Media Coverage

  • Mercury News "M" logo

    Apple at 50: How Cupertino’s tech giant changed what technology feels like

    When Apple unveiled the App Store in 2008 with 500 apps, it helped launch a new economy, said UC Santa Cruz lecturer Nolan Higdon, who studies the tech industry. Tech companies had struggled to make money from the internet after the dot-com bust, but the App Store and the iPhone’s booming popularity fueled an explosion…

  • marketplace logo

    How the K-shaped economy explains why it feels like we are in a recession

    Some economists, like Pascal Michaillat at the University of California, Santa Cruz, pay special attention to labor market indicators to get a better sense of whether the economy has entered a recession. Michaillat said he looks at labor market data because this is the same data you’d want to use to look at whether we’re…

  • KTVU2 logo

    Misinformation swirls online following White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting

    Nolan Higdon, a professor of political history and media education at UC Santa Cruz, says several factors have created this environment. He noted that the “media diet” from legacy journalism, independent media, and social media influencers often prioritizes content that appeals to a divisive nature.

  • kazu logo

    Climate change could create “zombie forests”

    New research from UC Santa Cruz shows climate change is a greater threat to California’s native trees than previously thought. The study estimates in the next 30 years some species may lose as much as half of their habitat. Lead author Blair McLaughlin says the rising temperatures and droughts that come with climate change increase…

  • earth.com logo

    California’s iconic trees may lose most of their habitat this century

    “These trees are the backbones of our ecosystems,” said Blair McLaughlin, a climate change adaptation scientist at UC Santa Cruz and lead author of the study. “They grow nowhere else in the world and provide the essential habitat that native wildlife and humans alike depend on.”

  • The Parajonian

    Community sensors provide Pajaro Valley with air quality info

    Javier Gonzaléz-Rocha, a Watsonville native and applied mathematics professor at UC Santa Cruz, is developing a network of drones and small sensors that can be attached to homes. He uses data collected from these monitors to try and paint a clearer picture of the air quality in the Pajaro Valley, as data that appears on…

  • New York Times "T" logo

    Talking Talmud On Tik Tok

    Nathaniel Deutsch, professor of Jewish studies, was quoted in a story about Shalom Landau, a 48-year-old Hasidic rabbi in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn who has become an unlikely star on Instagram and Tik Tok.

  • Imperial Valley Press logo

    Gas spikes and geopolitics: Why the ‘Lithium Valley’ dream is charging back to life

    When UC Santa Cruz Professor of Sociology Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor published Charging Forward in late 2024, they envisioned a steady, policy-driven climb toward a green energy future. They didn’t account for a legislative “sledgehammer” followed by a global oil shock.

  • Los Angeles Times

    ‘Chasing Whales’ film features UCSC ocean sciences research

    “Chasing Whales” is a short documentary that follows a team of scientists in Antarctica, including UC Santa Cruz Professor Ari Friedlaender, as they come face to face with the whales they study—only to find the whales looking back. In a region with few marine protections, the team hopes their groundbreaking data can help drive new…

  • The New Yorker

    The Novelist Reimagining the Japanese American Internment

    The New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu wrote an in-depth laudatory review of Emeritus Professor of Literature and Creative Writing Karen Tei Yamashita’s new book Questions 27 & 28, which “opens an inquiry into how the story of the past gets made.”

  • Nature "n" logo

    AI doom warnings are getting louder. Are they realistic?

    Researchers who fear existential risk often cite the pace of progress in AI development as evidence that we are moving towards a worrying level of capability. AI systems are doing things that seemed impossible a decade ago, says Anthony Aguirre, a cosmologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and executive director of the Future…

  • The Conversation logo of thought bubble

    Birds and monkeys in the Amazon share information via ‘internet of the forest’

    UC Santa Cruz Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Ari Martínez discusses his recently published study that shows how, when some animals spot a predator, they issue a warning cry that is picked up by others and spread through the rainforest canopy.

Last modified: Apr 29, 2026