Berkeley Talks

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 studi

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 economi

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 scie

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

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 st

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,

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.

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.

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 F

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 Gibs

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 Francis

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 BerkeleyBarry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science, UC BerkeleyGérard Roland, E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science, UC BerkeleyRoger Myerson, David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global

In celebration of the new book Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, three women — Judy Juanita, Madalynn Rucker and Ericka Huggins — discuss their time with the Black Panther Party at a UC Berkeley event in October 2022. "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."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.

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

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

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 r

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.

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.

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 anythingas I swim through the heat on Broadway and disappear in the Strand. Nobodyon these shelves knows who I ambut I feel so seen, it’s easy to be aimlessnot having written a line for weeks.Outside New York continues to be New York.I was half expecting it to be LAbut no luck. No luck with the guyI’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 stillthe free space of the skylures me back out—not evencanonical 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 callor ask to go to a movie.That’s off my list too!I want absolutely everythingon this Friday

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.