Berkeleyside
January 26, 2018

The “most dangerous man in America” is now 86 years old and lives in a modest mid-century house in Kensington, a stone’s throw from Berkeley. Daniel Ellsberg achieved notoriety when he released the Pentagon Papers (depicted in Steven Spielberg’s movie The Post), and helped bring about the resignation of President Richard Nixon and the end of the Vietnam War.   Read More

Berkeleyside
May 2, 2017

This article is Berkeleyside’s most read article ever and was profiled by the New York Times in its May 9 “Our Picks.” (scroll about 3/4th’s down the page)

George Lakoff, retired UC Berkeley professor and author of Don’t Think of an Elephant, is one of a very few people in Berkeley who does not underestimate Donald Trump. “Trump is not stupid,” he tells anyone who will listen. “He is a super salesman, and he knows how to change your brain and use it to his advantage.”   Read More

Berkeleyside
January 11, 2017

Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild — author of the best-selling book Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right — wrote her first book when she was nine years old. You could think of Colleen the Question Girl as a prequel to Strangers in their Own Land, which tries to make sense of why Trump supporters in Louisiana’s ‘cancer alley’ feel loyal to the oil companies who pollute their air and water, while despising the Environmental Protection Agency.  Read More

Berkeleyside
March 2, 2018

Almost every woman has a #MeToo story, about some level of sexual harassment, yet many men claim not to have known. Not to have heard. Not to have seen.

Jhos Singer is not one of those men.   Read More

Berkeleyside
January 7, 2018

Betty Reid Soskin, 96, considers herself “an absolutely ordinary extraordinary person.”

Soskin has dated Jackie Robinson, co-founded Reid’s Records in Berkeley with her first husband, served as a “bag lady” (delivering cash) for the Black Panthers, and hobnobbed with the leaders of the human potential movement as a faculty wife with her second husband.  Read More

Berkeleyside
July 26, 2017

The “science” of happiness may sound like an oxymoron to most people, but not so Dacher Keltner, psychology professor and director of the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) at UC Berkeley. For the past three decades, he has been researching human emotions, starting with micro-movements of facial muscles and more recently the relationship between powerlessness and health outcomes. Along the way, he has written several books and co-created one of the most popular MOOCs (massive open online courses) in the country.  Read More