BRIGHTHINK

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In 1665, an infectious disease swept through London and claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people. It would take another two hundred years for the cause of the Great Plague of London to be confirmed: a powerful bacterium called Yersinia pestis. In those centuries, our understanding of diseases was transformed.
The turning point came in the 19th century with the development of germ theory and scientists made major breakthroughs in our ongoing struggle against infectious disease. Perhaps the greatest of these achievements is the discovery of antibiotic treatment, which has been the salvation of much of humanity in recent centuries.

In a story that spans centuries and continents, Thomas Levenson reveals how human hubris led us to overestimate our own ability and underestimate the threat that microorganisms truly pose. Join us on a journey through some of the most significant epidemics and pandemics in history, including the recurrent outbreaks of cholera in Europe and Asia, and the 1721 Boston smallpox epidemic.

Thomas Levenson is a professor of science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also a film-maker, with many science documentary films to his credit and has received the National Academies Prize for Science Communication and a Peabody Award. His previous books include ‘Money for Nothing’, ‘Newton and The Counterfeiter’ and ‘Einstein in Berlin’.

This event will take place upstairs in The Nightingale Room at The Grand Central Pub, Brighton. Unfortunately, there is no wheelchair access at the venue.

• DOORS OPEN: 7:00pm
• TALK STARTS: 7:30pm
• AUDIENCE Q&A: 8:30pm
• BOOK SIGNING: 9:00pm (Books available to purchase on the night)

ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT EVENTBRITE NOW

The history of autism is male. It is time for women and girls to enter the spotlight.

When autistic girls meet clinicians, they are often misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, personality disorders – or receive no diagnosis at all. Autism’s ‘male spotlight’ means we are only now starting to redress this profound injustice.
In The Lost Girls of Autism, renowned brain scientist Gina Rippon delves into the emerging science of female autism, asking why it has been systematically ignored for so long. Generations of researchers, convinced autism was a male problem, simply didn’t bother looking for it in women. But it is now becoming increasingly clear that many autistic women and girls do not fit the traditional, male, model of autism. Instead, they camouflage and mask, hiding their autistic traits to accommodate a society that shuns them.

Urgent and insightful, this is a searching examination of how sexism has biased our understanding of autism. Informed by the latest research in psychology and neuroscience, The Lost Girls of Autism is a clarion call for society to recognize the full spectrum of autistic experience.

Gina Rippon will be In Conversation with Sophie Longley, and she will also be signing copies of her new book, The Lost Girls of Autism, which will be available to purchase on the night.

AUTHOR BIO
Gina Rippon is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Birmingham. Her research involves state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, investigating how the brain interacts with its world. She is an outspoken critic of outdated gender stereotypes in the field, and is the author of The Gendered Brain and The Lost Girls of Autism.

CHAIR BIO
Dr. Sophie Longley runs her own mentoring business for late-diagnosed (and identified) autistic women. She provides strengths-based mentoring in areas such as: reframing and processing a later in life autism diagnosis, employment & careers and self-advocacy skills. She is also an autism researcher, with an MSc in Psychology, and conducted research on the experiences of autistic women diagnosed in mid-late adulthood.

Presentations take place upstairs in the Nightingale Room at the Grand Central Pub, opposite Brighton Station. Unfortunately there is no wheelchair accessibility.

• DOORS OPEN: 7:00pm
• TALK STARTS: 7:30pm
• AUDIENCE Q&A: 8:30pm
• BOOK SIGNING: 9pm (Books available to purchase on the night)

Brighthink is a non-profit organisation, our invited speakers do not charge an appearance fee, and all proceeds go towards running costs that allow us to put on these events for the public.

ADVANCE TICKETS Available at EVENTBRITE now.

How did America end up trapped in a nightmare of conspiracy theories, in which millions see the government as an evil 'deep state'?

In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, a group of New York writers concocted what appeared to be a top-secret government report into what would happen to the USA if permanent global peace broke out. Report from Iron Mountain claimed that winding down America's vast war-making machinery would wreck the economy and tear society apart, necessitating draconian controls over the population. It was published as non-fiction – and was frighteningly convincing. Journalists tried to find out who had written it. Worried memos reached right up to the president. It became a bestselling cause célébre.

Even when the hoax was revealed, many refused to believe it wasn't real. The Report was seized on by eager figures on the far right and in the militia movement, who insisted that it revealed terrifying government conspiracies to pollute the environment, enslave Americans and even instigate eugenics. And its legacy lives on today.

Join Phil Tinline as he traces the story through a gallery of vivid characters, from the radical academic C. Wright Mills and the writers E.L. Doctorow, Victor Navasky and Leonard Lewin in 1960s New York, to the far-right impresario Willis Carto, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper,
L. Fletcher Prouty (the inspiration for 'Mr X' in the film JFK), and ranting broadcaster Alex Jones.

Phil Tinline is a freelance writer and documentary-maker. Over the course of twenty years working for BBC Radio, he made and presented many acclaimed documentaries about how political history shapes our lives. He has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, BBC History Magazine, Prospect, Unherd, Engelsberg Ideas and The New Statesman. He is the author of The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares and Ghosts of Iron Mountain.

This event will take place upstairs in The Nightingale Room at The Grand Central Pub, Brighton. Unfortunately, there is no wheelchair access at the venue.

• DOORS OPEN: 7:00pm
• TALK STARTS: 7:30pm
• AUDIENCE Q&A: 8:30pm
• BOOK SIGNING: 9:00pm (Books available to purchase on the night)

Advance Tickets available at EVENTBRITE

How did wet nurses drive civilisation? Are women always the weaker sex? Is sexism useful for evolution? And are our bodies at war with our babies?

Join Cat Bohannon as she delves into the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex.

Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon's findings, including everything from the way C-sections in the industrialised world are rearranging women's pelvic shape to the surprising similarities between pus and breast milk, will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens have become such a successful and dominant species, from tool use to city building to the development of language.

Cat Bohannon will be ‘In Conversation’ with Sally Howard.

AUTHOR BIO
Cat Bohannon is a researcher and author with a PhD in the evolution of narrative and cognition from Columbia University. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, The Best American Non-required Reading, The Georgia Review, The Story Collider and Poets Against the War.

CHAIR BIO
Sally Howard is a journalist and feminist academic. She holds a Master’s in Gender Studies and Law from SOAS, The University of London.
She is also the author of ‘The Kama Sutra Diaries: Intimate Journeys Through Modern India’ and ‘The Home Stretch: Why the Gender Revolution Stalled at the Kitchen Sink’.

Cat will also be signing copies of her book 'Eve' which will be available to purchase on the night.
This event will take place upstairs in The Nightingale Room at The Grand Central Pub, Brighton. Unfortunately, there is no wheelchair access at the venue.

• DOORS OPEN: 7:00pm
• TALK STARTS: 7:30pm
• AUDIENCE Q&A: 8:30pm
• BOOK SIGNING: 9:00pm (Books available to purchase on the night)