Computational folklorist on how storytelling becomes belief

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Close Encounters with UFO Hot Spots: Area 51, Roswell, and the Great ET Road Trip 39:50

12 روز پیش39:50

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39:50

The truth is out West! We’re hopping on the ET Highway and venturing to the most notorious alien hot spots, including Roswell’s infamous crash site, Area 51’s eerie perimeter, and a mysterious desert watchtower. Join us as journalist Laura Krantz, host of the podcast Wild Thing , beams up to share stories from the front lines of UFO reporting—from strange sightings and quirky festivals to a mailbox where people leave letters to extraterrestrials. Maybe you’ll even decide for yourself: Is Earth a tourist stop for spaceships? UFO hot spots you’ll encounter in this episode: - UFO Watchtower (near Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado) - Roswell, New Mexico - Area 51, Nevada - Extraterrestrial Highway (aka State Route 375), Nevada - Little A’Le’Inn, ET Highway, Nevada - E.T. Fresh Jerky, ET Highway, Nevada - Alien Research Center, ET Highway, Nevada - The Black Mailbox, ET Highway, Nevada Via Podcast is a production of AAA Mountain West Group .…

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In Berkeley Talks episode 213, Timothy Tangherlini, a UC Berkeley professor in the Department of Scandinavian and director of the Folklore Graduate Program, discusses the vital role that storytelling plays in many cultures around the world, and how it can influence belief, for good and for bad.

“Stories give a basis and a justification for people to take real life action,” Tangherlini said at an Alumni and Parents Weekend at Homecoming event on campus in October. “They can be retrospective justification, but they can also be motivating justification.”

A computational folklorist, who’s also a professor in the School of Information and associate director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Tangherlini works at the intersection of informal culture, storytelling and AI. He uses a combination of methods from the study of folklore and machine learning to describe storytelling networks and classify stories.

“This is where we start to unravel narrative at internet scale,” he said. “One of the things that's kind of interesting, if we start to think about conspiracy theories, is you've all heard little bits of these in different places. But what a conspiracy theory is able to do is to take simple threat narratives and link them together to form complex representations of threatening groups and their interconnections.”

Tangherlini went on to address specific conspiracy theories, from #stopthesteal to Pizzagate, and explored the potential of using storytelling to change the conversation.

“Can we use the structure of the storytelling to … question exclusionary ideas about who belongs and turn them into more inclusive ideas in the storytelling itself?” he asked. “Can we question ideas of what is threatening? Can I develop ways to steer conversations to more inclusive and less destructive strategies?”

This Oct. 18 event was hosted by Berkeley’s Division of Arts and Humanities.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

UC Berkeley photo.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

227 قسمت

#UC Berkeley #Berkeley News #University Of California #Berkeley #Berkeley Talks #Society #Podcasting Education

Berkeley Talks

Computational folklorist on how storytelling becomes belief

Berkeley Talks

22 subscribers

published حدود یک سال پیش

اشتراک گذاری

MP3•خانه قسمت

Tangherlini went on to address specific conspiracy theories, from #stopthesteal to Pizzagate, and explored the potential of using storytelling to change the conversation.

This Oct. 18 event was hosted by Berkeley’s Division of Arts and Humanities.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

UC Berkeley photo.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

227 قسمت

#UC Berkeley #Berkeley News #University Of California #Berkeley #Berkeley Talks #Society #Podcasting Education

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Berkeley Talks

1
Feeding the world without ‘eating the earth’ 1:14:36

24 hours پیش1:14:36

1:14:36

By 2050, the global population is expected to reach about 10 billion people. That means we need to find a way to feed nearly 2 billion more mouths in the next 25 years. Industrial farming practices have already destroyed countless natural ecosystems, and experts say that expanding farmland even further would have devastating consequences for the planet. In Berkeley Talks episode 227, UC Berkeley Professor Tim Bowles and journalist Mike Grunwald discuss the impact of our current agricultural methods and debate the ways we can ramp up food production without causing more harm to the environment. “Agriculture is eating the earth,” says Grunwald, author of the forthcoming book We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate. Farmland, he says, now covers two of every five acres on the planet, “and those are acres that used to be forest and wetlands and savannas that stored a lot of carbon and sheltered a lot of biodiversity.” In order to avoid further destruction, he contends, we must produce more food on land we already farm by improving the efficiency of our existing industrial systems. While Bowles agrees that expanding farmland isn’t the answer, he counters that industrial agriculture isn’t either; he argues that industrial farming is detrimental to the environment and human health and perpetuates social and economic inequality. Instead, he advocates for agroecology — sustainable farming that allows farmers to work with nature to create resilient and productive food systems. “It's already happening all over the world,” says Bowles, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley and lead faculty director of the Berkeley Food Institute. “What hasn't been happening is the political will to make it the foundation of our food system.” “Coming back here to California, agroecology is when 1.6 million schoolchildren are eating lunches that are not taco beef sticks,” he continues, “but fruits and vegetables and whole grains that are supplied by California farms that are using climate-smart agricultural practices supported by state investments, and building on the successes of an organic agricultural industry that is currently [worth] $11 billion.” This conversation took place on April 17, 2025, and was sponsored by the Berkeley Food Institute . It was moderated by New York Times correspondent Kim Severson. Watch a video of the conversation. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Zoe Richardson via Unsplash+ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) on reading the authors you want to write like 56:04

15 روز پیش56:04

56:04

It took nearly six years for bestselling author Daniel Handler to sell his first book, a satirical novel called The Basic Eight. When his agent sold it in 1998, it was “for the least amount she had ever negotiated for,” laughed Handler, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event earlier this month. More than two decades later, Handler has published seven novels. Under his pen name Lemony Snicket, he has written dozens of books for children, including the 13-volume series A Series of Unfortunate Events. His most recent book, And Then? And Then? What else?, is part memoir, part inspiration for aspiring writers. Handler was the keynote speaker at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life’s inaugural Jewish Arts and Bookfest , a day of events held on May 4 in celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. Throughout the day, artists and authors came together for panel discussions, workshops and other programming that showcased the Jewish experience through art, culture and storytelling. In episode 226 of Berkeley Talks, Handler, joined in conversation by J. The Jewish News of Northern California’s editor-in-chief Chanan Tigay, discusses how his Jewish identity shapes his worldview and storytelling, where the name “Lemony Snicket” came from and how a great mentor taught him to read work by authors he admired in order to hone his craft. “When you suggest that we create our own canon, you don't necessarily mean a list of books that are the most significant to us,” Tigay said to Handler at the event, “but actually, the moments in books, turns of phrase and plot twists that are, in some ways, significant. “And I'm wondering if you could take us through a bit of your own canon, in that regard, the moments and turns of phrase and plot twists in books, specific books that have been most impactful to you as a writer?” “For writers, I try to encourage them to seek out what they're enthused by,” Handler replied. “ … So instead of saying, ‘Gosh darn it, Toni Morrison is sure a great writer,’ that you think, ‘What is it about Beloved that I return to, that I think about all the time?’ … Then, you can go back and find that scene, and look at it, and study it for what it is that you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to take from it." Handler went on to describe how a scene from the 1958 film Vertigo , when an important character named Midge leaves halfway through the story, inspired the structure of his second novel. "My second novel Watch Your Mouth has two parts," he said. "I remember thinking, 'I want ... to have that feeling of like, OK, some things are gone. What in the world can happen in the second half of this story?' That was exciting to me, and I lifted that from that scene in Vertigo . No one in a million years would think that, there's nothing in the novel that reflects that plot or anything like that, but that was what it did for me." This conversation was recorded by Aaron Levy-Wolins / J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Read more about the speakers on the Magnes' website. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small for UC Berkeley. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
In 1970, one in five Americans moved every year. Now it’s one in 13. What changed? 1:32:19

29 روز پیش1:32:19

1:32:19

In Berkeley Talks episode 225, The Atlantic journalists Yoni Appelbaum and Jerusalem Demsas discuss the decline of housing mobility in the United States and its impact on economic opportunity in the country. Appelbaum, author of the 2025 book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity , began by tracing the history of housing mobility in the U.S. and its rapid decline in recent decades. He noted that in the 19th century, one out of three Americans moved to a new residence every year, and as late as 1970, one in five did. Today, only one in 13 people in the U.S. pack up their things and find a new place to live on an annual basis. “These constant moves in America, made possible by the constant construction of new housing, created a new kind of social order,” said Appelbaum, and most people “ended up better off for it.” The sharp decline in residential relocation, he said, caused largely by rising housing costs and restrictive zoning, is a major driver of the decline of social mobility, “the largest and least remarked change in America of the last 50 years.” Building on Appelbaum’s argument, Demsas said that exclusionary housing policies have shifted mobility from a widespread opportunity to a privilege for the affluent and well-educated. “Most Americans no longer stand to gain by moving toward the places in this country that offer them the greatest opportunities — the greatest professional opportunities, the best education for their children,” said Demsas, author of the 2024 book On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy . Instead, they move toward affordability, she said, which deepens inequality and limits their potential for economic advancement. The conversation, held in March 2025, was moderated by Paul Pierson , a UC Berkeley professor of political science and director of the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) . The event was co-sponsored by BESI and the Berkeley Center for American Democracy . Watch a video of the conversation and read more about the speakers. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Daniel Abadia/Unsplash+ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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The case for a philosophical life, with Agnes Callard and Judith Butler 1:35:20

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The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is considered the father of Western philosophy, one whose most famous ideas have all but risen to the level of pop culture. We parrot his claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” His name has been invoked by politicians to bolster their stance against “cancel culture.” There’s even an AI chat app modeled after Socrates that promises intelligent conversations. But what exactly were Socrates’ philosophical views? We may be quick to reference his name, but if asked, many of us would likely be hard-pressed to give a thorough account of what he actually believed. In Berkeley Talks episode 224, Agnes Callard, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and author of the 2025 book Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life , joins UC Berkeley’s Judith Butler , a Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School and a leading philosopher and theorist, for a conversation. Together, they dive deep into Socrates’ work and beliefs, discussing the value of pursuing knowledge through open-ended questions, how philosophical inquiry is a collaborative process where meaning and understanding are constructed through conversation, and how critical questioning can lead to greater freedom of thought and help us to ask and answer some of life’s most important questions. This event took place on Jan. 30, 2025, and was sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities . Watch a video of the conversation. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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J Finley on how Black women use sass to claim their humanity 1:23:07

۸ weeks پیش1:23:07

1:23:07

When J Finley arrived at UC Berkeley as a graduate student in 2006, she planned on studying reparations and the legacy of slavery. But after a fellowship in South Africa, where she studied the Zulu language and culture, Finley says she realized Black people were never going to get reparations. Switching gears, she started thinking: “How else do Black people make do? Well, we laugh.” In Berkeley Talks episode 223, Finley, an associate professor of Africana studies at Pomona College who earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2008 and 2012, discusses her 2024 book Sass: Black Women’s Humor and Humanity. During the talk, Finley shares how Black women have used and continue to use humor and, more specifically, sass , to speak back to power and assert their own humanity. Black women’s humor, she contends, is “rooted in the racist, patriarchal and, many times, degrading conditions from which it developed” and is “an embodied expression of resilience at the moment of crisis that has come to be the hallmark of Black women’s humor.” It’s not that sass is merely for show, she argues, but there’s an internal process that happens first that is then expressed gesturally and vocally. “If you are a Black woman, and you don't understand yourself as empowered, to have the agency to speak back within those relations,” she says, “in what world can you be free?” This UC Berkeley event, which took place March 18, was sponsored by the Department of African American Studies . Read more about J Finley, and her research on the use of Black women’s humor as a form of resistance. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Pomona College photo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Law professors debate the merits of originalism 1:05:45

10 weeks پیش1:05:45

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In Berkeley Talks podcast episode 222, UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Brian Fitzpatrick , the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, Tennessee, debate the merits of originalism in constitutional interpretation. Originalism is a theory that argues that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted based on its original meaning, as understood at the time of its adoption nearly 250 years ago, rather than evolving with society. Arguments for originalism in this debate include: Originalism limits judicial discretion and prevents judges from imposing their own political views under the guise of constitutional interpretation. It promotes certainty, predictability and stability in law by relying on a fixed meaning of constitutional texts. Changes to the Constitution should be left to the formal amendment process, rather than judicial interpretation. Arguments against originalism include: Originalism is often unworkable in practice because it’s difficult to determine the original meaning or intent of constitutional provisions, and historical context can be challenging to fully understand. The theory ties modern society to the views and values of earlier generations, potentially limiting constitutional rights and guarantees to outdated perspectives. It allows judges to impose their own biases under the guise of historical interpretation. This symposium , which took place on March 17, 2025, was UC Berkeley Law’s inaugural Thomas David and Judith Swope Clark Symposium on Constitutional Interpretation. Watch a video of the debate on UC Berkeley Law’s YouTube page. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Image from pixabay.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Heather Cox Richardson on the evolution of the Republican Party 1:38:03

12 weeks پیش1:38:03

1:38:03

In Berkeley Talks episode 221, American historian Heather Cox Richardson joins Dylan Penningroth , a UC Berkeley professor of law and history, in a conversation about the historical evolution of the Republican Party, and the state of U.S. politics and democracy today. Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College, is the author of the popular nightly newsletter Letters from an American, in which she explains current political developments and relates them to historical events. With more than 3 million daily readers, Richardson says Letters has grown a “community around the world of people who are trying to reestablish a reality-based politics.” Topics in the conversation include: The origins of the Republican Party : President Lincoln had a vision of a government serving the common person, including equal access to resources like education and land. After the Civil War, Republicans under Lincoln created a national taxation system, which former Confederates argued was an unfair redistribution of wealth from white people to Black people and from rich people to poor people. The backlash after Lincoln : After Lincoln, there was a rise of robber barons — industrialists whose business practices were considered ruthless and unethical — and a group of people who argued that intervention for ordinary people was a form of socialism. Wealth began to concentrate at the top and led to an inevitable crash. As a consequence, the Republican Party had to repeatedly rethink the way it did business and the way it worked. How Donald Trump changed the Republican Party: Richardson says President Trump took oligarchs' language about government overreach and "stripped away the veneer," appealing directly to racism and sexism. This empowered a new base of supporters and led to a movement encouraging violence and anti-authority sentiment. What gives Richardson hope: Richardson says the current moment in politics reminds her of the 1850s, when it appeared that elite enslavers, who made up 1% of the U.S. population, had completely taken over the country. But over the next decade, the nation went on to elect Lincoln and form a government by the people and for the people. “I believe that all of us coming together in the 21st century can do it again,” she says. The event took place on Feb. 26 in Zellerbach Hall, and was presented by Cal Performances and the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley as part of the Charles M. and Martha Hitchcock Lectures . More about the speakers: Richardson has written for The Washington Post , The New York Times and The Guardian , and is the author, most recently, of the best-selling 2023 book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America . Penningroth is the author of the award-winning 2023 book Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights . He serves as associate dean of the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley Law; his scholarship focuses on African American and legal history. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Screenshot from a UC Berkeley video. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
UC Berkeley political scientist asks: Does democracy work? 1:03:25

14 weeks پیش1:03:25

1:03:25

If someone asked you to describe democracy in one word, what would you say? An October 2024 survey by the Political Psychology of American Democracy Policy Project, led by UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy Dean David Wilson, asked people just that. Many respondents said, “freedom,” but a lot of others said, “broken.” In Berkeley Talks episode 220, Berkeley political scientist Henry Brady discusses how we got to a place of growing disillusionment with democracy, where so many mistrust the U.S. government and deride fellow voters’ ability to make informed decisions. In his Feb. 3 talk, part of the Martin Meyerson Berkeley Faculty Research Lectures series, Brady says factors include the rise of moral traditionalism and social division; the rise of the religious right; the demise of unions; and concerns about diversity, equity and inclusion and who belongs. There’s also a new division between less-educated elites and elite professionals, “which I think really affects us as university folks,” he says. Watch Brady’s full lecture on YouTube , which includes slides from his talk. Brady is the Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He served as dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy from 2009-2021 and as director of the University of California’s Survey Research Center from 1998-2009. He is co-author, most recently, of the 2021 book, Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the New Gilded Age . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Find us on YouTube @Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Dyana Wing So via Unsplash. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
How hospitals collect medical debts can hurt patients. Why? 55:37

16 weeks پیش55:37

55:37

When Luke Messac began his emergency medicine residency at Rhode Island Hospital in 2018, he noticed a lot of his patients came to him concerned about costs. Some worried about his recommendations for them to stay in the hospital overnight. Others questioned his motives when he asked them to undergo a test, like an X-ray or MRI. A few came in way too late in the course of their illnesses out of fear of the cost. He’d heard about aggressive debt collection practices at hospitals around the country that put people at risk of profound financial and legal consequences. It made him wonder: Was his hospital doing that, too? After a quick trip to the country courthouse to examine the case files, what he found troubled him. “I was inundated with what I thought were pretty horrific cases,” said Messac, author of the 2023 book, Your Money or Your Life : A History of Medical Debt Collection in the United States. “Low-income single moms, people living on disability, recent immigrants, were facing thousands of dollars of bills and court fees and interest fees. And if they did not pay and if they did not settle their suits quickly, then they could have their wages garnished. They would be charged double-digit interest rates.” In Berkeley Talks episode 219, Messac, now an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor in emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School, discusses how the changing role of hospitals, and the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, transformed how medical debts are collected in the U.S. This talk took place on Sept. 17, 2024, and was sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) and cosponsored by Berkeley Public Health . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts) or on YouTube @Berkeley News (youtube.com/@BerkeleyNews/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Ahmed for Unsplash+ . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Coming of age as an unaccompanied migrant youth in the U.S. 1:24:54

18 weeks پیش1:24:54

1:24:54

In Berkeley Talks episode 218, sociology professor Stephanie Canizales discusses her 2024 book, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles , about the experiences of undocumented immigrant youth as they come of age in the United States without their parents. Over six years, Canizales conducted 75 in-depth interviews with adult immigrants living in Los Angeles who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied children years before. “Many arrive in the U.S. to find that long-settled relatives who are constrained by their own legal and socioeconomic status are unable to offer material and emotional support, rendering children unaccompanied upon their arrival,” says Canizales, faculty director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI) , at a December 2024 event on campus. “Young people might feel disoriented as they are thrust into material and emotional independence, and their role as low-wage workers in the U.S.” Today, about 146,000 unaccompanied children from Central America, Mexico and other countries are apprehended every year at the U.S.-Mexico border, says Canizales. That’s double the number from 2014, when the U.S. declared a humanitarian crisis at the border . In addition to Canizales, the talk includes a panel of Berkeley professors who share their thoughts about the book, including Kristina Lovato, assistant professor of social welfare; Caitlin Patler, associate professor of public policy; and law professor Sarah Song, who moderates the conversation. This event took place on Dec. 3, and was part of the Author Meets Critics series by the UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix. It was cosponsored by the Department of Sociology, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI), the Center for Race and Gender, the Othering and Belonging Institute and the Latinx Research Center. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Image from Sin Padres, Ni Papeles book cover . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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A blueprint for creating a world where everyone belongs 1:42:47

20 weeks پیش1:42:47

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In Berkeley Talks episode 217, john a. powell and Stephen Menendian , director and assistant director of UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, discuss their 2024 book, Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World . During the campus event, the scholars touch on the transformative role of imagination and storytelling, why responding to demagogues with condemnation doesn’t work and how to create a world where everyone feels they truly belong. The October 2024 conversation was moderated by Ashley Gallegos, director of the institute's Places of Belonging program. powell and Menendian contend that for people to feel a strong sense of belonging in society, they must see their own stories and experiences reflected in the broader social narrative that shapes their everyday lives. “What we say in the book is that if people don't see themselves in the story, not only will they reject the story, but they will reject it violently,” says Menendian, who supervises many of the institute’s ongoing research projects and leads major initiatives. “People have to have a place for themselves in that future story.” “We're anxious as a world,” adds powell, a professor of law, ethnic studies and African American studies. “And the root of that anxiety is, will you belong in the next world? Most of us do not feel very secure. … When you have this deep anxiety caused by a rapid change, we make sense of it through stories.” This event took place on Oct. 28, and was sponsored by the Othering and Belonging Institute. Founded in 2012, the institute conducts research and develops policies aimed at addressing exclusion, marginalization and inequality to create a more just society. Learn more about powell’s and Menendian’s book on the Othering and Belonging Institute’s website. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Poet Ocean Vuong on disobedience and the power of language 1:20:23

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In Berkeley Talks episode 216, celebrated poet and novelist Ocean Vuong joins in conversation with UC Berkeley English Professor Cathy Park Hong , a poet and writer whose creative nonfiction book, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning , was a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Together, they discuss the importance of genre fluidity and artistic experimentation, the role of disobedience in their writing and how language can be both a tool of oppression and liberation. “I personally feel a lot of affinity with you as a writer for many reasons,” began Hong, in front of a packed auditorium at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) in April 2024. “But I think one of the key shared experiences is how the English language, once a site of estrangement and inadequacy for you, became this playground for bounty and experimentation. And part of that bounty and experimentation is how you refuse to limit genre by the way you swing from poetry to prose without feeling tethered by either.” “I think for me, genre was always as fluid as gender, even punctuation,” replied Vuong, author of two poetry collections — Night Sky With Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother — and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous , a widely acclaimed novel. “The rigor of punctuation, I think, is arbitrary. They're still up for grabs. And then the dialect of standard English, how legitimate is it? The linguists would tell us it's no more efficient or better or capacious than AAVE or other regional dialects. However, standard English is attached to the court system. It's a dialect that is also attached to an army and a navy, and so within that comes great, immense power. “I'm interested in genre as tendency rather than an ontological position to be. And I think there are tendencies that could be utilized and then left aside or even departed. What is a tendency in us stylistically that is then abandoned? I'm interested in abandon not as a way to cast away or to denounce, but as a restlessness. Like, I will use this mode until I'm done with it. I'll find something else and then return to it later. There's a kind of cyclical relationship. I think maybe if I'm trying to put order to it, I'll say there's a kind of inherent queerness in it — that, for me, my queerness demanded an alternative route, always.” Vuong was UC Berkeley’s 2023-24 Avenali Chair in the Humanities , established in 1987 to bring distinguished figures in the arts and humanities to Berkeley for lectures, panel discussions, and meetings with students and faculty. Vuong is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” Grant in 2019, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Read more about Vuong and Hong on the Townsend Center for the Humanities website. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Tom Hines/courtesy of Ocean Vuong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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How do we make better decisions? 1:05:04

24 weeks پیش1:05:04

1:05:04

In Berkeley Talks episode 215, a cross-disciplinary panel of UC Berkeley professors, whose expertise ranges from political science to philosophy, discuss how they view decision-making from their respective fields, and how we can use these approaches to make better, more informed choices. Panelists include: Wes Holliday, professor of philosophy. Holliday studies group decision-making, including the best methods of voting, especially in the democratic context. Marika Landau-Wells, assistant professor of political science. Landau-Wells studies the effect that threat perception has on national security decision-making, and how some decisions we make to protect ourselves can endanger many others. Saul Perlmutter, Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Professor of Physics and 2011 Nobel laureate. Perlmutter co-teaches a Big Ideas course, called Sense and Sensibility and Science , designed to equip students with basic tools to be better thinkers by exploring key aspects of scientific thinking. Linda Wilbrecht, professor of neuroscience and psychology. An adolescent scientist, Wilbrecht studies how adolescent learning and decision-making changes from ages 8 to 18, and how it compares to that of adults and children. Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, executive dean of the College of Letters and Science (moderator). The campus event was held on Oct. 9 as part of the College of Letters and Science’s Salon Series , which brings together faculty and students from a swath of disciplines to interrogate and explore universal questions or ideas from disparate perspectives. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. College of Letters and Science photo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Veteran news editors on how the media covered the election 1:28:38

26 weeks پیش1:28:38

1:28:38

In Berkeley Talks episode 214, former editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post , Dean Baquet and Marty Baron, evaluate how the media covered the 2024 U.S. presidential election and share thoughts on how journalists should effectively cover Donald Trump’s second term. In 2016, the New York Times was shocked that Trump won, because they didn’t understand that the country was “ready to elect a Donald Trump,” said Baquet at a UC Berkeley Journalism event on Nov. 13. But, he said, he thinks the coverage of the most recent election was much better. “My argument would be that, and people have trouble accepting this, but all of the stuff you know about Donald Trump — his abuse of the tax structure that David Fahrenthold wrote about, his taxes and his tax dodges that the New York Times , including David Barstow, wrote about, the allegations of women, all of the things that became controversies about Donald Trump — were written about in the American press, and the American people voted Donald Trump in anyway. So I actually think the press did a much better job. How do you think the press performed this election?” “Well, I think there was a lot of good work,” responded Baron. “I would say this: When people asked me, ‘How did we do?’ in 2016, I said that our problem predated 2016. Our problem is that we did not understand America well enough to understand that this country would produce a candidate like Donald Trump. “We did not understand the level of rancor and grievance against elites, including, and maybe particularly, the press, to understand that they didn’t want Jeb Bush, who was called the front-runner at one point. They wanted exactly the opposite of Jeb Bush. They wanted somebody who was not part of governing the ruling elites, the political families. They wanted somebody who was going to go to Washington, basically be an arsonist, burn everything down, punch people in the face. And that’s what they elected. And we didn’t capture that. We didn’t understand the country well enough. I do think that we suffered from the same problem this time.” “But this time, people knew that there was a good chance he’d win,” said Baquet. “There was a good chance he would win, but I don’t think people anticipated that he would win as decisively as he has,” said Baron. “And they didn’t understand that he would win in the voting segments that he won, to the degree that he did, among Black Americans, among Latinos, among even women, among you name it. To win all of the swing states, I don’t think that that was anticipated at all. “And so, I don’t think we detected that level of desire for a change. And to me, that is, I think we need to work harder at really understanding the country.” Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UC Berkeley photo by Marlena Telvick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Computational folklorist on how storytelling becomes belief 1:01:39

28 weeks پیش1:01:39

1:01:39

In Berkeley Talks episode 213, Timothy Tangherlini , a UC Berkeley professor in the Department of Scandinavian and director of the Folklore Graduate Program , discusses the vital role that storytelling plays in many cultures around the world, and how it can influence belief, for good and for bad. “Stories give a basis and a justification for people to take real life action,” Tangherlini said at an Alumni and Parents Weekend at Homecoming event on campus in October. “They can be retrospective justification, but they can also be motivating justification.” A computational folklorist, who’s also a professor in the School of Information and associate director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science , Tangherlini works at the intersection of informal culture, storytelling and AI. He uses a combination of methods from the study of folklore and machine learning to describe storytelling networks and classify stories. “This is where we start to unravel narrative at internet scale,” he said. “One of the things that's kind of interesting, if we start to think about conspiracy theories, is you've all heard little bits of these in different places. But what a conspiracy theory is able to do is to take simple threat narratives and link them together to form complex representations of threatening groups and their interconnections.” Tangherlini went on to address specific conspiracy theories, from #stopthesteal to Pizzagate, and explored the potential of using storytelling to change the conversation. “Can we use the structure of the storytelling to … question exclusionary ideas about who belongs and turn them into more inclusive ideas in the storytelling itself?” he asked. “Can we question ideas of what is threatening? Can I develop ways to steer conversations to more inclusive and less destructive strategies?” This Oct. 18 event was hosted by Berkeley’s Division of Arts and Humanities . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UC Berkeley photo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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The future of American democracy 1:17:51

30 weeks پیش1:17:51

1:17:51

In Berkeley Talks episode 212, a panel of UC Berkeley experts from former presidential administrations take a critical look at the issues that have led the U.S. to this year’s historic election and reflect on the future of American democracy. The Oct. 29 campus event was sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy and Cal Performances, and was part of the Goldman School’s Interrogating Democracy series . Panelists include: Janet Napolitano , professor of public policy and director of the new Center for Security in Politics ; former secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration; former president of the University of California. Robert Reich, emeritus professor of public policy; senior fellow at the Blum Center for Economic Development; former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. Maria Echaveste , policy and program development director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy; former assistant to the president and deputy White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration; president and CEO of the Opportunity Institute. Angela Glover Blackwell (moderator) , chief vision officer for the Goldman School of Public Policy’s new Democracy Policy Initiative; founder-in-residence of PolicyLink. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Dyana Wing So via Unsplash. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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A return to monarchy? Bradley Onishi on Project 2025 1:30:30

32 weeks پیش1:30:30

1:30:30

In Berkeley Talks episode 211, Bradley Onishi, a scholar of religion, an ex-evangelical minister and the co-host of the politics podcast Straight White American Jesus, discusses Project 2025, Christian nationalism and the November elections. “Project 2025 is a deeply reactionary Catholic vision for the country,” said Onishi, who gave the 2024 Berkeley Lecture on Religious Tolerance on Oct. 1. “It's a Christian nationalism fueled by Catholic leaders, and in many cases, reactionary Catholic thought.” Many see Trump’s vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance, a first-term senator from Ohio, as bolstering Trump’s outsider image, said Onishi. But it has gone mostly unnoticed that Vance is a radical religious politician, even more so than former Vice President Mike Pence. “Vance's Catholicism has barely registered as a driving factor in his political profile, and yet it serves as an interpretive key for understanding why Vance was chosen and how he brings a populist radicalism to a potential second Trump presidency — and a direct link to Project 2025,” he said. The UC Berkeley event was sponsored by the Endowed Fund for the Study of Religious Tolerance, the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion , the Center for Race and Gender , the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues , Social Science Matrix and the Center for Right-Wing Studies . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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With white helmets and GoPros, these volunteers risk it all in Syria’s civil war 1:04:21

34 weeks پیش1:04:21

1:04:21

In 2011, mass protests erupted in Syria against the four-decade authoritarian rule of the Assad family. The uprising, which became part of the larger pro-democracy Arab Spring that spread through much of the Arab world, was met with a brutal government crackdown. Soon after, the country descended into a devastating civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians and displaced over 13 million people, more than half of the country’s prewar population. When the civil war broke out, groups of volunteers formed to provide emergency response to communities across Syria. In 2014, those volunteers voted to form the Syria Civil Defence, a national humanitarian organization widely known as the White Helmets. Since then, the group has expanded to become a nearly 3,000-strong network that has saved more than 128,000 lives in Syria. In their daring and life-threatening work, the White Helmets provide critical emergency services, including medical care, ambulances and search-and-rescue operations. They also document military attacks and coordinate with NGOs in pursuit of justice and accountability for the Syrian people. In Berkeley Talks episode 210, we hear from the director of the White Helmets, Raed al-Saleh, and from Farouq Habib, a founding member of the organization who serves as their deputy general manager for external affairs. They were part of a panel discussion hosted by Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center on Sept. 19, 2024. “For us, as Syrian people, the most strategic and important work is on justice and accountability, our human rights work,” said al-Saleh, whose remarks were translated by Habib during the event. The group has become instrumental in exposing human rights violations and atrocities during the war. After they used GoPro cameras to record a double-tap strike in 2015 — when two strikes are launched in quick succession, often targeting civilians or first responders — the White Helmets recognized that the videos could be used to document these war crimes. “We realized that the footage … is not only important for media awareness and quality assurance, but it’s even more important to document the atrocities and the violations of international human rights law and how to use that in the future to pursue accountability.” When asked later in the discussion how the White Helmets envision the future of Syria, al-Saleh replied that they want to see “a peaceful Syria, where people can live with dignity and respect to human rights and support human rights everywhere.” Habib and al-Saleh were joined on the panel by Andrea Richardson, a senior legal researcher for investigations at Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center, and emergency physician and medical adviser Rohini Haar, a Berkeley Law lecturer and a research fellow at the Human Rights Center. The discussion was moderated by Andrea Richardson, executive director of the Human Rights Center. Learn more about Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center. Read the transcript and listen to the episode on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of the White Helmets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Legal scholars on free speech challenges facing universities today 1:41:16

36 weeks پیش1:41:16

1:41:16

In Berkeley Talks episode 209, renowned legal scholars Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law, and Nadine Strossen, professor emerita of the New York School of Law and national president of the ACLU from 1991 to 2008, discuss free speech challenges facing universities today. They covered topics including hate speech, First Amendment rights, the Heckler’s Veto, institutional neutrality and what steps universities can take to avoid free speech controversies. The conversation, which took place on Sept. 11, was held in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, in which thousands of students protested successfully for their right to free political speech at UC Berkeley. Instead of having a moderator, the speakers were given a list of questions they posed to each other, and took turns answering them. At one illuminating moment, Chemerinsky asked Strossen what steps she might take to reduce the harmful effects of polarized political speech on campus. “I think that punishment is not an effective way to change somebody's attitudes,” Strossen answered, “which is what we are concerned about, especially in an educational environment. Treating somebody like a criminal or even shaming, shunning and ostracizing them is not likely to open their hearts and minds. So I think it is as ineffective as a strategy for dealing with discrimination as it is unjustified and consistent with First Amendment principles. “But there are a lot of things that universities can and should do — and I know from reading about your campus, that you are doing … It's gotten justified nationwide attention.” Strossen went on to emphasize the importance of education, not only in free speech principles, but in other civic principles, as well, like the history of discrimination and anti-Semitism. Beyond education, Strossen said, “universities have to show support for members of the community who are the targets of hateful speech by raising their own voices, but also by providing psychological and other counseling and material kinds of support.” The event was sponsored by HxA Berkeley and Voices for Liberty, of George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School. It was co-sponsored by Berkeley Law’s Public Law and Policy program , the Berkeley Liberty Initiative and the Jack Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research . Read the transcript and listen to the episode on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Screenshot of HxA Berkeley video. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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What is understanding? Berkeley scholars discuss 54:50

38 weeks پیش54:50

54:50

In Berkeley Talks episode 208, three UC Berkeley professors from a wide range of disciplines — psychology, biology and ethnic studies — broach a deep question: What is understanding? “When I think about it through the lens of being a psychologist, I really think about understanding as a demonstration of, say, knowledge that we have about the world,” begins Arianne Eason, an assistant professor of psychology, in this episode. “But that knowledge doesn't necessarily have to be through what we say. It doesn't necessarily have to be explicit. It's really about shaping the way that we engage with the world around us, and with those around us, and being very flexible. “I think, a lot of times, if we’re thinking about the college context, and what is understanding, people's first reaction might be, ‘I'm able to give an answer.’ But that's not really understanding. It's really about being able to apply it to different contexts that you may not have seen before. “And I think kind of wrapped up in that for me is a recognition of what you don't know. To really understand also means to recognize what you don't understand, and where the limits of your knowledge are.” The fall 2024 discussion also included Christian Paiz, an associate professor of ethnic studies, and Hernan Garcia, an associate professor of molecular and cell biology and of physics. It’s part of a video series for Research, Discovery and You , a course for new students offered every fall semester by Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science . In the course, students are introduced to different ways of thinking and approaches to knowledge production as practiced across the college’s 79 majors. Research, Discovery and You is taught by Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, professor of psychology and the college’s associate dean of student outreach and engagement, and Aileen Liu, the college’s director of curricular engagement initiatives. The video series, part of the course’s recent redesign, was supported by the College of Letters and Science and the Division of Undergraduate Education’s Instructional Technology and Innovation Micro Grant Program . Read the transcript and listen to the episode on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Screenshot from L&S video. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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It’s not just psychedelics that change minds, says Michael Pollan. Storytelling does, too. 1:11:47

40 weeks پیش1:11:47

1:11:47

In Berkeley Talks episode 207, bestselling author and UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Michael Pollan discusses how he chooses his subjects, why he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and the role of storytelling in shifting our perspective. “We're wired for story,” he told KQED’s Mina Kim, whom he joined in conversation at a UC Berkeley event in May 2024. “We're a storytelling and consuming people, and we remember better and we're moved more by narrative than we are by information or argument. “The shorter journalism gets, the more it relies on argument to get any kind of heat. And I just don't think that's how you change minds. I think changing minds has to work at all levels: It has to work at the intellectual level, it has to work at the emotional level, and at even probably subliminal levels, and story does that. “When you look at great pieces of narrative journalism, people don't even realize their minds have been changed by the time they get to the end of it.” Pollan has written eight books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2010), about the impact of our various food choices on animal welfare and the environment, and How to Change Your Mind (2018) , an exploration of the history of psychedelics and their effects on the human mind. He recently retired from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he taught for many years. Read the transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UC Berkeley photo by Marlena Telvick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
The science behind the emotions in 'Inside Out 2' 1:00:59

42 weeks پیش1:00:59

1:00:59

There’s a scene toward the end of the new Pixar film Inside Out 2 where the main character, 13-year-old Riley, is having a panic attack in the penalty box at a hockey match. She’s just been reprimanded for tripping an opponent in frustration. On the outside, she’s seen sitting in the small space while grasping at her chest and neck, breathing in and out, faster and faster. On the inside, the character Anxiety, one of Riley’s newest emotions, is spinning in a glitchy loop at her brain’s control board. After a few moments, Riley slowly begins to notice and reconnect with the world around her. Her panic subsides, her breathing steadies and she centers herself. It’s a gripping illustration of a common (and terrifying) experience, and a reminder for teens and parents alike that there’s nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to anxiety. For experts who consulted on Inside Out 2 , normalizing the emotion was part of the goal. “You have so much pressure on young people to be perfectionistic and excel in everything,” said UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, who consulted on how to convey and understand emotions in the film. “Panic and anxiety, those are part of our evolutionary design. They have their point. They can get excessive, of course, but just to be there and to have a language, to let the child know they're not alone, that these are common reactions, is such a powerful [message].” In Berkeley Talks episode 206, Keltner joins a panel of others who worked on Inside Out 2 — clinical psychologist Lisa Damour, who served as a scientific consultant on the film with Keltner, and the film’s lead editor, Maurissa Horwitz. Together, they discuss the unique pressures that teenagers face, the science behind emotions, and how all of them, even the most uncomfortable, have a purpose. “I felt like I was learning more about my adolescent self as I worked on this movie,” said Horwitz. “I think being able to really name those emotions that come up during this period … and knowing that there's that amount of growth and reworking going on physically inside [your brain], it's just a great thing to be aware of as a touchstone.” “I'm hearing that conversations are happening in families, whether it's around anxiety or self-talk,” she continued, “and that parents and families are feeling seen by this movie and relate to it so much. It's really incredible to be a part of that.” This July 2024 conversation was moderated by Allison Briscoe-Smith, a child clinical psychologist and a senior fellow at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, where Keltner is the faculty director. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Screenshot from Inside Out 2. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Journalist Jemele Hill on the intersection of sports and race (revisiting) 1:31:11

44 weeks پیش1:31:11

1:31:11

In Berkeley Talks episode 205, sports journalist Jemele Hill discusses her career at the intersection of sports, race and culture in the U.S. at a UC Berkeley event in January 2020. "Sports journalism," began KALW radio journalist Hana Baba, with whom Hill joined in conversation as part of a Cal Performances speaker series. "So you’re growing up, you’re watching TV, you’re reading the papers ... When did you realize that this is a male journalist's space? "I knew that, but I didn’t know it," replied Hill, author of the 2022 memoir Uphill and host of the podcast Jemele Hill Is Unbothered. "And this is why — whenever I talk about mentorship, I preach this to both mentees and mentors: The first thing you can give a mentee and the first responsibility as a mentor, you need to give them a sense of belonging." She went on to describe how, when she was in an apprenticeship program for the Detroit Free Press , two women journalists — feature writer Johnette Howard and sports writer Rachel Jones — were assigned to be her mentors. "So I never knew that it was something I wasn’t supposed to be doing because the very first person I knew that did it was a woman. ... And so because I got that early confidence at the beginning of my career, I just never went through a period of self-doubt, which is totally normal for any woman in a male-dominated space, especially a Black woman. So I was very lucky that I got that sense of belonging early." Later on, Hill discussed when NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem throughout the San Francisco 49ers’ season in 2016 to protest racial injustice, effectively ending his football career. “I mean, the NFL owners are spineless,” said Hill, who worked for ESPN for more than a decade and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists in 2018 . “I knew Colin Kaepernick would never play in the NFL the moment Donald Trump said his name … One of the few things that a lot of people unfortunately agree with the [former] president about is that Colin Kaepernick should not be taking a knee. So, he [Trump] knows every time he says his [Kaepernick’s] name, that it is giving him a level of universal support … that he doesn’t experience usually. “And so what does that say about people in this country? … We just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, commemorated him. And the same people I saw talking about how great Dr. King was for his nonviolent protest are also the same people who think Colin Kaepernick doesn’t deserve to play in the NFL? … But the NFL, I think, as we have seen in the case with Muhammad Ali, as we have seen is the case with a lot of history, 20 years from now they’ll be telling a different story. They’ll act like all of this never happened.” Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Daniel Stark/ESPN. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
How the Supreme Court divided America 1:07:03

46 weeks پیش1:07:03

1:07:03

In Berkeley Talks episode 204, Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, discusses the history of the Supreme Court and how its recent decisions will impact generations to come. “When you think of the topics for the first two years of this supermajority — guns, abortion, affirmative action, the interest of the fossil fuel industry — that doesn't sound like a court,” Waldman said to UC Berkeley Law Professor Maria Echaveste, whom he joined in conversation in April 2024. “That sounds like a political caucus. “And so, I think disentangling our reverence for the Constitution and the rule of law, which is vital to the country and deeply embedded in who we are, with the specific role of the Supreme Court, and especially this Supreme Court, is a challenge. But I think we have to find a way to do it.” The Supreme Court issued decisions in June and July that may have historic impacts on American society, but because Waldman's talk took place before these decisions were issued, he doesn’t discuss them in this conversation. This event was hosted by Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy as part of its new Interrogating Democracy series. The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on improving systems of democracy and justice. Waldman is a constitutional lawyer and author of the 2023 book, The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America. He served as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States in 2021 and worked in the White House for President Bill Clinton alongside Echaveste. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks/). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Screenshot of the cover of Waldman's book, The Supermajority . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Reconsidering Black America’s relationship to the plantation 1:20:25

48 weeks پیش1:20:25

1:20:25

In Berkeley Talks episode 203, Alisha Gaines, a professor of English and an affiliate faculty member in African American studies at Florida State University, discusses why it’s important for Black America to “excavate and reconsider” its relationship to the plantation. “If we were to approach the plantation with an intention to hold space for the Black people who stayed and labored there,” said Gaines at a UC Berkeley event in April, “we might see the plantation as another origin story — one of resistance, joy, love, craftsmanship and survival, and not just dehumanization and the porn of Black suffering.” Gaines is currently at work on Children of the Plantationocene , a forthcoming book project about Black American origin stories, and is the first scholar-in-residence of Berkeley’s Banned Scholars Project . The project was launched by the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies in March 2024 in response to attacks on academic freedom across the nation. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Photo courtesy of Alisha Gaines. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Adam Gopnik on what it takes to keep liberal democracies alive 1:09:38

50 weeks پیش1:09:38

1:09:38

In Berkeley Talks episode 202, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik discusses liberalism — what it means, why we need it and the endless dedication it requires to maintain. Liberal democracy, he said at a UC Berkeley event in April, depends on two pillars: free and fair elections and the practice of open institutions, places where people can meet and debate without the pressures of overt supervision. Gopnik said these spaces of “commonplace civilization” — coffeehouses, parks, even zoos — enable democratic elections to “reform, accelerate and improve.” “These secondary institutions … are not in themselves explicitly political at all, but provide little arenas in which we learn the habits of coexistence, mutual toleration and the difficult, but necessary, business of collaborating with those who come from vastly different backgrounds, classes, castes and creeds from ourselves.” And what makes liberalism unique, he said, is that it requires a commitment to constant reform. “People get exhausted by the search for perpetual reform,” he said. “But we have to be committed to reform because our circles of compassion, no matter how we try to broaden them, come to an end.” So it’s up to each of us, he said, to always refocus our attention on the other, to re-understand and expand our circles of compassion. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of Adam Gopnik. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
'Wave' memoirist on writing about unimaginable loss 51:59

1 year پیش51:59

51:59

In 2004, Sonali Deraniyagala was on vacation with her family on the coast of Sri Lanka when a tsunami struck the South Asian island. It killed her husband, their two sons and her parents, leaving Deraniyagala alone in a reality she couldn’t comprehend. In Berkeley Talks episode 201, Deraniyagala discusses her all-consuming grief in the aftermath of the tragedy and the process of writing about it in her 2013 memoir, Wave. “Wave was the wave was the wave,” said Deraniyagala, who spoke in April 2024 at an event for Art of Writing, a program of UC Berkeley’s Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities. “What mattered was the loss. It could have been a tree. It just happened to be the wave. I wasn't that interested in how it happened. It was more this otherworldly situation where I had a life, I didn't have a life, and it took 10 minutes between the two. “So that I was trying to figure out, and I think the whole book Wave was trying to. Everything you know vanishes in an instant, literally in an instant, with no warning. … I experienced something that I didn't have words for. I didn't know what was happening when it was happening, which is why I was sure I was dreaming.” Deraniyagala, an economist who teaches at the University of London and Columbia University, described herself as "an accidental writer.” She said her initial goal, at the urging of her therapist, was to write for herself in attempt to make sense of a loss that "one can't write easily or put into sentences or find words for," she told Ramona Naddaff, Berkeley associate professor of rhetoric and founding director of Art of Writing, whom Deraniyagala joined in conversation for the event. But in the painstaking process of writing and rewriting, Deraniyagala found her voice. And after eight years, Wave was published. It became a New York Times bestseller and won the PEN Ackerley Prize in 2013. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Emily Thompson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Gigi Sohn on her fight for an open internet 13:55

1 year پیش13:55

13:55

In Berkeley Talks episode 200, Gigi Sohn, one of the nation’s leading public advocates for equal access to the internet, delivers the keynote address at the UC Berkeley School of Information’s 2024 commencement ceremony. “I'd like to share with you some of the twists and turns of my professional journey as a public advocate in the world of communications and technology policy,” Sohn began at the May 18 event. … “I'm hoping that by sharing my story, you'll be inspired to keep choosing the path that you know is right for you and for society, even if it sometimes comes at a cost.” Sohn began her story in the late 1980s, when she started a career in communications law. It was through this work, she said, that she learned the importance of media to a healthy democracy. “Those with access to the [communications] networks influenced the debates that shaped public policy and decided elections,” Sohn said. “Those without were simply perilous. The internet promised to change all of that. … The world that advocates like me envisioned was one where everyone would have a voice and where the marketplace of ideas, and ultimately democracy, would flourish. “But that ideal wouldn't happen by itself.” In her speech, Sohn detailed her lifelong career as a public interest advocate, her fraught White House nominations to serve on the Federal Communications Commission and the importance of staying true to herself. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Photo by Noah Berger for UC Berkeley's School of Information. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Harry Edwards to sociology grads: Even in turbulent times, always believe in yourself 27:29

1 year پیش27:29

27:29

In Berkeley Talks episode 199 , Harry Edwards, a renowned sports activist and UC Berkeley professor emeritus of sociology, gives the keynote address at the Department of Sociology’s 2024 commencement ceremony. “As I stand here before you, in the twilight of my life's time of long shadows,” said Edwards at the May 13 event, “from a perspective informed by my 81 years of experience, and by a retrospective assessment of the lessons learned over my 60 years of activism, what is my advice and message to you young people today? What emerges as most critically germane and relevant in today's climate? “First: Even in turbulent times, in the midst of all of the challenges, contradictions and confusion to be faced, never cease to believe in yourself and your capacities to realize your dreams. “From time to time, you might have to take a different path than you had anticipated and planned, but you can still get there. Achievement of your dreams always begins with a belief in yourself. Never allow anyone to dissuade you of this imperative disposition. And if someone so much as even tries, you tell them that the good doctor said you need to go and get a second opinion.” Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UC Berkeley photo by Allena Cayce. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Feeling like a failure isn't the same as failing, filmmaker tells journalism grads 24:33

1 year پیش24:33

24:33

In Berkeley Talks episode 198, documentary filmmaker Carrie Lozano delivers the keynote address at the 2024 Berkeley Journalism commencement ceremony. Lozano, who graduated from the school of journalism in 2005 and later taught in its documentary program, is now president and CEO of ITVS, a nonprofit that coproduces independent films for PBS and produces the acclaimed series, Independent Lens. “I've had a lot of tough moments in my career, sometimes feeling like I was not going to recover,” Lozano told the graduates at the May 11 event. “I have put energy into my process for dealing with staggering mistakes and things that don't work out. “First, I own my mistakes. We all make mistakes and it's OK to own them and take responsibility. And it's so liberating actually to just take responsibility for them. And then I do this: I allow myself, depending on the gravity of the situation, time to sulk or to cry, to be depressed, to be upset, to be angry, to feel all the feelings. But I am finite about it. Some things require a few hours. Some things might require a few days. Some things might require therapy. Whatever it is, I figure it out. “And then, I just try to figure out: What did I learn? How can I make it worth it? That was so damn painful … how can I make this mean something to me? How can I do better next time? Or at least not repeat it?" “It's super helpful to know that the feeling of failure is not the same thing as failing," she continued. "It's part of being human. It's part of growing. It's necessary. It's messy. It's life.” Berkeley Journalism recently launched a $54.4-million campaign to support the next generation of journalists whose stories will affect democracy, justice, human rights and the health of our environment. Learn more about the Campaign for Berkeley Journalism . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UC Berkeley photo by Amin Muhammad. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Berkeley commencement speeches celebrate resilience, bravery 33:30

1 year پیش33:30

33:30

In Berkeley Talks episode 197, we're sharing a selection of speeches from UC Berkeley's campuswide commencement ceremony on May 11. The first speech is by Chancellor Christ, followed by ASUC President Sydney Roberts and ending with keynote speaker Cynt Marshall, a Berkeley alum and CEO of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks. "I believe the future of our democracy depends on our ability to engage in civil discourse across the divides and reject the forces of division and polarization," Christ began, as hundreds of graduates chanted in protest of the war in Gaza. "Given recent events and the scourge of COVID, I can only marvel at how you've navigated these complicated times. "Your presence here today is a testimony to a remarkable accomplishment whose meaning and worth will serve you well in the days to come. We could not be prouder." Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small for UC Berkeley. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Ruth Simmons on access and equity in higher education 1:11:54

1 year پیش1:11:54

1:11:54

In Berkeley Talks episode 196, Ruth Simmons, a longtime professor and academic administrator, discusses how the journey to equal access and fairness in education has reached a critical inflection point — and why educators are essential to the progress we need to see. “History has shown: The failure to resolve satisfactorily the issue of whether and how the state should address the causes and effects of discrimination will continue to impair progress, sow seeds of hatred and despair, and make even more distant the goals and ideals enshrined in the United States Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution,” Simmons said during the Clark Kerr Lecture at UC Berkeley in April. “Yet, as we know,” Simmons continued, “considerable efforts have been undertaken by various branches of government, non-profit institutions, for-profit institutions, educational institutions and activists to reconcile the immense differences over what constitutes appropriate remedies for past and present discrimination. That we have failed to resolve this question adequately almost 250 years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights proves the intractability of the dilemma.” Simmons, currently the president's distinguished fellow at Rice University, served as the eighth president of Prairie View A&M University, an HBCU, from 2017 until 2023. And from 2001 to 2012, she served as the 18th president of Brown University, where she was the first Black president of an Ivy League institution. In closing, Simmons said: “Education makes possible the smoothing out of the unequal circumstances into which many are born. Educators are therefore on the front lines in ensuring that this democracy endures because we are optimistic enough, brave enough and wise enough to create and manage a process in which the public as a whole feels well-served by our work. “And so our efforts to make plain where we stand in regard to evening out unequal circumstances are, in this moment, all-important. So, let's get about the work of making plain where we stand.” This April 18 event was sponsored by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at Berkeley . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UC Berkeley photo by Brandon Sánchez Mejia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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The future of psychedelic science 1:02:14

1 year پیش1:02:14

1:02:14

In Berkeley Talks episode 195, UC Berkeley professors discuss how and why psychedelic substances first evolved, the effects they have in the human brain and mind, and the mechanism behind their potential therapeutic role. "If it's true that the therapeutic effects are in part because we're returning to this state of susceptibility, and vulnerability, and ability to learn from our environment similar to childhood," says psychology Professor Gül Dölen, "then if we just focus on the day of the trip and don't instead also focus our therapeutic efforts on those weeks after, where the critical period is presumably still open, then we're missing the opportunity to really integrate those insights that happen during the trip into the rest of the network of memories that are supporting those learned behaviors. "And then the caution is that we don't want to be opening up these critical periods and then, for example, returning people to a traumatic environment or exposing them to potentially bad actors … So we want to be very careful about the way that we take care of patients after they've been in this open state of the critical period." Panelists of this March 27, 2024 event included: Imran Khan (moderator): Executive director of the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP). Gül Dölen: Renee & U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Bob Parsons Endowed Chair in psychology, psychedelics, and neuroscience; professor in the Department of Psychology. Daniela Kaufer: Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute; associate dean of biological sciences. Noah Whiteman: Professor of integrative biology and of molecular and cell biology; faculty director of the Essig Museum of Entomology. Michael Silver: Professor in the Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry and Vision Science and in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute; faculty director of BCSP. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UC Berkeley photo of Daniela Kaufer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Sociologist Harry Edwards on sport in society (revisiting) 1:13:19

1 year پیش1:13:19

1:13:19

In Berkeley Talks episode 194, Harry Edwards, a renowned sports activist and UC Berkeley professor emeritus of sociology, discusses the intersections of race and sport, the history of predatory inclusion, athletes’ struggle for definitional authority and the power of sport to change society. “You can change society by changing people’s perceptions and understandings of the games they play,” Edwards said at a March 2022 campus event sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) and Cal Athletics. “I’m saying whether it’s race relations in America, whether it’s relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and China, whether it’s what’s going on in South Africa with apartheid, you can leverage sport to change people’s perceptions and understandings of those relationships. Change society by changing people’s perceptions and understandings of the games they play.” This episode is from our archive. It first ran on Berkeley Talks in April 2022. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of Harry Edwards. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson on the need for 'angry optimism' 1:25:38

1 year پیش1:25:38

1:25:38

In Berkeley Talks episode 193, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson discusses climate change, politics and the need for "angry optimism." Robinson is the author of 22 novels, including his most recent, The Ministry for the Future , published in 2020. "It's a fighting position — angry optimism — and you need it," he said at a UC Berkeley event in January, in conversation with English professor Katherine Snyder and Daniel Aldana Cohen, assistant professor of sociology and director of the Sociospatial Climate Collaborative. "A couple of days ago, somebody talked about The Ministry for the Future being a pedagogy of hope. And I was thinking, 'Oh, that's nice.' Not just, why should you hope? Because you need to — to stay alive and all these other reasons you need hope. But also, it's strategically useful. "And then, how to hope in the situation that we're in, which is filled with dread and filled with people fighting with wicked strength to wreck the earth and human chances in it. "The political battle is not going to be everybody coming together and going, 'Oh, my gosh, we’ve got a problem, let's solve it.' It's more like some people saying, 'Oh, my gosh, we’ve got a problem that we have to solve,' and other people going, 'No, we don’t have a problem.' "They'll say that right down over the cliff. They'll be falling to their death going, 'No problem here because I'm going to heaven and you're not,' or whatever. Nobody will ever admit they're wrong. They will die. And then the next generation will have a new structure of feeling. "In the meantime, how to keep your hope going, how to put it to use … I think all novels have a little of this, and then Ministry is just more explicit." This Jan. 24 event was sponsored by the Berkeley Climate Change Network and co-sponsored by Berkeley Journalism ; Berkeley Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry , home to the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative ; and the Townsend Center for the Humanities . Read the transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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The future of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) 58:03

1 year پیش58:03

58:03

In Berkeley Talks episode 192, Sarah Deer, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, discusses the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a federal law passed in 1978 that aims to keep Native children in their families and communities. She also talks about the recent Supreme Court decision in Brackeen v. Haaland, which upheld ICWA, and explores the future of ICWA. “I want to begin by just talking about why ICWA was passed, and it has to do with a very tragic history in the United States of removing children from Native homes,” said Deer, chief justice for the Prairie Island Indian Community Court of Appeals, at a UC Berkeley event in December 2023. “This issue really became a profound harm to Native people during the boarding school era, in which the policy of the federal government was to remove children from their Native homes and send them to boarding schools, sometimes thousands of miles away. At these boarding schools, the attempt was to civilize — so-called 'civilize' — Indian children, which was really a euphemism for destroying their identity.” Later in the talk, she continued, “We still see a need for ICWA because we still see a higher percentage of Native children being placed in out-of-home care. There may be a variety of reasons for that, but it took over a century to damage the relationship between Native children and their communities.” This Dec. 8 event was sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, part of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. Its co-sponsors were the Center for Race and Gender; Native American Student Development; and the Native American Law Student Association. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of Sarah Deer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor on fighting the good fight 1:02:59

1 year پیش1:02:59

1:02:59

In Berkeley Talks episode 191, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor talks about getting up every morning ready to fight for what she believes in, how she finds ways to work with justices whose views differ wildly from her own and what she looks for in a clerk (hint: It’s not only brilliance). “I’m in my 44th year as a law professor,” said Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinksy, who was in discussion with Sotomayor for UC Berkeley’s annual Herma Hill Kay Memorial Lecture on Jan. 29. “I’m teaching constitutional law this semester. I have to say that I’ve never seen some of my students as discouraged as they are now about the Supreme Court and about the Constitution. What should I say to them?” “What choice do you have but to fight the good fight?” Sotomayor responded. “You can’t throw up your hands and walk away. That’s not a choice. That’s abdication. That’s giving up. “How can you look at the heroes like Thurgood Marshall, like the freedom fighters, who went to lunch counters and got beat up? To men like John Lewis, who marched over a bridge and had his head busted open? How can you look at those people and say that you’re entitled to despair? You’re not. I’m not. “Change never happens on its own. Change happens because people care about moving the arc of the universe towards justice. And it can take time, and it can take frustration.” Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Philip Pacheco. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Read more about Sotomayor’s lecture on Berkeley Law’s website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Why so many recent uprisings have backfired 1:11:55

1 year پیش1:11:55

1:11:55

In Berkeley Talks episode 190, journalist and UC Berkeley alumnus Vincent Bevins discusses mass protests around the world — from Egypt to Hong Kong to Brazil — and how each had a different outcome than what protesters asked for. “From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in mass protests than at any other point in human history,” said Bevins, author of the 2023 book, If We Burn. “These protests were often experienced as a euphoric victory at the moment of the eruption. But then, after a lot of the foreign journalists, like me, have left (the countries), and we look at what actually happened, the outcome was very different than what was originally expected or indeed hoped for.” For his book, Bevins interviewed more than 200 people in 12 countries, all of whom were a part of the uprisings, whether they put the protests together or responded to them as government officials or lived through them. In closing, he said, “When you properly want to restructure the system or make real problems for powerful forces, the counterattack is going to come.” And, according to thinkers from around the world Bevins spoke to, including Berkeley sociology Professor Cihan Tuğal, instead of putting together an organization during an uprising, protesters should build in the off-season. “Build real structures that can allow human beings that want to reshape the world in the same way to act together in the moment of the uprising," said Bevins, "because it’s very difficult to put together an organization in the uprising.” This talk, recorded in October 2023, was moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, assistant professor of sociology at Berkeley and director of the Socio-Spacial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2. The event was co-sponsored by (SC)2 and Social Science Matrix. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy via Flickr. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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American democracy and the crisis of majority rule 1:09:35

1 year پیش1:09:35

1:09:35

In Berkeley Talks episode 189, Harvard Professor Daniel Ziblatt discusses how Americans need to do the work of making the U.S. political system more democratic through reforms that ensure that electoral majorities can actually govern. “If you're going to have a first-past-the-post electoral system, as we have in the United States, or one side wins and another side loses, then those with the most votes should prevail over those with fewer votes in determining who holds political office,” said Ziblatt, co-author How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority . “No theory of liberal democracy can justify any other outcome. Put differently, office holding should reflect how voters vote.” This Dec. 6, 2023 talk was presented by UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures as part of the Jefferson Memorial Lecture series . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Photo by Manny Becerra via Unsplash. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Free speech on campus in times of great division 1:00:48

1 year پیش1:00:48

1:00:48

In Berkeley Talks episode 188, a panel of scholars discusses free speech on university campuses — where things stand today, what obligation campus leaders have to respond to conflicts involving speech and the need for students to feel safe when expressing their own views. "Issues of free speech on campus have been there as long as there have been universities," began Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky at a UC Berkeley event on Jan. 10. "There's no doubt that since Oct. 7, universities across the country, including here at Berkeley, face enormously difficult issues with regard to freedom of speech." "Especially in these times where, and especially with this (Israel-Hamas) war, where people are feeling so hurt by words, and arguing that words or phrases mean you're anti-Semitic or Islamophobic, it's really challenging," said Berkeley Journalism Dean Geeta Anand. "The temptation when people are so hurt and in so much pain is to run from it. "But in fact, I think we should do the exact opposite. … At times, those are the moments where people will actually want to learn, and need to learn, and listen. "So I think we should charge toward the conversations in these hard times, precisely because there are opportunities to learn so much. Because … when people make this demand or that demand, they're often expressing a need to be heard and a need to have a voice in what's happening." Panelists in this discussion included: Geeta Anand, dean of Berkeley Journalism Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney, ACLU; adjunct professor, NYU School of Law Howard Gillman, chancellor and professor of law, UC Irvine Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law (moderator) This discussion is part of the Berkeley Law Conversations series. Watch a video of the conversation and learn more about the speakers on Berkeley Law’s website. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Photo by Kefr4000 via Wikimedia Commons . Music by Blue Dot Sessions . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Protecting survivors of sex trafficking 1:36:50

1 year پیش1:36:50

1:36:50

In Berkeley Talks episode 187, Bernice Yeung, managing editor of Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program; public health journalist Isabella Gomes; and gender-based violence expert Holly Joshi discuss how sex trafficking can appear invisible if we don’t know where to look, and how doctors, nurses, police officers, hotel operators — all of us — can do more to protect victims and survivors. “If we're just looking at sex trafficking as the issue, then it's a bipartisan issue,” said Joshi, director of the GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice in San Francisco , and a nationally recognized expert on gender-based violence prevention and intervention. “But if we're really looking at the causes and the historical oppression and the ongoing systemic oppression of women and girls and immigrants and failure to create safe cities for immigrants and anti-Blackness, all of those things equal a failure to protect survivors of sex trafficking. “So … yes, it's a bipartisan issue if we're just talking about sex trafficking legislation, specifically. But we're not. We're really talking about American politics and the historic lockout of entire groups of people that is continuing to go on and is creating vulnerable victims in this country.” This Nov. 8 discussion, co-presented by the Pulitzer Center and Berkeley Journalism, was part of a forum focused on gender. It also included a keynote by New York Times journalist Michelle Goldberg on democracy and authoritarianism in the context of gender, race and identity in the U.S. Learn more about the speakers and watch a video of the conversation on Berkeley Journalism’s website . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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The transformative potential of AI in academia 1:12:01

1 year پیش1:12:01

1:12:01

In Berkeley Talks episode 186, a panel of UC Berkeley scholars from the College of Letters and Science discusses the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in academia — and the questions and challenges it requires universities and other social institutions to confront. "When it comes to human-specific problems, we often want fair, equitable, unbiased answers," said Keanan Joyner, an assistant professor of psychology. "But the data that we feed into the training set often is not that. And so, we are asking AI to produce something that it was never trained on, and that can be very problematic. We have to think very carefully about how we're training our AI models and whether they'll be useful or not. I think there's so many awesome uses of AI, and I'm going to use it in my own work, and it's going to definitely infuse psychological science and social sciences more broadly." Panelists of the October 2023 Berkeley event included: Alex Saum-Pascual , associate professor of contemporary Spanish literature Keanan Joyner , assistant professor of psychology Josh Bloom , professor of astronomy Moderated by Marion Fourcade , professor of sociology and director of the Social Science Matrix This discussion is part of the L&S Salon Series , which showcases the diversity and range of academic disciplines embedded across the five divisions in the College of Letters and Science. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). UC Berkeley photo by Brandon Sánchez Mejia. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Nate Cohn on polling and the 2024 election 1:23:42

1 year پیش1:23:42

1:23:42

In Berkeley Talks episode 185, New York Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn discusses how polling works, the challenges facing pollsters today and where polling stands as we head into the 2024 U.S. presidential election. "I don't think it's a coincidence that we have a crisis of polling at the same time we have a crisis of democracy," said Cohn, who gave UC Berkeley’s Citrin Award Lecture on Oct. 19. "I don't think it's a coincidence that Trump mobilized a so-called silent majority of voters who felt that they were unrepresented in our political system, and who turned out to be underrepresented in polls by an order of magnitude for decades. "Just think about all of the choices that politicians made from the '80s onward. That in each one of those decisions, they were doing it, in part, based on data that underrepresented the number of white working class Americans by tens of millions. I think it added up, and I think I'll start by proving that to you, and I think it offers a nice launching point for where polling is today. Because although it's tempting to think the problems in polling are recent to Trump, I think it's probably fair to say that Trump exposed issues in polling that had existed for a very long time before that." The Citrin Award Lecture is an annual event of Berkeley’s Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research . Watch a video of Cohn’s lecture on YouTube . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Music by Blue Dot Sessions . AP Photo by Steve Helber. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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A blueprint for housing reform 53:35

۲ years پیش53:35

53:35

In Berkeley Talks episode 184, Richard Rothstein, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute, and housing policy expert Leah Rothstein discuss their 2023 book, Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law. The conversation was moderated by Tamika Moss, founder and CEO of the Bay Area organization, All Home. In the book, the father-daughter co-authors describe how unconstitutional government policy on the part of federal, state and local governments created the segregation that we know in this country today, where every metropolitan area has clearly defined areas that either are all white or mostly white, and clearly defined areas that are all Black or mostly Black. "We had a myth term that what we had in this country was 'defacto segregation,' something that just happened because of private bigotry or discriminatory actions on the part of private businesses or people just liking to live with each other of the same race ... something that just happened by accident," said Richard Rothstein, author of the 2017 book, The Color of Law, and a distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and senior fellow emeritus of the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "And the reason that that distinction is so important is because if it just happened by accident, then we might not like it, but it's easy to think that the only way it's going to unhappen is by accident. But when we understand that this is the creation of racially explicit written public policy on the part of federal, state and local governments ... (and) if we take our responsibilities as citizens of this country seriously, then we know we have an obligation to fix it, to undo this unconstitutional system." Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Poulomi Saha on why we're so obsessed with cults 50:34

۲ years پیش50:34

50:34

In Berkeley Talks episode 183, Poulomi Saha, an associate professor in the Department of English and co-director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley, discusses how cult culture, once a fringe phenomenon, has moved into the mainstream — and what that tells us about what we long for, what we fear and who we hope to be. "In this crisis moment, we have a return to desire for overarching meaning, radical acceptance, transformative experience, transcendence," says Saha. "But unlike in the 1960s, we're not dropping out, we're tuning in ... to a highly regularized representation of cults. If in the 1960s we had the sense that fringe groups and communes might offer us a way out of conformity and regularity, in this current incarnation, when cults appear in our everyday lives, they do so highly regularized." Saha is currently working on a book about America’s long obsession with its own invented visions of Indian spirituality, and why so often those groups and communities come to be called cults. (Editing note: Because of an audio issue, we left out the Q&A portion of this talk.) Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Jen Siska. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
How a lie from medieval Europe spread antisemitism across the world 1:06:58

۲ years پیش1:06:58

1:06:58

Magda Teter, professor of history and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University and author of the 2020 book, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth , discusses how an anti-Jewish lie that originated in medieval Europe has persisted throughout history and spread antisemitism across the world. Known as blood libel, the superstitious accusation — that Jews ritually sacrifice Christian children at Passover to obtain blood for unleavened bread — first emerged in 12th century Europe, but became a dominant narrative in the 15th century. "Why in the 15th century do we have this sudden shift in quantity, in quality of these accusations?" asks Teter, during the Center for Jewish Studies' Annual Pell Lecture on March 15. "The answer is Simon of Trent, the story of Simon of Trent." Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Photo courtesy of Magda Teter. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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ChatGPT developer John Schulman on making AI more truthful 1:04:13

۲ years پیش1:04:13

1:04:13

UC Berkeley alumnus John Schulman, the lead developer of ChatGPT , talks about how AI language models sometimes make things up — often convincingly — and offers solutions on how to fix this problem. Schulman's talk, which took place on April 19, was part of a series of public lectures at Berkeley this spring by the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Read a Berkeley News Q&A with Schulman in which he discusses why he chose Berkeley for graduate school, the allure of towel-folding robots and what he sees for the future of artificial general intelligence. UC Berkeley photo by Jim Block. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
International journalists on women's rights in Iran and Afghanistan 1:29:24

۲ years پیش1:29:24

1:29:24

Award-winning journalists — Arezou Rezvani, Jane Ferguson, Zahra Joya and Berkeley Journalism Dean Geeta Anand — discuss women’s rights in Iran and Afghanistan, and the challenges of reporting as women and about women in these countries. “I was last in Afghanistan in November of 2021, so the Taliban had been in control for several months,” says Ferguson, a PBS NewsHour correspondent. "Obviously, you’re there, you’re able to make connections with the women — you can talk to them on encrypted services, you can go and meet with them in places. But since then, I’ve been reporting from afar and you have to make connection with young women. And then, you have to try to do it as responsibly as you can. So, we’ll be interviewing them, hiding their faces, in some cases warping their voices, and you can really just take testimony from them on what life is like. It’s hugely challenging." This March 23 event was organized by the Pulitzer Center and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Support comes from the PIMCO Foundation. Learn more about the speakers on Berkeley Journalism's website. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Photo by Alisdare Hickson via Flickr. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Jitendra Malik on the sensorimotor road to artificial intelligence 55:48

۲ years پیش55:48

55:48

Jitendra Malik, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, gives the 2023 Martin Meyerson Berkeley Faculty Research Lecture called, "The sensorimotor road to artificial intelligence." "It's my pleasure to talk on this very, very hot topic today," Malik begins. "But I'm going to talk about natural intelligence first because we can't talk about artificial intelligence without knowing something about the natural variety. "We could talk about intelligence as having started about 550 million years ago in the Cambrian era, when we had our first multicellular animals that could move about," he continues. "So, these were the first animals that could move, and that gave them an advantage because they could find food in different places. But if you want to move and find food in different places, you need to perceive, you need to know where to go to, which means that you need to have some kind of a vision system or a perception system. And that's why we have this slogan, which is from Gibson, "We see in order to move and we move in order to see." For a robot to have the ability to navigate specific terrain, like stepping stones or stairs, Malik says, it needs some kind of vision system. "But how do we train the vision system?" he asks. "We wanted it to learn in the wild. So, here was our intuition: If you think of a robot on stairs, its proprioception, its senses, its joint angles can let it compute the depth of its left leg and right leg and so on. It has that geometry from its joint angles, from its internal state. So, can we use it for training? The idea was the proprioception predicts the depth of every leg and the vision system gets an image. What we asked the vision system to do is to predict what the depth will be 1.5 seconds later. "That was the idea — that you just shift what signal it will know 1.5 seconds later and use that to do this advanced prediction. So, we have this robot, which is learning day by day. In the first day, it's clumsy. The second day, it goes up further. And then, finally, on the third day, you will see that it ... makes it all the way." Malik's lecture, which took place on March 20, was the first in a series of public lectures at Berkeley this spring by the world's leading experts on artificial intelligence. Other speakers in the series will include Berkeley Ph.D. recipient John Schulman, a co-founder of OpenAI and the primary architect of ChatGPT; a professor emeritus at MIT and a leading expert in robotics, and four other leading Berkeley AI faculty members who will discuss recent advances in the fields of computer vision, machine learning and robotics. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. UC Berkeley photo. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
The rise and destruction of the Jewish fashion industry 1:18:58

۲ years پیش1:18:58

1:18:58

Uwe Westphal, author of the 2019 book, Fashion Metropolis Berlin 1836-1939: The Story of the Rise and Destruction of the Jewish Fashion Industry , discusses Berlin's once-thriving Jewish fashion industry and how the Nazi confiscations of Jewish-owned companies in the years before World War II led to the industry's demise. "The destruction of the entire fashion industry meant forced labor, government-organized theft and the murder and the deportation of Jews," Westphal says. "Today, 78 years after the end of World War II, unlike most other industries in Germany, fashion producers small and large have not yet taken on responsibility for what happened. … A younger generation needs to understand the connection between the Holocaust and the destruction of the Berlin fashion industry.” This Feb. 15, 2023, lecture was sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies , The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life , Goethe-Institut San Francisco and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany San Francisco. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo © Ullstein-Bild/Zander&Labisch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Economists on what it'll take to rebuild Ukraine 1:24:14

۲ years پیش1:24:14

1:24:14

To mark the first anniversary of Russia’s initial full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we are sharing a panel discussion with four leading economists about what it'll take to rebuild Ukraine. In this Feb. 14 talk, the panelists summarize trends in the region before the war, assess war damage and propose paths forward, laying the groundwork for future recovery efforts and increasing the chances of post-war success in revitalizing Ukraine. A recent Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) report, “Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and Policies,” provides a background for the panel. The report is available to download in English and Ukrainian. Panelists include: Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Quantedge Presidential Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science, UC Berkeley Gérard Roland, E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley Roger Myerson, David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies in the Harris School of Public Policy and the Griffin Department of Economics, University of Chicago; 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, University of Chicago The Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES) sponsored this event. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UNDP Ukraine photo by Oleksandr Ratushniak. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Women of the Black Panther Party 1:26:06

۲ years پیش1:26:06

1:26:06

In celebration of the new book, Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, Judy Juanita, Madalynn Rucker and Ericka Huggins discuss their time with the Black Panther Party. "I knew that my big purpose was to learn how to love because I was raised in a community that was not loved," says Ericka Huggins, who co-authored Comrade Sisters with photographer Stephen Shames and was director of Oakland Community School led by the Black Panther Party. "I could see the impact on the future generation's understanding that I came from a generation that didn't have what we were offering. And it worked." This conversation, which took place on Oct. 20, 2022, was hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists at UC Berkeley and The Reva and David Logan Gallery of Documentary Photography at Berkeley Journalism. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Artist William Kentridge on staying open to the 'less good' ideas 1:27:48

۲ years پیش1:27:48

1:27:48

World-renowned South African artist William Kentridge discusses the process of making the 2019 chamber opera Waiting for the Sibyl. He also touches on why artists should stay open to new ideas, the complex relationship between humans and algorithms — "one has to make space for that which does not compute," he says — and the "unavoidable optimism" in the activity of making. During the 2022-23 academic year, Cal Performances, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) and the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley are participating in a campuswide residency with Kentridge. Cal Performances will present the U.S. premiere of SIBYL on March 17-19. SIBYL is comprised of two parts: The first part of the program, The Moment Has Gone , is a film by Kentridge with live music featuring a piano score by Kyle Shepherd and an all-male vocal chorus led by Nhlanhla Mahlangu; the second part is the chamber opera Waiting for the Sibyl. Learn more about the residency and upcoming events. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Marc Shoul. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Adriana Green and Nadia Ellis discuss 'The Yellow House' 43:07

۲ years پیش43:07

43:07

Adriana Green, a Ph.D. student in the Department of African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley, and Nadia Ellis, an associate professor in the Department of English , discuss Sarah Broom's The Yellow House , winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The memoir, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East, tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home. "I am a diaspora scholar and I've had to explain what my field is to many people," says Ellis, who specializes in Black diasporic, Caribbean and postcolonial literatures and cultures. "Sometimes people seem to not understand what the word 'diaspora' means. And I think this is such a wonderful book that one can offer as an example of what it means to feel as if one is both from one place and also displaced from that place — to feel as if the place that claims you maybe most closely is also the place where you can't live, which is an extraordinary and painful and very, very idiosyncratic feeling to have. That's very characteristic actually of Black life and Black life in America." Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Emiliana Simon-Thomas on where happiness comes from (revisiting) 1:25:17

۲ years پیش1:25:17

1:25:17

In episode #158 of Berkeley Talks, we revisit a lecture by Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center , in which she discusses happiness — what it means, where it comes from and how we can enhance it in our lives. “Where does happiness come from?” asks Simon-Thomas, who co-teaches the Science of Happiness , an online course that explores the roots of a happy and meaningful life. “Humans have been wondering this for centuries. Early thought and philosophy on happiness was that it was just luck. It was divine favor. It was in the stars whether or not you ended up a happy person or not.” The Greeks and Romans, she says, had the idea that happiness was tied to how virtuous a person was. In another stretch of history, people believed that happiness was about maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain. And then, finally, and perhaps the most recent thinking, she says, is that happiness comes from social connection, from feeling a sense of belonging and community. “There’s some really compelling neuroscience studies that show that if we are isolated, this actually engages pathways and structures in our brain that signal vigilance to threat. So, being alone, being isolated, is actually not a safe state for the average human.” This lecture, given on July 28, 2021, was sponsored by Science at Cal. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
The social safety net as an investment in children 1:20:43

۲ years پیش1:20:43

1:20:43

Hilary Hoynes, a UC Berkeley professor of economics and of public policy, and Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities, discusses the emerging research that examines how the social safety net in the United States — a collection of public programs that delivers aid to low-income populations — affects children's life trajectories. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Photo by Kamaji Ogino via Pexels. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Inna Sovsun on what's next in Russia's war on Ukraine 1:05:53

۲ years پیش1:05:53

1:05:53

Ukrainian Member of Parliament Inna Sovsun joins Yuriy Gorodnichenko, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, and Janet Napolitano, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy and former secretary of homeland security, to discuss the impact of the war and what comes next for the people of Ukraine. This Nov. 8 event was co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy; the Center for Security in Politics; the Center for Studies in Higher Education; the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies; and the Institute of European Studies. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Poet Alex Dimitrov reads from 'Love and Other Poems' 32:03

۳ years پیش32:03

32:03

Alex Dimitrov reads from his 2021 book of poems Love and Other Poems. The Sept. 8 reading was part of the UC Berkeley Library’s monthly event, Lunch Poems. Here’s “July,” one of the poems Dimitrov read during the event: At last it’s impossible to think of anything as I swim through the heat on Broadway and disappear in the Strand. Nobody on these shelves knows who I am but I feel so seen, it’s easy to be aimless not having written a line for weeks. Outside New York continues to be New York. I was half expecting it to be LA but no luck. No luck with the guy I’m seeing, no luck with money, no luck with becoming a saint. I do not want you, perfect life. I decided to stay a poet long ago, I know what I’m in for. And still the free space of the sky lures me back out—not even canonical beauty can keep me inside (and beauty, I’m done with you too). I guess, after all, I’ll take love— sweeping, all-consuming, grandiose love. Don’t just call or ask to go to a movie. That’s off my list too! I want absolutely everything on this Friday afternoon when not one person is looking for me. I’m crazy and lonely. I’ve never been boring. And believe it or not, I’m all I want. Alex Dimitrov is the author of three books of poetry — Love and Other Poems , Together and by Ourselves and Begging for It — and the chapbook American Boys . His poems have been published in the New Yorker , the New York Times , the Paris Review and Poetry . He has taught writing at Princeton University, Columbia University and New York University, among other institutions. Previously, he was the senior content editor at the Academy of American Poets, where he edited the popular series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine. Lunch Poems is an ongoing poetry reading series at Berkeley that began in 2014. All readings happen from 12:10 p.m. to 12:50 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month. Find upcoming talks on the Lunch Poems website and watch videos of past readings on the Lunch Poems YouTube channel . Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Sylvie Rosokoff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Judith Heumann on the long fight for inclusion 1:29:28

۳ years پیش1:29:28

1:29:28

In Berkeley Talks episode 154, leading disability rights activist and UC Berkeley alumna Judith Heumann discusses her lifelong fight for inclusion and equality. This Oct. 26 talk was part of the Jefferson Memorial Lectures , a series sponsored by Berkeley's Graduate Division. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of Judith Heumann. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Indigenous access, political ecology in settler states 59:10

۳ years پیش59:10

59:10

Clint Carroll, an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, gives a talk called "Reuniting with Our Lands and Waters: Indigenous Access and Political Ecology in Settler States." "The early periods of what is known as the U.S. Federal Indian Policy are defined in terms of the specific type of dispossession they entailed," begins Carroll, author of the 2015 book Roots of Our Renewal: Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance. "While the removal era of the 1830s forcibly relocated tribes hundreds and thousands of miles from their traditional homelands, the creation of reservations beginning in the mid-1800s also entailed numerous relocations via treaties and land cessions. "The early U.S. conservation movement, coinciding roughly with the establishment of Indian reservations, excluded Native peoples from former hunting-and-gathering areas in the name of wilderness preservation," Carroll continues. "The allotment era, from about 1887 to 1934, broke up Indigenous systems of communal land ownership and opened Native lands to speculators in the market. Since this time, access has become a principle issue for Native peoples — specifically, the ability to access lands and waters through which to enact culturally sustaining practices and ceremonies that are tied to relations of reciprocal care." This Sept. 22 UC Berkeley event was sponsored by the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues , part of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues . It was co-sponsored by the Native American Studies Program , Native American Student Development , the American Indian Graduate Program , the American Indian Graduate Student Association and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of Clint Carroll. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
U.S. military bases in World War II Latin America 1:11:12

۳ years پیش1:11:12

1:11:12

UC Berkeley history professor Rebecca Herman discusses her new book, Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of U.S. Military Bases in World War II Latin America. She’s joined by Margaret Chowning, professor and Sonne Chair in Latin American History at Berkeley, and Kyle Jackson, a transnational historian of the Americas and a Berkeley Ph.D. candidate in history. "Typically, when the war comes up, the remarkable thing is that it was this moment where almost every country in the Americas banded together, united around the war effort," says Herman. "So, when I talk about cooperating with the colossus, I'm thinking in this sort of critical way about how people in the region during the Second World War tried to make the most of the United States' sudden attention to the region and willingness to share resources with the region and willingness to send weapons to the region, while also trying to mitigate U.S. overreach and to grapple with the real significant asymmetries of power that structured that cooperative relationship." Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Berkeley Department of History photo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Novelist Ilija Trojanow on the utopian prerogative 47:58

۳ years پیش47:58

47:58

Novelist Ilija Trojanow discusses why we need to embrace the idea of utopia in order to imagine a better future. "It's important to not confuse what does exist with what is impossible, which is how most people use the word "utopian" in everyday parlance," Trojanow says. "Progress has, at times, been utopia come true. By envisaging differing realities, we are imagining alternatives into existence. "Truly utopian narratives challenge existing preconceptions by opening windows of thought and fantasy that give life to a multitude of possibilities," Trojanow continues. "In order to survive, we will have to redefine our modes of planetary existence, and this will be impossible without powerful utopian imagination. Thus, utopia is not the art of the impossible, it is the rational of the necessary." Tojanow, author of more than 60 fiction and nonfiction books, delivered the 2022 Mosse Lecture at UC Berkeley on Sept. 1. The annual lecture was organized by Berkeley's Department of German and the Institute of European Studies, in collaboration with the Mosse Foundation and the German Historical Institute's Pacific Office at Berkeley. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of Ilija Trojanow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Activist Pua Case on the movement to protect Mauna Kea 1:15:18

۳ years پیش1:15:18

1:15:18

Pua Case, a Native Hawaiian activist and caretaker from the Flores-Case ʻOhana family, discusses the movement to protect Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii and the tallest mountain in the world. "We have been standing successfully for 12 years against the building of a huge telescope," Case said at a Berkeley Center of New Media event on Aug. 29, 2022. "Not because it's a telescope, but because it's an 18-story building of any kind that would be built on the northern plateau in a pristine landscape on a sacred mountain, and for so many reasons. "For 12 years, we have remained visible, we have remained committed, we have remained engaged and fully activated. But it is as if on a daily basis we have never stood because they are determined to build. And so, any of you who are facing what we're facing today, when a corporation, an institution, a developer, whatever the case may be — for us, five countries are determined to build no matter the consequence — it is almost as if you have to re-establish every day that you are here." This talk was presented as part of the Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium, the History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series, and the Indigenous Technologies Initiative. It was co-sponsored by the American Indian Graduate Program, the Arts Research Center, the Department of Ethnic Studies, Media Studies, the Center for Race and Gender, and Native American Studies. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Matt Biddulph via Flickr. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
How we learn language across communities and cultures 1:35:08

۳ years پیش1:35:08

1:35:08

In Berkeley Talks episode 149, Mahesh Srinivasan, an associate professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Psychology, discusses the importance of child-directed speech in language learning, how poverty may suppress parents' speech to their children and how children learn language from overheard speech, a main form of children’s early experience with language in many cultures around the world. This March 2022 lecture was sponsored by Science At Cal . Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Esteban Benites via Unsplash. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Learning from nature to design better robots 1:01:47

۳ years پیش1:01:47

1:01:47

Robert Full, a professor of integrative biology and founder of the Center for Interdisciplinary Biological Inspiration in Education and Research at UC Berkeley, discusses how nature and its creatures — cockroaches, squirrels, centipedes, geckos — inspire innovative design in all sorts of useful things, from bomb-detecting, stair-climbing robots to prosthetics and other medical equipment. Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News. Photo by Tate Lohmiller via Unsplash. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Scholars on using fantasy to reimagine Blackness 1:31:10

۳ years پیش1:31:10

1:31:10

A panel of scholars discusses UC Berkeley professor Darieck Scott's new book Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics, which explores how fantasies of Black power and triumph in superhero comics and other genres create challenges to — and respite from — white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Listen to the discussion and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Graphic courtesy of the Othering and Belonging Institute. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
America wants gun control. Why doesn't it have it? (revisiting) 1:26:18

۳ years پیش1:26:18

1:26:18

"If having a gun really made you safer, then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It’s not," said Gary Younge, a professor of sociology at Manchester University and former editor-at-large at the Guardian , in a lecture at UC Berkeley on March 4, 2020. "Yet while Americans consistently favor more gun control," Younge continued, "gun laws have generally become more lax. That is partly due to the material resources of the gun lobby. But it is also about the central role of the gun, what it represents in the American narrative, and the inability of gun control advocates to develop a counter-narrative. ... When the national narrative is a story of conquering, dominating, force and power, a broad atavistic attachment to the gun can have more pull than narrower rational arguments to contain it." Listen to the lecture and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Detail of a mural by Kyle Holbrook and local youth in Miami, Florida. ( Photo by Terence Faircloth via Flickr ) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
ACLU leader on how voter suppression works 59:42

۳ years پیش59:42

59:42

Abdi Soltani, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, discussed on Feb. 18, 2022, key moments for voting rights and elections throughout U.S. history, current threats to voting that are unfolding across the country and work the ACLU is doing in California. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts . Music by Blue Dot Sessions. AP photo by Morry Gash. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
'Mother Jones' editor on how the super-rich really live 1:04:04

۳ years پیش1:04:04

1:04:04

In Berkeley Talks episode 144, Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic joins Berkeley Journalism professor David Barstow to discuss his new book, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live — and How Their Wealth Harms Us All. This conversation was streamed live on May 4, 2022. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts . Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Climate displacement and remaking the built environment 1:26:52

۳ years پیش1:26:52

1:26:52

In Berkeley Talks episode 143, a panel of UC Berkeley experts discuss climate displacement — what it means to abandon places, the power dynamics between the Global South and the Global North, challenges for both the sending and receiving regions, and what needs to happen to address this fast-growing problem. Panelists include faculty members from Berkeley's new cluster in climate equity and environmental justice: Maya Carrasquillo, civil and environmental engineering Daniel Aldana Cohen, sociology Zoe Hamstead, city and regional planning Danielle Rivera, landscape architecture and environmental planning Moderated by Karen Chapple, director of Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project and the University of Toronto’s School of Cities This April 25 event is part of Cal Performances' Illuminations: Place and Displacement series. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts . Photo by Pablo Paredes. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Timnit Gebru on how change happens through collective action 19:31

۳ years پیش19:31

19:31

In a special episode, Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute and one of the most prominent researchers working in the field of ethics in artificial intelligence, gives the keynote address to the UC Berkeley School of Information graduating class on May 16. In the speech, Gebru touches on collective action, interconnectedness and the loneliness that may accompany standing on “the right side of history.” Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts . Photo by Noah Berger. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Scholars on Roman Vishniac's photos of Jewish life before the Holocaust 1:36:25

۳ years پیش1:36:25

1:36:25

In Berkeley Talks episode 141, a panel of scholars discuss the work of Roman Vishniac, a renowned Russian American photographer who took thousands of photos over seven decades and across three continents. Although Vishniac’s genres were diverse, he’s best known for images that he took of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. “These photographs are distinguished by their epiphenomena, the life circumstances of their subjects and the narratives that have surrounded these images,” said Jeffrey Shandler, professor of Jewish studies at Rutgers University, at a two-day event in May presented by The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in collaboration with Berkeley’s Center for Jewish Studies . “Shortly after these photographs were taken, most of the Jews they depict met a terrible fate during World War II. Those few who survived the Holocaust had to start their lives over in radically different circumstances." Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts . Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo of Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz by Roman Vishniac, Mukacevo, ca. 1937-38 . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
An update on Public Service Loan Forgiveness 1:00:01

۳ years پیش1:00:01

1:00:01

In episode 140 of Berkeley Talks, a panel of student loan experts discuss the Public Service Loan Forgiveness waiver, the recently extended COVID payment pause and student debt cancellation. Panelists of this April 2022 talk included: Kat Welbeck, Student Borrower Protection Center Suzanne Martindale, California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation Kyra Taylor, National Consumer Law Center Moderated by Amanda Prasuhn, Berkeley Law Financial Aid Office Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts . Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Elena Zhukova. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Damilola Ogunbiyi on driving an equitable energy transition 1:23:47

۳ years پیش1:23:47

1:23:47

In episode 139 of Berkeley Talks, Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary General for Sustainable Energy for All, gives the UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Group's 28th Annual Lecture on Energy and Environment. In the March 31, 2022 talk, Ogunbiyi discusses how to drive a just, inclusive and equitable transition to affordable and sustainable energy for all, and how the Russia-Ukraine war is affecting energy markets around the world. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts . ( Photo by Bamas100 via Wikimedia Commons ) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Sociologist Harry Edwards on sport in society 1:13:28

۳ years پیش1:13:28

1:13:28

In Berkeley Talks episode 138, Harry Edwards, a renowned sports activist and UC Berkeley professor emeritus of sociology, discusses the intersections of race and sport, athletes' struggle for definitional authority and the power of sport to change society. "You can change society by changing people's perceptions and understandings of the games they play," said Edwards in March at a campus event sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues and Cal Athletics. "I'm saying whether it's race relations in America, whether it's relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and China, whether it's what's going on in South Africa with apartheid, you can leverage sport to change people's perceptions and understandings of those relationships. Change society by changing people's perceptions and understandings of the games they play." Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Follow Berkeley Talks and review us on Apple Podcasts . (Photo courtesy of Harry Edwards) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Ezra Klein on building the things we need for the future we want 1:35:28

۲ years پیش1:35:28

1:35:28

In Berkeley Talks episode 182, Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist and host of the podcast The Ezra Klein Show, discusses the difficulties Democratic governments encounter when working to build real things in the real world. "To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of the things that we need," began Klein, who joined in conversation on Oct. 5 with Amy Lerman, a UC Berkeley political scientist and director of the Possibility Lab. "It's so stupidly simple, so obvious, that it seems weird there could be any need to write articles or podcasts or truly, God forbid, a book about it. "And yet, the story of America in the 21st century, more than that, the story of liberalism, and particularly California liberalism, is a story of chosen scarcity. Why did we choose to build so few homes in the places people most need to live, including here? Why do we choose to build so little clean energy, and make it so hard to build clean energy, that red states are getting far more of the money in the Inflation Reduction Act than blue states?" Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Lucas Foglia. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Chinese activist Ai WeiWei on art, exile and politics 1:29:40

۲ years پیش1:29:40

1:29:40

In Berkeley Talks episode 181, renowned artist and human rights activist Ai WeiWei discusses art, exile and politics in a conversation with noted theater director and UCLA professor Peter Sellars and Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society and former dean of Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Ai, who grew up in northwest China under harsh conditions because of his poet father's exile, is openly critical of the Chinese government's stance on democracy and human rights. He is well-known for his provocative works, including his 2014-15 installation on San Francisco Bay's Alcatraz Island, @Large, that the LA Times called, "an always-poignant, often-powerful meditation on soul-deadening repressions of human thought and feeling." "Normally, people call me an artist or activist, and I am often forced into one condition," he says. "It's not that I intentionally try to create something or to crystallize something, but rather I've been put in extreme conditions, and I have to focus on dealing with those situations. Normally, I don't accept the easy answer. "So I think I have to find a language to illustrate my expression, and it comes out in certain ideas or materials. We can call it art. I don't think my art really looks like art, but still, it's hard to categorize it. I'm a bit ashamed about it because everything in real life, it has a purpose. It has clear problems and solutions. But the art is not really about that. It rather creates problems after problems. So yeah, that's what I do." This Sept. 24 event was co-presented by Cal Performances, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) and the Townsend Center for the Humanities. Read about 10 of Ai WeiWei's adventurous works on Cal Performances' blog Beyond the Stage . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu) Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of Ai WeiWei. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
What are Berkeley's Latinx Thriving Initiatives? 52:31

۲ years پیش52:31

52:31

In Berkeley Talks episode 180, Dania Matos and Fabrizio Mejia, vice chancellor and associate vice chancellor, respectively, for UC Berkeley’s Division of Equity and Inclusion, join Berkeley student Angelica Garcia to discuss the campus’s Latinx Thriving Initiatives (LTI) and how these efforts are supporting Berkeley’s goal of not only becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), but also of transforming Berkeley into a Latinx Thriving Institution. “There's a practical standpoint of this that's about becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution,” begins Matos. “That's why you'll hear HSIs a lot, and it's important in that naming and framing. Dr. Gina Garcia is a sort of national expert who talks about this, but for us, it's really taking it beyond that. Because becoming an HSI is about 25% enrollment of undergraduate students, which, by the way, the federal government does not count graduate students, and we care about graduate students here, too. “For us, we're thinking about (how to) build this ecosystem where we are honoring, bringing in more Latinx communities, but also honoring the different ways of knowing and being, which are so counter to the way U.S. higher educational system is done. “Latinx Thriving Initiatives is a multifaceted campuswide effort, but not just campus. It's really thinking and honoring our mission as a public institution, and (asking), ‘How do we center community in that?’ We're not just a community center that people come to or get admitted to and leave from in four years, but a place where they're having an impact and creating that.” “It’s collecting all the work that is happening,” added Mejia, “honoring that historical effort, that ongoing effort, but also asking ourselves, ‘What else? What does it look like to have a Latinx student body, Latinx staff, Latinx faculty that are all thriving from the moment they conceptualize “Is Berkeley a place for me?” to the moment they land on the campus and say, “Where do I see myself in this environment? How do I meet my aspirations? Am I getting the support all the way through?"’ Listen to the full conversation in Berkeley Talks episode 180, “What are Berkeley’s Latinx Thriving Initiatives?” This conversation was recorded in March 2023 as the first episode of Berkeley’s Latinx Thriving Initiatives podcast, which explores what it means for Berkeley to become a Latinx Thriving Institution, and the direct impact it’ll have on its Latinx-identifying campus community. It was created in partnership with Ethnic Studies Changemaker , a campus group of students plus a faculty adviser that aims to “amplify the voices and diverse experiences of marginalized communities.” Learn more about Berkeley’s Latinx Thriving Initiatives and watch a video of what these efforts have accomplished over the past year on the Latinx Thriving Initiatives website. Photo by H.G. Villaseñor and I. Torres. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Poet Ishion Hutchinson reads 'The Mud Sermon' and other poems 41:06

۲ years پیش41:06

41:06

In Berkeley Talks episode 179, Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson reads several poems, including "The Mud Sermon," "The Bicycle Eclogue" and "After the Hurricane." His April reading was part of the UC Berkeley Library’s monthly event Lunch Poems. "I take this voyage into poetry very seriously," begins Hutchinson, "and take none of it for granted, because of the weight of history, both growing up in Jamaica and knowing the violent history that comes with that. But also the violence, too, of canon, and seeing that my work as a poet, in part, is to figure out what sort of emancipatory forces I should summon. Luckily, I stand in great shoulders within the Caribbean tradition of many poets and writers that I admire, and envy, and wish they hadn't been born. Don't tell them that. This isn't recorded, of course." Here’s “A Mud Sermon,” one of the poems Hutchinson read during the event: They shovelled the long trenches day and night. Frostbitten mud. Shellshock mud. Dungheap mud. Imperial mud. Venereal mud. Malaria mud. Hun bait mud. Mating mud. 1655 mud: white flashes of sharks. Golgotha mud. Chilblain mud. Caliban mud. Cannibal mud. Ha ha ha mud. Amnesia mud. Drapetomania mud. Lice mud. Pyrexia mud. Exposure mud. Aphasia mud. No-man’s-land’s-Everyman’s mud. And the smoking flax mud. Dysentery mud. Septic sore mud. Hog pen mud. Nephritis mud. Constipated mud. Faith mud. Sandfly fever mud. Rat mud. Sheol mud. Ir-ha-cheres mud. Ague mud. Asquith mud. Parade mud. Scabies mud. Mumps mud. Memra mud. Pneumonia mud. Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin mud. Civil war mud. And darkness and worms will be their dwelling-place mud. Yaws mud. Gog mud. Magog mud. God mud. Canaan the unseen, as promised, saw mud. They resurrected new counter-kingdoms, by the arbitrament of the sword mud. Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of two poetry collections: Far District and House of Lords and Commons . He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others. He is a contributing editor to the literary journals The Common and Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, and teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University. Lunch Poems is an ongoing poetry reading series at Berkeley that began in 2014. All readings happen from 12:10 p.m. to 12:50 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month. A new season of Lunch Poems will begin on Oct. 5 with Inuit poet dg nanouk okpik in the Morrison Library. Find upcoming talks on the Lunch Poems website and watch videos of past readings on the Lunch Poems YouTube channel . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Neil-Anthony Watson. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Michael Brown's family on keeping his memory alive 1:48:27

۲ years پیش1:48:27

1:48:27

In Berkeley Talks episode 178, Rashad Arman Timmons, a fellow at UC Berkeley’s Black Studies Collaboratory, joins in conversation with the family of Michael Brown Jr., whose 2014 killing by police in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited a wave of protests across the country. During the March 8, 2023, discussion, Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr., his stepmother, Cal Brown, and Timmons consider the enduring significance of Ferguson in the nation’s racial landscape and ponder Black grief as a resource for social transformation. “A note on grief,” begins Timmons. “We grieve because we care. We grieve because we love. And we grieve because we remember. I feel a responsibility to say this, to acknowledge grief for what it truly is: an ethical act of care, a radical act of love and a persistent triumph of memory. “When we grieve the Black dead and dying, we enact an urgent care for them. We profess a vigilant love over them and nurture a commitment to remember them. Christina Sharpe in her beautiful theorizing calls the unison of these practices ‘wake work.’ ‘Wake work,’ she writes, "describes how we attend to physical, social and figurative death, and also to the largeness that is Black life, or Black life insisted from death. Wake work describes how we imagine, defend and care for Black lives always already threatened, in our present or the future, that chattel slavery made possible.” Read more about the event and learn more about the Black Studies Collaboratory . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

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Oppenheimer's Berkeley years 1:27:34

۲ years پیش1:27:34

1:27:34

In Berkeley Talks episode 177, a panel of scholars discusses theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and how his years at UC Berkeley shaped him, and how he shaped the university. Oppenheimer, the subject of Christopher Nolan’s summer 2023 film Oppenheimer, came to Berkeley in 1929 as an assistant professor and over the next dozen years established one of the greatest schools of theoretical physics. He went on to direct the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, during which the first nuclear weapons were developed. He’s often referred to as “the father of the atomic bomb.” “Exceptional students and postdocs flocked here to Berkeley to work with him,” began Cathryn Carson, a Berkeley professor of history and a specialist in the history of 20th century physics, who moderated the July 28 discussion at Berkeley. “As we’ll hear today,” she continued, “the style of work that Oppenheimer unfolded at Berkeley was collaborative, pointed, directed at hard problems, not always successful. His modus operandi, you could say, was, ‘Work hard, play hard.’ “He landed in the Bay at a time when much else was in ferment. At the same time that he devoted himself to physics, he got engaged with contemporary left-wing politics. In the Bay Area in the 1930s, that included the fight against fascism in Nazi Germany and Spain and struggles for economic justice and labor in California. The Communist Party was part of that setting, and Oppenheimer immersed himself in the life of the Berkeley faculty, efforts to unionize it and intellectual currents across the university — this broad liberal arts institution that fed his roving mind.” Panelists include: Cathryn Carson , chair and professor of Berkeley’s Department of History, whose research includes nuclear history and the history of 20th century physics. She co-edited a volume of papers about Oppenheimer, Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections. Mark Chadwick , chief scientist and chief operating officer for weapons physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who edited and published a suite of papers on the technical history of the Trinity test. Jon Else , professor emeritus of Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, who created the documentary The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb. Yasunori Nomura , a Berkeley professor of physics and director of the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics. Karl van Bibber , professor of nuclear engineering at Berkeley, who spent 25 years conducting nuclear energy research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Jessica Morse on how we can live with fire 1:25:31

۲ years پیش1:25:31

1:25:31

In this Berkeley Talks episode, Jessica Morse, the deputy secretary for forest and wildland resilience at the California Natural Resources Agency, discusses the current wildfire crisis in California and how we got here, strategies the state is implementing, and lessons they've learned in order to decrease catastrophic wildfires and create more resilient forests. Morse began her Nov. 4, 2022, lecture with a story about the Camp Fire, the nation's deadliest wildfire in a century that killed 85 people and destroyed more than 18,000 structures in Northern California. "The story for me starts Nov. 8, 2018, almost four years ago to the day the campfire broke out in Paradise," began Morse. "I think all of us have some story of knowing where we were that day. It was a game-changer in terms of the deadliest, most devastating fire we've seen in California history. I went up there a couple days later to go help out and volunteer with the relief efforts. And what I saw was striking: We had 54,000 people displaced in the blink of an eye. Most of the people, even a couple days after the fire, were still meandering around in pajama bottoms and slippers because they had fled from their homes from this fire that was moving so quickly." "It was a level of trauma in people that I had not seen firsthand since I had been in an active war zone in Iraq," she continued. "And I thought, 'This is my community. These are our neighbors. This is our state. How is this happening? And how did it get this bad? And what do we do about it?' "And so, I dedicated then my time and energy, as well as many of you have to, trying to solve and answer that question. And so, I joined the Newsom administration. The governor on day one, he declared an emergency on these fires so that we could start investing in the prevention work. And so, that's what I'm going to tell you a lot about today, is how we've transformed and transitioned in California to the scale we're at today." This talk was the Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources' 2022 S.J. Hall Lecture in Industrial Forestry . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). UC Berkeley photo by Scott Stephens. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Siri creator Adam Cheyer shares secrets of entrepreneurship 1:26:58

۲ years پیش1:26:58

1:26:58

Siri creator Adam Cheyer talks about the long road to launching the virtual assistant, how to take an entrepreneurial idea from conception to impact and why he doesn't see anything as a failure. "An entrepreneur and a magician are exactly the same," begins Cheyer, who also founded the startups Change.org, Viv Labs, Sentient and Bixby. "An entrepreneur needs to imagine an impossible future. Think about Siri: 20 years ago, if I told you that you could pull a device out of your pocket, it would know who you are and where you are and you could just talk to it using your words and it would not only talk back to you, but do things for you, book that reservation, buy a movie ticket, you would've thought that were magic. "An entrepreneur has to imagine an impossible future that's desirable, that doesn't exist ... So, you have to reach far as an entrepreneur, dream big, dream magical. But you have to be very clear (and answer) 'Why would we want such a thing?'" This Feb. 9, 2021, talk was part of UC Berkeley's Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology's 2021 Newton Lecture Series . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo courtesy of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Legal scholars unpack Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action 1:01:35

۲ years پیش1:01:35

1:01:35

In this episode, three leading legal scholars — john a. powell, director of UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI); Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law; and Sheryll Cashin, professor of law at Georgetown Law School — discuss the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that public and private universities cannot use race as a factor in admitting students. The court, with its conservative justices in the majority, ruled that such affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, reversing decades of legal precedent. In California, UC Berkeley and other public colleges and universities have been prohibited from considering race in admissions since 1996, when voters approved Proposition 209. “The Supreme Court ignores the tremendous difference between using race to harm minorities as opposed to using race to remedy past discrimination and enhance diversity,” said Chemerinsky at the July 3 event, moderated by OBI Assistant Director Stephen Menendian. “When John Roberts tries to invoke Brown v. Board of Education, he ignores that Brown was dealing with laws that mandated segregation. They were all about subordinating a racial minority as opposed to what Harvard and North Carolina were doing, which was about trying to remedy past discrimination.” Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photos by (from left) Howard County Library System , Brittany Hosea-Small and Sara Yogi. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Poets laureate share works about creation, sacrifice and home 1:18:31

۲ years پیش1:18:31

1:18:31

In this episode, three poets laureate — Lee Herrick, the first Asian American poet laureate of California; Kealoha, Hawai'i’s first poet laureate; and Nadia Elbgal, the Oakland youth poet laureate — perform and read their works in celebration of National Poetry Month in April. Kealoha, a slam champion who has a degree in nuclear physics from MIT, began by performing a scene from his film, The Story of Everything, a creation story inspired by his son that tells 13.8 billion years worth of time, from the Big Bang to human life on Earth. Next, Elbgal, a Yemeni American activist and recent Berkeley High graduate, read three works of hers, including "Product of a Blended Culture" and "Spark." The event concluded with a reading by Herrick, who shared several pieces from his latest book of poetry, Scar and Flower. This April 20 event was presented by UC Berkeley's Arts Research Center in partnership with Engaging the Senses Foundation , and co-sponsored by the Center for Race and Gender and the English and ethnic studies departments at Berkeley. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Biden economic adviser on building a clean energy economy 1:20:02

۲ years پیش1:20:02

1:20:02

Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and chief economist to the Investing in America Cabinet, discusses Biden's plan to build a clean energy economy in the U.S. "The president has made clear, I feel like gazillions of times at this point, that his goal is to build an economy from the bottom up and middle out," began Boushey at the March 22 event at UC Berkeley. "He wants an economy where growth is strong, sustainable. Where gains are broadly shared. Where the economy is stable, not just strong. Where our industries are globally competitive. Where we have a strong and vibrant middle class. Where we run our economy on clean energy and we bring down carbon emissions. And where we move beyond longstanding inequities. "And so, we at the CEA, we help the president as he is thinking about the economics behind how we're going to do this. And so, today's conversation, what I want to spend the next little bit of time talking to you about, is about the president's economic blueprint to reach his goals — what motivated it, what it is, why we believe that the evidence shows us that it'll be effective and what successes that we're already seeing." This talk was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Society and Economy Initiative , the Network for a New Political Economy , the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality , and Social Science Matrix . Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Executive Office of the President of the United States photo via Wikimedia Commons. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Climate grief: Embracing loss as a catalyst for collective action 1:29:03

۲ years پیش1:29:03

1:29:03

Journalist and climate activist Naomi Klein joins Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen and posthumanist thinker Bayo Akomolafe, both senior fellows at UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute, to discuss climate grief and why they see it not as a reason for apathy, but as an invitation to feel the loss deeply — together — and to use it as fuel for collective action. "The moments that we face loss, and we really embody the grieving process, is the total moment of surrendering," said Celidwen at the May 4 event, hosted by the Othering and Belonging Institute . "Realizing that arrogance that keeps humans in a hierarchical organization, feeling that they are somehow exceptional from and different from all others, that arrogance dissolves the moment that we realize we are powerless, really, to the process of life, to the process of spirit, the process of nature. "That idea of bringing not only the possibilities of the mysterious, the possibilities of the stories, that not everything can be measured as Western sciences, but rather as how Indigenous sciences speaks about what we don't know, what we can't know, and how we can make meaning of precisely that unknowing, and resting in that unknowing by finding the right insight to the action that we need to do as a collective." "I was really struck, Yuria, that you said that grief is surrender," Klein said in response. "Because, right before, I was making a couple of notes, thinking about why so many people I know in the climate justice movement are afraid of grief. And I wrote down just now, 'It's because they equate grief with surrender.' "But, what I meant was political surrender. I think there's a fear that if we fall down, we'll never get up. And that, if we let ourselves feel the depths of the loss, the depths of the fear, that we'll just somehow never be able to be galvanized again. And it's the opposite, really. That grief is uncontainable, including that surrender. "I work with these students I mentioned, it's not a course on climate anxiety or climate grief. It's a course on climate feelings. And that's the first thing I say is, 'It can be rage, it can be just loss, it can be hope, it can be homesickness. There are so many emotions, and why do we prescribe just this one?' 'But the main thing I want is just feel anything , feel it a lot, because I feel like what is the source of the hopelessness or despair — those are legitimate emotions — but it's a deadeningness, really, that is what I'm most afraid of in myself and in the people I work with." Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo of Naomi Klein by Kourosh Keshiri via Flickr. Photos of Yuria Celidwen and Bayo Akomolafe courtesy of the Othering and Belonging Institute. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Pulitzer-winner Natalie Wolchover: 'Knowledge of physics is a superpower' 10:42

۲ years پیش10:42

10:42

In this Berkeley Talks episode, Natalie Wolchover, a senior editor at Quanta Magazine and winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting, gives the keynote commencement speech to the Class of 2023 at Berkeley Physics "'Knowledge is power,' my grandpa always used to tell me," said Wolchover at the May 14 ceremony. "Well, I think knowledge of physics is a superpower. We tend to forget, when we're in a bubble of people who've studied physics, as we are in this auditorium, just how unusual it is to understand the laws of nature. Galileo wrote that 'the universe is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.' You all understand the language of nature. You are not wandering about in a dark labyrinth. You have a headlamp on." Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Sarah Wittmer. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Sociology Ph.D. graduates on the power of family and deep inquiry 13:17

۲ years پیش13:17

13:17

In this episode, two Ph.D. graduates in sociology — Kristen Nelson and Mario Castillo — give the graduate student address at the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology's spring commencement ceremony. "Like many of you, I was raised by a single mother," said Castillo at the May 19 event. "Her name is Mariana Leticia Castillo, and she was 17 when I was born. Now, I have tried to imagine what a 16-year-old mother-to-be must have felt as she prepared to bring a new life into this world, how she had hope for my wellness, happiness and success, coupled with an overwhelming sense of worry, anxiety and fear about the uncertain journey ahead. "My mother's story, as a young working-class woman of color, finding her way as a single parent, combined with my own unique experiences as a queer person of color, propelled me towards deeper inquiry, self-discovery, and ultimately, the fascinating field of sociology." For Nelson, growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the most segregated metro area in the U.S., opened her eyes to the stark inequality in the country and caused her to ask, "Why is it like this?" "When issues ... go unspoken, that is a politics of silence that perpetuates exclusion," Nelson said. "This motivates me to practice a politics of articulation, where we choose to say out loud what has been overlooked, because we cannot change what we cover with silence. So, fellow graduates, as we step into the next chapter, one way that we might apply our sociological training is to ask ourselves: What needs to be spoken?" Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo courtesy of Kristen Nelson. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

Berkeley Talks

1
Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones to graduates: 'The world needs your imagination' 26:50

۲ years پیش26:50

26:50

In an impassioned keynote address to graduates of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy , Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones urged them to do three things: disrupt, dismantle, discover. "We are here to disrupt, not just in word, but with our very presence," he said at the May 14 ceremony. "I come standing with my ancestry. I come in a building as a first non-white member to represent my district. I come as the youngest member. I come as somebody who they said, 'You cannot come with long hair and hoop earrings." But you can see I'm my full self because we have to disrupt these systems of white supremacy and of patriarchy and of plantation capitalism that have hijacked our nation and that for too long have been the dominant voice." Last month, Jones and fellow lawmaker, Justin Pearson, were expelled from the House by the chamber's Republican majority after leading a group of students in a protest demanding gun reform. It was in response to a recent elementary school shooting in Nashville that left six dead, three of them 9-year-olds. "A lot of people said, 'What were you thinking when you were expelled from the legislature? What was going through your mind?' I said, 'Well, this was just another day at the Tennessee General Assembly.'" Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Photo by Catharyn Hayne/KLC Fotos. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

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