September 23rd: Nerd Nite London’s Knowledge Necessities

Nerd Nite London is a monthly event where three speakers give 18-21 minute fun-yet-informative talks across all disciplines, while the audience drinks along.

Address: Nerd Nite, Epic, 13 Stoke Newington Road, Dalston, London, N16 8BH

Details: Wednesday September 23rd Tickets £7.50. Early nerd tickets £6 (limited availability).

Doors open 7pm.  Tickets available here

We’re back from our summer break and to help you nurture that back to school spirit we’ve prepared a line up that covers everything you need to know: How to be happy, how to bend people to your will, and how to avoid a hangover. Join us at our new venue as we give you all the facts for a happier, more influential, less hungover life.

Laura Kudrna: Hacking happiness

A lot of suggestions about how to be happier involve changing how we think – adopt a happier mindset, think happy thoughts etc. But it’s quite hard to change the way we think. Instead, we should change what we do. I’ll discuss how to discover what you do that makes you happy and to design your life to get more happiness from it.

Laura is a postdoctoral candidate in Social Policy at the London School of Economics. She was ‘researcher extraordinaire’ on Happiness by Design, Professor Paul Dolan’s recent bestselling novel. Her research centres around the relationship of absolute and relative socio-economic status with subjective wellbeing but anything happiness related is right up her alley.

Christian Jarrett: How to use psychology to get people to do what you want

It can be very frustrating when people fail to obey. Thankfully there are thousands of studies on the psychology of influence. Forget simple bribery or seduction, I will tell you about some more intriguing, evidence-backed methods for bending people to your will, including why you should start off by apologising for the rain.

Christian (http://www.psychologywriter.org.uk) is editor and creator of the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest blog (http://digest.bps.org.uk). He also writes about brain science for New York magazine and productivity for 99U.com. He’s the author of The Rough Guide to Psychology and his latest book is Great Myths of the Brain.

Richard Stephens: Hangovers and how to avoid them

In my twenty minutes I’ll be looking at the science of hangovers. I’ll be answering no, no, no, and yes to the questions – does everybody get hangovers? Do hangovers get worse as we get older? Do women get worse hangovers than men? And are some drinks worse than others? I know you want to know how you can avoid hangovers so I’ll offer some top tips to help with that. But I’ll leave you with a question to ponder – would you really want never to have a hangover?

Richard Stephens is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Keele University and a founder member of the international Alcohol Hangover Research Group. Despite having written 11 peer review publications on alcohol hangover he maintains a deep affection for real ale. You might have seen Richard on The One Show over the summer promoting his recent popular science book “Black Sheep The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad”. He’ll have copies with him if you’d like to get one.

All proceeds from Nerd Nite go to charity. This month’s charity is Detention Action. More information about Nerd Nite London can be found by following us on Twitter @nerdnitelondon, liking us on Facebook www.facebook.com/NerdNiteLondon or visiting www.london.nerdnite.com