Suarez is a retired Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Section on Law and Psychiatry, UCLA. He serves on the Board of Trustees for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

$8, or free for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.

John Nichols

This is the Age of Paine

Sunday, April 18
11 a.m. in Hollywood;
3:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa

     Tom Paine was 200 years ahead of his time, and he paid a steep price for being a man of vision. Many of the public figures of his day did not accept him, and he was written out of the history of the republic for the better part of a century, comments John Nichols, the political writer for The Nation magazine who has written extensively on Thomas Paine in particular and the founding of the American experiment in general. Yet, it is clear now that Paine was the greatest of the founders. And it is clearer still that his passion, his ideas, and above all, his radicalism remain the most vital characteristics for those who still believe that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

     Nichols has argued in his books and essays that the radicalism of the American revolution needs to be renewed, along with our understanding of this country as a rebel state founded in opposition to empire and in embrace of the enlightenment. Of Nichols, Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."

     Nichols has worked as a daily newspaper journalist and magazine writer for 25 years, reporting from more than 25 countries and interviewing every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter. A pioneering political blogger for The Nation, he is the magazine's Washington correspondent. He is also the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. A co-founder of Free Press, he appears regularly on MSNBC, CNN, the BBC, and other broadcast and cable networks. His current book written with Robert W. McChesney is The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again.

Co-sponsored by the Thomas Paine Society of Pasadena.

$8, or free for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.

Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Sunday, May 2
11 a.m.

     Henrietta Lacks, known as HeLa, was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than 60 years. Award-winning writer Rebecca Skloot discovered this fascinating story and wrote a book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, that she will discuss. In its first weeks of publication, it reached #2 on the New York Times nonfiction Best Sellers list.

     HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions - yet Henrietta lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than 20 years after her death and never saw any of the profits.  The Story of the Lacks family - past and present - is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

     Skloot is a science writer whose articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover, and Columbia Journalism Review. She also is a contributing editor for Popular Science magazine and a correspondent for NPR and PBS. Skloot has an undergraduate degree in biomedical science from Colorado State University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She has taught in several creative writing programs. For more information, visit www.RebeccaSkloot.com.

$8, or free for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.

John C. Avise

Inside the Human Genome:
The Case for Non-Intelligent Design

Sunday, May 16
11 a.m. in Hollywood;
4:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa

     Proponents of intelligent design focus on the many beauties of life, claiming that smooth-working biological traits prove direct creation by a supernatural deity. However, natural selection combined with genetic processes also can produce complex biological systems that usually function well. So both natural selection and intelligent design are consistent with the appearance of biological craftsmanship. Serious biological imperfections, on the other hand, says Prof. John C. Avise, a Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of California, Irvine, can be expected of evolutionary processes but they are troublesome to rationalize as overt mistakes by a fallible God.

     How do believers reconcile a loving God with a world of evil and flaws? Can evolution emancipate religion from the shackles of the problem of evil? The blame for biological flaws falls squarely on the shoulders of evolutionary processes, thus relegating religion to its rightful realm - not as a secular interpreter of the biological minutiae of our physical existence but rather as a counselor on grander philosophical issues.

     Avise, who received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis, studies animal behavior, ecology and evolution primarily, as well as the relevance of evolutionary and molecular genetics to human affairs, including religion. He has received many academic honors and distinctions, including being elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition, he has published more than 300 refereed articles in scientific journals and 18 books, including his new one, Inside the Human Genome: The Case for Non-Intelligent Design.

$8, or free for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.

Naomi Oreskes
Erik M. Conway

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Sunday, June 6
11 a.m.

     According to a recently released study from the Yale Project on Climate Change, 40 percent of Americans believe there is major scientific disagreement as to whether global warming is real. Yet, you would be hard-pressed to find any working climate scientist who didn't think global warming is happening and has been for some time, explain science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. But ever since researchers first began examining the evidence that our planet was heating up - and that human activities were probably to blame - people have been questioning the data, doubting the evidence, and attacking the scientists who collect and explain it.

     In their talk based on their new book, Merchants of Doubt, the authors will explain how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades in several areas. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly; some of the same figures who claimed the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, argued that acid rain and the ozone hole was caused by volcanoes, and charged that the EPA had rigged the science surrounding secondhand smoke. Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, and show how ideology and corporate interest have skewed public understanding and spread confusion on many of the most important issues of our time.

     Oreskes is a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her study "Beyond the Ivory Tower," published in Science, was a milestone in the fight against global warming denial and was cited by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. Conway is the resident historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech in Pasadena.

$8, or free for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.

Photo credits: Naomi Oreskes by Charles Kazilek, Erik M. Conway by Paul Alers EManagement Consultants

return to top