PODCAST · education
Berkeley Talks
by UC Berkeley
A Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
-
Michael Pollan and Christof Koch talk psychedelics and consciousness
During a psychedelic experience in his garden, Michael Pollan became convinced that the plants around him were conscious. They seemed to be returning his gaze, he said — benevolent and perhaps grateful for his gardening. Back in ordinary consciousness, the author and UC Berkeley journalism...
-
W. Kamau Bell on AI, creativity and resisting the pull of automation
When W. Kamau Bell was a child, his mother bought the family a Commodore VIC-20, a popular home computer of the early 1980s. He also had Pong, a ColecoVision and, later, a MiniDisc player. Today, he is still the person his family calls when the TV stops working — and the father who sees...
-
Leaping robots, AI companies and a NASA mission
When Aravind Srinivas arrived at UC Berkeley in 2020 hoping to join Pieter Abbeel’s robotics lab, he encountered an immediate obstacle: The lab was already full. Undeterred, Srinivas proposed that he and Abeel work together for six months so he could prove himself. What followed was such a…
more -
How we've long misread gun violence (and ways to prevent it)
In the early hours of November 2007, Amadou Cisse, a 29-year-old University of Chicago chemistry graduate student, was walking home when Demetrius Warren, then 17, and Benjamin Williams, 21, approached him. According to trial testimony, Warren pointed a gun at Cisse while Williams attempted to…
more -
The making of pioneering Black feminist Frances M. Beal
In 1957, a terrified 17-year-old girl lay on a Harlem kitchen table undergoing an illegal, backstreet abortion. Nearly dying from complications, she was rushed to a hospital ward where nurses badgered her and demanded to know what she had done. That teenager was Frances M. Beal. Long before she...
-
When we talk to AI, what are we talking to?
In the early days of personal computing, people imagined artificial intelligence as a single, self-contained system — a kind of digital brain with a fixed identity. Talking to AI meant asking questions to a clearly defined machine. That picture no longer holds, says David Chalmers, a professor of...
-
Philosopher Mark Johnston asks, 'Is this our only life?'
When Princeton University Professor Mark Johnston's daughter was 18 months old, she stood on a beach with what he describes as a "quizzical philosophical look on her face, as if she was thinking, 'Is this my only life?'" That question is the heart of Johnston’s talk at UC Berkeley this past…
more -
Why kids need awe — and how puppets can help
As Halle Stanford drove through Topanga Canyon in Southern California, with Dolly Parton blasting from the car speakers, she was struck by a moment of inspiration. “I had this vision of a little hedgehog on the side of the road in her little pink hiking boots, with her guitar in her bag, out to...
-
What punk subcultures can teach us about resisting hate
Across the American West Coast in the 1980s, the burgeoning punk rock and skinhead scenes were much more than just raw music and counterculture fashion — they quickly became contested ground in an ideological battle against white supremacy. Neo-Nazi groups actively targeted these subcultures to...
-
Musician Lara Downes celebrates the sound of America
It was the morning after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and pianist Lara Downes was catching a flight from California to Kentucky, where she was set to perform later in the evening. “It was a very weird day to be anywhere,” she recalls. That night, she performed songs from her album America...
-
How the American university’s success led to its modern challenges
While preparing his lectures for UC Berkeley, Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber spent hours poring over the memoirs and writings of former University of California President Clark Kerr, seeking wisdom from the architect of California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education....
-
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...
-
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…
more -
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…
more -
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...
-
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…
more -
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…
more -
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…
more -
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”...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Top Biden official calls for unity, ‘moral courage’ in public service
The United States is in a moment like no other in recent history, says Deb Haaland, former President Joe Biden's secretary of the Interior Department from 2021 to 2025. Every day, she says, it seems a new pillar of the American government is under attack. But what makes this moment unique aren’t...
-
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...
-
Long said to be ‘too big to fail,’ the ocean needs a new narrative
In this Berkeley Talks episode, renowned marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco discusses how a persistent narrative that the ocean is “too big to fail” has led to its degradation. While many now believe its problems are “too big to fix,” Lubchenco explains why we need to embrace a new narrative: That...
-
Alva Noë on how art allows us to see everyday things anew
In his 2023 book The Entanglement, UC Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë argues that human nature is not a fixed phenomenon, and that art acts as a kind of “strange tool” that actively changes us. “Life and art are entangled,” says Noë, who spoke about his research at a Berkeley event in June 2023.…
more -
How forgiveness changes you and your brain
As the science director at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Emiliana Simon-Thomas thinks a lot about how prosocial emotions and behaviors — like compassion and gratitude — influence our well-being and society as a whole. And recently, she’s been more deeply exploring the effects of...
-
Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna on CRISPR and the future of gene editing
For UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna, the revolutionary discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing began 15 years ago with a meeting at the campus’s Free Speech Movement Cafe. “This is a quintessential story about Berkeley,” begins Doudna, a professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry, in a...
-
Berkeley scholars unpack what's at stake for U.S. democracy
Every spring semester, UC Berkeley Assistant Professor Shereen Marisol Meraji teaches a class on race and journalism. In the course, she and her students explore how colonialism and the legacy of its systems — including forced displacement of Native tribes, slavery and Jim Crow — continue to…
more -
Economist on the benefits of a (modest) billionaire tax
In this Berkeley Talks episode, economist Gabriel Zucman discusses how wealth inequality and billionaire wealth has soared in recent decades, prompting the need for a global minimum tax of 2% on billionaires. “The key benefit of a global minimum tax on billionaires is not only that it would...
-
Ezra Klein on building the things we need for the future we want (revisiting)
Today we are revisiting an October 2023 Berkeley Talks episode in which Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist and host of the podcast The Ezra Klein Show, discusses the difficulties liberal governments encounter when working to build real things in the real world. He joins in a conversation with...
-
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…
more -
Energy justice expert on his pursuit for affordable and clean energy for all
In Berkeley Talks episode 228, Tony Reames, a professor of environmental justice at the University of Michigan, discusses how the U.S. energy system has persistently harmed marginalized communities, a result of legacies of government-sanctioned policies, like redlining, land theft and resource...
-
A debate on how to feed the world without ‘eating the earth’
By 2050, the global population is expected to reach about 10 billion people. That means we need to find a way to feed nearly 2 billion more mouths in the next 25 years. Industrial farming practices have already destroyed countless natural ecosystems, and experts say that expanding farmland even...
-
Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) on reading the authors you want to write like
It took nearly six years for bestselling author Daniel Handler to sell his first book, a satirical novel called The Basic Eight. When his agent sold it in 1998, it was “for the least amount she had ever negotiated for,” laughed Handler, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event earlier this month. More…
more -
In 1970, one in five Americans moved every year. Now it’s one in 13. What changed?
In Berkeley Talks episode 225, The Atlantic journalists Yoni Appelbaum and Jerusalem Demsas discuss the decline of housing mobility in the United States and its impact on economic opportunity in the country. Appelbaum, author of the 2025 book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the...
-
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...
-
J Finley on how Black women use sass to claim their humanity
When J Finley arrived at UC Berkeley as a graduate student in 2006, she planned on studying reparations and the legacy of slavery. But after a fellowship in South Africa, where she studied the Zulu language and culture, Finley says she realized Black people were never going to get reparations....
-
Law professors debate the merits of originalism
In Berkeley Talks podcast episode 222, UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Brian Fitzpatrick, the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, Tennessee, debate the merits of originalism in constitutional interpretation. Originalism is a theory that...
-
Heather Cox Richardson on the evolution of the Republican Party
In Berkeley Talks episode 221, American historian Heather Cox Richardson joins Dylan Penningroth, a UC Berkeley professor of law and history, in a conversation about the historical evolution of the Republican Party, and the state of U.S. politics and democracy today. Richardson, a professor of...
-
UC Berkeley political scientist asks: Does democracy work?
If someone asked you to describe democracy in one word, what would you say? An October 2024 survey by the Political Psychology of American Democracy Policy Project, led by UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy Dean David Wilson, asked people just that. Many respondents said, “freedom,”…
more -
How hospitals collect medical debts can hurt patients. Why?
When Luke Messac began his emergency medicine residency at Rhode Island Hospital in 2018, he noticed a lot of his patients came to him concerned about costs. Some worried about his recommendations for them to stay in the hospital overnight. Others questioned his motives when he asked them to...
-
Coming of age as an unaccompanied migrant youth in the U.S.
In Berkeley Talks episode 218, sociology professor Stephanie Canizales discusses her 2024 book, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, about the experiences of undocumented immigrant youth as they come of age in the United States without their parents. Over six years, Canizales conducted 75 in-depth interviews...
-
A blueprint for creating a world where everyone belongs
In Berkeley Talks episode 217, john a. powell and Stephen Menendian, director and assistant director of UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, discuss their 2024 book, Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World. During the campus event, the scholars touch on the...
-
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…
more -
How do we make better decisions?
In Berkeley Talks episode 215, 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.…
more -
Veteran news editors on how the media covered the election
In Berkeley Talks episode 214, former editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post, Dean Baquet and Marty Baron, evaluate how the media covered the 2024 U.S. presidential election and share thoughts on how journalists should effectively cover Donald Trump’s second term. In 2016, the New...
-
Computational folklorist on how storytelling becomes belief
In Berkeley Talks episode 213, Timothy Tangherlini, a UC Berkeley professor in the Department of Scandinavian and director of the Folklore Graduate Program, discusses the vital role that storytelling plays in many cultures around the world, and how it can influence belief, for good and for bad....
-
The future of American democracy
In Berkeley Talks episode 212, a panel of UC Berkeley experts from former presidential administrations take a critical look at the issues that have led the U.S. to this year’s historic election and reflect on the future of American democracy. The Oct. 29 campus event was sponsored by the Goldman...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Berkeley Talks have?
Berkeley Talks currently has 260 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Berkeley Talks about?
A Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
How often does Berkeley Talks release new episodes?
Berkeley Talks publishes regularly with 260 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Berkeley Talks?
You can listen to Berkeley Talks on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Berkeley Talks?
Berkeley Talks is created and hosted by UC Berkeley.
URL copied to clipboard!