Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

mkirchner@commonwealthclub.org

For verified host and producer emails, sign up to view.

Andrew Weissmann: Liars Kingdom

June 13, 2026

“The 2020 election was a total FRAUD!”  “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”  “There is NO WAY Biden got 80,000,000 votes!!!”  These and other statements by Donald Trump sparked a historic insurrection that attempted to topple our democracy and undermined the public’s faith in elections. MS NOW legal analyst and veteran federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann says they are part of the scourge of political lies in America, and in his new book Liar...

CLIMATE ONE: Medium Rare: What’s Next For Meat?

June 12, 2026

Industrial agriculture accounts for a significant share of global emissions, but meat alternatives face real hurdles in becoming a mainstay of consumer diets. The hype around plant-based meat has cooled: hurt by price gaps, ultra-processed rhetoric, and culture-war politics around masculinity and food identity. Yet feeding a growing planet will require eating less beef, wasting less food, and producing more food with less land. Cultivated meat – made from animal cells and grown in a lab –  co...

Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic

June 09, 2026

Nowhere is the dual threat of climate change and geopolitical competition felt more strongly than in the Arctic. Sea ice is declining rapidly, wildfires are burning, and permafrost is thawing. At the same time, global interest is growing rapidly as the region transforms from being a frozen desert into an international waterway. Mia Bennett, a geography professor at the University of Washington and the co-author, with Klaus Dodds, of the new book Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arct...