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Education

Education

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Society & Culture

Society & Culture

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12/26/2025

How do we make better decisions? (revisiting)

Today we are revisiting a Berkeley Talks episode in which a cross-disciplinary panel of UC Berkeley professors, whose expertise ranges from political science to philosophy, discuss how they view decision-making from their respective fields, and how we can use these approaches to make better, more informed choices. Panelists include: Wes Holliday, professor of philosophy. Holliday studies group decision-making, including the best methods of voting, especially in the democratic context. Marika Landau-Wells, assistant professor of political science. Landau-Wells studies the effect that threat perception has on national security decision-making, and how some decisions we make to protect ourselves can endanger many others.Saul Perlmutter, Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Professor of Physics and 2011 Nobel laureate. Perlmutter co-teaches a Big Ideas course, called Sense and Sensibility and Science, designed to equip students with basic tools to be better thinkers by exploring key aspects of scientific thinking.Linda Wilbrecht, professor of neuroscience and psychology. An adolescent scientist, Wilbrecht studies how adolescent learning and decision-making changes from ages 8 to 18, and how it compares to that of adults and children. Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, executive dean of the College of Letters and Science (moderator).The campus event was held on Oct. 9, 2024, as part of the College of Letters and Science’s Salon Series, which brings together faculty and students from a swath of disciplines to interrogate and explore universal questions or ideas from disparate perspectives. 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 by Vladislav Babienko via Unsplash. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

12/26/2025

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1h 5m
12/27/2024

Poet Ocean Vuong on disobedience and the power of language

In Berkeley Talks episode 216, celebrated poet and novelist Ocean Vuong joins in conversation with UC Berkeley English Professor Cathy Park Hong, a poet and writer whose creative nonfiction book, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, was a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Together, they discuss the importance of genre fluidity and artistic experimentation, the role of disobedience in their writing and how language can be both a tool of oppression and liberation. “I personally feel a lot of affinity with you as a writer for many reasons,” began Hong, in front of a packed auditorium at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) in April 2024. “But I think one of the key shared experiences is how the English language, once a site of estrangement and inadequacy for you, became this playground for bounty and experimentation. And part of that bounty and experimentation is how you refuse to limit genre by the way you swing from poetry to prose without feeling tethered by either.” “I think for me, genre was always as fluid as gender, even punctuation,” replied Vuong, author of two poetry collections — Night Sky With Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother — and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, a widely acclaimed novel. “The rigor of punctuation, I think, is arbitrary. They're still up for grabs. And then the dialect of standard English, how legitimate is it? The linguists would tell us it's no more efficient or better or capacious than AAVE or other regional dialects. However, standard English is attached to the court system. It's a dialect that is also attached to an army and a navy, and so within that comes great, immense power. “I'm interested in genre as tendency rather than an ontological position to be. And I think there are tendencies that could be utilized and then left aside or even departed. What is a tendency in us stylistically that is then abandoned? I'm interested in abandon not as a way to cast away or to denounce, but as a restlessness. Like, I will use this mode until I'm done with it. I'll find something else and then return to it later. There's a kind of cyclical relationship. I think maybe if I'm trying to put order to it, I'll say there's a kind of inherent queerness in it — that, for me, my queerness demanded an alternative route, always.” Vuong was UC Berkeley’s 2023-24 Avenali Chair in the Humanities, established in 1987 to bring distinguished figures in the arts and humanities to Berkeley for lectures, panel discussions, and meetings with students and faculty. Vuong is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” Grant in 2019, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Read more about Vuong and Hong on the Townsend Center for the Humanities website. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Photo by Tom Hines/courtesy of Ocean Vuong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

12/27/2024

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1h 20m
12/12/2025

The Page Act and the making of racialized US immigration control

Before there was the Chinese Exclusion Act, there was the Page Act. Passed in 1875 amid growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the 19th century, the Page Act was one of the first national immigration laws in the United States. It targeted several categories of people, including contract laborers from Asia, women brought in for sex work and certain convicted criminals. In practice, however, it functioned mainly to restrict Chinese and other Asian women from entering the country. “It had enormous implications for the issues of race, gender and labor in U.S. immigration history and Asian American history,” says UC Berkeley history professor Hidetaka Hirota, who moderated a campus discussion in April to mark the Page Act’s 150th anniversary. In this Berkeley Talks episode, a panel of Berkeley scholars unpack how the Page Act helped institutionalize racially targeted exclusion and gendered surveillance at the border, and how it laid the groundwork for the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and later immigration laws. They also challenge the enduring myth of the “white bootstrapping ethnic,” supposedly living “the right way” without state support, showing instead how immigration and welfare regimes were structured to advantage European newcomers while systematically excluding Asians and other people of color. Panelists include Catherine Ceniza Choy, professor of ethnic studies; Cybelle Fox, professor of sociology; Leti Volpp, professor of law; and Hidetaka Hirota, associate professor of history, who moderated the conversation. The event, which took place on April 23, was hosted by Berkeley’s Social Science Matrix and was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, the Department of Sociology, the Department of History, the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Asian American Research Center and the Center for Race and Gender. 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 from the National Archives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

12/12/2025

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1h 27m
12/04/2025

Wikipedia as resistance

After Wikipedia made its debut in 2001, some trends quickly emerged. Most editors were male, topics tended to skew toward geek culture interests like computing and gaming, and only a small fraction of biographies were about women. More than two decades later, biases and knowledge gaps on Wikipedia of all sorts remain, especially for marginalized communities. But a UC Berkeley professor and her students are working to change that. Since 2016, ethnic studies professor Juana María Rodríguez has partnered with Wiki Education to teach a range of courses in which students create and edit Wikipedia articles about the contributions of LGBTQ people, especially queer and trans people of color. “Wikipedia is a public-facing project — it’s the largest encyclopedia in the world,” says Rodríguez. “In a political moment where these histories are actively being erased from public view, having students work on a platform like Wikipedia becomes even more important.” This is the second episode of a new Berkeley Voices season, featuring UC Berkeley scholars working on life-changing research and the people whose lives are changed by it. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-voices). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. UC Berkeley photo by Brandon Sánchez Mejia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

12/04/2025

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13 min
06/27/2025

How the tobacco industry drove the rise of ultra-processed foods

In the early 1960s, R.J. Reynolds, one of the largest and most profitable tobacco companies in the U.S. at the time, wanted to diversify its business. Its marketing strategies had been highly successful in selling its top brands, like Camel, Winston and Salem cigarettes, and executives thought, Why not apply the same strategies to, say, the food industry? So in 1963, R.J. Reynolds acquired Hawaiian Punch. It marked the beginning of the tobacco industry’s entry into the food sector. In the following decades, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris expanded aggressively into the food industry, acquiring major brands, like Del Monte, Nabisco, General Foods, Kraft and 7UP, where they produced hyperpalatable, chemically-engineered foods now known as ultra-processed foods, or UPFs. These products were marketed especially to children and other vulnerable groups. In Berkeley Talks episode 229, Laura Schmidt, a professor of health policy in the School of Medicine at UC San Francisco, discusses how ultra-processed foods — like cookies, sodas, instant noodles, fish sticks and cereals — are a direct legacy of the tobacco industry, and are responsible for a dramatic rise in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases across the country. “About 60% of the calories in Americans’ diets are from ultra-processed foods,” says Schmidt, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event in May. “In the mid-’80s, when we see ultra-processed foods starting to scale up in the American food supply, we also see obesity starting to really rise. That is the moment when some of the largest food companies are owned by tobacco companies.” This talk took place on May 5, 2025, and was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI) and Berkeley Public Health. It was moderated by Isabel Madzorera, an assistant professor in food, nutrition and population health at Berkeley Public Health and co-faculty director at the Berkeley Food Institute. Watch a video of the event on the Berkeley Food Institute’s YouTube page. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by HoliznaCC0. Photo by Cory Doctorow via Wikimedia Commons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

06/27/2025

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57 min
11/14/2025

The complicated role of media in motherhood

In the early 20th century, prominent figures in psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics in the U.S. began to promote a new standard for mothers: that they should serve as a constant, unchanging and wholly nurturing presence in their children’s lives. It was the best way, they claimed, to raise healthy and successful children. This ideal marked a shift away from earlier traditions where caregiving was often distributed among extended family members, hired help and community. In her new book, Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the Twentieth Century, UC Berkeley associate professor Hannah Zeavin explores how the new ideal of constant mothering was advanced by the mind sciences during the rise of the nuclear family and became especially powerful for white, middle-class mothers. Yet this expectation was both unrealistic and deeply shaped by issues of race and class, says Zeavin, who spoke last month at a Berkeley Book Chats event hosted by the Townsend Center for the Humanities. As more mothers entered the workforce and social changes disrupted older forms of caregiving, media researchers began to explore whether technology could step in, imagining devices — first, baby monitors and later, TVs and tablets — as substitutes for, or supplements to, maternal care. In this Berkeley Talks episode, Zeavin discusses how these ideals and interventions — defining the “perfect mother,” substituting media for maternal presence and punishing deviations from the norm — continue to influence American family life today. Watch a video of the conversation, which was moderated by Ramsey McGlazer, associate professor in the Department of Comparative Literature. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. Screenshot of the Mother Media book cover. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

11/14/2025

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53 min
04/18/2025

The case for a philosophical life, with Agnes Callard and Judith Butler

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is considered the father of Western philosophy, one whose most famous ideas have all but risen to the level of pop culture. We parrot his claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” His name has been invoked by politicians to bolster their stance against “cancel culture.” There’s even an AI chat app modeled after Socrates that promises intelligent conversations. But what exactly were Socrates’ philosophical views? We may be quick to reference his name, but if asked, many of us would likely be hard-pressed to give a thorough account of what he actually believed. In Berkeley Talks episode 224, Agnes Callard, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and author of the 2025 book Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, joins UC Berkeley’s Judith Butler, a Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School and a leading philosopher and theorist, for a conversation. Together, they dive deep into Socrates’ work and beliefs, discussing the value of pursuing knowledge through open-ended questions, how philosophical inquiry is a collaborative process where meaning and understanding are constructed through conversation, and how critical questioning can lead to greater freedom of thought and help us to ask and answer some of life’s most important questions. This event took place on Jan. 30, 2025, and was sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities. Watch a video of the conversation. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

04/18/2025

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1h 35m
11/28/2025

For Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, it began with pond scum and a toy microscope

When UC Berkeley Professor Randy Schekman was 12, he scooped up a jar of pond scum and examined it under his toy microscope. “I just could not believe the world that was revealed,” he said during a campus event earlier this month. “This complex set of creatures that you can't see with your naked eye, and yet are moving and somehow mechanically independent, and able to do amazing things. And this was so fascinating.” Schekman went on to become a professor of molecular and cell biology at Berkeley and win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2013 for his discovery of how yeast membranes work. His research has led to advances in food and fuel production, as well as life-saving drugs and vaccines. In this Berkeley Talks episode, Schekman explains the molecular building blocks that define who we are, the cellular processes that drive health and illness, and how curiosity-driven research leads to revolutionary insights into disease and opens doors to new possibilities for medicine and human health. This lecture, which took place on Nov. 7, was sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Watch a video of Schekman’s talk. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. UC Berkeley photo by Elena Zhukova. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

11/28/2025

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1 hr
09/08/2023

Poet Ishion Hutchinson reads 'The Mud Sermon' and other poems

In Berkeley Talks episode 179, Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson reads several poems, including "The Mud Sermon," "The Bicycle Eclogue" and "After the Hurricane." His April reading was part of the UC Berkeley Library’s monthly event Lunch Poems. "I take this voyage into poetry very seriously," begins Hutchinson, "and take none of it for granted, because of the weight of history, both growing up in Jamaica and knowing the violent history that comes with that. But also the violence, too, of canon, and seeing that my work as a poet, in part, is to figure out what sort of emancipatory forces I should summon. Luckily, I stand in great shoulders within the Caribbean tradition of many poets and writers that I admire, and envy, and wish they hadn't been born. Don't tell them that. This isn't recorded, of course." Here’s “A Mud Sermon,” one of the poems Hutchinson read during the event: They shovelled the long trenches day and night. Frostbitten mud. Shellshock mud. Dungheap mud. Imperial mud. Venereal mud. Malaria mud. Hun bait mud. Mating mud. 1655 mud: white flashes of sharks. Golgotha mud. Chilblain mud. Caliban mud. Cannibal mud. Ha ha ha mud. Amnesia mud. Drapetomania mud. Lice mud. Pyrexia mud. Exposure mud. Aphasia mud. No-man’s-land’s-Everyman’s mud. And the smoking flax mud. Dysentery mud. Septic sore mud. Hog pen mud. Nephritis mud. Constipated mud. Faith mud. Sandfly fever mud. Rat mud. Sheol mud. Ir-ha-cheres mud. Ague mud. Asquith mud. Parade mud. Scabies mud. Mumps mud. Memra mud. Pneumonia mud. Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin mud. Civil war mud. And darkness and worms will be their dwelling-place mud. Yaws mud. Gog mud. Magog mud. God mud. Canaan the unseen, as promised, saw mud. They resurrected new counter-kingdoms, by the arbitrament of the sword mud. Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of two poetry collections: Far District and House of Lords and Commons. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others. He is a contributing editor to the literary journals The Common and Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, and teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University. Lunch Poems is an ongoing poetry reading series at Berkeley that began in 2014. All readings happen from 12:10 p.m. to 12:50 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month. A new season of Lunch Poems will begin on Oct. 5 with Inuit poet dg nanouk okpik in the Morrison Library. Find upcoming talks on the Lunch Poems website and watch videos of past readings on the Lunch Poems YouTube channel. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Neil-Anthony Watson. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

09/08/2023

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41 min
10/17/2025

How Berkeley became a powerhouse for innovation and startups

UC Berkeley is widely considered a leader in innovation and startups. Pitchbook university rankings from 2025 announced, for the third year in a row, that Berkeley graduates have founded more venture-backed companies than undergraduate alumni from any other university in the world. Some might wonder, says Chancellor Rich Lyons, if this entrepreneurial energy clashes with Berkeley’s tradition of top-tier research and teaching. But Lyons sees it differently: These forces fuel each other, combining to drive the campus’s ultimate goal of making a lasting difference in the world. It’s a dynamic duo, he says, that keeps the campus pushing boundaries and shaping the future. In this Berkeley Talks episode, a panel of prominent Berkeley faculty and an alum join Lyons to discuss how the campus’s startup culture has powered their work and encourages the next generation of scholars to grow their ideas. The panel, which took place on Oct. 6 during Homecoming weekend, includes: Ana Claudia Arias, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciencesKen Goldberg, professor of engineeringMarco Lobba, alum and co-founder and CEO of CatenaBio Chancellor Rich Lyons (moderator)Watch a video of the conversation. Read more about the event. Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks). Music by HoliznaCC0. UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

10/17/2025

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1h 1m

Podcasts by UC Berkeley's Office of Communications and Public Affairs