Growing up in a Mexican household in San Diego, California, Berkeley student Alexa Carrillo Espinoza says there was always dancing in her home. She'd always wanted to try ballet folklórico, a traditional Mexican dance, but never had the chance. So, when she saw Ballet Folklórico Reflejos de Mexico tabling on Sproul Plaza as a first-year student in 2019, she signed up right away. "As I dance, I have this overwhelming sense of pride," she says.

Listen to the episode, see photos and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/09/17/berkeley-voices-ballet-folklorico/

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Third-year UC Berkeley student Maryam Karimi was born in Afghanistan in September 2001. A month later, the United States invaded Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks. The Taliban was ousted from power, but everyday violence remained. Her family applied for asylum and eventually settled in Fremont, California, when Maryam was 12. Now, she and her family watch as the Taliban once again takes control of their home country. But Maryam knows that Afghans — especially her generation — won't give up. “The fire of revolution and freedom is lit in their hearts. And with a little breeze, it's going to burn brighter than ever before," she said.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/09/03/maryam-karimi-afghanistan/

Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small

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Berkeley News writer Kara Manke discusses a new report from UC Berkeley that shows how allowing lightning fires to burn in Yosemite’s Illilouette Creek Basin recreated a lost — and more resilient — forest ecosystem.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/20/berkeley-voices-wildfire

Photo by Emily Gonthier

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In this interview, Savala Nolan, executive director of Berkeley's social justice center, talks about the "deeply corporeal nature" of her new memoir, Don't Let It Get You Down. "The body is where it all happens," she says. "It's where we experience life. It’s where we experience the world — the joys and the frictions. It’s where we experience the categories and the divisions in the world. They’re very often about our bodies and how other people see our bodies. And so, I think that our bodies become, over time, the site of so much knowledge and epiphany and humor and insight and also lies — we all probably believe lies about our bodies."

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/06/berkeley-voices-podcast-savala-nolan-new-book

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Over the summer, we have been revisiting some of our favorite episodes. In this episode, from 2018, then-Ph.D. candidate Sonia Travaglini talks about how we could use fungi, of which there are more than 5 million species, to mitigate a wide range of environmental and social crises — just by letting them eat our waste.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/07/23/podcast-mushrooms-revisiting/

UC Berkeley photo by Elena Zhukova

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While Fiat Vox is on summer break, we have been revisiting some of our favorite episodes. Today’s episode, originally released in April 2019, is a conversation between UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Professor Emerita Carol Clover about what it was like for women in the academy 50 years ago and how it has changed. They also discuss what it takes to be a strong leader and offer advice to the next generation of Berkeley women.

See photos and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/07/09/podcast-carol-christ-on-women-in-the-academy-revisiting

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Fiat Vox is going on summer break! We'll be back with new episodes in mid-August. In the meantime, we'll be revisiting some of our favorite episodes. Here's one from 2019 about UC Berkeley staffer Erika Johnson, who talks about why her family fled Ukraine after World War II and how ballet connects her to her culture like nothing else does. (Today, Erika is a development coordinator on the major gifts team with University Development and Alumni Relations (UDAR) at UC Berkeley. When this episode first came out, she had a different position with UDAR.)

Listen to the episode, read the transcript and see photos on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/06/04/revisiting-ballet-erika-johnson/

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Today, in the final episode of a three-part series, playwright and UC Berkeley professor Philip Kan Gotanda discusses how, in his Asian American theater workshop, he encourages students to approach issues, like anti-Asian violence, from an "inside-out" point of view, where they look at the world with Asians at the center. We also hear from a student, Wesley Tam, about how Gotanda’s workshop inspired Tam to start the ARC Repertory Theatre on campus.

Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/05/21/podcast-philip-kan-gotanda-part-3/

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In the second part of a three-part series, playwright and UC Berkeley professor Philip Kan Gotanda discusses how he began to write music during the emerging Asian American movement, which began at Berkeley in the late 1960s. And how, after his music career didn’t take off as he’d hoped, he went to law school, where he wrote his first play. Now, he’s one of the most prolific playwrights of Asian American-themed work in the United States.

Listen to the episode, read the transcript and see photos on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/05/14/podcast-philip-kan-gotanda-part-2/

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