Today, thousands of satellites orbit Earth. At the end of their missions they drop from space and burn up in Earth’s upper atmosphere.The resulting ash deposits thousands of tons of aerosols. Certain aerosols contain metal oxides and pollutants that can impact both the ozone layer and Earth’s thermal balance (heat and cooling factors).

Atmospheric scientist Dan Cziczo, an expert on aerosols and clouds, analyzes these particles that accumulate in Earth’s stratosphere, to determine their relationship to both ozone-depletion and climate change. He explains the concern about these unique space debris chemicals and their potential effect on the ozone layer and the cloud dynamics associated with climate. The studies on space debris represent a developing area of atmospheric science and is of great significance, given the continuing increase in the number of satellites.

Anne Berest’s first novel to appear in English, The Postcard, was a national bestseller, a Library Journal, NPR, and TIME Best Book of the Year, a Vogue Most Anticipated Book of the Year, and a finalist for the Goncourt Prize in France. It was described as “stunning” by Leslie Camhi in The New Yorker, as a “powerful literary work” by Julie Orringer in The New York Times Book Review, and as “intimate, profound, essential” in ELLE magazine. With her sister Claire Berest, she is also the author of Gabriële, a critically acclaimed, best-selling “true novel” based on the life of her great-grandmother Gabriële Buffet-Picabia, wife of Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp’s lover and muse, a leader of the French Resistance, and an art critic. Berest lives in Paris with her family.

Cosponsored by the Boston College Fiction Days Series.

The Lowell Humanities Series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.

Europe is frightened and frightening for the first time really since the 1980s, when nuclear sabers were rattling as the Soviet Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) both deployed contending intermediate range missiles along the dividing line of the military alliances. With Russia’s continued barbarity in Ukraine there is no escaping that Vladimir Putin intends not to be “European”.

Join WorldBoston for a timely discussion of this topic with Dr. Kori Schake, leader of the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute.

This program will feature an expert presentation, live audience Q&A, and time for networking and discussion with other globally-oriented participants in the Newsfeed Café.

Kori Schake leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, War on the Rocks, and Bloomberg.

Hear from those in closest contact to immigrants in Massachusetts. Their discussion sheds light on the real dangers faced by undocumented individuals and the impact of ICE raids on organizations providing services and care.

Katherine Grandjean is a historian of early America, specializing in colonial history, Native American history, and the history of communication. Her book, 'American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England' (2015), explores how information networks shaped power, violence, and relationships between colonists and Indigenous peoples. Through deep archival research, she reveals how control over communication influenced colonial expansion. A professor at Wellesley College, Grandjean’s work sheds new light on the intersections of media, migration, and conflict in early America, examining the complexities of colonial society and its lasting impact on American history.

Robert A. Gross is a renowned historian specializing in Revolutionary and 19th-century America. His Bancroft Prize-winning 'The Minutemen and Their World' (1976) examines Concord’s role in the American Revolution, blending social history with political change. His second book, 'The Transcendentalists and Their World'(2021), winner of the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize at Massachusetts Historical Society, explores Concord’s shift into a hub of intellectual thought, focusing on figures like Emerson and Thoreau. Gross’s work masterfully connects local history with broader themes of community and change. A respected scholar, he has held positions at institutions including Amherst College, the College of William & Mary, and the University of Connecticut.

Preeminent scholars Serena Zabin, Carleton College, and Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut Emeritus convene in Concord where 250 years ago, the "shot heard round the world" ignited the American Revolution. Joined in conversation by Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College, the scholars discuss New England society's challenges and the epochal day of April 19, 1775, when an outbreak of fighting led to the formation of a republic.

1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution is co-hosted by The Concord Museum, the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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Prize-winning historian Matthew Lockwood looks at the impulse to explore, the travels of Pocahontas, Columbus, Sacagawea, and Captain Cook alongside others who rightfully deserve the title of “explorers” including immigrants and fugitive slaves.

According to Lockwood, people of every background imagine new worlds. The impulse to seek new places is universal to humanity. In his new book, “Explorers,” he unfurls a tapestry of surprising and historically overlooked travelers spanning forty centuries and six continents. His illustrated talk will share the stories of such seekers as David Dorr, born into slavery in New Orleans who embarked on a Grand Tour or Europe and Egypt, and the Viking female voyager Gudrid Far-Traveler, who sailed to North America in 1000 AD; among other pioneers.

MATTHEW LOCKWOOD is an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama. He earned his PhD from Yale University and is theauthor of “This Land of Promise: A History of Refugees and Exiles in Britain, To Begin the World Over Again,” ”The Conquest of Death,” and “To Begin the World Over Again: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe,” which was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice” and a Financial Times “Top 10 Book of the Year.”