Curated playlist
University of California, Berkeley faculty
- Leonard H. LeskoLeonard H. Lesko can read all five stages of the Egyptian language. That includes Demotic and Coptic.
- J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer gripped a post to steady himself as the first nuclear bomb went off.
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault's surgeon father expected him to become a surgeon too. He became a leading thinker on power instead.
- Ram Dass"I didn't have one whiff of God until I took psychedelics." That is how Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert, described his early self to a writer for Tufts Magazine in 2006. He said he had been inured to religion. This is a striking thing to…
- Janet YellenJanet Yellen is the only person to have led the Fed, the White House economic advisers and the Treasury.
- Edward TellerEdward Teller stood and watched the Trinity test while nearly everyone else lay face-down.
- Timothy LearyTimothy Leary escaped prison in September 1970 by climbing a telephone wire over the wall.
- George GamowGeorge Gamow added Hans Bethe's name to a physics paper as a prank. Bethe had not written a word of it.
- Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt's name is printed on journals, schools, scholarly prizes, humanitarian prizes, think-tanks and street signs. It also appears on stamps and monuments. She was born Johanna Arendt, and she grew into one of the most influential…
- Stephen GreenblattStephen Greenblatt was stunned when universities sought experts in "New Historicism," a phrase he coined.
- John Guy (historian)Two of historian John Guy's books on Mary Queen of Scots became the source for a 2018 film.
- Stuart J. RussellStuart Russell called the AGI race "a race towards the edge of a cliff." He wrote it in January 2025.
- Otto SternOtto Stern and Walther Gerlach fired silver atoms through a magnetic field in 1922. The atoms landed in two bands.