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Pyramid of the Magician in the ancient Mayan city.
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2022 Winter

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The Science of Love

To help us get a handle on the subject in time for Valentine’s Day, we turned to Simon-Thomas for answers on questions about the biological basis for love, the different kinds of human love, and unconventional arrangements like polyamory.
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For more than 125 years, California magazine has told the story of Berkeley.

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Featured

Hu Xin writing Nushu (Feng Tiebing)

Hidden Letters: The Co-optation of a Once Secret Language

When filmmaker Violet Du Feng, M.J. ’04, returned to China after earning her master’s degree at Berkeley, she was struck by a kind of gender inequality she hadn’t noticed before.
Tetons are Awe-ful (Dexter Hake)

Awe is the Secret Ingredient to a Good Life

What Dacher Keltner teaches isn’t likely to land you a job on Wall Street or even make you more hireable, but that’s not really the point.

Current Issue

2022 Winter

11 Things You’ll Never Believe Came Out of Berkeley!

By Pat Joseph

Yeah, okay, you’ll probably believe some of it. Still, we think it’s a fun list.
Neshat (right) with subject Malala Yousafzai, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (Jorge Herrerera/NPG/Camera P​ress/Redux)

Berkeley’s Women Artist Trailblazers

By Laura Smith

Berkeley claims one of the first graphic novels, famous communist sculptors, and more
D-O-A-R: U.S. Justice Department attorney and Berkeley Law alumnus John Doar on the long walk to Montgomery, March 21, 1965. (1976 Matt Herron/Take Stock/TopFoto)

The Surprising Story of the Berkeley Attorneys Who Helped Desegregate the South

By Rob Gunnison

Anthony Lee simply wanted to go to high school.
(Illustration by Monica Hellström)

Cheered Up: You Can Be a Dancer and a Lawyer

By Rachel Schuster ’17, J.D. ’23 as told to Margie Cullen, M.J. ’22

When I was really young, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

Top Stories

Iris Yamashita (Anthony Mongiello)

How an Unusual Alaskan Town Inspired Iris Yamashita’s First Murder Mystery

Iris Yamashita has always loved fiction writing, but it was a winding road to her first novel, City Under One Roof (Berkley/Penguin, January 2023). As she explained, “I have Asian parents and they really expected me to be a doctor or engineer or something. Writing was okay as a hobby, but not okay  as my main focus.”

Black Cultural History at Cal: Sun Ra, James Baldwin, and More

UC Berkeley has historically been a magnet for African American activists, artists, and thinkers but never more so than during the tumultuous ’60s and ’70s. And with a little googling, many of these historical appearances can still be seen, heard, and savored online. In honor of the upcoming 45th annual Black History Month (February 2021), here’s a selection of Black speakers and cultural events that the Cal campus has played host to over the years.
The Pelican Building (Margie Cullen)

Seamus Heaney in Berkeley

Many Berkeleyans know that Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz taught at Cal for many years. Fewer likely remember that his fellow laureate Seamus Heaney.
(Alyssa Case '18)

Saving a Language from Extinction

90-year-old Berkeley alumna Rebecca Contopoulou speaks Greek, Italian, French, English, Spanish, and another language that sounds a lot like Spanish but is actually Ladino, a Sephardic language that traces its origins to Medieval Spain.

Listen to The Edge Podcast

California magazine's Laura Smith and Leah Worthington host The Edge, a podcast for surviving today's modern world.

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Quick Reads

The Wall Stands Only a Few Feet Tall. But What It Stands for is Significant.

UC Berkeley has its own wall, but, unlike most other walls, it brings people together. “The wall,” located in the heart of Cal’s campus at Sproul Plaza, has long been a communal space where Black folks gather and connect.

Image source: Brandon Ruffin

How to Make Black Lives Matter at Berkeley

Students, staff, and faculty discuss where we are and the way forward.
"A New Hope-Rah?" graphic by Krissy Eliot

A Dream Deferred: What President Oprah Might Look Like

Despite the post-Golden Globes buzz about Oprah Winfrey being the next Commander in Chief, polls say that most voters don’t want her to run.

A Social Media Celebrity Talks Leaving Twitter, Finding Joy

Friends have called me “Twitter famous,” but you’ve probably never heard of me. One night in 2015 I fell down an internet rabbit hole.

From the Archives

From the Archive: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Industry

From the June/July 1967 issue of California Monthly, "The Generation Gap." A panel discussion featuring Bob Bonis, Tom Donahue, Ralph J. Gleason (moderator), Bill Graham, and Phil Spector, industrialists in the economy of the young.

Recounting the Play, Play-by-Play, 40 Years On

Context and insight on that moment in 1982 when the football gods proved to fans everywhere that the cliches really are true: Anything can happen, and It ain’t over till it’s over.

Coded and Loaded: How Politicians Talk About Race and Gender Without Really Talking About Race and Gender

Richard Nixon had always been more of a rat-catcher than a heartthrob. All jowls and forehead, and sporting that rictus of a smile, he was a perennial runner-up. Willy Loman by way of Yorba Linda. In the summer of 1968, though, with the country in flames, Nixon rolled out the strategy that would vault him […]
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