Berkeley Voices
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Berkeley Voices explores the work and lives of fascinating UC Berkeley faculty, students, staff, and visiting scholars and artists. It aims to educate listeners about Berkeley’s advances in teaching and research, spark curiosity about the deeper layers of American history and to build community across our diverse campus. It's produced and hosted by Anne Brice in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs.
For the 2024-25 academic year on Berkeley Voices, we’re exploring the theme of transformation. In eight episodes, we’re exploring how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley. New episodes come out on the last Monday of each month, from October through May.
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Have you ever seen letters from the 1800s? Aside from the pristine penmanship and grammar, the way friends expressed their fondness for each other is remarkable.“Letters sent between friends are often full of the kinds of loving and affectionate language that today we would only associate with romantic or sexual relationships: ‘My darling,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘I can't wait to be near you,’” said UC Berkeley historian Sarah Gold McBride, who in 2022 created the course, Friendship in America, with Berkeley anthropologist Christine Palmer. Throughout history, with changes in cultural norms and communication technology, the ways we stay connected to each other has also changed, and not always for the better. While social media can make it easier to find people with similar interests, it can also make it easier to forget what it takes to build and keep meaningful relationships. Gold McBride and Palmer hope their class will inspire students to draw from the past and approach their friendships with the intentionality they require.This is the fifth episode of our eight-part series on transformation. In eight episodes, we’re exploring how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley. New episodes of the series come out on the last Monday of each month. See all episodes of the series.Key takeaways:Gender norms, throughout U.S. history to the modern day, influence the kinds of friendships we make and how we express affection for each other.As our dominant modes of communication shift, how we conceive of friendship evolves, too.By investigating friendship in a deeper way, we can better understand the role of friendship in our lives and become more intentional in how we make and maintain our connections.Read the transcript, listen to episode and see photos on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Find us on YouTube@BerkeleyNews.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo by Sarah.rdguezz via Wikimedia Commons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Against her mom’s warnings, UC Berkeley political scientist Marika Landau-Wells watched Arachnaphobia as a kid. Ever since, she has been terrified of spiders. But over the years, she has learned to reason with her quick fear response — No, that spider is not 8 feet in diameter — and calmly trap them and put them outside.We all encounter problems like this, she says, where we have quick reactions to things we’ve learned to fear. It might be something that is actually dangerous that we really should quickly react to, but it could also be a tiny, non-threatening spider. Each time, we have to decide what kind of problem it is and then how to respond. She says this task is especially hard today because we're inundated with messages trying to hijack our fear response, from junky online ads to the way politicians speak.Landau-Wells studies how we make these kinds of decisions, and what influences how we act, especially in situations where there’s a lot on the line.This is the fourth episode of our eight-part series on transformation. In eight episodes, we’re exploring how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley. New episodes of the series come out on the last Monday of each month. See all episodes of the series.Key takeaways:We learn what to be afraid of; once we fear something, it’s hard to change our perception.We’re bombarded with messaging trying to hijack our quick fear responses.Research on how the brain processes fear could help us persuade people to see dangers differently and influence how world leaders make decisions.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Image by Sara Oliveira/Unsplash+ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For UC Berkeley Professor Jack Tseng, the world of paleontology never gets old. With each new discovery, paleontologists like him learn more about the animals that walked the earth millions of years ago."If you look at books from 50 years ago, they postured dinosaurs very differently from the way we do it today," Tseng says. "This constant profusion of new scientific knowledge into the popular psyche is recorded in children's books, which is a lovely way to see how this science has progressed."Fossils also hold valuable clues about our planet's future and our role within it as we experience climate change, he says."The questions we ask of them have to do with how different species sometimes survive, when others go extinct. Paleontology is sort of pre-adapted to plug in to understanding the future of Earth because we have billions of years of the fossil record to learn from."This season on Berkeley Voices, we’re exploring the theme of transformation. In eight episodes, we’re exploring how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley. New episodes will come out on the last Monday of each month, from October through May. See all episodes of the series.Key takeaways: Paleontologists can better understand how dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals looked and lived by studying living animals.New discoveries have reshaped what we thought we knew about dinosaurs and the prehistoric world.Fossils hold clues about the role of different species of plants and animals during climate change — and the future of Earth.Listen to the podcast and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.UC Berkeley photo by Stanley Luo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Like millions of other Americans, UC Berkeley Professor Poulomi Saha watched a lot of docuseries about cults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The more Saha watched, the more they felt a kind of change within themself. "I was absolutely enthralled," said Saha. “My reaction no longer fit that old script, the script that I had internalized. I wasn’t just having a passing interest. I wasn’t sort of mildly terrified. I was thinking, “Oh, wow, that makes good sense.’” Saha wanted to understand why. So they started a class, called Cults in Popular Culture, where Saha and their students explore the history of cults, the transformative power of these groups and the conditions that give rise to our collective fascination. After all, Saha says, what better way to make sense of this phenomenon than to ask several hundred Berkeley undergraduates to be test subjects?This season on Berkeley Voices, we're exploring the theme of transformation. In eight episodes, we’re exploring how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley. New episodes will come out on the last Monday of each month, from October through May. See all episodes of the series.Key takeaways: Nobody joins a cult; they join a good thing. It’s labeled a cult when it goes bad.Our fascination with cults rises amid social and global crises. It happened in 1960s America and it’s happening today. The IRS decides the difference between a religion and a cult. A person who joins a so-called cult undergoes a transformative experience. Instead of calling them "crazy," we should listen.Listen to the podcast and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.UC Berkeley photo by Jen Siska. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In a June 2024 study, UC Berkeley psychology professor Keanan Joyner and his colleagues found that by using a combination of methods tailored to the multidimensional nature of psychopathy, we could transform how we identify and understand this personality disorder. "I think that it goes toward having a functional and positive society," Joyner said. "Our collaboration is the substance of what makes humans so wonderful as a species."Key takeaways:- Psychopathy exists on a spectrum- Boldness is a key, yet largely overlooked, trait of psychopathy- By changing the way we measure psychopathy, we could reduce the harms of the personality disorderThis year on Berkeley Voices, we're exploring the theme of transformation. In eight episodes, we’ll explore how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley. New episodes will come out on the last Monday of each month, from October through May.See all episodes of the series.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Image via Unsplash+ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For the first three years of Justin Davidson's childhood in Chicago, his mom spoke only Spanish to him. Although he never spoke the language as a young child, when Davidson began to learn Spanish in middle school, it came very quickly to him, and over the years, he became bilingual.Now an associate professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Davidson is part of a research team that has discovered where in the brain bilinguals process and store language-specific sounds and sound sequences. The research project is ongoing.This is the final episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the U.S. Listen to the first two episodes: "A linguist's quest to legitimize U.S. Spanish" and "A language divided."Photo courtesy of Justin Davidson.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
There are countless English varieties in the U.S. There's Boston English and California English and Texas English. There's Black English and Chicano English. There's standard academic, or white, English. They're all the same language, but linguistically, they're different."Standard academic English is most represented by affluent white males from the Midwest, specifically Ohio in the mid-20th century," says UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson. "If you grow up in this country and your English is further away from that variety, then you may encounter instances where the way you speak is judged as less OK, less intelligent, less academically sound."And this language bias and divide can have devastating consequences, as it did in the trial of George Zimmerman, who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. This is the second episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the U.S. Listen to the first and third episode: "A linguist's quest to legitimize U.S. Spanish" and "One brain, two languages."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.AP photo by Jacob Langston. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Spanish speakers in the United States, among linguists and non-linguists, have been denigrated for the way they speak, says UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson. It’s part of the country's long history of scrutiny of non-monolingual English speakers, he says, dating back to the early 20th century."It’s groups in power — its discourses and collective communities — that sort of socially determine what kinds of words and what kinds of language are acceptable and unacceptable," says Davidson, an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.But the U.S. is a Spanish-speaking country, he says, and it’s time for us as a nation to embrace U.S. Spanish as a legitimate language variety.This is the first episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the U.S. Listen to other two episodes: "A language divided" and "One brain, two languages."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In his research, UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Saagar Asnani looks at music manuscripts from between the 12th and 14th centuries in medieval France. He says only recently have scholars begun to use a wider variety of media and artistic expressions as a way to study language. "If we unpack the genre of music, we will find a very precise record of how language was spoken," Saagar says. To read medieval music, Saagar learned five languages — Latin, German, Italian, Catalan and Occitan — making 10 languages that he knows in total (for now, at least). In losing the history of pieces of music, Saagar says, we’ve lost languages and cultures that were present and important to the time period. And today, at a time when linguistic boundaries are crumbling before our eyes, he says, instead of judging someone who speaks differently from you, realize that “it's actually a way of speaking a language and that we should cherish that because it's beautiful in its own way."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).UC Berkeley photo by Brandon Sánchez Mejia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Brandon Sánchez Mejia stood at a giant wall in UC Berkeley’s Worth Ryder Art Gallery and couldn’t believe his eyes. In front of him were 150 black-and-white photos of men’s bodies in all sorts of poses and from all sorts of angles. It was his senior thesis project, "A Masculine Vulnerability," and it was out for the world to see."It came from this idea that as men, we are not allowed to show skin as scars or emotions or weakness," said Sánchez, who will graduate from Berkeley this May with a bachelor’s degree in art practice.Sánchez’s cohort is part of the Department of Art of Practice’s 100th year, a milestone that department chair Ronald Rael said is cause for celebration."There have been moments in art practice’s history when it was unclear that art should be at a university at all," said Rael, a professor of architecture and affiliated faculty in art. "And here we are, at 100 years, and it’s one of the most popular majors on campus."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). This is a companion podcast to a feature story about Sánchez, published earlier this month on Berkeley News. There, you can view more photos and read about about how Sánchez's mom made him stay inside for a year as a teenager in El Salvador out of fear he'd join a gang. And how, against his mom's wishes and without any money of his own, he decided to pursue an education — no matter what it took. UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The self-guided Black history tour at UC Berkeley begins at Memorial Stadium, where student Walter Gordon was a star of the football team more than 100 years ago. It then weaves through campus, making stops at 13 more locations, each highlighting an important person or landmark related to Black history.There's Ida Louise Jackson Graduate House, named in honor of the first African American woman to teach in Oakland public schools. Next is Barbara Christian Hall, named for the first Black woman to be granted tenure at Berkeley. Other stops include Wheeler Hall and Sproul Plaza, where Black visionaries, like James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr., gave famous speeches."Just knowing this history, walking around campus and knowing it, you really feel like you belong," said student Daniella Lake, who's on the Black Lives at Cal team that created the tour. "Black people have been here for the past 100 years, and if they were doing all these amazing things then, I can surely do it now."You can find the self-guided Black history tour at Berkeley on Black Lives at Cal’s website. And soon, on the site, you’ll also be able to sign up for upcoming in-person walking tours.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Illustration by Heaven Jones. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Bonobos and chimpanzees — the closest extant relatives to humans — could have the longest-lasting nonhuman memory, a study led by a UC Berkeley researcher found. Extensive social memory had previously been documented only in dolphins and up to 20 years."What we're showing here," said Berkeley comparative psychologist Laura Simone Lewis, "is that chimps and bonobos may be able to remember that long — or longer."Berkeley News writer Jason Pohl first published a story about this study in December 2023. We used his interview with Lewis for this podcast episode.Photo courtesy of Laura Simone Lewis.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Historians have long assumed that immigration to the United States was free from regulation until the introduction of federal laws to restrict Chinese immigration in the late 19th century. But UC Berkeley history professor Hidetaka Hirota, author of Expelling the Poor, says state immigration laws in the country were created earlier than that — and actually served as models for national immigration policy decades later.This is an episode of Afterthoughts, a series that highlights moments from Berkeley Voices interviews that didn’t make it into the final episode. This excerpt is from an interview with Hirota featured in Berkeley Voices episode #115: "They built the railroad. But they were left out of the American story."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo from the Library of Congress. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Today, we're sharing the first episode of the new season of the Berkeley Remix, a podcast by UC Berkeley's Oral History Center. The four-episode season, called "From Generation to Generation: The Legacy of Japanese American Incarceration," centers the experiences of descendants of Japanese Americans incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II. It explores themes of activism, contested memory, identity and belonging, and creative expression as a way to process and heal from intergenerational trauma. This first episode is called "It's happening now: Japanese American Activism."Listen to the podcast and read the transcript on Berkeley News.Artwork by Emily Ehlen.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The U.S. transcontinental railroad is considered one of the biggest accomplishments in American history. Completed in 1869, it was the first railroad to connect the East to the West. It cut months off trips across the country and opened up Western trade of goods and ideas throughout the U.S.But building the railroad was treacherous, brutal work. And the companies leading the railroad project had a hard time retaining American workers. So they began to recruit newly arrived immigrants for the job, mainly Chinese and Irish. And these immigrants, who risked their lives to construct the railroad, have largely been left out of the story.In recent years, though, there has been a new emphasis on reframing the narrative to include the perspectives, contributions and struggles of railroad workers, not only in scholarship, but in the arts.On Nov. 17, Cal Performances is presenting American Railroad by Silk Road Ensemble, as part of its 2023-24 season of Illuminations: Individual and Community. It's one of several notable works in recent years that explores the lives of the immigrants who built the U.S. transcontinental railroad.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Music by Silkroad Ensemble and Blue Dot Sessions.Photo courtesy of San Francisco Public Library. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
UC Berkeley's first social justice theater professor, Timmia Hearn DeRoy, talks about how Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival practice, rooted in emancipation, drives her work today."Trinidadian Carnival, it’s social justice theater in practice. Every moment, it’s all about emancipation, the subverting of the powerful narrative through humor, through performance, through doublespeak. And it just taught me so much about the possibilities of the art form."Photo courtesy of Timmia Hearn DeRoy.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Listen to the episode, read the transcript and see photos on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It was summertime in the early 1970s in New York City. Fifteen-year-old Jim LeBrecht boarded a school bus headed for the Catskill Mountains, home to Camp Jened, a summer camp for people with disabilities. As the bus approached the camp, he peered out the window at the warm and raucous group below."I wasn't exactly sure who was a camper and who was a counselor," he said. "I think that's really indicative of one of the many things that made that camp special."Over several years, the camp changed him in profound ways."I, for the first time, understood that I didn’t need to be embarrassed about being disabled, that I could have pride in who I was," he said. "And that it was possible to fight back against the system that was keeping us down."Nearly five decades later, in 2020, LeBrecht and filmmaker Nicole Newnham released on Netflix the documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, about Camp Jened and the activism it inspired. "What did we used to say, it was like Wet Hot American Summer meets The Times of Harvey Milk?" said Newnham. "It’s an activist history story. It’s the origin story of a political and identity-based community, the disability community. But it’s also a coming-of-age story and a joyous sort of celebration of youth and disability culture coming together." All incoming undergraduate students at UC Berkeley watched Crip Camp over the summer as part of On the Same Page, a program of the College of Letters and Science. "We had a couple of goals with our film," said LeBrecht. "One of them was to reframe what disability meant to people with and without disabilities. We also wanted to start conversations. I hope that this plants a seed within all of these students that they do talk, they do think differently, and that this is something they hold for the rest of their lives that will make the world a better place."Photo by Steve Honigsbaum/Netflix.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Listen to the episode, read the transcript and see photos on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Growing up, Linda Kinstler knew that her Latvian grandfather had mysteriously disappeared after World War II. But she didn't think much about it."That was a very common fate from this part of the world," says Kinstler, a Ph.D. candidate in rhetoric at UC Berkeley. "It didn't strike me as totally unusual. It was only later when I began looking into it more that I realized there was probably more to the story."What she discovered was too big for her to walk away.In 2022, she published her first book, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends. It follows her family's story in Eastern Europe through the war and its aftermath, and queries all the ways we’ve been told that justice was conducted for those responsible for the genocide of European Jews during the war.It then moves into the present, and asks: What position do we find ourselves in now? And how can we truly remember the Holocaust — a systematic murder that some are trying to erase — when the last living witnesses are dying? Is this how the Holocaust ends?"It's not a prescription, but rather a warning: an effort to call attention to the fact that we are in this moment of endings, where survivors are no longer with us," she says. "Undeniably, we are entering a new period of memory. ... We need to think more seriously about what we do with this memory."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Photo by Pete Kiehart. UC Berkeley graphic by Neil Freese.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
At 6 months old, Britt H. Young was fitted with her first prosthetic arm. "The belief was that you would get started on using an adaptive device right away and that would be easiest for you, rather than learning to adapt to your body the way that it is, rather than learning about how to navigate the world with the body you have," said Britt, who is graduating from UC Berkeley with a Ph.D. in geography on May 15.Born missing part of her left arm, Britt never went to school without wearing her prosthesis. "But when I came home, I would take it off immediately," she said. "And in that way, I was spending countless hours practicing being in my body and learning how to do things my own way."During graduate school, after nearly three decades of wearing a prosthesis every day, Britt decided to stop using it for good."The geography department at Berkeley, it sounds cliché to say it was a safe space, but it really felt like a welcoming space, and it really felt like a good space to be myself."It has been really interesting now going without a prosthesis and experiencing the world in a totally different way and seeing ... not just frustrating designs and inaccessible designs and hostile designs for disabled people or just for people with my body geometry, but for anybody."After she graduates, Britt will be working on a book about techno-optimism, the pitfalls of so-called human-centered design, prosthetics and the future of the human body.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Gabriela Hasbun.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Gericault De La Rose is a queer trans Filipinx woman, and refuses to change for anyone."Being that queer trans person completely owning herself I hope gives other people permission to be themselves, too," she says. A master's student in UC Berkeley's Department of Art Practice, Gericault explores in her art Philippine mythology and her experience as a trans woman. One time, she dressed up like a manananggal — a kind of monster that detaches from her lower body at night to look for unborn babies to eat — and then slept in an art gallery for six hours. "I look at the manananggal as kind of a metaphor for how society sees trans women — how this is literally a woman detached from her reproductive organs. And what are you as a woman if you can’t reproduce?"When Gericault came out to her parents as trans in her early 20s, they disowned her. For her thesis project, Gericault will unravel huge tapestries with images of her parents' stomachs on them. "It’s about disconnection and severance," she says. "I’m thinking about how much of myself is a part of them and how much of them are a part of me, and it’s kind of this final goodbye."Gericault's final MFA piece is part of the Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, which opens on May 10 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Listen to the episode, see photos and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).UC Berkeley photo by Sofia Liashcheva. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Yesterday at sunset marked the start of Ramadan, the ninth and holiest month of the Islamic calendar. For Ali Bhatti, a Ph.D. candidate in science and math education at UC Berkeley, it’s a time to feel closer to God, to break habits and to remember what he’s thankful for. In this episode, Ali describes, in his own words, what the month means to him. He also talks about how 9/11 shaped his childhood in New Jersey, finding his Muslim community at Berkeley and how Islam, and the support of his family and Berkeley community, helped him get through the hardest time of his life.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Photo courtesy of Ali Bhatti.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of Be the Change, host Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law's Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, interviews Purvi Shah.Shah is the founder and executive director of Movement Law Lab and a civil rights litigator, policy advocate and law professor who has spent over a decade working at the intersection of law and grassroots social movements.During their conversation, they talk about the nuts and bolts of founding a legal nonprofit in response to current events, and the intellectual and philosophical theory behind “movement lawyering,” a type of lawyering that aims to support and foment lasting social change."It’s not that we have to have all of this stuff, all of these virtues amassed, before we can engage in the work," Nolan says. "Doing the work actually helps us amass what we need in order to do it better.""That, to me, is one of the biggest beauties of being in social justice work: If you’re doing it right, all you have to do is show up and be persistent and committed and have your words, like what you say you’re going to do, actually be what you do," says Shah. "But the work over the years will transform you. It will teach you. And that hope and that imagination, that sense of it’s possible, I think that’s such a powerful thing."Shah and Nolan also talk about when it might be a good thing to loosen your grip on your power, how confidence is a process, and moments that give you chills — in a good way — as a lawyer.This is the last episode of season two of Be the Change, a collaboration between UC Berkeley's Office of Communications and Public Affairs and Berkeley Law. In the series, Nolan interviews changemakers who embody the transformation they want to see in the world. You can find all episodes on the Berkeley Voices podcast.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Photo courtesy of Purvi Shah; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of Be the Change, host Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law's Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, interviews Nazune Menka.Menka is a lecturer at Berkeley Law and a supervising attorney for the campus’s Environmental Law Clinic. She is Denaakk’e from Alaska and Lumbee from North Carolina. In fall 2021, Menka designed and taught a new undergraduate legal studies course called Decolonizing UC Berkeley, and she taught Indigenous Peoples, Law and the United States at the law school in spring 2022.During their conversation, they talk about how to bring a decolonial lens to education, and about the joys and challenges of being a trailblazer who is pushing against the inherited wisdom and mythology surrounding UC Berkeley — "a place we love deeply and, therefore, as James Baldwin said, claim the right to criticize and to call to higher levels of intellectual and moral honesty," Nolan says."This can be a unique space, right?" Menka says. "The university — it is a place of power. I know that. It's important that we are able to understand that if you have a voice, if you are in the room, you should use it."They also get into how instinct can be a particularly powerful gift when you're part of a subordinated community, and storytelling as a portal to individual and communal healing.Season two of Be the Change is a collaboration between Berkeley Law and Berkeley News. In the series, Nolan interviews three changemakers who embody the transformation they want to see in the world. New episodes will come out every week on Wednesday as a special series on the Berkeley Voices podcast.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News.Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Host Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law's Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, interviews Khiara M. Bridges. Bridges is a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Law and a powerful public intellectual who speaks and writes about race, class, reproductive justice and the intersection of the three.During their conversation, they talk about the process of Bridges claiming and using her voice as a prominent Black woman. And they discuss the complexities of presentation and adornment for members of marginalized communities — especially in academia — and about approaching work with a sense of liberation, creativity and hustle."Those things that I do to adorn myself, a lot of folks are going to read them in light of my identity as a Black woman," says Bridges. "So, my nails become read in a particular way and my tattoos will become read in a particular way. And the way that I wear my hair, you know, and my septum piercing, in a particular way. And I'm comfortable with that. I'm happy with that. And I feel that that affirms my identity as a Black woman."Nolan and Bridges also talk about getting comfortable with the Socratic method, and what it feels like to start law school with no idea what's going on or what you've gotten yourself into, but ultimately finding your way.Season two of Be the Change is a collaboration between Berkeley Law and Berkeley News. In the series, Nolan interviews three changemakers who have started something that wasn't there before, and that makes the world a better place. New episodes will come out every week on Wednesday as a special series on the Berkeley Voices podcast.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Embodying the change you want to see in the world can feel ... well, intimidating. Impossible, even. But Berkeley Law's Savala Nolan wants to help us all figure it out — one step at a time — in her podcast, Be the Change. "We're talking about transforming the world and being the change and these very lofty concepts," says Nolan, director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice. "But I hope what they see is that big, lofty concepts really contain lots of little, teeny, tiny steps that are repeated and built upon over time."In season two of Be the Change, a collaboration between Berkeley Law and Berkeley News, Nolan interviews three changemakers who have started something that wasn't there before, and that makes the world a better place. "I wanted to contribute something to the community that would help folks really be brave," says Nolan, "and think about their lives and their gifts and their work as things that are full of possibility and as things that are potentially really, really expansive and transformative."New episodes come out every week on Wednesday. Savala's next interview is with Khiara M. Bridges, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Law and a powerful public intellectual who speaks and writes about race, class, reproductive justice and the intersection of the three.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.UC Berkeley photo design by Neil Freese; photo courtesy of Savala Nolan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We’ve heard the acronym DEIBJ a lot on campus, especially in the past few years. For those who might not know, it stands for diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice. A growing number of people at UC Berkeley have positions dedicated solely to this incredibly important work.But sometimes it’s hard to know exactly what DEIBJ means, what it actually looks like in practice — now, in our day-to-day lives, but also in the future, when initiatives and policies and other on-the-ground work has transformed our institution.So, we talked with Ty-Ron Douglas. He's the associate athletic director of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice at Cal Athletics. Douglas, who joined Berkeley two years ago, explained the nuts and bolts of DEIBJ in his upbeat and clear-eyed way that he seems to apply to all things he does.He also talked about growing up in Bermuda, a precocious kid feeling like he didn’t belong; why sport is a legitimate academic discipline; and how "justice is the juice" of DEIBJ."For us, for me, I really see this work as life and death," says Douglas. "Not just of human life or death, but also of potential, of that glow in a person's eyes when they know that they belong. You can see it, you can feel it. Belonging has a feeling, and you can feel the healthy space."Listen to the episode and read a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo courtesy of Ty-Ron Douglas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of Berkeley Voices, Berkeley Law student Hoda Katebi discusses how, after she began wearing the hijab as a sixth-grader in Oklahoma, she learned that clothes are inherently political. "It played a huge role in shaping my own personal growth, as well as my relationship to politics," Katebi says.Since protests broke out in Iran nearly three months ago, sparked by the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini by Iran's so-called morality police, Katebi has been an outspoken supporter of the protesters. "The main demand that we're hearing is, 'Jin, Jiyan, Azadî,' or, 'Woman, Life, Freedom,' which is a Kurdish, anti-imperialist, feminist, anti-capitalist chant," she says. "I think that that's what is really hitting at the core and distinguishes these protests from others before — this is one that's calling for nothing short of the end of dictatorship, which means everything from women's rights to education to class, gender, everything."Although a senior official in the Iranian government confirmed on Monday, Dec. 5, that the morality police had been shut down — the first concession by the government since the protests began — the mandatory dress code remains in place. It’s unclear how the government plans to enforce the laws moving forward.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.Follow Berkeley Voices.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo by Aubrey Trinnaman for the New York Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On Nov. 20, 1969, a group of Indigenous Americans that called itself Indians of All Tribes, many of whom were UC Berkeley students, took boats in the early morning hours to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. They bypassed a Coast Guard blockade and took control of the island. The 19-month occupation that followed would be regarded as one of the greatest acts of political resistance in American Indian history.Everardo Reyes is a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology at Berkeley. After taking several classes with John-Carlos Perea, who last year was a visiting associate professor in Berkeley’s Department of Music, Reyes was inspired to research how radio and music were used during the Alcatraz takeover to capture mass attention and amplify the Red Power movement.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of Berkeley Voices, Charles Yu discusses his 2020 book, Interior Chinatown, which goes inside the mind of a young Asian American man trying to make it in Hollywood. Incoming UC Berkeley students read the book over the summer as part of On The Same Page, a program from the College of Letters and Science."This is really a book about roles and how we play them," Yu said. "Sometimes they are fundamental to who we are, but they can also be very limiting or reductive. I hope that people can see that, in one way or another, all the characters in this book are wearing a mask and a costume, to some extent, and it doesn't fit them perfectly. And we, hopefully, see the ways in which the person underneath peeks out and can't be fully covered by what's there. In those moments, when the mask slips and you talk out of character, real connection can come about."Listen to the episode and read a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When Roe v. Wade was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, which protected a woman’s right to an abortion, “it changed everything,” says Kristin Luker, a professor emerita of law and of sociology at UC Berkeley. “It was so revolutionary — I argue it was on a par with the American Revolution or the French Revolution.”Last Friday, the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe, giving states broad power to curtail or end abortion. As of today, abortion is now banned in at least seven states, and about half of states across the country are expected to ban or severely restrict the procedure in the coming days.In this Berkeley Voices episode, Luker talks about why doctors began writing anti-abortion laws in the 19th century, the experiences women had ending unwanted pregnancies in the decades before Roe v. Wade and how she doesn’t see us returning to the normative sexuality and reproduction of the 1950s.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on news.berkeley.edu.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo by the Associated Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In episode 99 of Berkeley Voices, Berkeley Law student Indi Garcia, who is graduating on May 13 with pro bono honors for her work on the Post-Conviction Advocacy Project, talks about how meeting with incarcerated men as a college student inspired her anti-prison and criminal justice work. "These men were just brilliant," said Garcia. "They were so much more than the crimes that led them there."Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of Berkeley Voices, Hope Gale-Hendry, a fourth-year student in ecosystem management and forestry at UC Berkeley, shares in her own words how she discovered her deep interconnectedness with all living things, and why she decided to study the American pika. "We have a shared history on this planet," said Hope. "That is the lesson that I have been able to use to foster my passion for conservation and foster this love and admiration that I have for my cousins on this planet. Not just humans, but moss and squirrels and horses and farm animals and lichen and every beautiful and unique species that has been on their own journey."Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo courtesy of Hope Gale-Hendry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of Berkeley Voices, Bree Rosenblum, a professor of global change biology at UC Berkeley, talks about why we need to stop blaming each other for the environmental crisis that we’re in, and instead confront its root causes and expand our ideas of what it means to be human on our planet. "We are in such an individual and collective squeeze point," she said. "Do we want humanity to mean what it has meant in the past, or do we want to create a new meaning for our species and our purpose?"Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Today, we are sharing an episode from The Edge, a podcast by California magazine and the Cal Alumni Association: "Should we bring back woolly mammoths?" Hosts Laura Smith and Leah Worthington sat down with a genetic engineer and an ecologist to understand how de-extinction works and to explore its unintended consequences. This episode was originally released in June 2021.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News.(Photo by Timothy Neesam via Flickr) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Berkeley Law professor and anthropologist Khiara Bridges discusses the history of reproductive rights in the U.S., what’s at stake when Roe v. Wade is overturned and why we should expand our fight for reproductive justice. "Roe v. Wade didn't fall out of the sky," says Bridges. "In 1973, the justices weren’t like, 'You know what we should make up? A right to an abortion.' Roe v. Wade was actually part of a long line of cases dating back to the 1920s." And it likely won’t stop at abortion rights, says Bridges. By saying that Roe v. Wade isn’t good law, it suggests that these court decisions that led to Roe v. Wade were also improper interpretations of the Constitution.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.UC Berkeley illustration by Neil Freese. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
As a kid growing up in New York City, Roqua Montez was interested in everything — comics, dinosaurs, science, music and dance, martial arts — and his calendar filled up fast. Now, as the executive director of communications and media relations in UC Berkeley's Office of Communications and Public Affairs, he still has a lot to keep track of. To manage his activities and responsibilities, Roqua has relied on something that we all rely on: the seven-day week.The week has been used as a timekeeping unit and calendar device to organize society for about 2,000 years, says David Henkin, a professor of history at Berkeley and author of the 2021 book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Made Us Who We Are. But it's only for the past 200 years in America that the week has had a grip on our daily lives.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.If you haven't already, follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!(UC Berkeley illustration by Neil Freese and music by Blue Dot Sessions) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Between 1910 and 1970, about 6 million Black Americans moved from the rural South to cities in the North, the West and other parts of the United States. It’s known as the Great Migration. Musicians who moved to these cities became ambassadors, says UC Berkeley history professor Waldo Martin, “not only for the music of the South, but for the culture from which the music emerged. And the music was made and remade, and continues to be today. On Feb. 17, mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran and jazz pianist Jason Moran — and an all-star roster of jazz collaborators — will perform their remaking of the music in Two Wings: The music of Black America in Migration for UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News. If you haven't already, follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!(UC Berkeley illustration by Neil Freese) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
As drought and the effects of climate change continue to threaten the water supply that Californians rely on, experts at UC Berkeley are looking for new ways to generate an ongoing, stable water supply in its cities that is not as reliant on the weather. "Californians are leaders worldwide in the recycling of water," says David Sedlak, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Berkeley Water Center. There's just one problem that needs to be solved — and if it is, it could open up water recycling opportunities in many parts of the world.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.If you haven't already, follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts!(UC Berkeley illustration by Neil Freese; Music by Blue Dot Sessions) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When Joshua Kyan Aalampour was 16, he taught himself to play the piano using a cheap 61-key keyboard and videos on YouTube. Four years later, Joshua is a music student at UC Berkeley. He has performed his work at Lincoln Center, written a symphony and composed a score for a feature-length film. He teaches music to students around the world. He performs a new piece for TikTok every day. All while taking at least 26 credits each semester so that he can graduate this May — two years early.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Today, we share an episode of The Science of Happiness, a podcast produced by our colleagues at the Greater Good Science Center. Host and UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner talks with Berkeley Journalism professor and bestselling author Michael Pollan about what it was like for Pollan to give up Twitter — something that he found was becoming a somewhat unproductive compulsion.Next week, we'll be back with our final Berkeley Voices episode of the season. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News.(Artwork by Whitney Anderson) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
1Ehren Tool is the ceramics studio manager in the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley and a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War. In his off-time, he makes brutal-looking clay cups to start conversations about war. Since 2001, he has made and given away more than 21,000 of them. Here he is — in his own words — talking about his cups. Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.This audio is from a video about Tool that was published with a feature story on Berkeley News in February 2020.If you have a moment, please give Berkeley Voices a rating and a short review on Apple Podcasts. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 2018, China enacted a policy that effectively banned the import of most plastics and other materials. "That really, I think, was the Chinese government drawing a line in the sand and saying, 'Look, we don’t want to be seen as the world’s garbage dump anymore,'" said Kate O'Neill, a professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and author of the 2019 book Waste. The United States, which had been shipping some 700,000 tons of recyclable waste to China each year, faced a crisis. Since then, communities across the U.S. have curtailed collections or put an end to their recycling programs altogether. Waste has been piling up, leaving many wondering: What now? At UC Berkeley, the Cal Zero Waste team has been hard at work answering this question. "We’re really talking about not just recycling, but reducing, reusing and composting," said Lin King, manager of Cal Zero Waste. "Really, it comes down to what you purchase and that mentality of how you get to zero waste." Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. (NurPhoto photo by Mamunur Rashid via AP) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The labor economist and UC Berkeley professor of economics, who won the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics, talks about why his research on the economics of the minimum wage, immigration and education was so controversial — and how it continues to be today. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. (UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In January 2015, 15-year-old Mariana Soto Sanchez woke up one Saturday morning at her home in Ontario, California, with weakness in her hand. Within minutes, the feeling had spread throughout her body. Her parents rushed her to the hospital. By the time they got there, she had total paralysis. Later that night, they found out she had a rare disorder called transverse myelitis. From that point on, Mariana had to adjust to an entirely new way of living. Six years later, Mariana has regained some mobility and will graduate from UC Berkeley this December with a degree in media studies and a minor in journalism. She says she continues to learn how to advocate for herself in a world that isn’t built for her. “I felt like I would place limitations on myself,” says Mariana. “But it’s really just limitations imposed by society that prevent me from achieving what I want to achieve.” And she has done things she never thought she could — including going to her first Cal football game, a dream she had since she first came to Berkeley in 2018. Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Growing up in a Mexican household in San Diego, California, Berkeley student Alexa Carrillo Espinoza says there was always dancing in her home. She'd always wanted to try ballet folklórico, a traditional Mexican dance, but never had the chance. So, when she saw Ballet Folklórico Reflejos de Mexico tabling on Sproul Plaza as a first-year student in 2019, she signed up right away. "As I dance, I have this overwhelming sense of pride," she says. Listen to the episode, see photos and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Third-year UC Berkeley student Maryam Karimi was born in Afghanistan in September 2001. A month later, the United States invaded Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks. The Taliban was ousted from power, but everyday violence remained. Her family applied for asylum and eventually settled in Fremont, California, when Maryam was 12. Now, she and her family watch as the Taliban once again takes control of their home country. But Maryam knows that Afghans — especially her generation — won't give up. “The fire of revolution and freedom is lit in their hearts. And with a little breeze, it's going to burn brighter than ever before," she said. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Berkeley News writer Kara Manke discusses a new report from UC Berkeley that shows how allowing lightning fires to burn in Yosemite’s Illilouette Creek Basin recreated a lost — and more resilient — forest ecosystem. Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News. (Photo by Emily Gonthier) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this interview, Savala Nolan, executive director of Berkeley's social justice center, talks about the "deeply corporeal nature" of her new memoir, Don't Let It Get You Down. "The body is where it all happens," she says. "It's where we experience life. It’s where we experience the world — the joys and the frictions. It’s where we experience the categories and the divisions in the world. They’re very often about our bodies and how other people see our bodies. And so, I think that our bodies become, over time, the site of so much knowledge and epiphany and humor and insight and also lies — we all probably believe lies about our bodies." Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Over the summer, we have been revisiting some of our favorite episodes. In this episode, from 2018, then-Ph.D. candidate Sonia Travaglini talks about how we could use fungi, of which there are more than 5 million species, to mitigate a wide range of environmental and social crises — just by letting them eat our waste. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. (UC Berkeley photo by Elena Zhukova) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
While Fiat Vox is on summer break, we have been revisiting some of our favorite episodes. Today’s episode, originally released in April 2019, is a conversation between UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Professor Emerita Carol Clover about what it was like for women in the academy 50 years ago and how it has changed. They also discuss what it takes to be a strong leader and offer advice to the next generation of Berkeley women. See photos and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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