Berkeley Talks

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 Oak...

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 acade...

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 relation...

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...

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....

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 Cent...

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 se...

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....

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," begi...

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....

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....

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 b...

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 M...

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 tr...

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 courte...

"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...

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...

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 . Mus...

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 equit...

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...

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 th...

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 C...

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...

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 sp...

The Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley’s 2021-22 Critical Conversations speaker series is a celebration of the life and legacy of June Jordan, an award-winning poet, activist and longtime professor in the department. At Berkeley, Jordan founded the Poetry for the People program, where writers of all levels wrote and showcased their own poems, and taught poetry to other universit...