Title:

In this talk, I will give a modern introduction to the challenges of studying microscopic physics of black holes, both from bottom-up and top-down perspectives. As a top-down example, I will discuss a simple construction of gauged supergravity theories with spontaneously broken supersymmetry in Minkowski vacua with light charged matter in the low energy spectrum; one in which the microscopic entropy of black holes can still be counted. I will also point out how such a simple idea naturally provides a stringy realization of the \rho algebras of Schwimmer-Seiberg. Finally, I will briefly mention some work in progress on a bottom-up approach that I have been pursuing.