Berkeley Talks

Ashton Applewhite, named one of PBS Next Avenue’s Influencers in Aging and author of the breakaway new book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, share her own personal experiences with ageism — defined as “treating a person differently on the basis of age" and discusses her work, which explores ageism’s destructive impact on individuals, our communities and our policies.Chronological age is often a key factor in decision-making about treatment for physical and mental health; or selection for housing, employment, or access to other opportunities, says Applewhite. Yet, she argues, age alone is a poor predictor and she pushes back on ageist assumptions that people within any given age group are all the same. They vary substantially in their capacities−and census data show growing diversity in every age group.Nevertheless, unfounded ageist stereotypes result in marginalization and discrimination against older people.This Chair Rocks does not simply identify the problem. It offers a wealth of ideas about how to counteract ageism. As Applewhite explored the subject, she discovered a clear upside: “The possibility that life could be more fun in your eighties had never crossed my mind…nor that such joyful clarity would be rooted in awareness — not denial — that time was short and therefore to be savored.”This talk, given on March 15, 2019, was hosted by Ashby Village and the UC Berkeley Retirement Center, who are committed to transforming aging in community. They hope this talk sparks interest in continuing an intergenerational conversation about collaborative efforts to build a community that works well for all ages.Read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Composer Jimmy López, who earned his Ph.D. in music from UC Berkeley in 2012, speaks about Dreamers, an oratorio he was commissioned by Cal Performances to write that is informed by interviews held with undocumented students at UC Berkeley. The piece was written in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, who created the libretto. Esa-Pekka Salonen, the music director designate of the San Francisco Symphony, conducted the world premiere performance of Dreamers in Zellerbach Hall on Sunday, March 17 at 3 p.m. with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, soprano Ana María Martínez, and a chorus of nearly 80 voices, including those from the UC Berkeley Chamber Choir.López's talk was held in an open session of the academic course Thinking Through Art and Design @ Berkeley: Creativity, Migration, Transformation taught by Peter Glazer and Stan Lai held in Osher Auditorium, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) on Thursday, March 14 at 12 p.m. It was free and open to the public.Read a Q&A with Jimmy López, "Alumnus's 'Dreamers' oratorio inspired by Berkeley undocumented students" on Berkeley News.See events related to upcoming shows by Cal Performances on calperformances.org.Watch the world premiere of Dreamers and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his latest book, How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan turns his focus to psychedelics — LSD, psilocybin mushrooms and the like — exploring their history, use, and potential to help people not only transcend, but also treat conditions from addiction to anxiety. On March 5, 2019, Pollan joined Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and founder of the Greater Good Science Center, for a conversation about the book.This talk was recorded by Educational Technology Services. Watch the video and read "A trip of his own: Michael Pollan on writing and the power of psychedelics" on Berkeley Library News. Photo by Alia Malley.Read a transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

NIMBYism, geographical limitation and weaponized policies have led California to the biggest housing crisis in state history. Can state-level policies fix a very local problem?  California housing is an undeniable problem. Rents are too high and there is not enough housing for those who need it in the places they want it. But how did we get here? Why has the development of solutions shifted from a city level to a state level?UC Berkeley MPP student Spencer Bowen speaks with Ophelia Basgal and Elizabeth Kneebone from the Terner Center and California Assembly member, David Chiu. Here are five intersecting causes of California’s housing crisis that they help identify:  Limited land and diverse geography  Production not keeping pace with booming job market Housing is expensive to build and new methods are limited Cities wield their power to slow down or vote down projects that they don’t like  Proposition 13 and the California Environmental Quality Act have been weaponized to limit housing production Talk Policy To Me is a podcast built by students at the Goldman School of Public Policy in partnership with the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans.Read more and listen to other Talk Policy to Me episodes on the Goldman School of Public Policy's website.Read the transcript and listen on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How are individuals and groups racially classified? What are the meanings attached to different racial categories? And what impact do these categories have on a range of policies and practices? Taking the U.S. Census as a site of racial classification, Michael Omi, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, examines the shifting state definitions of race and how individuals and groups assert, embrace, reject and negotiate different racial categories and identities.Michael Omi is co-author, along with Howard Winant, of Racial Formation in the United States (3rd edition, 2015), a groundbreaking work that transformed how we understand the social and historical forces that give race its changing meaning over time and place. At UC Berkeley, Omi serves as the associate director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, is a core faculty member in the Department of Ethnic Studies and is an affiliated faculty member of sociology and gender and women’s studies. Omi is also a recipient of UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award, an honor bestowed on only 240 Berkeley faculty members since its inception in 1959. This lecture, given on Feb. 20, 2019, was part of a series of talks sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).Listen and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

National analysts have noted the sharply increased number of women running for elective office in 2018, especially among Democrats. In a panel discussion, “Year of the Woman?," Nicole Boucher, co-executive director of the California Donor Table; Mary Hughes, a democratic strategist and founder of Close the Gap California; and Amanda Renteria, chair of Emerge America examines the phenomenon in the California context and whether it's likely to continue in future election cycles. The discussion was moderated by Laurel Rosenhall, a political reporter for Calmatters.This discussion was part of a Feb. 1, 2019 conference, “California Votes: A Post-Mortem on the 2018 Election,” hosted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.Listen and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dancer/choreographer Akram Khan appeared in the West Coast premiere of XENOS, a Cal Performances co-commission, in Zellerbach Hall on March 2-3, 2019. Khan, who is of British and Bangladeshi descent, is celebrated for physically demanding, visually arresting solo productions that combine Indian kathak with contemporary dance to tell stories through movement. Khan’s full length solo performances of XENOS conjure the despair and alienation suffered by an Indian soldier recruited to fight for the British Crown in the trenches of World War I.As an instinctive and natural collaborator, Khan has been a magnet for world-class artists from other cultures and disciplines. His previous collaborators include the National Ballet of China, actress Juliette Binoche, ballerina Sylvie Guillem, singer Kylie Minogue, writer Hanif Kureishi and composer Steve Reich.In this talk, Akram Khan speaks with Cal Performances’ interim artistic director Rob Bailis in the weekly open session of the Arts + Design course Creativity, Migration, Transformation held at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive on Feb. 28, 2019. The event was free and open to the public.More information about the class can be found on Berkeley Arts and Design's website.Listen and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Berkeley Law Professor Catherine Fisk, author of Writing for Hire: Unions, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue (2016), gave a lecture on Feb. 13, 2019, that examines some of the recent radical changes in the law of the workplace in California and nationwide. She discusses how the transformation of work through the gig economy and through the decline of union presents unprecedented challenges for regulating work for the common good, but how it also presents opportunities for a fresh start.This lecture was part of a series of talks sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).Catherine Fisk is the Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at Berkeley. She teaches and writes on the law of the workplace, on the legal profession, and on free speech and freedom of association. Her most recent book is Writing for Hire: Unions, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue (2016) and her next book will be on labor protest and labor lawyers in the mid-20th century.Listen and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ari Banias is the author of Anybody (2016), which was named a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Center USA Literary Award. His poems have appeared in various journals, in Troubling The Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics and as part of the MOTHA exhibition, Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects. Banias is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Stanford University's Wallace Stegner program. He lives in Berkeley, teaches poetry and works with small press books.On Feb. 7, 2019, Banias read his poetry — from Anybody and some new work — at Lunch Poems, an ongoing poetry reading series at UC Berkeley that began in 2014. All readings happen from 12:10 to 12:50 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month in Morrison Library in Doe Library. Admission is free.Listen and read the transcript on Berkeley News.See all Berkeley Talks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard Rothstein, a fellow of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley and author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America, gave a lecture on Feb. 6, 2019, about the forgotten history of how federal, state and local policy segregated metropolitan areas nationwide, creating racially homogenous neighborhoods in patterns that violate the Constitution and require remediation. This lecture was part of a series of talks sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).Rothstein is a distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a senior fellow, emeritus, at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and of the Haas Institute at UC Berkeley. He is also the author of Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right (2008) and Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap (2004). Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.