Profs and Pints - Nashville

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Antarctica 101,” a look at life and research on the Earth’s frozen continent, with Dan Morgan, geologist, scholar of glaciers, and principal senior lecturer in Earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-antarctica ]

Antarctica is the coldest, driest, highest, windiest, brightest, loneliest, most peaceful, and least explored continent on Earth. Come to a decidedly more comfortable environment—Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom—to gain a deep understanding of Antarctica and our efforts to explore it.

Your guide on this scholarly journey, Dan Morgan of Vanderbilt University, has been to Antarctica for six seasons of field research on the ice.

He’ll talk about the geologic history of Antarctica, its status as the world’s largest wildlife refuge, and why it’s central to our understanding of the global climate and ecosystem.

You’ll learn how Antarctica’s discovery more than 200 years ago helped motivate a golden age of its exploration and a race for the South Pole, with the key figures involved including the doomed Robert Falcon Scott and the death-escaping Ernest Shackleton. Dr. Morgan will talk about the treaty governing Antarctica and why it was the site of the first arms-control treaty signed during the Cold War.

You’ll get brought up to speed on current explorations and what it’s like to be living and camping there today. Motivating researchers who head there is a conviction that what happens in Antarctica affects all of us—Earth’s southernmost continent truly is at the heart of it all. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Emperor penguins and their young on the Antarctic ice. Photo by Giuseppe Zibordi (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Smashing Protons, Solving Mysteries,” a brief crash course on sub-atomic physics and the “big science” projects undertaken to solve its huge questions, with Raghav (Rithya) Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, assistant professor of physics at Vanderbilt University.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-protons ]

The cutting edge of research in fundamental physics often focuses on the natural world’s building blocks. It involves questions such as “What is the smallest form of matter?” and “How did it come about in the Big Bang?” Ultimately, it seeks to determine how we and the universe around us got where we are.

Seeking to answer these questions are gigantic particle accelerator and collider projects with worldwide scientific involvement and budgets in the billions. Among them are the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and our nation’s $1.5 billion electron-ion collider (EIC), expected to come online in the mid-2030s at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

Gain a better understanding of such research and what we are or might be learning through it with the help of Professor Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, a talented science communicator who is involved in groundbreaking physics research.

We’ll start by journeying inside the nucleus and learning the basics of sub-atomic physics.

From there, we’ll get caught up on the huge advances in basic science made by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, the biggest engineering project in human history, with an estimated cost roughly 10 times that of the Hoover Dam. The Large Hadron Collider was used for experiments that enabled us to discover the Higgs particle, which was deemed responsible for the creation of mass for fundamental particles. It also enabled researchers to recreate conditions like those of the early universe, a few micro-seconds after the Big Bang, and study primordial matter and its evolution.

As is often the case with basic science research, what we have learned so far has only brought up further questions regarding the secrets of the nucleus and the very nature of matter. You’ll learn how the EIC will aid research on this front and what we can expect as the new machine turns on.

It’s a talk that will help you better understand research with the potential to change how we see our world. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: The Large Hadron Collider (ATLAS at CERN)

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Wrestler Vs. Lawyer,” an evening devoted to court battles involving Hulk Hogan and other stars of the ring, with Professor Alex B. Long of the University of Tennessee College of Law, author of Professional Wrestling and the Law.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/wrestler-vs-lawyer ]

What happens when masters of the Sleeper Hold and Atomic Leg Drop find themselves up against those known for moves such as the subpoena, cross examination, and motion to dismiss?

Find out at Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom when law professor and legal scholar Alex Long delivers an entertaining overview of legal cases involving professional wrestling.

You’ll learn how the world of professional wrestling has a long and colorful history of lawsuits, ranging from sexual harassment and racial discrimination claims to intellectual property disputes and personal injury suits brought by fans injured at matches.

Professor Long will explore how kayfabe—the practice of maintaining the illusion that professional wrestling was a competitive athletic contest—has collided with the realities of the legal system over the years. He’ll talk about what happens when an industry with a long history of obscuring the truth bumps up against the legal system’s focus on arriving at the truth in any conflict. He’ll also help you understand the legal theories and procedures applied to legal disputes involving professional grapplers.

The main event will be a discussion of the legal battles of Hulk Hogan, among the most famous professional wrestlers ever and party to a disproportionate share of infamous lawsuits. We’ll look at the lawsuit that comedian Richard Belzer filed against Hogan after being injured by Hogan on his talk show. You’ll learn about the legal claims Hogan brought against his employer, World Championship Wrestling, over allegedly defamatory statements about Hogan made live during a pay-per-view event.

Perhaps the most famous lawsuit involving a professor wrestler was Hogan’s invasion-of-privacy claim against the website Gawker for its publication of a sex tape in which Hogan was featured. Professor Long will look at that case and the questions it raised about the controversial practice of investment companies (and fabulously wealthy Silicon Valley moguls) funding lawsuits for profit or revenge.

You’ll be glad you had a ringside seat for this event. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Hulk Hogan in the ring as host in 2014 (Photo by Megan Elice Meadows / Wikimedia Commons).