Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Football legend Jerry Rice is regarded as one of the best wide receivers ever to play in the NFL. He is a three-time Super Bowl champion and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and College Football Hall of Fame. Rice celebrates some of the most memorable moments in NFL history and reflects on his own love of the game. He offers a comprehensive look at the players and coaches that helped define and transform football to the cultural phenomenon it is today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

California has long led the country in environmental action. It established strong automobile emission standards; it preserved fragile lands from development; it set energy efficiency standards for buildings and appliances. But as climate change fuels megafires across the state and the state’s largest electric utility shuts off power to more than a million residents, can the state’s legacy of environmental leadership save it from climate disaster? In a state already accustomed to swinging wildly between drought and flood, what will become of the California dream? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Freedom. Ambition. Diet. Frustration. Exercise. Anxiety. Grief. These are concerns we recognize as central to the shape and scope of contemporary American life, especially life in the Bay Area. At times they seem so overwhelming as to be unique to our present moment—but they are not. In fact, much of ancient philosophy was committed to addressing and alleviating them. Ancient Athens and imperial Rome were in many ways quite similar to 21st century America. Antiquity was a world that included slaves and immigrants, plutocrats and exiles, political strife and crushing poverty. Beginning in the 4th century B.C., philosophers began to develop teachings and schools that addressed the freedom life promised and the constraints under which it unfolded. The names of two of these schools—the Stoics and the Epicureans—have so endured as to have entered the common lexicon. Along the way, however, they have lost much of their original force: We now tend to equate Stoicism with a kind of John Wayne-inflected, flat-bellied machismo. Epicureanism has become synonymous with an unbridled appetite for food, wine and “the good life.” This is a mistake. There is much we could learn and from which we could benefit by a renewed consideration of ancient thought. Please join us as we host Tony Long and Jim Porter, two of the world’s leading authorities on classical thought, in a conversation that will make relevant to our own time the teachings of ancient philosophy. Their conversation, which will touch on everything from climate crises to religion to gratitude and human dignity, will be moderated by Amanda Goldstein. Do you consider yourself a Stoic or an Epicurean? Or perhaps a Cynic, a skeptic or a Pythagorean? Join us, and experience the strength and relevance of ancient thought. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when you go abroad to live and work in another culture, surrounded by the strange sounds of a different language, different food, music and customs? What does it take to achieve a successful expatriate experience? Come and learn about the diverse experiences of 14 Americans who worked and lived in various countries—from England to Vietnam, Belarus to India. Learn about their challenges and how they finally adjusted and thrived in their foreign environments. Schickel presents the results of her recent qualitative research, conducted years after she herself experienced the expat life during her two years in the U.S. Peace Corps in Morocco, which inspired her continuing interest in these issues and led to her recently successfully defended dissertation. MLF ORGANIZER NAME George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

America’s most popular alcoholic beverages are about to take a hit from climate. Mild, sunny growing conditions have made California king of a $62 billion wine industry—from Napa Valley’s prized cabernet sauvignon to the plumy pinot noirs of Sonoma County. And more than 7,000 breweries in the United States rely on barley, a key ingredient in beer that is partial to the cool temperatures of northwestern states and Canada. But both grapes and barley are sensitive to a changing climate. And years of disruptions from drought, fires and rising temperatures have brewers and winemakers wondering: Will business as usual survive into the next generation? Join us for a conversation with Esther Mobley, wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and Dan Petroski, winemaker for Larkmead Vineyards; and Katie Wallace, director of social and environmental impact at New Belgium Brewing, on how climate is reshaping the wine and beer industries—and what that means for consumers and our wallets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Law professor Ian Haney López is one of the world’s pioneers of critical race theory. A challenger of the racial status quo, López has worked to emphasize the impact of racial divisions in the United States while also exploring how politicians exploit fractured societal structures to benefit the rich. In his newest book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America, López gives progressives the tools to fight politicized racism and build a multicultural future. López describes his last two years of research with union activists, racial justice leaders and statisticians, concluding that the “middle ground” of Americans can be persuaded Right or Left depending on the narrative of America that they are given. Join us for an important conversation with esteemed professor and author Ian Haney López as he gives us the tools to rebuild a better, racially equitable future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monday Night Philosophy celebrates its 10th anniversary by making predictions about the future of our common wealth: the ideas and assumptions that underlie all human cultures. The Commonwealth Club is dedicated to finding truth and turning it loose in the world. But what is truth? Whatever it is, that ancient question remains provocative. To come closer to an answer, George Hammond distinguishes between those ideas that describe inherent patterns in life and those cultural ideals that are basically a group consensus on how to live life. Our 21st century cultures are rapidly increasing in cultural communication, competition, discussion and dispute. Could that set the stage for sorting out long-standing but still competing cultural assumptions about justice, virtue, the meaning of life, and the purposes of community, nation and civilization building? If so, which assumptions are headed for the discard pile? And which will prove enduring? Hammond’s predictions about where trends in how we pursue happiness are headed will probably surprise you. MLF ORGANIZER NAME George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Green New Deal has raised hopes for a major push to address climate change and social injustice. Is it just pie in the sky? Not at all. The original New Deal of the 1930s brought a revolution in conservation and public health, worker rights and wages, income and regional equality, and public investment for the common good—all during the worst depression in history. A Green New Deal is possible because we have done it before. Come learn more about this initiative. MLF ORGANIZER NAME George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On October 8, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law the nation’s most far-reaching bills, which are designed to prevent homelessness, protect tenants from being evicted and make it possible to create new homes for many thousands of Californians. The work was made possible by a collaboration of diverse allies who are attempting to preserve existing affordable homes, protect the families in them and produce more housing at all income levels. They were joined by a broad coalition of elected officials, including Assemblymember David Chiu, who authored several of the recently passed bills and who has made preventing homelessness and providing affordable homes to all Californians one of his signature issues. While these represent important strides, some say a great deal of work still needs to be done. On November 4, The Commonwealth Club will host a panel discussion about the implications of this new legislation as well as what the future holds for addressing the challenge of homelessness and housing in the Bay Area. The panel will include Chiu; Guillermo Mayer, president and CEO of Public Advocates—a key organization that helped advance the public call for a comprehensive housing package; Denise Pinkston, a partner at TMG Partners—a local developer that has been involved in the housing debate at the local, regional and statewide levels and that has been a strong advocate for more housing; and Gina Dalma, special adviser to the CEO and vice president of government relations at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, where she has brought her leadership into the housing arena. The event will be moderated by Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation, which helped lead the coalition to advance the housing legislation. Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation, which is providing unrestricted grant support to the San Francisco Foundation, will provide introductory remarks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

San Francisco is a city of contradictions. It is one of the most socially liberal cities in America, but it also has some of the nation’s worst income inequality. It is a playground for tech millionaires, with an outrageously high cost of living, yet it also supports vibrant alternative and avant-garde scenes. So how did the city get this way? San Francisco native Lincoln Mitchell traces the roots of the current situation back to 1978, when three key events occurred: the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk occurring fewer than two weeks after the massacre of Peoples Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana; the explosion of the city’s punk rock scene; and a breakthrough season for the San Francisco Giants. Through these three strands, Mitchell explores the rifts between the city’s pro-business and progressive-Left politicians, the emergence of Dianne Feinstein as a political powerhouse, the increasing prominence of the city’s LGBT community, punk’s reinvigoration of the Bay Area’s radical cultural politics, and the ways that the Giants helped unify one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the nation. Join us for a panel discussion of four leaders who influenced this seminal cultural transformation. MLF Organizer: George Hammond MLF: Humanities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices