians to fund a decade of investments in high-tech nuclear and conventional weapons, including cybermeasures targeting the internal information systems of the United States and other countries. How should the United States respond to those threats, and to possible new opportunities for cooperation with Russia? What dangers, and opportunities, are presented by flash-points like the recent Russian military presence on the Ukrainian border?

What was it like to negotiate a major nuclear arms control treaty with the Russians, to get Presidents Obama and Medvedev to agree to it, and then negotiate its ratification through the U.S. Senate, at one of the most deeply partisan times in American history? Importantly, how did Republicans and Democrats come together to ratify a treaty to safeguard the future of all Americans?

Please join our CEO, Dr. Gloria Duffy, for a conversation with Rose Gottemoeller, on the eve of the first summit meeting between Presidents Biden and Putin. Deputy Secretary General Gottemoeller and Dr. Duffy have worked together on a number of occasions, including on dismantling weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet countries during the Clinton administration.

SPEAKERS

Rose Gottemoeller

Distinguished Lecturer, Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute; Research Fellow, Hoover Institution; Former Deputy Secretary General, NATO; Former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control; Author, Negotiating the New START Treaty

In Conversation with Dr. Gloria Duffy

President and CEO, The Commonwealth Club; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices