UC Santa Barbara (Audio)

Since its beginning in 1999, the UCSB New Venture Competition provides a unique opportunity for UCSB students to learn how to start a business. This eight-month educational experience, with activities and curriculum spanning the entire academic year, culminates with the New Venture Finals, where the finalist teams present an investor pitch to a panel of judges for prize money. Series: "Innovator Stories: Creating Something from Nothing" [Business] [Show ID: 33938]

Hardly a week goes by without another controversy over free speech on college campuses. On one side, there are increased demands to censor hateful, disrespectful, and bullying expression and to ensure an inclusive and nondiscriminatory learning environment. On the other side are traditional free speech advocates who charge that recent demands for censorship coddle students and threaten free inquiry. UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman is an expert in the American Constitution and the Supreme Court. Here he discusses why campuses must provide supportive learning environments for an increasingly diverse student body but can never restrict the expression of ideas. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Public Affairs] [Education] [Show ID: 33944]

UCSB Pollock Theater Director Matt Ryan and crew meet Comic-Con 2018 participants in San Diego. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33951]

Novelist, critic and cultural historian Marina Werner and Peter Bloom (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) engage Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) from several angles. They discuss the film’s astounding technical craft, Reiniger’s addition of feminist perspectives to the narrative, and the film’s relation to both the Arabian classic 1001 Nights and the French translation/adaptation of that work. Werner and Bloom discuss Reiniger’s relationship to the source material and provide rich historical details about early-twentieth century relations between Europe and what was then called “the Orient.” Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33756]

Novelist Sinaan Antoon and journalist Leila Fadel join UCSB’s Mona Damluji for a post-screening discussion of Kasim Abid’s 2008 film Life After the Fall. They discuss the difficulties of living and working in U.S.-occupied Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the decline of security and safety, loyalties-of-necessity to one’s particular neighborhood in the power vacuum that ensued, and the complications and sometimes harrowing difficulties of everyday life. At issue in particular is each guest’s struggle to tell stories about Iraq that felt honest, empathetic, and adequate when most narrativization of Iraq at the time tended to feel too superficial (U.S. media coverage), too insular (stories from inside the Green Zone), too nostalgic (for a functional Iraq, if one under dictatorship), or too limited in scale (to the scope of whatever groups, such as families or friends, that were intimate enough to permit trust).

Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33760]

Amar Akbar Anthony was a Bollywood blockbuster when it was released in 1977 and has become a classic of Hindi cinema and a touchstone of Indian popular culture. William Elison (Religious Studies, UCSB), Christian Lee Novetzke (International Studies, University of Washington) and Andy Rotman (Religion, Smith College) discuss their co-authored book on the film that offers a sympathetic and layered interpretation of the film’s deeper symbolism, seeing it as a lens for understanding modern India’s experience with secular democracy. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33816]

Hari Kondabolu, comedian and star of The Problem With Apu (2017), joins UCSB’s Kum-Kum Bhavnani for a conversation about the film. Kondabolu reflects on what it means to retrospectively reexamine offensive stereotypes about race, culture, and forms of work, as well as the power of humor to disarm and dismantle them. Kondabolu and Bhavnani discuss at length how, rather than creatively being intended as hurtful or offensive, stereotypes can enter the cultural lexicon as struggling/tokenized forms of representation in cultures where there is otherwise none, or as a form of insensitive marketing of foreignness in and for a dominant culture, as well as the eventual dilemmas this can cause for the creators and the legacy of their works.

Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33754]

Drawing on personal experiences of living with the Maasai tribe in east Africa and the Inuit of Greenland – whose cultures and resilience derive from living in constantly changing environments - Jacqueline McGlade explores how mind-sets, economies and ecosystems can become (re)active and more resilient to an increasingly uncertain world. McGlade has pioneered research in the dynamics of ecosystems, citizen science and social and environmental informatics. Series: "Bren School of Environmental Science & Management" [Science] [Show ID: 33663]

Randy Modos is the president and a founder of PayJunction, where he provides vision and leadership for the company as it pioneers green payment technology and delivers operational efficiencies for businesses. The founders of PayJunction took an inspired idea and grew it into a company that process over $4 billion annually. But it’s one thing to create a world-class product, it’s another to leverage your core beliefs into a revolutionary approach. PayJunction is a leader in ethical payment processing and prioritizes long-term relationships over short-term profit. Modos has been a champion of this approach over PayJunction’s 18 years in business. Series: "Innovator Stories: Creating Something from Nothing" [Business] [Show ID: 33673]

Eighteen years ago, Israeli author Ruby Namdar arrived in New York, not knowing that he had just taken the first step of an incredible literary, cultural and personal journey. He discusses the novel The Ruined House, winner of the 2014 Sapir Prize, Israel’s most prestigious literary award, which was an artistic response to Namdar’s wonderful experience of discovering America, American Jewry, and American Jewish literature. Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33734]