Matrix Podcast

Recorded on March 22, 2023, this talk — "The Modern American Industrial Strategy: Building a Clean Energy Economy from the Bottom Up and Middle Out" — features Heather Boushey , a member of President Biden's Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist to the Invest in America Cabinet. Boushey is co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, where she was President and CEO from 201...

Recorded on March 23, 2023, this talk featured Phil Gorski , Frederick and Laura Goff Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at Yale University, discussing his new book (co-authored with Samuel Perry), The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy . The respondent was David Hollinger , Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus of History at UC Berkeley. Carolyn Ch...

How do the wealthy maintain their wealth through tax havens, and what can we learn about these opaque practices? Recorded on April 3, 2023, this panel featured experts explaining aspects of the global ecosystem of tax avoidance, including how corporations and individuals move across multiple legal jurisdictions to maintain wealth and avoid paying taxes. The panel included Duncan Wigan , Professor...

Recorded on March 8, 2023, this video features a lecture by Jo Guldi, Professor of History and Practicing Data Scientist at Southern Methodist University. Professor Guldi's lecture was entitled "Towards a Practice of Text-Mining to Understand Change Over Historical Time: The Persistence of Memory in British Parliamentary Debates in the Nineteenth Century." Co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix, th...

Most nations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa experienced some form of "land reform" in the 20th century. But what is land reform? In her book, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights , Professor Jo Guldi approaches the problem from the point of view of Britain's disintegrating empire. She makes the case that land reform movements originated as an argument about reparations f...

The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reshaped global geopolitics, trade, and security. How will these changes affect the relationship between the US and China, Europe, and the Global South? How will they impact US firms operating globally, and how might foreign leaders — and notably the Chinese leadership — respond? Recorded on February 16, 2023, this panel discussion featured a group of disti...

Misinformation and conspiracy theories have become a central feature of modern life, but they have a long history that have served to justify surveillance and prosecution of marginalized groups. In this Matrix on Point panel, recorded on March 15, 2023, a group of scholars who study these histories discussed how misinformation circulates, and the effects of such myths and stories on society. The p...

Recorded on March 7, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this  Authors Meet Critics panel focused on To Defend This Sunrise: Black Women's Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua , by Courtney Desiree Morris , Assistant Professor and Vice Chair of Research in Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley. Morris was joined in conversation by Tianna Paschel , Associate Professor in th...

Recorded on March 6, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel focused on Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America , by Rebecca Herman , Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. The recording also features a response by Julio Moreno , Professor of History at the University of San Fran...

On February 15, 2023, Social Science Matrix was honored to host Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar , President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for a Matrix Distinguished Lecture entitled "Reimagining Global Integration." A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/mariano-florentino-cuellar-reimagining-global-integration/ . Abstract Whether th...

On February 1, 2023, Social Science Matrix presented an Authors Meet Critics panel on Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present , a book by Dylan Riley , Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Professor Riley was joined by two discussants: Colleen Lye , Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley, affiliated with the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, and Donna Jones , Associate Pr...

A transcript of this interview can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/alumni-interview-adriana-kugler-world-bank-executive-director-for-the-us/ . This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with  Adriana D. Kugler , the World Bank Group Executive Director for the United States. Dr. Kugler was appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate in May 2022. S...

What role did American social and moral reformers play in managing human migrations? J.T. Jamieson , a Phd Candidate in UC Berkeley's Department of History, examines how social reformers in the first half of the 19th century sought to control migration and insert their own understandings of morality, social benevolence, and humanitarianism into the lives and experiences of migrants. In so doing, h...

Monica Ellwood-Lowe  is a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology whose research focuses on differences between outcomes for students of different socioeconomic status, as well as the societal barriers that might hinder student success. Ellwood-Lowe tries to answer such questions as, what skills do children develop when they come from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes, even i...

On this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two scholars whose work focuses on explaining how mass incarceration has changed over the last 30 years. Alex Roehrkasse is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Butler University. He studies the production of racial class and gender inequality in the United States through violence and social control. He was previously...

Why do people choose to go to college (or not)? What impact do race-based or financial aid policies have on higher education and the broader economy? In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley-trained economists whose research focuses on higher education and its impact on the broader economy. Maximilian Müller  completed his PhD in Economics at UC Berkeley this y...

In countries around the world, the "Green Revolution" has changed the scale and economy of growing crops, as pesticides, fertilizers, and new kinds of hybrid seeds have transformed the agricultural production process. In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley scholars who study agrarian life in India, where farmers have been forced to adapt in the face of new te...

How do American child welfare and obstetric healthcare converge? Matty Lichtenstein , a recent PhD from Berkeley's Sociology Department, studies how state and professional organizations shape social and health inequalities in maternal and child welfare. Her current book project focuses on evolving conceptions of risk in social work and medicine, illustrated by a study of the intertwined developmen...

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was insulted on the Capitol steps in July 2020, it was a brief media sensation. But what does being called an "effing bitch" mean for how we think about political speech?  This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Gabriella Licata , a PhD candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley, who discusses how the standard language ideologi...

This episode features an interview with Victoria Netanus Grubbs , Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Black Studies Collaboratory . Grubbs is a black feminist abolitionist educator committed to developing radical leadership in underserved communities in the U.S. and abroad. She completed her PhD in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University in May 2021. Her cu...

In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek interviews David M. Henkin , the Margaret Byrne Professor of History at UC Berkeley, about his new book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Make Us Who We Are . Henkin's primary field of research is US history, and his interests include 19-century urban history, the history of reading and writing, and popular culture. He lives in Sa...

In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek interviews Biz Herman , a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Political Science, a Visiting Scholar at The New School for Social Research's Trauma and Global Mental Health Lab , and a Predoctoral Research Fellow with the Human Trafficking Vulnerability Lab . Her dissertation, Individual Trauma, Collective Security: The Consequences of C...

In this episode of the Matrix podcast, Julia Sizek (a PhD candidate in anthropology at UC Berkeley) interviews Clare Ibarra , a PhD candidate in history at UC Berkeley, and Naomi Schoenfeld , a public health nurse practitioner and recent PhD from the joint UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley medical anthropology program. Both Ibarra and Schoenfeld study the history and present of socialist science and me...

In this episode, Julia Sizek, a PhD candidate in Anthropology at UC Berkeley, interviews Dr. Victoria Massie, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and Faculty Affiliate for the Center for African & African American Studies (CAAAS), the Medical Humanities Program and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (CSWGS) at Rice University in Houston.  A recent alumna...

In this episode of the Matrix podcast, Julia Sizek interviews Hector Callejas, a PhD candidate in Ethnic Studies and a 2021-2022 ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion fellow. Callejas specializes in Native American and Indigenous studies and Latin American studies. He researches and teaches on the relationship between Indigeneity, race, space, and power in the Americas. His dissertation theorizes th...