For this episode of Berkeley Talks, we are revisiting an October 2023 conversation in which Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist and host of the podcast The Ezra Klein Show, discusses the difficulties Democratic governments encounter when working to build real things in the real world.

Klein, who has since co-written the 2025 book Abundance with Derek Thompson, joins in a conversation with Amy Lerman, a UC Berkeley political scientist and director of the Possibility Lab.

“To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of the things that we need,” begins Klein. “It’s so stupidly simple, so obvious, that it seems weird there could be any need to write articles or podcasts or truly, God forbid, a book about it. And yet, the story of America in the 21st century — more than that, the story of liberalism, and particularly California liberalism — is a story of chosen scarcity. Why did we choose to build so few homes in the places people most need to live, including here? Why do we choose to build so little clean energy, and make it so hard to build clean energy, that red states are getting far more of the money in the Inflation Reduction Act than blue states?”

“There is this fight within liberalism,” he continues, “and actually also within the right, but I’m going to focus here on liberalism. There’s this division, this troubling of the liberal soul, about what kind of power government should have, how much it should be checked by courts, by regulation, above all, by process. That’s become the liberal way of restraining government. Give it the money to act, give it big ambitions, but make it possible for anybody to sue. And if anybody sues for any reason, then a long process of analysis and negotiation and hearings commence.”

This event took place on Oct. 5, 2023, in UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. It was co-presented by Cal Performances and UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures as part of the Jefferson Memorial Lecture Series.

Watch a video of the event on the Graduate Lectures website.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by HoliznaCC0.

Photo by Lucas Foglia.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the early 1960s, R.J. Reynolds, one of the largest and most profitable tobacco companies in the U.S. at the time, wanted to diversify its business. Its marketing strategies had been highly successful in selling its top brands, like Camel, Winston and Salem cigarettes, and executives thought, Why not apply the same strategies to, say, the food industry?

So in 1963, R.J. Reynolds acquired Hawaiian Punch. It marked the beginning of the tobacco industry’s entry into the food sector.

In the following decades, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris expanded aggressively into the food industry, acquiring major brands, like Del Monte, Nabisco, General Foods, Kraft and 7UP, where they produced hyperpalatable, chemically-engineered foods now known as ultra-processed foods, or UPFs. These products were marketed especially to children and other vulnerable groups.

In Berkeley Talks episode 229, Laura Schmidt, a professor of health policy in the School of Medicine at UC San Francisco, discusses how ultra-processed foods — like cookies, sodas, instant noodles, fish sticks and cereals — are a direct legacy of the tobacco industry, and are responsible for a dramatic rise in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases across the country.

“About 60% of the calories in Americans’ diets are from ultra-processed foods,” says Schmidt, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event in May. “In the mid-’80s, when we see ultra-processed foods starting to scale up in the American food supply, we also see obesity starting to really rise. That is the moment when some of the largest food companies are owned by tobacco companies.”

This talk took place on May 5, 2025, and was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI) and Berkeley Public Health. It was moderated by Isabel Madzorera, an assistant professor in food, nutrition and population health at Berkeley Public Health and co-faculty director at the Berkeley Food Institute.

Watch a video of the event on the Berkeley Food Institute’s YouTube page.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by HoliznaCC0.

Photo by Cory Doctorow via Wikimedia Commons.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Berkeley Talks episode 228, Tony Reames, a professor of environmental justice at the University of Michigan, discusses how the U.S. energy system has persistently harmed marginalized communities, a result of legacies of government-sanctioned policies, like redlining, land theft and resource extraction. He goes on to emphasize the need for intentional efforts to undo these harms.

“When we think about energy justice, the goal is to achieve equity in both the social and economic participation in our energy system,” says Reames, who served as deputy director for energy justice at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Biden-Harris administration.

In 2015, he says, some 14% of U.S. households couldn’t afford their energy bills, and 21% had to decide between buying food and medicine or paying their energy bills. Eleven percent were keeping their homes at an unhealthy temperature, either too hot or too cold, because they couldn’t afford energy or they couldn’t repair their HVAC system. Higher proportions of income spent on energy are linked to negative health outcomes, including premature deaths and a decrease in average life expectancy.

“Black households are more likely to live in communities in the shadows of fossil fuel generation,” says Reames. “Other communities of color are first and worst to experience the impact of climate emergencies. Communities with economies that rely on fossil fuels experience harm as our energy economy shifts. Think about predominantly white communities in Appalachia, offshore drilling communities on the Gulf of Mexico, and refining communities like Richmond here in the Bay Area.”

Although no country explicitly guarantees equal access to energy as a right in its laws, he says, he advocates for using important principles — like fairness, inclusion and repairing harm — to understand who is being left out or treated unfairly in our energy system, and how to guide our energy policies so they are more just and equitable.

This event took place on Dec. 4, 2024, as part of UC Berkeley's Charles M. and Martha Hitchcock Lectures.

Watch a video of the conversation on the Graduate Lectures website.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo courtesy of Tony Reames.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By 2050, the global population is expected to reach about 10 billion people. That means we need to find a way to feed nearly 2 billion more mouths in the next 25 years. Industrial farming practices have already destroyed countless natural ecosystems, and experts say that expanding farmland even further would have devastating consequences for the planet.

In Berkeley Talks episode 227, UC Berkeley Professor Timothy Bowles and journalist Michael Grunwald discuss the impact of our current agricultural methods and debate the ways we can ramp up food production without causing more harm to the environment.

“Agriculture is eating the earth,” says Grunwald, author of the forthcoming book We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate. Farmland, he says, now covers two of every five acres on the planet, “and those are acres that used to be forest and wetlands and savannas that stored a lot of carbon and sheltered a lot of biodiversity.”

In order to avoid further destruction, he contends, we must produce more food on land we already farm by improving the efficiency of our existing industrial systems.

While Bowles agrees that expanding farmland isn’t the answer, he counters that industrial agriculture isn’t either; he argues that industrial farming is detrimental to the environment and human health and perpetuates social and economic inequality. Instead, he advocates for agroecology — sustainable farming that allows farmers to work with nature to create resilient and productive food systems.

“It's already happening all over the world,” says Bowles, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley and lead faculty director of the Berkeley Food Institute. “What hasn't been happening is the political will to make it the foundation of our food system.”

“Coming back here to California, agroecology is when 1.6 million schoolchildren are eating lunches that are not taco beef sticks,” he continues, “but fruits and vegetables and whole grains that are supplied by California farms that are using climate-smart agricultural practices supported by state investments, and building on the successes of an organic agricultural industry that is currently [worth] $11 billion.”

This conversation took place on April 17, 2025, and was sponsored by the Berkeley Food Institute. It was moderated by New York Times correspondent Kim Severson. Watch a video of the conversation.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo by Zoe Richardson via Unsplash+

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It took nearly six years for bestselling author Daniel Handler to sell his first book, a satirical novel called The Basic Eight. When his agent sold it in 1998, it was “for the least amount she had ever negotiated for,” laughed Handler, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event earlier this month.

More than two decades later, Handler has published seven novels. Under his pen name Lemony Snicket, he has written dozens of books for children, including the 13-volume series A Series of Unfortunate Events. His most recent book, And Then? And Then? What else?, is part memoir, part inspiration for aspiring writers.

Handler was the keynote speaker at The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life’s inaugural Jewish Arts and Bookfest, a day of events held on May 4 in celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. Throughout the day, artists and authors came together for panel discussions, workshops and other programming that showcased the Jewish experience through art, culture and storytelling.

In episode 226 of Berkeley Talks, Handler, joined in a conversation by writer and journalist Chanan Tigay, discusses how his Jewish identity shapes his worldview and storytelling, where the name “Lemony Snicket” came from and how a great mentor taught him to read work by authors he admired in order to hone his craft.

“When you suggest that we create our own canon, you don't necessarily mean a list of books that are the most significant to us,” Tigay said to Handler at the event, “but actually, the moments in books, turns of phrase and plot twists that are, in some ways, significant.

“And I'm wondering if you could take us through a bit of your own canon, in that regard, the moments and turns of phrase and plot twists in books, specific books that have been most impactful to you as a writer?”

“For writers, I try to encourage them to seek out what they're enthused by,” Handler responded. “ … So instead of saying, ‘Gosh darn it, Toni Morrison is sure a great writer,’ that you think, ‘What is it about Beloved that I return to, that I think about all the time?’ … Then, you can go back and find that scene, and look at it, and study it for what it is that you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to take from it.”

This conversation was recorded by Aaron Levy-Wolins / J. The Jewish News of Northern California.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small for UC Berkeley.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Berkeley Talks episode 225, The Atlantic journalists Yoni Appelbaum and Jerusalem Demsas discuss the decline of housing mobility in the United States and its impact on economic opportunity in the country.

Appelbaum, author of the 2025 book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity, began by tracing the history of housing mobility in the U.S. and its rapid decline in recent decades. He noted that in the 19th century, one out of three Americans moved to a new residence every year, and as late as 1970, one in five did. Today, only one in 13 people in the U.S. pack up their things and find a new place to live on an annual basis.

“These constant moves in America, made possible by the constant construction of new housing, created a new kind of social order,” said Appelbaum, and most people “ended up better off for it.”

The sharp decline in residential relocation, he said, caused largely by rising housing costs and restrictive zoning, is a major driver of the decline of social mobility, “the largest and least remarked change in America of the last 50 years.”

Building on Appelbaum’s argument, Demsas said that exclusionary housing policies have shifted mobility from a widespread opportunity to a privilege for the affluent and well-educated.

“Most Americans no longer stand to gain by moving toward the places in this country that offer them the greatest opportunities — the greatest professional opportunities, the best education for their children,” said Demsas, author of the 2024 book On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy. Instead, they move toward affordability, she said, which deepens inequality and limits their potential for economic advancement.

The conversation, held in March 2025, was moderated by Paul Pierson, a UC Berkeley professor of political science and director of the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI). The event was co-sponsored by BESI and the Berkeley Center for American Democracy.

Watch a video of the conversation and read more about the speakers.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo by Daniel Abadia/Unsplash+

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is considered the father of Western philosophy, one whose most famous ideas have all but risen to the level of pop culture.

We parrot his claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” His name has been invoked by politicians to bolster their stance against “cancel culture.” There’s even an AI chat app modeled after Socrates that promises intelligent conversations.

But what exactly were Socrates’ philosophical views? We may be quick to reference his name, but if asked, many of us would likely be hard-pressed to give a thorough account of what he actually believed.

In Berkeley Talks episode 224, Agnes Callard, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and author of the 2025 book Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, joins UC Berkeley’s Judith Butler, a Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School and a leading philosopher and theorist, for a conversation.

Together, they dive deep into Socrates’ work and beliefs, discussing the value of pursuing knowledge through open-ended questions, how philosophical inquiry is a collaborative process where meaning and understanding are constructed through conversation, and how critical questioning can lead to greater freedom of thought and help us to ask and answer some of life’s most important questions.

This event took place on Jan. 30, 2025, and was sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities.

Watch a video of the conversation.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When J Finley arrived at UC Berkeley as a graduate student in 2006, she planned on studying reparations and the legacy of slavery. But after a fellowship in South Africa, where she studied the Zulu language and culture, Finley says she realized Black people were never going to get reparations. Switching gears, she started thinking: “How else do Black people make do? Well, we laugh.”

In Berkeley Talks episode 223, Finley, an associate professor of Africana studies at Pomona College who earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2008 and 2012, discusses her 2024 book Sass: Black Women’s Humor and Humanity. During the talk, Finley shares how Black women have used and continue to use humor and, more specifically, sass, to speak back to power and assert their own humanity.

Black women’s humor, she contends, is “rooted in the racist, patriarchal and, many times, degrading conditions from which it developed” and is “an embodied expression of resilience at the moment of crisis that has come to be the hallmark of Black women’s humor.”

It’s not that sass is merely for show, she argues, but there’s an internal process that happens first that is then expressed gesturally and vocally. “If you are a Black woman, and you don't understand yourself as empowered, to have the agency to speak back within those relations,” she says, “in what world can you be free?”

This UC Berkeley event, which took place March 18, was sponsored by the Department of African American Studies.

Read more about J Finley, and her research on the use of Black women’s humor as a form of resistance.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Pomona College photo.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.