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This is Common Knowledge's Kickoff bar lecture event!

Title – The Human Brain, Society & Parasites

Speaker – Paul Smaldino, PhD, Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced

Location – Tandem Coffee & Wine in East Sacramento

Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Some animals, like parasitic roundworms, barely have a brain at all, while you’re sitting around with a massive cerebrum in your skull. Brains evolved to help their owners to make better decisions. Different animals have different brains because they needed to solve different problems in order to live, thrive, and survive. Human brains, however, are special, because they have supercharged our abilities to understand and manipulate our world by putting our heads together. In doing so, we have created a sort of super-brain, extended across space and time, that gives us good stuff like language and cake, as well as bad stuff like [knowing glance at the news]. So stop doomscrolling and spend the evening with cognitive scientist and complex systems researcher Professor Paul Smaldino (UC Merced, Santa Fe Institute) as he talks about brains, behaviors, and the evolution of society.

Dr. Paul Smaldino studies how behaviors emerge and evolve in response to social, cultural, and ecological pressures, as well as how those pressures can themselves evolve. He is a Professor of Cognitive & Information Sciences, and faculty in the Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate program at UC Merced. He is affiliated with UC Merced's Center for Analytic Political Engagement, the Center for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, and the Health Sciences Research Institute.  He's also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

All Common Knowledge events are 21+

What to Expect:

At Common Knowledge we believe that learning something new is the most rewarding and fun thing you can do. We're about bringing diverse people and ideas together to have a great time.

This event is open seating so come at 6pm to to grab a drink and a seat. Before the lecture we'll have music and trivia questions on the screen. We'll also have a fun, low pressure “side quest”  so you can win a free drink.

The lecture will last for 40 minutes and are made for an intelligent, general audience so you don't need any science background to have a great time. After the lecture, there will be 20 minutes for Q&A and then the bar will be open for another hour to hang out, meet the speaker, and discuss the ideas you just heard.

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