First Fridays Science Discussion | Natural History Museum Of Los Angeles

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L.A.’s first car hit the street 120 years ago, and through the smog and spaghetti-bowl freeways, L.A. is renowned for its car culture (and traffic). But we're starting to shift gears around here. We flirt with electric cars, pile into ride shares, trick out our bicycles, and hop aboard the Expo Line. In a city built for internal combustion, are we changing the rules of the road?

It's the City of Angels, but what kind of city is it? It's a place that, in just a handful of generations, grew from adobes and dirt roads to an architectural crazy-quilt built not on a human scale but on the scale of the Model T and the Humvee. In its third century, L.A. tries to reverse-engineer itself to become livable, walkable, and accessible. Can it be done? What would that L.A. be like, to work in and live in?

Author Kirk Wallace Johnson in conversation with NHMLA President Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga about The Feather Thief – A rollicking true-crime adventure about a young American that stole hundreds of rare bird specimens from the British Natural History Museum in Tring. His book is a thought-provoking exploration on the debt we owe institutions that house precious collections and the human drive to possess natural beauty.

To say that oil was "discovered" in Los Angeles in 1892, or even by the Spaniards in 1769, is absolutely absurd. That ignores the fact that the Gabrieleno/Tongva knew about the stuff for centuries. It was smelly, and if you wandered into the gleaming tarry depths at night, you could be a goner. But it did a dandy job of waterproofing reed baskets. Only in the 20th century did Yankees go drilling for it, and they found it in such quantities that backyard oil pumps were about as common as backyard orange groves. Oil paid the bills for so much of what L.A. became—including the car capital of the world. What geology put it here, what history did it make, and how do we now live with its consequences?

The same year L.A. outlawed bullfighting, in 1860, it played its first baseball game. Now we’re one of the only three-peat Olympic host cities, and from too few pro teams, we’ve gone to two of each for football, basketball, and baseball. Yet we’ve put our own stamp on sports, popularizing camel races at Exposition Park, chariot races in Pasadena, and beach volleyball in Santa Monica. And we’re the home of the Zamboni. What will the Olympics, and Los Angeles in general, look like in 2028 Sportsville USA?

On the 20th anniversary of Beverly Daniel Tatum’s 1997 book on the complexity of race relations—Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?—this landmark publication remains poignant and relevant in our current social climate.

The nation’s first air show went up, up and away in LA before World War I, and here, the space shuttle made its last trip—on the ground. LA broke the sound barrier, sent men to the moon and a spacecraft to Saturn. This is Space City, from the rudimentary missiles in the arroyos of JPL to the aircraft factories and technology that whacked the Nazis. Now the past is prologue, as the same SoCal ingenuity launches Space X satellites, and missions to Mars. It’s out of this world!

Join world traveler and anthropologist Dr. Lars Krutak, The Tattoo Hunter, as he shares his ongoing journey to understand how tattoos "make" the people who wear them. Lars Krutak's lecture explores these ancient traditions, revealing how tattooing exposed individual desires and fears as well as cultural values and ancestral ties that were written on the body in ink. As a visual language of the skin, Krutak demonstrates that tattoos have much to say about being human.

Artists, writers and media organizations are playing vital roles in conveying the science and ethics of global warming. This conversation will explore how experiments in environmental storytelling and media imagine possible futures for different communities and ecosystems in the context of planetary climate change. With poet-scholar Rita Wong; Media artist and NYU professor Marina Zurkow; KCET Chief Creative Officer, Juan Devis; and Whittier College associate professor and Nadine Austin Wood Chair in American History, Natale Zappia, with moderator Allison Carruth, UCLA professor and director of LENS.

It is tough to feel urgency when climate change seems like something happening to future generations, in faraway lands. The reality is, it is and will affect all of us, in every city on the planet. And it’s not all bad, by the way—some cities and people could benefit from global warming. To make climate change personal, local, and real, let’s talk about how it will affect two of the greatest cities in the world, Los Angeles and Beijing. We’ll compare notes on each city’s infrastructure and governance, actual on-the-ground impacts, and how residents might react. With UCLA Professor of Atmospheric & Ocean Sciences and Director, IoES Center for Climate Science, Alex Hall; UCLA Evolutionary Biologist Ecologist and Conservation Biologist, Brad Shaffer; and the founding Director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s China Environmental program, Alex Wang with moderator Stephanie Wear, Senior Scientist and Strategy Advisor at The Nature Conservancy.

We can get hints about what climate change could mean for our planet and the things that live on it by looking at climate change in the past. With Assistant Curator at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, Emily Lindsey and University of Notre Dame Professor and Department Chair of Anthropology, Agustín Fuentes, with moderator Michelle Bezanson, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Santa Clarita University.

There are so many questions about climate change and climate science. Is climate change right now really worse than climate change in the past? Isn’t it true that there has been a pause in warming in the ten years? Will the ice caps melt? Can we really blame heat waves, hurricanes, and droughts on global warming? With The Madhouse Effect author Michael Mann; creator of the California Weather Blog, Daniel Swain; and USC Associate Professor of Earth Science, Sarah Feakins with moderator Bob Lalasz, founder and principal consultant of Science+Story Communications.

Once upon a time, Angelenos grew what they ate. But WWII Japanese internments whisked accomplished growers off the land, and by the 1950s, aside from some fancy New York-style eateries, food culture was bleak. New immigrants brought delicious unknowns in the ’60s, and casual chic cuisine emerged in the ’70s. The cheeseburger, fortune cookie, French dip, Chinese chicken salad – all L.A. creations. Find out how the most diverse city in the nation became its foodie capital.

For almost all of human history, the food we ate came from no farther than a day’s search. Now, food zips around the world. But with climate change and drought, that may change. What does this mean for food in Southern California, where we once grew almost everything? Can we shorten our supply lines to feed ourselves again, if we have to?

It's unlikely we'd trade the allure of crunchy, salty, tasty food for a single, daily capsule. But with climate change and drought, what choices will we have? Can technology keep us fed, if farm-to-table becomes lab-to-table? If you know your sci-fi, you know the future of food is a little pill.

Such a small word for such a big role in our lives! Food has always been fraught with politics and class and culture. Salt was originally a pleasure for the rich; now, people of means are wary of too much sodium. Eating by the calendar – fresh food in season – was replaced by processed “forever” food. As food science and food tastes change, how are we taking back control of our personal food chains? Backyard gardens, neighborhood beers, urban beekeeping, home pickling and canning: does all this make food fairer, more plentiful and safer?!

If you swapped menus with a caveman, how different would the meals and the digestive processes be? Join Dr. Elain Y. Hsaio, Dr. Craig Stanford, and Mark Schatzker for a scientific look at our shifting food patterns, your plate, and your palate as you’ve never seen them before!

Bradley Voytek, Assistant Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science and the Neurosciences at the UC San Diego and an Alfred P. Sloan Neuroscience Research Fellow, and Timothy Verstynen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University, bite into the subject of "zombie brain research" and popular shows and films about the undead.