Profs and Pints Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Big Lebowski Lecture,” an exploration of the classic Coen Brothers’ film and its relation to Westerns, detective fiction, and the gritty history of Los Angeles, with Anthony Dyer Hoefer, associate professor of English at George Mason University and scholar of literature and culture.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-lebowski .]

Profs and Pints is bringing fans of The Big Lebowski something better than a White Russian: A deep look at the beloved 1998 movie in the broader context of film and literature.

Professor Anthony Hoefer, who has written extensively about the big-screen tale of the Dude, will tackle enduring questions asked by film scholars and historians, cinephiles, and league bowlers. He might even offer insights on what Sam Elliott was doing portraying The Stranger in the film.

To get the bowling ball rolling, we’ll discuss how The Big Lebowski represents a wholly original reading of Raymond Chandler’s most famous novel, The Big Sleep. Then we’ll look at how this has implications for any consideration of the connections between two of twentieth century American literature and film’s most enduring popular genres, the Western and the hardboiled detective story.

On our investigative journey we’ll cross paths with famous shamuses such as the dogged Jack Gittes memorably portrayed by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown and Easy Rawlins from Walter Mosley’s neo-noir novels and the film Devil in a Blue Dress. Roger Rabbit will pop up as well.

Looming large will be the setting of such tales, Los Angeles. We’ll try to solve the mysteries related to how the City of Angels was built – in terms of infrastructure and in the imagination – on top of a Wild West frontier dream.

It will be more fun than a night rolling on the lanes. The Dude abides, and Profs and Pints provides. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. The talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: Jeff Bridges at Lebowski Fest 2011. Photo by Joe Polletta / Creative Commons.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories,” with Brian A. Sharpless, licensed clinical psychologist, former faculty member at Penn State University and Washington State University, and author of Psychodynamic Therapy Techniques: A Guide to Expressive and Supportive Interventions.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-conspiracy .]

What exactly is a conspiracy theory? Are people who believe in conspiracies fundamentally different from those who do not? Are there any ways to protect yourself from buying into false theories? How often do conspiracy theories actually turn out to be true?

These are just a few of the fascinating questions that will be tackled by Brian Sharpless, a favorite of Profs and Pints fans, in a talk that earned rave reviews wherever he has given it.

Dr. Sharpless will discuss conspiratorial thinking throughout history, define what "conspiracy theory” means to psychologists and psychiatrists, and summarize what the field knows about the people who buy into conspiracy beliefs.

You may be surprised to learn that there are ways to predict who will believe in conspiracy theories, with some very common “cognitive biases” leaving people more accepting of them. Conspiracy theories also can provide short-term psychological benefits to the believer. Furthermore, a number of psychological traits and disorders – both common and rare – have been associated with conspiratorial thinking.

Perhaps most surprising, there are relatively few big differences between those who are predisposed to believe in conspiracy theories and those who aren't. It's small differences that sometimes have a huge impact in worldview.

The good news is that there are ways to evaluate – and even “inoculate” yourself against – conspiracy theories, and Dr. Sharpless will offer you practical tips on this front. You may walk out with a different perspective on what you read in the news and on the internet, with new knowledge that may help you maintain a more realistic and accurate worldview. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. The talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: An Airbus A340 jet emits contrails, the subject of conspiracy beliefs. (Photo by Adrian Pingstone / Wikimedia.)

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Medieval Sex,” a look at the reality of medieval sex and sexuality through the lens of comic literature, satire, and obscenity, with Larissa “Kat” Tracy, professor of medieval literature and author of several books on the Middle Ages.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/perch-medieval-sex .]

Profs and Pints is about to bring some “bawd” to Baltimore.
In its quest to provide scholars new audiences of people who love to learn, Profs and Pints is debuting at The Perch in Federal Hill with a fascinating, rollicking discussion of how medieval people navigated sex in their time.

The speaker, Professor Kat Tracy, has appeared on Wondrium’s series Sex in the Middle Ages and the History Channel’s Dark Marvels. She has earned a big following among Profs and Pints fans in Baltimore and other cities by giving excellent talks in other venues on medieval torture, the pagan origins of late winter holidays, monster beliefs, and the Green Knight legend.

This time out, Professor Tracy will tackle the question of whether medieval society truly was more prudish than our own.
She’ll discuss how the sex lives of medieval people were framed by religious edicts and secular laws, how they skirted those restrictions, and how they found outlets in sexual humor and displays.

Medieval discussions of sex were most common in humorous literature that used satire, double entendres, obscenity, and dirty jokes, often to engage in political commentary or draw attention to bigger social issues. We’ll look at how great writers of that time found ways to discuss sex while escaping censure from the Catholic Church.
It will be about as much fun as you can have outside the bedroom. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: An illustration by Giovannino de' Grassi from the late 1300s.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Search for Life Beyond Earth,” with Måns Holmberg, postdoctoral researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute and part of a team of astronomers looking for chemical traces of life on distant exoplanets.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-life-beyond .]

Are we alone in the universe?

While many of us have pondered that question, astronomer Måns Holmberg of Baltimore’s Space Telescope Science Institute is seriously focused on answering it. In April he was part of a Cambridge-led team of astronomers who generated worldwide headlines by announcing that they had discovered potential evidence of a gas produced almost exclusively by life in the James Webb Space Telescope’s data from the atmosphere of a distant world.

You don’t need to journey any farther than Baltimore’s Guilford Hall to learn from Dr. Holmberg how the search for life elsewhere is being conducted and what strides are being made on that front. We’ll explore what it would take to confirm signs of life on such a world, what challenges remain, and how the next wave of observations could ultimately tip the scales.

Dr. Holmberg will look at the role being played by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), how it uses infrared light to decode the chemical composition of strange atmospheres, and how it has left us closer than ever to answering the question of whether life exists elsewhere.

He’ll discuss astronomers’ growing interest in a new class of exoplanets known as “Hycean worlds”—ocean-covered planets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres that could be surprisingly hospitable to life. We’ll visit K2-18 b, a distant world around twice the size of Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of a cool red-dwarf star 120 light-years away, and discuss why it has become one of the most interesting exoplanets in the search for life.

Recent observations from JWST have revealed something extraordinary: the atmosphere of planet K2-18 b contains carbon-based molecules like methane and carbon dioxide and possibly even dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a gas that, on Earth, is almost exclusively produced by life. Dr. Holmberg will what makes DMS a compelling (though not yet definitive) biosignature candidate.

You’ll emerge from the talk with a much richer appreciation of the immense possibilities out there among the stars. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. The talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: An illustration showing what the exoplanet K2-18 b might look like. Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) / Wikimedia Commons