Country Bookshelf Presents: Clayton Page Aldern in conversation with Darby Minow Smith

Country Bookshelf is proud to present Clayton Page Aldern in conversation with Darby Minow Smith in celebration of The Weight of Nature.

Tickets are not required, but RSVPs are greatly appreciated!

The event at a glance:

- On September 9th, please arrive early to secure your seat. Seating is general admission first come, first serve.

- At 6:00pm the event program featuring Clayton Page Aldern and Darby Minow Smith will begin. The speakers will take audience questions following their program.

- After the talk, Clayton Page Aldern will be available for book signing.

- Can't attend in person? Order a signed copy of The Weight of Nature on our website or by calling 406-587-0166. Signing requests will need to be placed 24 hours before the event.

About The Weight of Nature:

A deeply reported, eye-opening book about climate change, our brains, and the weight of nature on us all.

The march of climate change is stunning and vicious, with rising seas, extreme weather, and oppressive heat blanketing the globe. But its effects on our very brains constitute a public-health crisis that has gone largely unreported. Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. A masterpiece of literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out.

Aldern calls it the weight of nature.

Hotter temperatures make it harder to think clearly and problem-solve. They increase the chance of impulsive violence. Immigration judges are more likely to reject asylum applications on hotter days. Umpires, to miss calls. Air pollution, heatwaves, and hurricanes can warp and wear on memory, language, and sensory systems; wildfires seed PTSD. And climate-fueled ecosystem changes extend the reach of brain-disease carriers like mosquitos, brain-eating amoebas, and the bats that brought us the mental fog of long COVID.

How we feel about climate change matters deeply; but this is a book about much more than climate anxiety. As Aldern richly details, it is about the profound, direct action of global warming on our brains and behavior—and the most startling portrait yet of unforeseen environmental influences on our minds. From farms in the San Joaquin Valley and public schools across the United States to communities in Norway’s Arctic, the Micronesian islands, and the French Alps, this book is an unprecedented portrait of a global crisis we thought we understood.

Clayton Page Aldern, is a neuroscientist turned environmental journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Vox, Newsweek, The Economist, Scientific American, and Grist. His climate change data visualizations have appeared in a variety of forums including on the US Senate floor in a speech by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

A Rhodes Scholar and a Salzburg Global Fellow, he holds a master’s in neuroscience and a master’s in public policy from the University of Oxford. He has been named a Climate Reality Leader (under Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project), a research affiliate at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington, a grantee of the Pulitzer Center, and most recently, a fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism. See claytonaldern.com or on Twitter @compatibilism.

Darby Minow Smith is a writer, educator, and fifth-generation Montana rancher. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University in New York. At the Climate School, she co-founded the Bridging Artistic and Scientific Approaches working group, which brings together professors from across the university for pedagogical collaborations. She recently returned to Montana to help run her family's cattle ranch near Boulder.

Accessibility Information:

- The event will take place on the first floor of Country Bookshelf.

- All doorways have a width greater than 32 inches with the narrowest being our front door at 35 inches.

- The speakers will be using a microphone at this event. Additionally, there will be seating reserved for folks who are hard of hearing in the front row.

- Please email staff@countrybookshelf.com if you have any specific accessibility needs and we will do our best to serve you!

- Do you or someone you know provide ASL interpretation? Country Bookshelf is seeking an interpreter to call on for future events. Please send information to staff@countrybookshelf.com if there is interest!