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Jenara Nerenberg in Conversation With Maya Dusenbery

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Jenara Nerenberg’s Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You (HarperOne) is a paradigm-shifting exploration of neurodivergent women — those with autism, ADHD, synesthesia, and other sensory processing differences — offering a timely, provocative examination of why these traits are overlooked in women and how our society can benefit from allowing their unique strengths to flourish. As a smart, successful, Harvard- and Berkeley-educated writer and devoted mother, Nerenberg didn’t discover her autism and ADHD until well into her adulthood, after it had already taken a huge toll on her personal and professional life. Being a journalist, she dove into the research and discovered neurodiversity — a movement which seeks to stop pathologizing "normal" and "abnormal" brains and start embracing the variety of…

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Free

Kate Greene in Conversation With Sian Proctor

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Kate Greene’s Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth (St. Martin’s) is an essay collection inspired by the author's four-month stay inside a simulated Martian habitat. When it comes to Mars, the focus is often on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. But upon arrival, what will it actually be like? In 2013, Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in…

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Free

Livestream: Moira Dolan: Boneheads and Brainiacs

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's is sponsoring this online interview with author Moira Dolan, MD discussing her new book Boneheads & Brainiacs: Heroes and Scoundrels of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Click this link to join the event: Join for a chance to win an author-signed copy of Boneheads & Brainiacs. Register to receive a free download of Dr. Dolan’s e-booklet "No-Nonsense Guide to Surviving Your Medical Encounter." For every purchase of Boneheads & Brainiacs from Annie Bloom's, Dr. Dolan will donate directly to the indie bookstore charity Binc (Book Industry Charitable Foundation). About the book: The inventor of the lobotomy won a Nobel prize in medicine for destroying his patients' brains. Another Nobel laureate thought malaria cured syphilis. The discoverer of anaphylactic shock also researched the spirit…

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Free

Terry Virts in Conversation With Katie Mack

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A wildly entertaining account of the rules, lessons, procedures, and experiences of space travel, How to Astronaut (Workman) is a book that will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in space. Written by Col. Terry Virts, a former NASA astronaut, space shuttle pilot, and International Space Station commander who spent 200 consecutive days in space, it answers all of our curious questions and much more: Here's how to survive that first brush with weightlessness (in the so-called vomit comet); the nearly indescribable thrill of a first blastoff; managing the daily tasks — eating, bathing, doing chores, going to the bathroom — that are anything but ordinary when you're orbiting the earth at 17,000 miles per hour; how to don your space suit and…

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Free

Kathryn D. Sullivan

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In her new book, Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention (The MIT Press), Kathryn D. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has, among many other achievements, revealed thousands of galaxies in what seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our knowledge of black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other stars; and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In Handprints on Hubble, the retired astronaut describes her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible. Along the way, Sullivan chronicles her early life…

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Elizabeth Kolbert in Conversation With Bill McKibben

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? In Under a White Sky (Crown), Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. She meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single, tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave. She visits a lava field in Iceland, where engineers are turning carbon emissions to stone; an aquarium in Australia, where researchers are trying to develop “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and a lab at Harvard, where physicists are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the…

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Michelle Nijhuis in Conversation With Elena Passarello

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In the late 19th century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts (W. W. Norton), acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement’s history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale. Nijhuis describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, as well as lesser-known figures in conservation history; she reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund; she explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping…

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Free

ARMCHAIR ADVENTUERE SERIES: NANSEN OF THE NORTH

Nordic Northwest 8800 SW Oleson Rd, Portland, OR, United States

Nansen of the North is the story of Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, and humanitarian. Nansen's story caught the imagination of Portland Story Theater co-founder and creator of the Armchair Adventurer series, Lawrence Howard. For the first time, Lawrence is telling an epic tale of the Arctic. A captivating performer, Howard holds audiences spellbound and has been called “the Homer of Portland” and “the master of nonfiction on the stage.” Nansen of the North is the seventh installment of his highly successful Armchair Adventurer series. Click here to learn more about Portland Story Theater and Lawrence Howard. Parking​ We encourage patrons to use public transportation or ride-sharing services. Our 50 space parking lot is open on a first-come, first-served, basis and limited street parking is available on SW 89th & 90th Avenues. Accessibility ​Nordia House…

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$5 – $20

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein in Conversation With Elissa Washuta

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From a star theoretical physicist comes a journey into the world of particle physics and the cosmos — and a call for a more just practice of science. In The Disordered Cosmos (Bold Type Books), Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter — all with a new spin informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek. One of the leading physicists of her generation, Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than 100 Black American women to earn a PhD from a department of physics. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant, buoyantly non-traditional, and grounded in…

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Kale Williams in Conversation With Jon Mooallem

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Six days after giving birth, a polar bear named Aurora got up and left her den at the Columbus Zoo, leaving her tiny, squealing cub to fend for herself. Hours later, Aurora still hadn’t returned. The cub was furless and blind, and with her temperature dropping dangerously, the zookeepers entrusted with her care felt they had no choice: They would have to raise one of the most dangerous predators in the world themselves, by hand. Over the next few weeks, a group of veterinarians and zookeepers would work around the clock to save the cub, whom they called Nora. Humans rarely get as close to a polar bear as Nora’s keepers got with their fuzzy charge. But the two species have long been intertwined. Three…

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