NHMLA Talks | Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Southern California is inextricably linked to the ocean. We depend on our coastal ecosystems for food, commerce, and recreation, and we celebrate our stunning vistas, but at the same time our actions on land and sea have compromised the health and wellbeing of our foremost asset. What steps have we taken to protect our seas, and have we been successful? What are the challenges and opportunities for protecting our coastal ocean in the future? Join Dr. Roberta Marinelli, Director of USC's Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, to learn about the role science can play in conserving our resources and adapting to the challenges that humans present.

From Jurassic cancer to diseases of civilization, animals and humans face many of the same health challenges. Yet their doctors - physicians and veterinarians - rarely communicate with one another, and they often treat similar conditions in vastly different ways. What does breast cancer in jaguars and beluga whales, for example, tell us about breast cancer in women? How can psychiatrists find new ways to help patients with eating disorders and anxiety by learning about social fear responses in pigs and elk? Waxwing birds, wallabies, and cocker spaniels can abuse intoxicating substances - even stallions can have sexual dysfunction. How would our physical and mental health improve if the two disciplines shared new discoveries and tools? Drawing on the latest in medical and veterinary science - as well as dynamic new findings in evolutionary biology - we'll explore how animal and human commonality can be used to diagnose, treat, and heal patients of all species.

Sean B. Carroll is an award-winning scientist, author, and educator. He is currently Vice President for Science Education of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the largest private supporter of science education in the United States, and Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin. Carroll is a pioneer of, and widely considered to be the leading figure in, the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or "evo-devo," the study of the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity.

Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? How did radium nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why did tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history? The Periodic Table is one of our crowning scientific achievements, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The Disappearing Spoon delves into every single element on the table and explains each one's role in science, money, mythology, war, the arts, medicine, alchemy, and other areas of human history, from the Big Bang through the end of time.

Earthquakes are a part of life in Los Angeles. But even people who have lived in L.A. their entire lives haven't experienced L.A.'s "big" earthquake yet. The Northridge Earthquake in 1994 and even the Long Beach Earthquake of 1933 won't compare to the big San Andreas Earthquake.

From the Masters and Johnson artificial-coition machine to Dutch gymnasts coupling in MRI mchines, the study of human sexual physiology is the most vital, surreal, awkward, and oddly overlooked branch of modern science. Roach salutes the bravery of early pioneers and takes us through the highlights (and a few low points) of the past hundred years.

In October 2010, a bulldozer operator working at the base of the Snowmass ski area in Colorado's Rocky Mountains uncovered the skeleton of a young female mammoth. Over the next 11 months, this find would yield a treasure trove of amazingly well-preserved ice age fossils - more than 5,000 bones of over 40 kinds of animals --and would change forever our understanding of alpine life in the ice age. Join Dr. Kirk Johnson as he tells the dynamic story of this discovery and dig: the excitement, emotion, and the colorful cast of characters who made the project a success.

Human creativity is profoundly influenced by those around us. But how does this influence happen? Lehrer will explore a few of the more surprising social effects, such as why the most innovative entrepreneurs have the oddest friends, why brainstorming doesn't work (but brutal honesty does) and why some cities produce so many patents per capita than others. (Hint: It's all about the walking speed of pedestrians.)

Join Amy Stewart for a darkly comical look at the sinister side of our relationship with the insect world. You'll meet creatures that infest, infect, and generally wreak havoc on human affairs.

Join Jared Diamond for a short introduction to language diversity and multilingualism around the world, and raise the question whether society would be better off if we could agree on just one language. Would we as individuals be better or worse off going to the effort of learning several languages?

Pluto, which used to be thought of as a lonely oddball planet at the edge of the solar system, is now known to be part of a new collection of tiny worlds circling far beyond the sun. Brown will talk about the discoveries of these worlds and how our new explosion of knowledge led, inevitably, to an undeniable conclusion: Pluto had to die.

Amy Parish is a biological anthropologist, primatologist, and Darwinian feminist. For the last twenty years she has been studying the world's captive population of bonobos, who are among the closest living relatives of humans. The social system of the Bonobo is unusual in many respects: females form real and meaningful bonds in the absence of kinship, females attack and dominate males, and all possible age and gender combinations participate in sexual interactions.

Synthesizing thirty years of research, Michael Shermer upends traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first, and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. Using sensory data that flow in through the senses, the brain naturally looks for and finds patterns - and then infuses those patterns with meaning, forming beliefs.

Ever since a single fossil feather, and its presumed owner Archaeopteryx, was discovered 150 years ago, the origins of birds have been one of paleontology's greatest debates. Recent discoveries of feathered dinosaurs in China have only stoked the controversy. Dr. Luis Chiappe, lead curator of the Dinosaur Hall which opens July 16, is a longtime advocate of the dinosaur-bird link. In this lecture, he'll examine the evidence in support of the idea that birds are the living descendants of meat eating dinosaurs, and therefore, that dinosaurs are not extinct.

Environmental change impacts the Earth's biota. Extracting the responses of populations, species and communities to perturbations of the past is one of the best ways of unraveling how they will respond to perturbations of the future. I excavate caves and use the fossils to reveal how animals have handled prehistoric warming and cooling events using isotopes, morphometrics and ancient DNA.