Profs and Pints - Richmond

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.

Profs and Pints Richmond presents: “Peering into Volcanoes,” an exploration of one of nature’s most dramatic and unpredictable forces, with David Kitchen, associate professor of geology at the University of Richmond and expert on volcanoes, earthquakes, and natural disasters.

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

The destruction of ancient Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius, the legendary 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, and the silent threat of Yellowstone’s deep magma reservoirs all serve as reminders that tremendous power lurks beneath our feet.

Gain an understanding of volcanoes, the risks they pose, and scientists’ efforts to understand them with David Kitchen, a researcher of volcanoes and volcanic processes who has visited and studied active and ancient volcanoes across the world. His talk promises to blend cutting-edge science with real-world risk analysis and depictions of awe-inspiring natural beauty.

Dr. Kitchen will discuss how the restless movement of Earth’s plates gives rise to towering mountains of fire, explosive eruptions, and vast fields of molten rock. We’ll explore how volcanoes form, why they erupt, how magma rises from the mantle, and how different types of volcanoes grow.

You’ll learn what makes some eruptions far more dangerous than others and how modern science is working to predict and mitigate the devastating hazards volcanoes pose — including ash falls, lava flows, violent mud and debris flows, and lateral blasts. We’ll look at vivid case studies from America’s own active volcanic regions—the Cascades, Long Valley, Yellowstone, the Great Basin, and Alaska.

Come and discover the story of the fire beneath our feet and why it matters to us all. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: The January 2018 eruption of the Mount Mayon volcano in the Philippines. Photo by Darkimages08 / Wikimedia Commons.

Profs and Pints Richmond presents: “The Power of Folk Horror,” an exploration of an especially creepy subgenre in folklore and film, with Joshua Barton, lecturer in English at Virginia Commonwealth University and scholar of horror.

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

What makes a horror film scare really stick with you? Sometimes, it’s not monsters or jump-scares but the eerie feeling that something ancient, something forgotten, is still lurking just under the surface.

That’s the heart of folk horror, a subgenre that blends folklore, rural isolation, and rituals gone wrong. It takes the past—the truly forgotten past—and makes it come roaring back to bite us.

Venture into the strange and fascinating world of folk horror with Joshua Barton, who has earned a big following among Profs and Pints fans with excellent past talks on cryptids, ghosts, movie monsters, and other things that go bump in the night.

We’ll start by digging down to folk horror’s roots in classic British films like The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General, discussing how these stories introduced us to secretive villages, ominous woods, and old traditions that clash violently with the modern world.

We’ll move on to explore how folk horror has reemerged in recent hits like The Witch, Midsommar, and Lamb. What ties them all together? The feeling that history isn’t dead; it’s just been waiting.

Beyond the scares, this genre taps into something deeper. Folk horror asks what happens when we lose touch with our roots or when we get too close to them. It reflects fears about identity, nature, belief, and the things we can’t explain. And in an age of environmental anxiety, political division, and cultural upheaval, these stories are more relevant than ever.

By the end of the lecture, we’ll see that folk horror goes beyond surface-level eeriness. It’s a mirror for our collective anxieties and a reminder that the past is never as far away as we think. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.