Princeton University Podcasts

Today's young Americans must combine their technological savvy with a commitment to environmental sustainability to help achieve Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a just society, keynote speaker Van Jones told the audience at Princeton University's annual King Day ceremony. This year's event focused on exploring the environmental impact of Hurricane Katrina and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf Coast region, in the context of King's vision for equality and his concern for the poor and oppressed. The theme was addressed in literary arts, visual arts and video contests for students from area schools. Jones, an environmental activist who is a visiting fellow at Princeton, pointed to the student contest winners who were honored at the ceremony as examples of a generation that holds the power to realize King's vision.

Patti Smith is a singer, songwriter, poet, and visual artist. Her memoir, Just Kids (Ecco, Harper Collins 2010) about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, just won the 2010 National Book Award for nonfiction. Smith will read excerpts from the book and her poems and perform some of the music that made her famous

The President’s Lecture Series was established by President Shirley M. Tilghman in the fall of 2001 to give Princeton’s faculty an opportunity to learn about the work of their colleagues in other disciplines and to share their research with the University community. First proposed by Alan B. Krueger, the Lynn Bendheim Thoman, Class of 1976, and Robert Bendheim, Class of 1937, Professor in Economics and Public Policy, the lectures are presented three times a year and are open to the public.

Citing examples from his near quarter-century’s worth of work, Chip Kidd explains the way graphic design works, how our brains process it, what it means if it succeeds or fails, and why we should care. Chip Kidd is an award-winning art director and graphic designer. Currently he is associate art director at Knopf, an imprint of Random House. He is the designer of covers for books by hundreds of authors. He is also the author of two novels (The Cheese Monkeys, Simon and Schuster 2001, and The Learners, Scribner, 2008), coauthor with Lisa Birnbach of the recently published True Prep (Knopf 2010), a musician, and an avid fan of comic book media, particularly Batman. He has designed book covers for several DC Comics publications, including The Complete History of Batman.

Errol Morris is a director and filmmaker. His film “The Fog of War” about Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara won the 2003 Academy Award for best documentary feature. Other films have won the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America, the Golden Horse (Taiwan International Film Festival), the Grand Jury Prize (Sundance Film Festival) and have appeared on many ten best lists. They have been honored by the National Society of Film Critics, the National Board of Review, and New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles film critics. Roger Ebert called Morris’s first feature, “Gates of Heaven,” one of the 10 Best Films of All Time. A survey in 1988 by the Washington Post picked “The Thin Blue Line” as the best film of the year. In his 2008 film “Standard Operating Procedure” Morris examined the incidents of abuse of suspected terrorists at Abu Ghraib. His latest film, “Tabloid,” was released in 2010 and is about a former Miss Wyoming who kidnapped a Mormon missionary in England in the late 1970s. His Princeton talk is about an event that occurred while he was a graduate student as Princeton University. A Spencer Trask lecture

This is a two-part lecture series. Modern science is constantly enriched by new discoveries and occasionally rocked by revolutions, but some fundamental conclusions, which answer questions traditionally assigned to philosophy, now seem secure. These lectures cover ten such fundamentals, presenting each in the context of (once) plausible alternatives. The discussion will bring in many interesting “case studies.” 1. We perceive a tiny portion of reality. 2. The physical world is comprehensible. 3. The basic laws are mathematical. 4. The basic laws are local. 5. The basic laws predict probabilities. 6. The world is a very big place. 7. The world is a very old place. 8. The state of the universe is comprehensible. 9. Vast opportunities are presently unexploited. 10. There’s still plenty we don’t understand. Frank Wilczek is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wilczek, along with David Gross and H. David Politzer, won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he earned his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He has been a faculty member at Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of California, Santa Barbara Institute for Theoretical Physics. A Louis Clark Vanuxem Lecture, cosponsored by the Center for Theoretical Physics

This is a two-part lecture series. Modern science is constantly enriched by new discoveries and occasionally rocked by revolutions, but some fundamental conclusions, which answer questions traditionally assigned to philosophy, now seem secure. These lectures cover ten such fundamentals, presenting each in the context of (once) plausible alternatives. The discussion will bring in many interesting “case studies.” 1. We perceive a tiny portion of reality. 2. The physical world is comprehensible. 3. The basic laws are mathematical. 4. The basic laws are local. 5. The basic laws predict probabilities. 6. The world is a very big place. 7. The world is a very old place. 8. The state of the universe is comprehensible. 9. Vast opportunities are presently unexploited. 10. There’s still plenty we don’t understand. Frank Wilczek is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wilczek, along with David Gross and H. David Politzer, won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he earned his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He has been a faculty member at Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of California, Santa Barbara Institute for Theoretical Physics. A Louis Clark Vanuxem Lecture, cosponsored by the Center for Theoretical Physics

Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University; Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco; food writer and author, respectively

The President’s Lecture Series was established by President Shirley M. Tilghman in the fall of 2001 to give Princeton’s faculty an opportunity to learn about the work of their colleagues in other disciplines and to share their research with the University community. First proposed by Alan B. Krueger, the Lynn Bendheim Thoman, Class of 1976, and Robert Bendheim, Class of 1937, Professor in Economics and Public Policy, the lectures are presented three times a year and are open to the public.

Born in Nigeria, novelist Chimamanda Adichie is the author of Purple Hibiscus (2003), which was nominated for a Booker Prize, and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), which won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and revolves around the Biafran war of 1967-70. She has recently published a collection of short stories titled The Thing around Your Neck (2009). She was a MacArthur fellow in 2008. She has been a visiting writer at Wesleyan University and at Princeton University, where she was a Hodder fellow.