Students, administrators and academic researchers demonstrate the value of learning music in school as they show improvements in English and Math test scores, class attendance rates, cognitive development, self-esteem and the ability to work with others. Featured are Francisco Escobedo, the superintendent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District; UC San Diego cognitive scientists Terry Jernigan and John Iversen; and young musicians participating in the Community Opus Project, an in-school and after school music program led by Dalouge Smith, the president and CEO of the San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory.

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 gained entry as self-styled refugees, while others enjoyed the help and protection of the CIA, the FBI, and the military, who put them to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers. Lichtblau's book draws from once-secret government records and interviews, telling the full story of the Nazi scientists brought to America, and the German spies and con men who followed them and lived for decades as Americans. He is presented by the Holocaust Living History Workshop at UC San Diego.

Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, delves into design's many directions and into its future. She takes us on a fascinating tour of design to ask some very serious questions.

Yusef Komunyakaa, an internationally renowned poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for "Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems," reads and discusses his work while writer-in-residence at UC Santa Barbara. Recorded on 03/01/2017.

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. Recorded on 04/11/2018.

What does it mean to be born in a concentration camp, arguably one of the most inhospitable places on earth? Eva Clarke was one of three "miracle babies" who saw the light of day in KZ Mauthausen in Austria. Nine days after her birth, the Second World War ended. As a newborn, Eva's chances of survival were extremely slim; against all odds, she lived, making her and her mother Anka the only survivors of their extended family. In 1948, they emigrated from Prague to the UK and settled in Cardiff, Wales. Eva regularly addresses audiences, and her remarkable story has been featured in the British and American media. She and her mother are among the protagonists of Wendy Holden's book Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope (Harper, 2015). Recorded on 05/30/2018.

In this talk Julian McAuley, UC San Diego Computer Science and Engineering, discusses the modeling techniques behind personalized recommendation technology on the web. Examples of Recommender Systems range from simple statistical approaches like Amazon's people who bought X also bought Y links, to complex AI-based approaches that drive feed ranking on sites like Facebook. We'll discuss the models that drive these systems, look at the research questions that drive the future of this field in the coming years, and discuss their ethical implications.

Most people are part-Neanderthal, the closest extinct human relative. Svante Pääbo explores human genetic evolution by analyzing preserved genetic material from the remains of ancient organisms, including Neanderthals. What can we learn from the genomes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Pääbo is an evolutionary anthropologist and pioneer of paleogenetics and the director of the Max Plank Institute of Evolutionary Genetics. He was awarded the 2018 Nierenberg Award for Science in the Public Interest. Recorded on 10/03/2018.

In this Q&A conversation Debra Granik, director and co-writer of Leave No Trace (2018), is joined by moderator and Pollock Theater Director Matt Ryan. The event is part of the Carsey-Wolf Centers Script to Screen series and covers the development of the film and its adaptation from Mindy Mejias novel of the same name. Granik discusses how characters and story were reworked for the film, the research that she did in preparation, and the ways the film seeks to represent family relationships and post-traumatic stress disorder. The conversation also covers the production process, the significance of the films setting in Oregon, and the actors preparations for their roles. Granik is also the director of Winters Bone (2010) and this Q&A draws comparisons between her work on these two films. Recorded on 11/17/2018.

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.