Podcast: Berkeley Voices

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. Follow Berkeley Voices.

For the 2024-25 academic year on Berkeley Voices, we’re exploring the theme of transformation. In eight episodes, we’re exploring how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley. New episodes come out on the last Monday of each month, from October through May. See all episodes in the series.

Also, check out Berkeley Talks, a UC Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at Berkeley. And see our guide to starting your own podcast at Berkeley.

Ann Johnson sits in her wheelchair with a cord plugged into a neuroprosthesis implant while she participates in a clinical trial helping to restore her ability to speak with a brain-computer interface

Research

Berkeley Voices: A stroke left her ‘locked in.’ With the help of AI, she heard her voice again.

UC Berkeley researchers explain how a brain-computer interface restored Ann Johnson’s ability to speak after 18 years.

A wall in an art exhibition of replicas of many famous artworks, like van Gogh's Sunflowers and da Vinci's Mona Lisa

Arts & culture

Berkeley Voices: Fakes, replicas and forgeries: What counts as art?

Sarah Gold McBride and Christine Palmer face one another at a desk, smiling at each other, conveying their close friendship

Arts & culture

Berkeley Voices: From Victorian-era letters to Swiftie bracelets, an evolution of American friendship

line drawing of a woman with eerie-looking ghosts coming out the back of her partially missing head

Mind & body

Berkeley Voices: We learn what to fear. Can we unlearn it?

Jack Tseng stands on the second floor of the Valley Life Sciences Building looking down on a replica of a T. rex

Berkeley Voices: Think you know what dinosaurs were like? Think again.

Poulomi Saha stands in front of a huge fireplace surrounded with decorative wrought iron.

Berkeley Voices: As crises escalate, so does our fascination with cults

a simple continuous line drawing of a face that suggests the many dimensions of a person's personality

Berkeley Voices: Psychopathy goes undetected in some people. Why?

Justin Davidson as a toddler smiles as he rides a horse and his mom smiles and holds him on the saddle.

Berkeley Voices: One brain, two languages

Rachel Jeantel on the stand during her testimony in the trial of George Zimmerman

Berkeley Voices: A language divided

Natalie walks on UC Berkeley's campus with her mom and younger brother.

Berkeley Voices: A linguist’s quest to legitimize U.S. Spanish

Saagar, with short dark hair and glasses, wearing a powder blue suit, holds a viola to his chin while standing in a courtyard

Berkeley Voices: Medieval song holds clues to lost dialects

A black-and-white photo of a young man without a shirt on holding and squeezing the bare skin on his chest with a pained expression on his face

Berkeley Voices: Art student’s photo series explores masculine vulnerability

Black-and-white line drawing of Walter Gordon with a Cal football to his side

Berkeley Voices: Take the first Black history tour at UC Berkeley

A mother and baby chimp hug each other atop a wooden structure in a human-made habitat

Bonobos and chimps show ‘a rich recognition’ for long-lost friends and family

A black-and-white illustration of hundreds of Irish immigrants and families with all their belongings

Afterthoughts: The true origins of American immigration policy

a sepia toned photo of about 100 white men in hats shaking hands and celebrating, some of whom are on top of a train.

They built the railroad. But they were left out of the American story.

All Berkeley Voices