Mixed Taste: At Home is where even the most mismatched subjects find common ground in an interactive lecture series that can go pretty much anywhere. On Wednesday nights at 7PM, two speakers get twenty minutes each to enlighten participants on unrelated topics, without making any connections to the other. It is only as participants begin to ask questions that these talented, sometimes hilarious, speakers start to take our highly engaged audience on an adventure of words with twists and turns that eventually bring the two together in extraordinary ways. 

 Co-curated by MCA Denver and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Mixed Taste: At Home will bring together favorite speakers from years past live from their living rooms to yours.

This week:

• 7/15: Polar Forests & Trendy Soul Food  |  Featuring Kirk Johnson & Adrian Miller

Each evening will conclude with an original poem inspired by the topics performed by some of Denver’s best poets, including Suzi Q. Smith, Brenton Weyi, Mahogany, and James Brunt. 

This six-week series will be free with registration, and accessible via YouTube live on Wednesdays. Please join us for laughs, intellectual gymnastics, and community-building through a fun, fascinating cultural discourse.

Dr. Kirk Johnson is the Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He oversees more than 440 employees and a collection of more than 147 million objects—the largest natural history collection in the world. The museum hosts about six million visitors annually. In 2018, its scientists published 586 scientific research papers and named 310 new species. In 2019, the museum opened its largest renovation, “The David H. Koch Hall of Fossils-Deep Time.” This exhibition interprets the history of life on Earth and addresses its relevance to humanity’s future. Johnson is a paleontologist who has led expeditions resulting in the discovery of 1,400 fossil sites. His research focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs. He is known for his scientific articles, popular books, museum exhibitions, documentaries, and collaborations with artists. His recent documentaries include the three-part NOVA series, “Making North America,” which aired on PBS in November 2015, “The Great Yellowstone Thaw,” which premiered on PBS in June 2017, and most recently “Polar Extremes,” which premiered on PBS in February 2020. His latest book, Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline, the Travels of an Artist and a Scientist Along the Shores of the Prehistoric Pacific, explores the deep history of the West Coast from California to Alaska. Previous Mixed Taste lecture topics: Aquatic Plants in 2009, the Ice Ages in 2011, and Walruses in 2012 and 2014.

Adrian Miller is a food writer, attorney and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, CO. He is the executive director of the Colorado Council of Churches. Miller previously served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton and a senior policy analyst for Colorado governor Bill Ritter Jr. Miller’s first book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, won the James Beard Foundation Award for Scholarship and Reference in 2014. His second book is The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, From the Washingtons to the Obamas. Previous Mixed Taste lecture topics: Soul Food in 2007 and 2014, Soda Pop in 2008, Hot Sauce in 2009, Chicken & Waffles in 2011, Kool-Aid Pickles in 2012, and Presidential Drinking in 2018.

Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, activist, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. Performing across the U.S. for over a decade, she has shared stages with Nikki Giovanni, the late Gil Scott Heron, and many more. Her poems have appeared in Union Station Magazine, Suspect Press, La Palabra, Muzzle Magazine, Malpais Review, The Pedestal, The Los Angeles Journal, Denver Syntax, Word is Bond, The Peralta Press, Yellow Chair Review, and in the anthologies The Mutiny Info Reader, Diverse-City, His Rib: Anthology of Women, and In Our Own Words. Her chapbook collection of poems, Thirteen Descansos, was published by Penmanship Books. She co-wrote the dramatic productions How I Got Over: Journeys in Verse (produced by DCPA Off-Center in the 2015/16 season) and Where We Are From: Freedom is a Constant Struggle. Suzi Q. has also worked extensively as an activist with civil rights organizations, victims advocate organizations, arts organizations, peace organizations, hospitals, prisons, and more. She was the founding Slammaster of Denver’s Slam Nuba, and she spent 12 years in the poetry slam arena as a coach, organizer, and performer. In addition, she has worked extensively with youth, serving as a Teaching Artist with Youth On Record, and as a coach of Denver Minor Disturbance Youth Poetry Slam, resulting in two international championships. Currently, Suzi Q. is at work on her next collection while she continues to teach Creative Writing, and she serves as the co-Chair of the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs.