Podcasts by Berkeley Voices

70: What crocodile mummies can tell us about everyday life in ancient Egypt from 2021-03-02T21:23:45

When archeologists, funded by University of California benefactor Phoebe A. Hearst, found hundreds of crocodile mummies on an expedition to Northern Egypt in 1899, they were annoyed. They were s...

After Thoughts: Dacher Keltner on the science of awe and psychedelics from 2021-02-22T16:30

Dacher Keltner, faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center and a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, discusses how our sense of self goes silent while experiencing awe and while using ...

69: Language is more than how we speak — it's home from 2021-02-16T19:59:55

When Natalyn Daniels transferred to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate student in 2009, she felt like an outsider. "A lot of the communication approaches I was exposed to — they're not ... necessar...

68: Building community one person at a time from 2021-02-02T18:17:22

In a time when our nation is more ideologically divided than ever, it's crucial that we find ways to come together across differences and find common ground, says UC Berkeley psychology professo...

67: How state courts use disability to remove Native children from their homes from 2020-11-24T19:12:46

This is the second part of the two-part series about how disability has been and continues to be used as a way to control and profit from Native populations.

Last week, we heard from UC B...

66: How the U.S. government created an ‘insane asylum’ to imprison Native Americans from 2020-11-20T17:28:07

In the late 1800s, two South Dakota congressmen were looking for ways to build an economy in their newly minted state — one that was carved out of Indigenous homelands. They decided on a mental ...

65: Savala Trepczynski on Breonna Taylor and the elusive nature of racial justice from 2020-09-25T22:14:44

When Savala Trepczynski, the director of the social justice center at UC Berkeley, first heard the decision in the Breonna Taylor case — that only one of three police officers involved in Taylor...

64: The Montgomery bus boycott and the women who made it possible from 2020-02-11T19:59:20

"People know about Rosa Parks. People know about Martin Luther King Jr. — and they should. And they know that it was the Montgomery bus boycott that ignited a certain kind of Southern civil righ...

63: Oral history project reveals '20 shades of Jerry Brown' from 2020-01-21T22:34:43

UC Berkeley's Oral History Center and KQED teamed up to record the longest interview that Jerry Brown has ever done — one that offers a first-person account of his nearly five decades in Califor...

62: After Parkland shooting, student fights for mental health resources in schools from 2019-12-17T22:08:45

Feb. 14, 2018, began like any other day for Kai Koerber. He was running late for his early morning AP English class at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. When he got there, he wa...

61: What does it mean to be a Native artist today? from 2019-11-26T21:15:40

After student Drew Woodson took a playwriting course with Philip Gotanda, a professor in the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at Berkeley, he realized he had a story to tell....

60: Fighting injustice with poetry from 2019-11-25T22:24:04

Saida Dahir grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. At first, she thought she was like everyone else. But by sixth grade, she realized she was different. Her family was from Somalia — she was born in a...

59: Teeter totters as activism: How the border wall became a playground from 2019-10-08T20:25:18

When UC Berkeley architect Ronald Rael took his bright pink teeter totters to the U.S.-Mexico border wall, he didn't know that what he and his team did next would go viral. He just wanted to cre...

58: The military isn't out to 'crush anybody who’s different' from 2019-09-03T17:12:32

"I grew up just super dirt poor ... about as poor as you can be in this country," says first-year Berkeley Law student, Blake Danser. School was where Danser felt safe, where he thrived. "And th...

57: Staffer's search for birth mom reveals dark history of Guatemalan adoption from 2019-07-09T19:19:54

Gemma Givens, who works at UC Berkeley's International House, was adopted from Guatemala in 1990 when she was 4 months old. Her mom, Melinda, was a graduate student at Berkeley at the time. She ...

56: The ministry of being out from 2019-06-11T18:41:33

For Martha Olney, a teaching professor of economics at UC Berkeley, coming out didn’t happen all at once. As a graduate student in 1980, she met her wife, Esther Hargis. A few of their friends k...

55: Why are there so many Filipino nurses in the U.S.? from 2019-05-28T18:11:06

Growing up in New York City, UC Berkeley ethnic studies professor Catherine Ceniza Choy remembers seeing a lot of nurses — dressed in their crisp white uniforms. She and her mom lived in an apar...

54: How a botched train robbery led to the birth of modern American criminology from 2019-04-30T20:08:02

On October 11, 1923, three brothers — Hugh, Ray and Roy DeAutremont — boarded a Southern Pacific Railroad train called the Gold Special near the Siskiyou Mountains in Oregon. The trio planned to...

53: Chancellor Carol Christ and Professor Emerita Carol Clover on women in the academy, then and now from 2019-04-16T20:57:12

In 1970, when Chancellor Carol Christ joined UC Berkeley's English department as an assistant professor, only 3% of the faculty on campus were women. “I always felt like a pioneer, in part, beca...

52: 'Mouthpiece' says what many women never say from 2019-03-18T19:07:51

When Amy Nostbakken and Nora Sadava started writing Mouthpiece six years ago, they revealed their deepest secrets to each other with the prompt: “Tell me something that you wo...

51: For Malika Imhotep, devotion to black feminist study is a life practice from 2019-03-11T16:31:14

Malika Imhotep grew up in West Atlanta, rooted in a community that she calls an "Afrocentric bubble," in a family of artisans, entrepreneurs and community organizers. Now, as a Ph.D. candidate i...

50: In campus records 49 years and still loving it from 2019-03-04T22:56:09

When Karen Denton got a job in UC Berkeley's registrar's office at 20, she had one job: to remove incompletes. "I did that all day every day," she says. Her tools of the trade? A fountain pen, a...

49: Black history cemetery tour: Abraham Holland and the Sweet Vengeance Mine from 2019-02-19T19:21:28

In 1849, a man named Abraham Holland packed up his things and left his life on the East Coast for California, in hopes that he’d strike it rich. The year before, gold had been discovered in...

48: Cal alumni leader gives hope to students who need it most from 2019-02-11T21:13:15

For Black History Month, we are resharing Fiat Vox episode #23, first published in 2018, about Clothilde Hewlett, the executive director of the Cal Alumni Association:<...

47: For international relations staffer, ballet kept her family’s Ukrainian culture alive from 2019-01-22T19:25:57

When Erika Johnson was 7, her Ukrainian mom put her in ballet class. Although Erika didn’t have the body that most principal dancers were known for, she had the work ethic that it took to be suc...

46: Berkeley Haas Chief of Staff Marco Lindsey lives like his 80-year-old self is watching from 2018-12-11T00:01:18

Every morning, Marco Lindsey wakes up in East Oakland, where he was born and raised. He puts on a suit and tie, packs his briefcase, chats with his neighbors and drives to work at Berkeley Haas....

45: Native American 'Antigone' explores universal values of honoring the dead from 2018-11-20T18:27:44

In the summer of 1996, Will Thomas and Dave Deacy were wading in the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, watching the annual hydroplane races. Will kicked something with his foot, bent down...

44: Academic counselor Quamé on standing out, dreaming big—and letting go from 2018-11-05T21:17:56

When John Patton was in high school, he changed his name to Quamé. When he got to UC Berkeley as a student, "it stuck, instantly," he says. At Berkeley, Quamé's world opened up: "African America...

43: 'White voice' and hearing whiteness as difference, not the standard from 2018-10-16T16:02:31

In the 1940s and 50s, actors in major American films, like Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, spoke with a kind of faux British accent as a way to sound “upper class.” This pronunciation sprea...

42: The history of why some say women sound shrill, immature  from 2018-10-09T19:29:33

Professor Tom McEnaney, who teaches a class called “Sounding American,” says the U.S. has a long history of men criticizing the way women speak. Sound technologies, starting with the gramophone ...

41: At Berkeley, nobody stuffs a bird like Carla Cicero from 2018-09-25T18:00:35

After Lux — one of the peregrine falcons born on the Campanile — died last year after striking a window of Evans Hall, the campus community was heartbroken. But Carla Cicero, the staff curator o...

40: From the archive: On Berkeley time? He keeps Campanile's clocks ticking from 2018-09-18T19:53:59

Last week, Berkeley students noticed that one of the Campanile’s four clocks stopped. While the north-facing clock was at a standstill, the other three kept going. How could that happen? Turns o...

39: AileyCamp — so much more than a dance camp from 2018-09-04T20:54:54

As a kid, Makayla Bozeman could not stop dancing. She'd go to bed late because she was dancing. She'd wake up in the middle of the night to dance. When she was 13, she applied to AileyCamp — a s...

38: Margaret Atwood: 'Things can change a lot faster than you think' from 2018-08-28T19:21:03

Canadian author Margaret Atwood doesn't like being called a soothsayer. "Anyone who says they can predict the future is... not telling the truth," she says. But like it or not, it's a label she'...

37: Bringing people together, one puppet at a time from 2018-07-25T19:42:02

After seeing Handspring Puppet Company — the creators of the puppets in Broadway's " War Horse" — at UC Berkeley in 2015, Glynn Bartlett knew he wanted to work with them. So he packed his bags a...

36: For disability advocate, helping students navigate campus is personal from 2018-07-18T00:05:05

When Derek Coates was 10, he found out he had a degenerative eye disease and was going to gradually lose his eyesight. Over the next 30 years, his visual world shrunk until he became completely ...

35: Peregrine falcons, zipping through campus at top speeds, are here to stay from 2018-07-10T15:39:36

The peregrine falcons that first made a home on UC Berkeley's Campanile last year get a lot of attention every spring when their babies hatch. But it's also amazing to watch the adults in action...

34: A biology prof on growing up gay in rural Minnesota from 2018-07-03T04:38:23

Noah Whiteman, an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, has always known how to survive. He moved to Sax-Zim, a rural area in Minnesota, when he was 11 and...

33: How a tender message helped win the fight for same-sex marriage from 2018-06-25T23:10:54

When Thalia Zepatos joined the Freedom to Marry campaign in 2010, she had a big job ahead of her: she had to craft a totally new message about same-sex marriage that would convince Americans tha...

32: Billy Curtis, an S.F. Pride grand marshal, on building inclusivity from 2018-06-14T22:39:29

Billy Curtis, the director of the Gender Equity Resource Center at UC Berkeley, has spent the past two decades working to build a more inclusive campus for the LGBTQ community. This year, he was...

31: With music as his guide, Haas graduating senior envisions a better Nigeria from 2018-05-10T16:41:32

Inside of Joshua Ahazie’s mind live hundreds of songs. Since he was a kid, he would hear a melody and then he would hear all the parts — the vocals, how to play it on the piano. How it all went ...

30: On Worthy Wage Day, early childhood educators fight for support from 2018-05-01T17:15:28

When Marcy Whitebook worked as a childcare teacher in the 1970s, she made less than $2 an hour. She was amazed at how little she made for the hard and important work she did with infants and tod...

29: From pollution cleanup to building houses, what can't mushrooms do? from 2018-03-29T21:20:40

There are more than 5 million species of fungi, and each one likes a particular food. Some like sawdust. Others like plastic. Some can even digest heavy metals. After the fungi eat their meal, w...

28: Creating the world you want, by seeing a world that's possible from 2018-03-12T19:39:19

When Derrika Hunt was in third grade, she didn't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. She remembers telling her mom, "This doesn't feel right to me. Why am I saying this pledge and then going hom...

27: For Ula Taylor, it's all about harnessing the leader within from 2018-02-28T21:27:15

"People know about Rosa Parks. People know about Martin Luther King Jr. And they know that it's the Montgomery bus boycott that ignited a certain kind of Southern civil rights movement," says Ul...

26: Staff director sees great strength in diversity from 2018-02-21T19:16:01

Like a lot of leaders, Sidalia Reel started young. In fifth grade, she ran her household, making sure her four younger siblings didn't get into too much trouble. Now, she's the director of staff...

25: For comics fan staffer, Black Panther was 'life changing' from 2018-02-14T21:48:35

As a kid, Alfred Day would spend hours holed up indoors reading comics. He loved Batman and Superman, but the character who really spoke to him — who taught him that he could be smart and powerf...

24: For Ph.D. student Kenly Brown, collecting data is about people from 2018-02-12T22:46:18

As an undergraduate in Colorado, Kenly Brown was one of only a few African Americans on her campus. She felt isolated in the classroom, often expected to speak on behalf of all black people. Now...

23: For alumni leader, giving hope is her life's mission from 2018-02-05T22:36:40

Before Clothilde Hewlett became the executive director of the Cal Alumni Association in 2016, she had lived many other lives. She spent years of her childhood in tenement housing in Philadelphia...

22: Here’s what an earthquake sounds like from 2018-01-12T21:52:33

Underground at UC Berkeley, seismic sensors capture the deep rumbles from Bay Area earthquakes. Here's what a 4.4-magnitude earthquake that shook the Bay Area last year on Jan. 4, 2018 sounded l...

21: Quit your giggling: the straight dope on cannabis from 2018-01-08T23:36:19

Most of us know by now that recreational cannabis became legal in California on Jan. 1. But there's still a lot we don't know about the plant, despite its long history of human use, says Eric Si...

20: For aspiring triple major, piano is a way of life from 2017-12-09T00:40:52

Christopher Richardson, a sophomore and aspiring triple major at UC Berkeley, has been competing in classical piano since he was 9 years old. Since then, he's competed at least 50 times. It's wh...

19: Growing up without free speech is like 'prison for your mind' from 2017-11-21T20:28:25

Parham Pourdavood, an incoming computer science student at UC Berkeley, grew up in Iran. He says that he, like most people, didn't challenge authorities. He wasn't an activist. He studied hard i...

18: Student musicians on learning from the best from 2017-10-18T19:57:24

"I was amazed at how he walked on, and he just got the attention of everyone right there,” says Kyle Ko, a fourth-year music major. “You could see everyone’s intense focus. You could feel it on ...

17: How generosity in disaster flows in both directions from 2017-09-27T22:27:37

When Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas coast in late August, Americans had a choice: they could share their resources or look the other way. Although as a society, we tend to value individualism...

16: Students & alumni reflect on free speech, Ben Shapiro from 2017-09-15T22:22:56

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro spoke on UC Berkeley's campus in September 2017. Berkeley News spoke to students and alumni as they waited in line to attend the event, protested peacefully ...

15: Roaya and Nissma on their surprise connection from 2017-08-28T15:03:39

When Roaya and Nissma met as freshman at UC Berkeley last year, they were amazed at how much they had in common. They were both Canadian and Moroccan, and were on the pre-med track. They became fas...

14: Students discuss social impact of Hamilton (with a cappella performance) from 2017-08-21T20:56:32

Incoming students discuss how the hit musical Hamilton has changed Broadway and inspired students to learn more about the nation's history, as students from campus groups including the UC Women’s C...

13: Same system with a different name for African Americans from 2017-07-26T18:24:28

UC Berkeley assistant professor of history and expert in African American history Stephanie Jones-Rogers discusses the historical basis and the modern implications of the recent exonerations of pol...

12: One young Republican's pursuit of the 'Freedom to Marry' from 2017-06-23T21:31:16

Tyler Deaton's story is one of 23 interviews conducted by Bancroft Library’s Oral History Center at UC Berkeley that explore the national campaign that won federal marriage rights for same-sex coup...

11: For Sayah Bogor, an arduous road from refugee to health researcher from 2017-05-08T23:42:35

Sayah Bogor, a UC Berkeley graduate student in public health, will make the short walk across the stage to receive her master’s degree. For Bogor, a native of war-torn Somalia, the event will mark ...

10: ‘Brooms up!’ Oski, meet Harry Potter from 2017-04-07T19:30:16

Cal Quidditch got its start on Berkeley's campus about eight years ago. For two consecutive years, the team has played in a national competition. "It wasn't expected from a young, scrappy team o...

09: From a border wall to a cultural bridge from 2017-04-05T18:24:41

Imagine a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico not as a barrier, but as a piece of architecture that brings people together. That’s what UC Berkeley architect Ronald Rael does in his new book, '...

08: The carefully crafted sound of Zellerbach Hall from 2016-12-22T20:15:50

The acoustics that make the sound of Zellerbach Hall didn’t just happen. The sound has been created with an acoustic system of some 40 microphones and 140 speakers, all intricately placed t...

07: How Moscow’s Tsar Bell found its voice — at Berkeley from 2016-04-21T22:48:36

We’re at UC Berkeley’s Campanile courtyard listening to sounds of an ancient bell that have never been heard before. It’s the 20-foot-tall, 200-ton Russian “Tsar Bell” — the largest bell in...

06: Is CDC’s alcohol warning paternalistic? Why some women think so from 2016-02-18T22:22:16

The CDC released a report recommending that women of childbearing age who aren’t taking birth control should abstain from drinking alcohol. Berkeley Law professor Melissa Murray says the report ...

05: Like GPS, but for your sex drive from 2016-02-11T22:50:40

These days so many of our devices are smart. Our phones are smart. Our cars are smart. Our TVs are smart. And now, even vibrators can be smart. It’s called Lioness. It’s a sleek, sophisticated v...

04: Berkeley Law professor Melissa Murray on the darker side of marriage from 2015-11-10T21:51:41

Marriage — modernly — is seen as sort of unalloyed good, says law professor Melissa Murray. “Everyone would like to get married, or most people would like to get married. Certainly, most people’...

03: The ‘Big Idea’ that’s leading the push to make UC carbon-neutral from 2015-10-02T00:30:46

In 2004, Scott Zimmermann had a big idea. He had just quit the oil and gas industry — he’d been working in it for eight years, trying to reduce the impacts of fossil fuels — and enrolled at UC B...

02: On Berkeley time? He keeps Campanile's clocks ticking from 2015-07-28T22:06:53

The Campanile clock tower is the campus’s North Star. At 100 years old and 307 feet tall, it’s a landmark everyone knows and trusts. But what happens when the clocks stop? There’s only one perso...

01: Trudy's bloom raises a stink from 2015-07-27T16:22:03

We’re at the UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley. A long line curves through the gardens, and a small group huddles in a steamy greenhouse, all here to get a whiff of Trudy.

Garden director Pa...