(Think & Drink begins at 7:30 p.m. at Naked City on Tuesday, January 20. The panel is free.)

Next Tuesday, January 20, Humanities Washington is hosting a special edition of their Think & Drink reading series at Naked City Brewery & Taphouse. Moderator Ross Reynolds will lead a conversation about the Charlie Hebdo massacre with Spokane political cartoonist Milt Priggee and Islam cultural expert David Fenner. While Think & Drink always aims to cover hot topics—past outings have focused on gay marriage and legalized marijuana—this edition was put together in record time.

Humanities Washington program director Zaki Abdelhamid sounds surprised that everything came together so smoothly. Fenner and Priggee were already on the roster of Humanities Washington’s Speakers Bureau, a program that provides 31 “low-cost, high-quality public presentations across the state” in a variety of fields, so they were immediately available. Obviously, Fenner’s expertise would be important to contextualize the discussion, and Priggee is a free speech advocate who had already produced two cartoons about the Charlie Hebdo shooting by the time Humanities Washington reached out to him. Abdelhamid says Priggee regularly gives a presentation titled “Kill the Cartoons,” which he says is a discussion of all the controversial cartoon proposals that “did not make it through his editor,” including one especially prickly cartoon that Priggee pitches every year and the editors reject every year, like clockwork.

The public’s response has obviously shifted in the days since the Charlie Hebdo shooting from a solid show of support of the Hebdo cartoonists to a more nuanced discussion of race, cultural issues, and what free speech really means in the Western world. Abdelhamid promises the program will “dive a little bit deeper into the issue,” and he’s been in continual discussion with Priggee, Fenner, and Reynolds; they've transitioned from broader lenses of freedom of speech and cultural sensitivity to a narrower focus. He says, “We’re going to address more than free speech—we’re going to talk a little bit more about France’s cultural sensitivities,” demographic makeup, and history, to “try to dig a little bit deeper into that history, into that context,” in an attempt to “answer questions about why these questions are important.” If there's one thing the world doesn't need, it's another hot take; Abdelhamid and the panel seem to understand what we require right now is meaning.