[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Words of a, of a crazy New England born, uh, savage, I guess is one way to put it. Recovering fiend. Recovering fiend, that was a big part of it. Uhm, how you living? What's going on?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you're gonna do the Blood of the Blood set as part of the Ramallah set?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're going to definitely have to get into the heroin at a certain point here. Not doing it, but talking about it. But I want to, I want to do this because I've, I don't know if I ever really heard you give like a full in-depth explanation of the very early days of Bluffer Blood, like all the way back to the roots. I don't know if it's been a while, if everybody knows the story besides me, but how old were you when you started?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is the weird thing about rock bands in general is that they usually end up being the more affluent members of the scene because how the fuck are you gonna start a band when you're in the projects?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no. Twenty-five? Twenty-three, yea. Twenty-three? Twenty-three.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But so how'd you even know about hardcore or what was your exposure to it that made you feel like you could be a part of it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well any, any subculture will eventually be like scooped up by fashion minded people, right? Always. Yeah. Always. It's only a matter of time. I haven't even seen it to a certain extent where I see kids wearing like a Youth of Today shirt as like an ironic vintage thing and stuff like that where like, that's only a matter of time because if they're wearing Slayer and Megadeth shirts now,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So by the time I first saw you guys, I think it was 1999, maybe 2000, at, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that I think was the moment when I realized that hardcore was some serious shit. So how do you get to you guys forming the band in 1994 to like that show five, six years later where that seems like an unbelievable amount of progress, uh, if you want to call it that in terms of you guys as a band or?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think you could say that about Southern California and weed. There's so much weed being smoked that like the stereotypical Southern California accent is like a stoner. It's a weed accent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, where everybody else catches up. And because it's, I don't know if you would say the same for like, Boston heroin epidemic, but with the weed stuff, it's like, a lot of those are rappers, they're the cool guys, they're influential, people want to talk like these cool guys did. They might not even realize that that's who they're taking it from, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were there other, were you early on even, cause like Boston's notoriously like one of the most legendary hardcore scenes in the world, often considered like the best hardcore scene at least during certain eras? Sure. Were you aware that you were creating a band that was gonna be part of that lineage or did, in your mind were you just doing something that sort of was just what you were doing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you're aware of like Slapshot and all these bands that came before you, you're aware of them and to what extent do you feel like you're kind of emulating them?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. If you're gonna be an artist, it's like you should be doing it because you have something to say that you can't hold in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When did you guys start to get recognized locally even as like, you know, a force or something that people cared about?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you guys had a U.S. tour like off the strength of that project or off the strength of what you'd already done?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like that moment when you sort of realized like, oh, this is scaling. Like I could actually like, when I introduce this to more and more people, they actually start to get into it. Like I could actually, this could transform into something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so Living in Exile is what, 99? 99, yep. And so to me, that was the first Bluffer Blood release that I went crazy for. That's my favorite to this day. Right. And so at that point, do you feel like something happened that you figured out what you were supposed to be doing musically at a certain point with that album?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How did that end up happening? Like, how big were you guys at that point that you were able to get? You know, they were the biggest label in hardcore at that time, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At a certain point, Boston was sort of infested with Nazis and shit in the hardcore scene. And at a certain point, that that kind of got taken out. Was that always an element, uh, early on when you go into shows and stuff? And was it, was it like what you're describing in terms of just being sort of dumbass kids from the projects who just sort of hate everybody else? Or was it like a real white power thing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, Huntington Beach, you can definitely walk around there and you can find some guys with some big ass swastikas in the back of their heads and shit like that, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and a lot of like LA street culture and even like the Bloods and Crips is sort of like dictated by like guys who are in jail and stuff, I think, so it kind of makes sense that, yeah, and you always hear about that on the, on the west coast too, is that like, you know, that white culture in prison is white power. Yep. Out there, that's like full on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is weird cause it's based on your area and your block and everything on the west coast until you get to jail. And all of a sudden you're in jail and you can be a creep, you can be a blood, you're getting along and stuff. These uber groups. Yeaah. But then these other groups take over once you get into jail. This is just people telling me and shit, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you're in that limbo where people don't know if they should consider you a child or an adult. Sure. They feel like you kinda should be able to take responsibility for yourself. But if you're 13 or 14 or 15.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Put forth an outward image of violence or outward expression of it so that everybody knows not to fuck with us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. It's a weird thing to balance the difference between being real with yourself and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And being, being real with yourself and living an open and honest life publicly, but then accepting. Me being open and honest about my life experience is being a terrible role model to all these kids. You're just being true to you. I'm sure that you've dealt with this too though, you know, cause you know, at a certain point do you ever, do you ever have to reckon with that and feel like, fuck, with Bluff or Blythe maybe I'm


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who were you talking about was the fake heroin addict dude that you hate? Nikki Sixx. Yeah, so you don't believe his addiction? Nope, not a word of it. I always found this very intriguing that you take issue with him false claiming his addiction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well there's a whole pose associated with it and we've seen it with Kurt Cobain, we've seen it with fucking...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of these rap kids now who like are drinking lean and taking zans. Oh, they're playing with fire. Yeah, this whole, this whole pose of like, you know, my eyes are rolling back into my head. I wish I was dead. I'm killing myself day by day. It's like, you know, you actually live that, but it's, it's crazy to think that there are people who are, you know, using that. So they're, uh. Selling it. Selling it as product.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sort of a branding genius there that like by seizing onto it or you think that he was just fully just a fucking poser who didn't realize the benefit of what he was doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you don't relapse, you don't, like what's the status of your addiction at this point in your life?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I haven't had a drop of alcohol in 10 years. Really? So that's not particularly something for you at this point?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you think you're just predisposed to love it? Or do you think that that's generally the reaction that people have in the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, but so, you were saying earlier when we were talking about, you were saying you never really been addicted to coke or meth or anything like that, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But what was it? You, you were, do you think it was because you were bipolar? Do you think it was because you, you had too much energy and you were just looking for something to turn you down? What was it that like drew you to it so intensely, like Vicodins and then heroin and everything?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You were drinking on all this stuff too? At the beginning. Because it's super dangerous to be drinking when you're on fucking lichenins and all that stuff too. You ever have issues with that, overdosing or anything?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it has that impact on you, then, like, where you can be creative, where you can, because I think, honestly, I switch with a lot of people I see in Hollywood, they seem like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of really productive people who actually go out and get a lot of shit done, like especially in like the movie business, the music world or whatever, they're fucking abusing coke, they're abusing the fuck out of uppers, but then these just so happen to be the people who are able to sort of harness that energy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was there a moment where you hit rock bottom in your opinion? Where like you really like first started to make, uh, attempts at getting clean or anything?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you're sorta like, well, if I'm gonna be depressed, I might as well be nursing this fucking habit. Bingo. At least it's a little more exciting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More active, you're more, you're more taking the reins of it, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so Romala, is this directly related to 9-11 and like what was, what was it that you wanted to say to the world with those bands?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's like, there was that to, to distract everybody, but then meanwhile you have like this rising tide of nationalism, and then you also have this like, the first time that you really start to think about like, oh, like Islam might destroy the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like finally we have something to really confront, but meanwhile we've basically gotten rid of religion as a reason to exist. It's like now we have Britney Spears shaving her head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember seeing you guys play the ICC. It was one of your first shows. Was it your first show? Or was it just one of the first? That might have been the first weekend.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was probably one of the first terror shows too, or at least like in Boston. Super early, like off the demo or maybe the first album.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, so this, this is my, uh, memory from that show at the fucking Alston Church, was that, you know, I've been going to a lot of Boston shows at that time, and then you guys came out and played, and this is like the first time I've ever seen you guys play, and I saw a whole fucking shitload of older dudes that I hadn't seen around, or at least hadn't seen in a long time, just brutalizing kids in the crowd.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did this play out exactly as I imagined that like, you know, you got on the horn at a certain point and were like, hey, we gotta make a big impact. As far as Boston Shaw, I need some fucking skulls cracked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was definitely like a lot of stories from that era of like blood sort of, you know, the late nineties, like early two thousands was when a lot of people started to have to reckon with myself included with dealing with the results of shit they said on the internet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was there a moment like, where you...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really started to feel like maybe hardcore had lost its way, like in terms of where it sort of became directly intertwined with like extremist leftist politics, maybe towards like the early 2000s and stuff like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like if you care about, you know, street level hardcore, then like you should be happy or like same thing with rap. Like if you like gangsta rap, you should probably be happy that there's like a Chance the Rapper and a J Cole and a Kendrick Lamar so that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, not to say that Kinnicklemar is not a gangster, I shouldn't throw him in that category, but you should be happy that there's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A duplicity to the scene or a duality so that there is something for people to go into because when I look back at...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or if- In the wind. If it was just a straight decision made. Because to me, I can imagine, having been around enough record labels, that at a certain point, you're just gonna realize like, oh, fucking gangsta shit sells more than political shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, uh, fucking Gucci Mane or whatever. It's like, those guys are popular, but they're not popular on the level that these other guys are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was a huge, that was a turning point. That was also a promotion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was the end of 50's career in a certain sense because there was no way for him to come back from that after he clowned tight pants so hard and then all of a sudden it became obvious that no, like no, tight pants are more irrelevant than like you wearing a 3XYT.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To what extent do you bother to go to hardcore shows? How do you feel when you go in one when you're playing or anything like that? Like how does the scene still feel to you? Cause you're like someone who


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For life you're tied to it regardless if you ever go to a show again. You're forever gonna consider that sort of your people. Sure. Even if you might not really have any interest in going to shows.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that just because you have been lucky enough to be in that position from early on? Was there never a chance that you were going to be just a participant and not a creator in terms of hardcore from early on?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I think, I think I would have drifted away. You had to start creating, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Crime and drugs and girls and all the good shit in life, do you feel like to a certain extent, it-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Protected you from going down a worse path with hardcore? Like do you think it saved you in a way or did it make things worse?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So probably a lot of, I know that you're sort of sworn to secrecy to certain parts, like both literally and just because you feel like you shouldn't talk about other people's dirty laundry, but what happened with the whole Buddha thing and did you know beforehand that like he was, uh, had some kind of issues with girls in general, I guess you could say?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it came out publicly, and so what was that like for you as somebody who...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Damn, you guys were doing pretty good at a certain point if you could've, if you lost two zeros, though, what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because to them that's a big look is like to be able to bring in the band that hasn't toured in five years or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hardcore is so different than rap, because it has a long memory. And like, a kid getting into hardcore loves, like, there's a fetishization of like, bold, or youth of today, or, and it extends to you guys and your whole generation too. Do you still like, it's almost kind of shocking to be able to go play a show and still have people this many years later still have, like, know the words to all your songs and everything like that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of these young kids, like a Lil Uzi Vert who will say, you know, I'm a rock star, I don't even care about rap, I'm a rock star now. Like that, like my buddy Anthony Fantano described this as like rap's punk rock moment, where like, you know, uh, what was the Sex Pistols' reaction to, like the Beatles?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so rap now is like a rejection of all lyricism, and not all, but you know, to a certain extent, like a lot of these young rappers, they want to reject everything and be able to like kind of start from scratch and still be able to be considered hip hop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's the question with hip-hop is, is that rejection? Like because now when we're looking at rap, like if-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rap rejects traditional hip-hop and then like sort of takes on a new identity and that identity still somehow falls within hip-hop, then all of a sudden the genre has gotten so big and all-encompassing that everything can kind of fall under it. Oh yeah. You know, which is the bizarre thing that I feel like is taking place. It's the constant war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like sometimes you, some, to a certain extent sometimes as a son.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Playing out on the same stage in a way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that type of stuff. Dance music, which you also had a lot to say about back in the day with the blood for blood and stuff because that was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Early era American rave culture was like 96, 97 people started doing ecstasy and shit. So you, you took game at that a lot too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Aggressive music and hardcore is clearly not on either end of the spectrum, but it's what a lot of people, myself and yourself included, were drawn to. And it's like, what was it in me? Cause you know, I found out about like punk and sky and shit like that before I found out about hardcore. But then once I found out about hardcore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not dancing in the same way that when you see kids two-stepping,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is something that is so uniquely hardcore. And you can think it's super gay, whatever the fuck you wanna say about it. Sometimes when I, when I, when I see the pit break out into it, when I was at the sound barrier the other day, I'm like, man, this is weird. What the fuck is this shit? And I used to do it, but it's a strange thing to see, especially like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that, in a lot of ways, I think that pace of like a lot of hardcore bands is what a lot of like logical people, because grindcore is the logical thing to go to if you think that like the values that matter to you in aggressive music are speed and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Complexity and technicality. Yep. It's clearly like not really like for guys like us, that's not what we wanted to go to. We wanted to go towards the thing that emulated like human emotion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If anything that's kind of drove me away from hardcore in a lot of ways, and I have said this, and I promise I'm not just sucking your dick, but I've said this many times, is that I think that if-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Going to shows a lot in maybe like 2003, 2004 where it's all on broken wings, mosh metal, stuff like that. And I love those dudes as people, but ultimately the music didn't really like keep me in it, uh, in the same way that I feel like I could have if I had maybe like landed at a different time in history. Oh, for sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obscuring your own words to the extent that like, oh, now nobody has to know how stupid the shit I'm saying is. For sure, for sure. Part of it. Uhm. And do you think you went in that direction vocally because you wanted people to hear what you had to say?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, this is good. I like hearing you examine your own sound. Alright, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is my last question, and I guarantee that we're gonna be doing podcasts in the future again. But this is- Dude, I would love to, I would love to, I told you those emails, somebody's gonna fucking publish them someday. We'll probably have a series of White Trash Rob podcasts for the rest of my life. I'd like that, that at the very least, every time I come back and do Christmas for my family or whatever,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh really? See on a personal level, like that was one of the most enjoyable conversations I've had on camera. And just like this one too, where it's like, there's something about like, I know rap so well, and that there's like a certain element of hardcore that I still find fascinating to try to like, get to the root of like what really kind of makes it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so this is my last question.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you think about what you need to do on earth before you die, what, what comes to mind? Is it music? Is it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A state of mind that you want to get to, a state of tranquility that I'm assuming that you don't have a whole lot of hope for being able to achieve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That really though like hits home because that in a lot of ways, you know, I wasn't an addict, but I was like a 15 year old kid who was totally lost and it was like blood for blood gave me a worldview. Like a, like a way to view the world that, you know, when you're talking about, uh, fucking, uh, royalty in exile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It gave me like a sense of self-confidence that like what I was coming from, being from a super ordinary fucking New England town, feeling like a scumbag, feeling like I didn't have anything going for me, and having that rage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That you can't put your finger on and like a hostility towards being forced into a world that you don't really care for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, it gave me like a viewpoint to view the world that allowed me to be able to deal with it and that gave me like a certain amount of pride that I never experienced before because I was never a person that gave a shit about where I was from or who I was per se, but it gave me like an ability to actually be more content with that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At least on an individual level, that's a big part of why this is such a big honor. You get to have a conversation with you to get you to come to my show and stuff the other days because you fundamentally shaped how I view the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everybody, check out your, uh, social media, your sold Twitter account, the white trash Rob Twitter account is on the screen right now. Check out the new Ramallah project dropping soon. How long are we waiting for this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've heard most of it, and uh, there's definitely new shit on the way. Streaming services, you can still put a fucking nickel in this guy's pocket, you don't listen to this shit on Apple Music right now, probably right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somehow, someway, like a penny of that will trickle back to you one day? Someday.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, alright, so, White Trash Rob, it's been a fucking honor, uh, thank you very much. This has been No Jumper, coolest podcast in the world. Check us out on YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes. Thank you, brother. Hope of the world. Hey!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mostly literary text, although we tend to venture outside. One of the nice things about doing this kind of quantitative work is that I can travel a bit outside of my home fields. We have collaborative projects with, uh, the law school, with political science, uh, with anthropology, who are all interested in understanding the ways that texts


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Work historically and how they work formally. How do people understand things from...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this project I wanted to share with you because, uh, we're particularly excited about it. Um, it's fairly new. I'm warning you right now. It's not entirely new.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but in some ways that makes it more interesting to share and talk about because this is still very much research in progress. And before I leap into it, I also want to say that I do run, uhm, it works a little bit differently than a science lab, but it's still a lab-like environment and so when I present I'm used to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, interacting with, with people. So if at any point you've got questions, you want clarification, et cetera, et cetera, feel free to, uh, ask me anything as we go along. I'm happy to, to chat, um, and make this as informal as, as you'd like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is a project, uh, called Microgenres. And before I really describe what we're trying to do, I want to acknowledge that I'm going to say we throughout the talk. And by we, I really do mean we. This is actually the team from the lab, uh, that has been working on this for about eight months or so. Um, and, and we're a group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, that combines, uhm, faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, uhm, and some people from outside, uh, who all come at this project from different angles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Different things and, and in different methods of learning things from the project.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, microgenres, and we're still debating the name, I'm very much in fond of microgenres because it's a great sounding name, but it's a little opaque. We're interested in knowing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When a novel stops being a novel and becomes something else for a little while.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that something that we as human readers can pick up on and interpret ourselves?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or are there formal characteristics that let us see when that happens, and more importantly, how that happens? So, for example, uh, here is an example of what we're calling a micro-genre from Isaac Asimov's Foundation novel, classic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sci-fi. And there's a really very startling break there. There's an excerpt from something called the Encyclopedia Galactica, which tries to sound like an encyclopedia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then a movement into narratives. So we get sort of the history of Terminus the planet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Followed by, Louis Purin was busily engaged at his desk in the one well lit. There's, there's a very clear style there. Uhm, here, very obviously signaled by, uh, by a movement from an encyclopedia or a, you know, a fake encyclopedia, a narrative encyclopedia, a fictional encyclopedia, to what we might consider to be narrative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a really obvious example of the kind of thing we're interested in. Unfortunately, it's usually not that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A parent. Take for example, uh, Octavia Butler's, uh, novel, The Parable of the Talents. This is narrative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's narrative that's describing the history of the disease that the novel takes as its subject. So it's a character in first person talking to the audience as characters in first person novels tend to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But not in a style that's typical to the novel. Instead, here we have a character telling history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the question that we're trying to ask is, when a character is doing this, are they still talking, or are they communicating in the style of the novel, or is there a kind of style switch where this might look more like history than it does a novel?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I'm showing you these three examples because they're getting sort of increasingly difficult in terms of their identification. So in the first one, we had that very clear kind of haptic break. We can see that this is an encyclopedia entry followed by


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, across, uh, across the land of England. Uhm, and, and in this scene, he's been, Caleb Williams has been put in jail by the evil, uh, squire and reflects upon the nature of the, of, of the human mind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When it is imprisoned. And the reason I show this as a good example is because Godwin actually wrote two books at the same time. He wrote a book called Political Justice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, he also wrote this novel, Caleb Williams, which was supposed to be an example of how those recommendations in political justice can be put into practice. And so here, there's an interesting movement between sort of a description of a character in a particular situation,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at the same time, trying to philosophically enact these ideas about political justice and what it means for characters or for people who are politically imprisoned. And so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Godwin's doing something really deliberate here. That is, he's trying to use a novel to convince his audience about his political ideas. And the question again becomes, when he does this,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Does this look more like a novel, or does this look more like Godwin inserting a bit of political theory into what should otherwise be a fairly straightforward gothic narrative? These are the kinds of moments that we want to find, and we want to find them for a couple of reasons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Shifts between disciplinary styles within what should be fictional writing. So, do microgenres exist at the level of style? And can we detect them computationally?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, what are the features that signal to the reader that you've moved out of narrative and into history or science or anthropology or psychology?


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[Assistant] Uhm, do those features exist in style or are they merely lexical features? Uhm, when do these kinds of narrative shifts occur? Do they, is there any kind of pattern in terms of when they happen in novels or


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, do particular genres show different kinds of patterns? That is, do historical novels or science fiction novels handle these kinds of shifts between narrative and other kinds of writing differently?


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[Assistant] So called heteroglossia of the novel is, is something that's, that's fairly well understood. That is, we understand novels to be assemblages of different kinds of writing that are all stuck together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Voices. So the kind of thing we're interested in has antecedents within the discipline


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Computational. We wanted to do something that lets us really dig into and say, does this happen? And if it does happen, how does it happen?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we had to establish a corpus, and I'll show you a couple of slightly different ones, but the main one that we used is from 1870 to 1914. And we chose this because this is a really important moment when what we now consider to be disciplines like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Literary studies like anthropology, psychology, natural science, et cetera, et cetera, really came into being in both the US and the UK. These are just some facts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] about the periods that we chose, but you can see that in addition to things like the second land grant act in 1890, uhm, and the rise of civic universities in the 1900, just the number of degrees awarded, if we understand


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Degrees as a sign of disciplinarity within the institution of the university that is you can get


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If we were gonna find something like a period to actually go look at, when we might be able to see the interaction between these early disciplines and the ways in which novels were being written.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We didn't want to use lexemes. A lot of what we do over in cultural analytics or computational literary studies, we look at words, we count words. And that's, that's very productive, as in fact you'll see.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In a little bit. But here we wanted to do something different because the argument we were trying to make is that when this happens, it doesn't depend on the words that are being used. That is, if I'm writing along in a novel and all of a sudden I switch from writing a novel to writing anthropology for a few paragraphs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I might as a novelist use different kinds of words, but the question that we had is, when people make these kinds of switches?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do they write in the style of the disciplines? What we decided to do was adopt a set of features that are more indicative of kinds of writing rather than the subject.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, what we decided to extract from all of our texts in our corpus, uhm, are the percentage of all of the, uh, part of speech, uhm, based predominantly on the, uh, pen tree bank, uhm, the number of verbs, past, present, uh, whatever tense, the number of gerunds, the number of proper nouns, uh, singular nouns, plural nouns, et cetera, et cetera.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The number of people who are named, the number of places that are named, the average length of sentences, and the number of clauses per sentence. That gives us some kinds of complexity measurements as well. So this is the feature set that we decided to use.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For many reasons, but there are two chief advantages. One, it's really easy to decompose the model, as opposed to something like a deep learning model.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And two, it gives us percentage probabilities of class membership.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because what we're really interested in is not places where the model worked, but places where the model didn't work. In other words, if we can teach a computer to tell the difference between anthropology writing, psychology writing, economics writing, history writing, and novel writing,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then the places in a novel where the computer says, I don't think this is a novel, I think this is history, that's the place where we're hoping we're gonna find these kinds of disciplinary style shifts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, we separated the corpus, uhm, which I'll explain to you in a second, or I'll show you what that is, into a training and a test set. Uhm, we, we had different numbers of things in each discipline and novel, so we had to do some downsampling. Uhm, and then we classified, uh, everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, we wanted to separate at the sentence level because that gave us complete, uhm, syntactical units, which makes the part of speech easier tagging. But we tried it in 200 sentence segments, 100 sentence segments, 50 and 20.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, because we weren't sure how, uh, how the different segment size would interact between these kinds of shifts. And it turns out we find different things at times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which turned out to be super interesting and something we weren't expecting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So what we did is we took, uh, ten books from seven, uh, academic disciplines that existed during this period between 1870 and 1914. Ten anthropology books, economics books, history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and this is not obviously a comprehensive list of disciplines that existed. Uhm, one of the favorite games of everyone that I present this to is to say, what about, what about journalism? What about sermons? What about theology? What about, and it's true. All of that is true. You're absolutely right. We could have been much more comprehensive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But these we felt were disciplines that A, we were interested in seeing how they were inserted in the novel. And B,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They also had monographs from this period that we could use to compare against the novels. But I'm very open to suggestions of other things that you think would be interesting for us to look at. Because we can easily add other disciplines to the model. We just have to find the texts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so to compare against, we just selected 26 novels. We selected these novels not randomly, they're all canonical, uhm, they're not all originally, or sorry, they're all originally written in English, but not always by native speakers of English. We thought that would be interesting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As an initial test, uhm, we thought that they would all potentially have


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We created our model, and it turns out that at 200 sentence segments, that is when we divide all of the text into 200 sentence segments, uhm, build a model and then test it, uh, we can classify disciplinary style correctly around 78% of the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is kind of astonishing because we're not using lexical features. This is just grammatical features. Just parts of speech and sentence complexity.


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[Assistant] Question one, are there things such as disciplinary styles? It turns out, yeaah. There kind of are. Different disciplines. Even this early on. Right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, is mostly classified correctly as natural science. It turns out natural scientists write fairly distinctly. Uh, anthropology and psychology at the end, less distinct, slightly more difficulty, uh, classified.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you move from 200 sentence segments down to 50, our classification percentage drops a bit down to 66. Although, if we're comparing against chance,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is still pretty good, because chance would be around 12% if this was just randomly assigned. So we're still, we're still well above chance. Uhm, some things have gotten slightly worse, like natural science, but still predominantly. Some things, like anthropology, the majority of our anthropology 50-sentence segments still classified as uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they were more likely to classify as anthropology than anything else, but there clearly was a less anthropological style than, say for example, a historical style, and this will be important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now when we got to the thing we really wanted to know, that is the novels themselves, what we could do is take the 200 sentence segments of the novel and use our classifier to guess what each one was. This is Joseph Conrad's novel, Nostromo. Each, uh, bar?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is a 200-sentence segment of the novel from beginning to end. So there are roughly 21, 23, 45, 6, uhm, 200-sentence segments in Nostromo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the bar color represents the distribution of probability of, uh, cluster of group membership. So, for example, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The teal bars are, is the percentage likelihood that it's a novel, and it turns out most of the novel Nostromo was guessed as being a novel, which is good, because if it wasn't, then we might have a problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but that bar right there, number 11, uhm, is not classified as a novel. In fact, it's some mixture of history and anthropology.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this was actually pretty cool because this lets us dig into those particular places where the computer says, wait, this doesn't look like a novel, and see if in fact this was or was not a novel. Are there in fact shifts that might be disciplinary in nature? Now, it turns out that most of our novels look like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which again is good, I guess, because it means that novels are being understood as novels, but not so much interesting for our projects. Uhm, this is, uh, Portrait of a Lady and Sons and Lovers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I gave a version of this talk in Paris, uh, about six months ago. It was really funny because, uhm, the first question I got from the French literary studies audience is, wait, can you use this to guess the most pure novel?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Question I should have expected, and yes, yes you can, and in fact it turns out Sons and Lovers is, is purely a novel. Uhm, which is actually kinda true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this is not the most interesting kind of result. In fact, uhm, many of our novels did show really interesting points where they departed from what we might consider the style of the novel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Into what turned out to be really interesting disciplinary insertions.


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[Assistant] So, for example, this is the very first Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's called A Study in Scarlet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And as you can see by the graph, this is 200 sentence segments. Uh, most of it, again, was classified as a novel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With one really big exception, and I didn't bother marking it on the PowerPoint because I assumed you could all see,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Does not look at all like a novel, but instead is evenly split between anthropology and natural science.


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[Assistant] So we decided to take a closer look at segment 8. And this is what we found.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The novel is actually, I don't know if any of you have encountered it, but the novel is actually really interesting in that it's really cleanly divided in half. The first half of the novel,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] ...is a typical Sherlock Holmes and Watson story where Sherlock Holmes and Watson are on the trail of these series of grisly murders that take place in London.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and eventually through clever and subtle machinations and good detective work, they catch the person, uhm, and that turns out to be fine. But then it turns out that the reason that the person was wandering around London killing these specific people is because said, uh, said criminal had had this past in the United States and so midway through the novel,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The action switches from contemporary London to a story about the Mormons in Utah territory. And that bar, which looked like something besides a novel, uhm, this is, this is a segment of text from it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is exactly where the story shifts. And the story shifts first by describing the natural scenery of Utah. The barrenness, uhm, the, the rivers that flow through. These are swift flowing rivers which dash through jagged canyons. There are enormous plains where, which in winter are white with snow, et cetera, et cetera.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, later in that 200-sentence segment, we move from a description of the natural scenery to a description of the Mormons. Uhm, the Mormons that show up with their wagon train and the ways in which they interact being remarked upon by both the character and the narrator.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a segment that's classified half as natural science and half as anthropology. The first half of the passage is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It does seem that in fact, what we have discovered is a kind of correct classification, that this is a part of the novel that split fairly evenly between these two disciplinary modes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we move down to 50 sentence segments, and again, this is exactly like the, uh, the graph before, except instead 200 sentences, uhm, they're each, each bar represents 50 sentences.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the, uh, parting question happens right here. So it's no longer a single bar. Instead, it is three. The first one, predominantly classified as natural science. The second one, almost entirely novel. And the third, predominantly anthropology.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We find that the first one is in fact that description of the natural scenery of Colorado, or of Utah and Colorado. Uhm, that in fact, this is Doyle trying his very best to give an accurate description of the landscape, much like a natural scientist of the late 19th century wood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That second bar, which was classified almost predominantly as a novel, after the natural scenery description, we move to a dialogue between the primary character and his young ward. This was classified almost entirely as a novel, which I kind of agree with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then that third bar, uhm, we move to the actual description of the Mormons themselves. Anthropology. Natural science, novel, anthropology.


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[Assistant] This is actually kind of astonishing and this is in the lab something we have to keep reminding ourselves because it turns out that yeaah, microgenres exist and they kinda work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, but they work in a way that's really difficult to explain to ourselves because this is the natural science passage, uhm, and when I read it,


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[Assistant] I will say yeaah, this is natural science because he's talking about rivers, he's talking about valleys, he's talking about geographic features. That makes perfect sense. Except none of those things are what the computer sees, right? We see this, the reader sees this, this is what the computer sees. This is what the classification is based on.


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[Assistant] And one of the most difficult parts of the project so far has been to try and figure out


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How this translates into an experience of anthropology or psychology or of natural science or history. In other words, there seem to be clear grammatical features


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That signal these disciplinary shifts that we recognize from the lexemes, but really are operating at levels below the lexical.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we tried a number of different ways. Here's an unsuccessful one. Uh, we actually went through and colored all of the passages in all of the novels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For the different parts of speech, in the hopes that we could recognize, well, this clearly has a lot of nouns, and this one has a lot of adjectives or adverbs, and it turns out that's not a good way to do it because it's really hard to read.


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[Assistant] Slightly better is that we correlated


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[Assistant] Uhm, things that are more likely to be classified as natural science have more clauses per sentence and longer sentences and a lot of determiners. So, thus and us.


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[Assistant] Whereas things that are classified as economics tend to have a lot of proper nouns, a lot of adjectives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, a high mean sentence length. Whereas novels tended to be personal pronouns and a lot of named people. Which kind of makes sense. So this gave us a way to begin to understand how the computer was making decisions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had a couple of questions. We had a couple of possible confounding effects that we wanted to dig a little bit into. For example...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is authorship. Uhm, any of you who are familiar with text analysis know that author signals are really, really, really strong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you just look at the most frequent words and you do some kind of classification based on that, the first thing you will always find is authorship. And we were worried that the computer was using author signals as a way to disambiguate different kinds of writing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we wanted to dig into that a little bit. So what we used was a perfect test case of someone who was published in two different disciplines. Isaac Asimov, who I started with, very prolific science fiction writer, but also a super prolific textbook writer in science. Uhm, so we made a corpus of his science fiction novels, 17 of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As well as some articles that he wrote. And we picked from the same span of time, from 1950 to 1993, and we wanted to see if we could replicate the same experiment in miniature. That is, in just Asimov, just looking at the discipline of science writing and novel writing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, yeaah, we can. We, this is our 50 sentence, uhm, segment. Uh, and, and again, we classified fairly accurately. 95% of the time, we could tell whether or not a 50 sentence segment was novel in red or science in blue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when we actually go to his novels, we find again mostly science, but, or sorry, mostly novel, but really important points where it seems to move from a novel style into a science style. Uhm, here obviously these two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, digging in, that first one is, uh, is a character named Arkady writing an essay for her class on the history of the Foundation. So Asimov is able to, in the middle of his narrative, stop writing a narrative and move into science writing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That second one is actually, uh, another segment from the Encyclopedia Galactica, uhm, which again Asimov uses in order to introduce certain kinds of history into his narrative that he then doesn't need to have his characters explain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So again, even in just Asimov's Corpus controlling for both date and author effects,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The process that we've devised is able to use these grammatical signals to find these micro-generic shifts. Uhm, here the features are slightly different. It turns out that mean sentence length is really important. Uhm, Asimov science essays have really long sentences.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As it turns out, but, but the percentage of determiners and adjectives and cardinal digits is also really important as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, in the same way, if we went down to twenty sentence slices, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our classification drops a little bit down to 91%, but still pretty good. Uhm, and we find slightly different segments that, uhm, that at the smaller sentence scale enact this kind of micro-generic shift, uhm, in, in miniature. So, for example, number 46.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is this section from Second Foundation, uhm, in which, uh, the, the two main characters land on a planet, and they're immediately quizzed about their equipment and their material and their way of life by the primitive, so-called primitive residents on the planet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, the second one is an explanation of how, uhm, uh, a kind of brain encephalography works within the world of the foundation. So again, in both cases, we seem to be able to detect these kinds of disciplinary shifts through these, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not really misclassifications, but classificatory procedure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, uhm, it turns out that mean sentence length in Asimov is really important, uhm, as our, as our determiners but equally, uhm, the, the use of comparative adjectives, for example, in, in novels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, we felt that we'd satisfied ourself that in fact there aren't confounding author effects and what we were finding is actually something real and stylistic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then we started wondering about semantics. How does our ability to compare different shifts grammatically


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a feature set, as it turns out, uhm, somewhat unsurprisingly, it turns out that words are really good at classifying different kinds of writing as we expected there to be. Uhm, across our seven or eight, sorry, original different kinds of writing, uhm, we were 90% accurate in guessing what each segment came from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's really interesting about this is that these started showing us different segments of the novel than our grammatical feature set. So for example, back to Study in Scarlet, uhm, that segment that was clearly Anthropology and Natural History, which is 29, 30, and 31,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there are these other places that turns out, even though grammatically they're like a novel, lexically, they're not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So take for example section 20, which is classified using semantic features, the actual words, as history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when we look at that, what we actually find is Watson recounting what the newspapers were saying about the attempts to solve the mystery. So, using lexical features we can find different segments that seem to be doing the same kinds of shifts, but doing them differently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we actually looked at the correlations again, uhm, this is one of my favorite graphs because it really puts a finger on what each of these disciplines thinks it's about. Uhm, so if you look at philosophy, uhm, the novels, the words that most highly correlated with something being philosophy were reality, beauty, sense, object,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Relation. Natural science with species, plants and animals. Economics, production, labor, capital. Uhm, I particularly love psychology with dream, element, movement and consciousness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So again, a completely different way of understanding how these different transitions happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the ways in which they tra- they happen differently depending on whether or not the author is adopting the style of a different discipline or the language of a different discipline.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So putting it all together, we decided to graph everything at once with the single most complicated graph I think has ever come out of my lab. Uhm, it's actually really useful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, as a heuristic tool, uhm, not so pretty to look at. It's actually referred to colloquially among the lab as the Kraken. So behold the Kraken. Uhm, here, each dot is a segment


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Should come, it actually did come from. So all of the yellow dots, for example, really are sections of natural science books.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The shape, whether it's a square or a circle, is whether or not it was classified as grammatical or lexical. And the size is the inverse of how well it was classified.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Backing up just a second because I realized I should have led with this and didn't say it. The position of each dot on the graph


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The probability of membership as a feature set. So things that are 100% classified as novels show up next to other novels. Uhm, things that are 100% classified as natural science show up next to natural science. And things that are half classified as natural science, half as a novel should show up next to each other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so the size shows how good the classi- or how correct the classification is. The bigger, the more unlike what they actually are they showed up, the smaller, the more like what they were actually are, uh, showed up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what you can see immediately from this, when you separate out the lexical and the grammatical, is that there's a really big difference in classification. So, taking out all of the lexical features, or all of the lexical classifications,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, the center is occupied predominantly by things that are classified grammatically but not correctly classified grammatically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the center seems to be the space of, of misclassification. Uhm, looking just at our lexical classifications, you can see that we have a movement out towards the edge where things are classified, uhm, much more correctly. Things are what they say they are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we can use this to actually look at the neighborhoods of each of the segments that we're interested in reading.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so for example, this is the same graph except I've removed everything but the disciplines that aren't novels and Sherlock Holmes' study in Scarlet. So the only novel on this graph is a study in Scarlet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so you can take a look at this little section of madness right there. And if we zoom in, you can see, uhm, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, number 29, which is that big blue dot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which looks most like anthropology, but in an interestingly confused way, because there's also some economics and some natural science next to it, uhm, as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you look at the lexical features, this is that part that was classified lexically as history, uhm, it is the most obvious in that it is that blue square surrounded by all those little green dots. So it is most clearly a movement lexically, uhm, into history. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Microgens exist. We can detect them. What can we do with that? Well, at a very blunt level, we can spend some time simply reading them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, take for example these two graphs which are on the top.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, the picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde classified grammatically and at the bottom using our lexical.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This lets us not only find places in this rather interesting novel that are not apparently novel, it also lets us look at how they are differently not novel, depending on whether or not we're looking at style,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or we're looking at the words. Uhm, take for example this piece, uhm, which actually is interesting because it's one of the few that is both misclassified.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the same way, uhm, by style and by lexical. In both, uhm, number, I'm looking particularly at number 74. In both, uhm, grammatical style and in both lexemes, it's classified predominantly as history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, on our giant graph, you can find it right there. Uhm, again, I've only marked the two passages, again in this area of very strong, uhm, historical writing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Both grammatically and lexically, this has identified a place where there is a really strong movement towards history. This is clearly, uhm, wild.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The novel and moving into history for a brief period of time. And just to remind you of what those features are that let us find that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, in terms of the grammatical features, a lot of places, a lot of people, and a lot of clauses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and in, uhm, lexically, uhm, a lot of past tense to be, a lot of England, a lot of King, a lot of years. Things that make sense when you actually look at them together, but are actually really hard for a reader to pick up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More interesting, this is from Bram Stoker's Dracula.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, are these places in the novel, like here, where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Both lexically and grammatically, the model identifies them as something that's not a novel, but there's a disagreement as to what it is. Here, uhm, this is-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's supposed to be a section that's natural science, according to its style.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But history, according to its lexemes, according to the actual words


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, again zooming in on the graph.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in slightly different places, uhm, next to both, uhm, next to both natural science as well as next to history depending on whether or not you're looking at it lexically or grammatically. Dracula's interesting because there are these very deliberate shifts on the part of Stoker.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] into what he's trying to convince the reader are different styles of writing. So, this particular segment is actually a place where, uh, Stoker


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] is writing as if he were a newspaper reporter reporting on the fate of the ship that brings Dracula to England, the ghost ship, the Demeter, that shows up in port with all of the crew mysteriously dead, and the newspaper reporter goes on board and writes this story.


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[Assistant] Grammatically, it's classified as natural science.


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[Assistant] Which could be because we don't have a journalism corpus in here, so it could be that natural science was simply the closest to journalism, or it could be that in Stoker's attempt to mimic journalistic discourse within a novel, he actually winds up closer to natural science.


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[Assistant] But lexically, it's much more strongly classified as history because it's doing the kind of content delivery that history specializes in.


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[Assistant] And again, to remind you of, uh, what those features are that we're using, uhm, in natural science, a lot of clauses, really long sentences, and a lot of determiners with present tense verbs.


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[Assistant] Uhm, which is the mark of both natural sciences, as it turns out, of certain kinds of journalism, and history, again, are those, uhm, different kinds of history words, particularly a lot of words, and a lot of men. Okay. So.


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[Assistant] We can use this to just read different novels and say, cool, here's a different micro-generic bit.


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[Assistant] That's one thing we can do, but, but that, that gets old after a little while, although I have to admit there's still a certain excitement to like running different novels and being like, ooh, look, natural science, ooh, anthropology. So that doesn't get old quite as fast as you think it would, but there are some larger questions that we have. For example, one of the things that we're interested in doing is reversing


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[Assistant] The analysis, that is, instead of looking at places in novels where there seems to be different disciplinary styles, we can look in disciplinary texts and see


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[Assistant] He writes a lot about dinosaurs as well as other early fossils. Most of it is natural science, but there are really strong anthropological signals and really strong psychological signals. So the ways in which an early work on natural history


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[Assistant] In the same way, uh, Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, classic work of psychology. This answers the prayers of all of the people I know in psychology who insist that Freud should not be read in psychology departments. Uhm, because there's a lot of psychology.


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[Assistant] But there's also a lot of what looks like economics and quite a bit of what looks like philosophy. So it's a way of understanding what Freud is up to, the way in which he's trying to put together an argument in a foundational text of a discipline that doesn't quite exist yet.


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[Assistant] By combining different kinds of stylistic signatures into something new.


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[Assistant] The other thing we can do, and this is sort of where we are with the project now, and this is where I will, I will leave you, is that we want to think more broadly about genres and the ways in which they act, uh, with, with, interact, sorry, with micro-genres.


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[Assistant] So, most of what I've shown you so far, Sherlock Holmes is a detective novel, uh, Bram Stoker obviously is writing a gothic novel, and the other ones that we looked at were much more literary. Science fiction.


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[Assistant] Is a really interesting case. I told you, most novels are predominantly classified as novels, except for a couple of, um, instances where they're not.


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[Assistant] Science fiction, this is on the top, uh, uh, novel called Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy about a guy who time travels a hundred years in the future and then describes what he sees. And at the bottom, a modern utopia by H.G. Wells, a foundational sort of, um,


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[Assistant] Uh, utopian science fiction text. Both of them...


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[Assistant] ...are mostly not novel and in fact partake grammatically of very different discourses. A lot of history in the case of, uhm, modern utopia, a lot of anthropology, whereas, uh, looking backward has a lot of things that look like psychology.


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[Assistant] Similarly, when we look at them lexically, which should be better at identifying novels as novels, we also find really strong microgeneric signals. So uhm, here,


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[Assistant] Both, uh, Wells and Bellamy seem to be using a lot of economic discourse. And this actually makes sense if you sit down and read the novel because they're really interested in describing to the reader how the economies of these utopian societies.


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[Assistant] In other words, science fiction novels as a genre seem to be using microgenres differently than other kinds of writing. And so one of the two things we're engaged in now


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[Assistant] Is looking more broadly at these genres, uhm, and seeing if there are commonalities between how different disciplinary styles get included in them. So, is science fiction much more imprecated with things like economics, lexically, and history, or grammatically,


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[Assistant] Uhm, and for example is something like historical fiction, much more interested in historical writing grammatically and say for example anthropology lexically. So, breaking down the disciplines, looking at these kinds of patterns, this is the kind of thing uhm, that we can do


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[Assistant] With the computational model. But really, the original goal of the project, do these kinds of shifts exist? Do they exist at the grammatical level? Yes!


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[Assistant] And, and they do in ways that we can detect computationally, but which remain, I think, invisible for the most part.


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[Assistant] And, you know, their albums don't sound exactly the same from one to the next, but, uh, the way we survived, we never, I never wanted to be in the fastest or the heaviest or the tightest band and thank god because we would have failed across the board. I wanted to be in the realest band, like the band that most


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[Assistant] It all started on Friday when President Trump went on a tear during a rally in Alabama.


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[Assistant] Here's a reminder of what he said and I should warn you, some, especially young ones in the room, are going to find this language offensive.


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[Assistant] It has happened before that children get lost in sandstorms and disappear.


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[Assistant] It's cold. It really is. And you start to freeze really quickly.


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[Assistant] If you do not drive slowly, it is very dangerous. You slip faster than you can imagine.


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[Assistant] Driving slowly helps, and eventually at some point, you learn how to do so.


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[Assistant] From the first of October, it is forbidden to drive a motorbike into the villages until, I think, April 10th.


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[Assistant] This law really should be revoked here on the countryside.


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[Assistant] Earth to Kanata, are you okay? Just thinking about what Guru told me. But we already talked about this yesterday. Our bond of friendship is as strong as it gets. We don't need to improve anything.


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[Assistant] I know, but maybe there's something we're not seeing. This is very important to me, Athora.


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[Assistant] Yes, and it's important to me as well. You're very strong. I'll continue to protect you and- You just don't get it. We lost to wisdom. Huh?


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[Assistant] You mean that creep who stole Gao's Mirage card? It's meaningless. They embarrassed us. That's not meaningless to me. I never wanna feel like that again. I'm sorry. I need to be alone. No, wait! Ugh, fine.


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[Assistant] Good for them. They will become stronger with Guru's help.


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[Assistant] Huh? Thanks, that'd be great!


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[Assistant] Yeah, but you know how it is. But nothing we can't work out.


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[Assistant] We won so often we took it for granted. Maybe it's time we started rethinking our approach.


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[Assistant] Have you talked to Athora about this? No, I've kinda been avoiding it.


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[Assistant] Athora? Hey, why isn't Kanata with you, yo?


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[Assistant] Huh? Please sir, just a minute more.


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[Assistant] Now we can prove just how strong we are. Athora, remember, this is a tag team match. We must cooperate with Gawain- Watts has no intention of cooperating. If we fight the way we always do, we'll win.


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[Assistant] I'm with Star Dragon World. And Cartina World.


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[Assistant] Demon Somalia Zagan attack Kanata!


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[Assistant] Buddyfight X! Evolve your decks with evolution and mutation. This booster contains many new Darkness Dragon World cards. Abigale, it is our destiny to get this booster. Now on sale. Bushiroad!


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[Assistant] Now double attack! As many times as it takes!


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[Assistant] Not on my watch, yo. I cast Solomon's Shield! This is impossible!


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[Assistant] I won't fail again! It's final phase! I give my power to Kanata! A sin!


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[Assistant] We lost, but that was off the hook, yo! You know it! Guess we got a lot more partying to do! Hmm.


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[Assistant] You realize how we won, because we had some help from Gow and Bots. I know. I'm lucky to have someone who believes in me. But even with you on my side.


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[Assistant] We're not invincible. So let's focus on our weaknesses as well. Yes, you're right.


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[Assistant] When it's over, we will have the cream of San Francisco throwing their diamonds on the stage. You've all been wonderful through these six weeks of rehearsal. I'm sorry we've had to keep you so late. I know you're all tired, so go straight home and get some rest. Good night, everybody.


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[Assistant] Bright light blinding us. Taser goes off. And I see they're wearing wetsuits.


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[Assistant] Beautifully put, turned his argument around on him. Exactly. I said...


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[Assistant] My mom cleaned houses growing up. I never really saw myself going into politics.


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[Assistant] Everything's wrong, Andy. No, you're a great director, Mr. Marsh.


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[Assistant] Mark, I'll read you the first one. Now, give me a great big smile. Come on. Now, get ready. Alright, curtain.


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[Assistant] Hey Kristen, how you doing? Hey James, I'm feeling great. No Kristen, I was just thinking, love can be a funny thing.


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[Assistant] And I love love too, Kristin, but love can lift us up.


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[Assistant] Thank Congresswoman Barbara Comstock for keeping her promise and replacing the Affordable Care Act with the better healthcare you deserve.


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[Assistant] This book tells a story that happened long ago, way back in 1943.


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[Assistant] When the lead platoon of the Texas division hit the beach at Salerno, sunny Italy. It tells of Sergeant Tyne. Never had much urge to travel.


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[Assistant] Providence, Rhode Island may not be much as cities go, but it was all he wanted. A one-town man. Rivera, Italian-American.


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[Assistant] Likes opera and would like a wife and kids. Plenty of kids. Friedman. Lathe operator and amateur boxing champion. New York City.


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[Assistant] Sergeant Ward, a farmer. Knows his soil. Good farmer.


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[Assistant] When a shell's lookin' for a guy, it don't whine. It snarls.


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[Assistant] Seems like this war is nothing but waiting. Waiting for your chow, waiting for your pay, waiting for a letter from home.


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[Assistant] Next time you get a bullet hole in, you stuff some paper in, see how it feels, and you'll know. Cut that stuff out, Riddle. If you mail a letter, you mail a letter. Now, leave him alone.


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[Assistant] What are you gonna do if Harrison doesn't come back, Porter? How do I know?


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[Assistant] They're out of range now. Probably gonna have to big again.


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[Assistant] Go and take a look, Mac. Go and take a look!


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[Assistant] We'd better get moving, hadn't we? I think we had. If I were you, I'd keep off the road. Why? Tanks. Let's take it along the ditch. Okay. What about Smith? I'll talk to him.


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[Assistant] Listen Eddie, I don't know what's the matter with you and what you're thinking, but you're gonna have everybody with their tongues hanging out if you don't snap out of it. What's eating you?


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[Assistant] Sergeant Porter wants you bazooka man up ahead. I'm giving you ample protection.


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[Assistant] There's a stone wall runs clear around. There's a clear slope up to the house from the wall. Not much cover.


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[Assistant] We'll send the patrol up first. Four or five guys. I'll take it. I may need you here. I wanna take it. Okay, you take it. Pick yourself four men. I'll go.


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[Assistant] Not as careless with firearms. Joke.


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[Assistant] Kampiyon Sikodrunel para sa male standard overall category sa time na 2 hours 19 minutes.


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[Assistant] Around the world, ice is now feeding vast amounts of freshwater into the sea.


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[Assistant] Raising sea levels, changing salinity, and disrupting ocean currents.


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[Assistant] You know, it's like everyone's waiting for this moment for him to become presidential. You know, they're like, oh, he has to learn how to control his emotions. He has to learn to be measured. Uh, you know, but the man is 70 years old.


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[Assistant] Okay, look, a friend of mine was at the movies, and he goes, oh, uh, guess who was here? Tiffany Trump was here with Secret Service.


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[Assistant] The laird received me in a room at the top of a flight of stone steps. It was a tower room, round and rich with paintings and tapestries hung against the sloping walls.


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[Assistant] This room was luxuriously crowded, crammed with furniture, bristling with ornaments and warmly lit by fire and candle against the drizzle of the day outside.


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[Assistant] While the outer walls of the castle had only the high slit windows suited to resisting attacks,


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[Assistant] This inner wall had been more recently furnished with long casement windows that let in what daylight there was.


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[Assistant] As I entered, my attention was drawn at once by an enormous metal cage, cleverly engineered to fit the curve of the wall from floor to ceiling, filled with dozens of tiny birds, finches, buntings, tits, and several kinds of warblers.


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[Assistant] Drawing near, my eye was filled with plump, smooth bodies and bead-bright eyes set like jewels in a background of velvet green.


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[Assistant] Darting among the leaves of oak, elm and chestnut, carefully tended trees rooted in mulched pots set on the floor of the cage.


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[Assistant] The cheerful racket of conversing birds was punctuated by the whir of wings and rustle of leaves as the inhabitants flitted and hopped about their business. Busy-wee things, are they new? A deep, pleasant voice spoke from behind me, and I turned with a smile that froze on my face.


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[Assistant] Though the vital force that gave Dougal an air of intimidation was here mellowed into something more welcoming, though no less vibrant.


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[Assistant] My discomfort arose from the fact that the beautifully modeled head and long torso


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[Assistant] The man who should have topped six feet came barely to my shoulder.


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[Assistant] He kept his eyes on the birds, tactfully allowing me a much needed moment to gain control of my features.


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[Assistant] Of course he must be used to the reactions of people meeting him for the first time. It occurred to me, glancing around the room, to wonder how often he did meet new people.


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[Assistant] This was clearly a sanctuary, the self-constructed world of a man to whom the outer world was unwelcome or unavailable. I welcome you, mistress, he said with a slight bow.


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[Assistant] My name is Colm Van Campbell Mackenzie, Laird of this castle.


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[Assistant] I understand from my brother that he, uh, encountered you some distance from here. He kidnapped me if you want to know, I said.


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[Assistant] I would have liked to keep the conversation cordial, but I wanted even more to get away from this castle and back to the hill with a standing stone circle. Whatever had happened to me, the answer lay there, if anywhere.


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[Assistant] The layered thick brows rose slightly, and a smile curved the fine-cut lips. Well, perhaps, he agreed. Dougal is sometimes a wee bit impetuous.


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[Assistant] I waved a hand, indicating gracious dismissal of the matter.


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[Assistant] And he nodded toward one of the attendants who vanished through the door. I've said for some refreshment, Mistress Beauchamp was it.


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[Assistant] I understand that my brother and his men found ye in, uhm, some apparent distress. He seemed to be hiding a smile.


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[Assistant] And I wondered just how my supposed state of undress had been described to him.


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[Assistant] But what is she thinking? I mean, this isn't even like, funny.


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[Assistant] It's kind of nostalgic for me because I, uhm, used to eat them as a kid.


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[Assistant] I'd give it a D. I'd give it a D. It's three D's. Hit the drum roll.


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[Assistant] It is an S candy. It is totally an S candy. Wow.


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[Assistant] Yeah, what were you gonna say that we didn't watch? The part, the part that pissed me off was like, who's gonna clean all that up? That's where my mind goes. Like the cleanup.


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[Assistant] Calling out the other eaters for using water like pussies.


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[Assistant] And it keeps traditions like the Alporn alive.


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[Assistant] Some visitors stay just one night. A stopover, so to speak, to be at the railway station in the morning. St. Moritz promotes itself as top of the world. And it's up here that one of the world's most famous train journeys begins.


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[Assistant] The Glacier Express was set on the rails in 1930. It followed and still follows the tradition of pre-World War I luxury trains.


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[Assistant] The train takes its time. It needs about 8 hours to travel 300 kilometers. But speed isn't the point.


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[Assistant] Those who board the Glacier Express aren't in a hurry. They want to enjoy every moment of the journey.


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[Assistant] The route winds through the splendid alpine world of Switzerland along the Albulaline to Chur. From down in the Rhine Valley, the train makes a slow climb up to Dicentus. Andermatt and Brigg are further stations before the Glacier Express reaches its destination, Zermatt, by the Matterhorn.


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[Assistant] Especially in winter, passengers can catch a glimpse of life in the mountains through the windows. The direct journey has existed for more than 88 years.


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[Assistant] After half an hour, the train reaches Samayden, one of the main towns in the Angadine region.


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[Assistant] Over the years, the attraction of the glacier express has somewhat paled.


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[Assistant] In particular, fewer German passengers come because of the strength of the Swiss franc.


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[Assistant] The route passes by the construction site for the new Albulat tunnel.


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[Assistant] The old tunnel opened in 1903 at an altitude of around 1,800 meters, which made it one of the highest tunnels going through a mountain in Europe.


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[Assistant] Parallel to the old tunnel at a distance of about 30 meters, construction of the new Algula tunnel has been ongoing since 2015. Miners work in a three-shift system.


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[Assistant] The main method being used for advancing the tunnel is blasting.


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[Assistant] A bit further up the track lies what's known as the most beautiful spot in Switzerland.


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[Assistant] Swiss television viewers gave this moniker to the mountain lake, the Lai da Palpônia, in 2007.


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[Assistant] For passengers, this is the first of many highlights along the Glacier Express route.


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[Assistant] Set within this glorious alpine panorama, several spiral loops and tunnels or helical tunnels help the train lose about 400 meters of altitude.


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[Assistant] This is done with such grace that the al-Bala section is considered a masterpiece of railway construction. Even those who aren't train experts are impressed.


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[Assistant] Train routing that's in perfect harmony with the landscape.


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[Assistant] The entrance to the spiral tunnel is up above, and the exit further down. This happens several times along the route.


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[Assistant] Idealized alpine life almost seems to be reality in the region. Like here, in the Swiss village of Bergun. There's no daily rush. Just time and quiet.


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[Assistant] Stunning scenery and Kaubünden architecture.


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[Assistant] At times, the gun can nearly look too idyllic.


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[Assistant] The gentle downward glide of the Glacier Express fits right in.


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[Assistant] Train driving with a personalized touch. And there's a lot worth photographing. The breathtaking scenery.


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[Assistant] Or particularly on the Albulas section of the track, one of the many beautifully designed railway structures.


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[Assistant] Looking out of the panoramic windows, it's easy to see why UNESCO made this a World Cultural Heritage Site.


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[Assistant] The organization describes it as an architectural and civil engineering achievement in harmony with the landscapes.


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[Assistant] 60 kilometers further, the World Cultural Heritage Route ends in Toussus.


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[Assistant] A special passenger sits at platform 2. She is a genuine Graubünden resident and has been waiting for the Glacier Express since 1995.


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[Assistant] The artist Robert Indermauer created The Lady at his studio nearby.


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[Assistant] And there she still patiently sits, watching for the Glacier Express.


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[Assistant] During this stretch the posterior rind keeps the Glacier Express company.


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[Assistant] Castles bear witness to the area's historical significance as a transit route.


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[Assistant] Before long, passengers have reached another highlight of the journey, the source of one of Europe's lifelines, the Rhine.


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[Assistant] At Reichenau, two tributaries, the posterior Rhine and the anterior Rhine, join to become the Alpine Rhine.


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[Assistant] The property has been in the hands of one family for seven generations, except for a few interruptions.


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[Assistant] A good ten minutes later, the Glacier Express rolls into the oldest town in Switzerland, Cua. It's the capital of the canton of Graubünden.


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[Assistant] People have been living in the fertile valley of the Alpine Rhine for 3,000 years.


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[Assistant] Perhaps because of the many fountains, pubs, bars and cafes.


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[Assistant] For a city of less than 40,000 residents, there's quite a lot on offer here.


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[Assistant] The train is divided here and takes on its final sequence of cars.


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[Assistant] This time, the Glacier Express travels in the opposite direction to cross the bridge over the posterior Rhine near Reichenau.


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[Assistant] Which is what locals here call the Rhine Gorge between Reichenau and Elands.


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[Assistant] It's a site even the driver never grows tired of.


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[Assistant] At this point, we're still in the Canton of Gaubunden in the Sor Selva area, which in Rita Romantic means above the woods.


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[Assistant] The tracks continue to run next to the anterior Rhine. The trip is genuinely spectacular.


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[Assistant] Many places can only be reached on foot or via the railway.


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[Assistant] Wuster comes from the Latin word for monastery. Monasterium.


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[Assistant] The rails of the Rishian or Albula Railway end here.


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[Assistant] From here, the ascent to the Oberalp Pass, the first cogwheel section, begins.


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[Assistant] The train will now climb 900 meters of altitude.


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[Assistant] By midday, the train is above the snow line.


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[Assistant] There's an interruption in operation towards the Uba'at Pass, even for the Glacier Express.


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[Assistant] We joined a snow removal team as they set to work at 5 a.m.


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[Assistant] The rail yard at the Oba Alp Pass is being cleared. At 2033 meters above sea level, these tracks cross the highest point on the route.


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[Assistant] A team of specialists looks for dangerous spots that could pose a threat to the railway. Any that are located are blasted. Avalanches are intentionally triggered.


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[Assistant] Blue skies and plenty of snow. Perfect weather for a train journey through the Alps.


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[Assistant] During wintertime, only the train crosses the border here between the cantons of Graubünden and Uri.


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[Assistant] What's hidden from view is that the mountains here in the Gotthard Pass are like Swiss cheese. Countless bunkers and tunnels have been drilled into them.


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[Assistant] The prolific German poet and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said that among all the places he knew, it was his favorite and most interesting.


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[Assistant] The Fokker-based tunnel starts in Rehab. The tunnel was opened in 1982. After that, operations on the Fokker mountain rail route, which turns off here, were suspended.


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[Assistant] Heinz Seiler-Furga drove the Glacier Express back when it still followed the Furga mountain route.


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[Assistant] The former engine man can't get enough of trains.


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[Assistant] A year after operations were suspended on the mountain route, the Association for the Forecum Mountain Route Steam Railway, also known by the initials DFB, was set up in 1983. Its aim was to maintain and run the railway.


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[Assistant] Most of those taking part are volunteers, known as phonies.


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[Assistant] They work without pay, but with plenty of passion.


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[Assistant] A proof of the saying, patience pays off.


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[Assistant] At over 100 years old, the steam locomotive is part of the Mountain Roots inventory.


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[Assistant] The rails on the Steffenbach Bridge have become shorter again.


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[Assistant] Still, around 30,000 railway fans enjoy this Alpine steam experience each year. The highlight is the Forca Summit Tunnel at 2,163 meters.


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[Assistant] When the Glacier Express first took to the rails in the 1930s, passengers could see the Rome Glacier from the train. That's no longer possible.


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[Assistant] During the summer of 2017 alone, the glacier lost 8 meters in thickness.


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[Assistant] By the end of the century, it's estimated that only 10% of the glaciers will be left in Switzerland.


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[Assistant] Around 90 years ago, the Glacier Express still rolled alongside the Rhone Glacier. Today, there's only gray stone to see.


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[Assistant] Down in the Obavite, the nostalgic train journey reaches the boundary of the canton of Vanis.


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[Assistant] This is also where the Glacier Express exits the 15.4 kilometer long Forca Base Tunnel and comes back into daylight. Here, the Rhone River is called the Roten.


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[Assistant] The town is an international railway hub par excellence.


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[Assistant] It's said to be the largest privately owned Baroque building in Switzerland.


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[Assistant] It's named after the man known as the Fuga of the Alps, Kaspar Stokalpa.


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[Assistant] He recognized Briggs' central transportation function and used it for trade.


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[Assistant] The Simplon Pass was a key artery between the great powers.


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[Assistant] Today, Kaspar Stokalpa would be described as a war profiteer.


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[Assistant] In the mid-17th century, he even had a monopoly on salt. And he increased his fortune through speculation.


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[Assistant] Shtokalpa lived by the saying, Sospis Lucra Carpat. God's favorite shall skim the prophets.


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[Assistant] Today, his family line no longer exists.