Berkeley Talks

Novelist Ilija Trojanow discusses why we need to embrace the idea of utopia in order to imagine a better future.

"It's important to not confuse what does exist with what is impossible, which is how most people use the word "utopian" in everyday parlance," Trojanow says. "Progress has, at times, been utopia come true. By envisaging differing realities, we are imagining alternatives into existence.

"Truly utopian narratives challenge existing preconceptions by opening windows of thought and fantasy that give life to a multitude of possibilities," Trojanow continues. "In order to survive, we will have to redefine our modes of planetary existence, and this will be impossible without powerful utopian imagination. Thus, utopia is not the art of the impossible, it is the rational of the necessary."

Tojanow, author of more than 60 fiction and nonfiction books, delivered the 2022 Mosse Lecture at UC Berkeley on Sept. 1. The annual lecture was organized by Berkeley's Department of German and the Institute of European Studies, in collaboration with the Mosse Foundation and the German Historical Institute's Pacific Office at Berkeley.

Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo courtesy of Ilija Trojanow.

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Pua Case, a Native Hawaiian activist and caretaker from the Flores-Case ʻOhana family, discusses the movement to protect Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii and the tallest mountain in the world.

"We have been standing successfully for 12 years against the building of a huge telescope," Case said at a Berkeley Center of New Media event on Aug. 29, 2022. "Not because it's a telescope, but because it's an 18-story building of any kind that would be built on the northern plateau in a pristine landscape on a sacred mountain, and for so many reasons.

"For 12 years, we have remained visible, we have remained committed, we have remained engaged and fully activated. But it is as if on a daily basis we have never stood because they are determined to build. And so, any of you who are facing what we're facing today, when a corporation, an institution, a developer, whatever the case may be — for us, five countries are determined to build no matter the consequence — it is almost as if you have to re-establish every day that you are here."

This talk was presented as part of the Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium, the History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series, and the Indigenous Technologies Initiative. It was co-sponsored by the American Indian Graduate Program, the Arts Research Center, the Department of Ethnic Studies, Media Studies, the Center for Race and Gender, and Native American Studies.

Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo by Matt Biddulph via Flickr.

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In Berkeley Talks episode 149, Mahesh Srinivasan, an associate professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Psychology, discusses the importance of child-directed speech in language learning, how poverty may suppress parents' speech to their children and how children learn language from overheard speech, a main form of children’s early experience with language in many cultures around the world.

This March 2022 lecture was sponsored by Science At Cal.

Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo by Esteban Benites via Unsplash.

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Robert Full, a professor of integrative biology and founder of the Center for Interdisciplinary Biological Inspiration in Education and Research at UC Berkeley, discusses how nature and its creatures — cockroaches, squirrels, centipedes, geckos — inspire innovative design in all sorts of useful things, from bomb-detecting, stair-climbing robots to prosthetics and other medical equipment.

Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News.

Photo by Tate Lohmiller via Unsplash.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

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A panel of scholars discusses UC Berkeley professor Darieck Scott's new book Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics, which explores how fantasies of Black power and triumph in superhero comics and other genres create challenges to — and respite from — white supremacy and anti-Blackness.

Listen to the discussion and read a transcript on Berkeley News.

Graphic courtesy of the Othering and Belonging Institute.

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"If having a gun really made you safer, then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It’s not," said Gary Younge, a professor of sociology at Manchester University and former editor-at-large at the Guardian, in a lecture at UC Berkeley on March 4, 2020.

"Yet while Americans consistently favor more gun control," Younge continued, "gun laws have generally become more lax. That is partly due to the material resources of the gun lobby. But it is also about the central role of the gun, what it represents in the American narrative, and the inability of gun control advocates to develop a counter-narrative. ... When the national narrative is a story of conquering, dominating, force and power, a broad atavistic attachment to the gun can have more pull than narrower rational arguments to contain it."

Listen to the lecture and read a transcript on Berkeley News.

Detail of a mural by Kyle Holbrook and local youth in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Terence Faircloth via Flickr)

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Abdi Soltani, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, discussed on Feb. 18, 2022, key moments for voting rights and elections throughout U.S. history, current threats to voting that are unfolding across the country and work the ACLU is doing in California.

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

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Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

AP photo by Morry Gash.

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In Berkeley Talks episode 144, Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic joins Berkeley Journalism professor David Barstow to discuss his new book, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live — and How Their Wealth Harms Us All.

This conversation was streamed live on May 4, 2022.

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

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Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

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In Berkeley Talks episode 143, a panel of UC Berkeley experts discuss climate displacement — what it means to abandon places, the power dynamics between the Global South and the Global North, challenges for both the sending and receiving regions, and what needs to happen to address this fast-growing problem.

Panelists include faculty members from Berkeley's new cluster in climate equity and environmental justice:

• Maya Carrasquillo, civil and environmental engineering
• Daniel Aldana Cohen, sociology
• Zoe Hamstead, city and regional planning
• Danielle Rivera, landscape architecture and environmental planning
• Moderated by Karen Chapple, director of Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project and the University of Toronto’s School of Cities

This April 25 event is part of Cal Performances' Illuminations: Place and Displacement series.

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

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Photo by Pablo Paredes.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

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In a special episode, Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute and one of the most prominent researchers working in the field of ethics in artificial intelligence, gives the keynote address to the UC Berkeley School of Information graduating class on May 16. In the speech, Gebru touches on collective action, interconnectedness and the loneliness that may accompany standing on “the right side of history.”

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

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Photo by Noah Berger.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

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