From his academic beginnings as a historian of world cultures and religions, Berry developed into a historian of the Earth and its evolutionary processes. He was influenced by the work of the Jesuit scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and he served as president of the American Teilhard Association (1975–1987). Berry took Teilhard’s major ideas on evolution and expanded them into an epic story to which we belong. To that end with the cosmologist Brian Swimme he wrote "The Universe Story" (1992)"." The multimedia project "Journey of the Universe" (2011) was also inspired by this perspective. This is a film (dedicated to Berry), a book, a series of Conversations on DVDs and podcasts, and online courses from Yale/Coursera.