Watch, Read, Listen

Maria Drout, Hubble, Carnegie-Dunlap Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories, discusses how a recent discovery of a “kilonova” associated with the cataclysmic merger of two neutron stars has filled in one of the final pieces of the elemental puzzle: the origin of many of the heaviest elements in the universe.

Author Susan Whitfield (Silk, Slaves and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road) is joined by renowned theater director Peter Sellars for a fascinating conversation about the diversity of peoples and cultures that traveled the ancient trade routes of Afro-Eurasia.

Deborah Friedman documented the California Sycamore as part of her botanical illustration studies with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The resulting art work was accepted as part of the traveling exhibition, “Out of the Woods: Celebrating Trees in Public Gardens.”

Best-selling author Simon Winchester (The Professor and the Madman; The Men Who United the States) explores the origins of “precision” and the invisible role it plays, for good or for ill, in the way we live our lives. The lecture is drawn from his new book, The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World.

David Baltimore, President Emeritus and Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, discusses the challenge of globally controlling technology when potentially 200 different jurisdictions might be involved.