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Hello and welcome to Focus on OLLI. What is OLLI? OLLI is a program at UNLV dedicated to active retired or semi-retired individuals who understand the importance of keeping themselves engaged. OLLI is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Every month this program will dig into favorite classes, interesting teachers and members as well as special events offered through OLLI.
Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NV studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Keith McMillen 0:16
Hello and welcome to focus on Olli. Olli is a program at UNLV, dedicated to retired or semi retired individuals who remain engaged and active in civic activities and lifelong learning. Olli is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Olli is made possible by support from the Bernard Osher Foundation, established by philanthropists Bernard and Barbara Osher with a mission to support lifelong learning, higher education and the arts. This series is designed to give you an in depth look at the Olli program, and encourage you to join in the fun. And welcome to focus on Olli. This is our first podcast of ninth, 2026 boy on my calendar, out of date, and we are excited to look forward to a spring term. And in that regard, I have as guests today three individuals, all talented in their own fields, who are going to teach what for Ali is going to be slightly new topics, and on my left is a young lady named Andy Isaacs, who is on the faculty here at UNLV in our film school. And she's going to be talking to Olli students about an aspect of film. Then we have Judd Hodgson, which some of you probably recognize for Molly. He's going to be talking about what seems to be our favorite topic, AI. And finally, Bernard Schwartz, who was a retired judge, and he's got some legal issues that he's going to talk about with you dealing with athletes. So let's go around the table. Let's let you introduce yourself. Maybe you want to give us a few words about your class, and we'll start with Andy. Hi.
Andi Isaacs 2:06
Thanks for having me here today. My name is Andy Isaacs. I teach at UNLV in the film department. I actually teach the producing track. I had a 30 year career in Hollywood. I started serving coffee, and when I retired, I was the head of physical production for a major studio. I've seen it all. I've heard it all, but I also learned it all, and my class is Hollywood lessons and logistics, which is really kind of a behind the scenes view of how the business of Hollywood works with a lot of anecdotes too, because I worked with a lot of people, you'll recognize. It's really fun. It is a version of what I teach at the film school, and it's just to understand this mysterious industry that really is a business, and how it works, and how we get go from idea to delivery and being in the theater. So I think it's a lot of fun, and I hope you guys will enjoy it.
Keith McMillen 3:00
I look forward to seeing that. Judd, you've done some stuff about what's in the black box, but you've picked AI this time.
Judd Hodgson 3:08
Yeah, I'm a retired engineer. About 45 years as a test engineer, I started with computers back when you needed punch cards, and I've watched the computer revolution up close, and I wanted to learn about AI, and since Olli didn't have a class, I decided I'd learn it and teach it. Fantastic.
Keith McMillen 3:28
I know that has been a topic of interest to so many Olli students. When we do a TED Talk that touches on AI, the conversation just boils up. It's fascinating.
Judd Hodgson 3:39
It fascinates me. Every week I'm finding something new and going, wow.
Keith McMillen 3:43
And Bernard, you are a retired judge now I haven't appeared before your court. Thank you. And what's your class going to be about?
Bernie Schwartz 3:52
Well, it's a good thing you didn't appear in front of me, because for most of my career, I was a criminal judge, so that wouldn't have been a good thing. I practiced law in California for about 16 years. I handled personal injury, I did some insurance defense, and for the large part it was criminal defense. I was a criminal defense lawyer, and then in 2003 I was appointed to the Superior Court bench in Riverside California, and I sat as a superior court judge for 22 years, I handled family law. For a short time, I did some civil and then for the large part of my career, I was a criminal judge. Handled everything from DUIs to death penalty cases, tried almost 100 murder cases, including 10 capital cases. So the focus of my class is going to be famous athletes and the law. And what I thought I would focus on is athletes that, for the most part, everyone knows, maybe some athletes that are not quite as well known, but that somehow got into trouble, usually criminal. Trouble, sometimes civil trouble, and focus on their careers, their life, and then focus also on the criminal or civil proceedings, if there were any sort of video clips that involved their trials, and then talk about the law, and then discussion about how they were treated, whether they were treated differently because they were an athlete or not, and some of the athletes that I was considering focusing on was OJ Simpson, Kobe Bryant, Tanya Harding, and just to name a few,
Keith McMillen 5:33
sounds very interesting as teacher in Olli, you've all taught before, not necessarily at Olli. What are you expecting out of our students?
Andi Isaacs 5:45
I love Olli students. I've probably around the country taught 15 to 20 different Olli classes and and I love my students at UNLV, but Olli, they're there. They're not going to let you get away with anything. So I expect the questions, and I expect the challenges. And there's often, really, really often stories that come from the students themselves about things that they've experienced on the topic. And it's always really fascinating and enjoyable. And it's just it's fun, it's really fun. So I'm looking forward to
Keith McMillen 6:19
it good. Good. Bernard Judd, any any expectations? Or are you just going to fasten your seat belt and hope for the best?
Judd Hodgson 6:28
Oh, well, I'm definitely going to fasten my seat belt. That's for sure. I find the fast the students to be fascinating at at Ollie in my first two classes, sometimes I would run out of material in the class, and I just say, let's have some questions. And the questions kept me on my toes. These are, these are topics I'm pretty well knew, but they had some great questions. Were very, very engaged and interested. And I expect that'll be even more so true with the AI,
Keith McMillen 6:56
oh yeah, I can only imagine what that's going to become, because it's fascinating.
Bernie Schwartz 7:01
And I was a student, actually, last semester, I took a couple of classes, and so I was exposed to ollie from the student side, but I found it interesting that people who take the classes come from all over the country, from all different walks of life, and bring different perspectives to the classes and to the classrooms and to question process. So I'm looking forward to it. I do have experience in the areas that I'm teaching, but I have a feeling that there'll be questions that will be asked that I won't know the answers to, and maybe we'll self discover it.
Keith McMillen 7:38
What the knowledge base of the Olli student body is almost unfathomable. I teach a thing that I've taught for many semesters now on TED Talks. We pick a topic, we show a few TED Talks discuss them. We did one on medicine. One talked about a cancer treatment that was promising. It was in early stages, but the TED talk was 10 years old, and one of the comments after that TED talk was what happened to it. One of our members of the class is a retired oncologist. He was very familiar with it, explained how it had proven to be too difficult, and pointed us to one that is much newer and more promising. It's what you run into is amazing. So what are there any specific things you are hoping to impart on our students?
Andi Isaacs 8:33
The way that I like to teach the class is the same way that you would make a movie. What's the idea? Where did it come from? What are the reasons to make it? What are the reasons not to make it. How does financial aspects fit in? How does the rest of the world fit into this story? What actors are you thinking about? And then ultimately getting to the green light process, which you'd be surprised how many people are involved in it and get a vote, and then moving on from there into the actual making of the film and all the things that go along with it, into post production, into music choices. So we basically will discuss the life of a film. One of the movies I worked on as Head of Production of the studio was red, and I like to use that as an example, because it's a really fun movie, and it's, it's you can easily connected to and in a really interesting story about how it came to be, but I worked on more than 90 feature films, so I've got a few anecdotes here and there that I can be sharing, and I'm looking forward to that as well.
Keith McMillen 9:31
You want to drop any names just to encourage membership?
Andi Isaacs 9:34
Oh, I think half the class already heard the Robert Redford story. Yes, they did. Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, everyone Hugh Jackman, Sandra Bullock, yeah, I've got a lot in my pocket. So it's a lot of fun stories to share.
Keith McMillen 9:53
Fantastic gentlemen, what? What kinds of things are you especially interested in? Focusing on Bernard. You had talked earlier about how these athletes are treated in the courts, right?
Bernie Schwartz 10:07
Obviously, OJ is the extreme example. He had a dream team to represent him. There was, I think, a judge that somewhat lost control of the court proceedings in allowing the cameras in, and so I think there's a lot of aspects that were far afield from what a real courtroom type trial would be. OJ was an extreme example, but OJ also had some interesting highlights, because there was a lot of things, such as DNA and various other physical evidence that was brought in. So a lot of these trials deal with and I think a lot of misconceptions occur from television. Sometimes people think you can get a fingerprint off a feather. Well, you can't, but how the actual CSI works. I handled when I was a judge, many cases, cold cases where DNA and various other experts came in to testify. And I think some of that will be in some of the courses that are in some of the athletes that we'll discuss, but also, were they treated differently because they were an athlete? Were they treated differently because, perhaps of gender or even race? I mean, there were instances, certainly in the OJ trial, but in some of the other athletes, I'm going to focus on where there could have been arguments made that a defendant in just a run of the mill trial in a in a run of the mill case might have been treated differently. So we're going to certainly focus on that part of it, and then the actual legal part of it, what perhaps the lawyers got right, what they got wrong, what the judge got right, what the judge got wrong, and did the jury, if it was a jury trial, did they get it right? Fantastic.
Keith McMillen 12:00
Judd you, we have seen AI creep into life everywhere. There's books, movies, it seems to be everywhere. Do any of them get it right? As far as you can tell
Judd Hodgson 12:13
from what I've seen so far, the books get it right. One of the things that I hope to cover in the class is that, by the way, the class is called playing in the AI sandbox, because I like to have cute names for my classes, and that's what we'll be doing, is everybody will be playing with AI. I'm going to encourage them to bring their phones, their tablets or their laptops to class so that they can play along as we go. We'll be talking about hallucinations, and why AI hallucinates, and what hallucinations are and how to recognize them. How to Recognize AI out in the wild. Does this picture? Was it created by AI, or was it an actual picture? Was this video by AI? We'll be looking you can't always tell, but I'll give them some clues on things they can look at and things, and then we'll be playing with it. We'll be mate, we'll be using AI. Will be creating prompts, which is the main part of of using generative AI, which is what we're covering, and that's how you do, how you use it. We'll hopefully, we'll be doing some movies. We'll be doing some song creating songs in AI, and right now I'm learning how to create web pages with AI.
Keith McMillen 13:28
Oh my so, so we're all going to be out of work. We'll just put a laptop here, and you people will just attach your phones, and we're good to go.
Judd Hodgson 13:35
Yeah, it'll be that simple. Yeah, I don't think so.
Keith McMillen 13:39
Okay, that sounds reasonable. So how did you find Ollie Andy? Where did you first run into Ollie?
Andi Isaacs 13:46
Wow, I first ran into Ollie at Florida State University. I was living in Maine after I retired, and it got really, really cold, so I snow birded on down to Florida. I had a friend who lived in Tallahassee who was teaching a class at Olli. So I sat in the class, and I was sitting next to a woman, and we made fun of my friend the entire time, and turned out she was actually the head of Olli and ran the entire program. So she asked me if I would teach a class. It was a lot of fun, and it wound up being very competitive between my friend and I just who would get the most people signing up for their classes. And I always won, which was great, but I really enjoyed it. And then I found that Olli was at University of Southern Maine as well, so I started teaching classes there when I was back in Maine. And then about three and a half years ago, I moved here to teach at UNLV, and I knew there was an Olli program, but as a new professor, I was kind of busy. And then this past semester, someone reached out and asked if I would do the professor's choice class, which was a lot of fun. And at that class that day, they said, You have to teach something next spring. So I agreed, and I'm. Looking forward to. It's just fun. It's a lot of fun for me. Of course, I'm teaching film, which is not brain surgery, but it's fun. So I enjoy it. It's, it's, it's a, it's a nice change for me, then from teaching the students who are expecting quizzes and tests and finals and things like that.
Keith McMillen 15:16
Okay, good. Yeah, yeah. One thing to remind our people at Olli. If you're not gripping with the program, it's not graded, there's no papers, there's no test. It is just a chance to learn something from a teacher who knows something about the field you're interested in. That's how we make it work. Judd, you've been involved in the Olli program as a student for some time now.
Judd Hodgson 15:41
Yeah, I've taken several classes here and enjoyed them all, pretty much, some fascinating classes, and I'm actually looking forward to taking Andy's class.
Andi Isaacs 15:52
I was just thinking I was going to take yours. I'll see
Judd Hodgson 15:56
you there. So
Keith McMillen 15:58
how did you find out about original I retired
Judd Hodgson 16:00
and moved to Las Vegas, and was looking for something to fill in some time. And I think a friend hung me on to ollie, and that's how I found it,
Keith McMillen 16:10
okay, yeah, it seems to be our best form of advertising, no matter what we do now. Bernard, you just retired.
Bernie Schwartz 16:17
I did. I retired the end of July, and I've had a place in Vegas for a while as a second home, but it's now my first home since the end of July, so for the last six months, and when I came here, I was deathly afraid that I was going to be bored after having been in the workforce for so long, and I had thought about taking classes, Actually at UNLV. I wanted to do a writing class. I want to learn how to play the piano. And my neighbor, who I've known for quite a few years, I mentioned it to, and she teaches a class at Olli, and she said, Well, maybe you should think about coming to Olli. So she gave me the booklet, and I read it, and came in for the open house and signed up for a couple of classes last semester. Fantastic.
Keith McMillen 17:05
Again, word of mouth, we have another open house coming up. It's going to be on February, January 13. Excuse me, from nine until noon, information is available online if you're interested. So looking forward, are there other aspects of Olli that you think people should be aware of, just in terms of encouraging people to come
Andi Isaacs 17:32
I think one of the things about Olli is it's a community. You make friends there. You get to know people. You get involved in other social aspects. You talk about the class after the class, you wait together for the class to start. And it's a really lovely, wonderful way to make new friends that you may not have had an opportunity to or run into in any other area. So especially someplace where Las Vegas, where there's a lot of retirees, there's a lot of transplants, it's a really nice way to meet people, and I still have friends from students that I taught 10 years ago. So it's really a pretty wonderful organization. Not only is it fun and learning, but you get to meet a lot of really great people with similar interests and from all over the country. Fantastic.
Keith McMillen 18:20
Now, of course, you've already set the hook a little bit when you talked about the late, great Robert Redford. I expect that we're going to have other anecdotes about these folks.
Andi Isaacs 18:31
You will have a lot of anecdotes. I will keep you amused, I promise.
Keith McMillen 18:36
And I don't know how how much fun the courts can be, but I've seen some pretty hilarious ideas that some people have presented about why they've been wronged, if you will. I don't know if you touch on any of that or not.
Bernie Schwartz 18:52
Well, there are certainly antidotes about cases that I tried, both as a lawyer and as a judge, but I think what will come to light is on the different weeks of each of the athletes that are focused on. I think you'll see that there was some interesting things that happened in each of the cases, sometimes light hearted, sometimes not. And I think that the that the humor part typically comes when the before the defendant comes in for trial, and you have an opportunity to talk to the lawyers and maybe the jurors. But once the trial starts, it's rather serious, but my class will certainly get some levity with respect to various things that happened during some of the trials that I've discussed with some of the athletes that I've discussed,
Keith McMillen 19:48
okay, something else to look forward to. Judd, you've been playing now with AI for a while. What has surprised you the most?
Judd Hodgson 19:56
I guess for me personally, because I've done a lot of programs. Programming is the fact that you can use it to create pretty complex programs. I sat down one day and out of 15 minutes, wrote out a fairly complex program just by prompting. This is what I want it to do. Here's the things, et cetera, et cetera. I think when the class starts I'm going to have right now, I think I know a lot of things you can do with AI. I think I'm going to be surprised by the number of ideas that come up in class, the people going, Hey, can ai do this? Well, let's try it and find out. And I think we'll all be pleasantly surprised. Usually scared, scared, little scared. Yeah, my career could have been shortened by AI, I think, or or simplified. Perhaps I could have maybe done a lot of my work with AI.
Keith McMillen 20:49
How it could apply to making you more productive is obviously, it's a promise from a lot of companies, but, yeah, the chance to demonstrate that might be very worthwhile. I think that's fantastic as a reminder open house. Ollie information is online@olli.unlv.edu that's Ali O, L, L, I January 13. You can come in. Don't worry about parking. There should be plenty. Teachers will be there. Other students will be there. Ask you questions. Tell us what you're looking for. We want, we want more people. And obviously you've heard about three great classes that you can sign up for. I don't think they're already full. Are they? I don't know that we've even we have, I don't think we've put up registration yet. The catalogs aren't out. Yeah, yeah. So that'll come in the next week or two, but in the meantime, do what we can. All right, any final word from any of you about ollie or about this experience,
Andi Isaacs 21:53
I think one of the things also we're going to talk about in class is the future of film. Is it always going to be in your living room? Are people going to go back to theaters? And I think that that's there's a lot going on with companies that are merging, and that's something that we'll be talking about in class as well.
Keith McMillen 22:09
That could be fascinating. Does AI touch on the legal system at all? Right? Now, I know people are using it to write contracts. I think,
Bernie Schwartz 22:17
I think so. And and when I retired, at times, I thought maybe some of the briefs might have been AI generated, but I did. Wasn't sophisticated enough to be able to pinpoint that, but I would imagine that it's something that will certainly be pervasive in the legal field. I would imagine lawyers will use it often. I'm not sure about judges, but maybe, maybe lawyers will,
Keith McMillen 22:46
well, a good AI might replace two clerks. I don't know, just in terms of research, if nothing else,
Judd Hodgson 22:53
but, but with AI, you still have to check your output. There have been lawyers using AI to create their briefs, and they've been caught because it hallucinated and created cases that did not exist.
Andi Isaacs 23:04
I love that it's hallucinated. I never heard that before. That's a perfect term,
Keith McMillen 23:09
yeah, yeah, yeah. You think that's a very human thing, but it's inventing things.
Judd Hodgson 23:15
Yes, AI has been trained to try and find an answer for you, and it will try and give you an answer. Even if it can't find what you're looking for, it will try and create
Keith McMillen 23:24
it. And I didn't think computers were creative.
Judd Hodgson 23:28
It's creative in its own way. Okay, all
Keith McMillen 23:30
right, that's again, that's scary, but I look forward to finding out more. I don't know that we have anything else we need to chat about right now, and I thank you all for being here. This has been a wonderful experience. We're getting ready for the new semester. We're hoping that a lot of new folks show up and become part of our community, as as Andy said, we aren't a community, and we're working very hard for that. Beyond our classes, we have special interest groups. We have a Mahjong group that meets, I don't know if you've ever played it, other than the solitaire Mahjong that's on computers, which is nothing like the actual board game. We have a hiking group that's very active right now. They're not so active in July and August, for obvious reasons, there's wonderful things going on, and we're trying to do stuff all the time. So I thank you all, and look forward to hearing from you in class, and we'll be talking to you folks again in February. On focus on Olli. Thanks for listening to focus on Olli, there are several ways to get more information. Our web address is Ali o l l i, dot, u n L v.edu, you may also email us at Olli, at U N L V, that's Ollie O L, L, I, a T u n l v. At sine unlv.edu, you can also just give us a call at 702-895-3394 Monday through Friday, between the hours of eight and five. Except, of course, on university holidays you.
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