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Commonwealth Club of California PodcastThe Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. Author: Commonwealth Club of California
The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's largest public affairs forum. The nonpartisan and nonprofit Club produces and distributes programs featuring diverse viewpoints from thought leaders on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast the oldest in the U.S., since 1924 is carried on hundreds of stations. Our website features audio and video of our programs. This podcast feed is usually updated multiple times each week. Language: en-us Genres: Government, News Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Taeku Lee: The Billionaire Backlash
Wednesday, 8 April, 2026
How can corporate scandals—from Enron to the Facebook privacy controversy—change the way the world works for the better?Political scientists Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee have drawn on a decade of research on policymaking and public opinion to show how scandals can ignite a public with few political outlets for their discontent. Scandals don’t simply dominate news cycles: they can provoke us to demand better policy, spurring governments to adopt rules that protect us from massive corporations run amok. They say that today it is giant companies, not governments, that run the world. Businesses launch rockets into space, control satellite communication, and develop era-defining AI technologies. But around the globe, these corporate titans are facing increasing public hostility. Tech giants are accused of promoting misinformation, undermining democracy and violating our privacy. Big banks, reeling since the financial crisis of 2008, continue to face major scandals. Drawing on real-life examples such as the powdered milk scandal that rocked France, the VW scandal in Germany, the Goldman Sachs scandal in the United States, Cambridge Analytica in Britain and Samsung in South Korea, Culpepper and Lee say these scandals are not just symptoms of a careless corporate elite, they are opportunities for real political change.They explore all of this in their book The Billionaire Backlash, and Taeku Lee comes to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to reveal their take on how the shared anger of citizens can be channeled into a backlash that has the potential to reinvigorate our failing democracies. One corporate scandal at a time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
