Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Please join us for a panel discussion: Following the enactment of H.R. 1, which includes significant changes to Medicaid and other federal health-care programs, California and San Francisco are grappling with what these changes will mean for patients, providers and the health-care safety net. 

The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation (SFGHF) is convening this timely conversation at the Commonwealth Club to explore the law’s implications for health-care access, our city’s public hospital Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG), and communities across California. 

Featuring Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and ZSFG CEO Dr. Su...

San Francisco has been connected to Francis of Assisi for over 250 years, when Spanish explorers gave the name San Francisco Bay to the waters east of the Golden Gate. That connection intensified 180 years ago when the town of 600 called Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.

Humanities West and the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco celebrate this civilizational connection to the influential Italian who founded the Order of Friars Minor for priests and brothers and the Order of Saint Clare for cloistered nuns — having been inspired by his earlier membership in the lay organization Brothers and Sisters of...

For generations, the American Dream has represented a promise of opportunity: work hard, and you can achieve economic stability, security, and upward mobility. Yet for many today, that promise feels uncertain—or fundamentally changed.

​Throughout our Dinner & Dialogue series, people across generations and backgrounds have gathered to share how they understand opportunity, success, and security in this moment. Now, we bring those insights to the stage.

​As the culminating event of this quarter’s Dinner & Dialogue series, What Happened to the American Dream?, this Unfiltered Conversation will bring together a panel of leading experts to respond...

The war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz created a global energy supply crisis. And while gasoline prices didn’t reach the extreme highs some predicted a few months ago, the global markets are still in flux. 

“What has been disrupted most is the confidence in the old energy system where you could reliably and affordably dig up a source of energy thousands of kilometers away from where you expected to ignite it and expect that process to be smooth,” says Gerald Butts, chairman of political risk consultancy the Eurasia Group. 

What has the...

Bestselling author Mark Shaw returns to Commonwealth Club World Affairs with the untold details of the inspiring friendship in the mid-1930s between Dorothy Kilgallen, the intrepid young journalist, and Amelia Earhart, the courageous, pioneering aviatrix. Their mutual support ran deep, with Kilgallen covering up-close Amelia’s historic 1932 solo transatlantic flight, and Amelia taking a strong, personal interest in Kilgallen’s famous 24-day “Race Around the World” against two older male reporters in 1936.

As Kilgallen put it, “I’m off on a race around the world—a race against time and two men. I know I can beat time. I h...

In her new book Valley of Death, former Wall Street Journal national security editor Sharon Weinberger draws on deep, exclusive reporting to reveal how a new military-industrial complex is arising from the cradle of Silicon Valley, with vast implications for American democracy and the global balance of power.

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alexander Karp. These tech titans are fast becoming some of the most powerful figures in the realm of national security, with enormous implications for us all. As Weinberger reveals in this gripping account, the American military and spy agencies helped to create Silicon Valley as...

Heritage is simply learned wisdom, the stories, myths, traditions and rituals that we inherit from our ancestors. What if we could alchemize that into a superpower as business leaders, instead of burying, hiding or running away from it? 

In this conversation with Kamini Ramani, author of Lotus Leadership: A Modern Playbook of Ancient Wisdom(Harper’s Business), and two powerful CEOs and board members—Chinese American Jenny Ming and Indian American Yamini Rangan—legendary journalist Sarah Lacy will unpack their journeys from Mumbai and Coimbatore to Macao to reveal the secret to owning your power.

Ramani h...

America’s election system faces unprecedented challenges as we approach the midterms. An electoral environment already upended by mid-decade gerrymandering and Supreme Court decisions undermining the Voting Rights Act has been compounded by collapsing popular confidence in the system we use to choose our leaders. Never-before-seen actions through executive orders and postal service changes, as well as a variety of measures at the state level, have created confusion and uncertainty as Americans begin to cast their ballots in the early voting period.

Can the system withstand these unprecedented threats to the right to vote?

Join St...

Join us for a conversation with Ben Davis, creator of the Bay Lights and City of Awe, and founder of the San Francisco nonprofit Illuminate, and Garry Tan, president and CEO of Y Combinator.

San Francisco might be the most important city in the world right now. The arc of human consciousness is being defined here. Artificial intelligence is racing forward on fear as much as ambition, which makes it inherently reckless. Davis, founder of the San Francisco nonprofit Illuminate, believes the antidote is culture. He has declared San Francisco the “City of Awe”—that rare blend of bea...

Join us for the third event in the popular Women Empowering Women series: Creating Financial Abundance. The evening focuses on fiscal management, budgeting, investment strategies, and resources so women in the arts can take charge of their financial futures and build a foundation for long-term security and wealth.

We’ll hear from:

Our moderator will be Debra Reabock, Women Empowering Women MLF chair.

The Women Empowering Women series was created by...

New York sets some of the country's most ambitious climate goals, from slashing emissions to bracing for rising seas. But living in the city is freaking expensive. So what does it take for NYC to be affordable and climate-conscious? 

In collaboration with Grist, we put that question to the city’s chief climate officer, a Grist reporter, and a grassroots leader during New York Climate Week. Listen as we discuss the places where climate, decarbonization, and affordability collide – and the ways people are working to make life better for New Yorkers while keeping both costs and carbon down...

Join us for this lively Transforming Our Region forum program on network leadership and building community, featuring Jane Wei-Skillern. Together, we will explore how to collaborate in ways that catalyze systems change for a Bay Area where people and nature thrive.

Strong communities are built not just through programs and organizations, but through relationships, trust, and shared leadership. In this highly interactive program, participants will explore key principles of network leadership and learn practical approaches for strengthening collaboration across individuals, organizations, and sectors to catalyze systems change. Through facilitated small-group discussions, participants will experience firsthand how networks...

Join us this evening for a deep-dive military and geopolitical program analyzing the decades-long regional cold and hot wars, proxy conflicts, and strategic power struggles for dominance in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran. 

At the heart of this analysis lies their relationship with the United States, which is a linchpin of the Saudi-Iranian conflict and the solution to ending it.

A Middle East Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Le...

A desire to simplify, an upcoming move, a remodel, and general overwhelm are among the many reasons we are called to rightsize our lives. The things that occupy our closets and shelves have all sorts of memories and hopes attached to them. Those same things can also be obligations or burdens. Deciding what to shed and how to go about it can be overwhelming in its own way. 

That’s where life organizer Debra Baida comes in. For close to 20 years, she has been empowering and guiding people through their life transitions. She is an empathic facilitator wit...

For critics of the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, much attention and ire is focused on the new justices appointed by President Donald Trump. But journalist Alex Wagner says the key president to note is Ronald Reagan, whose 1980 election marked a distinct right turn for American governance.

Wagner, host of Crooked Media’s “Runaway Country,” says Reagan’s election marked the return to power of the conservative right after many decades on the fringes: Tax cuts, aggressive foreign policy, and law and order would soon become the cornerstones of Reagan’s agenda. But, behind the scenes...

What happens when community knowledge, nonprofit purpose, business expertise, and long-term philanthropy come together to solve a basic neighborhood need?

San Francisco’s Sunnydale Market offers a compelling and nutritious answer.

Created in response to residents’ love of neighborhood, and their need for fresh and affordable groceries, the Sunnydale Market is catalyzed by community voices, the nonprofit 18 Reasons, and the for-profit Bi-Rite Family of Businesses. The Sunnydale Market partnership finds its home in a larger redevelopment made possible by Mercy Housing, Related Companies, and HOPE SF.

It is important that this partnership is made...

Francis Fukuyama, a leading public intellectual—including repeated popular appearances at the Club—is well-known for his significant, bestselling works of political philosophy and history. Now, for the first time, he examines his own political and intellectual evolution across five transformative decades. 

In his new memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man, Fukuyama invites us to follow him from the circle of students around the conservative intellectual Allan Bloom at Cornell, into the halls of power in Washington and at the RAND Corporation, and into private conversations with world leaders from Muammar Qaddhafi to China’s powerful...

Emily Wilson, whose translations of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad have captured a generation’s imagination, joins us virtually to explore the complicated terrain of reading and writing about the ancient past. Drawing on 20 years of scholarship and teaching, Wilson reviews the difficult choices that translators must make, the pleasures of finding new solutions to old problems, and the inevitable frustrations of never fully capturing what is in the original work.

Ranging from the politics of Helen of Troy to the obscenities of Aristophanes, from Roman imitations of Greek models to contemporary debates over “foreignizing” and “domesticizing” styles, Wilson e...

How should Democrats campaign on climate? Some are quietly shelving climate-specific language ahead of the midterms in favor of terms like “energy crisis” and “affordability.”  But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has been talking about climate change on the Senate floor for more than a decade, and he has no plans to stop now. 

“The most important thing that can be accomplished on the climate front is to end the pollute-for-free business model of the fossil fuel industry. It is morally wrong, it is economically wrong, it is an environmental sin, and there's literally no merit to it, which...

Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times columnist Carlos Lozada has spent years examining the books, ideas and figures that shape American politics. Now, as America marks its 250th anniversary, he turns to the country’s global role. In Lozada’s view, the United States has gone from the leader of the free world to a “dangerous nation.”
Whether in the war in Iran, the jailing of Venezuela’s president, or Trump’s stated desire to “take Cuba,” Lozada sees a consistent pattern. Under Trump, he writes, U.S. leadership has been remade “from authority to domination, from persuasion to bullying, from nurt...

Come hear the story of a single nuclear bomb’s deep origins, brief life during the Cold War, and lasting environmental and political legacies―and how some are viewing the entire sweep of the American nuclear enterprise. A grave reminder of the frightening truth about nuclear testing, as international norms waver.

As the United States and Russia let one treaty after another falter and expire, Jon Else reminds us of the terrible price of those tests. In his new book Frenchman Flat, Else recounts the science, politics and human experience of those who developed nuclear weapons, suffered the...

After Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Sarah Longwell did what she's done nearly every week for the past eight years: She sat down with voters. She conducted hundreds of focus groups, listening to thousands of ordinary Americans―Republicans, Democrats, and the politically homeless―with the goal of understanding politics through the eyes of the people who will decide our country’s future. 

American voters, and what they want for their country, are at the heart of her new book How to Eat an Elephant. Longwell, the founder of The Bulwark and a popular political communicator, lays out the play...

The Social Impact Forum examines how promising approaches to social challenges translate into measurable results. This conversation will explore not only the role of belonging and connection in addressing homelessness, but also questions of effectiveness, accountability, duplication of existing services, and whether organizations practice the relational values they promote.

Homelessness is one of the most vexing issues in the social impact field. Despite countless attempts and huge budgets to address it, and everyone anxious for results, it persists. Many talk of housing first, what other inputs can achieve results, and how can they be measured?

...

As the 2026 midterms approach, voters are contending with concerns around affordability, the AI boom, and climate disruption in their daily lives. AI data centers have become the wild card in energy politics, driving up energy demand and utility bills, and playing a large role in a battleground House primary. A year after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act rolled back key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, many climate advocates assumed the energy transition was stalled out, but new research suggests otherwise. 

How will climate and energy shape the ballot box this year? And what's it like t...

Join us on Thursday, September 10 at the Commonwealth Club for “Reading the Signals: Predictions, Polls & the 2026 Midterms,” featuring renowned nonpartisan election analyst Nathan Gonzales, editor & publisher of Inside Elections and election analyst for CQ Roll Call.

At Inside Elections, Nathan he analyzes every competitive race in the country. With more than two decades covering presidential, congressional and gubernatorial races, Nathan is widely recognized for delivering clear, objective, data-driven analysis that cuts through speculation and partisan spin. A frequent political analyst for CNN, NPR, CBS News, and other major national media, he is known for providing clear, objective insi...

When families have support, children and youth do better at home, in school and in their communities. Yet many conversations about “student success” focus narrowly on classrooms and test scores, overlooking the pregnancy, early childhood, housing, mental health, special‑needs and basic‑needs supports that shape whether children can show up ready to learn in the first place.

This program will explore how family resource centers and other family support services operate in San Francisco, drawing on the experiences of community leaders and parents who know these systems firsthand. Through stories from their work and lives, the panel wi...

Note: This podcast contains explicit language.

Is American democracy doomed? Robert Reich doesn’t think so, even though he is more than capable of pointing out how it has fallen short and is being challenged by powerful anti-democratic forces. He says we can reclaim a sense of community and a democratic capitalism based on American ideals we still have the power to salvage.

To know where to go next, it helps to know how we got here, and in his new book Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, Reich tells us how he got...

Skye Perryman—a Time 100 honoree and CEO of Democracy Forward—offers an urgent, inspiring blueprint for how ordinary people can fight for freedom in extraordinary times.

She says the future of our country lies in all of our hands. From protecting voting rights and public schools to finding courage in the face of fear, Skye Perryman makes the case that defending democracy isn’t the job of lawyers or politicians alone—it’s a role for every one of us, seasoned and brand-new activists alike.

Drawing on her frontline experience challenging threats to democracy in courtrooms a...

Note: This podcast contains explicit language.

Dating and relationships can be messy. The apps, the expectations, the endless options—it’s a lot. But there’s real science behind how people connect, commit and build a relationship with someone who will “be there when you need them the most.”

So how to find such a person, especially in such a world?

Fortunately we have a guide! Dr. Justin Garcia is the executive director of the Kinsey Institute, the premier research center on human sexuality and relationships, where he leads a team that has been delvin...

Growing power demands – coupled with increasingly frequent climate-driven disasters – have led even staunch environmentalists like NRDC head Manish Bapna to rethink their past opposition to nuclear power. 

Three Mile Island didn't kill anyone or cause major public harm, but it fundamentally changed U.S. nuclear policy for 40 years. Why did an accident with a relatively contained consequence have such a chilling effect – and what’s really different today? With dozens of new, purportedly safer designs at various stages of development and construction around the world, is it time for all of us to give nuclear energy a fresh loo...

Amidst a backdrop of unprecedented attacks on trans athletes, Schuyler, Chella, and Cal teamed up to take on the Ironman 70.3 relay in Oceanside, California, together on March 28, 2026—placing third in the men’s relay category. Schuyler in the water, Chella on wheels, and Cal hitting the pavement, these trans masculine athletes defy the erasure so commonly perpetuated against them, leaning into movement as essential empowerment, teamwork as vital community, and self-love as fuel. 

On June 29, Schuyler, Chella, and Cal invite us into their Ironman journey for a special event at the Commonwealth Club, with a panel discussion of th...

For decades, scholar and journalist Orville Schell has been one of the nation’s leading experts on China. The author of numerous books on China, Schell runs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. 

In his new book, Inside China’s Secret Prisons, Schell recounts the extraordinary investigation that uncovered China’s prison labor network, and the personal cost of reporting the truth. 

Schell delivers the first behind-the-scenes account of the landmark 1991 “60 Minutes” investigation that revealed China’s vast “reform through labor” prison system and documented how prison-made goods were illegall...

Gladstone’s Steven Finkbeiner shares how Gladstone’s AI-powered microscope is racing to cure neurodegenerative disease.

Imagine a scientist that never sleeps, runs thousands of experiments at once, and learns from every success and failure in real-time. It’s not a person—it’s a microscope. Scientist Steven Finkbeiner, M.D., Ph.D., of San Francisco’s Gladstone Institutes, introduces us to a mind-boggling new reality: a “thinking microscope” powered by autonomous AI. By looking beyond the limits of human imagination, this machine is mapping out how diseases such as Alzheimer’s and ALS unfold, and discovering how to reverse the...

Introduction: Cole Thomason-Redus, co-chair of the Arts Forum, Commonwealth Club World Affairs

Film: Flicka: A Love Letter 

Frederica “Flicka” von Stade has built an extraordinary legacy that reaches far beyond her celebrated opera career. In the documentary Flicka: A Love Letter, audiences follow her journey from one of the world’s most beloved mezzo-sopranos to a devoted mentor, educator and humanitarian. Through interviews and archival footage, colleagues, friends and family illuminate not only her artistry and musical brilliance but also the warmth, generosity and deep compassion that have defined her life and work, including her end...

Sinclair Lewis is said to have predicted, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” Democratic congressman Jared Huffman says he witnessed something eerily like that vision on January 6, 2021, and it was his wake-up call to the shocking power of Christian nationalism.
He explores this topic I his new book No Prophets, in which he argues that Christian nationalism is now America’s most dangerous political movement. Huffman uncovers the landscape of this movement―who they are, what they want, and how they plan to get it―and argues that it has dest...

While most Americans think of a truck or a sedan when they hear “electric vehicle,” a quiet revolution is happening in other countries on two and three wheels. In China and India, the electric vehicles doing the most to push out oil aren't cars – they're scooters, mopeds, motorcycles and the three-wheeled rickshaws and tuk-tuks that move people and packages through some of the world's busiest cities.

According to BloombergNEF’s EV Outlook report, 46% of global sales of two- and three-wheelers were electric last year. Collectively, they’re ⁠displacing more oil⁠ than cars. Electric delivery vehicles are also starting to sh...

“... reading it made me so hopeful and excited that I've been telling everyone I know about it. This is not just a book for MBAs or people who work in business. It's for anyone who has wondered, 'Is capitalism fixable?'"
—Ari Shapiro

What if the most radical idea in business is that purpose is the best tool for unlocking long-term growth? And what if the secret to sustaining your organization’s integrity is readily available if you look in the right places?

In his new book Incorruptible, a New York Times and USA Today best...

Since the passage of Proposition E in 2024, San Francisco has expanded its use of technology in public safety, including drones, automated license plate readers, and the city’s new Real Time Investigations Center. As these tools become part of everyday policing, they’ve prompted conversations about how the city can pursue safer streets while protecting privacy and civil liberties.

How should new technologies be evaluated and overseen? What transparency and accountability measures make sense? And what can San Francisco’s experience teach other cities considering similar approaches?

Join us for a thoughtful conversation about technology, public...

When Silicon Valley says it is “moving fast and breaking things,” the world interprets the chaos as a necessary cost of innovation. In his new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, Gil Durán argues that something far more sinister is at work: a decades-long campaign to replace elected governments with corporate rule.
Durán chronicles what he calls the “tech-authoritarian movement” from its early days in San Francisco politics to its current moment on the international stage, exploring the wild and dystopian ambition of the technocrats at its center, and offering his road ma...

There were 61 candidates on California’s June primary ballot for governor, but the race is now down to two: Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra. 

Hilton is a former Fox News commentator and political advisor. He was endorsed by President Trump and promises to “restore the California Dream” by cutting government spending, reducing taxes and energy prices, and slashing regulations. 

Join us as Hilton delivers a speech outlining his vision for the state and sits down for a conversation with KQED’s Scott Shafer.

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