Tacoma Community College's Artist & Lecture series continues Thursday with Robert Manning, PhD - billed in pre-event hype as a research professor and founding director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services, and "a specialist in the deregulation of household debt, consumer finance, economic development, immigration and globalization." Manning will be in Tacoma at TCC to talk about all of this, and likely his book, Credit Card Nation: America's Dangerous Addiction to Credit.

Best of all: it's free and open to the public.

Considering how much you put on the Discover Card during the holidays, free events are a good thing.

[Tacoma Community College - Bldg. 11 Student Center, 11:30 a.m., free, 6501 S. 19th St., Tacoma, 253.566.5000]