**Questions for the speaker can be submitted on the Registration page.**
\nJoin us for this e nlightening presentation with Smithsonian curator Sabrina Sholts as she ta lks about how the very fact of being human increases our pandemic risks&md ash\;and gives us the power to save ourselves. \;
\nThe COVID-19 pandemic won't be our last&mdash\;because what makes us vulnerable to pan demics also makes us human. That is the uncomfortable but all-too-timely m essage of \;The Human Disease: How We Create Pandemics\, From Our Bodi es to Our Beliefs\, which travels through history and around the globe to examine how and why pandemics are an inescapable threat of our own making. Drawing on dozens of disciplines&mdash\;from medicine\, epidemiology\, an d microbiology to anthropology\, sociology\, ecology\, and neuroscience&md ash\;as well as a unique expertise in public education about emerging infe ctious diseases\, biological anthropologist Sabrina Sholts identifies the human traits and tendencies that double as pandemic liabilities\, from the anatomy that defines us to the misperceptions that divide us.
\nWea ving together a wealth of personal experiences\, scientific findings\, and historical stories\, Sholts brings dramatic and much-needed clarity to on e of the most profound challenges we face as a species. Though the COVID-1 9 pandemic looms large in Sholts's account\, it is\, in fact\, just one of the many infectious disease events explored in \;The Human Disease. W ith its expansive\, evolutionary perspective\, the book explains how human ity will continue to face new pandemics because \;humans cause them\, by the ways that we are and the things that we do. By recognizing our risk s\, Sholts suggests\, we can take actions to reduce them. When the next pa ndemic happens\, and how bad it becomes\, are largely within our highly ca pable human hands&mdash\;and will be determined by what we do with our ext raordinary human brains. A presentation you don&rsquo\;t want to miss\, re gister now!
\nAbout the Author:
\nSabrina Sho lts is a biological anthropologist and Curator of Biological Anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Her resear ch explores intersections of human\, animal\, and environmental health in the past and present. She received her PhD in Anthropology at UC Santa Bar bara and was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley in Integrative Biolo gy and at Stockholm University in Biophysics and Biochemistry. Sholts has published widely in academic journals including \;American Journal of Biological Anthropology\, \;Environmental Health Perspect ives\, \;JAMA\, PNAS\, \;Scientific Rep orts\, \;Proceedings of the Royal Society B\, and \; Nature Ecology &\; Evolution\, and written for popular audienc es in \;Scientific American \;and \;Smithsonian Magazine. She was named as a World Economic Forum Young Scientist in 2019. In addition\, she was Lead Curator of the exhibition \;Outbreak: Epidemics in a Con nected World \;at the NMNH \;(2018-2022) and a scientific advisor for the related exhibition \;É\;pidé\;mies: \;Prendre soin du vivant \;at the musé\;e des Confluences in Lyon\, France \;(2024-2025).
\nhttps://edisonpubliclibrary.libnet.info/event/127 92939 URL;VALUE=URI:https://edisonpubliclibrary.libnet.info/event/12792939 ATTACH:https://static.libnet.info/images/events/edisonpubliclibrary/Sabrin a_Sholts.jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR