In this discussion of human memory and aging, the focus will be on how memory works, why it is imperfect in all people, and how it sometimes changes during adult life. No prior knowledge of brain science will be assumed; your own curiosity and life experiences should be ample context to aid understanding.

How does humor fit into your life? What purpose does it serve? Learn how humor can connect us (when used well) and divide us (if not). Also, learn all about what makes something funny as well as the basics of joke writing.

America has Hamilton-mania! With Disney+ now streaming the show, everyone’s talking about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical. Its crafty lyrics, hip-hop tunes, and big bold story have even rejuvenated interest in the real lives and true histories that Hamilton: the Musical puts center stage. In this talk we will explore this musical phenomenon to reveal what its success tells us about the marriage of history and show-business. We’ll learn what this amazing musical gets right and gets wrong about Alexander Hamilton, the American Revolution, and the birth of the United States, and we’ll consider why all that matters.

“A picture’s worth a thousand words,” so we’ll access stories of 15+ bold Montana women through pictures from their lives. The photos, published in Bold Women in Montana History (Mountain Press 2017), reveal important and intimate moments in the lives of such foremothers as Jeannette Rankin, Pretty Shield, Frieda and Belle Fligelman, Isabelle Johnson, Alma Smith Jacobs, Alice and Marge Greenough, and Elouise Cobell. In addition, people often wonder what’s involved in gathering photos for a book. That will be part of the stories spun in this session, affording a behind-the-scenes peek at one aspect of writing and assembling a book of history.

Rivers are not just water running over land. They are complex intriguing ecosystems full of life. This lecture will introduce the types of aquatic insects that occur in western Montana creeks and rivers, explain how to observe and identify them, and, through understanding a little basic ecology, use them to assess the health of our important aquatic systems. Because they are so abundant and easy to observe, aquatic insects are perfect for family or group outings aimed at learning more about the world around us.

Although grizzly bears are familiar to Montanans, crocodiles are not. They are more similar than you might think. Both are top predators in their habitats. Both can become "problems." Answering basic questions about their ecology is essential to human safety and their conservation. Using satellite transmitters and spot-lighting for eye-shines at night along remote rivers has revealed some surprising insights into crocodile ecology while simultaneously, and perhaps not so surprisingly, producing a few moments of stark terror. Crocodiles, like our grizzly bears, face environmental change in the coming years that will impact their long-term survival.

How can you tell good information from bad on the web? Now more than ever, sites of mis-, dis-, or fringe information are all over the place, and they’re not easy to identify using the traditional tools of close reading and evaluation that many of us learned in school. In this special event, a live demonstration of lateral reading will help you learn how to determine who is behind information, what evidence supports the claims made by a site, and what other (reputable) sources say about a site. Lateral reading, a set of skills and strategies used by fact checkers, is one of the most powerful digital literacy techniques you can use to recognize fake news, limit its spread, and educate yourself.

Soaring mountains, rambling plains – China’s frontiers look a great deal like Montana. Yet these vast, peaceful landscapes and their native peoples, the Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols, are in the news every day with reports of protests, violence, and now even talk of “genocide.” This presentation will explain how, over the past century, the relationship between China and its frontier peoples has been defined by a series of “broken promises” as the state has repeatedly first expanded cultural freedoms, autonomy, and economic development only to then trade these for crackdowns, assimilation, and poverty. We will learn about the central role of ethnically non-Chinese peoples in the creation of modern China and how the contradiction in that relationship continues to play out today.

The stunning orange and black monarch butterfly journeys through Montana on a multi-generational, several thousand-mile-long annual migration. When do they arrive? In what numbers? How do they use nectar and larval food sources in the Bitterroot Valley? These are just some of the questions the Bitterroot Monarch Project hopes to answer. Monarchs were recorded in the Bitterroot Valley in both 2019 and 2020, even though recent counts have recorded the population at less than 1% of its historical size. Join us to learn all about monarch ecology in the western United States, their awe-inspiring migration, the threats to their populations, and what you can do to help.