Humanities (Audio)

Beth Shapiro, Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz, explains her work on using ancient DNA to infer evolutionary history and processes. She is the MacArthur Award-winning author of "How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction," which considers the feasibility and desirability of bringing back passenger pigeons, steppe bison, mammoth and other currently extinct species. This program is presented by the Institute for Practical Ethics in the Division of Arts and Humanities at UC San Diego. [Show ID: 33419]

Emmanuel Jal, an internationally recognized hip-hop musician, former child soldier turned activist and entrepreneur, shares his story and music. Jal was born into the life of a child solider in the early 1980s in the war-torn region of Southern Sudan. He calls upon all of us to engage with our world and become global citizens through scholarship, leadership and service. [Show ID: 33490]

Cosmologist and author of "Losing the Nobel Prize" Brian Keating tells the inside story of BICEP2’s mesmerizing discovery and the scientific drama that ensued in this interview with science fiction author David Brin. Keating describes a journey of revelation and discovery, bringing to life the highly competitive, take-no-prisoners, publish-or-perish world of modern science. Along the way, he provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize, instead of advancing scientific progress, may actually hamper it, encouraging speed and greed while punishing collaboration and bold innovation. In a thoughtful reappraisal of the wishes of Alfred Nobel, Keating offers practical solutions for reforming the prize, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may, finally, be able to see all the way back to the very beginning. Series: "Writers" [Show ID: 33369]

Where does the line in digital ethics reside? As the number of social media users grows, so does the amount of data generated. This user-generated data includes sensitive and private details about people’s daily lives. The details can be used to uncover valuable information about trends in human behavior. As these social and technological spheres converge, ethical concerns about the manner in which the data are collected, analyzed, and ultimately used and disseminated by companies, researchers, and the government arise. Tim K. Mackey, MAS, PhD highlights some of these challenges from the perspective of a researcher exploring the social media risk environment for prescription drug abuse. Series: "Exploring Ethics" [Show ID: 32771]

The events of the Russian Revolution in 1917 exerted strong influences on immigrant Jews in the United States, who, over the previous three decades, had cultivated ties with various Russian-Jewish and Russian political parties. Tony Michels, Professor of American Jewish History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explores their attitudes towards Bolshevism. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Show ID: 33470]

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explores the creation of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto and its multimedia narrative exhibition honoring the lives of those who have passed. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a professor emerita at New York University, is also the chief curator of the Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum. She is presented here by the Jewish Studies Program and the Library at UC San Diego. Series: "The Library Channel" [Show ID: 32848]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Michael Warner, the Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and American Studies, at Yale University, and the 2018 Tanner Lecturer at Berkeley. The conversation focuses on Professor Warner’s intellectual odyssey from a Pentecostal upbringing to an Ivy League professorship of American literature. The conversation includes discussion of his scholarship on the reciprocal influence of colonial printing and the development and assertion of democratic values; his advocacy on issues surrounding gay marriage; and his theoretical insights on publics and counterpublic as they apply to contemporary political dialogue. Series: "Conversations with History" [Show ID: 33587]

Author and legendary athlete Kareem Abdul-Jabbar offers sage advice on writing. Abdul-Jabbar has written several best-selling books, along with some basketball on the side." Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Show ID: 33605]

Author and legendary athlete Kareem Abdul-Jabbar offers sage advice on writing. Abdul-Jabbar has written several best-selling books, “along with some basketball on the side." Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Show ID: 33605]

Novelist and filmmaker David Bezmozgis speaks about his 2014 novel The Betrayers, an intense look at morality and the human conscience, that won the National Jewish Book Award. The book is about a famous Russian Jewish dissident who, after the fall of the Soviet Union, meets the man who denounced him. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Show ID: 33367]