The UC Irvine Podcast

Rena Beatrice Goldstein is a graduate student in UCI's Department of Philosophy. She's the driver behind Ask A Philosopher, a program that seeks to engage the public in philosophical thinking and discussion. For this episode of the UCI Podcast, we caught up with Goldstein and colleagues at the Ask A Philosopher pop-up kiosk at the Sit Stay Cafe in Huntington Beach.

Basketball is back at UCI, and that means another season with Big West championships potentially in store for both the men’s and women’s teams. In this edition of the UCI Podcast, Trent Rush – the voice of Anteater basketball – catches up with head coaches Russell Turner and Tamara Inoue. Both are coming off record years. The 2018-19 men’s team was the best in UCI history. It won a record 31 games, the Big West Conference championship and its first NCAA tournament game ever. In addition, the women logged their first 20-win season in more than three decades. This year, both teams are preseason conference favorites and poised to once again contend for NCAA tournament berths next March. Let the excitement begin!

On the latest UCI Podcast, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – Distinguished Professor of comparative literature and English at UCI – shares the amazing story of his captivity, which led to the writing of his influential novel Devil on the Cross. In 1977, armed police pulled the Kenyan writer from his home and jailed him in one of Africa’s largest maximum-security prisons. His crime? He had written a play about class struggle, poverty and the legacy of colonialism that offended the brutal Kenyan regime. Ngugi was held in a block with 18 other political prisoners and quarantined from the general prison population. To fight back against the humiliation and the intended degradation of the spirit, he chose to write a novel on the only material to which he had access: toilet paper. Ngugi left that prison on Dec. 12, 1978, with streams of paper on which was written one of his most memorable books. Today, Ngugi is considered one of the world’s greatest living writers, and he’s been at UCI since 2002. He has published more than two dozen novels, stories, essays and memoirs, and he remains a strong voice of freedom around the world.

When KUCI first broadcasted in 1969, the counter-culture college radio station brought unplanned, wacky programming to the nation’s largest planned community. This month, the highly admired station turns 50 and can be heard throughout most of Orange County and on the Internet. It’s our place to turn for compelling talk, UCI sports and innovative new music. But some UCI lifers like to recall KUCI’s eccentric past. In this episode of the UCI Podcast, host Tom Vasich talks about KUCI’s rich and eclectic history with its longtime broadcast media coordinator Kevin Stockdale.

James Bullock, UCI professor and chair of physics & astronomy, became dean of the School of Physical Sciences in the summer of 2019, taking over for Kenneth Janda. In this UCI Podcast interview, Bullock talks about the past, present and future of the school, of which he has been a faculty member since 2004.

The University of California, Irvine officially launched its Brilliant Future philanthropic campaign on Oct. 4, 2019, with a goal of raising $2 billion to fund scientific research, provide scholarships for students, advance healthcare innovations, and foster deeper explorations into our shared human experience. In this episode of the UCI Podcast, host Tom Vasich delves into the campaign with one of its behind-the-scenes leaders, Karen Isble, associate vice chancellor & campaign director, University Advancement. You can learn more about the Brilliant Future Campaign at brilliantfuture.uci.edu.

The green streak continues! Sierra magazine has named the University of California, Irvine No. 1 in the nation and No. 2 overall in its annual “Cool Schools” ranking of sustainability leaders among U.S. and Canadian colleges. Learn more at http://news.uci.edu.

Money magazine has ranked the University of California, Irvine No. 1 on its 2019-20 list of the nation’s “Best Colleges.” In this episode of the UCI Podcast, host Sheri Ledbetter speaks with Willie Banks, UCI's vice chancellor for student affairs, to gain his perspective on why the university has earned this top college ranking.

This latest episode of The UCI Podcast goes onstage at the New Swan Shakespeare Festival with its creative director Eli Simon. The eighth season of popular theater series kicks off this July with two of the Bard’s most archetypal plays: “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

In this episode of the UCI Podcast, we meet with Mark Deppe, director of UCI Esports, and Avi Behar, jungler on the Anteaters collegiate champion League of Legends team who are defending their title this week. The two discuss the history and culture of the UCI Esports program and their excitement about competing in the College League of Legends championship.

This episode of The UCI Podcast features two interviews with University of California, Irvine faculty members. In our first conversation, we'll discuss the history of video games through the lens of LGBTQ theory with Bonnie "Bo" Ruberg, assistant professor of informatics, whose new book, "Video Games Have Always Been Queer," is on shelves now. Then we'll talk about what it takes to find exoplanets orbiting dim M-dwarf stars in the Milky Way with UCI assistant professor of astronomy Paul Robertson. Learn more by visiting news.uci.edu.

This first episode of The UCI Podcast features an interview with Kyriacos Athanasiou, Distinguished Professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Athanasiou's group at UCI has been looking into ways to treat defects to the temporomandibular joint, which impact about a quarter of the population.