One Bold Idea University of California

In December 1984, a handful of University of California, Berkeley students walked off campus and sat down in front of the entrance to UC's administrative offices. Outraged by the violence of the South African government during the country's fight to end racial segregation, the students demanded that UC pull out billions of dollars in investments in companies doing business with South Africa. This seemingly small gesture of solidarity led to a national movement with far-reaching impacts. This episode is just one chapter in a long history of student protests on UC campuses.

Special thanks to Jim Hurwitz for sharing audio from his video of the anti-Apartheid movement for a Cal on Video project.

When UC Merced opened its doors in 2005, it was the first research university of the 21st century. It's now fast becoming the unsung face of innovation in tech, bringing new and dynamic startups and incubators to the Central Valley. In this episode, we visit an engineering lab on the Central Valley campus that's applying student ingenuity to design a safer, cleaner world.

Listen to The Guardian's film critic and author David Thomson describe why he loves His Girl Friday. The 1940 film, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, is now regarded as one of Hollywood's most beloved screwball comedies. But at the time of production, it was considered run-of-the-mill. As Thomson explains, this was the case for many movies and is why film preservation is so important. The UCLA Film and Television Archive not only preserved His Girl Friday, but many other treasures that would have otherwise been forever lost.

Hear that full story: https://soundcloud.com/one_bold_idea/film_podcast

In 1929, a young physicist named Ernest Lawrence was leafing through physics periodicals at UC Berkeley when a drawing stopped him in his tracks. It was a diagram of a common particle accelerator, whose design inspired a feat of engineering that would change the course of the 20th century. In this episode, we'll learn about the creation of Lawrence's cyclotron, the granddaddy of today's particle accelerators.

Special credit: The interview with physicist Philip Abelson was made available through Voices of the Manhattan Project, an oral history collection from the Atomic Heritage Foundation and the Los Alamos Historical Society.

After the repeal of Prohibition, the wine industry was in tatters. California wines were selling, but they were bad. Really bad. In fact, about twenty percent of the wines made in 1933 had spoilage. In this episode, we'll learn how a team of tenacious scientists at the Department of Viticulture at the University Farm (later UC Davis), put California wine on the map.

In this episode, we talk to one of the founding doctors of Ward 86, the first dedicated HIV/AIDS clinic in the nation. UC San Francisco oncologist Paul Volberding describes how he and his colleagues pioneered a new model of care that not only changed the course of the AIDS epidemic, but still serves as an example of the management of other chronic diseases.