Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints DC 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/dc-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 Northern Virginia presents: “The Fly Room,” on a pioneering lab that gave rise to genetics on the wings of a common household pest, with William deJong-Lambert, professor of history at Bronx Community College.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-fly-room .]

In 1910, the zoologist and embryologist Thomas Hunt Morgan peered into a bottle full of red-eyed fruit flies and found among them an exception: One with eyes that were white. That simple observation would lead him and a group of students to embark on a course of research in which they used a roomful of flies to upend scientific assumptions and provide a new understanding of how our species and others came to be. When scientists today talk about X or Y chromosomes or use the term “gene pool,” they are carrying forward the work of Morgan’s lab, nicknamed the Fly Room.

Learn about the huge contributions of Morgan’s team of researchers—and gain insights into the nature of scientific progress—with Dr. William deJong-Lambert, a historian of science and the author of the new book The Fly Room: The Story of the Scientists Who Discovered Genetics and Reinvented Evolution.

He’ll set the stage by describing how Morgan came of age at a time when science still looked backward. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection had been eclipsed and overshadowed by doubt, Mendel’s laws had yet to be rediscovered, and DNA would not be understood for another half century.

We’ll look at how the focus of Morgan’s research, the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a prime example of how the study of even the simplest life forms can offer us tremendous insights into our own species. A constant presence around us since prehistoric times and in many ways as domesticated as dogs and cats, fruit flies share about 75 percent of our disease-causing genes and get cancer, diabetes, Down’s, autism and Parkinson’s disease. With 6-to-8 week life spans, they serve as time machines for observing what might happen to us over centuries.

Dr. deJong-Lambert will discuss how the talents and personalities of those inside and outside the Fly Room helped determine whether they’d be credited with major scientific advance. One of Morgan’s research assistants, Alfred Sturtevant, would end up drawing the first-ever map of a chromosome. Another, the prickly Hermann Joseph Muller, went on to win his own Nobel Prize by proving that X-rays mutate genes. One of many followers of the Fly Room’s work, J.B.S. Haldane, invented the “soup” metaphor to explain creation and became one of three scientists who invented biostatistics. Outside rivals of the Fly Room who refused to accept its findings related to genes and chromosomes went down dead-end roads with their research.

You’ll emerge from the talk with a greater understanding of how and why science advances. You might even end up with newfound, grudging respect for fruit flies in your kitchen. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A female Drosophila melanogaster. (Photo by Hannah Davis / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “The Stories in Our Bones,” an introduction to the field of bioarchaeology and what it tells us about life and death in the past, with Jordan Wilson, bioarchaeologist, skeletal biologist, and postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Georgetown University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-stories-in-bones .]

Gather among the living to learn how lessons are taught by the dead.

Join Dr. Jordan Wilson of Georgetown University to dig into the field of bioarchaeology, a science that combines knowledge of human skeletal anatomy with that of past cultures and treatment of the body after death.

Covering bioarchaeology’s history, she’ll describe how researchers first realized that skeletons could be every bit as important to our understanding of the past as artifacts displayed in museums. She’ll also discuss how early research on human skeletal remains unfortunately became intertwined with research in eugenics.

She also will give you an understanding of bioarchaeologists’ methods, teaching you how they determine the age, biological sex, and ancestry of the deceased from their bones. You’ll learn how they identify various traumatic injuries, from broken arms to scimitar cuts, as well as evidence of repetitive actions to gain insight into daily activities. Past health problems are identifiable from the scars left on bones by illnesses such as rickets, scurvy, tuberculosis, and anemia.

We’ll examine some famous bioarchaeology cases and look at what movies get wrong about mummies and the field of archaeology in general. We’ll also look at how human remains research is used for good, by identifying the missing, solving cold cases, and supporting tribal sovereignty.

Among the questions she’ll tackle: What’s the oldest murder mystery ever solved? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Part of a skeleton in a bioarchaeology lab. (Photo by Andreacise / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Dune and Messiahs,” on word of saviors in religion and science fiction, with Peter Herman, former lecturer in theology and religious studies at Marymount University and scholar of religious and social themes in sci fi.

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

Dune: Part Three is scheduled for release in December, and trailers for the epic space opera film have fans of the Dune franchise longing for it like visitors to its desert planet Arrakis long for water. Based on the second volume of renowned science fiction novelist Frank Herbert's Dune saga, the movie depicts the internal and external conflicts of protagonist Paul Atreides, an emperor treated by others as a messiah while being depicted as an antihero.

The film will raise intriguing questions related to the presence of redeeming figures, or messiahs, throughout both science fiction and religious texts. Among them: What exactly do we mean by the term “messiah”? Why have many religious traditions looked for a redeemer to emerge? What happens if the messiah gets it all wrong?

Explore such questions—and prepare yourself to enjoy the upcoming Dune film at a much deeper level—with Dr. Peter Herman, who has given several excellent, thought-provoking Profs and Pints talks on the Dune franchise.

To center Dune in the discussion, we’ll look at the character of Paul Atriedes as a ruler who has launched a jihad across known space to reconquer it. His prescient visions show him that although the spread of religious war is not optimal, neither is it the worst potential future for humanity, and he allows excess and violence to continue in his name out of a conviction that it’s for the greater good. Throughout the book on which the upcoming film is based, Atriedes struggles with his followers' desire to view him as a divine figure.

Dr. Herman, a trained theologian, will set such themes in the broader context of religious studies by discussing messianic figures across various religious traditions. Among them, Christianity names Jesus of Nazareth as the messiah, but he is hardly the first person in the canonical Bible given that title. Mainstream Judaism does not anticipate any similar, deified figure descending from heaven, but messianic strains of Judaism have looked for the arrival of a political liberator. Islam, from which Frank Herbert borrowed terms applied to Paul Atriedes, contains reference to someone serving not as a redeemer but as a heavenly guide. All branches of Buddhism situate within each new age of their cyclical cosmology a Buddha-yet-to-come.

We’ll look at the human tendency in confusing times to seek out direct, uncomplicated answers and to embrace messianism as part of apocalypticism, which foretells a straightforward sorting process in which believers, as good people, see reward while their enemies, as bad people, see punishment.

Dune fans will feel rewarded in coming to this talk. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.