Berkeley Talks

In this episode of Berkeley Talks , Martha Olney, a teaching professor of economics at UC Berkeley, discusses the economic forecast — how the post-pandemic U.S. economy might compare to that of the so-called roaring 1920s. "When I studied the 1920s, I was really focused on consumer spending, particularly household spending for durable goods — cars, appliances, furniture, jewelry — and the role of...

In this episode of Berkeley Talks , late filmmaker Marlon Riggs, a former Berkeley Journalism professor and alumnus, discusses his 1989 documentary, Tongues Untied , during a screening of his groundbreaking film at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) in 1990. In Tongues Untied , an experimental and deeply personal film, Riggs combines documentary footage with poetry, dance, m...

In this Berkeley Talks  episode, we revisit an interview that we first shared in 2019: Growing up in an immigrant family, comedian Maz Jobrani knew his parents wanted him to be a lawyer or doctor, maybe an engineer. When he became a comedian, he says, the whole community was sad for the family. "They were like, 'Did you hear about Jobrani's son? Yeah, it's a shame. He's almost a drug dealer."...

In this episode of  Berkeley Talks,  Aria Aber, a poet born to Afghan refugees and raised in Germany, who now lives in Oakland, California, reads from her first book of poems,  Hard Damage,  published in 2019 .  The early November reading was part of the UC Berkeley Library’s monthly event, Lunch Poems. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted o...

In this episode of  Berkeley Talks , experts discuss the forces that shaped the outcome of the U.S. elections in November and the implications of the elections for the U.S. and the countries of Latin America. "Hispanics are the new swing voters," said Maria Escheveste, a senior scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and president and CEO of the Opportunity Institute, who join...

In this episode of Berkeley Talks , a panel of scholars — Berkeley Law professor Khiara Bridges; Carol Joffe, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UC San Francisco; and Jill Adams, co-founder and executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law — discuss how race, class and reproductive rights intersect and how people are choosing and resorting to self-dir...

This episode of Berkeley Talks is  a 2019 interview on KALX's The Graduates with Katie Keliiaa, a graduate student in UC Berkeley's Department of Ethnic Studies. In this interview, Keliiaa discusses her research on the Bay Area Outing Program, an early 20th century assimilation program that took Native American women out of their tribal lands and brought them to the Bay Area to perform domest...

In this special Halloween-inspired episode of Berkeley Talks , UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ joins Manual Cinema's co-artistic director Drew Dir to discuss the collective's presentation of Frankenstein, a Cal Performances co-commission, in a talk moderated by Cal Performances' executive and artistic director Jeremy Geffen. Listen to the talk and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on...

In this Berkeley Talks episode, Salvadoran American journalist and activist Roberto Lovato, discusses his new book Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas,  with Jess Alvarenga, an investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker and a graduate of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. In Unforgetting , Lovato exposes how the U.S.-backed milita...

"I would say the loudest, boldest, most powerful voices coming out of Washington have been the voices of women," said U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood (IL-14). "The way that we, collectively, have reframed the conversation about where this country is going has really, I think, been jarring for some of those who have been the power class in Washington for decades." Underwood was part of a panel that disc...

Following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Sept. 18, 2020, Berkeley Law professors — Amanda Tyler, Catherine Fisk, Orin Kerr, Bertrall Ross and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky — came together to discuss Ginsburg's legacy, what will be the likely effects of her no longer being in the Supreme Court and what is likely to happen in the nomination and confirmation process of a new justice. "Her legac...

In this Berkeley Talks episode, Stephen Small, a professor in UC Berkeley's Department of African American Studies, and interim director for the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, discusses research from his upcoming book, tentatively titled Inside the Shadows of the Big House: 21st Century Antebellum Slave Cabins and Heritage Tourism in Louisiana.  Since the 1990s, Small has visited...

As the global pandemic stretches on and massive wildfires rage along the West Coast, many people are finding it hard — if not impossible — to get the restful sleep they need. But Allison Harvey, a professor of clinical psychology and director of the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic at UC Berkeley, says although anxiety can make it more difficult to sleep well, there are evidence-based tr...

"Little boxes on the hillside. Little boxes made of ticky tacky. Little boxes on the hillside. Little boxes all the same. There’s a pink one, and a green one, and a blue one and a yellow one. And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same. And the people in the houses all went to the university, where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same. And there's docto...

"I don't know anybody who can honestly say there hasn't been somebody in their life that helped them along," said Louise Renne, a lawyer who served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and as San Francisco City Attorney. "And I try to pay it back by working with young people in public housing here in San Francisco." Renne took part in a panel discussion — "Bay Area Women in Politi...

Joyce Carol Oates, author of more than 70 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, joined Poet Laureate and Berkeley English professor Robert Hass in March 2019 to discuss her 2018 book Hazards of Time Travel.  Set in a dystopian America in 2039, the novel tells the story of a 17-year-old who, after her subversive valedictorian speech, is exiled to rural Wisconsin in 1959. "It seems like dyst...

"Economists begin with this notion of the free market invisible hand, and we need to be clear that the hand has a color — it's a white hand, let me say, a white male hand," said Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke University. ... I was a major in sociology and economics... I ended up choosing sociology, in part because of the foundation of economics is assumptions about the rat...

“I’ve seen a huge capacity for redemption from people… if given a chance.” That’s Thelton Henderson, a renowned civil rights lawyer who spent 37 years as a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in conversation with Savala Trepczynski in a 2017 podcast series, Be the Change . Be the Change was created and hosted by Trepczynski, the executive director of the...

This  Berkeley Talks  episode features an interview on  Who Belongs? ,  a podcast by UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute. Host Marc Abizeid, joined by co-host Erfan Moradi, talk with Erin Kerrison, an assistant professor of social welfare at Berkeley, about why she thinks the U.S. needs to dismantle capitalism and police, and build a new system free of crime and puni...

The switch to remote learning, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, is realigning several education fundamentals. In this talk, top leaders at UC Berkeley — Chancellor Carol Christ; Bob Jacobsen, dean of undergraduate studies; and Rich Lyons, chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer — discuss how Berkeley is challenging convention in its new approach to instruction and learning, and conside...

"Now, some would like us to believe that racism can be cured pharmacologically," said Amani Allen, executive associate dean at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "One major problem with this argument is that it suggests that racism is primarily facilitated through individual actors, and if we can just fix those bad people, everything will be fine. Well, racism, I would argue, won’t be cured by...

"One myth I think that increasingly people are realizing, and I think Trump has accelerated this, is that national security is really about military and crime," said Politico reporter Nahal Toosi at a UC Berkeley event in March. ...I think what we're learning increasingly is that it's about the economy. It's about cyber issues. It's about climate. It's about migration. It's about the coronavirus....

In adopting a different diet or driving less, a person has an effect on the planet, says Robert Frank, an economics professor at Cornell University. But not for the reason they might think. "If you don't do it, the world will be the same as if you do it," said Frank, who spoke at UC Berkeley in January. "But the effect you have through your own actions are only a small fraction of the total effect...

"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 continues, "gun laws have generally become more lax. That is...

For the first week of quarantine during the global COVID-19 pandemic, Rebecca Vitali-DeCola's 82-year-old dad, Joe DeCola, seemed upbeat. "He was like, 'I got my dinner and I have this beautiful bouquet of flowers.' He just sounded, like, tucked-in and content." DeCola has stage 4 lung cancer. He's become accustomed to isolating himself from time to time, especially during flu season. But after a...