UC Santa Barbara (Audio)

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence went viral in conservative media in June 2023 when the L.A. Dodgers announced plans to honor the local house of the order at the team’s annual Pride Night. Reporting on the ensuing scuffle focused largely on sports, politics, and culture wars, not on religion, and it largely misrepresented or overlooked the international order of queer and trans nuns at the heart of the story. In this program, Melissa M. Wilcox, Professor and Holstein Family & Community Chair of Religious Studies at UC Riverside, talks about who these nuns are and why they keep rankling the right and delighting the left. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40374]

Aircraft, spacecraft and rockets connect people and goods across vast distances, enable global satellite communication, facilitate fundamental scientific discoveries and empower exploration of the solar system and beyond. The operating environments of these advanced systems require materials that can tolerate extremes of temperature, loading and surrounding chemical environment. Designing materials to survive in these environments has traditionally been a slow, expensive process that requires understanding and control down to the atomic level. In this program, Tresa Pollock, the Alcoa Distinguished Professor of Materials at UC, Santa Barbara, discusses new tools and approaches that accelerate this process and aid in materials discovery will be presented. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 40129]

Troubled interactions are moments when communication breaks down in subtle, often unnoticed ways. In this program, Waverly Duck, an urban ethnographer and professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara, discusses these breakdowns, revealing surprising aspects of how we create meaning and self-identity. Through video and audio recordings, Duck shows how misunderstandings lead people to assign motives to each other, creating conflict. Examples from Duck's research include neighborhood poverty, food inequality, and autism assessments. These cases highlight hidden social rules and practices, demonstrating how studying these troubles can help us understand everyday interactions better. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40131]

Pragmatism is a “philosophy” in two senses of the term. It is a general outlook on life and an academic theory of the universe and our place in it. In this program, Aaron Zimmerman, professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at UC, Santa Barbara, discusses the nature of America's pragmatism. The axiom of pragmatism is Alexander Bain’s (1865) theory of belief, which was subsequently developed by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Despite its Scottish origins, pragmatism is distinctively American, as philosophers, like Dewey and Rawls (in his later work), adapted American’s founding creed to the changes wrought by the Darwinian revolution in biology, offering a pragmatic rationale for natural rights originally grounded in creationist biology. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40130]

Director Don Hertzfeldt joins moderator Miguel Penabella (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of his films ME and It’s Such a Beautiful Day. They discuss his time as a UCSB student and his early interest in animation, as well as the development of his new film. Hertzfeldt also shares insights into his influences from silent cinema, and his thematic interests in deep time and memory across his work. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40070]

Our respiratory system provides oxygen to and removes carbon dioxide from the body. To function properly, the lungs need to fill up with fresh air upon inhalation. Unfortunately, for a variety of medical reasons, the amount of air that reaches the lungs can be insufficient, causing respiratory distress. Healthcare providers often administer liquid drugs in the trachea to ensure prompt relief. In this program, Emilie Dressaire, professor of mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara, discusses how the liquid drugs make their way down to the lungs. To answer open questions on drug delivery, her team has built an experimental system that is currently in Space. She presents the journey from UCSB to the International Space Station and shares the first results. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 40087]

Composer Christopher Willis joins moderator Tyler Morgenstern (Assistant Director, Carsey-Wolf Center) for a discussion of his work on Schmigadoon! They discuss how theatrical and movie musical history, as well as Willis’ musicology background, informs the music of the show. They explore the challenge of composing an underscore, and incorporating the stylistic variation of decades of musicals, from the Golden Age musical tradition to the darker themes of 1960s and 1970s productions. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 39993]

Director Lynn Hershman Leeson joins moderator Letícia Cobra Lima (History of Art & Architecture, UCSB and curator of A Box of One’s Own) for a discussion of her film !Women Art Revolution. They discuss her history as an artist, and the difficult process of piecing together a narrative from hundreds of hours of footage, interviews, and extensive archival research. They also examine the institutional issues faced by women in the art world and make connections between past and present artists. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 39975]

How secure are computers and how does artificial intelligence impact security? In this program, Christopher Kruegel, professor of computer science at UC Santa Barbara, explores two key questions related to security and artificial intelligence. First, how AI can help to improve security. For decades, security solutions have leveraged traditional machine learning models. Not surprisingly, recent advances in AI have opened up exciting new opportunities. Second, the security of AI systems themselves. Like any other software application, they can be exploited. Given their often-critical role, it is imperative to secure AI against attacks such as training data poisoning and adversarial inputs. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 40086]

Writer/director Sam Kadi and actors William Atherton and Rizwan Manji join moderator Juan Campo (Religious Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of their film The Citizen. They share their experiences making the film and drawing inspiration from real Arab-American stories. They also discuss the continued relevance of the film’s themes, including issues of citizenship, the immigrant experience, racial prejudice, and the right to protest, as well as the representation of Arab-Americans on-screen. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 39978]