Climate changes. It always has and always will. An extensive body of scientific evidence shows that human activities are the primary forces driving present changes in the Earth’s climate system. Over the past six decades, New England’s climate has been getting warmer and wetter, extreme precipitation events have increased, sea levels continue to rise, and summertime drought has become more frequent. These trends are very likely to continue.

Dr. Alan Hirshfield will share with us the story of how a cadre of amateur and professional astronomers turned away from their traditional study of celestial navigation. Instead, at the end of the nineteenth-century they brought two promising high-tech instruments — the camera and the spectroscope — into the observatory, imaging never-before-seen celestial landscapes and revealing the physical nature of stars and nebulae.

After the illness and death of her late husband, acclaimed author and National Public Radio correspondent Margot Adler began to read vampire novels as a meditation on mortality. This meditation soon became an obsession. Adler has read over 250 such novels ranging from teen to adult, from detective to romance, from gothic to modern. "Every society creates the vampire it needs," wrote the feminist scholar Nina Auerbach.

-What will healthcare look like in 10 years?

-How can I prepare for the new healthcare landscape?

-What are the best and worst aspects to the new healthcare system ahead?

Called “A voice the food world needs” by the New York Times’ Dwight Garner, Tracie McMillan explores food and class in her first book, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table. As she chronicles her journey through three jobs in America’s industrial food system, McMillan makes the case that good food is not elitist. She will begin her talk with stories from her experience researching her book as she worked—and lived and ate—alongside indigenous farm workers, the white working poor, and immigrants to New York City.

Christie Hager will speak about health reform and what it means to all of us. “Health reform” historically has referred to states striving to expand access to health care for their residents, whether with federal assistance or through consumer-oriented insurance regulation. Since March of 2010, health reform has meant a new era of partnership between the states and federal government. There are new ways for individuals and businesses to access health insurance, new investments in public health, and movement toward transformation of the US health care delivery system.

What’s going on? What can be done?

For far too long, the history of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the tale of a few iconic leaders, all white and native-born. Why They Marched uncovers a more diverse story.

Is children’s popular culture mere child’s play, unworthy of critical thought or questioning? Such a view may lead adults to miss problematic patterns in children’s culture such as gender role stereotypes and racial bias. In her presentation Rebecca Hains makes the case that children’s popular culture deserves our attention.

Noted author Gish Jen has long been known as a chronicler of the American experiment. She is also given to throwing a curveball. Her newest book, The Resisters, was a surprise even to her. How did she come to write a post-automation, surveillance state, feminist baseball dystopia?