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The Shadow Gospel: How Anti-Liberal Demonology Possessed U.S. Religion, Media, and Politics

When people talk about the chaotic, increasingly precarious political landscape in the United States, they often blame polarization and the culture wars.  The Shadow Gospel tells a very different story. Analyzing eighty years of densely overlapping religious and secular messages preaching the dangers of liberalism, the book shows us the root causes of the problems we face today.  Some of […]

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Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes Us Sick

If we knew that Coca-Cola was among the deadliest products in our diet, would we continue drinking it in such great quantities? The Coca-Cola Company has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure we don’t find out. This program will discuss the findings of extensive research and deep investigative reporting, that uncovered the damage Coke does to America’s health, and […]

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Big Mama Thornton, Little Richard, and the Queer Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton and Richard “Little Richard” Penniman were gender-nonconforming black musicians who began their recording careers in the South in the early 1950’s. Both demonstrate how queerness was an indelible part of the early rhythm and blues performances that influenced the development of rock ‘n’ roll. The backlash against queerness during the Cold War and the related […]

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Forgotten American Icons Matilda Joslyn Gage and Grover Cleveland: Who They Are and What They Can Teach Us

Upstate New York in the mid-19th century was a cauldron bubbling with the lure of fast fortunes, religious zealotry, and battles for civil liberties. This fervor centered on the Erie Canal, which successfully supported scores of villages brimming with opportunity. One village, Fayetteville, NY, was home to two future American leaders – Matilda Joslyn Gage and Grover Cleveland. Gage was […]

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Reading the Rock Record: Understanding Our Future

It’s difficult to understand how one or two degrees of global temperature rise can even be observed, much less have any impact on climate and ecosystems. It’s especially difficult to accept as we struggle through another cold and snowy winter. The effects of global warming are hardly noticeable on the timescale of a person’s life. However, on a geologic time […]

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A.I. and Our Future

Historian Yuval Noah Harari is a Big Thinker. His 2024 blockbuster book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI, concerns how Artificial Intelligence will shape our future. An AI “app” is a computer program trained on a vast amount of information (from the internet), learning to see patterns, for use in carrying out tasks. […]

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The Social Psychology of Group Delusions

How do people become entangled in conspiracy theories and other shared delusions? This question has long been the province of novelists, but recently psychologists and social scientists have applied the tools of their disciplines to shed light on this vexing question. This talk will survey their findings so far about the psychological and social factors that lead people to embrace […]

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Misinformation, Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in an Age of Political Mega-Identities

Misinformation is nothing new. For as long as humans have communicated, they also manipulated information and deceived others to gain power. Nevertheless, scholars, journalists and pundits have expressed a concern about humanity entering a new “Post-Truth” era, one driven by the collapse of truth and political turmoil. In this talk, Dr. Ophir argues that humans have never been motivated by […]

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Live To See The Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty

Kensington, Philadelphia, is distinguished only by its poverty. It is home to Ryan, Giancarlos and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children who live among the most marginalized families in the United States. This is the story of their coming-of-age, which is beset by violence–the violence of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, stray bullets, sexual and physical assault, the hypermasculine logic of the streets, […]

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