Diana Henriques

Blind Faith: The Lessons of the Madoff Scandal

Sunday, July 10
11 a.m.

Exploring the human dimensions of the largest Ponzi scheme in history raises significant questions for us as individuals and as a society. Why did so many people trust Bernie Madoff so much for so long? What does Madoff's rise and fall teach us about the nature of Ponzi schemes, the limits of regulation and -- most importantly -- the human capacity for self-delusion? Diana B. Henriques, senior financial writer for the The New York Times, will discuss her new book, The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, which is the first definitive account of the scandal. She raises these questions and points us toward some answers, offering the timeless warning that "in a world of lies, the most dangerous ones are those we tell ourselves."

Henriques, who is the author of The White Sharks of Wall Street and Fidelity’s World, joined the Times staff in 1989. A Polk Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, she has won several awards for her work on the Times’s coverage of the Madoff scandal and was part of the team recognized as a Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of the financial crisis of 2008. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
 

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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Vincent Bugliosi

Divinity of Doubt: An Agnostic's Challenge

Sunday, August 7
11 a.m.

It’s well-known about the popularity of religion, but in recent times, atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have taken center stage in criticizing religious belief and promoting atheist views. Now comes along a strong, provocative defense of agnosticism by Vincent Bugliosi, the L.A. County District Attorney turned author perhaps best known for prosecuting mass murderer Charles Manson and writing a book about the trial called Helter Skelter. In his new book, Divinity of Doubt: The God Question, Bugliosi will argue that agnosticism is the best position to take on the existence of God.

Bugliosi received his law degree in 1964 and successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials as D.A., including 21 murder convictions without a loss. Two of his books were #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List – And the Sea Will Tell and Outrage. An HBO eight-hour miniseries based on his book on the assassination of John F. Kennedy is being produced by Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions for 2013.

Honorary CFI-L.A. Chair Eddie Tabash will introduce Bugliosi.
 

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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Celebrate Science: A Special Screening of No Dinosaurs in Heaven

Sunday, August 21
11 a.m. in Hollywood only

No Dinosaurs in Heaven is a film essay that examines the hijacking of science education by religious fundamentalists, threatening the separation of church and state and dangerously undermining scientific literacy. The documentary, which is directed by Emmy Award-winning director and science educator Greta Schiller, weaves together two strands: an examination of the problem posed by creationists who earn science education degrees only to advocate anti-scientific beliefs in the classroom, and a visually stunning raft trip down the Grand Canyon led by evolutionist Dr. Eugenie Scott that debunks creationist explanations for its formation. These two strands expose the fallacies in the "debate," manufactured by anti-science forces, that creationism is a valid scientific alternative to evolution.

Schiller, whose previous documentaries include Before Stonewall and Paris Was a Woman, uses her own experience – with a graduate school biology professor who refused to teach evolution – to expose the insidious effect that so-called "creationist science" has had on science education. No Dinosaurs in Heaven intelligently argues that public education must steadfastly resist the encroachment of religion in the form of anti-evolution creationism, and that science literacy is crucial to a healthy democracy. (A special Skype discussion with the filmmaker may be arranged for the showing.)

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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Labor Day Weekend
Picnic, Book Sale and Music Fest

Sunday, Sept. 4 •  Noon to 4 p.m.

Join us for a Labor Day celebration with another huge used book sale on  our patio. Two food trucks will be vending in the parking lot: The Krazy BBQ truck, featuring a terrific fusion of Korean, U.S. and Mexican food, including vegetarian items,

and Sweet E’s Mobile, providing sweet highs with cupcakes (on sale), Whoopie pies, cookies, cake pops and specials for vegans. And parody cover band The Heathens will be back to rock the Center!

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Please donate your used books, CDs, and DVDs

Please contribute books, CDs and DVDs for sale and benefit to CFI-L.A. by bringing them to the Center by 3:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 4.
Please, no video or audio tapes or phonograph records.

Volunteer help is always needed and much appreciated.

If you’re interested in volunteering for the event, please contact Wendy Hughes for volunteer duties and work times at wendy[at]cfiwest.org.

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Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion

Author Janet Reitman in Conversation with Mark Ebner

Sunday, Sept. 18
11 a.m. in Hollywood only**

Scientology, created in 1954 by prolific sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world’s fastest growing religion, with millions of members around the world and huge financial holdings. But Scientology is also a notably closed faith, harassing journalists and others through litigation and intimidation, even infiltrating the highest levels of the government to further its goals. Its attacks on psychiatry and its requirement that believers pay thousands of dollars for salvation have drawn scrutiny and skepticism. And ex-members use the Internet to share stories of harassment and abuse.

Based on her five years of research, unprecedented access to Church officials, confidential documents, and extensive interviews with current and former Scientologists, Janet Reitman now offers the first full journalistic history of the Church of Scientology, in an evenhanded account that at last establishes the truth about the controversial religion. She traces Scientology’s development from the birth of Dianetics to today, following its metamorphosis from a pseudoscientific self-help group to a worldwide spiritual corporation with profound control over its followers and even ex-followers.

Reitman will be interviewed onstage by award-winning investigative journalist Mark Ebner.

Reitman was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2007 for her Rolling Stone story “Inside Scientology,” from which her book grew. She is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. Her work has appeared in GQ, Men’s Journal, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, and the Washington Post, among other publications. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Ebner is known for his coverage of celebrity and crime culture for such publications as Spy, Rolling Stone, Maxim and Details. He has been writing about Scientology since his undercover expose “Do You Want to Buy a Bridge,” for Spy magazine in 1996, and co-authored the NYT bestseller Hollywood, Interrupted in 2005 with Andrew Breitbart of the Drudge Report.

**SPECIAL NOTE FOR COSTA MESA ONLY –CANCELLATION - Due to her writing deadline schedule, Janet Reitman regretfully announces that she will be unable to give her talk in Costa Mesa at 4:30 p.m. There will be no replacement speaker; the event thus is cancelled in Costa Mesa.

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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Indre Viskontas

Beyond Belief: How Memory Obscures the Truth

Sunday, Oct. 2
11 a.m.

The Truth Is Out There. But how can we find it and what limits our ability to understand it? We are all still hunters-gatherers, though now of information instead of meat and berries (think of all those Blogs and Tweets). Yet the brain constrains how we process and use information to understand the world around us; it turns out that our personal experience trumps most other data. Dr. Indre Viskontas, cognitive neuroscientist and host of the TV show Miracle Detectives, draws upon her award-winning memory research and experiences investigating mysterious incidents across the country to highlight common traps in evaluating evidence for extraordinary claims.

The versatile Lithuanian-Canadian neuroscientist also is an accomplished soprano, performing in operatic roles ranging from The Countess in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro to the title role in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. Based in San Francisco, Viskontas holds a Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a doctorate in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto. She has published more than 30 original papers and chapters related to the neural basis of memory and creativity.
 

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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David Linden

Vice, Virtue and the Brain's Pleasure Circuits

Sunday, Oct. 16
11 a.m. in Hollywood only**

Whether it involves eating, taking drugs, engaging in sex, or doing good deeds, the pursuit of pleasure is a central drive of the human animal. Evolution has, in effect, hardwired us to catch a pleasure buzz from a wide variety of experiences from crack to cannabis, from meditation to masturbation, from Bordeaux to beef. In a talk based upon his new book, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, leading brain scientist David J. Linden looks at the neurobiology of pleasure and how pleasures can become addictions.

Linden is a Professor of Neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is author of another book on neuroscience for a general audience, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams and God, which won the Silver Medal for Science books at the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards. His books have been translated into 10 languages.

****SPECIAL NOTE FOR COSTA MESA ONLY – CANCELLATION - Due to the speaker’s scheduling conflict, the talk scheduled for Sunday. Oct. 16 at 4:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa has been cancelled.  

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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Brian Fagan

Elixir: What the History of Water and Humans Tells Us About California's Future Water Crisis

Sunday, Nov. 6
11 a.m.

Rising temperatures, human interference with natural climatic cycles, constant droughts and extreme weather events: Humans face an uncertain future sleepwalking into a chronically thirsty future. Author Brian Fagan describes the changing, usually intimate, relationship of humans with water over the past 10,000 years, showing how religious beliefs, elaborate rituals, and powerful deities played an important part in a relationship of respect and careful husbandry that still survives in some parts of the world. Then, with the Romans and the Industrial Revolution, water became an anonymous commodity, the subject of entitlement rather than careful, measured use. Fossil fuels and deep pumping sowed the seeds for an uncertain tomorrow.

In a densely populated world today, billions of people in dry lands have inadequate water supplies, quite apart from industrialized, heavily urbanized California. Humans face a quiet crisis of dwindling supplies and escalating urbanism, a political environment where denial of a pending water crisis is endemic. What strategies will take us out of this morass? In Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind, Fagan argues that we need a new respect for water and its conservation as a way of life, not as a sidebar to California’s future.

British-born Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an internationally known writer about ancient climate change and human societies. After an early career as an archaeologist in Central Africa, he came to the United States in 1966. His many books include several volumes for the National Geographic Society and The Great Warming. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he lectures widely about ancient climate change to audiences around the world.
 

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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Sam Brower

Prophet's Prey: An Inside Look at Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Mormon Church

Sunday, Nov. 20
11 a.m. at CFI-L.A.
4:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa*

In a new book being published in October, private investigator Sam Brower cracks open the case that led to the arrest of Warren Jeffs, the maniacal prophet of the polygamous fundamentalist Mormon denomination. In Prophet’s Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints, Brower tells the horrifying story of how a rogue sect used sex, money, and power disguised under a facade of religion to further criminal activities and a madman’s vision. Despite considerable press coverage and a lengthy trial, the full story has largely remained untold – until now.

Brower implicates Jeffs in his own words, bringing to light the contents of Jeffs’s personal priesthood journal, discovered in a hidden underground vault, and reveals to readers the shocking inside world of FLDS members whose trust he earned and who showed him the staggering truth of their lives.

Raised in the Mormon Church (mainstream LDS), Brower is the investigator who pushed forward the long and hard legal battles against the radical FLDS and Warren Jeffs. He lives in Cedar City, Utah. His Web site is: www.prophetsprey.com.
 

*This lecture will be repeated at 4:30 p.m. at the Costa Mesa Community Center at 1845 Park Avenue, Costa Mesa. map
Hosted by the CFI Community of Orange County.

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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Edward J. Larson

Re-Inventing Scott: Science in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration

Sunday, Dec. 4
11 a.m.

Over the 100 years since his death on his return for the South Pole, Robert F. Scott's image has shifted from tragic hero to Victorian bungler. Without excusing Scott's mistakes, Edward J. Larson in his new book, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science, seeks to restore some balance to Scott’s image by looking at the role of science in his polar expeditions. Scott may have been trying to do too much on his expeditions, at least as compared to the single-minded quest for the pole that propelled Amundsen's expedition, but they nevertheless left a lasting legacy in Antarctic research and discovery.

Larson, the Pepperdine University Professor of History who holds the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and is a visiting professor of law at Stanford University, received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History for Summer for the Gods:
The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.
The author of eight books, including several on evolution, and more than 100 articles, Larson writes mostly about issues of science, medicine and law from an historical perspective. An expert on the history of science and exploration of the Galapagos, which he has visited more than 20 times, Larson has led classes to the islands on four different occasions and frequently lectured on cruise boats.

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

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Humanlight/Solstice Party: Celebrating Another Year!

Featuring Tom Flynn and a performance by The Heathens!

Sunday, Dec. 18
1 - 5 p.m. in Hollywood only

Come and celebrate the longest night of 2011 with an afternoon of music and fun! Tom Flynn will give a talk on "The Trouble with Christmas" at 1:30, and The Heathens will be back with more parody cover songs. We will honor our most dedicated and beloved volunteers with awards, and we'll have another silent auction!

In "The Trouble with Christmas" Flynn will examine the origins of our most treasured holiday traditions - from the Christ Child to Santa Claus, from the wassail bowl to the tannenbaum - and ask whether there's still time to send them back. It's an information-filled, thought-provoking, yet wildly funny audio-visual extravaganza. Missing this presentation would be like getting a lump of coal in your stocking!

Admission is free. Donations gratefully accepted for food and drink.

Tom Flynn will be repeating his presentation that day at 4:30 at the Costa Mesa Community Center, 1845 Park St., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
 

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