Profs and Pints - Richmond

Profs and Pints Richmond presents: “New Views of the Universe,” a look at the previously unseen realms and phenomena revealed by space telescopes, with Jack Singal, associate professor of physics at the University of Richmond and former researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Stanford University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/richmond-universe .]

The images being produced by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have reignited interest in the frontiers of astronomy. But its voyage is just the latest in a series of remarkable space telescope missions, dating back almost to the dawn of the space age, that have revolutionized our understanding of the universe and what happens in it.

Come to Richmond’s Triple Crossing-Fulton taproom for a look at how telescopes that see forms of light invisible to our eyes are showing us distant galaxies and amazing phenomena that we never knew existed before, and even letting us see things as they were far back in time.

Your guide on this journey, Dr. Jack Singal, is an astrophysicist whose career has involved studying the universe in all different kinds of light, including radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays.

Professor Singal will discuss the history of space telescope missions and how these instruments’ ability to detect different forms of light has yielded revelations that changed our views of the universe and our place in it. If you’ve ever wondered how we know, for example, that the universe is full of mysterious dark matter, or how we can see what things were like 14 billion years ago, then this talk will provide some answers.

You’ll walk out after the talk and look up at the night sky with a bigger sense of wonder. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: “Pillars of Creation,” an infrared image of a star-forming region captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Photo by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI / Creative Commons.)

Profs and Pints Richmond presents: “The Truth About Confessions,” an exploration of police interrogation practices and how they can lead the innocent to falsely admit guilt, with Hayley Cleary, associate professor of criminal justice and public policy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/richmond-confessions .]

Would you ever confess to a crime you didn’t commit? Most people say no, yet scores of research studies show it’s surprisingly easy to induce false admissions of guilt. Real-world data confirm that innocent people have falsely confessed to heinous and violent crimes under the stress of interrogation by police.

Join Dr. Hayley Cleary, an internationally recognized expert on police interrogations and false confessions, for an in-depth look at contemporary American interrogation practices and how they can pave the way toward wrongful convictions of crime.

She’ll discuss how police interrogation tactics both intentionally and inadvertently trade on the psychological weaknesses of vulnerable suspects.

She’ll also look at the risk factors that make people more likely to give false confessions. These can be dispositional, related to adolescence and developmental immaturity, intellectual disabilities, or certain forms of psychopathology. Or they can be situational and related to aspects of the interrogation environment or interactions taking place there, with examples being prolonged custody and isolation, the presentations of false evidence, or implied promises of leniency.

There will be some good news. Dr. Cleary will also discuss the innocence movement to free wrongfully convicted people and also the remarkable progress being made in the development of evidence-based investigative interviewing techniques that promote due process and elicit accurate, reliable information. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints Richmond presents: “America’s Birth Certificate,” an in-depth look at the Declaration of Independence and its impact, with Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/richmond-declaration .]

The Declaration of Independence is a peculiar thing. It’s a literary masterpiece that was written jointly by a committee of fifty people. It’s short and punchy—just 1310 words long—but still somehow daunting and difficult to get a grip on. (There’s a reason most of us have never read it in full and can only quote the first third of its second sentence.)

And what is it exactly? Is it a birth certificate announcing happy news, or a petition for divorce full of grievance and score-settling? Is it aimed at the American people, or King George, or someone else? Was it the first ever declaration of independence, or a cheap imitation of a genre already well established? What did people at the time make of it? What did it change? Why does it still matter?

Rick Bell, a history professor who has given thrilling Profs and Pints talks on the Hamilton musical, the genius of Ben Franklin, and African Americans in the American Revolution, returns to the stage to answer these questions and more. He’ll set this uniquely American civic text in global perspective. He’ll discuss why the Declaration caused barely a ripple when it arrived in London, and how, in the months and years that followed, it became an example and inspiration to revolutionaries across the continent, the ocean, and the globe, with more than 100 other declarations of independence being issued in other parts of the world since 1776.

Our American Revolution—a modest change in political sovereignty in a few out-of-the-way agricultural colonies on the western rim of the Atlantic Ocean—occupies pride of place in the larger history of global decolonization and post-colonialism. You’ll have a much better grasp of why once you’ve learned about the fascinating origins, misunderstood purpose, and extraordinary global legacy of the Declaration of Independence.

Dr. Bell (a Brit with a vicious sense of humor) might even make you reconsider this whole independence thing in the first place. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: “The Declaration of Independence,” painted by John Trumbull in 1818 and on display at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.