Most of us know by now that recreational cannabis became legal in California on January 1. But there's still a lot we don't know about the plant, despite its long history of human use, says Eric Siegel, the director of the UC Botanical Garden. So the garden is hosting a lecture series called the "Science of Cannabis," where  experts will discuss everything from the environmental impacts of large-scale cannabis cultivation to the neurological effect of cannabis in our brains.

Read more about the lecture series on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/01/16/podcast-science-of-cannabis-lecture-series-uc-botanical-garden/
Photo by Sara Yogi

21: Quit your giggling: the straight dope on cannabis

"People know about Rosa Parks. People know about Martin Luther King Jr. And they know that it's the Montgomery bus boycott that ignited a certain kind of Southern civil rights movement," says Ula Taylor, the chair of the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. 

What people often don't know, she says, is that the boycott was started by the Women's Political Council, a group made up of more than 200 black women led by Jo Ann Robinson in Montgomery, Alabama.

In the last of a four-part series that highlights a different African American leader on campus for our podcast, Fiat Vox, Taylor talks about the women activists that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence and how she encourages her students to harness the leader within themselves to create the world they want to live in.

Read the transcript on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/02/28/podcast-black-history-month-interview-ula-taylor/

27: For Ula Taylor, it's about harnessing the leader within

When Derrika Hunt was in third grade, she didn't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. She remembers telling her mom, "This doesn't feel right to me. Why am I saying this pledge and then going home every day to my community, seeing people suffering, seeing people marginalized?"

Now, a Ph.D. candidate in education at UC Berkeley, Derrika takes teenage girls of color around the world through her nonprofit, Dreamers4Change Foundation. It's a way for them, all of whom are from economically disadvantaged communities, to see that another world exists and realize that change is possible. 

Read the story on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/03/12/podcast-interview-w-grad-student-derrika-hunt/
Photo by Elena Zhukova

28: Creating the world you want, by seeing a world that's possible

There are more than 5 million species of fungi, and each one likes a particular food. Some like sawdust. Others like plastic. Some can even digest heavy metals. After the fungi eat their meal, what was once waste turns into a new, natural and compostable material that can just be left to decompose or be used in all sorts of practical ways, from cleaning up oil spills to fashioning faux leather handbags to building houses. Sonia Travaglini, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, tells us all about it.

Read the story on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/03/29/what-cant-mushrooms-do/
Photo by Elena Zhukova

29: From pollution cleanup to building houses, what can't mushrooms do?

When Marcy Whitebook worked as a childcare teacher in the 1970s, she made less than $2 an hour. She was amazed at how little she made for the hard and important work she did with infants and toddlers. So Whitebook, with a group of teacher-activists, launched a national campaign in 1992 called Worthy Wage Day. The day of action, held every year on May 1, aims to raise awareness of the low wages earned by early childhood educators and draw attention to the chronic underfunding of public education.

In this podcast episode, Whitebook, now the director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, talks about how she and her team used faxes and mimeographs to get Worthy Wage Day to go viral.

Read the story and see photos on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/05/01/worthy-wage-day/

30: On Worthy Wage Day, early childhood educators fight for support

Inside of Joshua Ahazie’s mind live hundreds of songs. Since he was a kid, he would hear a melody and then he would hear all the parts — the vocals, how to play it on the piano. How it all went together. "I really thought I was going crazy." But he soon realized it was a gift. 

It's this gift of seeing how different pieces can go together to create a whole, he says, that has helped his succeed as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business — he's graduating Monday, May 14 at the Hearst Greek Theatre — and has given him the vision to launch his social enterprise, Atide. 

See photos and read the story on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/05/10/grad-profile-joshua-ahazie-podcast/
Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small

31: With music as his guide, Haas graduating senior envisions a better Nigeria

Billy Curtis, the director of the Gender Equity Resource Center at UC Berkeley, has spent the past two decades working to build a more inclusive campus for the LGBTQ community. This year, he was named a grand marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration, an honor given to people and organizations for their work and advocacy in helping strengthen LGBTQ communities in the Bay Area.

“I see this as an opportunity for us as a university to highlight our past, present and continued support of the LGBTQ community,” he said. “We’re getting honored, but let’s recommit to serving the LGBTQ+ community and any emerging un-yet-named marginalized sexualities and genders.”

Read the story on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/06/14/podcast-geneq-leader-billy-curtis-grand-marshal-sf-pride/
Graphic illustration by Hulda Nelson

32: Billy Curtis, an S.F. Pride grand marshal, on building inclusivity

When Thalia Zepatos joined the Freedom to Marry campaign in 2010, she had a big job ahead of her: she had to craft a totally new message about same-sex marriage that would convince Americans that supporting the issue was the right thing to do.

"It was looking for that statement that a lot of people could nod their heads to," said Zepatos. "It wasn’t about who was participating in the marriage, it was about what it really stands for. And we were trying to elevate that conversation."

Five years later on June 26, 2015, same-sex marriage was made legal in the U.S.

Martin Meeker, the director of the Bancroft Library's Oral History Center at UC Berkeley, interviewed Zepatos and nearly a dozen others about the Freedom to Marry campaign for the center's Freedom to Marry Oral History Project. Listen to Meeker talk about how a single message can help change a nation's opinion.

Read the story on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/06/26/podcast-freedom-to-marry/
Freedom to Marry photo

33: How a tender message helped win the fight for same-sex marriage

Noah Whiteman, an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, has always known how to survive. He moved to Sax-Zim, a rural area in Minnesota, when he was 11 and spent the next seven years learning to fish and hunt with his naturalist dad and hiding that he was gay. When a boy he'd been friends with started to bully him at every chance he got, Noah knew it was time to get out. 

See photos and read a Q&A with Noah Whiteman on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/07/03/podcast-growing-up-gay-in-rural-minnesota
Photo by Jennifer Bollmer

34: A biology prof on growing up gay in rural Minnesota

The peregrine falcons that first made a home on UC Berkeley's Campanile last year get a lot of attention every spring when their babies hatch. But it's also amazing to watch the adults in action. At speeds of more than 200 miles per hour, peregrines are the fastest animal in the world — three times faster than a cheetah. Mary Malec, a volunteer raptor nest monitor for the East Bay Regional Park District, describes a time when the mama peregrine chased a pigeon through unknowing crowds on campus.

See photos and read the transcript on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/07/10/podcast-campanile-peregrines-here-to-stay/

35: Peregrine falcons, zipping through campus at top speeds, are here to stay

When Derek Coates was 10, he found out he had a degenerative eye disease and was going to gradually lose his eyesight. Over the next 30 years, his visual world shrunk until he became completely blind at 41. Now, as a disability compliance officer at UC Berkeley, it’s his job to make sure students with disabilities are getting the accommodations they need to be academically successful.

Read the transcript, see photos and find more disability resources on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/07/17/podcast-derek-coates-disability-on-campus/

36: For disability advocate, helping students navigate campus is personal

After seeing Handspring Puppet Company — the creators of the puppets in Broadway's " War Horse" — at UC Berkeley in 2015, Glynn Bartlett knew he wanted to work with them. So he packed his bags and traveled to South Africa, where he built puppets for an annual parade and play performed on the Day of Reconciliation. Bartlett, a scenic artist for the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, says the experience reminded him just how powerful puppets can be in bringing people together.  

Read the transcript, watch a video about the performance and see photos on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/07/25/podcast-the-power-of-puppets/
UC Berkeley photo by Tonya Becerra

37: Bringing people together, one puppet at a time

Canadian author Margaret Atwood doesn't like being called a soothsayer. "Anyone who says they can predict the future is... not telling the truth," she says. 

But like it or not, it's a label she's been given since the revival of her 33-year-old dystopian novel "The Handmaid's Tale" was made into a popular Hulu TV series that aired just months after the election of Donald Trump as president. The story is set in near-future New England in a totalitarian and theocratic state that has overthrown the U.S. government. Because of low reproduction rates, certain fertile women are forced to become Handmaids to bear children for elite couples.

As part of On the Same Page, a program of UC Berkeley's College of Letter and Science, all 8,800 incoming students got a copy of the novel to read over the summer, so when they arrived on campus, they would have something in common to talk about — socially, in classes and at events designed to explore the book's themes.

Berkeley News sat down with Margaret Atwood for a few minutes before her appearance on campus last week to talk about her book's recent revival and how — in her view, and that of many of the book's fans — the Trump presidency is bringing the U.S. a step closer to becoming her fictional Republic of Gilead.

See photos and read the transcript on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/08/28/podcast-margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-on-the-same-page
Photo by Peg Skorpinski

38: Margaret Atwood: 'Things can change a lot faster than you think'

As a kid, Makayla Bozeman could not stop dancing. She'd go to bed late because she was dancing. She'd wake up in the middle of the night to dance. When she was 13, she applied to AileyCamp — a six-week summer program run by Cal Performances at UC Berkeley where 11- to 14-year-olds from the East Bay learn dance from professional choreographers. She soon realized that AileyCamp was so much more than a dance camp — it was a chance to discover who she was and learn how to navigate her complex social world.

Read the story and see photos on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/09/04/podcast-ailey-camp-at-cal-performances/

39: AileyCamp — so much more than a dance camp

Last week, Berkeley students noticed that one of the Campanile’s four clocks stopped. While the north-facing clock was at a standstill, the other three kept going. How could that happen? Turns out each of the clocks has its own motor and runs independently from one another.

But because the bell tower’s clocks are so old — the Campanile was built more than 100 years ago — its parts can’t just be replaced. The campus has to send them away to be repaired or find another way to keep the clocks ticking. 

A few years ago, I interviewed Art Simmons — an electrician on campus whose job it was to keep the clocks going. Now, a machinist who worked with Art is looking after the clocks. But I thought it’d be a good time to share a story that Art told me about how he saved the day with a light bulb and a little common sense.

See photos and read the story on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/09/18/podcast-from-the-archive-campanile-clocks/

40: From the archive: On Berkeley time? He keeps Campanile's clocks ticking

After Lux — one of the peregrine falcons born on the Campanile — died last year after striking a window of Evans Hall, the campus community was heartbroken. But Carla Cicero, the staff curator of birds at UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, has given the peregrine a new purpose. Lux is now one of 750,000 specimens — birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — at the museum used for research at Berkeley and across the world. Lux is the 4,287th specimen that Carla has prepped for the museum in the past 30 years. Although the museum is closed to the public, for one day a year — Cal Day, in April — people are invited in to see special displays.

See photos and read the story on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/09/25/podcast-carla-cicero-staff-curator-of-birds

41: At Berkeley, nobody stuffs a bird like Carla Cicero

Professor Tom McEnaney, who teaches a class called “Sounding American,” says the U.S. has a long history of men criticizing the way women speak. Sound technologies, starting with the gramophone and phonograph, he says, were developed for men's voices — and distort women’s.

Read the story on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/10/09/podcast-sounding-american-gender-and-politics

42: Why we think women sound shrill, immature

In the 1940s and 50s, actors in major American films, like Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, spoke with a kind of faux British accent as a way to sound “upper class.” This pronunciation spread across the country as a kind of standard to imitate. The problem was, this way of talking left out nearly all actual American voices, says Tom McEnaney, a UC Berkeley professor who teaches a class called “Sounding American.”

While the class talks about the generational differences of sound — no one today really speaks like movie stars of the 40s — they also discuss how today’s filmmakers, like Boots Riley in “Sorry to Bother You,” are pushing back against the racial norms concealed in what we might say sounds American. McEnaney says the film, about a young black telemarketer who uses his “white voice” to be successful at sales, takes the sense that many people have — that whiteness is a kind of invisible standard against which all other cultures are judged in the U.S. — and makes the audience think about how whiteness is audible, and is another kind of difference.

Story on Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/10/16/white-voice-and-the-american-sound/

43: 'White voice' and hearing whiteness as difference, not the standard

When John Patton was in high school, he changed his name to Quamé. When he got to UC Berkeley as a student, "it stuck, instantly," he says. At Berkeley, Quamé's world opened up: "African American studies changed my life." After graduating, getting a master's degree, trying to make it as a DJ, hitting rock bottom, then coming back to his alma mater to teach hip hop, Quamé is still Quamé. And he's an academic counselor, helping students unlock their potential and follow their hearts.

See photos and read the story on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/11/06/podcast-quame-on-standing-out-dreaming-big-and-letting-go 

(Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

44: Academic counselor Quamé on standing out, dreaming big—and letting go

In the summer of 1996, Will Thomas and Dave Deacy were wading in the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, watching the annual hydroplane races. Will kicked something with his foot, bent down and pulled something up. It was a human skull. Turns out, it was a really old skull — 9,000 years old, one of the oldest human remains found in North America.

It’s a discovery that would fuel an ongoing debate between scientists and Native Americans about how ancestral remains should be treated.

It also inspired Beth Piatote, an associate professor of Native American studies at UC Berkeley and a member of the Nez Perce tribe, to write the play Antíkoni. It’s a Native American version of the Greek tragedy, Antigone.

Watch a video of Antíkoni, a panel discussion on the making of the play, see photos and read the story on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/11/20/podcast-antikoni/

45: Native American Antigone explores universal values of honoring the dead

Every morning, Marco Lindsey wakes up in East Oakland, where he was born and raised. He puts on a suit and tie, packs his briefcase, chats with his neighbors and drives to work at Berkeley Haas. It's a typical morning routine, but to Marco, it’s a lot more than that. It’s a way to show boys and young men in his community that they have possibilities. He didn't have that growing up. But his drive — and mentors who helped steer him — propelled him forward, and now he's helping others to succeed. His motto: Live your life as if your 80-year-old self is guiding you.

See photos and read the story on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/12/11/marco-lindsey-berkeley-haas-chief-of-staff
(UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

46: Berkeley Haas Chief of Staff Marco Lindsey lives like his 80-year-old self is watching

Fiat Vox is a podcast that gives you an inside look at the people, places and research UC Berkeley. It's produced and hosted by Anne Brice, a reporter for Berkeley News in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs.

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