Library Channel (Audio)

Celebrated author, literature champion, and bookstore owner Ann Patchett electrifies the audience as she describes her evolving relationships with various books, ranging from classics by Leo Tolstoy and John Updike to more contemporary works by Min Jin Lee (“Pachinko”), Matthew Desmond (“Evicted”) and Ta-Nehisi Coates (”Between the World and Me”), among others. Patchett reads both for pleasure and...

Journalist Ari Shapiro shares his healthy approach to an onslaught of bleak world news. Shapiro's passion for literature has inspired him to find and report great stories in Washington, Europe and elsewhere around the world in his remarkable rise from radio intern to co-host of NPR’s flagship news program, All Things Considered. Shapiro is the featured speaker at the 2016 Dinner in the Library eve...

Journalist Ari Shapiro shares his experiences in Eastern Ukraine as the Separatists arrived. Shapiro had a remarkable rise from radio intern to co-host of NPR’s flagship news program, All Things Considered. Shapiro was the featured speaker at the 2016 Dinner in the Library event at the Geisel Library at UC San Diego. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32736]

In his highly-acclaimed book, The Nazis Next Door, Eric Lichtblau tells the shocking and shameful story of how America became a safe haven for Hitler's men. Lichtblau explains here how it was possible for thousands of Nazis -- from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich -- to move to the U.S. after WWII, and quietly settle into new lives as Americans. Some of them gain...

The International Tracing Service, one of the world’s largest Holocaust-related archival repositories, holds millions of documents detailing the many forms of persecution that transpired during the Nazi era and their continuing repercussions. Based on her recently published book, "Nazi Persecution and Postwar Repercussions: The International Tracing Service Archive and Holocaust Research," Suzanne...

Omer Bartov, the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and German Studies at Brown University, explores the dynamics of the horrifying genocidal violence which took place in the East Galician town of Buczacz— following the German conquest of the region in 1941— and its subsequent erasure from local memory. For centuries, Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews coexisted in the region,...

Author Zohreh Ghahremani talks with Babak Rahimi, associate professor of Communication, Culture and Religion at UC San Diego about the novel, "Sky of Red Poppies," the 2012 selection for One Book, One San Diego. Series: "Writers" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31539]

In his book, Spitting in the Soup: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sports, UC San Diego alumnus and sports journalist Mark Johnson traces the doping culture in professional sports, from the early days when pills meant progress, to the current day, when athletes are vilified for the use of performance-enhancing drugs. In his book, Johnson, who has covered cycling as a writer and photographer sin...

Journalist Ari Shapiro shares how his passion for literature has inspired him to find and report great stories in Washington, Europe and elsewhere around the world in his remarkable rise from radio intern to co-host of NPR’s flagship news program, All Things Considered. Shapiro is the featured speaker at the 2016 Dinner in the Library event at the Geisel Library at UC San Diego. Series: "Writers"...

In his book, Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminals, author Joel Dimsdale draws on decades of experience as a psychiatrist and the dramatic advances within psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience since the Nuremberg Trials to take a fresh look at four Nazi war criminals: Robert Ley, Hermann Goring, Julius Streicher and Rudolf Hess. Dimsdale, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at...

Born in Jerusalem to parents who had fled Nazi Germany, Israeli journalist Tom Segev is a leading figure among the so-called New Historians, who have challenged many of Israel’s traditional narratives or “founding myths.” His books include, “The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust” (2000); “One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate” (2000); “1967: Israel, the War...

Climate scientist Richard Somerville completes the “Climate Change at the Crossroads” series presented by the UC San Diego Library with a talk recounting his experiences at the Paris COP 21 conference and his ongoing efforts to widen public understanding of the catastrophic impacts of climate change. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 30489]

Renowned climatologist V. Ramanathan from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography makes a moral argument for mitigating climate change, arguing that it is caused by a fraction of the world’s population but is affecting everyone on this planet. He urges scientists and policy makers to reach out to religious leaders, as he has done with the Pope and the Dalai Lama, and ask them to join together in p...

Writer and artist Charlotte Salomon, the daughter of a highly cultivated Jewish family in Berlin, was deported to Auschwitz and murdered at the age of 26. In her final work “Life? or Theatre?” Salomon envisioned the circumstances surrounding the eight suicides in her family, all but one of them women. Darcy C. Buerkle, an Associate Professor of History at Smith College, explores Salomon’s tragic l...

Climate change policy expert David Victor, a professor of International Relations at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy & Strategy and two of his graduate students provide insights into the process and the outcome of the 2015 COP 21 climate talks in Paris. Victor has been a participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proceedings since the IPCC’s inception Victor is pres...

Investigative journalist Bob Woodward and former White House aide Alex Butterfield join Michael Bernstein for a conversation about Butterfield’s decision to reveal the existence of tape recordings that eventually led to Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 30187]

A riveting Q&A session with Bob Woodward and Alex Butterfield as the reporter and source share even more details about the personality and character of Richard Nixon. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 30454]

An evening of conversation and celebration at the close of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Jonas Salk featuring his sons Jonathan and Peter, author Mary Walshok and Gary Robbins, science editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The panel reflects on how Jonas Salk, his wife Francoise Gilot and his Institute shaped San Diego and its fledgling biomedical community; the interplay between Salk...

This extended version of “Back to the Future with the Brave New Library Featuring Sarah Thomas, Vice President for the Harvard University Library - Dinner in the Library 2015” includes remarks from UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, University Librarian Brian E.C. Schottlaender and Jonathan Hill, son of Ken and Dorothy Hill who curated the Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages. Series: "Library...

Sarah Thomas draws from her years in the stacks at Oxford, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and now, as the Vice President of the Harvard Library, to describe her vision for the future of libraries at the 2015 Dinner in the Library celebration hosted by the Library at UC San Diego. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Education] [Show ID: 28725]

E. Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of the composer Arnold Schoenberg, is an expert in handling cases involving looted art and the recovery of property stolen by the Nazi authorities during the Holocaust. He tells the story here of his most prominent case, “Republic of Austria v. Altmann” which resulted in the successful return of six paintings by Gustav Klimt, including the “Golden Lady,” to their...

Eminent earth scientist Walter Munk recounts events and personalities involved in UC San Diego’s formative years as it grew out of an oceanographic field station now known as Scripps Institution of Oceanography, with former UC San Diego Chancellor and University of California President Richard Atkinson. Series: "Library Channel" [Science] [Show ID: 29113]

Since the defeat of the Nazis in WWII, Germans have been forced to confront their “unmasterable past.” What was it like to grow up in a divided country burdened with the legacy of genocide? How does one deal with the knowledge of one’s people’s complicity in mass murder, and how does this knowledge affect one’s identity? Primary witnesses of both German and Jewish backgrounds explore answers to th...

Visual Artist Sheldon Brown presents a multimedia tour de force exploring how art and science illuminate the freedom of imagination. Using examples from his extensive body of work, the founding director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination challenges this audience to think about how developments in computation have reframed our understanding of the world and how new digital met...

Heavy drinking by teenagers was once considered just a rite of passage with no long-term effects, but modern biotechnology has changed that perspective. Dr. Sandra A. Brown of UC San Diego presents research showing how voluntary choices that are the hallmark of freedom become rigid and compulsory with frequent alcohol or drug use, especially among young people. Dr. Brown’s talk is part of the “Deg...