When a lake turns green, it’s natural to want a simple answer: What caused it, and is it dangerous? Is it because of climate change? The farms? Within hours, the internet usually has a verdict. But lakes are complicated systems, and the first explanation is rarely the whole story. The ...
Generative AI is fast becoming the first-place people turn for expert advice. The advice it provides can be directional rather than neutral, shaped in part by the choices of its designers and regulators. When clients consult AI before meeting an expert, they carry this directional advice into a relationship that ...
Where: Cost: Free
Expert Talk: Living with Lions in the North BayDr. Quinton Martins, co-founder of True Wild Conservation, will present an update on the Living with Lions Project, an exciting grassroots predator conservation project in the San Francisco North Bay. Since 2016, Dr. Martins has studied the movement of mountain lions fitted with GPS collars in the North Bay to ...
Where: Santa RosaCost: Free
Baratunde Thurston & Blaise Agüera y Arcas: On InterdependenceJoin us for a conversation exploring interdependence as the core governing principle of nature and intelligence. Featuring Baratunde Thurston (Emmy-nominated producer and host of How to Citizen) and Blaise Agüera y Arcas (VP at Paradigms of Intelligence team at Google), we will examine how cooperation, rather than dominance, will shape ...
Where: Cost: TBA
Birds of a Feather Lurk Together: The Spooky Parallels Between Spiders and Birds - LivestreamFeathered structures, complex social lives, and soaring flight aren’t just for the birds ??" spiders have evolved their own unique takes on all of them. While birds and spiders might seem worlds apart, their evolutionary strategies tell a remarkably similar story of survival and innovation. In this talk, we’ll dive ...
Biological enzymes have evolved over billions of years to mediate kinetically challenging transformations under mild conditions and with excellent selectivities. Inspired by nature, our group works at the interface of bioinorganic chemistry and materials science toward the precise engineering of void spaces that can kinetically stabilize high-valent, bio-inspired complexes. This ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Saturday, 10/24/26
Birding for Beginners at Bair IslandCalling all community members! Come birding with POST and San Mateo County Bird Alliance and meet other birders! Whether you are experienced or completely new to birding, this event will provide a fun opportunity to get out in nature and gain a bird’s-eye view of species found locally.Join us for ...
Where: Redwood CityCost: Free
Community-access hiking day at Bouverie PreserveJoin us for the rare opportunity to connect with the land at Bouverie Preserve, 535 acres of mixed evergreen forest, riparian woodland, and chaparral. The preserve is home to a rich combination of plants and animals, including 130 species of birds, 350 species of flowering plants, and numerous large mammals, ...
Where: Glen EllenCost: Free
Feed the Farm AnimalsGet ready for an unforgettable animal adventure! Join our dedicated animal care team and dive into the excitement of feeding our delightful farm friends: goats, chickens, rabbits, sheep, and adorable pigs! You'll gain hands-on experience and discover fascinating insights into each animal's unique personality and needs. This interactive experience is ...
Where: San JoseCost: $16 SJ Residents, $20 Non-Residents
Join us any time to explore fun, hands-on activities about Spiders, Snakes and Owls. Our interactive touchscreens and Baylands Marshcam will also be available to explore.
Where: Palo AltoCost: Free
We All JourneyExplore the life cycle and migratory patterns of the Monarch butterfly, whose arrival in Mexico often coincides with Día de Muertos, the annual "Day of the Dead" celebration. Paint your own butterfly or butterfly wing and add a personal message on the back. Then they'll be added to the Exploratorium's ...
It’s tarantula season!Join Youth Science Institute for a special late-afternoon hike through Alum Rock Park in search of one of California’s largest and most misunderstood spiders - the tarantula!For much of the year, tarantulas live surprisingly secretive lives and can be difficult to spot. But each fall, mature male tarantulas ...
Where: San JoseCost: Free
Bowl the Planet 2026Join us for SaveNature.Org's biggest fundraiser of the year!At Bowl the Planet your can expect endless glow-in-the-dark bowling, silent auction bidding, unlimited pizza, music, and more.Whether you're a serious bowler or just here for the fun, grab your friends and join us for a wild evening in support of conservation ...
Where: Daly CityCost: $50 adult, $25 youth under 18.
Sunday, 10/25/26
Churn and Learn- Butter Making Class - Youth sessionIt's time to churn and learn! Join us at Emma Prusch to learn how to churn your own butter! Participants will learn how to make butter from scratch and then taste their butter on different breads. Registration is required at weblink.This session is for children ages 7 through 10.
Where: San JoseCost: $33 SJ residents, $37 non-residents
Up Close with Whales - while supporting the American Cetacean Society!Enjoy four hours on Monterey Bay with humpbacks, dolphins, and other marine mammals alongside marine biologist Nancy Black and ACS community members. This is a benefit whale watch hosted by the American Cetacean Society SF Bay Chapter to support our mission toward the protection of cetaceans and their habitat.In the ...
Where: MontereyCost: $84.80 (full price)
Churn and Learn- Butter Making Class - Adult sessionIt's time to churn and learn! Join us at Emma Prusch to learn how to churn your own butter! Participants will learn how to make butter from scratch and then taste their butter on different breads. Registration is required at weblink.Ages 18 and up
Where: San JoseCost: $33 SJ residents, $37 non-residents
Monday, 10/26/26
'North: The Future of Post-Climate America'Climate change is already influencing how and where people live.Join us at BESI as urban planner Jesse M. Keenan discusses his new book, North: The Future of Post-Climate America, which explores how climate change is shaping the physical and demographic future of the United States. The book documents a new ...
I'm really interested in understanding how environmental factors impact an individuals' life history strategy and how this strategy in turn impacts their performance in future environments. In the Williams lab, I'm using the wing polymorphism in Gryllus crickets as a model to tease apart this interaction between the environment and ...
Scientific progress is a key driver of economic growth and prosperity. There is great excitement- but also concerns- about the impacts of AI on science, but so far little data. We provide early insights on this from three data sources: a sample of 15 million Gemini interactions, an inventory of ...
Speaker: Orion Weiner, UC San FranciscoRoom: Auditorium
Where: StanfordCost: Free
In-cell structural biology at a systems levelSpeaker:Julia Mahamid, European Molecular Biology Lab, HeidelbergSeth Shipman, Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco was originally scheduled to speak today.
The camera is a common metaphor for human vision. In the eyeball, the comparison holds up: both cameras and eyes have an aperture, a lens, and a sheet of detectors that turn light into an image. But once you consider the rest of the brain, the metaphor completely falls apart.In ...
Hydrodynamics provides a remarkably universal description of matter in terms of a few continuous?fields. But how does this continuum description emerge from the dynamics of discrete quantum particles? I will address this question in open quantum systems of bosons with a conserved particle-number symmetry. In mixed states this symmetry can ...
'Cosmic Coda: Detecting Ripples in Spacetime from Merging Black Holes and Neutron Stars'Screening of the film which features historical footage of 2017 Nobel prize winner Rainer Weiss and modern footage of LIGO, followed by Q & A with filmmaker M.J. Doherty and Sonoma State University professor Lynn Cominsky (emeritus). Rainer Weiss did some of the earliest work on experimental designs for LIGO. ...
Two black holes collide over a billion light-years away, creating waves in the fabric of spacetime. But by the time those waves reach us, their effect is so small that they would change the light-years of distance by less than the width of a human hair. When Einstein predicted gravitational ...
We are thrilled to put a spotlight on kelp forests with author and award winning journalist, David Helvarg as he discusses his newest book, ‘Forest of the Sea - the Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp’. Kelp forests need our attention - they inhabit up to one third of ...
For some people, compassion means sitting with another person's pain, listening, and emotionally connecting with their distress. For others, it means helping someone feel better by offering hope or a silver lining. And for some, it means doing both. But what if our understanding of compassion depends on culture?In this ...
Where: San JoseCost: $27
Wonderfest: Popular Myths of AstronomyMuch of what we think we know about outer space comes from film and television, but Hollywood’s job is more often to entertain than to educate. In this fun and informative presentation, Prof. Thomas Targett will sort fact from fiction, taking a tour through the worlds of Star Trek, Star ...
Speaker: Brian Gregory, University of Pennsylvania
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Activity-Based Assays for Monitoring Treatment and Prevention of Infectious DiseasesFor many infectious and chronic diseases, effective medications already exist, and prevention or treatment succeeds or fails on whether those drugs are dosed and taken correctly. Concentrations that are too low lead to new infection or treatment failure, and concentrations that are too high cause adverse reactions. Current methods for ...
The dual quests ??" to understand intelligence as it arises in biology and to build it in machines of our own making ??" have been with us for nearly a century. While neuroscience and psychology seek to characterize intelligence in terms of underlying neural mechanisms and emergent behavior, we still ...
The geologically young surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa shows multiple lines of evidence for both divergent and convergent tectonic activity: dilation bands, where fresh ice has been emplaced, and regions interpreted as “subduction” zones, where ice appears to have descended under the surface. These motions are likely driven by ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Walk with a NaturalistJoin Shelby Hendricks, group tour and family programs manager, for an observation-based exploration of works currently on view through the lenses of art and science.These cross-disciplinary tours invite visitors to engage with artworks in unexpected ways, bringing a more-than-human dimension to scientific ideas while deepening our emotional connection to the ...
Where: San JoseCost: Free with admission
All that is compute transforms into concrete: Monopoly rent and the fixity of AI’s infrastructureIn the capitalist imaginary, artificial intelligence is narrated on dematerialization. In this telling, capital has escaped the weight of human labor via the frictionless circulation of data. This paper argues the opposite: the AI economy is a geography of fixity, where training large language models requires warehouse-scale data centers anchored ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
SLAC on Tap: Night of the Dark MatterSomething is lurking in the dark. Dark matter makes up most of the matter in the universe, yet it continues to slip through our grasp. But could scientists be closing in? The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment recently made headlines after researchers spotted a mysterious particle interaction that they can’t easily explain ...
We talk to people every day, but research reveals surprising blindspots in our conversational awareness. We don't realize that we're quietly calculating the end of another person's sentence, actively building a shared sense of reality, or leaning on well-worn paths to make others laugh.In this talk, Zachary Reese, professor at ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $27
Virtual Skeptics on the PubThis is a casual night of socializing with fellow science-forward skeptics and with others inhabiting our oblate spheroidal planet.Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.Click here to join.
