Nell Painter combines the discursive meanings of scholarship with the visual meaning of painting, to answer, literally, why white people are called 'Caucasian,' what that looks like, and how they all relate to our ideas about personal beauty. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 26025]

Telomeres were first recognized in the late 1930s as important structures on chromosome ends. In the 1970s the sequence of these structures was identified in the ciliated protozoa Tetrahymena by Elizabeth Blackburn. In the 1980s telomerase was discovered as an enzyme that elongates telomeres and compensates for natural telomere shortening. Carol Greider, Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Johns Hopkins University, discusses the journey from these curiosity driven discoveries to the appreciation of the role of telomeres in human disease. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 28053]

Telomeres are the chromosomes end-part, that are needed to protect chromosome ends. Due to the way chromosomes are copied, these telomeres shorten with each round of cell division. This shortening is kept in check by the enzyme telomerase which elongates telomeres. However because of the limited amount of telomerase, telomere shorten with age in humans. People who cannot effectively elongate telomeres may show manifestations of a Telomere Syndrome, which include age-related diseases such as bone marrow failure, immune senescence and pulmonary fibrosis. Carol Greider, 2009 Nobel Laureate and professor at Johns Hopkins University, discusses how the seemingly benign structure on chromosome ends can underlie human disease. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 28052]

Why don't people just say what they mean? In this lecture, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker explains the paradoxical appeal of euphemism, innuendo, politeness, and other forms of shilly-shallying. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 27932]

Believe it or not, violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species existence. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker presents the data supporting this surprising conclusion, and explains the trends by showing how changing historical circumstances have engaged different components of human nature. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 27931]

Drawing on fieldwork in new charismatic evangelicals churches in the Bay Area and in Accra, Ghana, Tanya Luhrmann, Stanford University, explores the way that cultural ideas about mind and person alter prayer practice and the experience of God. Luhrmann's work focuses on the way that objects without material presence come to seem real to people, and the way that ideas about the mind affect mental experience. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 26087]

Geographer Carl Ortwin Sauer demonstrated through his work and writings that landscapes are the long-term contingent product of interactions between natural processes and cultural forces. In this lecture, Patrick Kirch, Professor of Anthropology and Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, applies the concept of landscape to the islands of Polynesia. Drawing upon recent multi-disciplinary research, Kirch shows how certain natural properties of islands shaped the course of cultural and social evolution of island peoples, at the same time that cumulative effect of human actions irreversibly altered island environments. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 26014]

The Fulbright Program, administered by the U.S. Department of State, was founded in 1946 for the purposes of fostering exchange between American and international students. In this lecture Harriet Fulbright provides an intimate look into the origins of the program, describing how the idea for international exchange evolved over the course of her husband’s career in Congress. She traces the program’s history from the passage of Senator Fulbright’s 1945 Bill, and what she sees as the future of his legacy.

Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Education] [Show ID: 26013]

Robert Brandom, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, argues that genealogies (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) present the revenge of naturalism on rationalism. Hegel teaches us how to replace the genealogical hermeneutics of suspicion with a hermeneutics of magnanimity that allows us to see naturalism and rationalism as complementing rather than competing with one another. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 25074]

Domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, have insinuated themselves into our society and imagination: long present in our art and narratives, they are now ubiquitous in American homes. Alexandra Horowitz, Barnard College, Columbia University, discusses the dog's historical and contemporary role, attributions typically made to dogs, and an alternative empirical approach to considering dogs. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 25113]