You are invited to A Panel Discussion on Eros & Human Flourishing

This will be a conversation exploring whether our greatest untapped resources might be hiding in the very dimensions of human experience we’ve been most determined to overlook. Moderated by Reason senior editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown, featuring Dr. Topeka Sam and an AI appearance by Nicole Daedone, who is currently incarcerated. Would love to have you!

About Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a senior editor at Reason and author of the biweekly Sex & Tech newsletter, covering sex, technology, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture. She is co-founder of Feminists for Liberty and a professional affiliate of the journalism program at the University of Cincinnati. Since joining Reason in 2014, she has focused on the politics and policy surrounding sex, speech, tech, justice, and women's rights.

About Dr. Topeka Sam

Dr. Topeka K. Sam is the founder of Ladies of Hope Ministries, a national network of re-entry homes for women coming out of prison, including a location in the Bronx. She is co-founder of FRESH, the first bank built specifically for people affected by the criminal justice system. Her advocacy helped pass federal legislation prohibiting the restraint of incarcerated women during labor. A recipient of the Soros Fellowship and a Presidential Pardon, she has been recognized across the political spectrum for her work building systems that create genuinely flourishing human beings.

About Dr. Vivian Siegel

Dr. Vivian Siegel holds a PhD in Genetics from the University of California, San Francisco, and currently serves as a Lecturer of Biology at MIT and Research Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. She has served as Editor-in-Chief of leading scientific journals including Cell, Molecular Cell, and PLOS Biology, and led education and outreach initiatives at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Her work spans rigorous science communication, research reproducibility, and expanding the questions science is willing to ask.

About AI Nicole Daedone

Nicole Daedone is a teacher, author, and originator of Orgasmic Meditation — a structured attention practice that has been the subject of peer-reviewed neuroscience research and practiced by tens of thousands worldwide. Her work spans over two decades, 19 published books, and hundreds of hours of teaching at the intersection of Eros, contemplative practice, and human flourishing. She has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and other major publications.

Nicole will participate in this event through her AI avatar — a first of its kind. Trained on 25 books (19 published, 6 unpublished), over 125 hours of recorded talks, 50+ lectures spanning Eros, OM, women, and human flourishing, 9 peer-reviewed science papers, core instructional materials, course archives, and personal writings, the avatar draws from one of the most comprehensive bodies of work ever used to build an AI representation of a living teacher. What you'll encounter isn't a mere chatbot or a summary — it's a distillation of Nicole's actual thinking, language, and philosophy, able to engage in real conversation about the ideas she has spent a lifetime developing.

A Panel Discussion On Eros and Human Flourishing with Reason Magazine Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown