Carl Hiaasen Draws Huge Audience at University of North Florida
3400 People in Attendance for Bestselling Author

Bestselling mystery writer and award-winning columnist Carl Hiaasen is known to be one of the funniest and most interesting speakers in the country. More than 3000 people turned out at the University of North Florida to find out for themselves just how interesting he is. And they were not disappointed. The event was one of the most successful the university has ever had, and drew widespread attention beyond the campus community. The event itself was filmed by a crew from 60 Minutes for an episode to air in April.


For more information about Carl Hiaasen, call your Lavin agent at 800-762-4234, or click on the link below:

http://www.thelavinagency.com/college/carlhiaasen.html

John Chatterton Unravels The Ocean's Mysteries on Deep Sea Detectives
Upcoming Episodes Explore Fascinating Shipwreck Puzzles

Upcoming episodes of John Chatterton's History Channel show, Deep Sea Detectives, focus on three fascinating stories from the world of submarine warfare: the only German U-Boat sunk in the Gulf of Mexico during WWII; a mystery WWI U-boat off the coast of England; and the tragic sinking of one of the U.S. Navy's first submarines, the S5, which went down in 1920 with all hands.

John Chatterton is a legend in the world of deep water diving, and an outstanding keynote speaker. His talks are a wonderful blend of adventure and inspiration, drawing on stories from John's remarkable life: his experiences as an Army Medic in Viet Nam; working in the tough and dangerous world of commercial diving; and as the most accomplished deep water shipwreck hunter in history. For more information on John Chatterton, please email us at info@thelavinagency.com, or click on the link below:

http://www.thelavinagency.com/college/johnchatterton.html

Lavin Agency Signs Expert on Politics of The Muslim World
Vali Nasr a Leading Commentator and Consultant on Geopolitics and Islam

Not a day goes by without some political event in the Middle East or other part of the Muslim world making international headlines. One of the most informed guides to these events is Vali Nasr. As a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Contemporary Conflict, he is a key advisor to the American military and allied governments, and a trusted commentator in major news media. From a broad primer on the politics of the entire Muslim world, to highly customized speeches on specific countries or issues, his talks are always timely, informative, and compelling.

For more information on Vali Nasr, go to:

http://www.thelavinagency.com/college/valinasr.html

The Most Influential Scientist You've Never Heard Of
Robert Trivers Now Available for Speaking Engagements

As a young graduate student in the early 1970s Robert Trivers published some of the most influential ideas ever developed in the field of evolutionary biology. Then, for more than two decades, he worked in obscurity, while his ideas were adapted and adopted by others to change the very nature of our understanding of humanity. Now, Dr. Trivers is working on a popular book and is making himself available for public lectures. So just who is Robert Trivers? Steven Pinker has this to say about this unknown genius:

"I consider Trivers one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that he has provided a scientific explanation for the human condition: the intricately complicated and endlessly fascinating relationships that bind us to one another.

In an astonishing burst of creative brilliance, Trivers wrote a series of papers in the early 1970s that explained each of the five major kinds of human relationships: male with female, parent with child, sibling with sibling, acquaintance with acquaintance, and a person with himself or herself. In the first three cases Trivers pointed out that the partial overlap of genetic interests between individuals should, according to evolutionary biology, put them in a conflict of psychological interest as well. The love of parents, siblings, and spouses should be deep and powerful but not unmeasured, and there should be circumstances in which their interests diverge and the result is psychological conflict. In the fourth case Trivers pointed out that cooperation between nonrelatives can arise only if they are outfitted with certain cognitive abilities (an ability to recognize individuals and remember what they have done) and certain emotions (guilt, shame, gratitude, sympathy, trust)—the core of the moral sense. In the fifth case Trivers pointed out that all of us have a motive to portray ourselves as more honorable than we really are, and that since the best liar is the one who believes his own lies, the mind should be "designed" by natural selection to deceive itself.

These theories have inspired an astonishing amount of research and commentary in psychology and biology—the fields of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, Darwinian social science, and behavioral ecology are in large part attempt to test and flesh out Trivers' ideas. It is no coincidence that E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene were published in 1975 and 1976 respectively, just a few years after Trivers' seminal papers. Both bestselling authors openly acknowledged that they were popularizing Trivers' ideas and the research they spawned. Likewise for the much-talked-about books on evolutionary psychology in the 1990s—The Adapted Mind, The Red Queen, Born to Rebel, The Origin of Virtue, The Moral Animal, and my own How the Mind Works. Each of these books is based in large part on Trivers' ideas and the explosion of research they inspired (involving dozens of animal species, mathematical and computer modeling, and human social and cognitive psychology).

But Trivers' ideas are, if such a thing is possible, even more important than the countless experiments and field studies they kicked off. They belong in the category of ideas that are obvious once they are explained, yet eluded great minds for ages; simple enough to be stated in a few words, yet with implications we are only beginning to work out."

For more information about Robert Trivers, email us at info@thelavinagency.com, or call your Lavin agent today. You can also get more information by clicking on the link below:


http://www.thelavinagency.com/college/roberttrivers.html