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.

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.

A panel discussion follows the release of the US postage stamp honoring Sally Ride, America's first woman in space. Three trailblazing women leaders Billie Jean King, tennis legend and champion of social change; Ellen Ochoa, first Hispanic woman in space and director of the Johnson Space Center; and Condoleezza Rice, 66th U.S. Secretary of State join journalist Lynn Sherr in sharing stories of obstacles and triumphs while encouraging more women to assume leadership roles in their fields. Presented by Sally Ride Science@UC San Diego.

UC San Diego's Geisel Library hosts an annual Paper Theater Festival, celebrating an art form with roots in Victorian Era Europe. Paper theaters (also known as toy theaters) were used to promote productions. They were printed on paperboard sheets and sold as kits at the concession stand of an opera house, playhouse, or vaudeville theater. The kits were then assembled at home and plays performed for family members and guests, sometimes with live musical accompaniment. The theaters gradually declined in popularity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but have enjoyed a resurgence in interest in recent years among many puppeteers, filmmakers, theater historians, and hobbyists. Presently there are numerous international paper theater festivals throughout the Americas and Europe, as well as several museums.

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.

High energy, long life, rechargeable batteries are considered an important technological opportunity to reduce production of greenhouse gases. What standards should be set for safety of new energy storage technologies? And who should enforce those standards? Learn about these exciting developments as well as how best to meet potential social and ethical challenges from Ying Shirley Meng, Ph.D., Associate Professor Department of Nano Engineering University of California, San Diego.