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Welcome to the L. A. Times Book Club, an opportunity to see, hear and interact with world-class authors, celebrities and newsmakers as they discuss their books and tell their stories. What stories do you want to share with the city? What authors would you most like to meet? Here’s your chance to help us build something amazing.

On Saturday, Feb. 15，author and former Los Angeles poet laureate (获奖者) Luis J. Rodriguez will discuss From Our Land to Our Land, a new collection of stories and essays about race, culture, identity, and belonging. Rodriguez will be in conversation with Times reporter Daniel Hernandez at the Colony Theatre in Burbank. Call 213-804- 2722 to get tickets.

On March 11, the book club authors Jeanine Cummins (American Dirt) and Reyna Grande (A Dream Called Home) in conversation with Times Column One editor Steve Padilla. Ticket information is coming soon.

Earlier, we read The Library Book by bestselling author Susan Orlean and hosted a community forum where Orlean and readers shared library stories. We also took a deep dive to explore what L. A. is reading right now and showed book lovers how to read for free with library apps.

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As an elementary school student in New York City, Robert Lee would stare in disbelief at his classmates throwing away half-eaten sandwiches after lunch. His Korean immigrant parents had taught him not to waste food.

While studying finance and accounting at New York University, Robert remembered this lesson all the time. When Robert and his friend Louisa Chen entered a college entrepreneurship (创业）contest，they proposed an idea for a food-rescue nonprofit group： Their program would deliver leftovers from the dining hall to homeless shelters seven days a week all by volunteers. Their idea won the competition. With the $ 1,000 prize, they founded Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (RLC) in July 2013. In just the first few weeks, Robert’s team delivered a donation of enough spaghetti and meatballs to feed 20 people at a New York City homeless shelter.

Robert, who had taken a job as an analyst at J. P. Morgan, devoted his spare time to creating a network of New York City restaurants, from small delis (熟食店）to large chains like Starbucks and Panera Bread, agreeing to donate food, and he enlisted volunteers to make food deliveries. After RLC received national press attention, homeless shelters and soup kitchens in Portland, Oregon, Washington, DC and other cities reached out to Robert for partnership advice. The organization now reaches 16 cities around the country.

Only a year into his finance job, Robert gave up his six-figure salary to focus on RLC. “I compared one hour of impact at J. P. Morgan to one hour at RLC，and the difference was just tremendous,” he says. “One shelter told us that our donations allowed them to provide entire dinners for more than 300 people, three nights a week，” Robert says. “Things like that make me gladly quit my job.”

More than half of UK species have suffered declines in recent years and 15 percent are at risk of vanishing (消失), a report has warned. There is little evidence to suggest the rate of loss is slowing down.

Farming is key to what is happening,with more intensive agriculture affecting nearly half of the species studied and responsible for nearly a quarter of the total impact on wildlife. A loss of mixed farms, changes to sowing patterns,increased use of pesticides and fertilizers and a loss of habitat (栖息地）have taken their toll. The report said government farming policies had led to dramatic changes in farming practices,almost doubling wheat and milk yields since the 1970s, but often at the expense of nature by interrupting the food sources and habitats species rely on.

Climate change is also increasingly affecting UK nature although the impacts are mixed with some species spreading north or surviving better in warmer winters, but others are hit by the loss of coastal habitat, increased sea temperature and wilder weather. In the long term, global warming poses one of the greatest threats to nature around the world. Wildlife is also being hit by urban development, loss of town green areas, changes to the way land and forests are managed and over-abstraction (过度抽取)of water.

“The natural world needs our help as never before,” said naturalist and TV presenter David Attenborough. “We must work together, governments, conservationists, businesses and individuals to help it.”

The good news is that the creation of new wetland by conservation programs and the planting of new woodland, as well as wildlife-friendly farming programs, are providing habitats for struggling species. Reintroduction of species such as the pine marten (松貂)and large blue butterflies is also helping, but more needs to be done, the report said.

In a classic episode (片段）of The Simpsons, Homer's class reunion ends in shame when one of Homer’s guilty secrets is exposed: he never graduated from high school. To get his diploma, he must pass a science test. As he sits down to retake the exam, he holds one of his trademark dialogues with his brain. “All right，brain. You don’t like me and I don’t like you. But let’s just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.”

Many a true word is spoken as a joke. Homer Simpson’s Everyman character really is an Everyman. For most people, engaging in the kind of effortful thinking that is required to pass a science test feels too much like hard work. It is so much easier to quit and let the brain’s autopilot take over.

And no wonder. Evolution has blessed the human brain with all kinds of mental shortcuts that make life manageable. If we had to think about every action or weigh up every decision, we would break down. As a result, certain ideas and modes of thinking come naturally to us, such as effortless thinking.

But at huge cost. Our mental shortcuts work fine at the level of individuals and small-scale societies, but in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, they are a danger to society. Effortless thinking is at the root of many of the modern world’s most serious problems: terrorism，hatred, inequality and religious extremism. All are caused by people disengaging their critical thinking and going with their gut (非理性的）feeling.

Everybody is capable of gut feeling, but also of the critical thinking. Both thinking styles are needed to make the world go round. Unfortunately, the latter requires training that is unavailable or unappealing to many people.

One of the bright spots in 2017 was the start of a movement called the March For Science. Those who believe in the power of science need to keep on marching, or give more power to people who don’t much like their own brains — or other people’s.