Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

President Bill Clinton called former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband "one of the ablest, most creative public servants of our time.” As president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, Miliband oversees the agency’s humanitarian relief operations in more than 40 war-affected countries and its refugee resettlement and assistance programs in 28 United States cities. Miliband points out that we are in the middle of the largest humanitarian crisis of the modern era and that more people have been forced to flee their homes by conflict and crisis than at any time since World War II. Miliband will discuss his view that while political leadership, abroad and in the United States is in retreat, close collaboration between the public, private and nonprofit sectors can help save millions of lives. Miliband’s parents fled to Britain from continental Europe during World War II and its aftermath. As the son of refugees, he brings a personal commitment to the IRC's work. As the 74th Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom, Miliband also drove advancements in human rights throughout the world.

San Francisco Ballet is more familiar to audiences for classical ballet or works by Balanchine, but the world-reknowned company is also committed to performing and commissioning new dances. This power-packed ballet panel will provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Unbound: A Festival of New Works, launching this spring. Bringing 12 international choreographers to San Francisco to create 12 new works in four programs, the festival is unprecedented in scope and will provide audiences a look at what ballet looks like today — and what it may look like tomorrow. MLF ORGANIZER NAME Anne W. Smith NOTES MLF: The Arts

Come for an enlightening and entertaining conversation between mathematician David Eisenbud and magician Mark Mitton about the relationship between technique and discovery, and surprise in math and magic. Everyone will learn math and magic tricks. David Eisenbud is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, an independent nonprofit that is a global center of collaborative mathematical research. He has served as president of the American Mathematical Society, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Eisenbud’s interests outside of mathematics include theater, music and juggling (on which he co-authored a mathematical paper). He is a trained singer, and particularly enjoys performing classical art songs. Mark Mitton performs and produces events all over the world. He has performed magic for business leaders, star athletes, Nobel prize-winning scientists, royalty and rock stars, economic migrants on the island of Lesbos and hospitalized children around New York City. Inspired by Martin Gardner, Mitton believes that the surprises of physical misdirection and comedy can teach us about the surprises in biology, psychology, philosophy and even mathematics. Notes In association with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute

From oatmeal to oysters, the world’s food supply is being drastically altered by rising temperatures and extreme weather. As the planet heats up, it’s affecting many of the foods we love – when and where they’re grown, how they get to the grocery store and how much we pay for them. This changing agricultural landscape calls for adaptive measures from large food producers like Mars. The family-owned company makes not just the M&Ms, Twix and Snickers bars we love, but also pet foods like Pedigree and Iams and people foods such as Uncle Ben’s Rice.

Volkswagen’s brazen cheating on air pollution rules rocked an industry with a long history of skulduggery. One VW executive went to jail for his role in Dieselgate and the plot thickened recently with revelations that VW, BMW and Mercedes paid researchers who locked monkeys in a room watching cartoons and pumped in diesel exhaust from a VW Beetle rigged with the cheating software. The two-year-old scandal has already cost VW $30 billion and the company has pledged to invest $40 billion in electric vehicles. Tesla’s revenues are growing but the pure-electric car maker is still burning billions of dollars a year. Will the newly energized push toward electric cars by VW, GM and other companies expand the market and drive down prices? Or could Tesla get squeezed as it struggles to scale up its assembly line? Join us for a dirty tale and a glimpse into a cleaner future. Notes This program is generously underwritten by the ClimateWorks Foundation

Failure is a seemingly inevitable part of life. However, surprising new research shows that the myriad of failures that dominate headlines every day share similar causes. Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik, co-authors of the book Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do about It, believe that if we can understand what lies behind these failures, we can make better decisions at work and at home. Chris Clearfield is the founder of System Logic, and András Tilcsik is the Canada Research Chair in Strategy, Organizations, and Society at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Together, they combine social science and stories – from the Gulf of Mexico to Mount Everest – to analyze why we’re so vulnerable to failure and what we can do to manage it.

This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. In 1997, Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren was appointed to preside over America’s first mental health court. As a young lawyer, she bore witness to the consequences of an underdeveloped mental health care infrastructure. Unable to do more than offer guidance, she watched families get torn apart as client after client was ensnared in the criminal justice system for crimes committed as a result of addiction, homelessness and severe mental illness. She soon learned that this was not an isolated issue—the Treatment Advocacy Center estimates that in 44 states, jails and prisons house 10 times as many people with serious mental illness than state psychiatric hospitals. Lerner-Wren says mental health courts offer some relief in underserved communities, but they can only serve as a single piece of a new focus on the vast overhaul of the policies that got us here. Come hear her thoughts on a future where our legal system and mental health infrastructure work in step to decriminalize rather than stigmatize.

David and Kate Marshall introduce life mapping, an introspective and holistic life planning tool, in this workshop. Learn how to chart your whole life—past, present and future—to better understand where you’ve been, where you are now and to create a vision of your future with clarity and intention using a tool like a vision board, but with words instead of pictures. Explore questions of what gives your life meaning and purpose, and what your priorities are for the rest of your life. By examining areas such as family, friends, education, work, service and play, and then putting it all together, the end results are 10-year and whole life maps that can help you to get to where you want to be. MLF ORGANIZER NAME Denise Michaud MLF: Grownups

Political operative Jennifer Palmieri is inspiring a new generation of leaders to shatter the glass ceiling, break down barriers and take control of their destiny. Palmieri served on the front lines of two historical and groundbreaking political operations, first as White House communications director for President Barack Obama and then as communications director for HIllary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Now, she’s making sure there is a playbook for future female political and professional leaders. Palmieri argues that the roadmap for the path to a female presidency hasn’t yet been clearly drawn and that our country needs to reimagine women in leadership roles — from the boardroom all the way to the Oval Office. Join INFORUM for a conversation with Jennifer Palmieri and discover a blueprint for achieving your dreams and taking the world by storm.

In 1942, as 110,000 Japanese Americans in the western U.S. were incarcerated in desolate “internment camps” around the country, Fred Korematsu refused and mounted a legal challenge that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1944 case Korematsu v. U.S. The Supreme Court ruled that compulsory exclusion was justified during times of “emergency and peril,” a decision later discredited in 1984 due to the government’s presentation of “intentional falsehoods” and “willful intentional falsehoods” about “military necessity” during the original case. What precedent, if any, was established by Korematsu? Eric K. Yamamoto, author of the newly published 2018 book In the Shadow of Korematsu: Democratic Liberties and National Security, considers the present-day significance of the ruling in the context of security-liberty controversies such as the president’s Muslim travel ban and sweeping electronic surveillance of Americans. He addresses the importance of judicial independence and how genuinely committed we in America are to democracy and the Constitution. Yamamoto is nationally and internationally recognized for his work on national security and civil liberties, civil rights and social justice. He has received many outstanding teaching awards and has published numerous articles, chapters and five books, including Interracial Justice, which received a national award as among the best social justice books of 2000. He was on the legal team in the 1984 Korematsu coram nobis case. He continues his work on post-9/11 controversies, including writing amicus briefs in appeals to the Supreme Court and other courts in the 2017-18 “travel ban” cases. MLF ORGANIZER NAME Lillian Nakagawa NOTES MLF: Asia-Pacific Affairs

John Cox is a successful small businessman born and raised in Chicago by his mother, a public school teacher who greatly influenced his perspective on politics. He resides with his family in the San Diego County community of Rancho Santa Fe and is a Republican candidate for California governor. Calling himself a "Jack Kemp-style” Republican, Cox is the author of the "neighborhood legislature" initiative. He founded an affiliate of Rebuilding Together, a nationwide organization that repairs the homes of low-income seniors and disabled persons. He currently sits on the board of the USO San Diego. Cox will discuss limiting the influence of special interests and what he believes we can do to unshackle economic growth.

The year 2018 is shaping up to be a major battleground for control of state governments and the U.S. Congress. Closer to home, we will see a spirited competition to replace the late Mayor Ed Lee in San Francisco's City Hall. Join us as we discuss the biggest, most controversial and sometimes the surprising political issues with expert commentary by panelists who are smart, are civil and have a good sense of humor. Join our panelists for informative and engaging commentary on political and other major news, audience discussion of the week’s events, and our live news quiz! And come early before the program to meet other smart and engaged individuals and discuss the news over snacks and wine at our members social (open to all attendees).

Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris is a pioneer in the movement to transform how we respond to early childhood adversity and the resulting toxic stress that dramatically impacts our health and longevity. A survey of more than 17,000 adult patients’ adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as divorce, substance abuse or neglect, proved that the higher a person’s ACE score, the worse his or her health. This led Burke Harris to an astonishing breakthrough: Childhood stress changes our neural systems and lasts a lifetime. As the founder/CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco, Burke Harris has brought these scientific discoveries and her new approach to audiences at the Mayo Clinic, American Academy of Pediatrics, Google Zeitgeist and Dreamforce. Her TED Talk, “How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime,” has been viewed more than 3 million times. Come for a fascinating discussion on how addressing past childhood trauma can result in a better adulthood.

As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who went into hiding, Rachel Lev has always been fascinated by the resilience of people who survive extreme trauma. Her father’s story was one reason, among others, that she collaborated on Collective Trauma, Collective Recovery: Promoting Community Resilience in the Aftermath of Disaster, a book that examines resilience in the face of political genocide and natural disaster. After finishing this study, Lev spent years working with women who survived genocide as well as domestic and sexual violence. A question guiding Lev’s academic and therapeutic work has been: Why are some women more resilient than others? Drawing from neuroscience and genetics, Lev takes a biopsychosocial approach in examining resilience. She asks: What strengths and weaknesses are we born with? Which strengths and weaknesses do we develop as we face extreme challenges? How does the brain handle trauma, and what happens to the brain following multiple traumas?

This panel discussion offers up-to-the-minute insights into what's new and what's on the horizon in the field of aging in America, and invites thoughtful responses from representatives of the Club's Grownups Forum. Join us, in association with Mary Furlong and Associates, for the capstone VIP lunch and wrap-up of to the 15th Annual What’s Next Boomer Business Summit. Come and hear industry leaders, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists share the highlights from the Aging In America Conference and the What’s Next Boomer Summit, followed by an in-depth thoughtful response by members of the Grownups Forum. MLF ORGANIZER John Milford MLF: Grownups In association with Mary Furlong and Associates