UCI Law professor David Kaye discusses Musk's controversial buyout of the social media giant and the human rights issues related to online speech.

Elon Musk, Twitter and free speech

With the inflation up and the GNP and stock prices down, UCI economist Eric Swanson explains that there’s nothing yet to fear … at least for now.

Is a recession coming?

Brett Sanders, UC Irvine professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been focusing his research efforts on understanding flood risk in Southern California, with a significant emphasis on the impact of climate change-caused sea level rise on coastal communities. Lately he has been examining flood risk to populations living further inland, in many cases affecting people of lower socioeconomic status. In this episode of the UCI Podcast, Professor Sanders talks about his research and its relevance in this season of substantial rain and snowfall in the U.S. West.

UCI Podcast: Evaluating Flood Risk in California

On April 3, 2025, Julie Washington was appointed interim dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. No stranger to leadership roles, the professor of education was already associate dean for faculty development and diversity at the school, where she’s been a member of the faculty since 2021. Before that, Washington served as professor and chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Georgia State University and professor and chair of the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Washington describes herself as a “language nerd” who, during her high school years, frequently won oratory contests and reveled in the art of diagramming sentences. After working with a speech-language pathologist for voice therapy during that same period of her life, Washington knew she had found the career she wanted to pursue. 

Most recently, her research has centered around how language impacts reading and writing and how it develops in children who learn variations of American English in their communities. Washington shares her expertise worldwide – this summer, she served as the keynote speaker at the Africa Dyslexia Conference, held in Accra, Ghana, an event co-sponsored by UC Irvine’s School of Education.

In this episode of The UC Irvine Podcast, we’ll learn more about her origin story and the work she’s leading with UC Irvine’s Language Variation and Academic Success lab and Learning Disabilities Research Innovation Hub, which is funded by the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Washington will also share where she’s seeing the positive impacts of AI in education, why research drives practice in the field, and how she plans to lead her school and maintain its nationally recognized reputation during this time of funding uncertainty. 

“Words” the music for this episode, was provided by Audionautix via the audio library in YouTube Studio. Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Julie Washington on her love of language and the future of teaching

In March, the UCI Medical Center became the first hospital in Orange County to provide COVID-19 testing. Dr. Ed Monuki, chair of pathology who leads UCI Health’s testing efforts, discusses how the campus came together to address this community need and how future testing for the coronavirus and its antibodies will play an important role with the resumption of our regular daily activities, like going back to work or the classroom.

UCI Podcast: The race for COVID testing

UCI is reengaging operations and more people are getting ready to come back to campus, with university leaders generating plans and implementing measures to ensure a smooth, safe transition. Bernadette Boden-Albala, the director and founding dean of UCI’s Program in Public Health, talks with the Anteater Insider about those plans, where Orange County stands on COVID-19, and why it’s safe to return to campus.

Anteater Insider: Prof. Bernadette Boden-Albala on coming back to campus

When Russ Dalton's mother Sandy passed away in 2018, his sister Janet found a trove of letters their father Bob, a soldier in Patton's Third Army, had sent during his deployment to Germany. Earlier this year, Russ and Janet published a book, "Love Letters from World War II: Robert W. Dalton's WW II Service" that is an assembly of some of their dad's letters and photos. It offers a first-person account of an average GI's war experience and an intimate glimpse into the lives of two members of the Greatest Generation. Russ, a UCI political science research professor, tells the UCI podcast how that war affected family relations and touched all of their lives.

UCI Podcast: Commemorating the 75th anniversary of WW II

The COVID-19 crisis has intertwined economics and public health into a single issue, creating a collective action problem. Eric Spangenberg, dean of The UCI Paul Merage School of Business and consumer behavior expert, joins the UCI Podcast to share his insights into the relationship between community action and keeping Orange County safely and successfully open for business during the pandemic.

UCI Podcast: Coronavirus crisis and economic recovery

Good Trouble

The clouds of misinformation swirling on the internet have only thickened this election season, with unfounded allegations of rampant voter fraud and online conspiracy theories that severely strain credulity. To learn more, the UCI Podcast spoke with Cailin O’Connor, an associate professor in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at UCI, is an expert on misinformation, and, along with fellow UCI professor James Weatherall, the co-author of the book, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread (2019). In this interview, O’Connor discusses the most consequential pieces of misinformation this election season and the ways people can slow their spread.

UCI Podcast: Slowing the spread of election misinformation

With a student resident population of 7,000 for Fall Quarter, UCI embarked on an ambitious combined effort to help slow the spread of coronavirus on campus: weekly asymptomatic testing for resident students, and a contact tracing program unique to the UCI community. Dr. Albert Chang, the Medical Director of the UCI Student Health Center; and David Souleles, the Director of UCI’s COVID-19 Response Team, together join the UCI Podcast to discuss these two programs and how the two initiatives work together to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

UCI Podcast: COVID-19 Testing and Tracing

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.