Frankie Bailey is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice and a crime novelist. Her research focuses on crime history, mass media and pop culture. She is the author of the Lizzie Stuart and Hannah McCabe mystery series.

Bailey is working on a reference book that maps the cultural and historical significance of nine of the most renown gangster movies (including The Grandfather (1998), White Heat (1949), Scarface (1990), American Gangster (2007) and Good Fellas (1990), among others) as well as the television series The Sopranos.

The book explores the impact of the Motion Picture Production Code or the "Hays Code" of the 1930s, the emergence of the "G-Man" as a protagonist, and the role of fashion in the genre.

Her other current writing projects include a non-fiction book about four hundred years of dress and appearance in American crime and justice and a historical thriller set in 1939.

Article mentioned: Inside the Debate Between Netflix and Big Theater Chains Over ‘The Irishman’ (The New York Times).

The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

Gangster Movies And Their Muses, With Frankie Bailey

Kevin Knuth is an associate professor of physics whose research focuses on exoplanets, and quantum mechanics and relativity.

He is a former computer scientist in the Intelligent Systems Division of NASA’s Ames Research Center in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he designed algorithms to analyze astrophysical data as well as earth science data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Knuth is preparing to lead a team of scientists to track unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) off the coast of California.

He is pairing up with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists including Deep Prasad, CEO of the quantum computing company ReactiveQ, and Rizwan Virk, executive director of the startup accelerator PlayLabs@MIT, for the project.

Knuth is also a member of the Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Studies (SCU), a research organization comprising scientists, former military officers and law enforcement personnel. The group issued a letter to several members of Congress this week containing a series of recommendations for the advancement of UAP research and the public dissemination of the data.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Sejong Univ./Hur et al; Optical: NASA/STScI

The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

The Search For Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Off The West Coast, With Kevin Knuth

It’s been about a year since political scientist Timothy Weaver spoke with the UAlbany News Podcast about the Opportunity Zone program. We’ve invited Weaver back to the series to share his insights on what 2019 revealed about the tax incentive's effects on American cities and which of his predictions have already come true.

Weaver is an assistant professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, where his studies place-based tax incentives and their investment outcomes. He is the author of ‘Blazing the Neoliberal Trail: Urban Political Development in the United States and the United Kingdom’ (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

We'll also be releasing a second episode featuring Weaver next week ahead of the UK's General Election on Dec. 12. We spoke with Weaver about the most contentious issues on the political agenda as well as the sticking points preventing a final deal on Brexit.

You can tune in to that conversation on Monday. We'll see you next week.

The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

The Opportunity Zone Program: What 2019 Has Taught Us, with Timothy Weaver

Ahead of the UK's General Election this Thursday (on Dec. 12), we brought Timothy Weaver of Rockefeller College to the show to share what's at stake and what to look out for in the last three days of the campaign trail.

Photo credit: "Brexit protestor flags near the Palace of Westminster, London," by Chiral Jon.

If you're interested in hearing more about Weaver's work, you might like our last episode, where we spoke with the political scientist on the Opportunity Zone Program.

The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

The UK's General Election: What You Need to Know

James Acker, a distinguished teaching professor at the School of Criminal Justice, and Brian Keough, head of the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives, are among the founders of the University’s National Death Penalty Archive (NDPA).

The NDPA contains a repository of publicly-accessible materials that track the history of capital punishment in the United States.

Acker and Keough join the series to share about the digitization efforts of a collection by M. Watt Espy, a researcher who spent three decades of his life gathering and indexing documentation of legal executions for what would become the nation’s largest database on capital punishment.

The M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives has since added 6,000 executions to the list through the verification process of Espy’s work.

Espy began the project in the 1970s as a traveling salesman pedaling encyclopedias and cemetery plots, among other goods. While the scholar was originally an advocate for capital punishment, he became an avid opponent following growing concerns about racial prejudice in the legal system.

During a pre-Internet era, Espy documented over 15,000 executions conducted between 1608 and 2002.

Espy died in 2009 at the age of 76.

The University at Albany Libraries was responsible for salvaging the “Espy File” from Espy’s home in Headland, A.L. following his passing and moving the database to its current home at the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives.

The NDPA is a partnership between the University at Albany Libraries and the Capital Punishment Research Initiative (CPRI) at the University’s School of Criminal Justice.

Image from the "Espy File" collection: Mug shot of George Stinney, a 14-year-old who was convicted of murdering two white girls in Alcolu, S.C. He was executed by electric chair in 1944.

The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

How a Traveling Salesman in the 1970s Became a Leading Opponent to the Death Penalty

It’s been about a month since Evo Morales resigned as president of Bolivia following weeks of civil protests over disputed results of the country’s general election in October.

After initially seeking asylum in Mexico, Morales flew to Argentina on Thursday to be granted refugee status.

Gabriel Hetland, an assistant professor of Latin American, Caribbean and U.S. Latino Studies, shares his insights on the political crisis and why he believes the resignation was a military coup.

Hetland’s research focuses on urban and national politics, participatory democracy and social movements. Learn more about his work.

Article mentioned: “Many wanted Morales out. But what happened in Bolivia was a military coup” (Written by Gabriel Hetland for The Guardian)

Photo credit:”Quito, Acto en solidaridad con el señor Presidente del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, Evo Morales,” by Cancillería Ecuador.

The Future Of Democracy In Bolivia, With Gabriel Hetland

Michael Leczinsky, a professor of practice in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity (CEHC), and Don Berchoff, CEO and founder of TruWeather Solutions, join the series to share their predictions for what ethical and technological challenges the drone industry will face in the new year.

TruWeather Solutions is a UAlbany-affiliated company that focuses on providing weather data and business analytics for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

Photo by Patrick Dodson.

The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

Where Drones are Headed in 2020, with Michael Leczinsky and Don Berchoff

Welcome to the UAlbany News Podcast, where we speak with faculty, staff and students on how their research is tackling today’s most challenging problems and issues.
 
This show is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson. 

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.