The Edge

Octopuses and humans have very little in common. It’s not just a matter of their eight limbs and cool camouflage—we haven’t had a shared ancestor for more than half a billion years, before dinosaurs walked the earth. But there’s one surprising thing we do seem to share: MDMA makes us both a lot cuddlier. For neuroscientist Gül Dölen, this was a huge insight into the powerful role psychoactive drugs can play in animal social behavio...

Don’t let the term “climate change” mislead you. It’s true that our environment is changing in all sorts of ways as we continue to pollute and exploit and manipulate our planet. But even as we brace for more historic typhoons and biblical floods, there's an invisible and pervasive force that is wreaking havoc on us all: heat. In this episode, we speak with environmental journalist and Berkeley alumnus Jeff Goodell about his la...

Nearly four years have passed since COVID swept the globe, infecting millions and bringing society to a grinding halt. The ensuing months saw strict mask mandates, revolutionary vaccines, new viral strains, and—finally—a return to some sort of normal. With the end of the public health emergency and a sudden disappearance of the once-ubiquitous masks, it’s easy to feel like the pandemic is, well, over. But some would strongly disagr...

Roughly every second, a star explodes. Beyond treating astronomers to a radiant light display, these dramatic supernova events contain vast amounts of information about the origin, behavior, and ultimate demise of our universe. UC Berkeley astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance, has dedicated her life to studying really big exploding stars and what they tell us about our ever-expanding universe. She joins us this episode to talk ab...

We’re back with something a little different this month. In the wake of this year’s historic floods, wildfires, and hurricanes, we asked ourselves: What would it look like to take a more optimistic attitude towards slowing climate change? In that spirit, we’re sharing an episode of The Science of Happiness, a podcast co-produced by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and PRX. The first in a miniseries the center is airin...

For centuries, doctors have medically treated people differently according to their race because they believed that race was biological. But in recent years, medical professionals and activists have argued that this is both wrongheaded and can be dangerous to people’s health. In this episode, we talk to UC Berkeley grad Stephen Richmond, a primary care physician and assistant professor at Stanford, about the movement to abolish bio...

Today, we’re featuring the audio version of California magazine’s recent cover story, “Into the Ishi Wilderness.” In 1911, a Yahi Native American man walked out of the wilderness near Oroville, California. The famed anthropologist Alfred Kroeber brought him to UC Berkeley’s campus. What happened next is still being hotly debated almost 100 years later. 

For audio text, please see the feature article, Into the Ishi Wilderness. 

This e...

How is it possible to be blind and able to see at the same time? In this episode, we explore a bizarre, paradoxical neurological condition called blindsight, which challenges everything we think we know about vision—and offers insight into the nature of human consciousness. Leah is joined by a UC Berkeley researcher and Simon Lewis (JD ‘80), a film producer and survivor of a traumatic brain injury, to discuss how blindsight works a...

It’s not easy coming up with the perfect opening line on Tinder. Should you play it cute? Ask a thought-provoking question? Woo them with a witty remark? One entrepreneur thinks he has the answer: robot-generated text. Artificial intelligence is already helping us compose emails and complete sentences, so why stop there? Laura and Leah talk to UC Berkeley grad and the founder of Keys about the possibilities—and dangers—of letting r...

You hear about blockchain everywhere: social media, the news, the guy next door. Some say that in a few years, everyone will use it for everything, much like the internet. But right now we’re in the early days, and it’s pretty Wild West. (Think: early ’90s internet.) Laura and Leah talk to Medha Kothari, a UC Berkeley alum and founder of she256, a non-profit promoting diversity in blockchain, about what blockchain is and why it has...

Passenger pigeons. Woolly mammoths. Neanderthals. They’re all extinct. But what if we could bring them back? And if we could, should we? Geneticists are exploring de-extincting extinct and near-extinct species, but ethical and logistical problems abound. Laura and Leah sit down with a genetic engineer and an ecologist from UC Berkeley to understand how de-extinction works and the unintended consequences of playing god. Life, uh, fi...

Since the first human left Earth’s atmosphere in 1961, few earthlings—and even fewer private citizens—have had the opportunity to “boldly go” there. But, with new advancements from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other spaceflight companies, wealthy tourists could soon be booking rooms in hotels in outer space. As with any new industry, the rise of space tourism raises some new, sometimes uncomfortable, questions: Are we colonizing space?...

Five years after 29-year-old, terminally ill Brittany Maynard makes national news by choosing to end her life early, medically assisted death continues to face enormous legal and social barriers. And yet public support of the practice is high. As life-expectancy and palliative care improve, we face new questions: Under what circumstances are people allowed to choose when and how they die? And how might rethinking the conversation a...

Half a century after the counterculture movement swept through the Bay Area and “mind altering substances” were banished from the laboratory, researchers at the new UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics are reviving a long-buried field of research. Is this the beginning of a psychedelic renaissance? Are psychedelics the new frontier in both understanding and treating psychological disorders? And what happens when you “...

After an unsettling encounter with a turkey, Laura resolves to eat less meat and takes Leah on a journey through the alternative meat industry. Will real, flesh and blood meat be obsolete in 15 years, as one industry leader suggests? Laura and Leah discuss with the director of UC Berkeley’s Alt: Meat Lab, Dr. Ricardo San Martin, and a former student who is developing a faux-chicken drumstick. (The question on everyone’s mind is: if...