Talk to Me, Baby

The 150th anniversary of Darwin's On the Origin of Species will be celebrated all day Saturday at the Natural History Museum. Creationists: hide your children.

Wednesday:
>> This week's first crime novelist event is today at noon at the Freer's Meyer Auditorium with forensic mystery author, forensic anthropologist and professor Kathy Reichs, whose novels inspired the TV series Bones. Reichs will give an illustrated lecture discussing her forensics work and how it influences her writing. $25.

>> Head to the American History's Carmichael Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. for a discussion about pitching legend Satchel Paige with journalist and Paige biographer Larry Tye, as well as Lonnie Bunch (director of National Museum of African American History and Culture) and Wil Haygood (WaPo columnist).

>> Or, be at the Hamiltonian Gallery at 7 p.m. for an artist talk with current Almost Surely, Almost Everywhere exhibitor Ken Fandell, whose work merges science and art, including "the problems and potentials of infinity (philosophical and mathematical), [and] ways to define and destroy time and space."

>> Looking for a more politically charged option? Head to Sixth and I, where author and editor Sam Tanenhaus will look at The Death of Conservatism at 7 p.m. He'll pose an answer to the question, “Why does the contemporary Right define itself less by what it yearns to conserve than by what it longs to destroy?” and "argue that conservatives today need to understand that the true role of conservatism is not to advance a narrow ideological agenda but to engage in a serious dialogue with liberalism and join with it in upholding the politics of stability.” $6.

Thursday:
>> If you can't make Wednesday's lunchtime crime novel lecture, meet up with D.C.'s own George Pelacanos at the 14th Street Busboys as he reads from his newest crime novel The Way Home, as well as the late Don Carpenter's first book Hard Rain Falling. Free; 6:30 p.m. in the Langston Room.

Friday:
>> This week's 12:30 p.m. lunchtime lecture at the Hirshhorn focuses on Walead Beshty: Legibility on Color Backgrounds and will be led by curator Evelyn Hankins.