UC Berkeley (Audio)

Award-winning historian Jules Gill-Peterson examines transgender identity and politics through the lens of American liberalism, arguing that anti-transgender politics cannot be understood by analyzing conservatism alone. She traces the emergence of transgender identity from middle-class cross-dressing cultures, the development of transgender medicine, and the class tensions surrounding transition....

Embodiment affects how we understand personhood, moral status, and whether this life is our only life. Mark Johnston, Henry Putnam University Professor, Princeton University, explains how competing theories of mind and matter shape the question of whether a will could have an embodiment other than its present one. Johnston examines the failures of functionalism, reductive and non-reductive materia...

A common model of AI suggests that there is a single measure of intelligence, often called AGI, and that AI systems are agents who can possess more or less of this intelligence. Cognitive science, in contrast, suggests that there are multiple forms of intelligence and that these intelligences trade-off against each other and have a distinctive developmental profile and evolutionary history. Exploi...

Contemporary populism is almost everywhere; a right wing phenomena that focuses on a politics of white working class grievance. A set of grievances that are to be addressed, when in power, with policies of expulsion, exclusion, and domination. Attempts by liberal states to deal with such movements paradoxically rely on a similar politics of exclusion, such as building so-called firewalls against t...

How do you navigate a nonlinear, “squiggly line” career in science and public health? Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and scientific communicator, explores challenges of science communication within academia—from cultural resistance to misaligned incentives—and why so much vital research never reaches the public. Joined by Dr. John Schwartzberg, Professor Emeritus, School of Public Health,...

Espiritismo traces its roots to the sacred knowledge of West and Central African peoples carried into the Americas by enslaved ancestors between the 15th and 19th centuries. Marta Moreno Vega, Ph. D., scholar and co-founder of Corredor Afro, explores how these traditions—sustained in Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, Puerto Rico, other Caribbean islands, and U.S. urban centers—function as systems of memory, su...

Public health often works behind the scenes—preventing illness, protecting communities, and generating research that too often stays hidden behind paywalls. In a world of eroding trust and rising falsehoods, Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and scientific communicator, explores how we can make the value of public health visible: by telling better stories with data, making science more acces...

Peter Godfrey-Smith, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, explores the evolutionary roots of consciousness by surveying animal evolution and the emergence of felt experience in several lineages. He examines two central philosophical questions: how such experience might arise gradually, existing in partial forms, and whether it represents a single unified feat...

Chef-turned-chemist Vayu Hill-Maini has a passion: to turn food waste into culinary treats using a fungus called Neurospora intermedia. Visit the postdoctoral researcher in the lab and in the kitchen to learn how this mold could make our food system more sustainable and delicious. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Science] [Show ID: 40983]

Legal scholar Annabel Brett explores the idea of “moral possibility”—the boundary between what laws demand and what people can realistically or ethically be expected to do. Drawing from early modern thinkers like Aquinas, Suarez, and Hobbes, Brett shows how moral impossibility has long shaped debates about legal obligation, resistance, and political agency. Commentators Melissa Lane and David Dyze...

Political theorist Annabel Brett of Cambridge University explores how the concept of “moral possibility” shapes law, politics, and public obligation. She explains that laws must be realistic for people to follow—what is morally possible varies by individual, culture, time, and circumstance. Drawing on early modern Catholic legal theory, Brett discusses how extreme demands (like enduring war or pla...

It's time for a new narrative for the ocean, one that reflects current scientific knowledge and acknowledges innovative new partnerships and solutions that center the ocean in our future. In this program, Jane Lubchenco, Professor of Marine Biology at Oregon State University and with expertise in the ocean, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being, talks about...

Three major global challenges – climate change, loss of biodiversity and its benefits, and inequality and inequity among people – are typically tackled within three separate silos. However, scientific knowledge tells us that the three are inextricably linked. If the problems are not considered together, solutions to one may undermine solutions to the others. Moreover, more holistic, integrated sol...

There's a powerful idea in the history of European legal and political thought: that laws must be possible for people to follow. Annabel Brett, professor of Political Thought and History at Cambridge University, describes how from ancient times through the Renaissance, thinkers believed that demanding the impossible—whether physically or psychologically—was a hallmark of tyranny. A classic example...

The "energy transition" is actually a shift from relying on fossil fuels (like coal, oil, and gas) to using metals to generate energy. However, extracting metals has always been a significant environmental and political issue, especially for cities. This problem has been around for centuries, even ancient Roman writers wrote about it. In this program, Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy...

Historian and political commentator Heather Cox Richardson joins UC Berkeley professor of law and history Dylan Penningroth in a timely conversation about the reshaping of the United States’ two major political parties. A professor of 19th century American history at Boston College, Richardson provides an incisive perspective on current politics to the more than three million readers of her nightl...

We are at a critical moment in our society. While we advance efforts to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, across the globe, millions are experiencing issues of energy affordability, reliability and equitable access to modern energy technologies. In this program, Tony Reames, Professor of Environmental Justice at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, explores...

Does giving cash up front improve the health and wellbeing of people in poor communities? In this program, Edward (Ted) Miguel, professor of economics and co-director of the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley, talks about his work in Kenya on the impact of cash transfers on infant mortality, leveraging a unique large-scale census of local households’ birth histories. The findings pr...

This program explores the decolonizing potential of Indian aesthetic-social philosophy by challenging two entrenched colonial prejudices: the supposed radical dissimilarity and inferiority of pre-modern Indian traditions compared to modern social theory. Through an analysis of the Upanishads and Vaisnava theology and poetry, Sudipta Kaviraj, professor of Indian Politics and Intellectual History at...

What defines a person’s character, and how does it shape who they are? In this lecture, Susan Wolf, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, challenges traditional ideas about character. She argues that character is more than just a set of traits or values an individual endorses—it can include aspects of ourselves we may not even recognize or approve of. Wolf explores...

Oil and gas are the most traded commodities on the planet; they are also the chief causes of the most grievous harm our species has yet faced, the burgeoning climate crisis. Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He examines how the export of hydrocarbons,...

As voters prepare to head to the polls on Election Day, join the Goldman School of Public Policy and Cal Performances for a critical look at the moment we’re in, the issues that have shaped and led us to this year’s tumultuous election, and the future of American democracy. UC Berkeley experts from former presidential administrations—Janet Napolitano, former Secretary of Homeland Security under th...

This program aims to recover Plato’s idea of craft or art, Greek technê, in the expansive sense which includes not only the handicrafts but skilled practices from housebuilding to navigation. Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, examines Plato and other Greek thinkers who were fascinated by the craft model: the idea that both the moral virtue of the good person and...

Across the United States, homelessness has been on the rise. In California, there have been over 181,000 people without a stable place to call home—about 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population. During the COVID-19 pandemic, those numbers continued to rise as earnings dropped and the housing affordability crisis worsened. What interventions have prevented people from becoming homeless? What...

What is a craft? For Plato, paradigmatic craft-practitioners include the doctor, carpenter and navigator; an updated, more generous conception should include the dancer, coder, waitress, painter, chef, professional athlete, and firefighter. Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, discusses how each of these skilled practices is oriented to the achievement of a distinct...