Upcoming Events

Sip Salon - Dirty Little Secrets: The Science of Clean

Tuesday, June 2, 2026 6:30-8:30 PM

Nocterra Audubon

Welcome to the Sip Salon where we gather to learn together through articles and discussion. Read the article, join the discussion. Just curious folks coming together to discuss topics. Whether you know a little or a lot, we hope to grow together in our understandings. With drinks.

This month, is cleanliness next to godliness or are we overdoing it?

The story of handwashing is stranger than you'd think. For most of human history, the idea that your hands could kill someone was considered absurd — even offensive. When a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis discovered in 1848 that doctors washing their hands between the morgue and the delivery room could drop maternal death rates from 18% to 1%, he lost his job, had a breakdown, and died in a psychiatric institution at 47. Nobody believed him.

It took another 40 years and the discovery of germs themselves before the world caught up.

Since then, our relationship with cleanliness has swung wildly back and forth: from Victorian germ paranoia to post-WWII laxity, from the "hygiene is bourgeois nonsense" countercultural 60s to the HIV-era anxiety of the 80s, right up to the Covid-era memes of us all singing Mr. Brightside while lathering up.

But here's where it gets complicated: scientists now argue that we may have overcorrected. The "Hygiene Hypothesis" suggests that obsessive cleanliness — by removing us from the beneficial microbes we evolved alongside may actually be driving the rise in allergies, asthma, autoimmune conditions, and even anxiety and depression. Your immune system, deprived of the microbial diversity it needs, starts attacking things it shouldn't.

So what's the right balance? When does clean become too clean? And what does our 130-year obsession with hygiene reveal about how we think about risk, bodies, and control?

Bring your curiosity and maybe skip the antibacterial soap this once.

The Siposium - A Sanitary Revolution: How Victorians Transformed Dirty Dogs into Hygienic Hounds

Thursday, June 11, 2026 7:00-9:00 PM

Parsons North Brewing Company

Ever wish your favorite NPR segment or Ted Talk came with trivia, drinks, and real conversation? Welcome to The Siposium—a live, interactive gathering where we deep dive into surprisingly niche topics with expert guests, thoughtful dialogue, and just enough irreverence to keep it fun. Think NPR-style curiosity, casual community vibes, and real-time interaction. With drinks.

This month, have you ever stopped to consider why you give your dog a bath and brush their teeth—or why they detest either of these routines? Pet ownership developed alongside a sweeping transformation known as the Sanitary Revolution that shaped our modern, hygienic lifeways. Together, we will explore how this process transformed dogs' bodies, behavior, and character while also exploring how this same event forever altered everything from human habits to urban landscapes.

Speaker Bio: Neil earned his PhD in environmental history from The Ohio State University in 2024. His dissertation, titled "In a Dog's Age: Fabricating the Family Dog in Modern Britain, 1780-1920," examines how, why, and where the modern pet dog originated. When not writing about dogs he enjoys spending time hiking with—and forever tossing tennis balls to—​his golden retriever.

*Weather Permitting this event will be held outdoors and dogs will be welcome to attend. Should we need to move inside, we will email at least an hour in advance of the event and ask you to leave your furry friends at home. *

Sip Salon - Why Do We Believe Things We Can't Prove?

Monday, July 6, 2026 6:00-8:00 PM

Honest Friend Brewing

Why do we believe things we can't prove? Faith, intuition, gut feelings, conspiracy theories, and scientific consensus all ask us to believe things we haven't personally verified. What's the difference between reasonable trust and blind faith and how do we know which one we're doing?

Welcome to the Sip Salon where we gather to learn together through articles and discussion. Read the article, join the discussion. Just curious folks coming together to discuss topics. Whether you know a little or a lot, we hope to grow together in our understandings. With drinks.

Why do we believe things we can't prove — and how do we decide who to trust when we can't verify the facts ourselves? This month's Sip Salon explores two surprisingly connected ideas: that our brains may be hardwired to find meaning, detect patterns, and seek out belief whether the evidence is there or not and that the real crisis of our information age isn't our inability to tell true from false, but our inability to tell who is even genuinely trying to tell the truth. Drawing on two short, engaging articles one from psychology and neuroscience, one from philosophy and media we'll dig into the fuzzy line between reasonable trust and blind faith, between honest mistakes and deliberate deception, and what any of this means for how we navigate a world full of things we'll never be able to personally verify. Just curious people, a willingness to question some assumptions, and a drink in hand.

The Siposium - Beyond the Echo Chamber: How to talk with someone you think is completely wrong

Sunday, July 12, 2026 7:00-9:00 PM

Seventh Son Brewing

We're bad at talking to people we disagree with — and this month, Dr. Aaron Yarmel is going to fix that.

Ever wish your favorite NPR segment or Ted Talk came with trivia, drinks, and real conversation? Welcome to The Siposium, a live, interactive gathering where we deep dive into surprisingly niche topics with expert guests, thoughtful dialogue, and just enough irreverence to keep it fun. Think NPR-style curiosity, casual community vibes, and real-time interaction. With drinks.

This month, we know how to debate to win, and we know how to ghost, but our current culture rarely gives us the tools to actually talk across a deep divide. When faced with profound disagreement about life's biggest questions or society's most controversial topics, we easily fall into intellectual traps that shut real discussion down, such as dogmatism, moral relativism, or total nihilism. This month, we're unpacking a powerful alternative over a beer called Inquiry Dialogue. Distinct from both adversarial debate and purely supportive storytelling spaces, Inquiry Dialogue is a rigorous, truth-seeking practice. It is an actively transformational process where we learn and evolve by thinking deeply in community with others. Drawing on his years of experience facilitating discussions with everyone from kindergartners to medical professionals, Dr. Aaron Yarmel will show how this collaborative, disciplined framework can transform hostile arguments into meaningful exchanges.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Aaron Yarmel is the Director of the Philosophy For & With Children Academy at The Ohio State University, where he is also the Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values and a Physicians Coach, specializing in Philosophical Counseling, at The James Comprehensive Cancer Center. Aaron's research and practice revolve around dialogue facilitation, philosophy for children, AI ethics, and two-level utilitarianism. He is a Fellow and an Endorsed Practitioner of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) and the Founding Director of Philosophy Counseling and Consulting. Aaron holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MSc in Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics, and a Bachelor of Music in violin performance from the Eastman School of Music.