Berkeley Talks

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. 

“Stories give a basis and a justification for people to take real life action,” Tangherlini said at an Alumni and Parents Weekend at Homecoming event on campus in October. “They can be retrospective justification, but they can also be motivating justification.” 

A computational folklorist, who’s also a professor in the School of Information and associate director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Tangherlini works at the intersection of informal culture, storytelling and AI. He uses a combination of methods from the study of folklore and machine learning to describe storytelling networks and classify stories. 

“This is where we start to unravel narrative at internet scale,” he said. “One of the things that's kind of interesting, if we start to think about conspiracy theories, is you've all heard little bits of these in different places. But what a conspiracy theory is able to do is to take simple threat narratives and link them together to form complex representations of threatening groups and their interconnections.” 

Tangherlini went on to address specific conspiracy theories, from #stopthesteal to Pizzagate, and explored the potential of using storytelling to change the conversation. 

“Can we use the structure of the storytelling to … question exclusionary ideas about who belongs and turn them into more inclusive ideas in the storytelling itself?” he asked. “Can we question ideas of what is threatening? Can I develop ways to steer conversations to more inclusive and less destructive strategies?”

This Oct. 18 event was hosted by Berkeley’s Division of Arts and Humanities.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News.

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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 School of Public Policy and Cal Performances, and was part of the Goldman School’s Interrogating Democracy series.

Panelists include: 

• Janet Napolitano, professor of public policy and director of the new Center for Security in Politics; former secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration; former president of the University of California. 
• Robert Reich, emeritus professor of public policy; senior fellow at the Blum Center for Economic Development; former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.
• Maria Echaveste, policy and program development director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy; former assistant to the president and deputy White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration; president and CEO of the Opportunity Institute.
• Angela Glover Blackwell (moderator), chief vision officer for the Goldman School of Public Policy’s new Democracy Policy Initiative; founder-in-residence of PolicyLink.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks).

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In Berkeley Talks episode 211, Bradley Onishi, a scholar of religion, an ex-evangelical minister and the co-host of the politics podcast Straight White American Jesus, discusses Project 2025, Christian nationalism and the November elections.

“Project 2025 is a deeply reactionary Catholic vision for the country,” said Onishi, who gave the 2024 Berkeley Lecture on Religious Tolerance on Oct. 1. “It's a Christian nationalism fueled by Catholic leaders, and in many cases, reactionary Catholic thought.”

Many see Trump’s vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance, a first-term senator from Ohio, as bolstering Trump’s outsider image, said Onishi. But it has gone mostly unnoticed that Vance is a radical religious politician, even more so than former Vice President Mike Pence.  

“Vance's Catholicism has barely registered as a driving factor in his political profile, and yet it serves as an interpretive key for understanding why Vance was chosen and how he brings a populist radicalism to a potential second Trump presidency — and a direct link to Project 2025,” he said.

The UC Berkeley event was sponsored by the Endowed Fund for the Study of Religious Tolerance, the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, the Center for Race and Gender, the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, Social Science Matrix and the Center for Right-Wing Studies.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks).

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In 2011, mass protests erupted in Syria against the four-decade authoritarian rule of the Assad family. The uprising, which became part of the larger pro-democracy Arab Spring that spread through much of the Arab world, was met with a brutal government crackdown. 

Soon after, the country descended into a devastating civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians and displaced over 13 million people, more than half of the country’s prewar population. 

When the civil war broke out, groups of volunteers formed to provide emergency response to communities across Syria. In 2014, those volunteers voted to form the Syria Civil Defence, a national humanitarian organization widely known as the White Helmets. Since then, the group has expanded to become a nearly 3,000-strong network that has saved more than 128,000 lives in Syria.

In their daring and life-threatening work, the White Helmets provide critical emergency services, including medical care, ambulances and search-and-rescue operations. They also document military attacks and coordinate with NGOs in pursuit of justice and accountability for the Syrian people. 

In Berkeley Talks episode 210, we hear from the director of the White Helmets, Raed al-Saleh, and from Farouq Habib, a founding member of the organization who serves as their deputy general manager for external affairs. They were part of a panel discussion hosted by Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center on Sept. 19, 2024.

“For us, as Syrian people, the most strategic and important work is on justice and accountability, our human rights work,” said al-Saleh, whose remarks were translated by Habib during the event. 

The group has become instrumental in exposing human rights violations and atrocities during the war. After they used GoPro cameras to record a double-tap strike in 2015 — when two strikes are launched in quick succession, often targeting civilians or first responders — the White Helmets recognized that the videos could be used to document these war crimes.  

“We realized that the footage … is not only important for media awareness and quality assurance, but it’s even more important to document the atrocities and the violations of international human rights law and how to use that in the future to pursue accountability.”

When asked later in the discussion how the White Helmets envision the future of Syria, al-Saleh replied that they want to see “a peaceful Syria, where people can live with dignity and respect to human rights and support human rights everywhere.”

Habib and al-Saleh were joined on the panel by Andrea Richardson, a senior legal researcher for investigations at Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center, and emergency physician and medical adviser Rohini Haar, a Berkeley Law lecturer and a research fellow at the Human Rights Center. The discussion was moderated by Andrea Richardson, executive director of the Human Rights Center. 

Learn more about Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center.

Read the transcript and listen to the episode on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

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In Berkeley Talks episode 209, renowned legal scholars Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law, and Nadine Strossen, professor emerita of the New York School of Law and national president of the ACLU from 1991 to 2008, discuss free speech challenges facing universities today. They covered topics including hate speech, First Amendment rights, the Heckler’s Veto, institutional neutrality and what steps universities can take to avoid free speech controversies. 

The conversation, which took place on Sept. 11, was held in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, in which thousands of students protested successfully for their right to free political speech at UC Berkeley. Instead of having a moderator, the speakers were given a list of questions they posed to each other, and took turns answering them. 

At one illuminating moment, Chemerinsky asked Strossen what steps she might take to reduce the harmful effects of polarized political speech on campus. 

“I think that punishment is not an effective way to change somebody's attitudes,” Strossen answered, “which is what we are concerned about, especially in an educational environment. Treating somebody like a criminal or even shaming, shunning and ostracizing them is not likely to open their hearts and minds. So I think it is as ineffective as a strategy for dealing with discrimination as it is unjustified and consistent with First Amendment principles.

“But there are a lot of things that universities can and should do — and I know from reading about your campus, that you are doing … It's gotten justified nationwide attention.”

Strossen went on to emphasize the importance of education, not only in free speech principles, but in other civic principles, as well, like the history of discrimination and anti-Semitism. 

Beyond education, Strossen said, “universities have to show support for members of the community who are the targets of hateful speech by raising their own voices, but also by providing psychological and other counseling and material kinds of support.”

The event was sponsored by HxA Berkeley and Voices for Liberty, of George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School. It was co-sponsored by Berkeley Law’s Public Law and Policy program, the Berkeley Liberty Initiative and the Jack Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research.

Read the transcript and listen to the episode on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

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In Berkeley Talks episode 208, three UC Berkeley professors from a wide range of disciplines — psychology, biology and ethnic studies — broach a deep question: What is understanding?

“When I think about it through the lens of being a psychologist, I really think about understanding as a demonstration of, say, knowledge that we have about the world,” begins Arianne Eason, an assistant professor of psychology, in this episode. 

“But that knowledge doesn't necessarily have to be through what we say. It doesn't necessarily have to be explicit. It's really about shaping the way that we engage with the world around us, and with those around us, and being very flexible. 

“I think, a lot of times, if we’re thinking about the college context, and what is understanding, people's first reaction might be, ‘I'm able to give an answer.’ But that's not really understanding. It's really about being able to apply it to different contexts that you may not have seen before. 

“And I think kind of wrapped up in that for me is a recognition of what you don't know. To really understand also means to recognize what you don't understand, and where the limits of your knowledge are.” 

The fall 2024 discussion also included Christian Paiz, an associate professor of ethnic studies, and Hernan Garcia, an associate professor of molecular and cell biology and of physics. 

It’s part of a video series for Research, Discovery and You, a course for new students offered every fall semester by Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science. In the course, students are introduced to different ways of thinking and approaches to knowledge production as practiced across the college’s 79 majors.  

Research, Discovery and You is taught by Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, professor of psychology and the college’s associate dean of student outreach and engagement, and Aileen Liu, the college’s director of curricular engagement initiatives. 

The video series, part of the course’s recent redesign, was supported by the College of Letters and Science and the Division of Undergraduate Education’s Instructional Technology and Innovation Micro Grant Program.

Read the transcript and listen to the episode on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

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In Berkeley Talks episode 207, bestselling author and UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Michael Pollan discusses how he chooses his subjects, why he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and the role of storytelling in shifting our perspective. 

“We're wired for story,” he told KQED’s Mina Kim, whom he joined in conversation at a UC Berkeley event in May 2024. “We're a storytelling and consuming people, and we remember better and we're moved more by narrative than we are by information or argument. 

“The shorter journalism gets, the more it relies on argument to get any kind of heat. And I just don't think that's how you change minds. I think changing minds has to work at all levels: It has to work at the intellectual level, it has to work at the emotional level, and at even probably subliminal levels, and story does that.

“When you look at great pieces of narrative journalism, people don't even realize their minds have been changed by the time they get to the end of it.”

Pollan has written eight books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2010), about the impact of our various food choices on animal welfare and the environment, and How to Change Your Mind (2018), an exploration of the history of psychedelics and their effects on the human mind. He recently retired from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he taught for many years.

Read the transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

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There’s a scene toward the end of the new Pixar film Inside Out 2 where the main character, 13-year-old Riley, is having a panic attack in the penalty box at a hockey match. 

She’s just been reprimanded for tripping an opponent in frustration. On the outside, she’s seen sitting in the small space while grasping at her chest and neck, breathing in and out, faster and faster. On the inside, the character Anxiety, one of Riley’s newest emotions, is spinning in a glitchy loop at her brain’s control board. 

After a few moments, Riley slowly begins to notice and reconnect with the world around her. Her panic subsides, her breathing steadies and she centers herself.

It’s a gripping illustration of a common (and terrifying) experience, and a reminder for teens and parents alike that there’s nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to anxiety. For experts who consulted on Inside Out 2, normalizing the emotion was part of the goal.

“You have so much pressure on young people to be perfectionistic and excel in everything,” said UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, who consulted on how to convey and understand emotions in the film. “Panic and anxiety, those are part of our evolutionary design. They have their point. They can get excessive, of course, but just to be there and to have a language, to let the child know they're not alone, that these are common reactions, is such a powerful [message].”

In Berkeley Talks episode 206, Keltner joins a panel of others who worked on Inside Out 2 — clinical psychologist Lisa Damour, who served as a scientific consultant on the film with Keltner, and the film’s lead editor, Maurissa Horwitz. Together, they discuss the unique pressures that teenagers face, the science behind emotions, and how all of them, even the most uncomfortable, have a purpose.

“I felt like I was learning more about my adolescent self as I worked on this movie,” said Horwitz. “I think being able to really name those emotions that come up during this period … and knowing that there's that amount of growth and reworking going on physically inside [your brain], it's just a great thing to be aware of as a touchstone.”

“I'm hearing that conversations are happening in families, whether it's around anxiety or self-talk,” she continued, “and that parents and families are feeling seen by this movie and relate to it so much. It's really incredible to be a part of that.” 

This July 2024 conversation was moderated by Allison Briscoe-Smith, a child clinical psychologist and a senior fellow at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, where Keltner is the faculty director.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Screenshot from Inside Out 2.

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In Berkeley Talks episode 205, sports journalist Jemele Hill discusses her career at the intersection of sports, race and culture in the U.S. at a UC Berkeley event in January 2020.

"Sports journalism," began KALW radio journalist Hana Baba, with whom Hill joined in conversation as part of a Cal Performances speaker series. "So you’re growing up, you’re watching TV, you’re reading the papers ... When did you realize that this is a male journalist's space?

"I knew that, but I didn’t know it," replied Hill, author of the 2022 memoir Uphill and host of the podcast Jemele Hill Is Unbothered. "And this is why — whenever I talk about mentorship, I preach this to both mentees and mentors: The first thing you can give a mentee and the first responsibility as a mentor, you need to give them a sense of belonging."

She went on to describe how, when she was in an apprenticeship program for the Detroit Free Press, two women journalists — feature writer Johnette Howard and sports writer Rachel Jones — were assigned to be her mentors.

"So I never knew that it was something I wasn’t supposed to be doing because the very first person I knew that did it was a woman. ... And so because I got that early confidence at the beginning of my career, I just never went through a period of self-doubt, which is totally normal for any woman in a male-dominated space, especially a Black woman. So I was very lucky that I got that sense of belonging early." 

Later on, Hill discussed when NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem throughout the San Francisco 49ers’ season in 2016 to protest racial injustice, effectively ending his football career. 

“I mean, the NFL owners are spineless,” said Hill, who worked for ESPN for more than a decade and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists in 2018.

“I knew Colin Kaepernick would never play in the NFL the moment Donald Trump said his name … One of the few things that a lot of people unfortunately agree with the [former] president about is that Colin Kaepernick should not be taking a knee. So, he [Trump] knows every time he says his [Kaepernick’s] name, that it is giving him a level of universal support … that he doesn’t experience usually.

“And so what does that say about people in this country? … We just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, commemorated him. And the same people I saw talking about how great Dr. King was for his nonviolent protest are also the same people who think Colin Kaepernick doesn’t deserve to play in the NFL? … But the NFL, I think, as we have seen in the case with Muhammad Ali, as we have seen is the case with a lot of history, 20 years from now they’ll be telling a different story. They’ll act like all of this never happened.”

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks).

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In Berkeley Talks episode 204, Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, discusses the history of the Supreme Court and how its recent decisions will impact generations to come. 

“When you think of the topics for the first two years of this supermajority — guns, abortion, affirmative action, the interest of the fossil fuel industry — that doesn't sound like a court,” Waldman said to UC Berkeley Law Professor Maria Echaveste, whom he joined in conversation in April 2024. “That sounds like a political caucus.

“And so, I think disentangling our reverence for the Constitution and the rule of law, which is vital to the country and deeply embedded in who we are, with the specific role of the Supreme Court, and especially this Supreme Court, is a challenge. But I think we have to find a way to do it.”

The Supreme Court issued decisions in June and July that may have historic impacts on American society, but because Waldman's talk took place before these decisions were issued, he doesn’t discuss them in this conversation.

This event was hosted by Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy as part of its new Interrogating Democracy series.

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on improving systems of democracy and justice. Waldman is a constitutional lawyer and author of the 2023 book, The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America. He served as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States in 2021 and worked in the White House for President Bill Clinton alongside Echaveste.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks/).

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Screenshot of the cover of Waldman's book, The Supermajority.

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