Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

About Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast — the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 — is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week.

Publisher

Commonwealth Club of California

Category

government · news

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Feb 2019

Latest episode

21 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

3 of 2,475 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   21 Sept 2026

   YT’s Carlos Lozada: America Has Become a “Dangerous Nation”

   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 nurturing alliances to wrecking them.”Lozada argues that Pax Americana has given way to “Lax Americana”—a superpower that still expects the benefits of global leadership while shedding the obligations that once came with it. Before joining The New York Times in 2022, Lozada served as The Washington Post’s nonfiction book critic, Outlook editor, national security editor and economics editor. Previously, he was the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. He’s the author of What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era and The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians. He joins us for a timely conversation about America’s changing role in the world and what it means for democracy at home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2. 

   20 Sept 2026

   Jon Else: The Rise and Fall of Atomic Bombs

   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 consequences of their testing, and fought for and against arms control between the 1940s and 1990s. The throughline of this vast, complex story is a 37-kiloton atomic bomb dubbed “Priscilla” that was exploded above a custom-built mini-civilization at Frenchman Flat, Nevada, in 1957. Jon Else uses Priscilla and the bombs that preceded and followed to highlight the terrifying ways we have considered to blow ourselves to bits with nuclear weapons, how near and often we came to self-annihilation, how we managed to avoid it, and what we did to the planet and to our own bodies in the process, from wartime Los Alamos to the suspension of U.S. and Soviet nuclear testing in 1992. In the two decades after Hiroshima, a pair of dramatic stories unfolded alongside each other: the scramble to produce ever more powerful nuclear weapons, and the struggle to ban testing of those same weapons. The dramatic narrative takes in the physics of the megaton postwar bombs, the role of private industry, the near misses of the Cuban Missile Crisis and less well-known events, and the testimony of scientists, politicians, doctors, weapons developers, test-site workers, ranchers and families downwind of test sites. Else reminds us how we have―so far―prevented nuclear war by deterrence, diplomacy and luck. It is for the moment a success story—and a warning. This content has EXPLICIT langauge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3. 

   19 Sept 2026

   Sarah Longwell: How to Eat An Elephant

   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 playbook for building a coalition big enough, bold enough, and tough enough to defeat authoritarian populism for good. Not with a single election. Not by doing another poll or debating the benefits of being more progressive or more moderate, but by building something new: A modern pro-democracy movement that can create its own communications infrastructure―just like the right has done for decades―achieve narrative dominance, elevate more compelling leaders, and talk to voters like adults. Drawing on her own unlikely political journey from a lesbian Republican operative to the vanguard of the anti-MAGA movement, Longwell makes an argument that is equal parts war manual and pep talk―with her personal and professional story woven throughout. With her trademark bluntness and humor, she explains exactly how we got here and, more important, what we must build next―all while directly quoting the most important but overlooked people in the country: the voters themselves. Join us as she answers the question: How do you eat an elephant? One voter at a time, she says. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inside a recent episode

Celebrating 50 Years of Ms. Magazine

Published 29 Nov 2023 · Transcript excerpt

[…] And unfortunately, that still exists to this day. And don't even get me started on politics. Well, it's interesting you would say sexual harassment. Ms. actually helped Educate the country about sexual harassment putting it on the cover of the magazine in 1977 77 40 years before The me too movement and it was a good 20 years before some of the first groundbreaking legal cases defining sexual harassment and the editors at the time said that they had to use a those clay doll figures, you know, those clay figures for people to illustrate what sexual harassment was because the newsstands warned against putting a real woman on the cover for that. […]

Who has been a guest on Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah
• Born I
• Vishal Prasad
• Julia Olson
• Rylee Brooke Kamahele

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

37,464,246

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.0 / 5

4 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 70 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

90

Social presence

0

YouTube

93

Engagement

31

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting pitches.

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