Theodore Talks 2026: Cinco de Ted-O

 

None of this happens without the terrific volunteers who notify members on Mensa Connect about upcoming talks: Michael Kravec, Mark Cohen, Alan Baltis, Alison Brown, Linda Schreiber, Martha Confray, Jess Pettitt, Tim Bentley, Bill Horton, and Lily Noonan. Their posting helps keep members informed across many chapters, and we also thank the chapter newsletter editors who share these announcements with their members. We always need more volunteers to post, and it takes only about 5 minutes. If you’d like to help, please contact us.

Big news! Life Member Dr. Mark Cohen has graciously offered to fund Theodore Talks for the year — a tremendous help, as the series costs about $1,000 annually. Muchas gracias, Mark.

Theodore Talk T-shirts continue to be popular. For the third year in a row, we’re offering shirts featuring our logo, designed by Rachel Mouer, daughter of Co-chair Shirley Mouer. Shirts are $12 plus S&H. If you’d like one, email us at MensaTheodoreTalks@gmail.com to be added to our next order.

We’ve got a little of everything in our 2026 lineup, from history, science, and space to a talk on the National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame leading up to the 2026 AG in Fort Worth. We already have three speakers confirmed for 2027, including one of the co-founders of the Ig Nobel Prizes. Suggestions and volunteer speakers are always welcome.

We began Theodore Talks to add more value to your membership, especially for members who live outside large urban areas or belong to less active chapters. That’s why we keep doing what we do. Thank you for your support, and we hope you can join us in the coming year.

 

 

Jan. 25

Narrative War: The Philosophy of Social Conflict

Brian L. Steed, PhD, Associate Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and author of Narrative War: The Philosophy of Social Conflict, will discuss the six big ideas associated with narrative war and the strategy and critical questions for understanding, conducting, and ideally winning narrative war.

Narrative War was born out of Steed’s personal experiences dealing with 9/11, serving within and with Arab armies, and planning for the Battle of Mosul to defeat ISIS. His book has been almost twenty-five years in the making, with ten years dedicated to thinking, planning, teaching, speaking, and advocating for a new approach to war — narrative war — against groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban.

The events of 2020 and 2024 in the form of elections, COVID-19, protests and marches, and violent actions against government events and buildings, led him to understand that narrative war is more than military war; it is a philosophy that explains all forms of social conflict. The big ideas, basic strategy, and critical questions necessary for understanding, conducting, and ideally winning narrative war are part of what is inside. Narrative War also provides a philosophical understanding of narrative war ideas and concepts using multiple examples of its conduct in the real world. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

Feb. 22

Munich and the Rise of the Nazi Party

Adolf Hitler once referred to Munich as the “capital of the Nazi movement,” a title he officially conferred on the city in 1935.

Dr. Shelly Cline, Historian and Director of Education at the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, will explore Munich’s central role in the rise of National Socialism—from its roots in the aftermath of World War I, through Hitler’s transformation of the Nazi Party, to the city’s function within the broader machinery of the Third Reich. The presentation will also examine how Munich has since reckoned with this complex and troubling legacy. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

March 22

Dudley Clarke: The Genius of Deception

Can one man change the course of a world war? From 1941, working from rooms over a Cairo brothel, British officer Dudley Clarke conceived a new way of fighting the Nazis: using the tools of the mind. Deception in war isn't a new idea, but this eccentric colonel realized that global conflict offered the chance to carry out deception on a global scale. Instead of getting the enemy to put a battalion at the wrong end of the line, he would persuade them to put whole armies in the wrong country. His tools were a limitless imagination and a talent for stagecraft. But his eccentricity would end up nearly destroying everything he'd built.

Robert Hutton, author of The Illusionist: The True Story of the Man Who Fooled Hitler, spent years in Britain's archives digging out Clarke's amazing story; now you will learn it as well. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

April 26

Language Processing in the Brain Across Diverse Languages and Speakers

A staggering 7,000 languages are spoken and signed worldwide, and most people speak two or more. Yet, neuroscience research has largely focused on monolingual speakers of just a few dozen languages, leaving our understanding of the language system incomplete and potentially biased.

In this talk, Saima Malik-Moraleda, who received her PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior from Harvard University, will present a more comprehensive view of how the brain processes language by examining both diverse languages and diverse speaker populations using precision fMRI.

Malik-Moraleda will examine whether the core properties of the left-lateralized language network—its anatomical organization, hemispheric bias, selectivity for linguistic input, and strong internal connectivity—generalize beyond English to dozens of typologically diverse natural languages. She will also probe constructed languages (e.g., Esperanto, Klingon, Na’vi, High Valyrian, Dothraki) to ask what makes a language, a 'language', and will present data from polyglots (speakers of five or more languages) to examine how multiple languages of varying proficiency engage the language network.

Finally, she will explore how language and executive function tasks are processed in monolingual versus bilingual speakers, highlighting both shared and distinct patterns. Taken together, these findings suggest that the brain’s language network is remarkably robust and universal, with activity that varies systematically with proficiency rather than language identity. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

May 24

National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame

Join Bethany Dodson, Director of Research & Education at the National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame, for an engaging discussion on the history and culture of cowgirls. The Cowgirl is where history meets horsepower, and fearless women take center stage. Located in the heart of Fort Worth’s Cultural District, it’s the only museum in the world that celebrates the grit, grace, and guts of the women who shaped the American West — and those breaking boundaries today. Through permanent and temporary exhibits, interactives, and powerful storytelling, the Museum highlights artists, ranchers, rodeo champions, activists, and trailblazers from all walks of life. It’s not just about looking back — it’s about inspiring the next generation of unstoppable women.

Dodson will lead a virtual tour of the galleries and interactives, share some of their 261 Honorees’ incredible stories, and discuss their expansion, opening in the fall of 2026, that will add 16,000 more square feet to their existing 33,000 square feet of interpretive spaces. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

June 28

The NASA Psyche Mission: First Journey to a Metal World

How are habitable planets like the Earth built? How do we learn what they were built from, and when? We can learn about the rocky exteriors, but one fundamental mystery remains: The metal core.

When our solar system was just an infant, thousands of planetesimals (tiny planet-like objects) formed in fewer than one million years. Many melted, allowing metal cores to form inside rocky mantles. One of these metal cores may still exist, revealed in the asteroid (16) Psyche. The NASA Psyche mission is sending a robotic (uncrewed) spacecraft on a long journey through space to visit this asteroid, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. We are sending the probe there because this asteroid seems to be made largely of metal, and to have a partially metal surface. This will be the first metallic object humans have ever visited! It’s primary, fundamental exploration, visiting a new class of solar system object.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Foundation and Regents Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and Principal Investigator of the NASA Psyche mission, will discuss what is known and what is hypothesized about the asteroid, how we have planned a mission and built a spacecraft to study this unknown object, and how we progressed with the mission through COVID, with its intense challenges to teams. Now, two years after launch, the spacecraft is soon to receive a gravity assist from Mars, and slingshot out further in the solar system to intersect with and go into orbit around the asteroid in 2029. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

July 26

Born Smart or Built Smart? The Truth About Intelligence and Effort

In this talk, Alexander Puutio, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and author of the upcoming book AI for MBAs, will explore the critical distinction between being “born smart” and being “built smart.” He will also examine how curiosity, metacognition, resilience, and deliberate practice shape effective intelligence, often outweighing genetic endowment. By looking at how individuals and organizations foster, or sabotage, their own cognitive performance, we can identify the tools and environments that maximize human potential. For Mensa members in particular, the opportunity lies in shifting the conversation from static measures of IQ to dynamic strategies for making intelligence count in the world. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

Aug. 23

Wild Boar to Baconfest: Pigs in History and Culture

Pigs were the first food animals to be domesticated, so they have a history with humans that goes back more than 12,000 years. Antiquity is only one of the reasons, however, that pork is the most commonly eaten meat in the world. This odd, contradictory animal offers a great range of advantages when it comes to feeding large populations, especially urban populations, though historically, it has also offered several disadvantages. Pork was virtually the only meat available to most of Europe during the Middle Ages, and if you ask for meat in China, you will get pork. From the invention of blood sausage by the Assyrians to creation of such American icons as barbecue and hot dogs, pig has remained on the menu for all but a few notable people groups. Celebrated at fairs and looked to for medical research, pigs offer culinary delight and potential promise but also create some challenges. So the topic of pigs is as far-ranging as the pigs themselves.

Cynthia Clampitt is a writer, speaker, and food historian. She has been writing and talking about food history for more than twenty-five years, and is the author of Pigs, Pork, and Heartland Hogs: From Wild Boar to Baconfest and Midwest Maize: How Corn Shaped the U.S. Heartland.  Her most recent book, Destination Heartland: A Guide to Discovering the Midwest's Remarkable Past, is about places to visit Midwestern history. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

Sept. 27

How to Communicate with Someone Who Disagrees with You

In our highly polarized societies, chances are good that you have run across someone who disagrees with you. Whether you just want increased harmony or you want to get your views across despite the hostile terrain, both can be achieved with key communication strategies. Even people who are highly resistant to you and your ideas can lower their guard and embrace your information if you (a) identify which of the prevailing cognitive obstacles is behind an audience’s resistance to your facts and (b) communicate in a way that targets the underlying reasons for the resistance (which are often not the same reasons your audience thinks are driving his/her/their resistance). This presentation will help you understand what is happening in the brain of someone who disagrees with you and will arm you with surprising (yet practical) strategies for persuading even the most averse audience and achieving better discussions and relations in the process.

Mensan Jenny Grant Rankin, PhD, has taught these strategies at Columbia University and the University of Cambridge, as well as in her books and Psychology Today online column, and while training federal agents, researchers, business executives, educators, and others on the best ways to share information. This engaging presentation will merge rich storytelling with comprehensive research to surprise you, delight you, and inform you along the way. You surely have a wealth of knowledge to share as a Mensan, and this Theodore Talk will help your brilliant ideas gain a more brilliant reception, no matter your audience’s initial opposition. Register for this presentation here.

 

 

Oct. 25

Saving the World with Cheap, Generic Toys

For his War-Toys photo series, photographer Brian McCarty has spent years sourcing toy-props in war zones. After finding the exact same inexpensive toys everywhere from Beirut to Baltimore, he discovered that there are just a handful of factories churning out these cheap toys for the entire global market. With support from Fulbright, the US Department of State, and PolyU Design Hong Kong, Brian conducted research on these factories and developed a simple strategy for improving the play and developmental value of these extremely-low-cost toys: give manufacturers better designs and subsidize their startup production costs.

The War Toys® organization is working to positively influence children's play on a global scale by partnering with generic toy makers; developing new, extremely-low-cost toy lines; and allowing factories to keep all of the revenue. In exchange, War Toys is harnessing existing markets to impact millions upon millions of children for relatively little cost. As pilot and proof of concept, they've started with the ubiquitous army man and are fostering a small-but-important addition to sets of plastic soldiers still being sold worldwide – photojournalists, aid workers, and frontline rescuers. The presence of these "humanitarian heroes" changes the inherent play pattern of the toys, giving children more options than "us versus them," while quietly promoting more peaceful ideals, somewhat ironically, to kids playing war. There are endless opportunities to foster similar changes to enduringly popular, generic toy lines. War Toys will bridge the play gap for disadvantaged children and create ripple effects that will span generations. After all, at this level of the market, the same toy designs are sold for decades. Register for this presentation here.