Category: Monthly Gathering

For more than 150 years, academics have questioned how William Shakespeare of Stratford, a man who left school at age thirteen and apparently never traveled abroad, could have written such a broad and deep body of work, one that is said to draw on the largest vocabulary of any writer in the English language.

Our speaker on Saturday, September 17 will be Mark McPherson, who was a featured MENSA guest a few years back. In his address, he will discuss the matter of the oft-debated Shakespearean Authorship Question. In the course of his presentation Mark will cover: Who was “Shakespeare?” And what evidence does or does not exist to affirm him as the author of the plays and poems which have born his name for the last six centuries? These are the burning questions which have intrigued the likes of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud and many others. Along just such an inquisitorial line, Mark McPherson has continued his scrutiny of the Bard of Avon. Over the course of years Mr. McPherson has actually “tried” William Shakespeare in absentia in a number of discourses, debates, and in 1984, the production of “The Great Shakespeare Duel,” which aired on PBS. On the heels of convincing a general audience jury of his prosecutorial case, Mr. McPherson was invited to London’s Middle Temple Hall, where a British debate involved him as a member of the Oxfordian Prosecutorial team.

Himself a lover of historical research and mystery, our speaker is also the founder of DAEDALOS, an agency for “consultancy and field investigation,” which over the decades has examined such enigmas as parapsychology, the Loch Ness Monster, the quests for Atlantis and Camelot, the Shroud of Turin, as well as the enduring matter of Shakespeare’s identity and authorial claim upon a host of immortal works.

As an actor, playwright, film-maker and popular lecturer, Mark McPherson brings his own unique style to the stage, even as he has done in his national and international one-character dramas in which he has portrayed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens, Wyatt Earp, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt and C.S. Lewis. He is also the author of two non-fiction volumes, “Looking For Lisette: In Search Of An American Original”, and a memoir, “An Irregular Life: The Adventures and Memories of a Fortunate Sherlockian”.

Bringing a keen sense of curiosity, intellectual method and vibrant humor to his subjects, Mark McPherson admits to applying “the sort of investigative and deductive techniques” to his case-work as two of his idols, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his fictive creation, Sherlock Holmes. Dubbed” Michigan’s Indiana Jones” by legendary radio host J.P. McCarthy, Mark McPherson’s work has been critically acclaimed on a national as well as international basis. “Poe is fine, but McPherson is superb” wrote America’s literary giant, Ray Bradbury.

For these and other reasons we look forward to what Mark has to say concerning the enigma of Shakespeare, at 7pm on Saturday, September 17.

Please note that this program will be presented live and on Zoom. The live presentation will take place at:

Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church in Southfield
23925 Northwestern Hwy
Southfield, MI 48075

Doors open at 630pm. The program begins at 7pm. Admission: $4 for Mensa Members, $5 for non-Mensans.

Following the presentation, please join us for dinner at Buddy’s Pizza, located at 31646 Northwestern Hwy., in Farmington Hills, Just Northeast of Middlebelt Rd.

If you’d prefer to participate on Zoom, you’ll need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-0922-Gathering ,The event’s Zoom URL and instructions for connecting will only be sent to those who are pre-registered. The Zoom room opens at 6:30pm for mingling. There is no charge for the Zoom presentation.

“Anti-Semitism is a disease.”
-Daniel Barenboim 

Christianity originated as one of multiple Jewish sects found throughout the Roman Empire, and it remained one through much of the 1st century CE. By the end of the first century, especially with the growing influence of Greek sources on the development of the faith, Christianity began to emerge as an independent religion from Judaism and, in the process, Jews and Judaism began to be cast as satanic. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire (381 CE), Judaism became a target of Christian hatred, and antisemitism became a fundamental part of Christianity, resulting in untold suffering by the Jewish people and their religion, eventually manifesting itself most horribly in the Holocaust. 

Kenneth W. Phifer holds a BA degree in history from Harvard College and a doctorate from the University of Chicago. A Unitarian Universalist minister for over fifty years, he served the Ann Arbor congregation for 25 years (1980-2005). He is the author of three books and some two dozen articles and has been active in many peace groups and social justice movements. He is a father (5), grandfather (17), and has one great granddaughter. 

Join us on Saturday, June 18, when our speaker, Reverend Dr. Kenneth W. Phifer, will review the origins of Christianity and how antisemitism, often referred to as “the oldest hatred”, came to be a central part of the Christian religion.

Please note that this program will be presented live and on Zoom. The live presentation will take place at:

Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church in Southfield
23925 Northwestern Hwy
Southfield, MI 48075

Doors open at 630pm. The program begins at 7pm. Admission: $4 for Mensa Members, $5 for non-Mensans. 

Following the presentation, please join us for dinner at Buddy’s Pizza, located at 31646 Northwestern Hwy., in Farmington Hills, Just Northeast of Middlebelt Rd.If you’d prefer to participate on Zoom, you’ll need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-0622-Gathering ,The event’s Zoom URL and instructions for connecting will only be sent to those who are pre-registered. The Zoom room opens at 6:30pm for mingling. There is no charge for the Zoom presentation.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
– Edmund Burke

Join us at 7pm on Saturday, May 21, when our guest speaker, Dr. Arash Javanbakht M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic (STARC) at Wayne State University, will give us a crash course on the nature of fear, why we experience it, and how it can be, and is, used to manipulate us.

Dr. Javanbakht will deliver a research-based analysis of how fear can be exploited by politicians or religious leaders to encourage tribalism, by rallying us against feared others. Also, how it keeps us frantically consuming the media and social-media products that convey it, thus offering business a financial incentive to keep us afraid in ways that pit us against each other, or to intimidate enemies and subordinates. Lasty, Dr. Javanbakht will explore ways of overcoming fear and how to resist fear-based manipulation. Skills that if learned widely would leave our nation less divided.

Few people confront fear as often as Dr. Javanbakht, an internationally recognized expert on all of its aspects, including its biological roots and cultural influences. 

Dr. Javanbakht’s clinical work is mainly focused on anxiety and trauma related disorders, and PTSD in civilians, first responders, law enforcement, and refugees and victims of torture and human trafficking. 

His research is also focused on anxiety disorders and trauma. Several research studies at the STARC examine the impact of exposure to war trauma in adult and child Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the US, and biological and psychological factors of risk and resilience. This research examines genetic, environmental, and inflammation correlates of trauma as well. Also, use of art, dance and movement, and yoga and mindfulness in helping refugee families overcome stress.

Please note that this program will be presented live and on Zoom. The live presentation will take place at:

Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church in Southfield
23925 Northwestern Hwy
Southfield, MI 48075

Doors open at 630pm. The program begins at 7pm. Admission: $4 for Mensa Members, $5 for non-Mensans. 

Following the presentation, those attending the live presentation are invited to join us for dinner at Buddy’s Pizza, located at 31646 Northwestern Hwy., in Farmington Hills, Just Northeast of Middlebelt Rd.

If you’d prefer to participate on Zoom, you’ll need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-0522-Gathering ,The event’s Zoom URL and instructions for connecting will only be sent to those who are pre-registered. The Zoom room opens at 6:30pm for mingling. There is no charge for the Zoom presentation.

Until the weather becomes more predictably amenable to meeting in person, Southeast Michigan Mensa will be presenting a series of lectures on Zoom. Attendees need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-0322-Gathering .

In 1961, NASA invited the nation’s best female pilots to a medical facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they were subjected to physical exams unlike any they had ever experienced before. The tests were intense, both physically and psychologically, and were designed to determine if these women had “the right stuff” to fly in space. NASA had also just administered these tests to a select group of men, of whom seven were destined to be forever known as “the Mercury 7”. Now commonly known as “the Mercury 13”, this class of First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs) included twins, a senator’s wife, and a few mothers. Would they fly in space too…and, if so, when??? 

Dr. Nicolle Zellner, our speaker this month, is a professor of physics at Albion College. Nicolle’s research interests focus on understanding the impact history of the Earth-Moon system and how those impacts affected the conditions for life on Earth. 

Dr. Zellner was a member of the 2006 Antarctic Search for Meteorites team and collected over 800 specimens. Before Albion she was a post-doctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and she was a member of the scientific ground crew during NASA’s STS-67 Astro-2 mission of the Space Shuttle “Endeavour” in 1995. 

Nicolle completed her undergraduate degree, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her PhD is from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her work has earned several prestigious awards, including the Carl Sagan Medal for excellence in public communication.

Dr. Zellner has been published in over 50 Scientific Publications. She’s presented at more than 100 Conferences, and participated in up to 150 public outreach activities, and you can follow her on Twitter at @astrodiva.

Sound interesting? You can blast off with us on Saturday, March 19 to learn more about America’s first female astronauts. The Zoom room opens at 6:30pm for mingling. The program starts at 7:00pm. Please remember that all attendees need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-0322-Gathering .