Berkeley Talks

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A Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Alison Gopnik on why AI is no match for a 4-year-old

    1D AGO

    Alison Gopnik on why AI is no match for a 4-year-old

    Over her decadeslong career as a developmental psychologist, Alison Gopnik has observed a striking phenomenon: When children are given a new toy without an obvious use, they often outperform high‑achieving college students in figuring out how it works. While adults tend to test the most likely possibilities and quickly get stuck, children respond with playful experimentation.  "What children are doing is exactly the kind of open-ended, non-utilitarian, exploratory learning that allows you to find out things about the world that you would never find out any other way,” says Gopnik, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology.   In this Berkeley Talks episode, Gopnik argues that human intelligence is not a single, general capacity, but a collection of distinct cognitive modes — exploration, exploitation and care — that are distributed across different stages of a person’s life. Childhood, she says, is evolution’s way of creating a dedicated “explorer” phase, made possible by a specialized care system provided by adults. "The reason why we can have these big brains," she explains, "is because we have this period of childhood where we're protected ... and we have those older people who are there to provide the resources.”  Gopnik contrasts this biological model with current artificial intelligence, noting that while large language models excel at using existing data to predict patterns, it lacks the embodied, curiosity‑driven learning of a child. To create truly intelligent systems, she suggests that we need to focus on the “intelligence of care.” “A system that develops, that changes over time, and in particular, a system that's cared for by humans or cared for by other intelligent agents — that's the secret of human intelligence,” she says. “That's the kind of system you'd need if you wanted a system that had the same kind of intelligence as humans.”  This lecture took place on Nov. 5, 2025, as part of the Berkeley Distinguished Faculty Lectures in the Social Sciences. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. UC Berkeley photo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 25m
  2. Hany Farid on the erosion of shared reality in the age of deepfakes

    APR 6

    Hany Farid on the erosion of shared reality in the age of deepfakes

    Two decades ago, when Hany Farid first began studying digital misinformation and manipulated media, fake content was easier to detect. Today, that landscape has shifted with a speed that he describes as “breathtaking.” In just the last year or two, he says, we’ve moved from an era where a computer takes seconds or minutes to produce a static file to "full-blown interactive deepfakes" that can hold a live conversation in real time. In this Berkeley Talks episode, Farid, a digital forensics expert and professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, discusses the rapidly accelerating landscape of generative AI and the unique threat it poses to our collective understanding of the world. Farid notes that tools once reserved for governments or well-funded organizations are now freely available, radically expanding the threat landscape. “We have taken a mechanism that was in the hands of state-sponsored actors and bad actors and given it to 8 billion people in the world," he says. This democratization of powerful technology makes it much easier to create convincing false images, audio and video — and much harder to trust what we see online. And he explains that human perception is no longer a reliable defense, as his research shows people are only slightly better than chance at identifying AI-generated content. To reduce the damage to our shared sense of reality, Farid suggests solutions should focus on the systems that profit from harmful content, including platforms and ad networks that help it spread. He also gives a warning about news consumption: “Stop getting your news from social media. That’s not what it was designed for. Despite the rise of deepfakes and online deception, Farid says he rejects the idea that there is no truth or fact. He believes that, although it takes effort, people can still work together to understand what is happening in the world. This lecture, which took place on March 13, was part of LNS 110: Brilliance of Berkeley, a course featuring distinguished researchers working on the world’s most pressing issues. Watch Farid's lecture (with slides) on YouTube. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. Screenshot from lecture. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    51 min
  3. First a plague, then a fire: How a changing city rebuilt the modern stage

    MAR 20

    First a plague, then a fire: How a changing city rebuilt the modern stage

    When William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet around 1600, the power of London’s theater lived almost entirely in language. The stage was mostly bare and the scenery imagined. To mark a shift in setting, an actor might simply declare, “This is the Forest of Arden.” But by the mid-17th century, this mode of performance began to change.  Following decades of civil war and Puritan rule, King Charles II’s 1660 restoration of the monarchy reopened public theaters that had been closed for nearly two decades. It marked the beginning of the Restoration era, when movable scenery debuted — massive painted flats slid along wooden grooves, transforming the stage in seconds — and women, immigrants, servants and enslaved people first moved across it as performers and stagehands. The English stage became a space of motion, a vivid counterpart to a London rebuilt after the 1665 plague and the Great Fire of 1666. In this Berkeley Talks episode, UC Berkeley Professor Julia Fawcett discusses her 2025 book Moveable Londons: Performance and the Modern City, which traces how this mechanical innovation echoed a deeper cultural one. It was, she says, a “revolution in English performance” that redefined movement, agency and belonging in a rapidly changing city. And that revolution, she contends, provided the template not only for modern theater’s moving sets, star actresses and illusionistic stages, but also for ways of moving through — and belonging in — the modern city. Fawcett’s talk, which took place on Feb. 11, 2025, was part of a Berkeley Book Chats event hosted by the Townsend Center for the Humanities. She was in conversation with Joshua Gang, an associate professor of English at Berkeley. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. Image from Moveable Londons book cover. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    44 min
  4. Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi on turning air into water for all

    MAR 6

    Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi on turning air into water for all

    At age 10, Omar Yaghi walked into a school library in Amman, Jordan, and opened a book that changed his life. He saw molecular drawings — complex structures he didn’t yet understand, but which immediately captivated him. "I thought I discovered something that nobody had ever seen before," Yaghi recalls.  Yaghi, now a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, shared this story during a recent Brilliance of Berkeley lecture to illustrate how a life defined by scarcity can be transformed through the pursuit of science.  Growing up in a family of 10 children, Yaghi lived in a single room that lacked electricity and running water. The family shared their living quarters with cattle, separated from the animals only by sacks of feed. Education was the family's singular priority; his parents spent everything they earned to keep their children in school to ensure they had a path toward a different future. In 2025, Yaghi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs — porous materials that act like "molecular sponges" capable of capturing carbon dioxide from the air and harvesting water from desert humidity. In this Berkeley Talks episode, Yaghi describes how his childhood as a refugee and his early days as an immigrant in the U.S. shaped his relentless work ethic. He recounts the "failure" of a yearlong graduate school experiment that actually resulted in his first major discovery: a ball-shaped molecule that paved the way for his career. Today, his research on reticular chemistry continues to push toward real-world solutions to the climate crisis. For Yaghi, science is not only about discovery, but about transforming access to life’s most basic resource. “My dream,” he says, is “for everyone to have water independence — where your water is yours, independent of everything else.” This lecture, which took place on Jan. 23, was part of LNS 110: Brilliance of Berkeley, a course featuring distinguished researchers working on the world’s most pressing issues. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small for UC Berkeley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    56 min
  5. The rule of law depends on the courage of judges

    FEB 20

    The rule of law depends on the courage of judges

    In 1957, 6-year-old Bernice Bouie Donald started first grade in rural DeSoto County, Mississippi. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down school segregation three years earlier in Brown v. Board of Education, the young girl’s educational reality remained unchanged: Her all-Black school was a two-room cinderblock building with no indoor plumbing, and her books were hand-me-downs discarded by white students. Donald went on to have a decadeslong career as a federal judge, and at a recent UC Berkeley Law event, she shared her personal memories to highlight a sobering truth: The rule of law is not self-executing. For the promise of Brown to reach her classroom, Donald explained, it required "extreme moral courage" from judges who faced bombings, social ostracization and death threats to enforce the law. Without that bravery, she warned, the law is "simply words on a piece of paper." This ongoing challenge was at the heart of a Dec. 5, 2025, panel discussion featuring Donald and a group of legal experts. Together, the panelists discussed the rising tide of personal and political threats facing the judiciary, exploring how modern pressures — from social media harassment to political tribalism — threaten the independence necessary for a fair society. The event was part of “Conversations in Civil Justice,” a webinar series presented by UC Berkeley Law’s Civil Justice Research Initiative and co-sponsored by the Berkeley Judicial Institute. The series is supported by a gift from the American Association for Justice’s Robert L. Habush Endowment. The panelists include: Bernice Bouie Donald, a retired judge from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Philip Pro, a retired federal judge from the District of Nevada.Amrit Singh, a professor of professional practice and faculty director of the Rule of Law Lab at New York University School of Law. Jeremy Fogel (moderator), executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a retired federal judge from the Northern District of California.Richard Jolly (moderator), professor at Southwestern Law School and senior fellow at the Civil Justice Research Initiative.Watch a video of the discussion. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. Photo via Unsplash. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    58 min
  6. An evolutionary biologist makes the case for pausing AI

    FEB 6

    An evolutionary biologist makes the case for pausing AI

    In the early 20th century, factory workers — later known as the “Radium Girls” — were hired to paint watch and instrument dials with radium‑based luminous paint. They were instructed to keep their brushes sharp by shaping them with their lips. In the following years, many of these workers developed devastating illnesses, including severe bone and jaw damage, anemia and cancer, that were ultimately traced to chronic radium exposure. For Holly Elmore, an evolutionary biologist and executive director of PauseAI US — an organization that seeks a global pause to advanced AI development — this tragedy is a stark warning for our current era.  In a talk she gave Dec. 9 for the Berkeley AI Risk Speaker Series, Elmore argues that we’re repeating this mistake with artificial intelligence by assuming we can safely play with a technology we don't fully understand. “The expectation of many people in AI safety, for many years, has been that when we got to this point, the AI, once it was aligned, would figure out the answers for us,” she says.  But Elmore warns that this approach is like clearing a minefield by walking through it. As AI capabilities grow, she says, the probability of accidents increases — and unlike minor software glitches, these could be "one-shot" events that we cannot recover from. She points to risks ranging from the automated assembly of bioweapons to the unpredictable disruption of the social and environmental systems we depend on for survival. Instead of waiting for a machine to solve its own safety problems, she contends that experiments with such high-stakes technology are too costly to continue without a pause. “The scale of the danger really could cripple civilization or cause extinction,” she says, “and the possibility of this alone is reason enough to pursue pausing frontier AI development.” Watch a video of Elmore’s talk. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. Photo courtesy of PauseAI. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    52 min
  7. Ramzi Fawaz on the psychedelic power of the humanities

    JAN 23

    Ramzi Fawaz on the psychedelic power of the humanities

    In this Berkeley Talks episode, Ramzi Fawaz, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, explores why the humanities and psychedelics might have more in common than you’d think, and how literature, much like psychedelics, can help open one’s mind to the world. Fawaz, who spoke at UC Berkeley in September, argues that the humanities classroom functions as a vital space for shared sense-making, where deep engagement with art and literature can rewire the brain much like a psychedelic experience — helping students heal from the rigid constraints of competitive individualism. During the talk, Fawaz recalls reading bestselling author and Berkeley Professor Emeritus Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind.  “I am sort of mind-boggled by the specific chapter where he talks about the neuroscience of psychedelics,” Fawaz tells Ramsey McGlazer, an associate professor in Berkeley’s Department of Comparative Literature, with whom he joined in conversation. “As I was reading it, I was like, ‘He’s just describing humanities education ... except we don’t use drugs, we use art and literature to invoke these transformative effects.’" Fawaz points out a divide in academia: While scientists look for "magic bullets" to treat mental health — with a specific pill or clinical treatment — humanities scholars often shy away from discussing the intense, emotional ways that art allows us to lose ourselves. He argues that by avoiding these deep sensory experiences, the humanities fail to use their full power to help people heal and grow. By bridging these fields, he suggests that the study of film and literature can pull us out of our narrow perspectives, enabling us to embrace diversity and multiplicity rather than feel threatened by it.  “This is an extraordinary value of the humanities classroom that we don't talk about,” he says. “It literally has the potential to not only make people critical thinkers, but to actually heal them in a way.”  The event, which took place on Sept. 25, 2025, was organized by the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry and co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics as part of the Psychedelics in Society and Culture programming. Fawaz is the author of two books — The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (2016) and Queer Forms (2022) — and is at work on a book titled How to Think Like a Multiverse: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World. He recently launched his podcast Nerd from the Future, where he engages in conversations with the nation’s leading humanities professors about the state of higher education today.  Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. Photo by Bryce Richter/University of Wisconsin–Madison. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 19m
  8. Why kind leaders finish first (according to science)

    JAN 9

    Why kind leaders finish first (according to science)

    A broad group of leaders from academia and the private sector — including UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons and neuroscientist Emiliana Simon-Thomas of the Greater Good Science Center — discuss how kindness is a strategic asset rather than a professional weakness, and why the traditional “jerk” model of leadership is scientifically flawed. This shift toward evidence-based management, the panelists point out, is backed by massive datasets.  “When companies perform very well, we find that prosocial CEOs are more likely to share credit with others,” explains Weili Ge, a professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, drawing on data from a decadelong analysis of 3,500 corporate leaders.  “And when firms don't do well,” she continues, “they're less likely to shift the blame, they're more likely to take responsibility. This is quite different from self-centered CEOs, who are more likely to take credit when things go well and shift the blame when things don't go well." The panelists include:  Rich Lyons: 12th chancellor of UC Berkeley Emiliana Simon-Thomas: Science director at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science CenterWeili Ge: Professor of accounting at the University of Washington’s Foster School of BusinessYamini Rangan: CEO of HubSpot, Berkeley alumKeyAnna Schmiedl: Chief human experience officer at WorkhumanDenis Ring: Former CEO of Ocho Chocolates, creator of the Whole Foods 365 brandKia Afcari (moderator): Director of Greater Good Workplaces at the Greater Good Science CenterThe event, which took place on Dec. 1, 2025, was hosted by the Greater Good Science Center in partnership with the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. Video screenshot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 38m
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A Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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