Science

Members of the public are invited to view the wonders of the universe through the telescopes of NOVAC volunteers at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. You do not need to be a member of the club or own any astronomical equipment to attend. Telescopes will be provided by the Smithsonian and pre-approved members of the NOVAC. No other personal telescopes are permitted at the event. The event will take place on the bus parking lot of the museum. **Please park your vehicle at the south end of the main visitors lot and follow signs and red lights to the observing site. As a reminder, parking during the event is free.** Have a cosmic question? One of NOVAC's astronomers or museum staff will be happy to help you. As the sky gets dark, be prepared to enjoy the wonders of the night sky! Don't forget to dress warmly. Please check the weather forecast. For lighting, cover a flashlight in red cellophane (the darker the better). Bring along water to keep hydrated. Note: This outdoor event is weather-dependent and may be cancelled because of significant cloud cover or precipitation.

(2024) by Christof Koch, 288 pages [Psychology] • Hardcover • Kindle • Audiobook • Library: https://fcplcat.fairfaxcounty.gov/search/title.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.1&pos=1&cn=613100 Check the How To Find Us section for Zoom Link **(Remember, the Zoom Link is different each month, do not bookmark)** ### Review "A wonderful book."―Sam Harris, Making Sense with Sam Harris “a fun introduction to a number of debates… Mr. Koch’s book provokes questions… and counterarguments, but that’s what gives it life.” ―The Wall Street Journal “Easily the most current, thorough, and helpful exploration of consciousness available. Koch’s light, simple, yet authoritative writing style will appeal to general audiences as well as scientists and researchers. An essential, highly recommended purchase.”―Library Journal “magisterial… charming, sometimes beautiful, and almost always illuminating” ―Science Magazine “an impressive and sometimes exuberant work, showcasing decades of [Koch’s] research”―New Scientist “Koch’s adept use of analogies and entertaining anecdotes — complete with his own near-death experience and psychedelic drug trips — make the book a compelling and surprisingly light read.” ―Science News “undeniably compelling… a smoothly written must-read for anyone interested in a detailed introduction to the relationship between the brain, consciousness, and transformative experiences” ―Ars Technica “Expertly weaving in personal experience with science that few, if any, can speak more authoritatively about, Koch leads us on an amazing journey of consciousness—from birth to death. Deeply personal and infinitely digestible, Then I Am Myself the World is a remarkable must read for anyone interested in knowing their mind.”―Judson Brewer MD, PhD, New York Times–bestselling author of Unwinding Anxiety “Koch’s latest book brilliantly navigates the intricate landscape of our mind and our brain, offering insightful perspectives on the nature of conscious experiences, both ordinary as well as extraordinary ones.”―Hartmut Neven, founder and lead of Google’s quantum AI lab “Then I Am Myself the World is the new record of note for the scientific understanding of consciousness. This is an elegant tableau, a travelogue of subjective experience grounded in the latest neuroscience and philosophy traversing religion, science, and a life dedicated to the biggest questions. Filled with crystalline prose, lucid explanation, and revelatory honesty, this book will continue to be read centuries from now.”―Patrick House, author of Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness “What would happen if a hardcore neuroscientist, with encyclopedic knowledge and four decades of experience in his field, were personally confronted with transformative mystical experiences carrying inevitable metaphysical implications? What would happen if the neuroscientist in question were open-minded, humble, but remained rigorously grounded in reason, evidence, and his hard-earned understanding of how consciousness relates to brain structures and function? What would he, the most preeminent professional of his generation, make of his extraordinary experiences? And what if, in addition, the neuroscientist was a modern renaissance man versed in physics, philosophy, the arts, the classics, and could pluck irresistibly evocative metaphors from the Western literary and artistic canon as if leisurely picking apples in early fall? This is what you will find in this treasured book, a whirlwind ride of insight after insight—so many they can’t possibly be all documented in footnotes—that will surprise and delight you from the get-go. ‘Primacy goes to consciousness, not to the objective world,’ he boldly states already on page two, in a prelude of things to come. ‘Everything else follows from there, including the realist assumption of the existence of objects, out ‘there,’ independent of my experiencing them.’ The book embodies the ever-evolving wisdom of a man whose intellectual prowess is only matched by his intellectual honesty. And this man, in the seventh decade of his scintillatingly productive life, has a lifetime of learning to share with you.”―Bernardo Kastrup, executive director, Essentia Foundation “Koch’s first book was entitled The Quest for Consciousness. And such has been Koch’s life, an adventurer’s pursuit of a distant goal, undeterred by the prevailing winds. The reader will learn where this quest has led and, like the author, will be enriched by it. Koch, one of the most accomplished scientists of our time, a mind singularly open to learning and changing, here opens his soul, revealing his vast, scintillating appreciation of nature in all its forms. It is a touching, profound book. Which is as it should be, since consciousness touches everything and is everything we touch.”―Giulio Tononi, University of Wisconsin-Madison ### About the Author Christof Koch is a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute and at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, the former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and a former professor at the California Institute of Technology. Author of four previous titles, Koch writes regularly for a range of media, including Scientific American. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

[Profs and Pints Northern Virginia](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“Venezuela’s Future—and Ours,”** an analysis of how the Trump administration’s intervention in Venezuela will affect that nation, the U.S., and the rest of the world, with Ernesto Castañeda, Director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab at American University. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-venezuela-future](https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-venezuela-future) .] On January 3rd, after a long military buildup, the United States used special forces to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their residence in Caracas, Venezuela to stand trial here on criminal charges. The development marked a major turning point in our relationship with Venezuela and the rest of Latin America and raised a host of complex questions, not just for Venezuelans living inside and outside that country but for American citizens and other nations of the world. Coming to the stage to break down what all of this means is Ernesto Castañeda, a scholar of Latin America who has given several excellent Profs and Pints talks on immigration policy and has given dozens of interviews to media outlets around the world in the wake of the U.S. raid. In a talk offering informed perspective on the latest news developments, Professor Castañeda will discuss various theories about why the U.S. conducted the operation to get Maduro out of Venezuela. He’s put our nation’s current plans for Venezuela into context by touching on previous U.S. military interventions in Latin America and beyond. Professor Castañeda will look at the implications of recent events for U.S. politics and U.S. citizens and what such developments tell us about the balance of power in the United States. He’ll examine the distance between decisions made by the White House and public priorities, touching on how it all relates to our immigration policies and our views about peaceful protest and democracy. He’ll consider how the Venezuela raid and our actions since have altered relations between the U.S. and other nations and provide scenarios about what the future might hold. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image by Canva.

Join PSW Science® on January 23 at 8 PM as we welcome Lecturer Gordon Guyatt, Professor of Medicine and Health Research Methods at McMaster University, for the Presidents' Lecture. During the question and answer period, in-person attendees and live stream viewers may ask the speaker questions, and in-person attendees may also engage with the speaker during the post-lecture reception. Refreshments are served. For more information on this meeting, please visit: https://pswscience.org/meeting/2529/ The meeting will be held in the John Wesley Powell Auditorium, adjacent to the Cosmos Club. The Powell Auditorium is located at 2170 Florida Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20008. Use of the Cosmos Club is restricted to the Powell Auditorium, the entryway to the auditorium, and the restrooms immediately outside the auditorium. Please note there is no onsite parking available. PSW Science, founded in 1871, is one of the oldest scientific societies in Washington D.C. Now, over 150 years later, we celebrate the Society's rich history and contributions to scientific discovery and cross-disciplinary collaboration. For information on how to become a member of PSW Science and membership benefits, please visit https://pswscience.org/join/

[Profs and Pints Northern Virginia](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“The Life of Frankenstein,”** on the birth, evolution and impact of a tale of man-made monstrosity, with Bernard Welt, an emeritus professor of arts and humanities at George Washington University who frequently lectures on Frankenstein in literature, cinema, and culture. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-life-of-frankenstein](https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-life-of-frankenstein) .] Guillermo del Toro’s lush and lovingly produced film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel *Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus* is just the latest of many iterations of the story to capture the public’s imagination. People have watched Victor Frankenstein give life to his monster in numerous films, on television, and on stage, and even perform “Putting on the Ritz” with him thanks to the comic genius of Mel Brooks. Mary Shelley did not just tell a tale. She spawned the modern genre of speculative fiction and gave rise to a myth that would crop up in debates over nature versus nurture and other matters. Even today it stokes anxieties over the potential impacts of robotics, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering, by evoking the image of a monster turning on its progenitor. Come gain a new appreciation of Mary Shelley’s creation with the help of Dr. Bernard Welt, who has studied the relationship between nightmares and the horror genre and is the author of *Mythomania: Fantasies, Fables, and Sheer Lies in Contemporary American Popular Art.* Dr. Welt will start by telling a literary origin story almost as famous as Frankenstein itself, of how an 18-year-old Shelley started writing *Frankenstein* in 1816 while staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with two of her era’s leading poets, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, her lover. Housebound by foul weather, the three read Gothic tales of ghosts and monsters and challenged each other to produce something even more terrifying. Mary dreamed up a story of a man who defied death by creating a living being out of scraps of deceased men harvested from graveyards and anatomy labs. The resulting novel, *Frankenstein*, published anonymously in 1818, would by that century’s end become a touchstone in philosophical discourse on the nature of humanity and in political discussions of imperialism and populism. By the 21st century, Mary Shelley (as she became) had earned a more significant place in the literary canon than Byron and her husband Shelley. We will examine how this grisly tale became a landmark of modern thought and look at the part played by numerous film adaptations from the first years of cinema to the present day. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: From a Theodor von Holst engraving in an 1831 edition of *Frankenstein* published by Colburn and Bentley of London.

**Join globally respected cardiologist , Dr. Mohit Gupta, as we explore how our thoughts impact our physical health and overall well-being.** Our thoughts are far more powerful than we often realize. A single thought has the capacity to influence our emotions, shape our health, strengthen or strain our relationships, and quietly guide the course of our lives. The Power of One Thought is an insightful session that explores how conscious and intentional thinking impacts the brain, heart, and overall well-being. Through a thoughtful blend of scientific evidence and meditative practice, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how thought patterns influence stress, emotional resilience, mental clarity, and long-term health. In this session, Dr. Mohit Gupta seamlessly integrates modern neuroscience and cardiology with the wisdom of Raj Yoga meditation, offering practical insights into emotional regulation, cardiovascular health, and the slowing of biological aging. He uses his own life stories of Belief and Resilience. The experience is designed to be reflective, engaging, and immediately applicable to both personal and professional life. This session is ideal for individuals seeking inner clarity, emotional balance, and a deeper understanding of how one consciously chosen thought can create lasting transformation. **About Dr. Mohit Gupta** *Dr. Mohit Dayal Gupta, MD, DM, FACC, FRCP, is a globally respected interventional cardiologist and Director–Professor of Cardiology at GB Pant Hospital, New Delhi, and serves as Cardiologist to the Parliament of India. A four-time TEDx speaker, he has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications and is a Fellow of leading international cardiology institutions.* *A distinguished clinician–scientist, Dr. Gupta’s current research focuses on the effects of Raj Yoga meditation on biological aging and cardiovascular resilience. Associated with the Brahma Kumaris since childhood, he is widely known for his rare ability to bridge cardiology, neuroscience, meditation, and spirituality, offering a compelling perspective on holistic health and conscious leadership.* Fri., Jan. 30th, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm. Held at Brahma Kumaris, 14020 Thunderbolt Pl, Suite 200, 2ndFloor, Chantilly, VA. Free Event – Register at: [https://shorturl.at/wt8yd](https://shorturl.at/wt8yd)