6:30 p.m.
What听if the most consequential questions of our time听aren’t听being asked in laboratories or policy chambers 鈥� but in the quieter, stranger corners of human experience?听听
At Rice University’s Fondren Library, tucked within the Woodson Research Center, lives one of the most extraordinary academic collections in the world: the听Center for听the Impossible. With over a million files spanning decades of rigorous inquiry, this serious, peer-reviewed scholarly archive is home to thousands of firsthand accounts of unexplained phenomena, declassified government remote viewing programs, and the life’s work of some of the most credentialed researchers ever to venture into the听unknown;听 including听the remarkable holding of the John E. Mack Archives.听听听
Dr.听Mack a听Harvard psychiatrist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and a man whose intellectual courage led him to do what few of his peers dared 鈥� to sit with approximately 300 individuals who reported alien encounters, and to take their experiences seriously. His meticulous case files, now preserved at Rice, represent one of the most disciplined attempts ever made to understand what these encounters mean 鈥� psychologically, culturally, and perhaps beyond.听听
This lecture invites you to set aside听assumptions听and enter a space of genuine inquiry. What do we do with experiences that resist our frameworks? What does it mean to study the impossible 鈥� rigorously, honestly, and without flinching?听What does it mean to听listen?
Registration opens March 11, 2027.
Biography:
Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he convenes the Archives of the Impossible conference series and helps host the Center for the Impossible, the physical collections professionally curated and stored by Woodson Research Center. He also co-directs听the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Jeff is the author of听numerous听books, most recently听How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else听(Chicago, 2024). He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the sciences, modern esoteric literature, and the hidden history of science fiction collectively entitled听The Super Story: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies. His full body of work can be seen at听He thinks he may be Spider-Man.
Department Sponsors: The Graduate School,听Department of American Indian Studies, The Department of the Comparative History of Ideas, and the Simpson Center