Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Everyday Supernatural,” a discussion of how folklorists and anthropologists view our belief in uneasily explained beings, forces, and experiences, with Benjamin Gatling, folklorist, scholar of belief and everyday religion, and associate professor of English 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-everyday-supernatural .]

Have you ever wondered why people believe in the supernatural? Or where do such beliefs come from and what purposes do they serve?

On hand to offer answers will be Benjamin Gatling, who teaches a course on folklore and the supernatural, studies various cultures’ oral traditions, and serves as editor of Folklorica: the Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association.

You’ll gain an understanding of how the supernatural isn’t something strange or extraordinary. It’s part of the everyday lives of most people around the world, and it’s fundamental to virtually all cultural traditions. Here in the United States, three out of four people believe in some aspect of the supernatural such as astrology, telepathy, clairvoyance, or communication with the dead. About half attest to having personally had a mystical experience.

In discussing the nature of supernatural beliefs, Dr. Gatling will talk about how our experiences are inexact and ambiguous and how we operate on incomplete information. In many ways belief in the supernatural represents an affirmation that human understanding extends beyond empirical observation and that we live in an imprecise, infinite, irrational, and mysterious world.

The goal of folklorists and anthropologists studying such beliefs is not to prove or disprove them, but rather to understand various peoples’ lived experiences and gain insight on how individuals make sense of the uncanny around them. Dr. Gatling will talk about such researchers’ findings in terms of how such beliefs are expressed in dream interpretation or the stories people tell about encounters with ghosts or their relationship with the dead.

He’ll talk about visits to haunted places and touch upon subjects such as UFO sightings, encounters with the divine, and magic in our everyday lives. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A deck of 22 Tarot cards. (Photo by Roberto Viesi / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “How AI Alters Thinking,” on dealing with artificial intelligence’s capacity to change and undermine our thought processes, with Eli Alshanetsky, assistant professor of philosophy at Temple University, principal investigator at its Cognitive Integrity Lab, and author of an upcoming book on AI and freedom of thought.

[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-how-ai-alters-thinking ]

Doctors who give bad advice can be sued for malpractice. Teachers belong to a profession with set standards. When artificial intelligence guides you, however, that guidance comes with a disclaimer: Use at your own risk.

Every day millions of people take that risk, and usually AI seems genuinely helpful. But even if AI gives us good answers, might its use over time do bad things to how we think?

Explore the relationship between AI and our own minds with Eli Alshanetsky, whose Cognitive Integrity Lab studies how artificial intelligence changes how we think, learn, and build trust. Author of Articulating a Thought and the upcoming book Freedom of Thought in the Age of AI, he’s on the cutting edge of efforts to answer AI-related questions such as: How can we tell when work is truly our own? How can technology support rather than replace authorship and reflection? What does trust mean when AI mediates our relationships with others and with our own thoughts?

To set up his discussion of potential consequences of AI, he’ll describe how social media’s impact on society serves as a preview.

Social media didn’t just give people what they wanted to click on, it actually changed what they regarded as click-worthy. It broke attention spans and fueled radicalization across millions of very different people. It left us with people who doom-scroll for hours, who can’t focus, who don’t know what to trust anymore.

If you’d shown people this version of themselves ten years ago, would they have chosen it?

Artificial intelligence is making a similar deal with us, but the stakes are higher. It isn’t chasing clicks. It’s optimized for giving you the most satisfying response to whatever is on your mind right now.

The risk over time isn’t just that you’ll get lazy. More profoundly, even when you think hard, your sense of what counts as good thinking—as well as what sounds like you—will shift to match what AI has been feeding you.

We’ll consider what kind of person this produces and whether this is someone we want to be or want children to become. Professor Alshanetsky will lay out a practical framework, which he calls “the interaction layer,” for using AI without letting it replace the thinking it’s supposed to support. He’ll also talk about what AI-related concerns should be the focus of parents and educators. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Illustration by David S. Soriano / Creative Commons.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Power of Protest Literature,” an exploration of plays, prose, and films as drivers of change, with Hunter Plummer, assistant teaching professor of English at Loyola University Maryland and scholar of American literature and queer theater.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-power-of-protest .]

We live in an era of renewed activism, with protests seeming to become everyday parts of life. In the eyes of many involved in such actions, to protest is to be American.

In the eyes of literature professor Hunter Plummer, a passion for protest is woven especially into the identity of the American writer. His American Literature survey course at Loyola University asks students to read both literature as protest and literature that is about protests. It also encourages students to view protests, in themselves, as “texts” to be studied. It regards America’s history and literature as a series of defiant acts and calls to action by and for marginalized communities, rather than as a vision of the country crafted by those in power.

Join Dr. Plummer at Baltimore’s Section 771 bar for a rich exploration of protest literature throughout our nation’s history.

We’ll look at works including Henry David Thoreau’s treatise on civil disobedience, Lorraine Hansberry’s lesser-known play about 1960s leftist politics, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, and Larry Kramer’s autobiographical remembrance of the AIDS epidemic’s tense early days, The Normal Heart. We’ll explore what these works can teach us, from offering practical protesting advice to instilling in us a belief that change is possible.

Dr. Plummer will discuss how all of these works demand their readers’ engagement in seeking change through political engagement and direct action. He’ll invite you to consider that reading about protest is one thing, thinking about protest is another, but actually protesting as the characters in these works do represents the only way to attain the justice that we hope for. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Bar doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Exploring the Deep Sea,” a scholarly dive into an enormous and little-understood ecosystem, with Melissa Betters, deep ocean explorer and deep-sea biologist at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

[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-exploring-deep-sea ]

If you’re afraid of the deepest, darkest reaches of the ocean, you aren’t alone. For centuries, humans have imagined the ocean’s depths to be inhabited by all manner of monsters, from the Kraken to Godzilla.

But what is the cost of viewing over 70% of our planet with fear and aversion? Who benefits from that?

Come to see the deep sea as far more worthy of fascination than fear with the help of Dr. Melissa Betters, a biologist and marine ecosystem researcher who has made nine trips to the bottom of the ocean and taught at Bryn Mawr College and Temple University.

She’ll take you on a scholarly exploration of various deep-sea ecosystems around the world such as deep coral reefs and boiling-hot hydrothermal vents. We’ll get to know some of the deep ocean’s captivating biodiversity, examining where it lives, what it does, and why it matters to us.

With her help you’ll come to see the deep ocean as a tapestry of different environments, each of which host their own forms of life and present their own suite of ecological challenges.

Importantly, we’ll also look at how the deep ocean is portrayed in both myth and media, considering how our perceptions are skewed by the rhetoric used to describe it and the images used to depict it.

Despite appearing far-removed and out of reach, the deep ocean is still a part of our planet, subject to all the same challenges and human impacts as life on land. The final part of this talk will examine the variety of human impacts affecting the deep ocean and actions we can take to protect Earth’s final frontier. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Magnoteuthis magna, the most common deep-ocean squid, as photographed in Kinlan Canyon off of Rhode Island (NOAA Ocean Exploration photo).