Humanities (Video)

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla and Executive Vice Chancellor Elizabeth H. Simmons welcome Tam O'Shaughnessy, Cofounder and Executive Director of Sally Ride Science@UC Diego, who then presents a United States Postal Service video honoring the late Sally Ride and the new Sally Ride Forever commemorative stamp. Journalist Lynn Sherr follows with introductions of panelists Billie Jean King, Condoleezza Rice and Ellen Ochoa, who discuss Women in Leadership here: (uctv.tv/shows/33160) Series: "STEAM Channel" [Show ID: 33762]

Sometimes the soul seems a more precise concept than the body. In this lecture Marilyn Strathern, goes to a place and time where all kinds of beings (including food plants) have souls and where the bodily basis of life is immortalized through cloning. She comments on the way present-day anthropology brings fresh illumination to what we thought we knew. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 33308]

Steve Clemons of the Atlantic talks with MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo. Her bestseller, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving for a better life in a Mumbai slum. Based on three years of uncompromising reporting, she puts a human face on issues of inequality. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Show ID: 33266]

Rev. Traci Blackmon is the Executive Minister of Justice & Local Church Ministries for the United Church of Christ and Senior Pastor of Christ The King United Church of Christ in Florissant, MO. A featured voice with many regional, national, & international media outlets and contributor to print publications, her communal leadership & healing work in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown, Jr., in Ferguson, MO has gained her both national & international recognition and audiences, from the White House to the Carter Center to the Vatican. She was appointed to the Ferguson Commission by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon & to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships for the White House by President Barack Obama. Rev Blackmon's mission is an expanded understanding of church as a sacred launching pad of community engagement and change. Series: "Burke Lectureship on Religion and Society" [Show ID: 33456]

Conversations host welcomes Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College, London, for a discussion of his new book, The Future of War, A History. Sir Lawrence reflects on the historical perspective he brings to topics such as strategy and war. Emphasizing the importance of understanding patterns and context through the study of history, Sir Lawrence analyzes what we can learn through a focus on ideas that shape thinking about war. What are the origins of these ideas? How do these ideas hold up in the face of the flexibility of adversaries to develop new responses and the uncertain consequences of human decision-making—the unpredictable factors that shape the trajectory of war. Especially important are the lessons learned from previous wars that distort the images of future wars. There is also a focus in the conversation on the limits of technology to address the contingencies of war. Series: "Conversations with History" [Show ID: 33597]

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]