UC Berkeley (Audio)

Berkeley student and mother, Valeska Castañeda, spent much of her summer leading a 350-mile walk from Merced to Mexico in support of immigrant rights. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 29319]

A leading moral and political philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. He explores the ideas of the philosopher Hans Vahinger, who argued that our theories of the world involved understanding things “as if” what is in fact false were true. He uses Vahinger’s ideas to discuss a contemporary philosophical proposal, due to Dan Dennett, that says that human beings can be understood by way of an “intentional strategy” that “consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states …” Since, as Appiah suggests, we are not fully rational, there is a puzzle about why this should work.

Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29293]

Many of the 9.9 million people in Bangalore, India, never know when they’ll turn on the tap and find water flowing. Water is scarce and rationed. Each household gets about 4.5 hours of running water every other day — but when, and if, the water runs can be unpredictable. While high-income households can afford tanks that automatically turn on when the water does, low-income households cannot, meaning that women can devote hours on a weekly basis to waiting for and storing water. UC Berkeley graduate student Christopher Hyun spent his summer working on a research project examining how the people of Bangalore can get more reliable and timely information about when and how long they’ll get water each day. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 29311]

UC Berkeley professors Philip Stark and Tom Carlson are launching a new interdisciplinary project that’s bringing them to three East Bay food "deserts" to forage for wild edibles — dandelions, blackberries, oxalis, plantago, nasturtiums, mallow and more — and to document their availability. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 29312]

Richard Allen, professor and director of the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, discusses the lessons learned from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake which was centered on a section of the San Andreas Fault near Santa Cruz. It shook Northern California at 5:04 p.m., causing 63 deaths, several thousand injuries, and $6 billion in property damage, including the collapse of a section of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge, a section of the Interstate 880 freeway in Oakland, and many residential homes in San Francisco’s Marina District. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Science] [Show ID: 29314]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University, for a discussion of his intellectual journey. Appiah reminisces about his early years in Ghana and Great Britain focusing on the influence of his parents. After outlining his formal education, he discusses the philosophical problems that have interested him. The discussion then turns to his analysis of identity and cosmopolitanism and the interface between them and concludes with a discussion of the importance of conversation in building a cooperative world. Series: "Conversations with History" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29334]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes author Karin Sveen for a discussion of her book, “The Immigrant and the University: Peder Sather and Gold Rush California.” After describing her intellectual journey as a writer and poet, the conversation turns to a discussion of philanthropist Peder Sather, a Norwegian immigrant, who was one of the founders of the University of California and whose philanthropy left an indelible mark on the University including the Campanile, Sather Gate, endowed chairs in history, literature, and classics, and the Sather Law Library. Series: "Conversations with History" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29338]

A web-based survey of more than 1,000 pet owners nationwide analyzed the key personality traits and nurturing styles of people who identified as a “cat person,” a “dog person,” “both” or “neither.”

Surprisingly perhaps, those who expressed the greatest affection for their pets also rated among the most conscientious and neurotic, suggesting that the qualities that make for overbearing parents might work better for our domesticated canine and feline companions, who tend to require lifelong parenting. The research was conducted by UC Berkeley and California State University, East Bay. Mikel Delgado, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley co-authored the study. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29308]

English professor Scott Saul discusses his new book, Becoming Richard Pryor. The richly researched biography about the comedian is accompanied by a website, “Richard Pryor’s Peoria,” which presents more than 200 photographs and documents from Pryor’s first two decades in Peoria, Ill. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29310]

UC Berkeley's Sather Tower, or the "Campanile," houses a large collection of fossils belonging to the Museum of Paleontology. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Science] [Show ID: 29301]