Original Sin: Kathryn Paige Harden

Join us on September 18 at noon as we welcome Kathryn Paige Harden, PhD, to discuss her new book Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness.

Click here to watch this virtual presentation.

In Original Sin, acclaimed psychologist Kathryn Paige Harden explores how genetics complicates traditional concepts of blame, punishment, and moral responsibility. Integrating cutting-edge DNA research with personal insights, Harden examines the tension between biological constraints and human agency through the lenses of addiction, violence, and antisocial behavior. Rather than using science to absolve wrongdoers or make guilt obsolete, she challenges readers to reckon differently with fairness. Ultimately, this revelatory inquiry urges us to move past ancient nature-versus-nurture debates to imagine a more humane, realistic vision of accountability for ourselves and society.
Kathryn Paige Harden is a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab. Harden received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She has been honored by the American Psychological Association for her distinguished scientific contributions to the study of genetics and human individual differences.

Melissa Gira Grant: Policing Pregnant Bodies Post-Dobbs

Join us on July 10 at noon (MST) for a conversation with Melissa Gira Grant about the policing of pregnant bodies in a post-Dobbs landscape. 

Click here to watch this virtual presentation. 

Melissa Gira Grant is a staff writer at The New Republic; the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (Verso), which was named a Village Voice favorite book of the year; and the co-director of They Won’t Call It Murder, selected for the 2021 DOC NYC Short List. Her forthcoming book, A Woman Is Against the Law (Little, Brown and Company), is about how the law sees women: as objects of protection, as instruments for disciplining white womanhood, all weaponized in the name of protecting law and order, and only against which has the women’s movement succeeded in claiming freedom.

 

FemTech and U.S. Policy: Dr. Chelsea Polis and Candace Gibson

Join us on May 29 at noon (PT) for a conversation with Dr. Chelsea Polis, Principal Research Scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, and  Candace Gibson, Director of State Policy at the Guttmacher Institute. They’ll discuss the intersections between FemTech, such as fertility tracking, reproductive justice, and public policy. 

Click here to register for this virtual presentation. 

Dr. Chelsea Polis is a reproductive health epidemiologist in New York City who works to improve global sexual and reproductive health, including on issues related to contraception, abortion, “FemTech”, infertility, and sexually transmitted infections including HIV. She currently serves as Principal Research Scientist at the Guttmacher Institute. Since 2011, she has held an Associate appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Previously, she served as Senior Scientist for Epidemiology at the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research and Senior Epidemiological Advisor to the Office of Population and Reproductive Health at USAID. In 2023, she received a John Maddox Prize from Sense about Science and Nature for protecting science and public health by challenging misleading claims by a fertility thermometer manufacturer. Dr. Polis holds a PhD in reproductive health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a BA in medical anthropology from Brown University.

Candace Gibson (she/her) is the Director of State Policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which she joined in 2024. She oversees the Institute’s work to advance evidence-based state-level policies to secure sexual and reproductive health and rights. Previously, Ms. Gibson served as the Director of Government Relations at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, where she oversaw the organization’s federal policy and advocacy efforts. As a staff attorney at the National Health Law Program, she created strategies to improve access to and coverage of sexual and reproductive health care for individuals enrolled in Medicaid and in private insurance. Prior to attending law school, Ms. Gibson worked with refugee and immigrant communities to eliminate health inequities at Comunidades Unidas, in Salt Lake City, UT. She has a JD from the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and received a BA in government and Spanish from Smith College. She was an If/When/How Reproductive Justice Fellow from 2012 to 2014 and was a New Leaders Council Maryland Fellow in 2020. Read her most recent paper here. 

 

Learn more about FemTech here. 

Daniella Mestyanek Young: The Culting of America

Please join us on April 24 at noon (PST) for a conversation with Daniella Mestyanek Young, author of “The Culting of America: What Makes a Cult and Why We Love Them.”

Watch on Secular AZ’s YouTube channel

Daniella was born a third-generation member of the infamous Children of God religious cult, and grew up being trafficked around the world, before escaping that life and moving to America at age 15. She put herself through high school and graduated as college valedictorian before commissioning into the US Army as an intelligence officer. That’s where she really started to think about group behavior…and seeing it, well, everywhere.

Daniella deployed twice to Afghanistan (2011, 2014) and became a member of one of the Army’s first Female Engagement teams (an experiment that put women into deliberate ground combat for the first time in Army history, and eventually led to the repeal of the sexist combat ban and the gender desegregation of the entire US military).

She is a proud daughter of the 101st, (that’s the unit in Band of Brothers), a recipient of the Presidential Volunteer Service Award (from Obama, y’all), and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Organizational Psychology at the Harvard Extension School (she focuses her research on group behavior, social norms, culture, extremism, leadership demagoguery and cults).

This is an Uprising: Paul Engler

Please join us on March 27 at noon (PST) as we welcome Paul Engler, co-author of This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century.

Watch this virtual presentation

Paul Engler is founding director of the Center for the Working Poor, co-founder of the Momentum training, and co-director of the Whirlwind Institute, a social change strategy center. He is author, with Mark Engler, of This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century (Nation Books). Order a copy of the new edition on Bookshop.org here.

 

 

 

“Thank God We’re Rich”: Dawson Vosburg

Please join us on March 20 at noon (AZT) as we welcome Dawson Vosburg, sociologist of inequality and religion and author of “I Thank God We’re Rich”: Justifying Economic Inequality in an Evangelical Congregation. 

Watch this presentation on Secular AZ’s YouTube channel

Vosburg is a PhD candidate whose research investigates, through content analysis and in-depth interviews, how American Christians make sense of US economic inequality, illustrating how the structures of that inequality shape which religious beliefs, practices, and institutions get amplified—and which struggle to survive. You can his recent research in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

 

 

 

Krispin Mayfield: Strongwilled Project

Join us on March 6 at noon (MST) for a conversation with Krispin Mayfield. 

Click here to watch this virtual presentation.

Krispin Mayfield is a licensed professional counselor in Portland, OR. He specializes in treating religious trauma and developmental trauma. He and his partner, D.L. Mayfield have been writing about and analyzing Christian nationalism for over a decade. The Mayfields currently publish regular articles about religious authoritarianism on substack at strongwilled.substack.com

 

Religion is Not Done With You: Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst & Megan Goodwin

Join us on January 23 at noon (MST) for a conversation with Dr. Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst & Dr. Megan Goodwin, authors of Religion is Not Done With You: Or, the Hidden Power of Religion on Race, Maps, Bodies, and Law and hosts of Keeping It 101: A Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion. 

 

Click here to watch this virtual presentation.

A smart, irreverent, and accessible guide to thinking more deeply about how religion permeates and shapes the world around us –and why you need to understand the work it’s doing. 

Megan Goodwin PhD is an editorial consultant at Religion Dispatches and media & tech consultant for The Crossroads Project. Her research centers on race, religion, gender/sexuality, and politics in what’s now the United States. Her first book, Abusing Religion: Religious Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions is available through Rutgers. Her next project is Cults Inc.: The Business of Bad Religion.

Dr. Morgenstein Fuerst is an associate professor of Religion and the director of the Humanities Center at the University of Vermont. Her formal expertise is in Islam in South Asia, racialization of Muslims, and global histories of imperialism. Her first book, Indian Muslim Minorities & the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels, and Jihad, is available through Bloomsbury. She is also co-editor of Words of Experience: Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst (Equinox).