Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints DC presents: “China to Our South,” on a rival superpower’s emergence as a key player in Latin America and the Caribbean, with Leland Lazarus, former diplomat in China and the Caribbean, former researcher and instructor on U.S.-China relations at Florida International University, and author of Dragon in the Americas: China’s Power, Presence, and Regional Influence.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-china-to-south .]

Across Latin America and the Caribbean, China is helping build ports, digital networks, energy projects, space facilities, and supply chains for the critical minerals that power life. Along with creating opportunities, these investments are shifting influence and altering diplomatic relationships, security dynamics, and the balance of power in the United States’ neighborhood.

Learn about the implications of China’s growing investment and influence in the Western Hemisphere at a talk that will go beyond the headlines and simplistic narratives of China as either a predatory threat or a benevolent development partner.

The speaker, Leland Lazarus, is a former special assistant to two commanders of U.S. Southern Command who has spent more than a decade researching China’s engagement with the Western Hemisphere.

In accessible, nonpartisan terms he’ll seek to answer two fundamental questions: Is China’s growing role in the Americas primarily an economic opportunity, a strategic challenge, or both? And what should the United States do to remain a trusted, competitive partner without forcing the region to choose sides?

He’ll discuss how China’s regional presence affects trade, technology, migration, crime, and U.S. national security.
Drawing on examples from across the hemisphere, he will explain why ports and undersea cables matter, how Beijing competes with Taiwan for diplomatic recognition, where Chinese companies and criminal networks intersect, and how Latin American and Caribbean countries are navigating relationships with both the U.S. and China.

You’ll emerge from the talk with a clearer, more nuanced understanding of a transformation already underway just beyond our borders and why it matters to all of us. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Tom Paine’s Revolutions,” on a writer whose words inspired struggles for independence and ultimately left him alone, with Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park and author of the new book The American Revolution and the Fate of the World.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/northern-virginia-thomas-paine .]

When Thomas Paine died in June 1809, scarcely a dozen people showed up to bury him.

His funeral took place on the 250-acre farm in Westchester County that the people of New York had given him in gratitude for his role in inspiring the American Revolution. The grave was neither remote nor difficult to reach. Yet not one political leader came to pay respects to a man whose words had once helped set a continent on fire.

How did one of the American Revolution’s greatest celebrities end up dying virtually friendless and despised?

Join Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland, for a dramatic look at the astonishing rise and spectacular fall of Thomas Paine, the impoverished English immigrant and former corset-maker who became one of the most electrifying political writers of his age.

You’ll learn how Paine arrived in America with little money or status and, through sheer force of argument, found a language capable of turning revolutionary ideas into calls to action. Bell will explore the extraordinary success of Common Sense, the incendiary 46-page pamphlet that appeared in 1776, sold on a staggering scale, and helped persuade ordinary colonists that independence from Britain was not only possible but necessary.

Then he’ll trace what happened when Paine kept pushing.
Paine’s Rights of Man, published beginning in 1791, embraced the radical promise of the French Revolution and attacked inherited privilege and monarchy. His Age of Reason, first published in 1794, challenged organized religion while championing deism, reason, and free thought. The convictions that had once made Paine a revolutionary hero increasingly made him seem dangerous, offensive, and intolerable to the cautious new republic that had emerged from the revolution he helped ignite.

Come learn how America’s most relatable revolutionary became one of its most notorious outcasts—and how a founding father once celebrated for saying what others would not ended up paying a devastating price for refusing to stop. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A statue of Thomas Paine in Thetford, England (Photo by Richard Croft / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy,” on findings, debates and trends in the use of psychedelic substances to treat trauma and other conditions, with Whitney Marris, instructor at the University at Buffalo’s School of Social Work, certified psychedelic-assisted therapy facilitator, and consultant to clinical trials.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/arlington-psychedelic-assisted .]

Psychedelics are rapidly moving from the margins into the mainstream, and questions abound as the sociocultural and legal landscapes surrounding them shift. President Trump’s recent executive order expanding access to psychedelic drugs for certain conditions and accelerating research on them has both heightened interest and added to confusion.

Learn more about the so-called “Psychedelic Renaissance,” and get help separating the hope from the hype surrounding it, with Whitney Marris, a leading trainer and facilitator of psychedelic therapy who has used it to treat trauma survivors, military veterans, and people with cancer.

She’ll present foundational information on what we know about how psychedelics work. You’ll learn how psychedelic-assisted therapy differs from “trip sitting” and about what we know about the effects of “microdosing” versus “macrodosing.” We’ll examine what has been demonstrated to be helpful versus harmful before, during, and after a dosing session intended to support significant, sustainable change.

Marris also will discuss the historical and cultural context of the use of psychedelic medicines for healing, and she’ll describe the ethical challenges that arise as such practices move from counterculture to clinic. We’ll look at emerging and evolving findings in the field, as well as at the roles being played by various financial interests and ideologies in determining the direction of psychedelic-assisted therapy and research on its outcomes.

Attendees will gain an awareness of the need for new professional standards and regulatory guardrails related to such work, and they’ll leave knowing key questions to ask potential providers of psychedelic-assisted therapy. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Forgeries Throughout History,” on famous fakes and their real impact, with Vanessa R. Corcoran, Catholic Church and medieval historian and director of Catholic Studies at Georgetown University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-forgeries-throughout-history .]

Today people often discuss fraud and forgery as if they are uniquely modern problems—the products of the internet, artificial intelligence, and the rise of deepfakes. But the impulse to deceive by fabricating evidence, identities, or images is far older than any digital technology. Moreover, even those who did not get away with it for long sometimes altered the course of history with their trickery.

Learn in depth about such deceptions during an evening of mythmaking and myth-busting with Dr. Vanessa R. Corcoran, previously has given excellent Profs and Pints on Catholic history and culture and the 2025 papal conclave.

She’ll walk you through a series of forgeries tied to the Crusades, the Catholic Church, and the Byzantine Empire, especially focusing on fakery that confounded the medieval world. You’ll learn about cases involving forged documents, imitated signatures, counterfeited money, bogus works of art, and imposters in disguise.

We’ll look at how Roman artists in antiquity created sculptures that they attempted to pass off as Greek works to increase marketability. (Even Michelangelo was guilty of trying to disguise one of his sculptures as a work from the classical era.) Later on, Dutch painter Han Van Meegeren created numerous forgeries of Vermeer’s paintings, ultimately getting convicted of fraud and forgery.

Among acts of deception that changed the course of history was a medieval forgery titled “The Donation of Constantine,” which as of the late 700s was used to buttress claims that the fourth-century Byzantine Emperor Constantine I had transferred authority over Rome to the Pope. It was viewed as authentic until fifteenth-century Renaissance humanist Lorenzo Valla debunked it as created centuries after Constantine died.

A popular legend in the Catholic Church held that a woman later known as “Pope Joan” disguised herself as a man and ruled as “popess” in the ninth century. That narrative, largely debunked by modern historians, was treated by medieval chronicles as credible and used to buttress arguments that women should be ordained as priests.

Among other cases we’ll examine include the Shroud of Turin, purported to be the burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, which was denounced as forgery as early as 1389 but remains venerated as a relic by some believers.

Dr. Corcoran’s talk will offer an important lens for understanding the challenges and stakes of today’s debates over AI-generated fakery. You’ll walk away with an appreciation of how every generation has had to learn, often painfully, how to distinguish what merely looks authentic from what actually is. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Customers at a 1984 art and antiques fair examine a Han van Meegeren fake of a Vermeer. (Photo by Rob C. Croes, National Archives of the Netherlands.)