**PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A VIRTUAL PROGRAM THAT WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM. Registrants will receive a link to access the Zoom Webinar via email.**

Bestselling author Maryn McKenna will give a presentation based on her book, Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats, in this ZOOM webinar. Particular attention will be paid to antibiotic abuse, consumer pressure, and the future of eating meat.

About The Book: What you eat matters—for your health, for the environment, and for future generations. In this riveting investigative narrative, McKenna dives deep into the world of modern agriculture by way of chicken: from the farm where it's raised directly to your dinner table. Consumed more than any other meat in the United States, chicken is emblematic of today's mass food-processing practices and their profound influence on our lives and health. Tracing its meteoric rise from scarce treat to ubiquitous global commodity, McKenna reveals the astounding role of antibiotics in industrial farming, documenting how and why "wonder drugs" revolutionized the way the world eats—and not necessarily for the better. Rich with scientific, historical, and cultural insights, this spellbinding cautionary tale shines a light on one of America's favorite foods—and shows us the way to safer, healthier eating for ourselves and our children. The book documents how antibiotics transformed chicken from local delicacy to industrial commodity—and human health threat—uncovering the ways we can make America's favorite meat safer again.

About the Author: Maryn McKenna is a senior writer at WIRED, where she covers public health and global health, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory University, where she teaches health and science writing and storytelling. She is the author of the 2017 bestseller BIG CHICKEN: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats, which received the 2018 Science in Society Award and was named a best book of 2017 by Amazon, Smithsonian, Science News, Wired, Civil Eats, and other publications (and is published in the UK and other territories under the title Plucked) as well as the award-winning books Superbug and Beating Back the Devil. She appeared in the Vox+ Netflix documentaries “Pandemics: Explained” and “Coronavirus: Explained”; the 2019 documentary Resistance Fighters, which won top prizes at the Vancouver and Paris film festivals; and the 2014 documentary Resistance. Her 2015 TED Talk, "What do we do when antibiotics don't work anymore?" has been viewed 1.9 million times and translated into 34 languages. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Scientific American, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, among many other publications. She has received the 2019 AAAS-Kavli Gold Award for magazine writing, the 2019 John P. McGovern Award for Excellence in Biomedical Communication, the 2014 Leadership Award of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, and the 2013 Byron H. Waksman Award for Excellence in the Public Communication of Life Sciences, among many other honors. She was a 2018 Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale University and a Knight Foundation science journalism fellow at MIT and the University of Michigan.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. Presented in collaboration with the Tewksbury Public Library.

NOTE: This program will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recording via email within 24 hours of the program.