Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “How Ancient Athens Restored Democracy,” on lessons to be learned from an overthrow of tyrants in 403 B.C., with Nicholas D. Cross, assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and author of The Roots of Cooperation: Constructing Interstate Alliances in Ancient Greece.

[Doors open at 3. The talk starts at 4:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-athens-democracy ]

The defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War led to its democracy being replaced by the Thirty Tyrants, an oligarchic regime that consolidated power through executions and political repression. Democratic exiles managed to organize resistance, defeat the oligarchic forces, and return to Athens to restore democratic government, but then faced the far more challenging task of reconciling a community torn apart by political divisions.

The restorers of Athenian democracy grappled with a question that often arises in periods of political upheaval: Can a deeply divided community ever overcome its past and build a shared future? Learn how they managed to bring about such an outcome in a talk that holds hopeful lessons for our own time.

The speaker, Dr. Nicholas Cross, teaches the history of ancient Greece and Rome and is the author of a forthcoming biography of the leader of democratic resistance to the Thirty Tyrants, Thrasybulus of Steiria: An Athenian Hero?

He’ll describe how the settlement that followed the civil war included an amnesty designed to prevent cycles of retaliation, but Athens nonetheless remained deeply divided. Among those who had to find a way to live together once more were former democrats, supporters of oligarchy, and citizens such as Socrates whose conduct during the regime was open to question.

Democracy’s return was not a straightforward triumph. It instead involved dealing with tensions and making political decisions intended to enable peaceful coexistence possible. The Athenians had to balance both accountability with reconciliation and the desire for revenge with the need for lasting political stability.

The events of 403 BC remind us that rebuilding a divided society requires not only restoring political institutions but also reviving trust and learning to coexist with former adversaries. The lessons they learned in the process remain relevant nearly 2500 years later. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: The Acropolis at Athens as painted by Leo von Klenze in 1846 (Neue Pinakothek museum / Wikimedia Commons).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “How to Feel Worthy,” with Marisa G. Franco, psychologist, assistant clinical professor at the University of Maryland’s Honors College, and New York Times best-selling author of Platonic and the new book Worth: The New Science of Self-esteem and Secure Attachment.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-feel-worthy]

If you don't feel worthy, you can achieve great success but still feel like a failure. You can find great love and still feel unlovable.
Sometimes the very things that should make us feel worthy only make us feel worse. Studies reveal that if we don't feel worthy, we are more likely to deflect compliments and affiliate with people who treat us negatively. Fascinatingly, when positive events happen in our lives, we only feel sicker.

But there is a way forward.

Join Dr. Marisa G. Franco, who previously has given outstanding Profs and Pints talks on friendship, for an interactive evening built to help you shift long-held negative beliefs about yourself.

She’ll describe how self-worth is stubborn, because our brain is invested in maintaining the same sense of self-worth that we developed in childhood. It does this to protect us, so that we don’t trick ourselves into feeling better and get further crushed should the harms of our past—rejection, bullying, neglect—happen again.

You'll learn about the paradox of self-worth and how the very things that should make you feel more worthy--people who love you, great success—can actually only make you feel worse. You worry that you can't live up to others' expectations and you experience more anxiety.

Dr. Franco will discuss the foundation of self-worth and how, as researchers put it, “memories are the database of self-esteem,” with low self-worth stemming from memories of being rejected, bullied, or otherwise harmed.

We’ll delve into research-backed ways to improve self-worth. Although we can't change the past, cutting-edge research on memory reconsolidation finds that we can change how the past lives within us. As researchers put it, memories are made to predict the future, not to record the past, which means the emotional impact of memories can be updated every time we revisit them. You’ll learn how to do so during this talk.

Being on hand will help both those who have struggled with their sense of self and those who think they have it figured out. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: From “Triple Self Portrait” by Rick Beerhorst (Creative Commons).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Course of the Appalachian Trail,” on the fascinating past and uncertain future of a beloved wilderness trail and national park, with Mills Kelly, emeritus professor of history at George Mason University and author of A Hiker’s History of the Appalachian Trail.

[Doors open at 3. The talk starts at 4:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-appalachian-trail]

For more than 100 years the Appalachian Trail has provided opportunities to spend anywhere from a few hours to six months traversing the Appalachian Mountains. Stretching more than 2,000 miles across 14 states, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, it ranks among the most iconic long-distance hiking trails in the world. It and its associated national park are annually visited by nearly 17 million.

Gear up to perhaps spend some time on the trail yourself by spending an evening with Mills Kelly, an expert on all things Appalachian Trail and the author of two books and numerous articles on the trail’s history.

We’ll start our scholarly journey by looking at the trail’s origins. First proposed by Benton MacKaye, a forester, in 1921 as a place for urban workers to get some fresh air and sunshine, the trail took 16 years to scout, map, and carve out of the mountains. The first version was woven together mostly from abandoned mountain roads, Indigenous people's paths, and highways.

Drawing on research in archives up and down the length of the trail, Professor Kelly will show us archival photographs and video clips spread across the decades of the trail’s history, and he'll let the voices of hikers themselves describe how the experience of hiking has changed over the decades. You’ll learn what hikers ate before the advent of freeze-dried backpacker meals and when and why thru-hiking became a thing. More profoundly, we’ll examine how innovations in gear changed the experiences of women on the trail, and how changing attitudes about race transformed the hiking community.

Professor Kelly will describe how the trail is maintained entirely by 33 volunteer clubs. Looking ahead, he’ll discuss how the trail’s long-term health as a recreational resource is being affected by declining federal support, overuse in some sections, and climate change. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A 1928 photo of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club taking a break from its work (National Park Service / Public Domain).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Power of Cults,” on how cults operate, recruit members, and get people to stay, with Mariah Wilkerson, adjunct professor of psychology at George Mason University.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-power-of-cults ]

Most people believe that they’d never join a cult, yet cults have existed for thousands of years and continue to pop up all over the world.
What makes people join cults and why is it so hard to leave them? Hear these and other questions about cults tackled by Mariah Wilkerson, a social psychologist with a deep interest in them.

Dr. Wilkerson will take you inside the psychology of cults, both demystifying them and busting common myths about them.

She’ll describe how cults grab people's attention by co-opting religious doctrine or messaging around current social issues. Once people are drawn in, cults use simple, yet powerful, social psychological techniques to keep them from leaving, to take money or other resources away from them, and to even pressure them to commit horrendous crimes.

We’ll look at how cults recruit through positive reinforcement, love bombing, and charismatic leadership, and then control through cognitive dissonance and through deindividuation—the shedding of self-awareness and personal identity.

You’ll learn how cults cause people to undergo dramatic psychological changes that alter how they make sense of the world and interact with others. Dr. Wilkerson will shed light on why leaving a cult can be so difficult as well as what happens to someone psychologically once that person is out. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Members of the Rajneesh movement at a 1981 festival. (Photo by Marcel Antonisse / Dutch National Archives / Creative Commons.)