Alexis Madrigal: "To Know A Place"

Recorded on December 4, 2025, this video features a Social Science Matrix Distinguished Lecture, "To Know a Place," presented by journalist and author Alexis Madrigal. Madrigal has long explored how technology, culture, and environment shape our lives; from his work co-founding The COVID Tracking Project to his books Powering the Dream and The Pacific Circuit. In this talk, Madrigal turns his attention to the question of how we come to know a place. Drawing on his background as a reporter, writer, and thinker of cities, landscapes, and histories, he explores different ways of writing about and understanding place, revealing how perspective, memory, and narrative inform the stories we tell about the world around us. About the Speaker Alexis Madrigal is a journalist in Oakland, California. He is the co-host of KQED's current affairs show, Forum, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, where he co-founded The COVID Tracking Project. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief of Fusion and a staff writer at Wired. His latest book, The Pacific Circuit, came out in March 2025 from MCD x FSG. He is the proprietor of the Oakland Garden Club, a newsletter for people who like to think about plants. Madrigal authored the book Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. He has been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Information School and UC Berkeley's Center for the Study of Technology, Science, and Medicine as well as an affiliate with Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. He was born in Mexico City, grew up in rural Washington State, and went to Harvard. A transcript of this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/alexis-madrigal.