Matrix Podcast
93 episodes - English - Latest episode: 27 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
Institutionalizing Child Welfare: An Interview with Matty Lichtenstein
August 10, 2022 18:21 - 1 hour - 56.1 MBHow do American child welfare and obstetric healthcare converge? Matty Lichtenstein, a recent PhD from Berkeley’s Sociology Department, studies how state and professional organizations shape social and health inequalities in maternal and child welfare. Her current book project focuses on evolving conceptions of risk in social work and medicine, illustrated by a study of the intertwined development of American child and perinatal protective policies. She is working on several collaborations r...
Race, Gender, and Political Speech: An Interview with Gabriella Licata
August 01, 2022 18:54 - 53 minutes - 49.2 MBWhen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was insulted on the Capitol steps in July 2020, it was a brief media sensation. But what does being called an “effing bitch” mean for how we think about political speech? This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Gabriella Licata, a PhD candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley, who discusses how the standard language ideologies of political speech come to shape perceptions of language and people in Congress. Gabriella ...
Floods and Equity: A Panel Discussion
May 25, 2022 01:48 - 1 hour - 72.1 MBFloods are the most destructive natural hazard, both at the national and international scale, and they disproportionately affect people of color and the poor. To understand this uneven exposure to floods requires that we understand the history of land use and institutional structures that have resulted in current exposure and inequitable allocation of resources for flood protection and for post-disaster aid (‘procedural vulnerability’). One of the most critical agencies is the US Army Corps ...
Matrix on Point: One Million COVID Deaths
May 18, 2022 17:29 - 1 hour - 72.1 MBAs we pass the grim milestone of one million deaths in the United States, taking stock of the personal and collective consequences of the global COVID-19 pandemic becomes an urgent task for social scientists. Recorded on May 10, 2022, this panel examined the physical, material and psychological toll of the past two years of rampant disease, on-and-off social distancing, and shifting economic ground. The panelists discussed the unequal distribution of the pandemic’s burden across the popula...
Matrix on Point: Organize! Power and Collective Action
May 09, 2022 03:47 - 1 hour - 74.1 MBWhat can we learn from historical and contemporary cases about building organizations that engage, mobilize, and manage to wield influence on the political process? What kinds of infrastructural choices best support engagement and success in the long run? Recorded on May 5, 2022, this panel explored the varied and changing terrain of collective action to reflect on the nature, promises, and pitfalls of associational power in the 21st century. Panelists included Arisha Hatch, Vice Presid...
Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation
May 03, 2022 18:47 - 1 hour - 63.3 MBRecorded on April 22, 2022, this “Author Meets Critics” panel focused on the book Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation by Sarah Vaughn, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Professor Vaughn was joined in conversation by Stephen Collier, Professor of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, and Sugata Ray, Associate Professor in the Departments of History of Art and South and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. The panel was moderated by Daniel Alda...
Digital Transformations in Global Land, Housing, and Property
May 03, 2022 04:39 - 1 hour - 76 MBRecorded on April 27, 2022, this panel discussion brought together members of the UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix Research Team on Digital Transformations in Property and Development to discuss how state, corporations, and grassroots actors are employing digital technologies to remake global land, housing, and property. Panelists included Hilary Faxon, Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley; Elizabeth Resor, P...
The Future of Money: Mobile Money, Social Media, and Cashless Economies
April 16, 2022 03:27 - 1 hour - 69.6 MBHow does the shift away from cash economies affect relationships of debt and belonging? Through studying forms of cashless payment, such as mobile money and apps, this panel of scholars explored questions about how the social connections made through money are changing, and what the implications might be for our understanding of money, trust, and social connection. Recorded on April 14, 2022, this panel discussion was presented by the University of California, Berkeley's Social Science Matrix...
The Social and Economic Impacts of Wildfires
April 11, 2022 23:18 - 1 hour - 63.2 MBWildfires have grown dramatically over the last five years, both as a result of a century of fire suppression as well as contemporary climate change, which makes fires hotter and more destructive. In this panel, recorded on April 4, 2022, a group of experts discussed contemporary social and economic impacts of wildfires in California during another record-breaking fire season. How have fires changed during the last five years, and with what impacts on the economy? How might policy-makers a...
Listening to Rwandan Popular Music with Victoria Netanus Grubbs
April 10, 2022 22:33 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBThis episode features an interview with Victoria Netanus Grubbs, Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Black Studies Collaboratory. Grubbs is a black feminist abolitionist educator committed to developing radical leadership in underserved communities in the U.S. and abroad. She completed her PhD in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University in May 2021. Her current book project, Kumva Meze Neza: Sounding Blackness in Rwanda, examines how popular Rwandan ...
Cryptography and the Future of Money
April 04, 2022 02:02 - 1 hour - 79.6 MBRecorded on March 2, 2022, this "Matrix on Point" panel featured presentations by Markus K. Brunnermeier, Edwards S. Sanford Professor in the Economics Department at Princeton University and Director of Princeton’s Bendheim Center for Finance; Stefan Eich, Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University; and Christine Parlour, the Sylvan C. Coleman Chair of Finance and Accounting at Berkeley Haas. Moderated by Barry Eichengreen, the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Chair and D...
Matrix on Point: The War in Ukraine and Its Consequences
April 03, 2022 16:38 - 1 hour - 75.8 MBIn this Matrix on Point event, recorded on March 15, 2022, a panel of UC Berkeley scholars discussed the Ukraine-Russia War conflict and its implications. Panelists included John Connelly, the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor in the Department of History; Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Quantedge Presidential Professor in the Department of Economics; Gérard Roland, the E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science; and Katerina Linos, the Irving G. and Eleanor D. Tragen Professo...
What happened to the week? Interview with David Henkin
March 30, 2022 16:31 - 39 minutes - 36.4 MBIn this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek interviews David M. Henkin, the Margaret Byrne Professor of History at UC Berkeley, about his new book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Make Us Who We Are. Henkin’s primary field of research is US history, and his interests include 19-century urban history, the history of reading and writing, and popular culture. He lives in San Francisco, California, and Bozeman, Montana.
Author Meets Critics: "Bankers in the Ivory Tower"
February 08, 2022 14:47 - 1 hour - 68.4 MBOn February 3rd, 2022, Social Science Matrix and the Center for Studies in Higher Education hosted an online “Author Meets Critics” panel discussion focused on the book, Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education, by Charlie Eaton, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced. Elite colleges have long played a crucial role in maintaining social and class status in America while public universities have offered a major step...
Individual Trauma, Social Outcomes
January 14, 2022 01:07 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBIn this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek interviews Biz Herman, a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Political Science, a Visiting Scholar at The New School for Social Research’s Trauma and Global Mental Health Lab, and a Predoctoral Research Fellow with the Human Trafficking Vulnerability Lab. Her dissertation, Individual Trauma, Collective Security: The Consequences of Conflict and Forced Migration on Social Stability, investigates the psychological effects of living ...
Science and Socialism in Cuba
January 09, 2022 17:54 - 34 minutes - 31.3 MBIn this episode of the Matrix podcast, Julia Sizek (a PhD candidate in anthropology at UC Berkeley) interviews Clare Ibarra, a PhD candidate in history at UC Berkeley, and Naomi Schoenfeld, a public health nurse practitioner and recent PhD from the joint UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley medical anthropology program. Both Ibarra and Schoenfeld study the history and present of socialist science and medicine in Cuba. Ibarra examines the scientific exchange between Cuba and the Soviet Union during...
Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations along Urban Corridors in India
November 29, 2021 20:10 - 1 hour - 80.5 MBRecorded on November 16, 2021, this video presents an “Authors Meet Critics” panel focused on the book Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations along Urban Corridors in India, by Sai Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, with a joint appointment with DCRP and Global Metropolitan Studies. Professor Balakrishnan was joined in conversation by Sharad Chari, Associate Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley, and Michael Watts, Class of ‘63 and Chancellor’s ...
Matrix on Point: New Directions in Studying Policing
November 04, 2021 17:31 - 1 hour - 78.5 MBContemporary movements like Black Lives Matter and the prison abolition movement point to the long histories of police violence and mass incarceration in the United States and elsewhere, demanding new approaches to approaching the history and present of policing. In this Matrix on Point panel, recorded on October 25, 2021, UC Berkeley graduate students were joined by outside experts in discussing the impacts of policing on the lives and health of officers and the communities they serve, as...
Music, the Diaspora, and the World: A Conversation with Angélique Kidjo
November 04, 2021 16:55 - 1 hour - 72.2 MBOne could say that, by definition, music is the most diasporic of art forms. It is movement itself. It is hybridity. It passes from place to place and from time to time, heedless of natural or social borders. Music belongs everywhere, and yet it is always from somewhere. Diasporic themes and histories have been central not only to the creation and commodification of new musical forms, but also to the emergence of global identities and solidarities. In this conversation, recorded on October...
Genetic Ancestry Testing and Reconnection: Interview with Dr. Victoria Massie
November 04, 2021 04:13 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBIn this episode, Julia Sizek, a PhD candidate in Anthropology at UC Berkeley, interviews Dr. Victoria Massie, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and Faculty Affiliate for the Center for African & African American Studies (CAAAS), the Medical Humanities Program and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (CSWGS) at Rice University in Houston. A recent alumna of the Ph.D. program in Sociocultural Anthropology and the Designated Emphasis in Science & T...
Doing Academic Research with Mechanical Turk
October 14, 2021 13:47 - 1 hour - 63.3 MBAmazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has become increasingly popular as an online tool for conducting social science research. What are the specific advantages and downsides of using online crowdsourcing tools like MTurk for conducting research? What practical and/or moral dilemmas might emerge in the course of the research process, and what concrete strategies have scientists developed to address them? Presented as part of the Social Sciences and Data Science event series, co-sponsored with the...
Politics of Indigeneity in El Salvador
October 07, 2021 16:12 - 37 minutes - 34.6 MBIn this episode of the Matrix podcast, Julia Sizek interviews Hector Callejas, a PhD candidate in Ethnic Studies and a 2021-2022 ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion fellow. Callejas specializes in Native American and Indigenous studies and Latin American studies. He researches and teaches on the relationship between Indigeneity, race, space, and power in the Americas. His dissertation theorizes the territorial turn in Latin America from a settler colonial perspective. It draws on extensive e...
A New Voice for Black History: Xavier Buck, PhD
September 16, 2021 00:24 - 34 minutes - 31.4 MBIn this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek interviews Xavier Buck, Deputy Director of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, a nonprofit that has preserved and promoted the legacy of the Black Panther Party for over 25 years. Buck graduated with a PhD in History from UC Berkeley in 2021. His work blends organizing and educational pursuits in the service of sustaining movements for Black lives, and he has previously been a fellow at Prosperity Now, the Education Trust – West, and the Di...
Matrix on Point: Leaving Afghanistan
September 12, 2021 23:21 - 1 hour - 80.9 MBOn August 31, 2021, the United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year war against the Taliban that began following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Recorded on September 7, 2021, this "Matrix on Point" panel discussion featured a panel of scholars discussing the geopolitical and humanitarian consequences of the withdrawal. The panel featured Omar Sharifi, Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Humanities, American University of Afghanistan, and Country Dir...
Porn, Privacy, and Digital Dissidence in Senegal
September 09, 2021 20:13 - 25 minutes - 23.7 MBIn this podcast, Julia Sizek interviews Juliana Friend, a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology, whose research focuses on the intersection of technology, privacy, and culture. Her dissertation, “Don’t Click Here! Porn, Privacy, and Digital Dissidence in Senegal,” examines how digital dissidents are transforming the idea of sutura (discretion or modesty), a concept used to describe the appropriate relationship between private and public life in Senegal. Her research...
The Past and Present of Teletherapy
September 02, 2021 11:06 - 57 minutes - 53 MBIn this episode, Julia Sizek, a Phd candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology, interviews scholars Hannah Zeavin and Valerie Black about teletherapy, which describes all forms of remote therapy, from letter-writing to chatbots. Both of these UC Berkeley researchers study the history and experience of these tools of therapy, which are often assumed to be more impersonal than and inferior to forms of in-person therapy, but which have seen a surge during the pandemic. They discuss...
Matrix Podcast: Interview with Youjin Chung
June 09, 2021 00:37 - 54 minutes - 50.3 MBYoujin Chung is Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Equity at the University of California Berkeley, with a joint appointment in the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Her work encompasses the political economy of development, feminist political ecology, critical agrarian and food studies, and African studies. She draws on ethnographic, historical, and participatory visual methods to examine the relationship between gender,...
America’s Pursuit of Racial Justice
June 08, 2021 23:21 - 1 hour - 78.1 MBOn May 14, 2021, Social Science Matrix convened a “Matrix on Point” panel discussion focused on the long (and continuing) struggle for racial justice in America. At the center of the discussion: the critical momentum of Black-led protests and the Black Lives Matter movement from the past year, situated within the larger historical context of social movements for racial justice in the United States and the unfinished work of the Civil Rights Movement. The panel featured Monica Bell, Associa...
Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics
June 08, 2021 22:38 - 59 minutes - 54.3 MBOn May 7, 2021, UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix presented a Matrix Book Salon featuring the book, Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics, by LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. Professor Stephens-Dougan was joined in conversation by Taeku Lee, Professor of Political Science and Law at UC Berkeley.
Authors Meet Critics: "Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity"
May 03, 2021 12:44 - 1 hour - 64.4 MBRecorded on April 19, 2021, this Social Science Matrix "Authors Meet Critics" panel featured the book Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity, by Armando Lara-Millán, Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In "Redistributing the Poor," Lara-Millán, an ethnographer and historical sociologist, takes us into the day-to-day operations of running the largest hospital and jail system ...
Beyond Competition: Alternative Discovery Procedures & The Postcapitalist Public Sphere
May 03, 2021 12:36 - 57 minutes - 52.3 MBRecorded on March 19, 2021, this video features a lecture by Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom and To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. ABSTRACT One of Friedrich Hayek's most celebrated essays — "Competition as a Discovery Procedure" (1968) — tells us tantalizing little about the existence of other such procedures. Hayek's insistence that competition is the surest and most reliable technique of eliciting i...
Truth & Denial: Searching for Information in the Digital Era
May 03, 2021 12:25 - 1 hour - 77.2 MBRecorded on April 22, 2021, this "Matrix on Point" discussion — sponsored by UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism — featured a group of distinguished panelists approaching questions of objectivity, disinformation, and the construction of truth from a media-consumption (rather than media-production) perspective, focusing on how internet users find information, how algorithms play a deterministic role in search results, and how lies propagate an...
Joan Donovan, "The True Costs of Misinformation: Producing Moral and Technical Order in a Time of Pandemonium"
March 02, 2021 15:36 - 59 minutes - 54.5 MBRecorded on February 19, 2021, this episode features a lecture by Joan Donovan, Research Director for the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. This event was presented as part of the "Solidarity and Strife: Democracies in a Time of Pandemic" initiative, funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and co-sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley's Social Science Matrix and the D-Lab. Dr. Donovan leads the field in examining intern...
Social Science Matrix Podcast: "Bloc by Bloc: How to Build a Global Enterprise for the New Regional Order"
March 02, 2021 15:01 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBRecorded on February 11, 2021, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel discussion, features Professor Steven Weber, a political scientist and professor in the UC Berkeley School of Information, discussing his book, "Bloc by Bloc: How to Build a Global Enterprise for the New Regional Order," together with Vinod K. Aggarwal, Professor of Political Science, and Homa Bahrami, Senior Lecturer in the Haas School of Business. The panel was introduced by Marion Fourcade, Director of Matrix, and moderated ...
Social Science Matrix Podcast: Interview with Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History, UC Berkeley
February 07, 2021 22:06 - 53 minutes - 48.7 MBIn this podcast, Michael Watts interviews Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History, UC Berkeley. Professor Herman's research and writing examine modern Latin American history in a global context. Her first book, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, reconstructs the history of U.S. military basing in Latin America during World War II – through high diplomacy and on-the-ground examinations of race, labor, sex and law – to reveal the origins and impact of inter-American “security...
Measuring Belief in Fake News Online: Joshua A. Tucker, Professor of Politics, New York University
February 07, 2021 21:55 - 55 minutes - 51.1 MBHow well can ordinary people do in identifying the veracity of news in real time? In this lecture, recorded on Feb. 1, 2021, Professor Tucker reported on preliminary findings from a study focused on this important question. Using a unique research design that involved crowdsourcing popular news articles from both mainstream and suspect news sources that have appeared in the past 24 hours to both ordinary citizens and professional fact checkers, Professor Tucker researched the characteristic...
"Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century": A Matrix Distinguished Lecture by Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
February 07, 2021 21:20 - 1 hour - 65.9 MBRecorded on February 3, 2021, this podcast features a Matrix Distinguished Lecture by Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Professor Allen’s lecture focuses on the findings of "Our Common Purpose: Reinventing Democracy for the 21st Century," a report by the American Academy’s Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. Allen served as co-chair of the Commission, which convened w...
Social Science Matrix Podcast: Interview with Clancy Wilmott, Assistant Professor of Geography, UC Berkeley
January 05, 2021 21:39 - 59 minutes - 54.4 MBIn this episode, Professor Michael Watts interviews Clancy Wilmott, Assistant Professor in Critical Cartography, Geovisualisation, and Design in the Berkeley Centre for New Media and the Department of Geography. Clancy comes to UC Berkeley from the Department of Geography at the University of Manchester, where she received her PhD in Human Geography with a multi-site study on the interaction between mobile phone maps, cartographic discourse, and postcolonial landscapes. At UC Berkeley, P...
Social Science Matrix Podcast: Interview with Leigh Raiford, Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
November 16, 2020 18:08 - 58 minutes - 33.9 MBIn this episode, Michael Watts interviews Leigh Raiford, Associate Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley and author of Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle, finalist for the 2011 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians First Book Prize. In Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare, Leigh Raiford argues that over the past one hundred years, activists in the black freedom struggle have used photographic imagery both to gain political reco...
Social Science Matrix: Brittany Birberick
June 16, 2020 15:17 - 36 minutes - 34.2 MBIn this episode, Professor Michael Watts interviews Brittany Birberick, an anthropology PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. Birberick's dissertation project focuses on urban transformation in Johannesburg, South Africa. More broadly, she writes and thinks about economies, migration, temporality, and aesthetics within an urban context. Her dissertation, “Paved with Gold: Urban Transformation in Johannesburg,” situates the city of Johannesburg historically, considering the...
Social Science Matrix Podcast: Mariane Ferme
June 12, 2020 16:38 - 49 minutes - 45.6 MBIn this episode, Michael Watts interviews Professor Mariane C. Ferme, a sociocultural anthropologist whose current research focuses on the political imagination, violence, and conflict, and access to justice in West Africa, particularly Sierra Leone. Ferme's latest book, "Out of War: Violence, Trauma, and the Political Imagination in Sierra Leone," draws on her three decades of ethnographic engagements to examine the physical and psychological aftereffects of the harms of Sierra Leo...
Social Science Matrix Podcast: Desiree Fields
June 10, 2020 23:30 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBIn this episode, Professor Michael Watts interviews Desiree Fields, an assistant professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Fields' research explores the financial technologies, market devices, and historical and geographic contingencies that make it possible to treat housing as a financial asset, and how this process is contested at the urban scale. At the heart of her work is an interest in how economic and transformations unevenly r...
Social Science Matrix Podcast: Interview with Dacher Keltner
April 08, 2020 19:08 - 55 minutes - 44.8 MBRecorded in February 2020, this episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview between Professor Michael Watts, Emeritus "Class of 1963" Professor of Geography and Development Studies at UC Berkeley, and Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory. Keltner is also the Faculty Director of the Greater Good Science Center. Professor Keltner’s research focuses the biological and evolutionary origins of emotion, in particular prosocial...