Matrix Podcast
93 episodes - English - Latest episode: 13 days ago -The Matrix Podcast features interviews with social scientists from across the University of California, Berkeley campus (and beyond). It also features recordings of events, including panels and lectures. The Matrix Podcast is produced by Social Science Matrix, an interdisciplinary research center at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Episodes
Storytelling and the Climate Crisis
April 14, 2024 17:54 - 1 hour - 127 MBContemporary writers and activists have described the climate crisis as, in part, a crisis of the imagination, of culture, and of storytelling. Recorded on March 11, 2024, this panel featured a group of authors and scholars of different genres — science fiction, journalism, history, literary fiction, and comedy — discussing how the climate crisis has impacted their craft and what practices of storytelling have to offer us at this pivotal moment in human history. This panel was co-sponsored b...
New Directions in Greening Infrastructure
April 14, 2024 16:20 - 1 hour - 105 MBAs the effects of climate change become more obvious, moving away from fossil fuels has only become more urgent. But to do so, new energy sources – and new infrastructure – are desperately needed. Recoreded on March 20, 2024, this panel features three early-career scholars from UC Berkeley presenting their research on the greening infrastructure and the green energy transition. The panel included Johnathan Guy, PhD Candidate in Political Science; Caylee Hong, a PhD candidate in Anthropolog...
Conservatorship: Inside California’s System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness
April 05, 2024 20:51 - 1 hour - 116 MBRecorded on March 18, 2024, this panel focused on Professor Alex V. Barnard’s book, Conservatorship: Inside California’s System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness. The book analyzes conservatorship, a legal system used to take legal guardianship over individuals deemed unable to meet their own basic needs. This controversial system, which has come under fire from civil liberties and disability rights groups, is at the center of state policies for mental illness, homelessness, and addict...
Authors Meet Critics: “Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics,” Salar Mameni
April 05, 2024 02:06 - 1 hour - 134 MBRecorded on March 4, 2024, this Authors Meet Critics panel focused on Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics, by Professor Salar Mameni, Assistant Professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Ethnic Studies. Professor Mameni was joined by Mayanthi Fernando, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz; Sugata Ray, Associate Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art and Architecture in the Departments of History of Art and South & Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley; and Stefania Pandolfo,...
Traumatic Repercussions: Black Women and Obstetric Racism
April 02, 2024 21:30 - 1 hour - 106 MBRecorded on March 7, 2024, this video features a lecture entitled “Traumatic Repercussions: Black Women and Obstetric Racism,” by Dána-Ain Davis, Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College, and a member of the faculty of the PhD Programs in Anthropology and Critical Psychology. This talk charts the way two Black reproducing bodies are shaped by obstetric racism. Davis shares the birthing experiences of two women and thinks through their medical encounters by considering how Black bo...
Structural Determinants of Police Violence: Interview with Kimberly Cecilia Burke
March 19, 2024 17:57 - 27 minutes - 26 MBKimberly Cecilia Burke, a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley, researches the relationships between institutional violence and social stratification, utilizing multi-level mixed-methods analysis. Her dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine how Black-White interracial couples understand and experience police violence in their relationships. Her current research aims to determine how the dynamics of intimate partnerships can perpetuate and challenge patterns of racial ...
The Scandal of Access: An Interview with Zahra Hayat
March 19, 2024 17:55 - 47 minutes - 43.6 MBThis episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Zahra Hayat, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and is also trained as a lawyer with a background in intellectual property. Matrix Content Curator Julia Sizek spoke with Hayat about her research on pharmaceutical access in the global South, particularly in Pakistan, and the regimes of price and property on which such access is contingent...
Private Firms and WTO Dispute Escalation: An Interview with Ryan Brutger
March 19, 2024 17:54 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MBOn this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Daniel Lobo, a PhD student in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology and a 2022-2023 Matrix Communications Scholar, interviewed Ryan Brutger, Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. Professor Brutger obtained his PhD in politics at Princeton University and was previously an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is broadly interested in international relations and foreign policy. His research spans international po...
Understanding Land-based Psychological Trauma in Light of Epistemic Justice
March 03, 2024 18:00 - 1 hour - 100 MBRecorded on February 8, 2024, this video features a lecture by Dr. Garret Barnwell, South African clinical psychologist and community psychology practitioner. The talk was moderated and coordinated by Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at UC Berkeley. A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/garret-barnwell. Abstract The places we live are inseparably connected to who we are. Our relationship with these spac...
Authors Meet Critics: "The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall," by Andrew Garrett
February 05, 2024 00:54 - 1 hour - 116 MBRecorded on January 19, 2024, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel centered on the book, The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California, by Andrew Garrett, Professor of Linguistics and the Nadine M. Tang and Bruce L. Smith Professor of Cross-Cultural Social Sciences in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Garrett was joined in conversation by James Clifford, Professor Emeritus at UC Santa Cruz; William Hanks, Berkeley ...
Vincent Bevins - "If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution"
January 28, 2024 19:06 - 1 hour - 98.6 MBRecorded on October 17, 2023, this video features a talk by Vincent Bevins, an award-winning journalist and correspondent, focused on his book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. The panel was moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2. This event was co-sponsored by the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative and Social Science Matrix. A transcript of this ta...
Authoritarian Absorption: An Interview with Yan Long
January 13, 2024 23:17 - 54 minutes - 74.4 MBThis episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Yan Long, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley who focuses on the politics of public health in China. She was formerly an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society. She obtained her PhD at the University of Michigan and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees at Beijing University. Matrix Social Science Communications Scholar...
Trevor Jackson, "Impunity and Capitalism: the Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830"
December 18, 2023 23:32 - 1 hour - 115 MBRecorded on December 5, 2023, this Authors Meet Critics panel focused on Impunity and Capitalism: the Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2022), by Trevor Jackson, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Professor Jackson was joined by Anat Admati, the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and William H. Janeway, Affiliated Member of the Economics Faculty at Cambridge Unive...
Authors Meet Critics: Sharad Chari, "Gramsci at Sea"
December 16, 2023 02:58 - 1 hour - 107 MBRecorded on November 28, 2023 as part of the UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix “Authors Meet Critics” series, this panel focused on Gramsci at Sea, a book by Sharad Chari, Associate Professor in Geography and Co-Director of Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. Professor Chari was joined in conversation by Leslie Salzinger, Associate Professor and Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, and Colleen Lye, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley. The panel was moderated by James Ver...
Authors Meet Critics: Dylan Penningroth, “Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights”
December 16, 2023 00:48 - 1 hour - 112 MBRecorded on November 14, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel is focused on Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, by Dylan Penningroth, Professor of Law and Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History at UC Berkeley, and Associate Dean, Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy / Legal Studies at Berkeley Law. Professor Penningroth was joined in conversation by Ula Yvette Taylor, Professor and 1960 Chair of Under...
Matrix on Point: New Directions in Gender and Sexuality
December 15, 2023 19:10 - 1 hour - 110 MBWhile the last 20 years have marked a significant change in increased acceptance of varied gender expressions and sexual orientations, these changes haven’t made the importance of gender and sexuality as concepts disappear. If anything, they’ve become more relevant for understanding the world today. Recorded on November 30, 2023, this panel brought together a group of UC Berkeley graduate students from the fields of sociology, ethnic studies, and political science for a discussion of gende...
Racial and Ethnic Difference in South Africa and the USSR: An Interview with Hilary Lynd
December 13, 2023 23:18 - 43 minutes - 39.9 MBHow did South Africans and Soviets think about how to manage difference--in their home contexts and in decades of conversation with one another? In this episode of the Matrix podcast, Hilary Lynd, a PhD candidate in history, discusses the changing relationship between South Africa and the USSR from the 1960s through the 1980s. In this interview, Julia Sizek, Matrix Postdoctoral Scholar, and Lynd discuss how anti-apartheid activists were initially inspired by a Soviet model for a multinationa...
California Spotlight: From Boom to Doom in San Francisco
November 13, 2023 17:07 - 1 hour - 107 MBDuring the peak of the most recent tech upswing, downtown San Francisco was booming. Now, after the pandemic and a new round of tech layoffs, commentators fear that the so-called “doom loop” has come to valuable commercial real estate. While boom and bust cycles are not new to The City, what can we learn from the struggles of commercial real estate? Recorded on October 31, 2023 at UC Berkley's Social Science Matrix, this panel featured a discussion of the current state of commercial real...
Authors Meet Critics: Massimo Mazzotti, “Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity”
November 10, 2023 18:01 - 56 minutes - 77.9 MBRecorded on October 17, 2023, this video features an "Authors Meet Critics" panel on the book Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity, by Massimo Mazzotti, Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of History and the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science. Professor Mazzotti was joined in conversation by Matthew L. Jones, the Smith Family Professor of History at Princeton University, and David Bates, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Thomas Laqueur, the Helen...
Matrix on Point: The Future of College
October 21, 2023 01:13 - 1 hour - 74.3 MBThe pandemic has rocked higher education. From Zoom classrooms to students leaving higher education, colleges have needed to change modalities to adapt to public health risks and the emergence of new technologies. Enrollment patterns are also shifting in a changing economy: while selective flagship public institutions and not-for-profit private institutions are receiving more applications, enrollments have declined, especially among lower-income students. What are the implications of these c...
War, Diaspora, Bureaucracy: An Interview with Sherine Ebadi
October 16, 2023 21:51 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MBHow does international conflict shape immigration bureaucracy? Sherine Ebadi, a PhD Candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, researches the impact of Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) and employment-based visa programs on Afghan nationals who worked with the U.S. military. For Ebadi, visa programs like the SIV are crucial lenses for understanding imperialism as well as social relations within the Afghan diaspora. In this podcast interview, J.T. Jamieson, a recent PhD graduate fro...
Voter Turnout in the United States: An Interview with Emily Rong Zhang
October 04, 2023 19:04 - 49 minutes - 45.2 MBIn this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Jennie Barker, a PhD Candidate in the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley — and a Matrix Communications Scholar — spoke with Emily Rong Zhang, Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley Law School, about her research on voter turnout in the United States. Voter turnout has been a hot topic in the news. Turnout soared to highs not seen in decades during the 2020 presidential elections and in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elec...
The Binational Politics of Return Migrant Activism: An Interview with Caroline Tracey
July 27, 2023 16:58 - 39 minutes - 36.7 MBThis episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Caroline Tracey, who holds a PhD from the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, and whose research uses ethnographic, archival, and literary methods to study the American Southwest, Mexico, and the US-Mexico border. Tracey's dissertation, "Binational Politics from Intimate Scales: Motherist, Feminist, Queer and Trans Activism by Deportees and Return Migrants in Mexico City," responds to existing scholarship that has focused on depo...
Roundtable with Orlando Patterson: The Nature and Invention of Freedom
June 13, 2023 16:51 - 1 hour - 83.7 MBRecorded on May 2, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this video features a roundtable conversation with Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, focused on The Paradox of Freedom, an interview with Patterson by David Scott, originally published in Small Axe in 2013. The interview has recently been published by Wiley as a book. In their interview, Scott and Patterson discussed the sociologist and novelist’s childhood, education, public service...
Orlando Patterson: "Slavery and Genocide: The U.S, Jamaica and the Historical Sociology of Evil"
May 22, 2023 16:51 - 1 hour - 104 MBA transcript of this episode can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/slavery-and-genocide-the-u-s-jamaica-and-the-historical-sociology-of-evil/. Recorded on May 1, 2023, this episode of the Matrix Podcast features a lecture by Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, entitled “Slavery and Genocide: The U.S, Jamaica and the Historical Sociology of Evil.” Presented as the Matrix Distinguished Lecture, the lecture was presented at So...
Training Bourgeois Selves: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Subsumption of Pederasty
April 17, 2023 23:12 - 1 hour - 80.9 MBRecorded on February 22, 2023, this podcast features a lecture by Professor Kadji Amin, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. In this talk, “Training Bourgeois Selves: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Subsumption of Pederasty,” Amin discusses a key architect of Modern Sexuality, the German Jewish homosexual sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. Amin argues that Hirschfeld’s work allows us to track the process by which the bourgeois Western notion of sexuality a...
The Modern American Industrial Strategy: Building a Clean Energy Economy from the Bottom Up and Middle Out
April 17, 2023 22:44 - 1 hour - 73.1 MBRecorded on March 22, 2023, this talk — "The Modern American Industrial Strategy: Building a Clean Energy Economy from the Bottom Up and Middle Out" — features Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist to the Invest in America Cabinet. Boushey is co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, where she was President and CEO from 2013-2020. She previously served as chief economist for Secretary Clinton’s 2016 transition team a...
The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy
April 17, 2023 21:33 - 1 hour - 73.1 MBRecorded on March 23, 2023, this talk featured Phil Gorski, Frederick and Laura Goff Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at Yale University, discussing his new book (co-authored with Samuel Perry), The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy. The respondent was David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus of History at UC Berkeley. Carolyn Chen, Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion and Professor of Ethnic Studies, ...
Matrix on Point: Wealth and Taxes
April 17, 2023 18:24 - 1 hour - 72.7 MBHow do the wealthy maintain their wealth through tax havens, and what can we learn about these opaque practices? Recorded on April 3, 2023, this panel featured experts explaining aspects of the global ecosystem of tax avoidance, including how corporations and individuals move across multiple legal jurisdictions to maintain wealth and avoid paying taxes. The panel included Duncan Wigan, Professor with Special Responsibilities in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business Schoo...
Jo Guldi: Towards a Practice of Text Mining to Understand Change Over Historical Time
April 15, 2023 21:20 - 1 hour - 91.2 MBRecorded on March 8, 2023, this video features a lecture by Jo Guldi, Professor of History and Practicing Data Scientist at Southern Methodist University. Professor Guldi’s lecture was entitled “Towards a Practice of Text-Mining to Understand Change Over Historical Time: The Persistence of Memory in British Parliamentary Debates in the Nineteenth Century.” Co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix, the UC Berkeley Department of History, and D-Lab, this talk was presented as part of the Social...
Jo Guldi, "The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights"
April 15, 2023 20:06 - 1 hour - 74 MBMost nations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa experienced some form of “land reform” in the 20th century. But what is land reform? In her book, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights, Professor Jo Guldi approaches the problem from the point of view of Britain’s disintegrating empire. She makes the case that land reform movements originated as an argument about reparations for the experience of colonization, and that they were championed by a set of leading administrat...
Economics and Geopolitics in US International Relations: China, Europe, and the Global South
April 15, 2023 19:42 - 1 hour - 80.6 MBThe pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reshaped global geopolitics, trade, and security. How will these changes affect the relationship between the US and China, Europe, and the Global South? How will they impact US firms operating globally, and how might foreign leaders — and notably the Chinese leadership — respond? Recorded on February 16, 2023, this panel discussion featured a group of distinguished scholars addressing these questions, and the possible implications for the global mul...
Matrix on Point: Myths and Misinformation
April 15, 2023 17:29 - 1 hour - 72.3 MBMisinformation and conspiracy theories have become a central feature of modern life, but they have a long history that have served to justify surveillance and prosecution of marginalized groups. In this Matrix on Point panel, recorded on March 15, 2023, a group of scholars who study these histories discussed how misinformation circulates, and the effects of such myths and stories on society. The panel featured Timothy R. Tangherlini, Professor in the Scandinavian Department and Director of...
To Defend This Sunrise: Black Women's Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua
March 21, 2023 01:56 - 1 hour - 74.5 MBRecorded on March 7, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this Authors Meet Critics panel focused on To Defend This Sunrise: Black Women’s Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua, by Courtney Desiree Morris, Assistant Professor and Vice Chair of Research in Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. Morris was joined in conversation by Tianna Paschel, Associate Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies. The panel was moderated by Lok Siu, Chair o...
Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America
March 21, 2023 01:37 - 1 hour - 73.6 MBRecorded on March 6, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel focused on Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America, by Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. The recording also features a response by Julio Moreno, Professor of History at the University of San Francisco, and and José Juan Pérez Meléndez, Assistant Professor in Latin American and Caribbean Histo...
Matrix Distinguished Lecture: Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, "Reimagining Global Integration"
March 01, 2023 18:21 - 1 hour - 73.5 MBOn February 15, 2023, Social Science Matrix was honored to host Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for a Matrix Distinguished Lecture entitled "Reimagining Global Integration." A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/mariano-florentino-cuellar-reimagining-global-integration/. Abstract Whether they live in vast cities or rural villages, people in virtually every corner of the world hav...
Authors Meet Critics: Dylan Riley, "Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present"
February 09, 2023 15:17 - 1 hour - 77.3 MBOn February 1, 2023, Social Science Matrix presented an Authors Meet Critics panel on Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, a book by Dylan Riley, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Professor Riley was joined by two discussants: Colleen Lye, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley, affiliated with the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, and Donna Jones, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley and Core Faculty for the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory ...
Interview with Adriana Kugler, World Bank Executive Director for the US
December 05, 2022 22:31 - 50 minutes - 46 MBA transcript of this interview can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/alumni-interview-adriana-kugler-world-bank-executive-director-for-the-us/. This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Adriana D. Kugler, the World Bank Group Executive Director for the United States. Dr. Kugler was appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate in May 2022. She is the first Latinx person and first Jewish woman to be appointed to this position since th...
How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea
November 29, 2022 20:15 - 1 hour - 62.4 MBOn November 9, 2022, Social Science Matrix hosted a panel discussion on “Authors Meet Critics” panel discussion on How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea, by Sandra Eder, Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Eder was joined in conversation by Laura Nelson, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, and Danya Lagos, Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology. The panel was moderated by Catherine Ceniza Ch...
Matrix on Point: The Court and the People
November 28, 2022 21:47 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBIn the wake of recent decisions on abortion, First Amendment rights, gun rights, Miranda rights, and jurisdiction over Native American reservations, the Supreme Court today seems particularly out of sync with the American people. In this Matrix on Point panel, a panel of experts from UC Berkeley discussed what these decisions and the conservative turn in the Supreme Court mean for the relationship between the court and the people. Recorded on October 20, 2022, the panel featured Erwin Chem...
Voices in the Code: A Story About People, Their Values, and the Algorithm They Made
November 03, 2022 18:17 - 1 hour - 72.9 MBRecorded on October 10, 2022, this “Authors Meet Critics” panel focused on the book Voices in the Code: A Story About People, Their Values, and the Algorithm They Made, by David Robinson, a visiting scholar at Social Science Matrix and a member of the faculty at Apple University. Robinson was joined in conversation by Iason Gabriel, a Staff Research Scientist at DeepMind, and Deirdre Mulligan, Professor in the UC Berkeley School of Information. The panel was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Ce...
Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics
November 03, 2022 17:48 - 1 hour - 66.9 MBPresented on October 14, 2022 as part of the Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics series, this panel focused on the book Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics (NYU Press, 2022), by Darieck Scott, Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Professor Scott was joined in conversation by Ula Taylor, Professor & 1960 Chair of Undergraduate Education in the UC Berkeley Department of African-American Studies and African Diaspora; and Scott Bukatman, Profess...
Migration and Reform in Early America: An Interview with J.T. Jamieson
October 25, 2022 21:19 - 40 minutes - 37.2 MBWhat role did American social and moral reformers play in managing human migrations? J.T. Jamieson, a Phd Candidate in UC Berkeley’s Department of History, examines how social reformers in the first half of the 19th century sought to control migration and insert their own understandings of morality, social benevolence, and humanitarianism into the lives and experiences of migrants. In so doing, he argues, their reforms frequently perpetuated racial supremacy, religious supremacy, and Christi...
Matrix on Point: Humanitarian Technologies
October 12, 2022 00:03 - 1 hour - 64.5 MBNow more than ever, humanitarianism is being conducted at a distance. As humanitarian efforts shift from in-kind and in-person assistance to cash- and information-based assistance, how does this change what humanitarian work looks like? Recorded on September 26, 2022, this "Matrix on Point" panel featured a group of scholars examining how technology raises new questions about the efficacy of humanitarian interventions, the human rights of recipients, and the broader power relations between...
Authors Meet Critics: "Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley"
October 11, 2022 22:06 - 1 hour - 73 MBRecorded on September 30, 2022, this Matrix “Author Meets Critics” panel focused on the book Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, by Carolyn Chen, Associate Professor in the University of California, Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies. Work Pray Code explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritu...
Reconsidering the Achievement Gap: An Interview with Monica Ellwood-Lowe
October 11, 2022 18:26 - 31 minutes - 28.5 MBMonica Ellwood-Lowe is a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology whose research focuses on differences between outcomes for students of different socioeconomic status, as well as the societal barriers that might hinder student success. Ellwood-Lowe tries to answer such questions as, what skills do children develop when they come from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes, even in the face of societal barriers to success? Do children’s brains simply adapt to their respective...
Shifting Inequality and Mass Incarceration
September 30, 2022 16:57 - 36 minutes - 33.2 MBOn this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two scholars whose work focuses on explaining how mass incarceration has changed over the last 30 years. Alex Roehrkasse is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Butler University. He studies the production of racial class and gender inequality in the United States through violence and social control. He was previously a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Sociology at Duke University and at the National...
Authors Meet Critics: The Government of Emergency
September 21, 2022 18:51 - 1 hour - 75.6 MBOn Friday, September 9, 2022, Matrix hosted an "Authors Meet Critics" panel discussion on the book The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security, by Stephen Collier, Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning, and Andrew Lakoff, Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. This new book explores how experts and officials approach challenges like pandemics and cyberattacks as catastrophic risks. The author...
Economic Benefits of Higher Education: Maximilian Müller and Zach Bleemer
September 12, 2022 19:40 - 41 minutes - 38 MBWhy do people choose to go to college (or not)? What impact do race-based or financial aid policies have on higher education and the broader economy? In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley-trained economists whose research focuses on higher education and its impact on the broader economy. Maximilian Müller completed his PhD in Economics at UC Berkeley this year and is now starting a position as Postdoctoral Fellow at the briq Institute on Behavior & ...
A Changing Landscape for Farmers in India: An Interview with Tanya Matthan and Aarti Sethi
August 31, 2022 21:40 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBIn countries around the world, the "Green Revolution" has changed the scale and economy of growing crops, as pesticides, fertilizers, and new kinds of hybrid seeds have transformed the agricultural production process. In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley scholars who study agrarian life in India, where farmers have been forced to adapt in the face of new technologies, as well as environmental and social change. Tanya Matthan is a S.V. Ciriacy-Wantru...