Great Talk Inc and The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute JHU present a free event – The Phenomenon of Past Lives in Children’s Memories: The Science & the Skepticism. Altered States of Consciousness and Cognitive Psychology. This panel discussion will take place on October 16 at 7pm, Johns Hopkins University, Mason Hall, 3101 Wyman Park Drive, Baltimore, MD. Registration is free for both in-person or Livestream. Parking vouchers will be provided at the Talk.REGISTER FOR FREEPANEL OF EXPERTSMatthew W. Johnson, PhDMATTHEW W. JOHNSON, Senior Investigator at the Sheppard Pratt Center for Excellence in Psilocybin Research and Treatment.Dr. Matthew W. Johnson is an experimental psychologist conducting human research on psychedelics and behavior change. From 2004 to 2024 he conducted seminal psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins, playing a role in the modern-day revival of psychedelic research. In March 2024 he joined Sheppard Pratt to expand his psychedelic research. He has published research on psychedelics in relation to mystical experience, personality change, tobacco smoking cessation, cancer distress treatment, depression treatment, and psychedelic risks and safety guidelines. In 2021 he received as principal investigator the first grant in about 50 years from the US government to administer a classic psychedelic as a treatment, specifically psilocybin for tobacco addiction. He is also known for his expertise in behavioral economics, addiction, sexual risk behavior, and research with a wide variety of drug classes. He has been Interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, NPR, Fox News, BBC, the Lex Fridman Podcast, the Huberman Lab Podcast, Big Think and Michael Pollan.Profile as Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at JHU.Profile as senior researcher for the Center of Excellence for Psilocybin Research and Treatment at Sheppard Pratt’s Institute for Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics.Speaker Disclosure:Matthew Johnson serves as consultant to several companies that are developing psychedelics as FDA approved treatments: AJNA Labs, Beckley Psychedelic Ltd., Clarion Clinics, MindMed, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization, and Reunion Neurosciences.James G. Matlock, Ph.D.JAMES G. MATLOCK, Research Fellow at the Parapsychology Foundation & Author.James G. Matlock received a B.A. in English from Emory University in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale in 2002. He worked at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City and at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina. Matlock is presently a Research Fellow at the Parapsychology Foundation. His chief research interests are the history of parapsychology, anthropology of religion, and reincarnation. He teaches a 15-week online seminar course on reincarnation research and theory. Read more in-depth on Matlock and his research.Matlock’s book Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory, published by Rowman & Littlefield (2019), provides the first comprehensive look at the belief in reincarnation and the evidence for past lives from historical records, anthropological studies, and contemporary research. Matlock discusses various ways the evidence may be interpreted and shows that although reincarnation entails a rejection of the materialist notion that consciousness is generated by the brain, it does not require the acceptance of any radically new concepts or the abandonment of well-established findings in mainstream psychology or biology. This book offers students, scholars, and anyone interested in the possibility of reincarnation an essential grounding in beliefs, cases, and theory, while opening doors for future research into the extension of consciousness beyond our present lives.See more on Memories of previous lives.Tom ShroderTOM SHRODER, Author and Editor.Tom Shroder is the author of Old Souls: Scientific Evidence for Reincarnation From Children Who Remember Past Lives (1999); Acid Test: How a Daring Group of Psychonauts Rediscovered the Power of LSD, MDMA and Other Psychedelic Drugs to Heal Addiction, Depression, Anxiety and Trauma (2014); The Most Famous Writer Who Ever Lived), A True Story of My Family (2016) and co-author of Fire on the Horizon: the Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster (2011).His ghost-written books include The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior by Robert O’Neill, which spent seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont, by Robert Bilott, the true story behind the movie Dark Waters, starring Mark Rufallo.At Tropic Magazine in 1988, he edited the work by Dave Barry that won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary, and as editor of The Washington Post Magazine between 2001 and 2009 he oversaw staff writer Gene Weingarten’s two Pulitzer Prize-winning feature stories, Fiddler in the Subway (2008) and Fatal Distraction (2010).A 25th anniversary edition of Old Souls with a new afterword was published in July. View all of Shroder’s books on Amazon.See Tom Shroder’s website.Frederick Kaufman, PhDMODERATOR: FREDERICK KAUFMAN, Professor of English & Journalism at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.Frederick Kaufman, Ph.D., is Professor of English and Journalism at the City University of New York. A contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Foreign Policy, Fortune, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Lapham’s Quarterly, Literary Hub, Scientific American, Salon, Slate, Nature, Wired, Vice, British Medical Journal, and numerous other publications.He is the author of four books, most recently The Money Plot: A History from Shells to Bullion to Bitcoin. Other books include Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food, and the award-winning A Short History of the American Stomach. He hosted and executive produced a Webby-nominated documentary film for Vice Reports, and has appeared on MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, Fox Business News, Democracy Now!, C-Span, National Public Radio’s Radiolab, On the Media, and the BBC World Service, among numerous other broadcasts and podcasts. He has lectured throughout the United States and abroad, including addresses to the National Press Club, PEN, and the General Assembly of the United Nations.Frederick Kaufman’s profile at CUNY School of Journalism.REGISTER FOR FREE