What does it mean to become more fully who we are—body, history, faith, family, and all?

In this Radix Live conversation, we welcome Rev. Dr. Lauren Lisa Ng to discuss her latest book, Becoming Chinese: Essays on Self-Discovery from Head to Toe, a personal and beautifully written exploration of identity, belonging, and the sometimes complicated work of coming home to ourselves.

Structured quite literally from head to toe—hair, eyes, ears, mouth, belly, hands, feet, and more— Lauren’s essays trace her journey as a second-generation Chinese American growing up in suburban Pennsylvania and learning, over time, to reclaim parts of herself she had once been encouraged to minimize or leave behind altogether. Along the way, she writes about family and ancestral memory, racism and assimilation, ministry and vocation, food and the body, and the ordinary rituals through which culture is passed from one generation to another.

Yet Becoming Chinese is about more than one person’s cultural identity. As a minister and theologian, Ng asks what it means to become whole: to attend honestly to the histories we inherit, the bodies we inhabit, the communities that form us, and the God who meets us within them. 

Join us for a warm and wide-ranging conversation about heritage, faith, race, embodiment, and the sacred—and unfinished—work of becoming who we are.

Coco won Academy Awards for Animated Feature and Original Song. It's a beautiful film for all ages, and a rich starting point for conversation about grief, legacy, and the healing that comes when broken relationships are finally seen and named. Discussion led by Doug Dunderdale.

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

As part of this year’s Berkeley Palmer Lecture, we offer this special Faith & Film screening around the theme of artiificial intelligence. Following the movie and a dinner break, Dr. Hanna Reichel will speak on the dilemma of AI omniscience through the lens of the church’s long thinking about God and omniscience. Find out more about Seeing Like a God? Faith, Tech, and Power in Such a Time as This, the 2026 Berkeley Palmer Lecture, here. Stay for a fascinating evening!

As artificial intelligence races ahead faster than most of us can process, filmmaker Daniel Roher (director of Navalny) turns his camera on the people building it — and on himself, an expectant father wrestling with what kind of world he's bringing a child into. Sitting down with the leading minds behind today's AI (including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis), Roher confronts both the peril (extermination of all humanity) and the promise (we’ll never have to work again) of the technology reshaping our future. The result is a deeply personal, unflinching look at fear and hope in the age of AI — and an invitation to consider what wisdom, discernment, and faith have to offer as we navigate it together.

Join us for a screening of this timely documentary, followed by conversation on what it means to hold both hope and caution as we face a rapidly changing world.

PG, 2025, Musical/Action, 95 minutes, directed by Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans

Free Admission. Please register. Co-sponsored by New College Berkeley and First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley.

There are some films that entertain us, and there are others that quietly examine the human soul. The Lives of Others is one of those rare works. 

Set in East Germany during the final years of the Cold War, it explores a society built on fear, suspicion, and the relentless pursuit of control. Yet beneath its political story lies a more enduring question: Can a human heart truly change? 

The film invites us to consider the power of beauty, music, literature, truth, and sacrificial love to awaken conscience where ideology has numbed it. Whether viewed through a philosophical lens or a religious one, it asks timeless questions about sin and redemption, justice and mercy, and what it means to become fully human. Discussion led by Sam Choi. 

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

What does faithful discipleship look like when the world seems to be coming apart?

Join theologian Hanna Reichel for a timely conversation on her book For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional. Drawing on Scripture, church history, and the witness of Christians who remained faithful through periods of political upheaval—including the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany—Reichel offers practical wisdom for cultivating discernment, courage, hope, and community in anxious times. Rather than encouraging fear or political tribalism, she invites believers to rediscover the deep resources of the Christian tradition for living faithfully in extraordinary seasons.

This special Radix Live conversation will be hosted by Michael Barram and Doug Dunderdale, whose recent congregational study of Reichel's book sparked meaningful conversation about Christian witness, courage, and hope for today's church.

Writing can be a powerful tool for self-reflection, theological awakening, and the discernment needed to imagine and enact the kind of presence our society longs for. Come join Dr. Marilyn McEntyre, Dr. Craig Wong, and a team of writing facilitators, and practice crafting counter-narratives to the self-defeating stories and myths that serve to protect those in power rather than empowering the silenced and disempowered. NCB aspires to be a hope-producing “center for writing” and we invite you to join us.

This workshop is for all writers, whether you consider yourself a beginner or a seasoned veteran. Our hope is that the gathering will facilitate mutual learning and co-creativity. Just come with your pen or laptop and your desire to live faithfully in the world.

Bright, funny, and unexpectedly moving, this one gives us plenty to chew on: light vs. darkness, identity vs. performance, and whether grace has room for the parts of ourselves we'd rather keep backstage. Join us for the movie and a discussion afterwards. “Protect the Honmoon!” The screening will by facilitated by Doug Dunderdale.

PG, 2025, Musical/Action, 95 minutes, directed by Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans

Free Admission. Please register. Co-sponsored by New College Berkeley and First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley.

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Online / zoom

Whose life has inspired you to love God — and your neighbor — more deeply?

Throughout Christian history, believers have wrestled with the perennial question: What does faithful discipleship look like when it leaves the sanctuary and enters the public square? In this Radix Live conversation, we welcome Daryl Grigsby, author of a powerful collection of profiles celebrating 36 near-contemporary Catholics who have made a significant impact in the public sphere. Spanning the globe and encompassing both laypeople and clergy, these individuals, from Fr. Daniel Berrigan to Paul Farmer to jazz legend Mary Lou Williams, offer a rich tapestry of Catholic witness in action. 

A most astounding film combining nonstop belly laughs, accurate-based history, and eye-opening revelations of chaotic, cynical power grabs that reveal true sausage making. Discussion led by Sam Choi.

The Death of Stalin, A Comedy of Terrors, is one of the sharpest and most darkly hilarious political satires of the modern era -- a film where terror and absurdity sit side by side at the dinner table.

Online / zoom

In this Radix Live conversation, we are delighted to welcome Jeffrey to discuss his beautifully reflective new book (May 2026). Part memoir, part film criticism, and part spiritual testimony, the book traces Overstreet’s journey from a fear-based religious upbringing into a richer and more expansive vision of faith—one shaped, surprisingly enough, by the movies. As always, there will also be time for questions from our live audience.

No Other Land is a powerful, on-the-ground documentary that follows Palestinian communities in the West Bank as they struggle to remain on their land amid ongoing displacement and conflict. Co-created by Palestinian and Israeli activists, the film offers a rare, deeply human portrait of life under pressure, as well as an unexpected story of friendship and shared moral courage across dividing lines.

Free Admission. Please register. Co-sponsored by New College Berkeley and First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley.

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

US missiles target civilian targets in the name of Jesus, Christ’s sermon on the mount is vilified as heretical, and a president who boasts that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” continues to earn the trust of large swaths of the American Church. What has happened? How did we get here? What am I to learn, who do I listen to, and how do I stay rooted in - and faithful to - Jesus in such a time as this?

In the heart of the vast Australian Outback, two siblings are left stranded after a sudden tragedy. Their survival seems impossible until they encounter an Aboriginal youth on his "walkabout"—a solitary, months-long rite of passage.

What follows is a haunting, wordless journey across a landscape of surreal beauty, as two vastly different worlds collide. Nicolas Roeg’s masterpiece is a shimmering visual poem that explores the thin line between civilization and the wild, the loss of innocence, and the profound mystery of the human connection. Discussion led by film curator Sam Choi - one of his favorite films!

"A masterpiece of visual storytelling." – The Guardian | "One of the most beautiful and haunting films ever made." – Roger Ebert | "A shimmering, sensory experience." – The New York Times

NR, 1971, Adventure/Drama, 1 hr 40 min, directed by Nicolas Roeg

Free Admission. Please register. Co-sponsored by First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley and New College Berkeley.

Online / zoom

Some books diagnose the sickness of an age. Others offer practices for healing. Jonathan Pan Walton’s work does both.

For this Radix Live conversation, we are pleased to have Walton discuss two of his books: Twelve Lies That Hold America Captive: And the Truth That Sets Us Free and Beauty and Resistance: Spiritual Rhythms for Formation and Repair. One names the false stories that shape our national imagination; the other offers a way of living that resists despair, burnout, and spiritual fragmentation. Sounds timely, right?

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Online / zoom

We live in a visual age. Screens catechize us daily, shaping how we see the world, ourselves, and even God. But what if the Church has always possessed a visual language of its own: one not designed to distract, but to reveal? It’s an interesting question – timely, too.

In this Radix Live conversation, Eve Tibbs reflects on her gloriously illustrated book Seeing the Gospel: An Interpretive Guide to Orthodox Icons (2025)and invites us to rediscover Orthodox icons as more than religious art. Often described as “windows into heaven,” icons are theological proclamations in color and form – visual interpretations of Holy Scripture that draw viewers into the Kingdom of God.

Hosted by Matthew Steem, this event will feature dialogue between Eve Tibbs and Christian contemplative and essayist Arthur Aghajanian. Aghajanian writes and speaks at the intersection of visual culture and theology, examining how images guide imagination and influence our perception of reality. Together they will consider how icons shape Christian imagination, how beauty forms belief, and what it means to “see the Gospel” in a culture saturated with competing images. 

Past Lives invites viewers into a tender and reflective story about love, longing, and the mysterious ways our lives unfold. The film follows Nora and Hae Sung, two childhood friends separated when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea to North America. Decades later, they reconnect and begin to explore what might have been—and what truly is.

With quiet beauty and emotional honesty, Past Lives raises profound questions about destiny, choice, identity, and the meaning of “home.” It gently explores how our past shapes us, how relationships form us, and how we discern the life we are called to live. Rather than offering easy answers, the film invites reflection on grace, commitment, and the sacred complexity of human connection.

This is a contemplative, deeply human story that opens space for meaningful conversation about love, vocation, and the paths we choose—and the ones we leave behind. Join us and bring a friend for an engaging discussion and review after! Discussion led by Doug Dunderdale.

Academy Awards 2024, nominated for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay | Independent Spirit Awards 2024, won Best Film, Best Director. PG-13, 1 hr 46 minutes, (2023), written and directed by Celine Song

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

One of the great achievements of animation by one of the most revered filmmaker/story tellers of the 20th and 21st Century! Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke was the most watched film in the history of Japan when it was released.

Free Admission. Please register. Co-sponsored by First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley and New College Berkeley.

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Online / zoom

In this Radix Live interview, Bradley Jersak will reflect on his book Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction, exploring what faith might look like after cherished certainties are shaken—but not abandoned. Drawing from memoir, theology, philosophy, and the Christian tradition, Jersak invites us to consider how deconstruction, when approached wisely and communally, can actually become a pathway toward deeper communion with God rather than an exit from faith.

This conversation with Bradley (who is so known for his gentle, humble, and pastoral voice) will explore what deconstruction actually is, why critique of the Church is necessary, and why thoughtful deconstruction does not have to lead to deconversion. Special attention will be given to the vital role of community, the dangers of isolation, and the temptation toward new fundamentalisms once old ones fall away. For those feeling disoriented, weary, or searching for a faith that can breathe again, this conversation offers space, honesty, and a surprising promise: that in the embers, life still stirs.

Invest a day in growing spiritual practices that can ground you for many days to come. You will acquire practical handles on how to pray and journal - two spiritual disciplines that complement each other and help us personally, and collectively, to follow Christ amid these changing and uncertain times. All are welcome, whether exploring new faith practices or enriching existing ones.

Throughout the day, expect an interactive, conversational environment where instruction will be interwoven with writing and devotional exercises. NCB gatherings always seek to foster co-learning, discernment and relationship-building across cultures, generations and theological traditions.

“A sensory feast that makes the mundane magical.” — RogerEbert.com

Lovers Rock is a sensuous, immersive celebration of Black British life that unfolds almost entirely within the walls of a single house party in 1980s London. Pulsing with reggae, soul, and intimacy, the film captures the electric beauty of young love, freedom, and community as bodies move in sync and time seems to dissolve.

This Valentine’s Day, skip the standard rom-coms and lose yourself in the intoxicating, slow burn intimacy - not just as a social gathering, but as a sacred space where music, movement, and emotion merge into a shared ritual. Film discussion will be led by Sam Choi. 

Ranked #6 on IndieWire’s “100 Best Movies of the 2020s"

TV-MA (2020), Drama/History, 1 hr 10 min, directed by Steve McQueen

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Online / zoom

In this live conversation, Julie Lane-Gay will reflect on her award-winning book The Riches of Your Grace: Living in the Book of Common Prayer and will invite us into a deeper way of inhabiting time, prayer, and grace through the Book of Common Prayer. Rather than offering a history or technical guide, Lane-Gay will share how the Prayer Book quietly forms us—shaping our hearts, ordering our days, and anchoring ordinary Christian life in Christ.

The movie phenomena that dared to ask the question “Why? and for what Purpose?" 

Join for this cultural touchstone that challenges our societal conventions while tapping your feet and smiling along the way!

Barbie achieved remarkable commercial success while making a significant cultural impact. The film grossed around $1.447 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2023, the highest-grossing live-action comedy ever, and the first film directed solely by a woman to surpass $1 billion. Its popularity extended beyond the box office, sparking widespread conversations about gender, identity, and modern societal norms, while also influencing fashion, marketing, and online culture. Critically acclaimed, it earned numerous awards and nominations, further cementing its status as both a commercial and cultural phenomenon. By blending humor, visual spectacle, and social commentary, Barbie transformed a childhood toy into a global symbol capable of reflecting and shaping contemporary cultural conversations.

PG-13 (2023), Comedy/Fantasy, 1 hr 54 min, directed by Greta Gerwig

Free Admission. Co-sponsored by First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley and New College Berkeley. Discussion led by filmmaker Doug Dunderdale.