Berkeley Voices

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Berkeley Voices explores the work and lives of fascinating UC Berkeley faculty, students, staff, and visiting scholars and artists. It aims to educate listeners about Berkeley’s advances in teaching and research, spark curiosity about the deeper layers of American history and to build community across our diverse campus. It's produced and hosted by Anne Brice in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs.

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Wikipedia as resistance
This UC Berkeley class makes queer contributions visible
How a Pomo elder's recordings are helping this student reclaim his culture
For Berkeley graduate student Tyler Lee-Wynant, linguistic materials in the California Language Archive featuring his great-great aunt have opened a portal to his family’s history and led him to teach their language to new generations.
New season: Two sides of a story
In this season of Berkeley Voices, we hear from Berkeley scholars working on life-changing research, and from the people who’ve been changed by it.
How new color 'olo' stretches the limits of human perception
Last month, UC Berkeley researchers tricked the eye into seeing a new color they named "olo." They say it could transform how we understand and treat eye diseases, and expand the way we see the world around us.
AI helped this paralyzed woman speak again after 18 years
UC Berkeley researchers explain how a brain-computer interface restored Ann Johnson’s ability to speak after 18 years.
Fakes, replicas and forgeries: What counts as art?
In the early 2000s, UC Berkeley rhetoric professor Winnie Wong visited Dafen village in China, where artists painted replicas of famous pieces like the Mona Lisa and Starry Night. It dramatically changed how she thinks about art and those who make it.
An evolution of American friendship, from Victorian-era letters to Swiftie bracelets
An American studies class at UC Berkeley explores how the depiction of friendship in popular culture and media has shifted throughout history, and what it looks like today.
How fear is being weaponized against you (and how to respond)
We’re bombarded with messaging trying to hijack our quick fear responses, says UC Berkeley political scientist Marika Landau-Wells. Brain research could tell us more about how to change our perception of what’s dangerous and what's not.
Think you know what dinosaurs were like? Think again.
Was the T. rex brightly colored with feathers? Did it run as fast as movies make it seem? How new discoveries challenge our long-held beliefs about the world of paleontology.
As crises escalate, so does our fascination with cults
UC Berkeley Professor Poulomi Saha, who teaches a class on cults in popular culture, says students today see limited economic possibilities, the scourge of war and the looming threat of climate change and think, "It doesn't have to be this way."
Psychopathy goes undetected in some people. Why?
UC Berkeley psychology professor Keanan Joyner and his colleagues found that by using a combination of methods tailored to the multidimensional nature of psychopathy, we could transform how we identify and understand this personality disorder.
123: One brain, two languages
UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson is part of a research team that has discovered where people who are bilingual process and store language-specific sounds and sound sequences in their brains.
122: A language divided
Rachel Jeantel was on the phone with Trayvon Martin moments before he was killed in 2012. But when she testified at George Zimmerman's trial, the jury deemed her an unreliable witness. Why?
121: A linguist's quest to legitimize U.S. Spanish
Spanish speakers in the U.S., among linguists and non-linguists, have been denigrated for the way that they speak, says UC Berkeley Professor Justin Davidson.
120: Medieval song holds clues to lost dialects
In his research, UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Saagar Asnani looks at manuscripts from between the 12th and 14th centuries in medieval France. "If we unpack the genre of music, we will find a very precise record of how language was spoken."
119: Art student's photo series explores masculine vulnerability
Photographer Brandon Sánchez Mejia, whose cohort is part of UC Berkeley's Department of Art Practice's 100th year, showcased his senior thesis project, "A Masculine Vulnerability," in the campus's Worth Ryder Art Gallery last semester.
118: Take the first Black history tour at UC Berkeley
“Just knowing this history, walking around campus and knowing it, you really feel like you belong,” said fourth-year student Daniella Lake, who was on the Black Lives at Cal team that created the tour.
117: Bonobos and chimps show 'a rich recognition' for long-lost friends and family
Extensive social memory had previously been documented only in dolphins and up to 20 years. "What we're showing here," said UC Berkeley researcher Laura Simone Lewis, "is that chimps and bonobos may be able to remember that long — or longer."
Afterthoughts: The true origins of American immigration policy
Historians have long assumed that immigration policy in the U.S. began with federal laws to restrict Chinese immigration in the late 19th century. But it started before that — with the Irish.
116: How WWII incarceration fueled generations of Japanese American activists
The first episode of the Oral History Center's new season about the legacy of Japanese American incarceration

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