Are we living in the End Times? Are we doomed? Is History really over?
John Martin believes these are reasonable questions in an age of climate change, AI, nuclear threats, and assaults on democracy at home and abroad. Yet in this talk, he invites us to take a longer historical view of the apocalyptic imagination — and to consider some of the surprising ways it has fostered cultural and political change, sometimes even for the better.

Join Durham County Library for this special event exploring the history of apocalypse and its implications for us today. Musical accompaniment will be provided by Durham heralds of the end times, Doomsday Profit. This event is free of charge, open to all ages, and will be held offsite at Beer Study, located at 2501 University Dr #4, Durham, NC 27707. Please note entry will be first come first serve. 

John Jeffries Martin is a historian of early modern Europe, with particular interests in the social, cultural, and intellectual history of Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He is the author of Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (1993), winner of the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association, Myths of Renaissance Individualism (2004), and A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World (2022). Martin teaches courses in Italian and European history. His most recent courses include a seminars on Christopher Columbus and on the history of torture in the West, from Antiquity to the present.

Durham, N.C. sludge metal band Doomsday Profit have built upon their foundations of gritty, groovy, and psych-splattered sludge with their forthcoming self-titled album, out Sept. 19, 2025. Across the album’s nine songs, the band has embedded an even wider array of influences into their acerbic, dystopian sludge. Particles of monolithic doom, grisly death ‘n’ roll grooves, driving punk rock and scathing black metal all flash in the band’s raw recordings.  This broader approach has turned their already dynamic performances into a must-see, with a live resume that includes Hopscotch Music Festival and Seismic Summer, as well as supporting slots with established acts like Thou, The Obsessed, Black Tusk, REZN, and Restless Spirit.