UC Santa Barbara (Audio)

Language and the law is a field growing in size and importance. While some forensic linguistics applications -- e.g. authorship attribution -- have a wider tradition, this growth is particularly acute in the domain of legal interpretation, which is increasingly using corpus data and methods. Stefan Gries, Professor of Linguistics at UC Santa Barbara, discusses two recent applications. One is from recent work as an expert witness for a law firm; it is a more quantitative application and concerned with authorship attribution in an internet trolling case. The other is concerned with more quantitative and qualitative research for an amicus brief to the Supreme Court. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 41041]

Batteries have become an essential component of our daily life. They power our smartphones, laptops, tablets, and many of the cars around us. They are also key to the renewable energy transition. Building better batteries requires the design of materials whose chemical composition and structure evolve drastically on charge and discharge, yet those changes must be perfectly reversible for the device to sustain hundreds or thousands of charge-discharge cycles. Raphaële Clément, Associate Professor of Materials Department at UC Santa Barbara, explains why this is a challenging task that necessitates an atomic-level understanding of the inner workings of battery materials. Clément is working to establish materials design rules and optimize materials processing approaches to advance electrochemical energy storage. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 41031]

Artist and filmmaker Tom Kalin joins moderator Bhaskar Sarkar (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of his 1992 film Swoon. Kalin discusses the historical background of the film (the famous 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case), how he reimagined the case through the lens of queer desire, and how he conducted archival research into the central figures of the murder. Kalin also discusses how his background and training as a visual artist fed into his work in feature-length film making. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40927]

Film producer Liz Yale Marsh and mustang wrangler West Taylor join moderator and co-producer Wendy Eley Jackson to discuss their work on the documentary Facing the Falls, which follows disability rights advocate Cara Elizabeth Yar Khan and her twelve-day expedition through the Grand Canyon. They explore how Yar Khan’s muscle disease provided a unique challenge to navigating the Grand Canyon, as well as how Marsh and Jackson came onto the film in post-production and helped to finish the project. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40926]

Filmmakers Natasha Merkulova and Alexey Chupov join moderator Sasha Razor (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) to discuss their film Captain Volkonogov Escaped. Merkulova and Chupov share how they work as a film making team, how they researched the period of Stalinist purges in the 1930s, and how they sought to make the period of the film feel contemporary. They go on to discuss their experience working with lead actor Yura Borisov, who gained wider recognition for the 2024 film Anora.

Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40925]

Eric Faden (Bucknell University) discusses his work on the Japanese Paper Film Project, a project that has been preserving paper films made in Japan in the 1930s. Koto player Yoko Reikano Kimura and cellist Hikaru Tamaki (Duo Yumeno) joins Faden and moderator Alex Lilburn (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) to talk about how the preservation work was carried out and their experiences presenting the digitized films with live musical accompaniment. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40924]

Mona Damluji (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) and Elisabeth Weber (German and Slavic Studies, UCSB) join moderator Bishnupriya Ghosh (English and Global Studies, UCSB) to discuss the film project From Ground Zero, an anthology of films made by Palestinian filmmakers since the beginning of the war in Gaza. They discuss how the films present a unique vision of Gaza, showing a vibrant society dealing with the outbreak of war, and how the films urge the audience to become informed viewers. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40923]

Coastal Santa Barbara is considered one of the most idyllic locations on the North American West Coast, but its beauty is frequently disrupted by fast-spreading, wind-driven wildfires. The east-west oriented Santa Ynez Mountains (SYM), rising abruptly over 1,000 meters from the coastal plain, create a distinct climatic environment by separating the cool, stable air over the Pacific from the much drier atmosphere of the Santa Ynez Valley. This topography leads to unique regional wind patterns, including the Sundowner winds, which occur along the southern slopes of the SYM. Leila Carvalho, Professor of Geography and a researcher at the Earth Research Institute at UC Santa Barbara, studies regional and large-scale climate variability and change, including monsoon dynamics, tropical-extratropical interactions, extreme precipitation and temperature events, mountain weather and climate, and regional modeling. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 41039]

Film historian Rebecca Prime joins moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of the classic Hollywood film The Sound of Fury. Prime outlines the film’s production history and how its political and social commentary was shaped by its director, Cy Endfield, who would go on to be blacklisted due to his association with the Communist Party. They further discuss Endfield’s subsequent work in London and how he struggled with the blacklist for the rest of his career. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40919]

Documentary subject and Chicano activist Jerry Ramirez joins moderator Clint Terrell (English, UCSB) for a discussion of the documentary film American Homeboy. They discuss Ramirez’s involvement with the film, his relationship to his Chicano identity, and how his experience being incarcerated fueled his activism, particularly in relation to Chicano issues. Ramirez and Terrrell reflect on how the film portrays Chicano history, including how Chicana and Chicano identity has been shaped over time. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40921]