British Mensa : Introducing Inclusion – SMART Planning 1:30 PM. Following Lenna Cumberbatch's Talking Point article Inclusion is Good for Everyone (March/April 2026 IQ, pp 36-37), this interactive session will support attendees in achieving their own inclusion journey. Lenna will explore core inclusion concepts and language, and there will also be an opportunity for you to develop your own SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) inclusion objective. There's also homework! Come prepared with an inclusion objective you would like to achieve (work or personal) and we'll workshop as many as we can in small groups.

For the full write-up, registration instructions and how to become a guest on the British Mensa website, visit the American Mensa event. The talk is free for members to attend. The Zoom link will be sent to all registrants the week commencing 30 March.
Virtual Event!!

MWW : Nonfiction Book Discussion 4:30 PM CST. Please join us in discussing The Technological Republic by Alexander Karp. We generally discuss what we liked about the book or found challenging. We also discuss what we would like more or less of, what format we read the book in, and whether it was a recent read.

Can't make it this month? The next books will be Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity by Peter Attia (May 20), and Fixing Fairness: 4 Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All by Lily Zheng (June 17). See the full write-up and find contact info on the American Mensa Event.
Virtual Event!!

Irish Mensa Lecture and Discussion: Why Do We Laugh? 1 PM. Irish Mensa meets virtually on the third Monday of each month at 7 PM Irish Time; a discussion then follows the lecture.

Laughter is an incredibly powerful and yet mysterious emotion. We laugh with delight, but also surprise. We laugh at jokes, but also at embarrassment. Why? What subconscious signal is laughter intended to display? Why do we laugh when someone tickles us and what should we make of the fact that rodents do it too? And why is it that people's sense of humor differs wildly and yet some drugs can send us all into fits of the giggles, even if there is nothing to laugh at?

Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency, Robin May was appointed Gresham Professor of Physic in May 2022. Between July 2020 and September 2025 he served as Chief Scientific Adviser at the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Professor May continues his work on Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham. A Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Wolfson Royal Society Research Merit Fellow and Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, Professor May specializes in research into human infectious diseases, with a particular focus on how pathogens survive and replicate within host organisms.

For the full write-up and to join, visit the American Mensa Event. One does not have to register early for the event—simply click on the Zoom link before the session starts (check back here for that link on Monday, April 19th).
Virtual Event!!

Theodore Talk: Language Processing in the Brain Across Diverse Languages and Speakers 2:30 PM. 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.

The list of all the Theodore talks will be on the American Mensa Event Calendar. Provided you register for the live talk, you will receive a link to a recording of the event. Closed captioning enabled.
Virtual Event!!