Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

This program is part of our Food Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. Join the brains behind Bay Area-based Dandelion Chocolate, in conversation with maker Adam Savage, as they dig deep into the world of chocolate making and eating. What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day? Todd Masonis, CEO of Dandelion Chocolate, Greg D’Alesandre, chocolate “sourcerer,” and the rest of the Dandelion Chocolate team make some of the best bean-to-bar chocolate around, and their book, Making Chocolate: From Bean to Bar to S’more, unravels the secrets for anyone from hobbyists to professional makers seeking to create delicious, luxurious chocolate in their home kitchen. From the simplest techniques, such as roasting beans on a sheet pan to winnowing away the shells with a hair dryer, to more complex subjects, such as the science and mechanics of making chocolate to the nuts, bolts and ethics of sourcing beans directly, this book follows the cocoa bean from the farm to the factory to the pastry kitchen—and everywhere in between. Talking about chocolate can be torturous unless there’s tasting involved, so join us before and after the program for Dandelion chocolate-making demonstrations and education, chocolate samples, hot chocolate, s’mores, and more! Thanks to in-kind sponsor Fort Point Beer for providing tasty brews to accompany the treats.

Sir Francis Drake’s 1579 Plate of Brasse was left at Point Reyes, claiming California for England. Its 1937 recovery became California’s greatest historical hoax. The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus (ECV), whose members are commonly known as Clampers, is a spoof on all other fraternal organizations. It was revived in 1932 by professional and successful businessmen, prominent collectors of Californiana, published historians, fine press printers, bibliophiles and University of California academics, who threw off scholarly stuffiness to have fun. From the Roman Empire, ECV spread throughout Europe, China and to the New World via the Spanish. It was brought to California by Chinese mariners. Not until the 21st century did the Clampers’ background with the Plate of Brasse become revealed. Robert Chandler, the speaker, will appear in full regalia and lead the presentation with PowerPoint. MLF Organizer Name Anne W. Smith Notes MLF: Arts

Carl Pope is a veteran leader in the environmental movement and spent nearly 20 years as the executive director of the Sierra Club. He offers an optimistic look at the challenges of climate change, the solutions that hold the greatest promise and the practical steps that are necessary to achieve them. Pope also highlights the contributions and bold actions that cities, businesses and citizens are making to reshape and jump-start a new type of conversation about climate change. Notes Co-hosted by the American India Foundation

San Francisco can be a tough place to find love. There are plenty of apps to help you find casual connections, but what works for finding a longer lasting relationship or even true love? Where should you go, and how can you catch his or her eye? How can you handle rejection without feeling discouraged? And how can you quickly recognize that you're talking to the wrong person? If you're ready to find the lifelong partner you truly want, come get advice from our speaker, Rich Gosse, the worldwide authority on dating. He has run over 2,000 dating parties over more than 30 years, many of which have been in the Bay Area. He’s been interviewed by dozens of major newspapers and TV shows to provide expert insight. And he found his wife by following his own advice. So stop wasting time by falling into impulsive traps that all your friends can see but you can't, or by making endless lists that never seem to lead to an enduring relationship. Come listen to Gosse and move forward with your life. MLF Organizer Name Eric Siegel Notes MLF: Personal Growth, Grownups Co-sponsored by INFORUM

In his new book, How to Fix the Future, Andrew Keen focuses on what we can do to prevent the Internet from further damaging our culture and society. Looking to the past to learn how we might change our future, Keen describes how societies tamed the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, which demolished long-standing models of living, ruined harmonious environments and altered the business world beyond recognition. Keen travels the world to interview experts in a wide variety of fields, including Margrethe Vestager, EU commissioner for competition, whose recent 2.4 billion euros fine to Google made headlines around the world; successful venture capitalists who nonetheless see the tide turning; and CEOs from companies such as The New York Times. According to Keen, there are five key tools for fixing the future: regulation, competitive innovation, social responsibility, worker and consumer choice, and education. His journey to discover how these tools are being practiced around the globe took him to digital-oriented Estonia, the place where Skype was founded, where every citizen can access whatever data the government holds on them, and where an e-residency program allows the country to expand beyond its narrow borders. Keen also traveled Singapore, where a large part of the higher education sector consists of professional courses in coding and website design. Join us and learn more about the Internet’s hold on both American and world culture and how, according to Keen, we can disrupt this negative pattern. MLF Organizer Name Gerald Harris Notes MLF: Science & Technology

There is an information vacuum among government, media and the public about the relative role of wired communications and the reasons hard wires, such a copper cable and optical fiber, usually offer better telecommunications options. From the perspective of public investment, health and ecosystem impacts, and energy efficiency, a strong case can be made that hard wiring is preferable to wireless, yet few understand this. Instead, we seem to believe there is innate value to championing wireless over wired technologies, obsessing about how we can get and pay for more of it without first doing comprehensive cost–benefit analysis or understanding the risks. This program will feature a report by the National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy, Reinventing Wires—The Future of Landlines and Networks by Timothy Schoechle. MLF Organizer Name Bill Grant, Camilla Rees (co-chair), Ellen Marks (co-chair) Notes MLF: Health & Medicine

Monday Night Philosophy revisits Pythagoras's conception of harmonious order in the universe. While most of us are familiar with Pythagoras only through the theorem we imbibed as high school students, his place in history is far deeper and greater: first philosopher, hidden root of Platonic ideals, father of western music harmony, architect of medieval education, and demigod of myth and legend. In this multimedia presentation, learn how the Pythagorean search for underlying patterns in the cosmos shaped much of western civilization and has renewed relevance for us today. MLF Organizer Name George Hammond Notes MLF: Humanities In association with Humanities West

Climate chaos looks different in different places, and in the West, it's all about water: drought, floods, fires, unhealthy drinking water. Communities across the West are facing these challenges in interesting and unique ways. Carpe Diem West supports a network of diverse western water leaders who are implementing innovative and equitable responses to the impacts of the warming climate on our water resources in the American West. MLF Organizer Name Ann Clark Notes MLF: Environment and Natural Resources

Rachel Khong and Mark Lukach bring together the stories of two families that found renewed love and commitment after being thrust into caregiving roles. Khong’s novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, chronicles the life of a young women who returns home to care for her father who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Lukach’s memoir, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward, is about his wife’s experience with mental illness. Together, Khong and Lukach look at the role of caregivers and how it often takes a community to tackle life’s most challenging situations. Notes: Presented by the Santa Clara County Library District, the San José Public Library, the Santa Clara County Office of Education and De Anza College

This is a Food Lit program, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. Who started the organic food craze that now is a cornerstone of popular American eating? Who is responsible for getting whole food staples such as sprouts, tofu, yogurt, brown rice, and whole grain bread onto every grocery and home shelf? It’s more than a corporate marketing effort, and although it’s a way of life for many, it wasn’t always like this. Food journalist (and former line cook) Jonathan Kauffman digs deep into funky food history in his new book, Hippie Food, shedding light on the cultural revolutionaries who shaped a more idealistic and communal way of life and food in the United States. Food is deeply woven into our cultural history. Join Kauffman as he shares a chapter from hippie food history, including stories about cults, the Summer of Love, and a coast-to-coast journey of culture and cuisine. Before the program, enjoy juices and plant-based snacks from in-kind sponsor Urban Remedy.

In Troublemakers, historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor, as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, Ask and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. In the space of only seven years and 35 miles, five major industries—personal computing, video games, biotechnology, modern venture capital and advanced semiconductor logic—were born. In addition to well-known innovators such as Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Don Valentine, Berlin’s book features Mike Markkula, former Apple chairman; Bob Taylor, who kick-started the ARPANET and masterminded the personal computer; Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public; Al Alcorn, the engineer behind the first wildly successful video game; Fawn Alvarez, who rose from an assembler on a factory line to the executive suite; and Niels Reimers, who changed how university innovations reach the public. These troublemakers rewrote the rules and invented the future. MLF Organizer Name Gerald Harris Notes MLF: Science and Technology

The so-called hockey stick papers, published in 1999, ignited an assault on the science of climate change that still rages to this day. But lead author Michael Mann hasn’t backed off on his mission to educate the public on the science of global warming. Mann was awarded the seventh annual Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication, by Climate One. Jonathan Foley, Executive Director, California Academy of Sciences Dr. Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Penn State University This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, CA on January 16, 2018.

What should climate-conscious people do to eat most sustainably? How people approach their diet is deeply personal and can be extremely controversial. Roughly 1 in 9 people in the world are undernourished. Addressing hunger while making the food chain more sustainable is critical for addressing climate change. Are GMOs the answer to food shortages, or do they jeopardize our crops with destructive cycles of pesticide resistance? Is our appetite for animal protein unsustainable, is worldwide veganism possible? Greg asks farmers, scientists and others what’s best for climate and our health.

A.J. Baime takes on the dramatic story of Harry Truman’s first four months in office, when, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, the small-town farmer and haberdasher stepped into FDR's shoes to take on Germany, Japan and Stalin. Heroes are often defined as ordinary characters who get thrust into extraordinary circumstances and, through courage and a dash of luck, cement their place in history. When Truman was chosen as vice president for his well-praised work ethic, good judgment and lack of enemies, he was still an obscure Missouri politician. But during the founding of the United Nations, the Potsdam Conference, the Manhattan Project, the Nazi surrender, the liberation of concentration camps and the decision to drop the atomic bomb to end World War II, Truman had to play both judge and jury. Tightly focused and meticulously researched using previously unavailable papers, The Accidental President escorts readers into the president's situation room during these tumultuous 120 days. MLF Organizer Name George Hammond Notes MLF: Humanities This event was recorded in-front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on January 23rd, 2018.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Stephen Kotkin continues his definitive biography of Stalin with a second volume, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941, which covers collectivization and the Great Terror until the eve of the war with Hitler's Germany. Once Stalin had achieved dictatorial power over the Soviet empire, he began transforming Russia's vast peasant economy into a modern socialist one, using the most relentless campaign of shock industrialization the world had ever seen. This is the story of five-year plans, new factory towns and the integration of a huge system of penal labor into the larger economy. With the Great Depression throwing global capitalism into crisis, the New Soviet man looked like the man of the future. But as the shadows of the 1930s deepened, Stalin's urgent transformations challenged the ambitions of Nazi Germany, and Hitler declared that communism was simply a global Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy to bring the Slavic race to power. Stalin's paranoia wreaked havoc on Soviet life and severely weakened its military leadership, diplomatic corps and intelligence apparatus. His 1939 pact with Hitler left the Soviet Union further unprepared for World War II. Still, in just 12 years of power, Stalin had taken his country from a peasant economy to a formidable modern war machine. This eventually proved crucial in stopping Hitler from achieving his goals.