The Commonwealth December 2016 / January 2017

THE MAGAZINE OF THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA

DEC 2016/JAN 2017

SIR ROGER PENROSE

page 35

ALAN CUMMING page 41

GLORIA DUFFY page 46

$5.00; free for members | commonwealthclub.org

MOROCCAN DISCOVERY R A B AT • F E Z • E R F O U D • O U A R Z A Z AT E • M A R R A K E C H • C A S A B L A N C A

M AY 1 2 - 2 5 , 2 0 1 7

Visit the imperial cities of Rabat, Meknes, Fez and Marrakech • Discover the ancient Roman ruins and exceptional mosaics of Volubilis • Enjoy a private Arabic music concert and the medieval medina (market) in Fez • Travel the scenic “Route of a Thousand Kasbahs” • Take a sunset excursion in the Sahara and a camel ride on the dunes • Witness dramatic Todra Gorges and the spectacular Atlas Mountains • Visit with a local Imam and take an optional cooking class • Experience Marrakech’s medina and Djemaa el Fna Square • Explore storied Casablanca and Hassan II mosque.

Cost: $5,879 per person, double occupancy, including air from SFO, and air taxes and fees 9-40

CST: 209688

Brochure at commonwealthclub.org/travel

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415.597.6720

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travel@commonwealthclub.org

Inside T H E CO M M O N W E A LT H D E C E M B E R 2016 - J A N UA R Y 2017

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EDITOR’S DESK

In which we arrive at a new appreciation of time, on this planet and maybe on others.

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THE COMMONS

Can you bear to dress up at the Club? Plus a roundup of the Club in the news.

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ONWARD TO MARS With Pascal Lee, Andy Weir, and Mary Roach

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SIR ROGER PENROSE Need-to-Know Science A leading theoretical physicist discusses the passion for fashion among today’s scientists.

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END-OF-LIFE CHALLENGES

U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier and Rebecca Sudore talk about timing and planning for the end of life.

INSIGHT

Three red-planet experts explain the why and the how about getting to Mars.

Dr. Gloria C. Duffy President and CEO

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EVENTS Program Information 19

THE CITY IN THE BAY

Rising sea levels are a littleappreciated threat to San Francisco.

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CHINA’S ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN AND THE UNITED STATES

China’s economy is changing; it will have effects on the rest of the world.

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Photo by Ed Ritger

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ACTIVIST, ACTOR, AUTHOR ALAN CUMMING In conversation with Cleve Jones Cumming and Jones discuss what Liza Minnelli watches on TV, what made Elizabeth Taylor stop talking, and more.

On the Cover

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have both pledged an American mission to Mars. This issue, we feature a lively discussion on how to get there, featuring Martian chroniclers Pascal Lee, Mary Roach, and Andy Weir.

Photo by NASA Above: An artist’s concept portrays a NASA Mars Exploration Rover on the surface of Mars.

Language Classes 19 Two Month Calendar 20 Program Listings 22

President Obama ... made clear that it wasn’t for NASA to go to Mars alone. He saw a public-private partnership.

PA S C A L L E E

V O LU M E 111, NO. 01

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EDITORIAL TRANSCRIPT POLICY The Commonwealth magazine covers a range of programs in each issue. Program transcripts and question and answer sessions are routinely condensed due to space limitations. Hear full-length recordings online at commonwealthclub.org/media, podcasts on Google Play and Apple iTunes, or contact Club offices to buy a compact disc.

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Copyright © 2016 The Commonwealth Club of California.

Photo by Adam Jones Adam63

Time After Time

S

OME OF YOU probably noticed on the cover of our last issue that we had the wrong date. Instead of October/ November 2016, it said Feb/ Mar 2016.

I am reminded of a friend of mine who published, back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, a small science and science fiction magazine called Future Life.

But the cover of the February 1981 issue was labeled as the February 1980 issue. In a later edition the editors noted the mistake, quipping “It just goes to show that occasionally we take a look into the past as well as the future.“ I’ll spare you the snarky responses about our magazine going time traveling. Our cover error was a mistake—mine, in fact— and I’m embarrassed by it. But be assured that the rest of that issue is full of timely and interesting things; if you didn’t check it out—or if you recycled the issue thinking it was an old one—you can read it all online at issuu.com/thecommonwealth/docs/ the_commonwealth_oct_nov_2016. speaking of the future, this issue we go to Mars. More accurately, we hear from three fascinating individuals who have been involved in educating and inspiring people about the red planet and urging us to get there. Pascal Lee (co-founder of the Mars Institute, author of Mission: Mars, and a

scientist working with SETI Institute and NASA), Andy Weir (author of the bestselling book The Martian, which was made into a blockbuster motion picture starring Matt Damon), and Mary Roach (author of Packing for Mars) tell us why they think it’s important to set foot on another planet and they discuss some of the ideas about how it can be done—and by whom.

Not interested in moving to Mars? Then we’ve also got a sobering look at rising sea levels and what it could mean to the city very much by the bay, San Francisco. Also on the science beat is legendary theoretical physicist Roger Penrose, who told a sold-out Commonwealth Club audience the things he thinks we all need to know about physics.

In the non-science world, we have a panel looking at economic slowdown in China and what it means for the United States, whose economy is so intertwined with China’s. U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier and Dr. Rebecca Sudore talk about end-of-life challenges and approaches; and actor/ activist/author Alan Cumming speaks with LGBT activist Cleve Jones about politics and some big stars.

All of that’s right here in our big June/ July issue. I mean, our December/January issue. I’ll get it right some day.

JOHN ZIPPERER V P, M E D I A & E D I TO R I A L

D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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The Commons

TA L K O F T H E C LU B

Club in the news

CLUB LEADERSHIP

What happens here doesn’t stay here “‘Half a century ago, [the wine industry in California] was struggling to get by, but the Paris tasting of 1976 changed that forever,’ said Gloria Duffy, president and CEO of the Commonwealth Club of California, which is hosting a 40th anniversary celebration of the Judgment of Paris in Woodside, Calif.... Attendees will have the rare chance to taste wines from most of the California wineries included in the Judgment of Paris.”

—Rhonda Abrams, USA Today “On the Castro Theatre stage for a recent Commonwealth Club event celebrating the publication of his new book, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures, the Scottish actor [Alan Cumming] found himself momentarily tongue-tied when moderator Cleve Jones asked him to read aloud a particularly racy chapter.... ‘Ooh, I can’t believe you asked me to do this with my mother-in-law here,’ said a suddenly bashful Cumming.”

—Jessica Zack, SFGate.com “The ... confusion from consumers was demonstrated at a recent panel on driverless cars, when speakers at the Commonwealth Club of California were asked whether people should wait before buying a new car, as they tried to get a sense of how close self driving cars are to reality. ‘We have to think about the fact that the laws are not going to move that quickly,’ said Linsey Willis, a spokeswoman for the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, home of Concord, California’s GoMentum Station, the largest secure self-driving test center in the U.S. ‘If you are not able to take advantage of a shared network, my advice is to buy a new car.”

—MarketWatch

Introducing Shelley Wood We are extending a big welcome to Shelley Wood, CFRE, the Club’s new vice president of membership and marketing. She hails from England originally and served for a number of years as director of membership at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. More about Shelley soon!

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THE COMMO N WE AL TH

Photo by Ed Ritger

The Great Outdoors Indoors Sometimes it’s hard to find the right thing to wear to a Club event

When Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard came to speak to The Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley, tickets quickly sold out. Come the night of the event, one attendee found a way to stand out in the crowded room—she wore a full brown bear’s costume.

Viral media Club at the click of a mouse Millions of people have viewed Commonwealth Club videos on YouTube. Some recent videos that have proven to be quite popular include theoretical physicist Sir Roger Penrose (see page 39), chef Ayesha Curry, Professor Robert Reich, Wired founder Kevin Kelly, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi, journalist Anja Manuel, and author Emma Cline.

On the audio side, we have more than 2.5 million downloads of our podcasts each year, with many new programs sent out each week. But some recent programs have proved more popular than most, including a panel on climate disruption of urban areas (“Future Cities”), Tara Smith discussing judicial review and legal objectivity, A Climate One program on “Is California Entering a Megadrought?’,journalist Bill Hayton on the South China Sea, and—again—Robert Reich.

All of our videos can be found at youtube.com/ commonwealthclub and get our podcasts by searching for “Commonwealth Club” in the iTunes Store and on Google Play.

CLUB OFFICERS Board Chair: John R. Farmer Vice Chair: Richard A. Rubin Secretary: Frank C. Meerkamp Treasurer: Lee J. Dutra President & CEO: Dr. Gloria C. Duffy BOARD OF GOVERNORS John F. Allen Carlo Almendral Courtland Alves Dan Ashley Massey J. Bambara Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman** Harry E. Blount John L. Boland J. Dennis Bonney* Michael R. Bracco Thomas H. Burkhart Maryles Casto** Hon. Ming Chin* Mary B. Cranston** Susie Cranston Dr. Kerry P. Curtis Dr. Jaleh Daie Dorian Daley Evelyn S. Dilsaver Joseph I. Epstein* Jeffrey A. Farber Dr. Joseph R. Fink* Rev. Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J. Dr. Carol A. Fleming Kirsten Garen Leslie Saul Garvin John Geschke Paul M. Ginsburg Rose Guilbault** Hon. James C. Hormel Mary Huss Claude B. Hutchison Jr.* Julie Kane John Leckrone Dr. Mary Marcy Lenny Mendonca Anna W. M. Mok** Kevin P. O’Brien Richard Otter* Joseph Perrelli* Donald J. Pierce Bruce Raabe Frederick W. Reid Toni Rembe* Victor J. Revenko* Skip Rhodes* Bill Ring Renée Rubin* Robert Saldich** George M. Scalise Lata Krishnan Shah Connie Shapiro* Dr. Ruth A. Shapiro Charlotte Mailliard Shultz George D. Smith, Jr. James Strother Hon. Tad Taube Hon. Ellen O’Kane Tauscher Charles Travers Nelson Weller* Judith Wilbur* Dr. Colleen B. Wilcox Dennis Wu* Jed York * Past President ** Past Chair ADVISORY BOARD Karin Helene Bauer Hon. William Bradley Dennise M. Carter Rolando Esteverena Steven Falk Amy Gershoni Dr. Charles Geschke Jacquelyn Hadley Heather M. Kitchen Amy McCombs Don J. McGrath Hon. William J. Perry Hon. Barbara Pivnicka Hon. Richard Pivnicka Ray Taliaferro Nancy Thompson

THE BIG PICTURE

Marisa Lev ine, director of Inforum, holds up a reminder sign for moderator Cleve Jones and speaker Alan Cumming from the front row of the Castro Theatre auditorium. Inforum ends all of its programs by asking its speakers to take 60 seconds to explain an idea for improving the world. (For more on Cumming and Jones, see page 41.)

Photo by Ed Ritger

D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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THE COMMO N WE AL TH

Three Martian chroniclers discuss how to get humans to Mars. Maybe even return them (though it’s strongly discouraged).

Dr. Pascal Lee, co-founder of the Mars Institute, planetary scientist at SETI Institute, principal investigator of the Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center, and author of Mission: Mars; and Andy Weir, suthor of The Martian, in conversation with Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars. From the October 19, 2016, program “Exploring Mars with Pascal Lee, Andy Weir and Mary Roach” in Silicon Valley. Produced in association with WonderFest.

MARY ROACH: There’s been a lot of talk about missions to Mars these days.

Recently Elon Musk announced his plan for the Interplanetary Transport System that’s going to be shuttling [people to Mars]; we’re going to colonize Mars and fairly rapidly, certainly by NASA standards. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about that vision and kind of reality-check it ANDY WEIR: I’m a big fan of SpaceX [Musk’s space venture firm]. I love the way they do things. I love their “fail fast” ideology, which sounds kind of weird, but their plan is take larger risks so that we can reduce costs to the point that we on average get more done. Which is fine as long as you don’t have people on the ship. [Laughter.]

Being who I am, I double-checked all the math on the plan for getting to Mars, and it all checks out. It’s kind of inelegant; it’s basically: We’re gonna take a really big rocket and put a ridiculous amount of fuel in it and go to Mars really fast. And then we’re gonna aerobrake at Mars and land this big old rocket on the surface.

Some back-of-the-napkin math shows me that they could have used considerably less fuel and put the ship in orbit instead. They’re presuming they’re gonna have near perfect reusability technology. I say instead, make your reusability technology such that your Mars ascend vehicles can refuel the craft in orbit bit by bit.

So I’m not thrilled with that. Also, I think the budget estimates of the thing are wildly optimistic. He estimates that he can build the BFR, as it’s called. [Laughter.]

It stands for Big Falcon Rocket. [Laughter.] That’s their story and they’re sticking to it. Or he’s saying he can build this spacecraft for $200 million, a reusable long-range spacecraft. Now, the idea is that the space industry is not currently market-balanced,

D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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Top to bottom: Dr. Pascal Lee, Mary Roach, and Andy Weir

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and that more competition in it will drive prices down of all the components and make this feasible. But I would point out that the airline industry is market-balanced, and a Boeing 777 costs $320 million.

So I don’t think you can make a long-range reusable spacecraft for less money than it takes to make a long-range reusable aircraft.

ROACH: Mm-hm, yeah.

WEIR: Also, the schedule estimates are pretty optimistic.

They say they can launch a test flight in 2020, which is four years away. We’ve been waiting since 2014 for them to launch a Falcon Heavy [space launch vehicle by SpaceX].

At no point did they ever mention who’s gonna pay for it.

ROACH: Yeah, a little bit of a challenge.

PASCAL LEE: Yes, good points. I tend to have mixed feelings about Elon’s plan, as well. There’s a side of me that’s completely on board. I want to see humans go to Mars. I think the time has come. I think Elon has really pushed the envelope on what we can do with rocketry and really given humanity a new prospect of seeing all this happen in our lifetime.

So there’s a lot of optimism and positive thinking that has me completely onboard when I hear Elon’s plan. But the other side of me that’s more pragmatic is a side that realizes that Mars is a very hostile place and it’s a very difficult place to get to. When I heard Elon’s presentation, I was expecting something a lot more realistic from my perspective—in other words, bridging the gap between where we are now and how we’re going to ramp up to eventually down the road get to what he’s proposing to do. So I tend to view what he presented more as a vision than as a plan.

A plan would be something where—what’s the next step? Building a big rocket is not the only thing; that’s what SpaceX will do. The idea is to send 100 people at a time to Mars on this giant, super giant rocket.

ROACH: And they would stay there as— LEE: They’d have the option to come back.

ROACH: They’d have the option to come back.

LEE: They’d have the option, but it’d be frowned upon.

[Laughter.] “That was fun. I’m going home, bu—” ROACH: You have to have a note from your doctor.

LEE: But the idea is to set up shop on Mars. I’m reminded of something that Arthur C Clark said. Which is: every time you have a new idea, there are four stages to people’s reaction to it. Stage number one is, “No it’s not possible; it’s not worth doing.” And I don’t want to be in that stage myself right now toward Elon’s idea. Stage two is, “Okay, it’s possible, but it’s still not worth doing.” Stage three: as time goes by and things are happening, people’s reactions become, “Yeah, it’s possible. I always knew it.” [Laughter.]

And stage four is, “That was my idea.” [Laughter.]

So I don’t want to say that what Elon’s proposing is not real. I just want to say that I’m thirsty for details about how we’re going to go from here to there. There’s a lot of details that need to be worked out.

ROACH: One of the things that he was saying is, because

you’re going to have these much more powerful rocket engines, going a lot faster than has been previously achieved, it sounded like there’s a lot of acceleration. How’s that going to work?

LEE: He’s not using a standard Hohmann transfer [an elliptical route used to move between two orbits], which is one of the most economical ways to travel. He’s essentially assuming there’s plenty of fuel to sort of cut across this whole system in some sense and get there in 80 days.

WEIR: It’s wildly inefficient. The idea that— ROACH: How many days did you say?

LEE: Eighty days, 80 to 90. It’s not impossible, like you said. It’s just not efficient.

ROACH: As opposed to 500 or whatever.

WEIR: Well, 254. [Laughter.]

ROACH: As opposed to a lot more.

LEE: I think they designed it from the ground up to minimize the time that the passengers spend in space, exposed to radiation, because they’re not really doing anything to protect them from it. So on a Hohmann transfer, you spend considerably longer, but man, it takes a lot more fuel to do what they’re doing.

ROACH: He was talking about [how] you would get the rocket up and you would fuel it once you launched the thing. So at least you wouldn’t have to launch all the fuel.

WEIR: Well, you do have to launch all the fuel.

ROACH: But separately.

WEIR: Yeah, but you still need to get all that mass up there. There’s no cheating that system. Physics is a really good accountant.

ROACH: Like little batches at a time.

WEIR: You’ve still got to launch the little batches. It’s like, if you want to put all these rocks on a shelf, you can put them up five at a time. Or one at a time. But you’re still putting all the rocks up on a shelf.

LEE: Yeah, so you leave the Earth with the outbound fuel, but you count on a fuel plant on Mars to refuel. The fuel system that you’re using in Elon’s plan is methane and oxygen. It’s not an optimal choice for propellant, except that in the case of Mars you can actually manufacture methane and oxygen out of existing resources and CO2 from the atmosphere. Plus H2O in the ground of Mars can then be converted by a process called the Sabatier process, and turn that into methane and oxygen, and with that you have the rocket fuel that you need to fly back.

WEIR: And that’s extant technology, too, the Morpheus project. Nothing to do with The Matrix. The Morpheus project at NASA showed that they could sustain and control a methane oxygen offload.

LEE: But you have to nurture that system. People who are going there will rely on that fuel to have the option of coming back. The ship will need that fuel to come back, so we have yet to produce methane and oxygen on another planet.

WEIR: But the Mars 2020 probe will have the Moxy experiment, which does just that. It’s going to collect CO2

and—I don’t know, does it have the hydrogen built in or does it collect it from the environment some how?

LEE: It’s collected from the environment.

WEIR: Nice, and it’ll do the Sabatier reaction just to test to see if they can.

ROACH: So given all that you guys know, and you clearly know a lot, assuming we get sort of a global funding— commercial and government and international—and everybody’s behind it and we have the money to do it: What’s the timeline like?

LEE: So here’s what was interesting. Elon presented this program at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara in Mexico a few weeks ago. That was a long-awaited presentation. Meanwhile, the schedule that he is presenting for the mission tomorrow is really aggressive.

I mean, we would be launching for the first attempt to go to Mars that big rocket in 2024.

Bearing in mind that this mission that Andy just talked

What an astronaut at Mars provides you with is a human brain on-site. They can control rovers effectively in real time. about to manufacture for the first time on a trial basis fuel from Martian resources is flying only in 2020. Okay, so there’s a lot that has to happen there. But Elon’s announcement and then on the other side [there was] the president’s oped on CNN.com. President Obama had one major space speech, which took place in 2010, early in his administration. And the schedule was given at the time and NASA has been running on that schedule pretty much ever since.

The schedule goes this way. We’re going to go into deep space in the short term. In fact, take advantage of the fact that we can access some near-Earth asteroids as a target for our early missions into deep space. Then by the mid-2030s, we have humans in Mars orbit. Not on Mars itself yet, but in orbit around Mars and I personally think that’s a very good approach, because Mars orbit has Mars’ two little moons. They’re very exciting to explore on themselves.

WEIR: Just if I can interject. Another awesome thing about Mars orbit is that during the days of Apollo, really the only way to get a good look at what’s going on on the surface of a planet was to have an astronaut on the surface.

But now, we have really, really good rovers that can do that for you. Unfortunately, the transmission time to Mars from Earth makes it really a pain ... to control those rotors.

So what an astronaut at Mars provides you with is a human brain on-site. If you have astronauts in orbit around Mars, they can control rovers effectively in real time. And that’s D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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Put this on your itinerary? Valles Marineris is a huge canyon system running along Mars’ equator. It is 4,500 kilometers long, 200 kilometers wide and 11 kilometers deep, making it 10 times longer, seven times wider and seven times deeper than the Grand Canyon.

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almost as good as having someone on the ground.

LEE: But anyway, Mars orbit and then humans on Mars, at the surface of Mars, by the mid-2040s. Okay, so we’re still on schedule when it comes to that.

We need several elements in the NASA plan, because NASA’s following this president-mandated plan. The giant rocket to get there, first flight in 2018 at this point, late 2018, so about two years from now. In fact, if you don’t have something better to do in 2018, you should all go to the Cape together and watch the launch of the most powerful rocket ever launched. It’s called the SLS, Space Launch System. Hopefully by then, we’ll have a more attractive name. It should be spectacular. If it works, it will be spectacular; if it doesn’t, it will be spectacular.

WEIR: Even more so. [Laughter.]

LEE: So that’s 2018. Now, in the mid-2020s, we’re doing the asteroid thing, and there are different options that are being considered even now by NASA. But one of them is to get a piece of an asteroid by a little robotic probe back to the Earth-moon system, and then have astronauts visit that boulder.

WEIR: Is that particularly exciting for you because your doctorate, your specialty, is asteroids?

LEE: I see the benefit as being relatively limited. Now, on the other hand, I personally would be [interested], and I think there would actually be public interest in this, if we clearly make Mars, in everybody’s mind, the destination of our new space program, then having milestones toward it to keep the public interested and just to have relatable milestones along the way.

We don’t need to make those milestones necessarily tied to a body. We’ve been to the moon, we’ve walked on the surface of the moon. How about the next milestone in going on toward Mars be “Let’s get humans to a million miles from Earth.” The million kilometer mission, and then we can do the 10 million kilometer mission. Those would be super-exciting, because they would actually test

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what we really need to be testing, the reliability of systems in deep space.

So anyway, going back to the schedule: mid-2040s for humans on Mars, that’s the NASA plan. And I personally feel that’s more realistic given all the homework that needs to be done.

What was interesting about President Obama’s recent op-ed is it was made clear that it wasn’t for NASA, or even the United States, to go to Mars alone. But he saw a public-private partnership in that. I think he was thinking NASA working with SpaceX. ROACH: Right, right.

LEE: Well, and other companies.

WEIR: Yeah, SpaceX is the most well-known private space site, but Boeing has their stuff going on a big load.

ROACH: Blue Origin.

WEIR: Okay, so Blue Origin is cool because they’re working on technology. Any advance in rocketry and space technology is good, but I think they’re really pushing the definition of “We’re putting you in space.” I mean, there’s a huge difference between going up past the Von Karmen line and actually going into orbit. It’s not that hard to get up into space; what’s hard is to stay there. You have to get going 7,800 meters per second. And just going straight up and then falling back down, it’s not hard. That’s the reason Blue Origin rockets are so small; it just doesn’t take that much fuel, and it’s not nearly as big of a challenge.

So, I think it’s interesting that [Blue Origin owner Jeff] Bezos is going for a different approach. He’s going for what can we do that has commercial applicability right now.

And what it is, is if you go on one of those Blue Origin rockets, you get four solid minutes of zero-g, while you’re coming back down.

ROACH: Whatever happened to Virgin Galactic? Wasn’t that the same, weren’t they— WEIR: So, Virgin Galactic, don’t get me started. [Laughter.] Virgin Galactic is, basically, you fly in a plane really,

really high.

ROACH: Yeah.

WEIR: Now, here’s a little tip: If you can still do aerodynamic flight, you’re not in space, okay? The flight ceiling for Virgin Galactic is 80,000 feet. It’s really high, you go really high, but that’s lower than the cruising altitude of an SR-71.

ROACH: Okay, so it’s like a really, really, really expensive simulated zero-g flight where they go like— WEIR: I don’t know if you get too much zero-g, you just go really, really high. What you can do, though, is you are high enough that you can see the horizon, the curvature of Earth, and it’d be a really cool experience.

I am a stickler. I say you’re not in space unless you’re actually in space. [Laughter.]

ROACH: I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the risks of long-term existence on Mars, particularly radiation.

That’s the thing that comes up over and over again—cosmic radiation, solar radiation. If you shield the craft, that’s something heavy you need to launch, so what’s the best approach, particularly for a colony on Mars, long-term.

LEE: If everything is going well on a mission to Mars, the biggest danger that lurks during transit to Mars and back is space radiation. And that’s assuming other life support systems are covered, like you have air to breathe.

WEIR: Mainly, it’s because of the super powers that the crew ends up getting, and how they abuse those powers.

[Laughter.]

LEE: Space radiation, yeah, sure. So here’s what I like about the space radiation issue— WEIR: Super powers.

LEE: You have space radiation from really two sources.

You’ve got the sort of run-of-the-mill background space radiation that you’re getting from the rest of the galaxy— from stars, black holes, pulsars. They are shedding galactic cosmic rays, so that’s one form of radiation that’s very hard to shield against.

But the good news about that is that there are very few hits over time; they’re sort of few and far between. The other form of radiation is solar radiation, specifically radiation that comes in the form of charged particles that are emitted from the sun during solar eruptions, coronal mass ejections.

So big nasty storms on the sun will send out a wave of high-energy particles. Those are really nasty. Now, the good news about those is that you can shield yourself against them. One of the most efficient ways to shield yourself against that form of radiation—in fact, the galactic cosmic rays, as well—is to have hydrogen between you and the incoming radiation. So this is why if you’re going on a trip to Mars, you should line the walls of your spacecraft, or the habitat in which you live, with things that contain hydrogen, and ideally that’s food and water.

Water contains hydrogen, it’s H2O. Food has plenty of hydrogen—carbohydrates.

So you’re surrounded by food and water. Now, the good

One of the most efficient ways to shield against that radiation is to have hydrogen between you and the incoming radiation. news with that is you drink the water, and then you have to go to the bathroom. It turns into urine. Urine, however, is recyclable. You’re not going to take a year’s worth of fresh water for a crew of seven; that’s way too much water. So you would take only so much water, then you will plan on recycling it into your mission. A few weeks into your mission, you’re already drinking each other’s recycled urine and sweat.

We already do this on the space station, by the way, and D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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it’s working fine. That’s the good news; the bad news is with the food. The food—you eat the food, you go to the bathroom, but you cannot recycle [solid waste]. [Laughter.]

Okay, NASA is not even trying; if you write a proposal to NASA saying “I have a solution to recycling food,” you’re not going to get funded, because a lot of work has gone into this and we know that it’s super difficult.

What you want is a ziplock bag, emphasis on lock.

[Laughter.] The bag goes back on the wall where you took the food in the first place to patch the radiation hole. So I recommend very thorough labeling. [Laughter.]

WEIR: Just a little more fun science, fun as defined by me: science on radiation. So GCR is galactic cosmic rays, which are very badly named, because they’re not cosmic rays, they’re particles, so they’re charged particles coming in.They come from all directions, because they’re created by stars from all over the galaxy.

As Pascal’s said, solar radiation comes out from the sun, it

The idea of our search for life on Mars is to find a form of microbe on which we could do genetic analysis. emanates from the sun. Now what’s interesting about that is the sun goes through peaks and troughs of how active it is. When the sun is extremely active, it’s spewing out a whole bunch of the solar radiation, but its magnetic field diverts away a lot of the cosmic radiation. So it’s like you will either have a bunch of cosmic radiation or a bunch of solar radiation, but not both. It is helpful that it kinda self-regulates.

Another thing we’re noting is that NASA is a super-cautious organization; they don’t like to take a lot of risk, especially when it comes to human life. But they recently quietly decided that “Eh, the radiation that you get on a trip to Mars is okay.” [Laughter.]

ROACH: I’ve got a good question here: Once we actually get to Mars, what science are you most looking forward to?

LEE: The search for life. The reason why scientifically Mars is so interesting is because we now know that throughout its history, there has been liquid water near the surface of Mars. Now that’s really interesting, because on Earth, all forms of life require liquid water. Everywhere on Earth where there is liquid water that’s clean, there is life in it.

Okay? So there’s a one-to-one connection between liquid water and life on Earth. So NASA’s strategy for looking for life has been to follow the water. To go to Mars, not to look for life directly—because we’re not quite sure what we might look for yet—but to look for water, which is believed to be sort of a universal solvent and something

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that any form of life that’s carbon-based would like to be around. So from my perspective, the search for life is going to be the commanding scientific goal, and it’s not just a search for past life.

Of course, now we’re talking about looking for microfossils in the ancient rocks of Mars. So that’s one possibility.

But the really exciting possibility from my perspective is the search for extant life. Life that is still alive today, that’s martian life. Let me add the key point about the search for life, which is the fact that it’s not just about finding life; it’s about finding alien life, and something that we would be able to determine is really different from Earth life. Something that we could establish scientifically is alien life. All life on Earth uses DNA and the same acid bases to form the DNA molecule. All life on Earth uses the same 21 left-handed amino acids to manufacture proteins. Meanwhile, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of possible amino acids that are chemically viable but will not work for Earth life.

Of course presumably we all therefore come from a common ancestor. It was presumably a microbe of which we have no more record even in a fossil form. So the idea in our search for life on Mars is to find a form of microbe on which we could do genetic analysis. From that, we’d be able to determine whether or not it’s related to life on Earth. If it were related to life on Earth, that won’t tell you much because Earth and Mars are not separate planets. We have meteorites that have come from Mars naturally to the Earth. We have about actually 100 meteorites on Earth that we know 100-percent for-sure have come from Mars.

WEIR: I have one at my house.

LEE: Okay, great. [Laughter.]

WEIR: I really do.

ROACH: Where’d you get that?

WEIR: I bought it. [Laughter.] It’s legal. What? You can buy it.

LEE: Yeah, I have one in my briefcase, too. But anyway— WEIR: It was a street vendor. He assured me.

LEE: But the thing about this is we’re not isolated planets.

Life could have started on Earth and been ejected, because what happens is that an asteroid or comet hits Mars or the Earth and ejects a piece of the planet to the other one.

Okay, so you can imagine life having started on Earth and having been naturally thrown out to Mars. And therefore, what we’re finding on Mars is Earth-like.

But the thing about this is that if we were able to find an alien form of life, something that does not map onto the tree of life on Earth, something that’s really different, that would be a major, major discovery.

WEIR: They would call it a second Genesis.

LEE: Yes, and I worked at the SETI Institute here in Mountain View. The SETI Institute is interested in the search for life in all its possible forms and manifestations in the cosmos. We’re really excited about this possibility of finding extant life on Mars today.

Rising sea levels might not mean much to Denver, but to a city such as San Francisco, it could mean a great deal of expense and dislocation.

Climate One looks at whether we’re ready for the change.

J.K. Dineen, reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle; Lauren Sommer, science and environment reporter for KQED; and Michael Stoll, executive director of San Francisco Public Press, with moderator Greg Dalton, director of Climate One. From the September 13, 2016, Climate One program in San Francisco “Rising Seas: Is San Francisco Ready?” Photos by Ed Ritger.

GREG DALTON: Scientists predicted that by 2050, oceans in northern California will rise another 11 inches, give or take a few. That’s right. Seas will increase more in the next 35 years than they did in the last 100. Like those advertisements for mutual funds say, the past is no guarantee of future performance.

So J.K. Dineen, the Bay Area has a housing crisis, there’s a fair amount of building going on. Where does sea level rise rank in the concern of building housing and addressing a housing problem?

J.K. DINEEN: In a way it’s at the top, but it’s also at the bottom. If you sit through a 10-hour planning commission meeting, there won’t be a single person who mentions sea level rise. It’s historic preservation, it’s affordable housing, it’s shadows, it’s open space. And there’s all these pressing [matters]; I mean, right now the [San Francisco] Board of Supervisors is meeting about an appeal of a 350-unit project in the Mission which will easily go 10 hours, and there will be hundreds of people that will testify. This is the fourth such hearing, and not one person will mention sea level rise.

I think, however, at the same time, sort of in the background of this kind of new-urbanism, infill, and transit-oriented development, and all that sort of thing, is this sense that it’s all about climate change and bringing people close to transportation, and walking, and biking, and all that sort of thing. I think that typically sea level rise is something that has been at most major American newspapers covered by the science

(Left to right) Michael Stoll, Lauren Sommer, and J.K. Dineen talk about the media’s role in discussing climate change.

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reporters. Not so much the real estate reporters. John King did a great series. But it’s sort of very much separate from the daily battles over every little development that comes along, whether it’s on the waterfront or on higher ground.

DALTON: So it’s there for some people, but it doesn’t come up as an average concern during hearings.

Lauren Summer, it’s often downtown [that] gets covered; there’s a bit of a bias toward downtown San Francisco.

When you’re covering this, do you look for downtown San Francisco, or do you think about other areas that might be affected by sea level rise?

LAUREN SOMMER: I think as journalists, we tend to gravitate toward things that are kind of iconic and symbolic. The Ferry Building is sitting right there; obviously, a huge number of people work in the Financial District.

There’s a lot of other places around the bay though that I think have become those places as well. I mean, some people might be familiar with a spot of 101 near Mill Valley that gets flooded on a regular basis now. You can pretty reliably go up there and see them shutting down this big bike trail; and the tech companies are another great example that people kind of see them right on the bay.

So [media] tend to pick those places because it’s something that people can connect to, even if you maybe live across the bay or in the South Bay or something like that.

But it’s getting much easier to find those places than it was maybe, five, seven years ago.

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DALTON: Michael Stoll, you did a deep dive on sea level rise recently, [devoted] a whole issue of the San Francisco Public Press on this. What were some of the headlines that you found in that? What were some of the takeaways from looking at what’s happening now in the city?

MICHAEL STOLL: Generally in the past, journalists have been focused on what has been built so far, the ways that the cities are going to have to deal with existing infrastructure.

We looked forward, and we looked at existing planning documents for new mega-construction that’s happening right now on the bay. We counted up 27 major projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. All told, $21 billion worth of development cost—that doesn’t include the land.

That’s happening now, that’s either been permitted by local government, or is under construction, or has just been completed, like the Facebook campus.

These are places where they’re going to put housing, commercial developments, strip malls, offices, and sports complexes. These are going to be new neighborhoods that have never been inhabited before, and they’re going to be with us for generations.

DALTON: Lauren, Michael mentioned Facebook; we often look to them as leaders in the economy in our region.

Where are they on this issue—if you tried to talk to them about sea level rise—which is, if you look at the maps of inundation [areas], Oracle, Google, they’re all in some shade of blue area that will be swimming sometime soon.

SOMMER: Yeah, I think this summer we had measure AA here in the Bay Area, which in a lot of cases people heard the message that it was to restore wetlands and wildlife habitat, which it definitely was. But sea level rise was part of the case they were making about why people should vote yes on it. So we did see the tech companies kind of right before the election come out and support it. I would not say that they were a huge part of the conversation. It took me months to get them to call me back on this issue. But they’re very much part of it, whether they like it or not.

Facebook has the new campus, the new buildings they built. They say that they’ve built it above the flood plain, which is what they’re saying they’ve done to kind of prepare for sea level rise right there. But the Dumbarton Bridge, the freeway that comes in right there, their employees use that. There’s a lot of places in the Bay Area that are going to have to talk about this. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

DALTON: J.K. Dineen, obviously tech companies if not tech employees are a big part of the downtown market in San Francisco. Is this on their radar at all, or are they like, “Ah, the city is gonna solve it, we’re running our business, we can’t be bothered with something like that”?

DINEEN: I think that the tech companies are tenants, and they just go into whatever space is available. They like large floor plates, they like old buildings. They like brick and mortar, they like tall ceilings. I don’t think that in terms of their presence in downtown San Francisco it’s something

that they’re focused on.

DALTON: Not at all. Lauren, when you do a story on this, do you make the climate connection when you cover king tides or things like that? Because a lot of time extreme weather happens, and journalist weather people are reluctant to make that connection because they’ll get attacked.

“It’s not proven,” etc., So how do you cover that? Did you actually make that climate tie?

SOMMER: At KQED we’ve kind of covered climate change as a regular part of our coverage for a long time, so it’s always been there. But I think there are things like king tides that we try to cover, because it’s kind of reminding the Bay Area about what’s coming. I mean, these past king tides which were over the winter were really interesting, because El Nino was in effect and the warmer water expands, and so you had this added layer of the king tide which has to do with the gravitational alignment of the Earth and the moon. You had El Nino. If you get a big storm or a windy day you’ve got the added level there of the water. So there’s these things that I think help the public understand it’s not just about the water slowly rising. You get these events that can be much more problematic.

DALTON: That’s exactly what superstorm Sandy was—it was a full moon, expanding ocean, high tides, and the New York Stock Exchange closes for three days because it’s flooded. Michael Stoll, you think that there’s something called “climate denial light” in the Bay Area. Tell us about that.

D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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STOLL: In some ways California, Northern California, the Bay Area are an enlightened kind of bubble in terms of acceptance of science. In other ways there’s this sort of strange compartmentalization where our public policies acknowledge the science of climate change and sea level rise in particular, but do basically nothing to shape the shoreline. And that’s in part responsible for or a consequence of—it’s kind of hard to tell—the lack of regulation on private property that’s happening all across the Bay Area.

There are more than 40 cities that touch the Bay in nine counties. None of the counties has a comprehensive plan to rezone the area that’s going to be underwater or the area that’s most likely to be underwater. We don’t know whether it’s 3 feet, 6 feet, 8 feet, 10 feet; there are different ways of calculating it. All of those are being talked about.

Local governments are taking baby steps. By the time San Francisco has a sea level rise plan that actually makes recommendations to do things like put any kind of limits

This is a bay-wide problem. There is definitely a big planning process going on for a regional look for how the bay is going to adapt. on private development, it will be 2018. That will be three years after the city started studying this.

They could be studying it for another 5, 10 years, and meanwhile this massive wave of development that’s happened in the recovery of the economy is going to be a done deal. And you’re going to see a lot of development that we are committing to right now, that is in what is increasingly becoming known as a danger zone. And local governments, and state governments, and regional authorities are just now starting to take tentative steps. But there’s really no political motivation to do so.

DALTON: J.K. Dineen, you cover the property market.

The property developers think in fairly long-term cycles, maybe not as long as decades. Is there any awareness that what they’re doing now—once they sell the building, they’re out of it? They’re on to the next thing, and the owner is kinda, buyer beware?

DINEEN: I think developers follow government plans.

All of the development going on in San Francisco right now is because of neighborhood planning. It’s comprehensive EIR’s [environmental impact reports] that covered whole neighborhoods, and from that grows crops of buildings.

As a reporter I get hundreds of emails about all kinds of things. Almost none about this issue, honestly. I do think that to some extent I’m hearing from the same people that the Board of Supervisors is hearing from. They’re reacting

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to their constituents and the developers are reacting to the politicians, and we’re covering the whole story. Climate change is sort of this overarching cloud over everything, but in terms of the nitty-gritty and how policy gets made and how plans get developed or rejected occasionally, it’s really just kind of like background noise.

DALTON: The people who live in the Four Seasons tower are much more concerned about that new tower in front of them blocking their million-dollar views than any potential sea level rise.

Lauren Sommer, when you think about issues that get the public or even your editor interested, is it temperature records, fires, seas, drought—is sea level rise a hard sell of a story because it’s kind of so on-the-horizon?

SOMMER: It’s one of those gradual climate stories. I cover this regularly.

I’m dealing with this. Almost every climate story I do right. We always say that environment stories don’t break, they ooze. And that makes it hard for us to kind of find the news hooks. I mean once you’ve done the story, wow, this is a huge problem for the bay, what are we building and where are we building it? It is hard to get your editor, six months later, to be interested in the exact same story.

I think the policy developments are kind of very incremental, far in between. I was looking at my old stories from 2011; it was the last big major kind of policy move around the bay to figure out when you make planning decisions, how much do you have to think about climate change? I was like Googling that and I had to go way back to find it.

So it’s a huge challenge, but I think it’s one where we need to think about these things in ways that are not just one development that’s not in your city that’s across the bay that maybe you won’t even read that story. This is a bay-wide problem. Planners are starting to think about it that way. There is definitely a big planning process going on for a regional look for how the bay is going to adapt.

But we’re far from a moment where that’s just a regular story that we can find ways to cover.

DALTON: J.K. Dineen, yes or no: Sea level rise is a buzzkill for people lucky enough to be involved in the hot Bay Area property market?

DINEEN: Yes, definitely.

DALTON: Michael Stoll, the San Francisco Chronicle has done a good job shining a light on the reality of rising seas.

STOLL: No. DALTON: Lauren Summer, news coverage of rising seas will spike when downtown San Francisco starts to experience sunny day flooding.

SOMMER: Probably. Lots of iPhones down there.

DALTON: J.K Dineen, the Golden State Warriors’ new waterfront stadium in San Francisco will one day be an excellent place to play water polo.

DINEEN: It could be, but I just looked up the average age of an NBA arena and they only last like 25 years so. The oldest arena in the country is Oracle, which is 1966.

Programs PROGRAM OVERVIEW

TICKETS

The Commonwealth Club organizes more than 450 events every year—on politics, the arts, media, literature, business and sports. Programs are held throughout the Bay Area.

STANDARD PROGRAMS Typically one hour long, these frequently include panel discussions or speeches on a variety of topics followed by a question and answer session. Many evening programs include a networking reception with wine.

PROGRAM SERIES CLIMATE ONE programs are a conversation about America’s energy, economy and environment. To understand any of them, it helps to understand them all.

GOOD LIT features both established literary luminaries and up-and-coming writers in conversation.

Includes Food Lit. INFORUM is for and by people in their 20s to mid-30s, though events are open to people of all ages.

MEMBER–LED FORUMS (MLF) Volunteer-driven programs focus on particular fields. Most evening programs include a wine networking reception.

FORUM CHAIRS MEMBER-LED FORUMS CHAIR Dr. Carol Fleming carol.fleming@speechtraining.com

Cathy Curtis

ARTS Anne W. Smith asmith@ggu.edu

GROWNUPS

Lynn Curtis lynnwcurtis@comcast.net ASIA–PACIFIC AFFAIRS Cynthia Miyashita cmiyashita@hotmail.com

FOOD MATTERS

LGBT James Westly McGaughey jwes.mcgaughey@me.com

ccurtis873@gmail

MIDDLE EAST Celia Menczel celiamenczel@sbcglobal.net

John Milford Johnwmilford@gmail.com HEALTH & MEDICINE William B. Grant wbgrant@infionline.net

BOOK DISCUSSION Betty Bullock bbullock@yahoo.com

Patty James

BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP Kevin O’Malley kevin@techtalkstudio.com

HUMANITIES

patty@pattyjames.com

George C. Hammond george@pythpress.com

ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES Ann Clark

Norma Walden

cbofcb@sbcglobal.net

norwalden@aol.com

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

PERSONAL GROWTH Eric Siegel eric.siegel@comcast.net PSYCHOLOGY Patrick O’Reilly oreillyphd@hotmail.com SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Gerald Harris Gerald@artofquantumplanning.com

RADIO, VIDEO & PODCASTS Hear Club programs on more than 200 public and commercial radio stations throughout the United States. For the latest schedule, visit commonwealthclub.org/broadcast.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, tune in to: KQED (88.5 FM) Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 a.m.

KRCB Radio (91.1 FM in Rohnert Park) Thursdays at 7 p.m.

KALW (91.7 FM) Inforum programs on select Tuesdays at 7 p.m.

KLIV (1590 AM) Thursdays at 7 p.m.

KSAN (107.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

KNBR (680 and 1050 AM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

KFOG (104.5 and 97.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

TuneIn.com Fridays at 4 p.m.

Beau Fernald bfernald@gmail.com SF DEBATE Deborah Binder dbinder0912@gmail.com

FOREIGN LANGUAGE GROUPS

HARD OF HEARING?

Free for members Contact group leaders below for information

To request an assistive listening device, please e-mail William Blum seven working days before the event at wblum@commonwealthclub.org.

FRENCH, Advanced Conversation Gary Lawrence garylawrence508@gmail.com

Prepayment is required. Unless otherwise indicated, all Commonwealth Club events— including “Members Free” events—require tickets.

Programs often sell out, so we strongly encourage you to purchase tickets in advance. Due to heavy call volume, we urge you to purchase tickets online at commonwealthclub.org; or call (415) 597-6705.

Please note: All ticket sales are final. Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to any program. Select events include premium seating; premium refers to the first several rows of seating. Pricing is subject to change.

Watch Club programs on the California Channel every Saturday at 9 p.m., and on KRCB TV 22 on Comcast. Select Commonwealth Club programs air on Marin TV’s Education Channel (Comcast Channel 30, U-Verse Channel 99) and on CreaTV in San Jose (Channel 30). View hundreds of streaming videos of Club programs at fora.tv and youtube.com/commonwealthclub

GERMAN, Int./Adv. Conversation Sara Shahin sarah_biomexx@yahoo.com SPANISH, Advanced Conversation (fluent only) Luis Salvago-Toledo, lsalvago2@gmail.com

Subscribe to our free podcast service on iTunes and Google Play to automatically receive new programs: commonwealthclub.org/podcast.

D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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DECEMBER

T WO MONTHS CALENDAR

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

1

FRIDAY

SAT/SUN

2

3/4

9

10/11

2 p.m. Russian Hill Walking Tour 6 p.m. Resilience: A Story about Hope and Research 6 p.m. Can We Get Back to Policy, Please?

Cecile Richards December 5

5 6 p.m. I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up FM 6 p.m. Reading Californians Book Disc. FM 7 p.m. The Future of Choice with Cecile Richards 7 p.m. SFDebate FM

6 7 p.m. Thomas Friedman: A Field Guide to the 21st Century

7

8

6 p.m. Mind over Genes: Heredity Is not Destiny — The Science of Epigenetics 6:30 p.m. Ben Franklin Circles FM

2 p.m. Waterfront Walking Tour 6 p.m. Lamentation and the Limits of Philosophy 6:30 p.m. Max Stier: How to Ensure a Smooth Presidential Transition FM

12

13

14

12 p.m. Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn FM 12 p.m. Is Climate Denial Destroying Our Planet? FM 6:30 p.m. Week to Week Political Roundtable and Social Hour 7 p.m. David Grinspoon: Shaping Our Planet’s Future

6:30 p.m. Astronaut Mae Jemison: Launching Women into Science and Tech

6:30 p.m. Dava Sobel: The Women Who Rocked the Cosmos

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19

20

21

27

28

12 p.m. Senator George Mitchell and Alon Sachar: How Tte Next U.S. President Should Handle the Middle East FM

Thomas Friedman December 6

16

17/18

22

23

24/25

29

30

31/1

6:30 p.m. Dr. Naomi Oreskes: The 2016 Stephen Schneider Award

6:30 p.m. Socrates Café FM 7 p.m. SFDebate FM

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Mae Jemison December 13

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www.commonwealthclub.org/events

JANUARY MONDAY

2

TUESDAY

3

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

4

FRIDAY

SAT/SUN

5

6

7/8

12

13

14/15

2 p.m. Nob Hill Walking Tour

9

10

11 7 p.m. Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel: The New Science of Living Younger

6:30 p.m. Week to Week Political Roundtable and Social Hour

Elizabeth Blackburn January 11

16

17 6 p.m. A Neurologist’s Insightful and Compassionate Look into the Misunderstood World of Psychosomatic Disorders

18 12 p.m. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen

19

20

21/22

27

28/29

2 p.m. San Francisco Architecture Walking Tour

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

Janet Yellen January 18

23 6:30 p.m. Socrates Café FM

30

24 7 p.m. Walter Alvarez: A Most Improbable Journey

25 6:30 p.m. Terrorism Expert Brian Fishman: How Can ISIS Be Defeated?

26 5:30 p.m. Arts Forum Planning Meeting FM

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5:30 p.m. Middle East Forum Discussion FE 6:30 p.m. Week to Week Political Roundtable and Social Hour

Walter Alvarez January 24

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

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DECEMBER 1 - 5 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1 1 THURSDAY, DECEMBER

Can We Get Back to Policy, Please?

Russian Hill Walking Tour Join a more active Commonwealth Club neighborhood adventure! Russian Hill is a magical area with secret gardens and amazing views. Join Rick Evans for a “cardio hike” up hills and staircases and learn about the history of this neighborhood. See where great artists and architects lived and worked, and walk down residential streets where some of the most historically significant houses in the Bay Area are located.

Nadine Burke Harris December 1

SF • Location: Meet in front of Swensen’s Ice Cream, 1999 Hyde Street, SF (corner of Hyde & Union) • Getting there: There is absolutely no parking on Russian Hill—no parking lots or street parking. Please take a taxi or public transport (Muni Bus 45). • Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4:30 p.m. walk • Notes: Steep hills and staircases, recommended for good walkers only; tour operates rain or shine; limited to 20 participants; tickets must be purchased in advance and will not be sold at check-in

James Hoggan December 5

Cecile Richards December 5

Resilience: A Story about Hope and Research Nadine Burke Harris, M.D., Founder and CEO, UCSF Center for Youth Wellness Joyce Dorado, Ph.D. UCSF Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools Jane Stevens, Founder, Publisher, ACEs Connection James Redford, Director and Producer, Resilience—Moderator

Resilience is an amazing story of research, understanding and hope for our children’s futures and for ourselves. People hope that every child lives in a safe and healthy environment. Most people know that neglect, abuse and unhealthy environments are damaging to children. The new documentary Resilience is about dedicated people discovering that adverse childhood experiences can lead to poor physical and mental outcomes in childhood and can carry over to life-threatening issues and health risks in adulthood. It explores new discoveries and research about life, health and hope for people at all ages.

For current prices, call 415.597.6705 or go to common wealthclub.org

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SF • Location: 555 Post Street, San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program • MLF: Environmental & Natural Resources, Business & Leadership, Science and Technology • Program organizer: Anne Clark

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Christine Pelosi, Democratic Political Strategist Duf Sundheim, Republican Candidate for U.S. Senate

Can Republicans and Democrats come together after a nasty election to make progress on energy, water, transportation and other climate-related concerns? Those issues were barely a sideshow in the 2016 national election, but climate disruption requires modifying how we run our economy and get around. Is it naive to think elected leaders can bury the hatchet and find common ground in the state legislature or U.S. Congress?

Where are the opportunities for political deals? Join a conversation about licking wounds, moving forward and getting to work on important systems that need fixing.

SF • CLIMATE ONE PROGRAM • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30-p.m. program

MONDAY, DECEMBER 5 5 MONDAY, DECEMBER I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up James Hoggan, President, Hoggan & Associates; Chair of the Board, David Suzuki Foundation; Author, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot

James Hoggan contends that the most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. It is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric and propaganda stifles discussion and creates resistance to change, thwarting our ability to solve our collective problems. In I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, Hoggan grapples with this critical issue, conducting interviews with such notables as Thich Nhat Hanh, Noam Chomsky and the Dalai Lama.

SF • Location: 555 Post Street, San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing • MLF: Humanities • Program organizer: George Hammond

Reading Californians Book Discussion Group Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, by Los Angeles Times reporter Jill Leovy, will be discussed at our next meeting. This is the story of a mostly ignored American murder—a

“ghettoside” killing, one young black man slaying another—and a brilliant and driven cadre of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs. The book has been described by critics as a masterly work of literary journalism and a fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives, a community bonded in tragedy, and a surprising new insight into the great subject of why murder happens in our cities and how the epidemic of killings might yet be stopped.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. check-in, 6 p.m. program • MLF: San Francisco Book Discussion • Program organizer: Betty Bullock

The Future of Choice with Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund

This year, Planned Parenthood marks its 100th year of providing vital health-care services, education and information to women, men and families across America.

While 2.5 million men and women visit Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers annually, the organization faces major opposition and during this historic election year, Planned Parenthood and its supporters have been under scrutiny by politicians and others who want to eliminate the organization’s state and federal funding and shut down its clinics. One side argues that Planned Parenthood’s initiatives should not be bolstered by the government and often have a negative impact, while Planned Parenthood’s supporters assert that without the organization’s services, public health and safety are potentially endangered.

SF • INFORUM PROGRAM • Location: Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco • Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program • Notes: Tickets must be purchased from City Box Office

SFDebate SFDebate is an open forum for discussion on the events of our time. It is a place where you will not only be exposed to opposing points of view, but a safe place where you will be encouraged to find and speak up for yours. SFDebate is also a meeting of

SF: San Francisco SV: Silicon Valley EB: East Bay NB: North Bay

JUNE 21–27, 2017

ITINERARY June 21 LAS VEGAS TO CEDAR BREAKS NATIONAL MONUMENT Arrive independently the previous night. Meet for an early morning orientation at the Las Vegas DoubleTree before we depart. After stopping in St. George for lunch, continue to Cedar Breaks National Monument, which encompasses a 5-mile wide natural limestone amphitheater. From its 10,000-foot-high rim, experience views across the multihued cliffs, spires, and arches of its eroded slopes. Hike the 2-mile Alpine Pond Trail, set amid spruce trees and bristlecone pines. Continue to Bryce Canyon National Park.

The Lodge at Bryce Canyon (L,D) June 22 BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK Visit the Bryce Canyon Visitor Center and hike the Rim Trail. Experience the canyon’s intricate geological display from the rim at Bryce Point and Paria View, and below the rim on the Navajo and Queens Garden Trails on a 3-mile loop. This afternoon savor the ambiance of the Lodge, designed in 1924 by master architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood. The lodge and its cabins were recognized in 1987 as a National Historic Landmark. The Lodge at Bryce Canyon (B,L,D) June 23 GRAND STAIRCASE-ESCALANTE NATIONAL MONUMENT Travel along scenic highway 12 to Grand Staircase Escalante. Explore one of the narrow, steep-walled slot canyons characteristic of the Escalante Country, as it branches off of Long Canyon. Travel through pinyon-juniper woodlands to the rim of the 100-mile-long monocline known as the Waterpocket Fold, which once blocked the progress of emigrant wagon trains.

Lodge at Red River Ranch (B,L,D)

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Cedar Breaks, which became a national monument in 1933, has the highest elevation of the parks we visit. Much of its original facility development done by the Civilian Conservation Corps, such as the 1937 visitor center, is still in use.

June 24 CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL PARK Visit the pioneer Mormon community of Fruita, including a stop at the old schoolhouse, in the verdant bottomlands of the Fremont River. View petroglyphs and take a 3-mile hike into the Fold on the Grand Wash Trail. Return via the 2-mile trail in Cohab Canyon.

Lodge at Red River Ranch (B,L,D)

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Bryce Canyon became a national monument administered by the U.S. Forest Service in 1928. Hotels in the park, like the one we stay in, originally were developed

by The Union Pacific Railroad.

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Grand Staircase-Escalante, unlike the National Park System, is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Little development exists within its boundaries.

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Capitol Reef was first a National Monument created in 1937. In 1969, a presidential proclamation expanded it, then Congress authorized the monument to become a National Park in 1971.

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Zion originated as a national monument created from the public domain by a presidential proclamation. Congress legislated the creation of Zion National Park–the first in Utah–in 1919.

June 25 ANASAZI STATE PARK & ZION NATIONAL PARK Visit Anasazi State Park, the anthropology museum, and the excavated site of a 1,000-year-old village. The Fremont prehistoric people occupied most of Utah during the same period as the Ancestral Puebloans. Artifacts recovered from this site, as well as its architecture, reflect a prehistoric “melting pot.” Take a 3-mile, out-andback hike along the Escalante River, crossing it several times before continuing on to Zion, the oldest of the parks on this tour.

Desert Pearl Inn (B,L,D) June 26 ZION NATIONAL PARK Enjoy a 1-mile roundtrip hike up to the canyon rim for an overview of Zion. Explore the area along the Virgin River within Zion Canyon, the heart of the park. Take a shuttle bus ride to the Temple of Sinawava and continue on foot along the paved Riverside Walk trail to the Narrows of Zion Canyon.

Enter the river for a unique hiking experience, traveling a few miles further through the river (water shoes needed) for a total of 4 miles roundtrip. This afternoon visit the Zion Human History Museum. Desert Pearl Inn (B,L,D) June 27 ZION NATIONAL PARK TO LAS VEGAS Relax at the hotel or head back into Zion for an optional 4-mile hike to Scout Lookout. After freshening up, depart for Las Vegas with a lunch stop on the way. Please book your flights for 6:00 p.m. or later. (B,L)

WHAT TO EXPECT Average temperatures in June range from day-time highs in the 70s-90s and overnight lows down to the 40s-50s.

We’ll also be at a variety of elevations from 4,000 to more than 10,000 feet. Our transportation around the region is by van. Given the vastness of the area, there is some time to be spent in the van driving between parks, but we’ve designed it so you alternate days with longer drives (3 to 4 ½ hrs) with days with much less driving (1 to 2 hrs). Travelers should be in active good health to participate in this trip. Most hikes are between 2 to 5 miles with a 200 to 500 feet elevation gain. Walks are not too strenuous, but some are over uneven terrain and may require the use of hands and feet to climb over obstructions. Two hikes include walking through stretches of rivers, so closed-toe water shoes are needed. Our longest day of hiking is up to 5 miles, with approximately 1,000 feet in elevation gain. Most hikes are “out and back” so participants can go as far as they like, and then wait for the group to return. Optional trekking poles will be provided to all guests for the duration of the tour.

TRIP DETAILS Dates: June 21-27, 2017 Group Size: Minimum 12, maximum 20 Cost: $3,995 per person, double occupancy; $795 single room supplement Included: 6 nights accommodation as specified; round-trip transfers from Las Vegas to Utah’s National Parks; all park admission fees; daily hiking activities; all ground transportation; daily breakfast (6) at the hotel or nearby, 7 lunches and 6 dinners, welcome and farewell dinners with beer and wine; tours, entrances, and events as specified in the itinerary; van transportation for all excursions; gratuities for hotel staff, restaurant staff, drivers and for all group activities; expert guide Frank Ackerman; services of a professional tour manager and assistant.

Not included: Air transportation to and from Las Vegas, Nevada; hotel accommodations in Las Vegas; meals and beverages other than those specified as included; optional excursions and other activities done independently; trip cancellation/interruption and baggage insurance; personal items such as email, telephone and fax calls, souvenirs, laundry; and gratuities for non-group services.

STUDY LEADER FRANK ACKERMAN Study leader Frank Ackerman, pictured right, is a retired National Park Service Ranger. His 30-year career included posts at the Grand Canyon, Death Valley and Voyageurs National Parks. He finished his time with the Park Service at Cape Cod National Seashore where he served as the chief of interpretation. After his initial retirement, Frank helped create an award-winning interpretative program as part of a joint venture between Amtrak and the National Park Service to provide educational commentary on select passenger trains in the Northeast. He recently retired as director of the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, Nevada, and now lives in Fremont. As we journey between parks, Frank will discuss the evolution of park policy over the past 100 years and, in specific, the delicate balance of the dual mandate of preservation and promotion of visitation. He is also excited to teach you about the spectacular desert flora and fauna, and the geology and human history of the region.

RESERVATION FORM JUNE 21-27, 2017

Phone: (415) 597-6720 Fax: (415) 597-6729

NAME 1 NAME 2 ADDRESS

CITY/STATE/ZIP

HOME PHONE

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E-MAIL DOUBLE OCCUPANCY ONLY:

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OR I’d like to know about possible roommates. I am a smoker / nonsmoker (circle one).

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SIGNATURE(S) We require membership to The Commonwealth Club to travel with us.

Please check one of the following options:

PLEASE RETURN THIS FORM ALONG WITH YOUR DEPOSIT TO:

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I will visit commonwealthclub.org/membership to sign up for a membership.

DEPOSIT & PAYMENTS: To make a reservation, a deposit of $500 per person is required by check or credit card. Please mail your check (payable to “Black Sheep Adventures, Inc”) or charge instructions, with your completed reservation form to the address on the reservation form. You may also fax in your reservation form or call our office or call (415) 5976720. Final payment is due no later than April 21, 2017. For those who pay by credit card, BSA will charge your card the balance due at 60 days prior if no other payment has been made. Charges will appear on your credit card statement as “BSA Tour 866-6474337” or “Stripe”.

CANCELLATIONS AND REFUNDS: Your deposit and payments are refundable, less the following cancel fees: • 91+ days prior to trip start date, $100 per person • 61-90 days prior to trip start, $500 deposit • 0-60 days prior to trip start, No refund We recommend trip-cancellation insurance; applications will be sent to you. Tour can also be cancelled due to low enrollment. Neither CWC nor Black Sheep Adventures accepts liability for cancellation penalties related to domestic or international airline tickets purchased in conjunction with the tour.

MEDICAL INFORMATION: Participation in this program requires that you be in good health.

It is essential that persons with any medical problems and related dietary restrictions make them known to us well before departure.

RESPONSIBILITY: The Commonwealth Club of California and our ground operators and suppliers act only as agents for the travelers with respect to transportation and arrangements, and exercise every care possible in doing so. However, we can assume no liability for injury, damage, loss, accident, delay or irregularity in connection with the service of any automobile, motorcoach, or any other conveyance used in carrying out this program or for the acts or defaults of any company or person engaged in conveying the passenger or in carrying out the arrangements of the program. We cannot accept any responsibility for losses or additional expenses due to delay or changes in air or other services, sickness, weather, strike, war, quarantine, force majeure or other causes beyond our control. All such losses or expenses will have to be borne by the passenger as tour rates provide arrangements only for the time stated. We reserve the right to make such alterations to this published itinerary as may be deemed necessary. The right is reserved to cancel any program prior to departure in which case the entire payment will be refunded without further obligation on our part. No refund will be made for an unused portion of any tour unless arrangements are made in sufficient time to avoid penalties.

The Commonwealth Club of California accepts no liability for any carrier’s cancellation penalty incurred by the purchase of a nonrefundable ticket in connection with the tour.

CST: 2096889-40; Photo Credits: Chris Willis/Fotopedia; Murray Foubister/Flickr; Romain Guy/Flickr; Daxis/Flickr.

You may also fax the form to (415) 597-6729

DECEMBER 6 - 9 minds, and we follow every meeting with continued debate and conversation at a nearby bar/restaurant.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7–8:45 p.m. debate • Notes: Register through meetup.com/ sfdebate

TUESDAY, DECEMBER TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6 6 Thomas Friedman: A Field Guide to the 21st Century Thomas Friedman, Columnist, The New York Times; Author, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World Is Flat, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

This program is sold out. No tickets will be sold at the door.

of the waterfront neighborhood that surrounds the location of the future Commonwealth Club headquarters.

Hear the dynamic stories of the entrepreneurs, controversial artists and labor organizers who created this recently revitalized neighborhood. This tour will give you a lively overview of the historic significance of this neighborhood and a close look at the ongoing development.

SF • Location: Meet in front of Boulevard Restaurant, 1 Mission Street, SF (corner of Mission & Steuart) • Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4:30 p.m. walk • Notes: Tour operates rain or shine; limited to 20 participants; tickets must be purchased in advance and will not be sold at check-in

SF • Location: Herbst Theatre, War Memorial, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco • Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program

Lamentation and the Limits of Philosophy

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7 7

Mozart and Homer both understood that philosophical perspectives can be of limited utility in providing comfort to the bereaved. In commemoration of the 225th anniversary of Mozart’s death, we will listen to the extraordinarily moving lamentation section of his String Quintet in G minor, performed by the London Quintet. After examining how Mozart uses musical devices to achieve emotional effects, we will compare his musical evocation of grief with passages in The Iliad lamenting the death of heroes.

Ben Franklin Circles See website for details SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program • MLF: Humanities • Program organizer: George Hammond

Mind over Genes: Heredity Is not Destiny — The Science of Epigenetics Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., Stem Cell Biology Pioneer; Best-selling Author, The Biology of Belief

A renaissance in science is creating a revolution in thought and understanding—and in our physical bodies—that is changing the world and our health. Epigenetics reveals that we are not victims of our genes: Cancer, depression and diseases were once believed to be preprogrammed in our genes, but the nervous system can reprogram cells. Dr. Lipton says that this provides for miraculous spontaneous remissions from cancer or other diseases.

SF • Location: 555 Post Street, San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing • MLFs: Health & Medicine, Personal Growth • Program organizer: Adrea Brier

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8 8 THURSDAY, DECEMBER Waterfront Walking Tour Join Rick Evans for his new walking tour exploring the historic sites

Steven Machtinger, Attorney; Violist; Independent Mozart Scholar

SF • Location: 555 Post Street, San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program • MLF: Humanities • Program organizer: George Hammond

Max Stier: How to Ensure a Smooth Presidential Transition Max Stier, Founding President and CEO, Partnership for Public Service In conversation with Lenny Mendonca, Director Emeritus, McKinsey & Company; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors.

The peaceful transition of power has been a hallmark of our democracy, but new presidents consistently fail to get their new administrations up and running quickly and effectively. Max Stier has been leading a comprehensive initiative to reform the system and advise both the outgoing administration and the incoming transition teams. He will give a candid, insider’s perspective on the most complex takeover in the world and a case study

commonwealthclub.org/events

on changing how Washington works.

Under Max Stier’s leadership, the Partnership for Public Service has been widely praised as a first-class nonprofit organization and thought leader on federal government management issues. In 2015, the Partnership launched the Center for Presidential Transition, a first-of-its-kind effort to ensure the smoothest transition of power yet by working with campaign teams, federal agencies and the outgoing administration.

Thomas Friedman December 6

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program

FRIDAY, 9 9 FRIDAY,DECEMBER DECEMBER

Steven Machtinger December 8

Senator George Mitchell and Alon Sachar: How the Next U.S. President Should Handle Israel and Palestine George Mitchell, Retired U.S. Senator (D-Maine); Former Senate Majority Leader; Former U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace ; Co-Author, A Path To Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East Alon Sachar, Former Advisor, U.S. Ambassador to Israel and President Obama’s Special Envoys for Middle East Peace, George Mitchell and David Hale; Co-Author, A Path To Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East

George Mitchell knows how to bring peace to troubled regions. The New York Times has called him “a diplomatic heavyweight. He was the primary architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for peace in Northern Ireland. But when he served as U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under President Obama from 2009 to 2011—working to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—diplomacy did not prevail. For the first time, George Mitchell will offer his insider account of how the Israelis and the Palestinians have progressed (and regressed) in their negotiations through the years and the new steps the U.S. and international community can take to encourage a peace agreement.

Alan Sachar served as an advisor to the U.S. ambassador to Israel, from 2011 to 2012 and to President Obama’s special envoys for Middle East peace from 2009 to 2011.

As a new U.S. administration is about to take power, hear from one of the world’s most astute statesmen and

Max Stier December 8

George Mitchell & Alon Sachar December 9

For current prices, call 415.597.6705 or go to common wealthclub.org

D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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DECEMBER 12 - 14 a top diplomatic advisor.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 11:15 a.m. check-in, noon program • Notes: In association with The Commonwealth Club’s Middle East Forum

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12 12 MONDAY, DECEMBER

Week to Week December 12

Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn Daniel Gordis, Author; Israel Analyst; Commentator Riva Gambert, Former Director, East Bay Israel Center; Director, East Bay International Jewish Film Festival.

David Grinspoon December 12

Mae Jemison December 13

Dr. Gordis, a former Conservative rabbi, award-winning author of several books on Jewish thought and Israeli currents, and columnist for the Jerusalem Post, will discuss the topic of his latest book, which has been described as a luminous history shedding light on Israel’s culture, politics and economy, so people can understand her future. Gordis was the founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles before moving to Jerusalem, where he helped to found Israel’s first liberal arts college. He is senior vice president and Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem.

SF • Location: 555 Post Street, San Francisco • Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. book signing • MLF: Middle East • Program organizer: Celia Menczel

Dava Sobel December 14

Is Climate Denial Destroying Our Planet?

Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology, Penn State University; Co-author, The Madhouse Effect Cristine Russell, Freelance Science Journalist Tom Toles, Political Cartoonist; Co-author, The Madhouse Effect

For current prices, call 415.597.6705 or go to common wealthclub.org

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The majority of Americans agree that climate disruption is a major concern. The Paris Climate Agreement has been ratified by 61 countries and counting, which so far represents 47.81 percent of the world’s emissions. So we all agree, climate change is the biggest problem humankind has ever faced? Not so fast.

Here in the United States, denial and confusion about the science is rampant, and we may be the only developed nation where it is written into a major political party’s platform. Climate scientist Michael Mann and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Tom

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

Toles take a satirical look at how this lack of consensus came to be. Cristine Russell is a veteran science journalist with deep knowledge about conveying complex scientific issues to a broad public. How deep does climate doubt run, and how can communication help us move on to solutions?

Join us for a fun and informative look at manufactured doubt and genuine skepticism.

SF • CLIMATE ONE PROGRAM • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. networking reception

Week to Week Political Roundtable and Social Hour Check website for panelists

Let’s gather together and talk about the impact of the recent contentious national and local elections, and we’ll look forward to what happens next.

Come early for our members social (all attendees are welcome), then join our expert panelists for a smart, informed and fun discussion of political developments.

SF • WEEK TO WEEK PROGRAM • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. social hour, 6:30 p.m. program

David Grinspoon: Shaping Our Planet’s Future David Grinspoon, Ph.D., Astrobiologist; Senior Scientist, Planetary Science Institute; Author, Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future Alison van Diggelen, Host, “Fresh Dialogues”; BBC Contributor—Moderator

For the first time in Earth’s history, our planet is experiencing rapidly accelerating changes prompted by one species: humans. Climate change is the most visible, and our current behavior threatens not only our own future but that of countless other creatures. As we stand at this pivotal juncture, Dr. Grinspoon calls upon all of us to be planetary engineers, conscious shapers of our environment and caretakers of the Earth’s biosphere. With our future at stake, Dr. Grinspoon shares his 10,000-year perspective by not only asking what kind of future we want to avoid, but what do we ultimately seek to build?

SV • Location: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto • Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing • Notes: In association with Wonderfest; photo by Lawrence Cheng

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13 13 TUESDAY, DECEMBER Astronaut Mae Jemison: Launching Women into Science and Tech Mae Jemison, M.D., Astronaut; Physician Kimberly Bryant, Electrical Engineer; Founder and Executive Director, Black Girls Code

Physician and astronaut Dr. Mae C. Jemison is a science literacy advocate and the lead ambassador of the Making Science Make Sense program. The goal of the initiative is to provide 1 million hands-on science experiences to children by 2020. Dr. Jemison is particularly devoted to getting more girls, young women and minorities into careers in science, tech, engineering and math (STEM).

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14 14 Dava Sobel: The Women Who Rocked the Cosmos Dava Sobel, Former Science Reporter, The New York Times; Author, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars Becky Worley, Tech Contributor, “Good Morning America”—Moderator

Dava Sobel reports that in the 19th century, it was women and not male astronomers who actually made some of the great discoveries of the universe. In the mid-19th century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations made via telescope by their male counterparts each night.

At the outset, this group included the wives, sisters and daughters of the resident astronomers, but by the 1880s the female corps included graduates of the new women’s colleges—Vassar, Wellesley and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of a half-million plates that Harvard amassed in this period—thanks in part to the early financial support of another woman, Anna Draper, whose late husband pioneered the technique of stellar photography—enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim.

Come hear this captivating, lit-

SF: San Francisco SV: Silicon Valley EB: East Bay NB: North Bay

DECEMBER 15 - JANUARY 17 tle-known true story of a group of women whose remarkable contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.

or he considers that topic interesting and important. An open discussion follows, and the meeting ends with a summary of the various perspectives participants expressed. Everyone is welcome to attend.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. book signing • Notes: This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation; photo by Mia Berg

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • MLF: Humanities • Program Organizer: George Hammond

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15 15 THURSDAY, DECEMBER Dr. Naomi Oreskes: The 2016 Stephen Schneider Award Naomi Oreskes, Ph.D., Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

Climate One presents Naomi Oreskes the 6th Annual Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication. According to Schneider Award juror Ben Santer, “Her 2004 Science paper helped to quantify, for the first time, the broad scientific consensus on climate change. Her recent research unmasked the forces behind denial of human effects on climate and improved our chances of having a responsible, science-based discussion of climate change solutions.”

The award was established in honor of Stephen Henry Schneider, one of the founding fathers of climatology, who died suddenly in 2010.

This special evening will include a conversation with Dr. Oreskes and other special guests, in addition to a reception.

SF • CLIMATE ONE PROGRAM • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. award ceremony and reception

MONDAY, DECEMBER MONDAY, DECEMBER 19 19 Socrates Café On one Monday evening of every month, the Humanities Forum sponsors Socrates Café at The Commonwealth Club. Each meeting is devoted to the discussion of a philosophical topic chosen at that meeting. The group’s facilitator, John Nyquist, invites participants to suggest topics, which are then voted on. The person who proposed the most popular topic is asked to briefly explain why she

SFDebate SFDebate is an open forum for discussion on the events of our time. It is a place where you will not only be exposed to opposing points of view, but a safe place where you will be encouraged to find and speak up for yours. SFDebate is also a meeting of minds, and we follow every meeting with continued debate and conversation at a nearby bar/restaurant.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7–8:45 p.m. debate • Notes: Register through meetup.com/sfdebate

TUESDAY, JANUARY TUESDAY, JANUARY 3 3 Nob Hill Walking Tour Explore one of San Francisco’s 44 hills, and one of its original “Seven Hills.” Because of great views and its central position, Nob Hill became an exclusive enclave of the rich and famous on the West Coast who built large mansions in the neighborhood.

This included prominent tycoons such as Leland Stanford and other members of the Big Four.

Highlights include the history of four landmark hotels: The Fairmont, Mark Hopkins, Stanford Court and Huntington Hotel. Visit the city’s largest house of worship, Grace Cathedral, and discover architectural tidbits and anecdotes about the railroad barons and silver kings. A true San Francisco experience of elegance, urbanity, scandals and fabulous views.

SF • Location: Meet in front of Caffe Cento, 801 Powell Street, San Francisco • Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4:30 p.m. walk • Notes: Tour operates rain or shine; limited to 20 participants; tickets must be purchased in advance and will not be sold at check-in

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11 11 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel: The New Science of Living Younger Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, President, Salk

commonwealthclub.org/events

Institute; 2009 Nobel Prize Winner; Co-author, The Telomere Effect: The New Science of Living Younger Dr. Elissa Epel, Founder and Director, Center on Obesity Assessment, Study, and Treatment, University of California San Francisco; Co-author, The Telomere Effect: The New Science of Living Younger

Have you ever wondered why some 60-year-olds look and feel like 40-year-olds and why some 40-yearolds look and feel like 60-year-olds?

Though many factors contribute to aging and illness, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn — a Nobel laureate — and health psychologist Dr. Elissa Epel reveal the critical role that biological markers called telomerase and telomeres play in our health. Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Epel discuss how to increase not only your lifespan but your health-span (the number of years that you remain active and healthy). They say that to live healthier and younger, we need to understand how sleep, exercise, stress and diet can affect our telomeres.

SV • Location: Schultz Cultural Hall, Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto • Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing • Notes: In association with the Oshman Family JCC

Naomi Oreskes December 15

Lauren LeaderChivee January 9

Elizabeth Blackburn & Elissa Epel January 11

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12 12 THURSDAY, JANUARY Week to Week Political Roundtable and Social Hour

Week to Week January 12

Check website for panelists

We’ll kick off the new year, discuss the presidential transition, and examine all of the biggest topics now that the campaign is out of the way. Come early for our members social (all attendees are welcome), then join our expert panelists for a smart, informed, and fun discussion of recent and upcoming political developments.

SF • WEEK TO WEEK PROGRAM • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. social hour, 6:30 p.m. program

TUESDAY, JANUARY TUESDAY, JANUARY 17 17 A Neurologist’s Insightful and Compassionate Look into the Misunderstood World of Psychosomatic Disorders Suzanne O’Sullivan, M.D., Consultant, Clinical Neurophysiology and Neurology, The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery; Former Consultant, Neurology, The Royal London Hospital

For current prices, call 415.597.6705 or go to common wealthclub.org

D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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JANUARY 18 - 24 It’s happened to all of us: our cheeks flush red when we say the wrong thing, or our hearts skip a beat when a certain someone walks by. But few of us realize how much more dramatic and extreme our bodies’ reactions to emotions can be. Many people who see their doctors have medically unexplained symptoms, and in the vast majority of these cases, a psychosomatic cause is suspected. Yet the diagnosis of a psychosomatic disorder can make a patient feel dismissed as a hypochondriac, a faker or just plain crazy. In Is It All in Your Head?, neurologist Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan takes us on a journey through the world of psychosomatic illness. O’Sullivan reveals the hidden stresses behind their mysterious symptoms, approaching a sensitive topic with patience and understanding. She addresses the taboos surrounding psychosomatic disorders, teaching us that “it’s all in your head” doesn’t mean that something isn’t real, as the body is often the stand-in for the mind when the latter doesn’t possess the tools to put words to its sorrow. She encourages us to look with compassion at the ways in which our brains act out, and to question our failure to credit the intimate connection between mind and body.

Janet Yellen January 18

Walter Alvarez January 24

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing • MLF: Health & Medicine • Program organizer: Bill Grant

Tech Innovator Jerry Kaplan: Could Artificial Intelligence Eventually Take Us Over?

Jerry Kaplan, Entrepreneur; Author, Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know In conversation with John Markoff, New York Times Technology Reporter

For current prices, call 415.597.6705 or go to common wealthclub.org

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Over the coming decades, artificial intelligence will profoundly impact the way we live, work, wage war, play, seek a mate, educate our young and care for our elderly. It is likely to greatly increase our aggregate wealth, but it will also upend our labor markets, reshuffle our social order, and strain our private and public institutions. Eventually it may alter how we see our place in the universe, as machines pursue goals independent of their creators and outperform us in domains previously believed to be the sole dominion of humans. Jerry Kaplan is widely known as an artificial

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intelligence expert, serial entrepreneur, technical innovator, educator, bestselling author and futurist. He co-founded four Silicon Valley startups, two of which became publicly traded companies, and teaches at Stanford University.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. book signing

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18 18 Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen Janet L. Yellen, Ph.D., Chair, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System; Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

Two days before the new U.S. president is sworn in, join us for a rare opportunity to hear an economic assessment from the head of the Fed. Dr. Janet Yellen took office as chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2014, for a four-year term ending February 3, 2018. Dr. Yellen also serves as chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the country’s principal monetary policymaking body. Prior to her appointment as chair, Dr. Yellen served as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, while simultaneously beginning a 14-year term as a member of the board that will expire January 31, 2024. Dr. Yellen is professor emeritus of business and economics at UC Berkeley, where she has been a faculty member since 1980. From 2004 through 2010 she served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and previously chaired President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. Dr. Yellen holds a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University and has written on a wide variety of macroeconomic issues, specializing in the causes, mechanisms and implications of unemployment.

SF • Location: Herbst Theatre, War Memorial, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco • Time: 11 a.m. check-in, noon program • Notes: Tickets must be purchased through City Box Office at CityBoxOffice.com or by calling 415392-4400

THURSDAY, JANUARY THURSDAY, JANUARY 19 19 San Francisco Architecture Walking Tour Explore San Francisco’s Financial

District with historian Rick Evans and learn the history and stories behind some of our city’s remarkable structures, streets and public squares.

Hear about the famous architects who influenced the building of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Discover hard-to-find rooftop gardens, Art Deco lobbies, unique open spaces and historic landmarks. This is a tour for locals, with hidden gems you can only find on foot!

SF • Location: Meet in the lobby of the Galleria Park Hotel, 191 Sutter Street, San Francisco • Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4:30 p.m. walk • Notes: The tour involves walking up and down stairs but covers less than one mile of walking in the Financial District; tour operates rain or shine; limited to 20 participants; tickets must be purchased in advance and will not be sold at check-in.

MONDAY, JANUARY MONDAY, JANUARY 23 23 Socrates Café Socrates Café at The Commonwealth Club is devoted to the discussion of a philosophical topic chosen at that meeting. The group’s facilitator, John Nyquist, invites participants to suggest topics, which are then voted on. The person who proposed the most popular topic is asked to briefly explain why she or he considers that topic interesting and important.

An open discussion follows, and the meeting ends with a summary of the various perspectives. Everyone is welcome to attend.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 6 p.m check-in, 6:30 p.m. program • MLF: Humanities • Program Organizer: George Hammond

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24 24 TUESDAY, JANUARY Walter Alvarez: A Most Improbable Journey Walter Alvarez, Professor, Earth and Planetary Science Department, University of California, Berkeley; Author, A Most Improbable Journey: A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves

One in a million doesn’t even come close. Not when we’re talking about the odds that you would happen to be alive today, on this particular planet, hurtling through space. Almost 14 billion years of cosmic history, more than 4 billion years of Earth history, and a couple million years of human history, has led to you. This panoram-

SF: San Francisco SV: Silicon Valley EB: East Bay NB: North Bay

JANUARY 25 - 30 ic viewpoint has captured the imagination of historians and scientists alike, and together they’ve created a new field—big history—that studies the entire known past of our universe to give context to our very existence.

Famed geologist Alvarez is best known for the impact theory explaining dinosaur extinction. His unique expertise and infectious curiosity give us a new appreciation for the incredible occurrences—from the Big Bang and beyond—that have led to our improbable place in the universe.

SV • Location: Cubberley Community Theatre, 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto (near Montrose & Middlefield) • Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing • Notes: In Association with Wonderfest; photo by Steve Dutch

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25 25 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY Terrorism Expert Brian Fishman: How Can ISIS Be Defeated?

Brian Fishman, Counterterrorism Research Fellow, New America; Fellow, Combating Terrorism Center, West Point; Author, The Master Plan: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory In conversation with Kori Schake, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution

To defeat ISIS, you need to understand ISIS. Brian Fishman is a leading expert on ISIS. He served as the director of research at the United States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center and began studying the progenitors of ISIS in 2005. He predicted the rise of the Islamic State in early 2011, prior to the Syrian civil war. Fishman says that the rise of ISIS was neither an accident of history nor an unpredictable product of chaos in Syria, but rather the fulfillment of a vision to capitalize on Syria’s demographic and geopolitical frailty, detailed in a plan that runs through 2020. He says that “master plan” offers important insight into how ISIS might now evolve. Fishman says that only by learning the Islamic State’s full history and the strategy that drove it can we understand the forces that could ultimately tear it apart.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program

THURSDAY, JANUARY THURSDAY, JANUARY 26 26 Arts Forum Planning Meeting For those with a passion for the vi-

sual and performing arts, please join us in discussion as we explore ideas for future Club programs and exhibitions. The planning meeting is open to all Club members. Come with your ideas, and your willingness to take an active role in our 2017 events.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. program • MLF: The Arts • Program organizer: Lynn Curtis

MONDAY, JANUARY 30 30 MONDAY, JANUARY Middle East Forum Discussion The Middle East Forum discussion group—which primarily covers the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan—has been meeting monthly for nine years. We are not a debate group; we exchange ideas and opinions. The group is a perk of Club membership, but others who are interested are welcome to attend.

SF • Location: 555 Post Street, San Francisco • Time: 5 p.m. check-in, 5:30 p.m. discussion • MLF: Middle East • Program organizer: Celia Menczel

Week to Week Political Roundtable and Social Hour Check website for panelists

Join us for a lively discussion of politics, priorities, and people. Come early for our members social (all attendees are welcome), then join our expert panelists for a smart, informed, and fun discussion of recent and upcoming political developments.

SF • WEEK TO WEEK PROGRAM • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:30 p.m. social hour, 6:30 p.m. program

LATE-BREAKING PROGRAMS LATE-BREAKING PROGRAMS JAN. 11: Obamacare Architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel: Transforming Health Care Post-ACA Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., Former Chief Health Policy Advisor to the Obama Administration; Chair, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania In Conversation with Mark Zitter, Chair, The Zetema Project

See website for details.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program

FEB. 1: Changemakers: Movement Leaders on Building Power & Voice See website for panelists and details.

SF • Location: 555 Post St., San Francisco • Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program

commonwealthclub.org/events

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP Publication title: The Commonwealth. ISSN: 0010-3349. Filing date: September 30, 2016. Issue Frequency: Bimonthly. Number of issues published annually: 6.

Annual subscription price: $34.

Location of office of publication: 555 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94102.

Location of office of general business office: 555 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94102. Name and address of Publisher: The Commonwealth Club of California, 555 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94102. Editor: John Zipperer, Commonwealth Club, 555 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94102.

Managing Editor: Mackenzie Crist, Commonwealth Club, 555 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94102. Owner: The Commonwealth Club of California, 555 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94102.

Known bondholders, mortgages and other security holders: None.

Brian Fishman January 25

Week to Week January 30

EXTENT AND NATURE OF CIRCULATION Avg. No. Copies Each Issue During Pre ce d i n g 1 2 M o nt h s : To t a l number of copies (net press run): 11,392. Paid/Requested Outside County Subscriptions: 10,725. Paid In-County Subscriptions: None.

Sales Through Dealers & Carriers: None. Other Classes Mailed Through USPS: None. Total Paid Distribution: 10,725. Free Distribution by Mail: None. Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail: 617.

Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: 617. Total Distribution: 11,342. Copies not Distributed: 50.

Total: 11,392. Percent paid and/or requested circulation: 94.56 percent.

No. Copies Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date (October/ November 2015): Total number of copies (net press run): 10,848. Paid/ Requested Outside County Subscriptions: 10,248. Paid In-County Subscriptions: None. Sales Through Dealers and Carriers: None. Other Classes Mailed Through USPS: None. Total Paid Distribution: 10,248.

Free Distribution by Mail: None Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail: 550. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: 550.

Total Distribution: 10,798. Copies not Distributed: 50. Total: 10,848. Percent paid and/or requested circulation: 94.91 percent. I certify that the statements above are correct and complete.

John Zipperer, Vice President of Media & Editorial, September 30, 2016.

For current prices, call 415.597.6705 or go to common wealthclub.org

D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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Yingyi Qian, dean and professor at the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, in China; and Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a board member olf Asia Policy and The China Review; in conversation with George Lewinski, former foreign editor of “Marketplace.” From the October 6, 2016, program in San Francisco “China’s Economic Slowdown: Will It Hurt the U.S. and the World?” Program was in association with The Committee of 100; photo by Ed Ritger.

China’s rise has had an enormous impact on the rest of the world. Now as China tries to shift to a middle-income economy, its moves are once again affecting the world. How has China prepared for this moment? Is the United States prepared?

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GEORGE LEWINSKI: When China starts to slow down, commodity producing countries all over the world start to feel it. If you ask Canada, ask Brazil, both had recessions, and both actually had changes of government partly as a result of the economic slowdown. If China’s economy slows further from 6.5 or so percent down to say, 5 or even 4, what will be the effect on the U.S.?

Some services are still warning that there will be a hard landing in China. Hard landing, for those of you who don’t know, means basically a high flying economy that’s growing rapidly, and its growth falls precipitously and it slips into recession. Very often this is caused by the central bank tightening the money supply to fight inflation. Since inflation is only 2 percent a year more or less in China at the moment, I’m wondering whether the idea of a hard landing in China is still current?

YINGYI QIAN: When economists talk about soft landing and hard landing, we usually refer to the previous case [of an] overheated economy. The particular case is the Chinese economy in the mid-1990s; there was inflation, very high growth, and that led to the so-called soft landing in 1996, 1997 and 1998. That is the case we call a soft landing. But today, we talk about China’s economic slowdown. It’s not in that sense, because this is a long-term trend instead of a cyclical change. Therefore, it is a slowdown because China is now no longer a poor, low-income country. Instead, it is a middle-income economy. So the slowdown is true, but I would not call that either a soft landing or hard landing.

LEWINSKI: A lot of people are talking about China’s heavy debt. The Bank of International Settlements, which worries about these sorts of things, says that the growth of debt in China is greater than the growth in the economy.

Fitch, another rating agency, says 15 to 20 percent of all loans in China are non-performing. Isn’t that worrisome?

NICHOLAS LARDY: There has been really an unprecedented buildup of debt over the last five years. Remember, China began a very aggressive program at the onset of the global financial crisis to keep economic growth at a fairly reasonable pace. This was financed mostly with bank credit.

They didn’t increase the government budget or outlays [for] the budgetary system. They increased credit through the banking system. So there was a huge increase and continues to be a very large interest in bank credit. The question is whether or not this is a threat to the economy and could lead to a banking crisis. There are a lot of mitigating factors in China. China has a very high savings rate. Most of these loans are being financed with deposits. The ratio of loans to deposits is relatively low, and China’s big systemically important institutions don’t finance themselves through what is sometimes called the wholesale market, like Lehman Brothers and other institutions did in the United States.

In other words, they’re not going to be subject to a sudden stop, or suddenly their creditors aren’t going to roll over their money. Bank deposits tend to be very, very sticky. This is particularly the case in China. So the build-up of credit is a risk, but I don’t think we’re at the point yet where we’re going to be talking about a financial crisis or banking problems that contribute to a substantial slowdown in economic growth.

QIAN: Professor Lardy wrote a very famous, influential book in the late 1990s, China’s Unfinished Revolution, which dealt with at that time, a bad loan problems. How do you compare today’s problem with those in 15 years or 20 years?

LARDY: I think that they’re substantially less. In the 1990s, banks were not allowed to write off any bad loans. They just kept accumulating. In the current environment, bad loans are being written off every quarter, every year, by most of the banks. And the banks are much more commercially oriented than they were back then. In those days, they lent their money almost entirely to state-owned companies.

Today, they’re lending a lot of money to private companies.

Equally important, the banking system in China today is lending a lot of money to households, mostly for mortgages. And for example, in the first half of this year, about 40 percent of all the new loans extended by the banking system went to households, and about 80 percent of that went for mortgages.

The United States could learn a lot from China. They’ve

been having property price increases, but if you want to buy a second or third house to speculate, you have to come up with the 50-percent down payment in most cities in most times. If we had had rules like that in effect 10 or 12 years ago, we wouldn’t have had a big financial crisis in the United States.

The share of lending going to the household sector has even increased further in recent months. In August, for example, about 70 percent of all new loans are going to the household sector. So the household sector is not very highly leveraged, and most of the money is in mortgages where the loan-to-value ratio is very, very low, certainly compared to Western economies that had problems associated with the property market, countries like Ireland, Spain, and the United States.

LEWINSKI: So, clear sailing?

LARDY: No, I think there are risks. They need to slow down the growth of credit. They can’t do this instantaneously or overnight, but I think we’ve already seen the beginning of a slowdown in the second and third quarter of this year, and I think that will continue.They’re very gradually tightening. Wang Yang, the Chinese vice premier, said the Chinese economy is like a big ship, if you turn the rudder suddenly, you’re likely to capsize. So they want to slow down the growth of credit, but I think they recognize that it can’t be done precipitously.

QIAN: And the day before yesterday, we read from the newspapers that the government of Shenzhen and Guangzhou just required that [for] the second house, second apartment, the down payment requirement increased to 70 percent. So that’s one of the measures they are taking.

LEWINSKI: Speaking about a big ship turning, China is embarking on quite radical economic reforms right now.

It’s promising to raise per capita income to $10,000. It’s going to try to move up the manufacturing chain, less on low-value goods, and more goods and services based on science and technology. I know that you’re training your students at Tsinghua to understand this new economy that’s coming. What are your challenges?

QIAN: Well, there are many challenges.

China came a long way in the last 35, 37 years. When I first came to the U.S. in 1981, China’s per capita income was around $200. Even 15 years ago, China’s per capita GDP was below $1,000. And now, last year, almost $8,000.

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Left to right: Nicholas Lardy, Yingyi Qian, and moderator George Lewinski.

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So it’s a solid middle income country. Like all middle income countries, and like other East Asian economies, like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, they have experienced early on when you are at this stage—$8,000 or $10,000, you are a middle-income country­—then your economy has to slow down. It’s really a sign of maturity as compared to the past.

Therefore, being a middle-income economy is different from being a poor, low-income country. It’s also different from an advanced country like the U.S., Europe, or Japan.

These are advanced. U.S. is $50,000, $60,000 per person.

So on a one hand, you still have room to mobilize resources, still need to build infrastructure. On the other hand, you cannot repeat the way of doing business 15 years ago, 20 years ago, at a time that the labor cost is so low.

LEWINSKI: What kind of changes do graduates of business school [need] in their mindset about doing business?

QIAN: There are several things. One is that innovation, entrepreneurship, become very important compared to the past. Another very important element is globalization. For the last three years, every summer I took a group of our executive MBA students to Silicon Valley, because this is the place that these students are extremely interested in, because Silicon Valley is the place, from many Chinese students’ point of view, for innovation, for entrepreneurship.

Therefore, they need to learn entrepreneurship, innovation, and have the global mind to do things.

LEWINSKI: There seems to be a large of number of interests in China concerned or worried about how this

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reform process will affect them. State-owned enterprises, for one; sectors of the economy that are based on exports and that may have to rethink their business model. How important are these groups as a drag on any reform efforts?

LARDY: They’re very important. Vested interests are a big source of a relatively slow reform process, particularly of state-owned enterprises. As this economy transitions away from the traditional model based on a high level of investment, huge amounts of exports, toward a model based more on consumption and less on exports, there’s a tremendous amount of adjustment going on. Firms are having to change their product mix. More firms are failing.

New firms are arising to meet new demands. So this is very much a market-driven economy in response to changes in global environment and changes within China itself. It used to be that investment was the main driver of growth. Now we are seeing the service sector is the main driver of growth.

In terms of the influence on the global economy, China’s kind of insatiable demand for metals and raw materials has diminished substantially. One of the reasons commodity prices have softened over the last five years is that the demand from China has moderated substantially for most of these kinds of commodities. So there are big changes within China, and they translate into substantial changes in the global economy, because China’s the second-largest economy in the world and the biggest trading economy in the world.

NEED-TO-KNOW SCIENCE

What does fashion have to do with science? Leading theoretical physicist Roger Penrose says it plays a big part in shaping some of the most important theories in the universe. Penrose makes the case for not being fashionable.

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Sir Roger Penrose, theoretical physicist and author of Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, in conversation with Dr. David Eisenbud, director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. From the October 4, 2016, program in San Francisco, “Sir Roger Penrose: What We All Need to Know About Physics.” Photos by Rikki Ward.

DAVID EISENBUD: What’s fashion got to do with science?

ROGER PENROSE: [Laughter.] Well, I was particularly aiming these words at particular topics, what I would call big fish in the area of theoretical physics.

EISENBUD: So what is a big fish?

PENROSE: The first fish was actually string theory, but I should make clear, it’s not really string theory I was worried about.

I should explain what string theory is, first of all. In

I was particularly aiming these words at particular topics, what I would call big fish in the area of theoretical physics. ordinary physics you might talk about particles, and these particles, you’d think, follow this point. As time progresses, to draw it—because you don’t really have three dimensions, you have to sacrifice one of the space dimensions and think of it as a time dimension, so it usually goes up in my relativity circles. Anyway, you have these pictures, which are referred to as Feynman diagrams, and each of those lines represents the history of a particle. Another one comes along and then it may combine to make a third that may break apart and make a fourth. Each one of these pictures represents a mathematical expression. Now they work fine and you can get all sorts of wonderful answers using these things, but the trouble is that [the answer for] most of them is infinite, and that’s not much use.

There are all sorts of clever ways of getting around making them infinite and subtracting things off and so on, but that’s not very satisfactory. The idea of string theory was not to think of these particle trajectories as little one-dimensional lines like that, but as little tubes and these tubes represent little loops, the history of a loop, going along like that. But then that might split up and join together and you might be doing a bit of plumbing with these pipes coming together. Instead of having diagrams which lead you to mathematic expressions which are infinite, you find that you get expressions which are completely finite.

It’s a wonderful idea. When I was first told about this I thought, “That’s wonderful, amazing, and I hope that things take off with this idea.” That was fine, until I learned

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that it didn’t quite work, unless space had 26 dimensions.

That to me didn’t make any sense. All of the extra dimensions were not meant to be things you would see. They’d be tied up in little knots and they’d be such small knots that you wouldn’t be aware of them.

That’s the way people thought about it. But it didn’t make sense to me for a different reason. It’s what’s called functional freedom—the amount of degrees of freedom that your fields have. If you’ve got more space dimensions, it completely swamps anything you had before. It seemed to me that this was a terrible nuisance.

Then people said, “You’ve got quantum mechanics.”

It doesn’t quite work like that. What didn’t really make sense is the mathematical theory. There is so much that was fashionable because it was fashionable. That might be good if it was a theory that made sense. But there were fundamental problems with it. Is that a good thing? Well, if you were doing it because the mathematics is beautiful or at least some of it is. That is one of the reasons it was fashionable.

EISENBUD: Isn’t fashion some way of how you decide on what problems to work on? It seems to me that some element of fashion is necessary for working scientists.

PENROSE: In pure mathematics, it’s fine, and fashion as an element of it is very important. Because after all in mathematics, you’re exploring the mathematical universe, if you like. When I say universe there, I mean just the world of mathematical ideas and how they fit together and so on.

Then, having a lot of people working on some area means that a lot of progress is likely to happen, and that’s fine, because that’s what you’re trying to do. Whereas in physics, if a lot of people are working on some area and it doesn’t actually relate to the world in a direct way, then that’s not so good. So the problem I was having in the physics is that it’s not clear that the fashion is for a good reason.

EISENBUD: Let’s talk about faith, yes?

PENROSE: Well, you see it’s completely different. Because one of the other troubles with string theory is that it doesn’t have any implications that people can measure with accelerators. The energies you need are way out the scales anybody could think of. So it’s not testable in any direct way, so that some people object for that reason.

My objection was really rather different. I’m saying, “That’s true, too, but does it hang together?” Now the faith is completely different, because it had to do with quantum mechanics. Now quantum mechanics is an incredible subject, which has an incredible number of implications. Your laptops, your cellphones, your GPS—many, many things depend crucially on effects that we couldn’t understand at all before quantum mechanics came along. So quantum mechanics has amazing implications in many, many different areas. But the trouble with quantum mechanics is it doesn’t hang together when you think about large things.

EISENBUD: I wanted to turn to some of the questions from the audience. What experiments are most needed now to make a step forward in theory?

PENROSE: Probably the most important is to test the limits of quantum mechanics. There are experiments which are at present underway. The one I know best is by a Dutchman, Dirk Bouwmeester. For a long time he’s been developing an experiment in which you have a little tiny mirror. The mirror is so small you couldn’t quite see it. Its dimensions are about a tenth of the thickness of a human hair. The idea is that you take a photon, you split it into two by hitting it with a half-silvered mirror or beam splitter.

So the photon goes through it and is reflected at the same time. So usually that’s split into two, but it’s a super position.

EISENBUD: Like the cat.

PENROSE: Schrödinger’s cat, exactly. It goes this way and that way at the same time, which you can do if you’re a particle—it’s a bit harder if you’re a real cat.

But the idea is that the bit that goes this way is caught in a cavity and it reflects backwards and forwards between two mirrors. The one that comes the other way hits this little turning mirror, reflects off it, and there’s another mirror which is a bit like a hemisphere, and the thing comes back and ... keeps hitting it. Now when it hits the little mirror—the part of the photon wave that is trapped in this little funny cavity—it’s on a sort of spring, so it pushes it down. You hit it, you have to hit something like a million times, and it slightly moves this little mirror, by about the diameter of an atomic nucleus, not much. The idea is that you let it do this for a second or a minute. Then you try

to get the two parts back again and see whether they’re coherent again or have they lost coherence.

They would have lost coherence if this little mirror at some point decides “Whoops, I’m going to be either here or here, not in a super position of the two.” The idea is that there’s a limit, and that we will see that it does one or the other. We don’t know yet. Personally, I think that it’s sort of around the corner. Not like many of these experiments which have to do with quantum mechanics and gravity, which are simply way off the picture and there’s no chance of doing experiments; this is a real, plausible experiment.

What I think is needed is more than just the experiment.

Let’s suppose ... that quantum mechanics will fail at this point. And so the mirror does decide “I’ve gotta be either here or here, not in this super position up under here.” So it’s a Schroedinger’s cat at this point making its decisions to which it must be.

And that is a violation of quantum mechanics as we know it. But it does it because of a conflict between the principles of quantum mechanics in general relativity. So the basic principles of general relativity, if you follow them through, you’ll see there is a conflict with those quantum mechanics. My argument is that these principles of general relativity will somehow win out in this circumstance and show that the mirror’s got to be one or the other.

EISENBUD: That’s a very interesting— PENROSE: Fancy experiment.

The Club audience for Dr. Penrose’s speech was filled with students and professional (and amateur) math and science fans.

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END-OF-LIFE CHALLENGES Far too often, end-of-life decisions are made close to the end of life. Could pain and suffering be reduced if people took a longer-term involvement in the planning and decision-making required for one’s final days?

Jackie Speier, U.S. representative (D-California) and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations; in conversation with Rebecca Sudore, M.D., associate professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and a palliative care physician. From the October 7, 2016, program in San Francisco, “End-of-Life Challenges and Solutions.”

JACKIE SPEIER: This is not a topic that most people want to talk about or think about, and it has really been enlightening for me over the last five or six years as we’ve debated the Affordable Care Act to appreciate how reluctant we are, even now, to discuss this issue.

Kaiser Family Foundation just did a study recently in which they found that 90 percent of those they polled wanted to have their doctors talk to them about end-of-life decisions and 81 percent thought that Medicare should pay for it, and 17 percent of physicians actually provide that counseling. So we are in that kind of never-never land where no one wants to think about it. Everyone wants a physician to provide it and no one’s willing to pay for it.

I came to this issue over many years in the state legislature, where I served on the health and insurance committees, knowing a lot about how we spend our money. Knowing full well that 25 percent of Medicare dollars are spent in the last year of life and that many studies have shown that hospice service actually is preferable for the patient and that their lives are extended more by having hospice care than by having standard tools. I knew all of that information, and then my mother, who was 93 years of age, got sick enough that she was in the hospital and was suffering from a number of cardiac situations.

Her cardiologist came to me and said, “We want to do an angioplasty on her.” She’s 93 years old, and I said, “I don’t know that we need to do that. I mean, I’d rather have her just enjoy the last months or years of her life and not have any complications associated with more intervention.” He looked at me kind of shocked, because physicians are always there feeling compelled to treat. His answer to me was, “Well, let’s ask your mother.”

Now, my mother at 93 was immortal, she was going to live forever. So he went in to talk to her and said, “Do you want this angioplasty?” From her perspective, of course, she wanted it. Now if you had gone in to her and said, “Well, you’re going to have to pay a 20-percent or 30-percent copay on this,” she would have said, “No, I don’t want to do that.” But since Medicare is kind of a freebie—in some respects, to many [people] if you’ve got Medicare and you’ve got a wraparound plan, you’re not putting any out-of-pocket money for much of your care—she said yes.

She had the angioplasty. She was living with us in our home and over the course of the next

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eight months was slowly deteriorating. [She] was on oxygen—but still moving around and would go outside in the backyard and do her exercises, kicking her feet up and the like.

Finally, it was time to bring in the hospice nurses. I said to the nurse, “Now the one thing you can’t do is tell her you’re a hospice nurse. Because, of course, she’s going to live forever.” She agreed to do that; technically, they shouldn’t do that, but she accommodated me.

My mom had her first visit with the hospice nurse. I came home from D.C. that night, and she complained to me that I got home too late and it’s too late to eat. So I gave her some Ensure, and then woke up at three in the morning to check on her and she had foam around her mouth, and I was thinking maybe she didn’t swallow all the Ensure.

I called the hospice nurse and the hospice nurse said no, that she is beginning to pass. So I woke up my then-younger daughter and we just stayed with her as the next three, four hours passed. And she died. A very peaceful life. So she literally died in her sleep.

Also living with us at the time was my mother-in-law.

So we had my mother who was virtually deaf and my mother-in-law who was now almost blind living with us for the last years of their lives. Four months later, we had just come back from Mother’s Day services and brunch and my mother-in-law wasn’t feeling so good. She had a number of issues. She was 87 years old, and as the night wore on we took her to the emergency room and she had a blockage. The doctor wanted to do surgery on her. I of course was of the opinion that was not necessarily the best avenue, but in fact the blockage over a period of time would be very, very dangerous.

So they did the surgery. She never really came out of the surgery. The next three days she was hospitalized. We were at her bed and the nurse comes in and wants to give her an antibiotic injection, and I look at her and I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? I said, “No, don’t do this.” We knew she was within hours of passing. She looked at me kind of shocked and then left the room. So my mother-in-law died in the hospital with tubes and injections and all the things that she really didn’t want.

Fast forward three years later. My father was then living with us, and he was complaining about this pain in his back, and it was getting more painful. So I took him to the hospital to get a bone scan. They found out that his prostate cancer that had been first diagnosed 10 years before had metastasized to the bone. We were in the hospital, I spent the night with him and I said “We’re getting out of here.” I arranged for transport, I took him home, we got a hospital bed into the bedroom, the hospice nurse came.

The expectation was he’d have five to six weeks.

This was Labor Day weekend, so this was on a Friday.

He was comfortable. Saturday, he was very lucid. He was on morphine, of course, but was lucid, telling stories.

Sunday he started to sleep more and more. He passed away on Labor Day. So the hospice services that were provided

to both my parents were very short in duration, which is another aspect that we hopefully will be dealing with in a more rational way as we become more educated, because hospice care is great care, but it’s oftentimes offered very late in life, so the benefits are not enjoyed by those who could gain the most from it.

Those were my experiences with end of life. With all the knowledge I have, with all of the experience, and yet it didn’t go as I would have liked in most of those cases.

I think for my father, it was as good as you could possibly imagine it, considering that we didn’t have that serious diagnosis until days before. But it’s a great message to all of us that we really need to take charge of how we want to be cared for at the end of life, and be very clear and specific to our family members as to what we want done.

REBECCA SUDORE: Those were some incredibly powerful stories. It really just makes me fired up about the fact that I feel like we need a revolution. When I say that, I think it’s not only in the medical realm, but we need to sort of stand up as a community to figure out how can we do these things differently.

I think I’ve spent a lot of my career trying to empower the people. Because you might not always get that physician who understands or who has been trained. So what can we do to do this as a community—not only in Congress, not only in our hospitals, but also serve in our communities?

How does this spiral of unwanted care happen? Congresswoman Speier talked about how doctors were trained

Hospice care is great care, but it’s oftentimes offered very late, so the benefits are not enjoyed by those who could gain the most from it. to do treatments, so the saying goes that if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We are trained to use the tools in our toolbox, and sometimes we forget that the person is a whole person and maybe those tools aren’t the best tools for them.

So I think that’s one of the things that happens. I also think when I see some of these communication breakdowns that happen, what are some of the deficits? Patients are often not empowered with the information they need to make informed medical decisions for themselves. There’s often a power differential in that situation with a clinician; how do you stand up for yourself? As the congresswoman was saying, if you haven’t had these discussions and haven’t been empowered to know what’s important to you so you can tell your loved ones, your loved ones might be in situations where they’re not empowered to make decisions.

So the question is, How do we preserve our stories? How D E C E M B E R 2016/J A N UA RY 2017

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do we preserve ourselves and what’s important to us and how we want to live our lives? I’ve spent a lot of time doing research and thinking about this, about redefining what we talk about when we talk about advance care planning. The idea is maybe redefining this planning and advance care planning from just filling out advance directive forms about CPR mechanical ventilation, to really preparing people to make complex, ongoing decisions over time and preparing people to communicate effectively when they’re in those situations in the medical environment. Really asking the right questions. So is it just about CPR or is it really about what brings life meaning and again how we want to live?

The traditional objective of advance care planning, if you don’t know, is to have people make treatment decisions in advance of serious illness. This is in an attempt to provide care that’s consistent with somebody’s goals, and that’s a good thing. Advanced-directive legal forms, or living wills, are the ways that this has usually been done and I like to

Patients are often not empowered.

There’s often a power differential in that situation with a clinician; how do you stand up for yourself? call this the one-and-done situation. Clinicians and lawyers, we like our check boxes. We want to ask, “Do you want to be in a breathing machine or not? Yes or no? Can we check the box?” And then can I just sort of be done with this, because as the congresswoman was saying, these are often very uncomfortable conversations, and let’s just do it once and never talk about it again.

Even so, advanced-care plans are often not completed.

[One of ] the problems with advanced directives [is that] they only talk about this very narrow set of treatment decisions at the very end of life, but not about all the other decisions that somebody might be making up until that point. We know that over 55 percent of seriously ill older adults haven’t completed an advance directive. These forms are written from a legal perspective, so they have very difficult legal language and can be difficult to understand.

They’re not really preparing people for decision-making and for some of those other decisions that might come up.

Unfortunately, clinicians are not trained, and they have limited time to have the discussions. So I just want to say that I do think advanced directives are critically important.

I want to refer people sort of to our easy-to-read advanced directive that we have. This is writtenat a fifth-grade reading level and has pictures that help explain the text. I’ll just tell you we’ve done randomized control trials that show that this is wildly successful, and even people with high literacy prefer this form because it’s just easier to understand. It

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is available at the Institute for Healthcare Advancement website (iha4health.org).

So I do think advance directives are important, but are advance directives enough to sort of deal with all of the problems related to end-of-life care? We’ve done a series of focus groups with patients and their love ones. I’m just going to read you a quote from a woman who was her husband’s surrogate decision maker.

She said, “We got the DNR, or do not resuscitate, in writing. But in making the decisions, which there were many, that was just one, because the first decision was to put him in a nursing home. We were married 30 years and I could no longer take care of him. Then the second decision was whether to put him on a feeding tube, because he had stopped eating, and I wasn’t ready to let him go.”

A lot of decisions that people need to make over time.

I think we sort of know inherently that no form or check box will ever eliminate the uncertainty or the complexity of the human condition, but I will tell you that the medical environment still keeps trying to squeeze people into boxes.

People need better preparation. We know that unprepared patients and their families result in uninformed choices, that spiral of unwanted care that the congresswoman spoke about, and studies showing stress and post-traumatic stress disorder from people and their loved ones who have had to make these decisions.

So again, how do we prepare to preserve our own stories and to preserve who we are in the medical environment?

What we’ve determined is that advanced care planning really should prepare people with skills to identify what is most important to them and how they want to live.

That is evolving and changing over time. Getting back to what congresswoman Speier said, the time to start this isn’t when you’re 93. The time to start this isn’t when you’re at the very end of your life. If we are moving this upstream, and this becomes normalized, the idea is that we’re having these conversations, people are learning to identify what’s important to them, as it evolves over time.

Advanced care planning should also prepare people with skills to communicate what is important to them to their loved ones and importantly to providers, especially if you’re in a crisis situation, and make informed decisions, either for yourself or for a loved one. One of the other things again is, have we been asking the wrong questions? I can tell you in the medical environment, what do doctors ask? They ask, “Do you want to be on a breathing machine? Do you want CPR? Do you want surgery? Do you want angioplasty?”

Should we be asking instead how your life will be after treatment? How you want to live? Studies show that is what is most important to people. I feel like, if you get nothing else out of this talk today, the thing that I hope people walk away [with] is that it’s okay to ask your doctors, “What will my life be like after this treatment? What will my life be like after this surgery, after this chemotherapy? If I were to need CPR, what kind of bang for my buck am I going to get if I have angioplasty when I’m 93?”

ACTIVIST, ACTOR, AUTHOR

ALAN CUMMING The busy actor sits down with Cleve Jones to discuss his life in show business and his political interests.

Alan Cumming, actor, activist, and author of You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams; in conversation with Cleve Jones, founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, human rights activist, and author. From the September 22, 2016 Inforum program in San Francisco “Spend the Night with Alan Cumming.” Photos by Ed Ritger.

CLEVE JONES: You’ve campaigned for Scottish independence. Talk about what’s going to happen with Scotland now. Is this going to open the door for Scottish independence again?

CUMMING: Well, can I sort of talk about the refugee thing first of all and make it kind of a more realistic— JONES: Sixty-five million people living in refugee camps today, more than any time in history.

CUMMING: Did you know that 65 million people in the world are living in refugee camps? And why I asked if I could talk about this is because I feel like my feelings about Brexit, Scottish independence, Trump—everything—is overshadowed by this idea, not an idea, this fact, that right now in the world there’s been great displacement of people. I mean there always is, and I recently went to Lebanon with the UNHC actually. [Applause.] Don’t clap for that. Well, do if you want, but actually make donations rather than clap.

So the UNHC are the UN High Commission on Refugees, and it’s an organization that was formed after the Second World War to help people who are displaced after all the terrible things that happened.

It was designed to be a thing that would only last a few years. Here we are 60 whatever, 70 years later. It’s now only about 20 years ago [when it] was designated a permanent thing. So I went to Lebanon with the UN, partly because I feel I have a voice and I can do good things in the world—that I think are good—because of my fame. But also because I had seen so many things happen in the rest of the world that I felt were due to this displacement of people. And when that happens, and people come into other people’s cultures, they get scared and terrified and they start to have more extreme views.

For example, a big thing about Brexit and the vote for Britain to leave the EU was to do with this mass of refugees coming from Syria and Iraq and other countries and going to Turkey and then in Turkey they got in all these boats. So many thousands and thousands of people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to get away from the war in Syria, and some of them arrived and they’ve gone to different countries.

But it’s been a huge social and political issue in Europe and it really, really affected the Brexit vote, because I think that what happened was, the language of fear was used so much about the idea of “the other.” The idea that these people are coming into our country. We’re not that well ourselves, but now all these foreigners are coming. And within Europe there’s a big thing about asylum seekers who already before the war in Syria were coming in, and there’s a lot of unrest, especially in the south

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Alan Cumming (left) and Cleve Jones

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of England, who received most of these people.

So this idea was then enhanced by this wave of immigrants—not immigrants but refugees—coming into the country. And whenever there’s unrest and change, in any country—perhaps like a new election about to happen?—it’s very easy for people to use the language of fear to make the people who potentially are going to vote have quite radical opinions, even if their economic situation is quite good, even if things are going quite well, even if

Rhetoric about ‘the other’ and people who are different from you can be whipped into a language of absolute fear and absolute fascism. they have jobs.

But it’s easy to use a language of fear to change people’s opinions and make them do quite radical things. So in a way what I’m trying to say is that the language of fear that was used in Brexit was already being used right now in the American election system.

This idea of “the other,” these immigrants who are coming in, these people, these rapists and murders, these Muslims who are coming in. It was so fascinating for me to go to Lebanon and see these people who had really been displaced, had tried to live in their country, had had to go to another country for salvation and were living in these huts, two chairs like this would have been their home, and a piece of tarpaulin over the top. It really was galling, and all these people wanted to do was go back to their homes.

They didn’t want anything from us. They didn’t want to harm us. Refugees are refugees for a reason. They’re not operatives trying to infiltrate us; they’re people who have been displaced by great violence and persecution. I think Brexit and the rise of Trump are an example of the way that rhetoric about the other and about people who are different from you and people who may share different religions from you and people you don’t understand, can suddenly be whipped into a language of absolute fear and absolute fascism. And I really, really, really fear that’s happening in this country right now.

JONES: I love this story about Elizabeth Taylor [in your book]. I have my own wonderful Elizabeth Taylor story, because she was so great with AIDS from the beginning.

You know she was friends with Reagan and all of those Republican fools. She lost all those friends because she stood with us, and she stood with us in a very real way.

CUMMING: Didn’t she manage to sort of get Reagan to talk about AIDS for the first time, because she lured him to this award ceremony, her and Doctor [Mathilde Krim, the founder of The Foundation for AIDS Research]?

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JONES: Yes, I was there. Really intense, and he was booed.

After, I said, “I’m sorry [about] that; I hope you didn’t feel awkward,” and she said “No, he needed to hear it, he needed to hear it.” But she came to the quilt display, the final display of the quilt and we covered the entire Mall.

We set up a trailer for her behind the Lincoln Memorial from where she would address the crowd, and she had the hottest security guy I’ve ever seen in my life. My gosh. And so I kept walking by the trailer. [Laughter.] He thought I was trying to talk to her. Then at one point I hear her yelling inside. She was upset. I said, “What’s wrong with Miss Taylor?” He said, “She’s very frightened of speaking in public,” which I thought was so odd. I said “Let me talk to her; I’ve given speeches here many times and I can calm her down.” So he knocked on the door and I went in—and those eyes.

CUMMING: Violet eyes.

JONES: I mean really, violet eyes. She was very upset. I said “What’s wrong?” She said, “I hate public speaking.”

I said, “Look, it doesn’t matter what you say, because everyone there already loves you. You could go up there and recite the alphabet and people would just continue to love you for what you’ve done for us. And everybody knows it. And everyone knows that you were the first.” She said, “Really?” I said, “Yes. Calm down, calm down, relax.” And then as I was leaving, I remembered that we’re right next to—I won’t call it by its current name—National Airport in Washington, D.C. And if you do anything on the Mall before 10 p.m. there’s a very strong likelihood that a jet’s gonna go right over you in the mid-speech.

So I informed her of this and she got very nervous and said, “No, jets [are] going to go over? They won’t be able to hear me?” I said, “Look, it’s simple. When you hear the sound of the aircraft just pause, look up, look at your watch, tap your toe, look up again and then everyone will know you’re waiting for the jet to go by.” Sure enough, halfway through her speech, the jet came over. She stopped, she looked up, she looked at her wrist, tapped her foot. When I told Gus [Van Sant, film director] that, he said, “Girl, you directed Elizabeth Taylor.” [Laughter.]

CUMMING: He did? That’s fantastic.

JONES: I also liked your description of Liza [Minnelli].

She was also really good with us in the early days of the quilt, and when I met her I just, my first thought was, “I want to take care of you.” I wanted to get her a blanket or something, you know CUMMING: I just saw Liza yesterday, actually. I’ve just come from LA and she’s living in LA now, and she’s such a darling. It’s so weird; like, I get how we’re both show biz, Broadway. But actually, from where I’m from and how I feel about my life, the idea that I’m friends with Liza is so nuts. But actually, I feel that we have a very similar sensibility and outlook on the world. Yesterday I was in her apartment, and she’s watching Fox News. [Laughter.]

Fox Business News, actually.

She said to me, “I’m terrified.”

I was like, “Well, you’re watching Fox News. What do you expect?” [Laughter.]

She said to me, “I want to buy a chalet in Switzerland.” I was like, “Why?” And she goes, “Because it’s neutral.” And I was like, “All right, I’m in.” Then I said to her, “Don’t watch Fox News, Liza, it’s all just like this rhetoric of fear, it’s all about fear, you know.” Yes, we should be wary, we should be vigilant, but you can’t live your life being fearful of everything, you can’t.

Otherwise you just like crawl into a hole. So you’ve got to go out into the world with a quite an open heart, and expect that some people will engage with you in that same spirit. I said, “Why don’t you watch CNN?” [Laughter.]

And she was like, “Okay.” So I put CNN on, and then I went to the loo, and I came back—she put it back to Fox. [Laughter.] The familiar, I suppose, you know.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Did you enjoy doing “The Good Wife”?

CUMMING: No! [Laughter.] I loved “The Good Wife,” I loved it. I thought it was, on many levels, such a great thing for me to be able to be at home. I live with my husband Grant in New York. It was so nice to not have to travel the world all the time.

Also it made me realize about the value of writing, and that if you are on a TV show, or whatever you’re in, if you have great writing, it can sustain you for much, much longer than you ever thought it was possible. Because clever, clever people engender great things in other people. The standard of writing in that show really changed my life.

I didn’t enjoy all the aspects of the finale, like I really wanted Eli to take revenge on Peter. [Laughter, applause.]

But you know what, the show is called “The Good Wife” not “The Good Eli,” and so the biggest story was this kind of arc of things she did, this violence she did on someone else at the beginning, and then this violence being done on her because of her actions. I thought that was amazing.

Alan Cumming (left) shares a toast with moderator Cleve Jones.

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InSight The Triggers We Need Dr. Gloria C. Duffy, President and CEO

A

DEBATE IS SIMMERING on American college campuses about posting “trigger warnings” before course material or presentations that contain descriptions of discrimination, hate crimes, sexual assault, violence and abuse. Some colleges warn students before presenting such material, concerned that it may precipitate discomfort, panic attacks, or flashbacks of abuse or violence the student may have personally suffered.

A recent Huffington Post article refers to such trigger warnings, and related “safe spaces” on campus free from challenges to one’s identity, as “potentially lifesaving,” for people who may suffer from panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or mental health issues.

Certain institutions, notably the University of Chicago, do not support “trigger warnings,” preferring to emphasize free expression.

As the Class of 2020 was recently advised in a letter from the dean of students, “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their presentations might be controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

I see this issue a little bit differently than either the proponents of trigger warnings, or opponents like the University of Chicago.

I oppose trigger warnings, but not just on grounds of free speech.

I believe we need to be shocked, including by graphic descriptions, into realizing the brutality of what has happened in our world, and reminded frequently of the violence and abuse that continues. If we are not informed, how can we identify behavior or circumstances that lead to abuse? How can we recognize abuse when it is disguised, or rationalized or excused? How can we work effectively to prevent violence, and be strongly motivated to protect those who are vulnerable?

In the summer of 1967, returning from a trip to Alaska, our family took a ferry south through the Inland Waterway. I always brought a stack of books on our family adventures, and my reading selection for this voyage was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, published in 1960. This 1,250 page book exposed in graphic detail the horrors of the Nazi regime and the genocide against the Jews, drawn from captured documents of the Third Reich, eyewitness accounts, and testimony at the Nuremburg Trials.

It was raining throughout our voyage, so I spent three solid days sitting on the indoor observation deck of the ship, gliding past the fog-shrouded trees, immersed in this story of horrible brutality. At age 14, I was very disturbed by what I was reading, and I definitely had nightmares. There was, of course, no trigger warning.

That early, unprepared exposure to the story of the Holocaust shocked me into realizing that there is never any excuse for such

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brutality, made me aware of the dangers of totalitarianism, and left me determined to do what I could to oppose such inhumanity.

In my early twenties, I read the Strategic Bombing Survey conducted by the United States in Europe and the Pacific after World War II. The Pacific survey documented the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No trigger warning there. UnderstandPhoto courtesy of Gloria Duffy ing the devastating effects of nuclear blast and radiation on the Japanese population helped spark my commitment to diminish the possibility that nuclear weapons would be used again.

Journalism and literature have taken me on many other excursions into darkness. I read all of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novels about the Soviet gulag, as well as books on the bloody siege of Stalingrad. Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts is a recent further exploration of Nazi crimes, as is the biography I’m currently reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed for trying to protect the German churches from Nazism. The Spanish Inquisition, human trafficking,

I don’t believe it is right to shelter ourselves, students or the general population, from ... details of wrongdoing. sexual violence, elder abuse—all of these stories are important to inform us, and they strengthen our resolve to be on the right side in protecting victims and standing against violence and abuse.

It’s one thing for a soldier immediately recovering from PTSD, or a person who has just experienced sexual violence to be protected against immersion in triggering stories. But I don’t believe it is right to shelter ourselves, students or the general population, from distressing and even disgusting details of wrongdoing.

We need to be challenged and provoked to do the right thing. If we are, we are less likely to be Holocaust deniers or “good Germans,” or to countenance the banality of evil. If we have been informed and shocked by it, we are more likely to recognize abuse and stand against it, whether it is in our individual lives, or in society at large.

GRAND DANUBE PASSAGE

From Prague to Sofia

August 23 - September 6, 2017 Journey through eight countries and discover old-world capitals and stroll through charming villages along the Danube River. After three nights exploring Prague, embark the MS Amadeus Silver for an eight-night river cruise. Visit Passau, Melk and DĂźrnstein before sailing through the Wachau Valley toward the Austrian capital of Vienna. Explore Bratislava and Budapest. Wander through Kalemegdan Citadel in Belgrade. Sail through the Iron Gate Gorge. Disembark and enjoy two nights in Sofia.

From $4,695 per person, not including port taxes and airfare. Limited single cabins available with no single supplement!

Detailed brochure online at commonwealthclub.org/travel | 415.597.6720 | travel@commonwealthclub.org CST: 2096889-40

The Commonwealth Club of California 555 Post Street San Francisco, CA 94102

Purchase event tickets at commonwealthclub.org or call (415) 597-6705

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PROGRAMS YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS Tuesday, December 13

Mae Jemison Mae Jemison, M.D., Astronaut; Physician Kimberly Bryant, Electrical Engineer; Founder and Executive Director, Black Girls Code

Wednesday, January 11

The 2016 Stephen H. Schneider Award Naomi Oreskes, Ph.D., Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

Physician and astronaut Dr. Mae C. Jemison is a science literacy advocate and the lead ambassador of the Making Science Make Sense program. The goal of the initiative is to provide 1 million hands-on science experiences to children by 2020. Dr. Jemison is particularly devoted to getting more girls, young women and minorities into careers in science, tech, engineering and math (STEM).

Join Dr. Jemison for an inspiring call-toaction on how to get Americans psyched about science!

Climate One presents Naomi Oreskes the 6th Annual Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication. According to Schneider Award juror Ben Santer, “Her 2004 Science paper helped to quantify, for the first time, the broad scientific consensus on climate change. Her recent research unmasked the forces behind denial of human effects on climate and improved our chances of having a responsible, science-based discussion of climate change solutions.”

for event details, see page 28

for event details, see page 29

The New Science of Living Longer

Ezekiel Emanuel

Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, President, Salk Institute; 2009 Nobel Prize Winner; Co-author, The Telomere Effect: The New Science of Living Younger D r. E l i s s a E p e l , Founder and Director, UCSF’s Center on Obesity Assessment, Study, and Treatment; Co-author, The Telomere Effect: The New Science of Living Younger

Thursday, December 15

Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., Former Chief Health Policy Advisor to the Obama Administration; Chair, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania Mark Zitter, Chair, The Zetema Project—Moderator

Have you wondered why some 60-year-olds look and feel like 40-year-olds and why some 40-year-olds look and feel like 60-year-olds?

Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Epel discuss how to increase not only your lifespan but your health-span. They say to live healthier and younger, we need to understand how sleep, exercise, stress and diet affect our telomeres.

As U.S. health-care costs continue to grow, supporters of the Affordable Care Act point to a dramatic drop in uninsured citizens, while critics highlight skyrocketing premiums.

Lost in the arguments over cost and access is reform in the delivery of health-care services to patients. Obamacare architect and noted health policy expert Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel will discuss the impetus for delivery reform and specific practices that enable highly effective care delivery.

for event details, see page 29

Visit us online for event details

Wednesday, January 11