The Edge

How is it possible to be blind and able to see at the same time? In this episode, we explore a bizarre, paradoxical neurological condition called blindsight, which challenges everything we think we know about vision—and offers insight into the nature of human consciousness. Leah is joined by a UC Berkeley researcher and Simon Lewis (JD ‘80), a film producer and survivor of a traumatic brain injury, to discuss how blindsight works and its implications for understanding the origin of consciousness. 

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It’s not easy coming up with the perfect opening line on Tinder. Should you play it cute? Ask a thought-provoking question? Woo them with a witty remark? One entrepreneur thinks he has the answer: robot-generated text. Artificial intelligence is already helping us compose emails and complete sentences, so why stop there? Laura and Leah talk to UC Berkeley grad and the founder of Keys about the possibilities—and dangers—of letting robots do the talking for us. 

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You hear about blockchain everywhere: social media, the news, the guy next door. Some say that in a few years, everyone will use it for everything, much like the internet. But right now we’re in the early days, and it’s pretty Wild West. (Think: early ’90s internet.) Laura and Leah talk to Medha Kothari, a UC Berkeley alum and founder of she256, a non-profit promoting diversity in blockchain, about what blockchain is and why it has the potential to be a fairer technology than the ones we’ve already built.

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Passenger pigeons. Woolly mammoths. Neanderthals. They’re all extinct. But what if we could bring them back? And if we could, should we? Geneticists are exploring de-extincting extinct and near-extinct species, but ethical and logistical problems abound. Laura and Leah sit down with a genetic engineer and an ecologist from UC Berkeley to understand how de-extinction works and the unintended consequences of playing god. Life, uh, finds a way.

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Since the first human left Earth’s atmosphere in 1961, few earthlings—and even fewer private citizens—have had the opportunity to “boldly go” there. But, with new advancements from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other spaceflight companies, wealthy tourists could soon be booking rooms in hotels in outer space. As with any new industry, the rise of space tourism raises some new, sometimes uncomfortable, questions: Are we colonizing space? Is this just another exclusive vacation experience for the ultra-rich? Why are billionaires spending so much money on space tourism when there are plenty of humans on Earth without food, housing, or health insurance? Laura and Leah speak with two UC Berkeley grads, including the fifth-ever space tourist and one of the minds behind the universe’s first space hotel.

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Five years after 29-year-old, terminally ill Brittany Maynard makes national news by choosing to end her life early, medically assisted death continues to face enormous legal and social barriers. And yet public support of the practice is high. As life-expectancy and palliative care improve, we face new questions: Under what circumstances are people allowed to choose when and how they die? And how might rethinking the conversation and practices around death change our very conception of it? To find out, Laura and Leah speak with California’s leading end-of-life doctor and a healthy octogenarian who plans to quit while she’s ahead.

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Half a century after the counterculture movement swept through the Bay Area and “mind altering substances” were banished from the laboratory, researchers at the new UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics are reviving a long-buried field of research. Is this the beginning of a psychedelic renaissance? Are psychedelics the new frontier in both understanding and treating psychological disorders? And what happens when you “shake the snowglobe” of the mind? Laura and Leah speak with a neuroscientist and a BCSP Senior Guide to find out.

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How did video gaming, or esports, make it from your parents’ basement to the big leagues? Laura and Leah discuss with student esport “athletes,” an administrator, and a team owner. Also discussed: why UC Berkeley is investing in gaming as a career path, whether it should be considered a sport, and the industry’s fraught but promising relationship with women gamers. 

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After an unsettling encounter with a turkey, Laura resolves to eat less meat and takes Leah on a journey through the alternative meat industry. Will real, flesh and blood meat be obsolete in 15 years, as one industry leader suggests? Laura and Leah discuss with the director of UC Berkeley’s Alt: Meat Lab, Dr. Ricardo San Martin, and a former student who is developing a faux-chicken drumstick. (The question on everyone’s mind is: if it’s vegan, what’s the drumstick bone?) Also on the docket: how to turn plants into burgers, why many meat alternatives on the market aren’t good for you, the cultural and moral implications of meat-eating, and what the food of the future might look like.  

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When a Berkeley student launches an AI-generated blog that goes viral, Leah and Laura wonder if robots will soon replace us all. Will the journalists, novelists, and poets of the future be robots? What does this mean for art? Programmer/poet and UC Berkeley grad Allison Parrish reads her own robot poetry and discusses the creative process, experimental writing, and our anxieties surrounding technology. Special guest, editor in chief, Pat Joseph, joins the pod to ponder the question, what’s missing from AI-generated art?

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