Jamelle Bouie is the Chief Political Correspondent of Slate. In October 2015 he sat down with Lance Knobel at the Uncharted Festival of Ideas in Berkeley to talk about the 2016 election. Rather than delve into the horse race of candidate nominations, Knobel asked Bouie to offer a framework for understanding this election — does the party actually decide who the nominees should be, how does campaigning and financing impact outcomes?

Nicholas Dirks is the Chancellor of the University of California Berkeley. He spoke with Quentin Hardy, deputy technology editor of the New York Times, about how UC Berkeley is planning to cement its position as one of the top public universities in the world with the launch of a global campus.

Elñora Tena Webb is president of Laney College, a community college in Oakland, California. Every day, Webb grapples with the issues of how to get young, often disenfranchised, people into colleges and universities. She spoke with bestselling author Julia Flynn Siler about how her personal journey informs how she tackles the job, and has given her a strong faith in the power of education.

Described by Rolling Stone as “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform globally. He spoke with bestselling author and Berkeleyside co-founder Frances Dinkelspiel about viable alternatives to the war on drugs.

Wherever he’s worked, Robin Sloan, author of “Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore," has been figuring out the future of media. Sloan and media innovator Peter Leyden here explore the difference between online writing — which, he says, can sometimes feel like consuming sugar — to publishing a book, which he compares to eating protein-heavy leafy greens.