Melanie Trecek-King :  Mesmerized! A lasting legacy

We have a very special treat in the place of our monthly Science Lecture series! Please join us as we welcome Melanie Trecek-King to the Secular Hub as she presents her talk entitled “Mesmerized: The Lasting Legacy of an 18th-Century Health Fad” on Saturday, July 11th. Doors open at 4:30 with the talk to begin at 5:00 p.m.

About the topic: You probably know what it feels like to be mesmerized. What you might not know is that the word comes from a wild, 18th-Century health fad that swept Europe, featuring a cast of history's most famous characters. But this story is more than a fascinating historical anecdote. It's a timeless reminder of just how easily our minds can be tricked.

About Our Speaker: Melanie launched her website www.Thinkingispower.com in January of 2021 and it has rapidly become a go-to resource for science and critical thinking education. Her articles have been featured in Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptical Science and Thinking is Power content is used in colleges and universities around the globe. Melanie Trecek-King is an Associate Professor of Biology at Massasoit Community College, where she teaches a general-education science course designed to equip students with empowering critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy skills. An active speaker and consultant, Trecek-King loves to share her “teach skills not facts” approach with other science educators and to help organizations meet their goals through better thinking. Trecek-King is also the Education Director for the Mental Immunity Project and the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative, which aim to advance and apply the science of mental immunity to inoculate minds against misinformation. Trecek-King has a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Chemistry and a Master of Arts in Ecology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she studied prairie ecology, succession, the role of fire in ecosystems, and conservation biology. She is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, whose founders included Carl Sagan, Issac Asimov, B.F. Skinner, Philip J Klass, Ray Hyman, and James Randi. Other notable CSI fellows are Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ann Druyan and Steven Pinker.