An Evening with Robert Pinsky - Point Loma Writer’s Symposium by the Sea 2017 Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky describes himself as a "composer" who considers poetry to be first and foremost a vocal art, and his work seeks to blur the distinctions between language and music by emphasizing the rhythms and innate physicality of recited verse in a jazz context. In this performance for the 22nd Writer's Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University, Pinsky's reading is accompanied by a talented trio of PLNU students. The music - a blend of rehearsed and improvised - employs a variety of jazz styles, sometimes sympathetic and sometimes in playful counterpoint, but always responsive to the poet's distinctive voice.
	An Actor’s Education: A Conversation with John Lithgow For more than a half century, John Lithgow has been delighting audiences on stage, in movies and on television. In a lively discussion with Peter Gourevitch, distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at UC San Diego, Lithgow reflects on his preparations for the wide diversity of roles that have shaped his career and influenced the larger culture, from his star turn in "The World According to Garp" to his SAG-award-winning role as Winston Churchill in the Netflix original series "The Crown." Recorded on 10/11/2017.
	Can We Should We and Will We Bring Back Mammoths? with Beth Shapiro 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.
	From War Child to Global Citizen with Emmanuel Jal 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. Recorded on 04/12/2018.
	Luis Alberto Urrea - Dinner in the Library San Diego-raised novelist and UC San Diego alumnus, Luis Alberto Urrea '77 is the featured speaker at the UC San Diego Library annual gala. Urrea, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist, has written about the border and has knitted together stories in a way that makes them familiar and impactful for everyone. Recorded on 09/21/2018.
	An Evening with Nnedi Okorafor - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2019 More recently known for her Black Panther and Wakanda Forever Marvel Comics, Nnedi Okorafor is an international award-winning novelist of African-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism for both children and adults. Born in the United States to two Nigerian immigrant parents, Nnedi is known for weaving African culture into creative evocative settings and memorable characters. In a profile of Nnedi's work titled, "Weapons of Mass Creation," The New York Times called Nnedi's imagination "stunning." Game of Thrones author, George R.R. Martin and HBO are currently developing a show based on her World Fantasy Award Winning novel, Who Fears Death. Ta-Nehisi Coates has passed the torch on writing the Black Panther comics to Nnedi, and the women warriors from the mega-hit movie were such fan favorites that Marvel has tasked Nnedi to create a new spinoff comic, Wakanda Forever.
	An Evening with E.J. Dionne - Writer's Symposium by the Sea Feb 2019 E.J. Dionne writes about politics in a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post, and is a government professor at Georgetown University, a visiting professor at Harvard University, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. He is a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio. Before joining The Post in 1990 as a political reporter, Dionne spent 14 years at The New York Times, where he covered politics and reported from Albany, Washington, Paris, Rome and Beirut. His coverage of the Vatican was described by the Los Angeles Times as the best in two decades. In 2014-2015, Dionne was the vice president of the American Political Science Association. Recorded on 02/20/2019.
	Frankenstein: Afterlives - Young Frankenstein Lester Friedman, Professor of Media and Society at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, joins moderator Patrice Petro in a Q&A discussion of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). They cover the production, style, and influences at work in Brooks' adaptation. Part of the Frankenstein: Afterlives series, this Q&A emphasizes the ways Brook's film references James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) and Mary Shelley's original novel. Young Frankenstein is faithful to the form and production technology of Whale's version, while seeking to return more closely to the themes developed by Shelly's original work. Friedman discusses the way Brooks' adaptation, through comedy, returns to questions of science, ethics, and sexuality in ways that reference Shelly but update them for 1970s audiences—speaking to the politics of marginality and social change. Recorded on 11/13/2018.
	Dawn Solér - Powerful Music Supervisor Who is Changing the Way We Watch TV As a music supervisor and executive on such films as The Big Lebowski, Sweet Home Alabama and Dead Man Walking, Dawn Solér joined ABC Studios in 2006 to bring her extensive film experience to the world of television. Once there, she established a full-service music department that manages every musical component on all of its shows -- the hiring of music supervisors and composers, budgets and integrating music from programming into marketing. Recorded on 11/13/2018.
	The View from the Edge of Modernity An engaging lecturer and storyteller, Rabbi Feinstein unites the ancient Jewish love of ideas with the warmth of Jewish humor. He is the author of several books and offers a new way to do Judaism urging us to recover the message of Jewish self empowerment, or chutzpah, to reshape the world. Recorded on 11/19/2018.
	Beatles Revolutions: Let It Be The Beatles' final concert, their late-era conflicts, and the complicated history of director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's Let It Be documentary all arise in this discussion between musician Alan Parsons and Music Professor David Novak (UC Santa Barbara). Parsons was a teenage sound engineer at Abbey Road studios when he was assigned to record audio for the Beatles as they worked through this iconic album. Novak draws Parsons into dialogue about recording equipment, studio layouts, and the musical personalities of each member of the band. Recorded on 01/25/2019.
	Black Power Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s Undermining widely held beliefs about the black-Jewish alliance, Marc Dollinger, Professor of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University, describes a new political consensus, based on identity politics, that drew blacks and Jews together and altered the course of American liberalism. Dollinger's most recent book takes a new and different look at Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, showing how American Jews leveraged the Black Power movement to increase Jewish ethnic and religious identity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Recorded on 01/14/2019.
	Shaney jo Darden - No. HerPower: Education Vision Empowerment "I use art to start conversations about something that is serious and complex." Shaney jo Darden, Founder and Global Creative Chief of The Keep A Breast Foundation, shares her journey in the world of art and activism. As someone who has carved out a career path focused on community and compassion, she stresses the importance discovering your unique talents and finding a place for them in your everyday work. Recorded on 03/12/2019.
	The Weight of Ink Rachel Kadish is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction, author of several novels and a novella. Her fiction work has won the National Jewish Book Award and the Julia Ward Howe Prize, the John Gardner Fiction Prize, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award. She discusses her latest book, "The Weight of Ink," a work of historical fiction set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century. Recorded on 02/04/2019.