  In four lectures, delivered at the TASI 2010 summer school, I cover selected
topics in the application of the gauge-string duality to nuclear and condensed
matter physics. On the nuclear side, I focus on multiplicity estimates from
trapped surfaces in AdS_5, and on the consequences of conformal symmetry for
relativistic hydrodynamics. On the condensed matter side, I explain the fermion
response to the zero-temperature limit of p-wave holographic superconductors.
