Nerd Nite London

…with guest host James Ward

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, Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA

Date: Wednesday September 21st.

Time: Doors open 6.30pm, event starts 7.30pm

Tickets: Early nerd tickets £6, general admission £7.50.

Tickets available here

This month’s Nerd Nite’s speakers will show you what fictional realities can teach us about war and linguistics, and we ask what makes us man not monkey. This month’s learning and drinking will be hosted by James Ward, one of Nerd Nite London’s favourite speakers and the founder of the Boring Conference.

From Kesh to Klingon: How languages are created for books and films

Aliens always used to speak English, which made understanding them very easy. Some writers, however, thought that this was a decidedly unlikely state of affairs and made up new languages for them to speak. We’ll look at how some of these conlangs were based on believable rules of evolutionary linguistics while others were, frankly, utter gibberish.

Matt has an unhealthy obsession with languages, the more useless the better. He’s currently working on the machine translation of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. He’s also rather fond of incredibly strong cheese.

Monkeys to Man – How Human is Human?

Whilst the classic line up of chimp to man is widely used to illustrate evolutionary theory, at what point along that queue of primates did we become people? How are we really any different to other large primates in our family tree? What is it exactly that makes us human, and is it necessarily something we should be happy about?

Els has degrees in archaeology, anthropology & human evolution and behaviour. Having spent almost a decade in education she’s slightly concerned that she now finds people more bewildering than ever, and can only hope that people remain distracted enough by her hair and tattoos to not realise this.

What can science fiction teach us about the realities of global politics?

If you’ve watched Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and Game of Thrones, you are already a scholar of global politics and international relations. Did you know that Cersei from GoT is essentially theories of Realism wrapped into one character? Or that Adama from BsG systematically exercises Constructivist ideals when interacting with the Cylons? This talk will highlight how the expertise you’ve gained from binging on boxsets translate to theories that can be used to analyse wars and foreign policy… and that you are maybe more qualified for office than most current politicians.

Tracy is a fellow in health economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She studies the politics and economics of global health and focuses on ameliorating problems in health systems. After years of schooling and teaching she realized that sometimes it is more effective to learn from sci-fi than your traditional books and articles.

This month’s host, James Ward is the author of Adventures In Stationery: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case and the founder of the Boring Conference, a one-day celebration of the mundane, the ordinary, the obvious and the overlooked. He previously spoke at Nerd Nite on our favourite traffic icon, Ampfelman.

All proceeds from Nerd Nite London go to charity. This year we are partnering with the Shine Trust to help foster a new generation of nerds. More information about Nerd Nite London can be found by following us on Twitter @nerdnitelondon, or liking us on Facebook www.facebook.com/NerdNiteLondon For more information about the Shine Trust visit www.shinetrust.org.uk

Nerd Nite goes to the festival- July 22^nd, Secret Garden Party

 

When: Friday July 22^nd, 5-7

Where: The Forum

 

Heading to Secret Garden Party next weekend?  So are we!  We’ve selected the best of our speakers to help you pack your chat with some space-bending facts to blow your friends’ minds as the sun comes up.  Sam Furniss from Punk Science will guide us up into space, Julia Shaw will describe the technologies of the future that will help us modify memories, and Dan Walker-Smith will be providing a Garden Party guide to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Come, drink and learn as you get ready for a weekend of festival fun.

When: May 4th, 7pm-10pm
Where: Hackney Attic, Hackney Picture House, 270 Mare St, London E8 1HE
Tickets: £20.  Available here

May the fourth is Star Wars Day and so it holds a special and auspicious place in the nerd calendar. That’s why the folks at Nerd Nite London and Science Showoff have chosen this date to hold their first ever Speed Dating event, providing smart, interesting nerdy men and women with a chance to meet the one. (Just in case you’re wondering it’s not a fancy dress event, unless you’re always in cosplay)

Before the slightly awkward nerdy speed dating begins, we’ll have a talk from Scientist and TV expert Dr Emily Grossman on ‘X –Rated Weird and Wonderful Science Facts’ to help get the conversation flowing.

Did you know that two thirds of people turn their head to the right when kissing? Or that some animals eat their own babies? Would it surprise you to discover that some insects leave their penis behind in the female after sex? Or that one crazy creature rips off its penis and throws it at the female… so she can inseminate herself? Is it possible that you make better decisions when you need a wee? All these will be covered by Dr Emily.

Tickets are strictly limited to 40 attendees (20 men, 20 women).

At the event:
Guests will be greeted by a member of the Nerd Nite London team on arrival, before the evening events kick off with a talk from Dr Emily on ‘‘X –Rated Weird and Wonderful Science Facts’.

Then after the talk, the dating begins. This will follow the standard speed dating format where you chat to someone for four minutes and then speak to the next individual. Everyone will be noting down which nerds they want to see again.

At the end of the dates we’ll collect the score cards and get in touch with the matched individuals so they can take things further (if they want to!). The whole thing will be kept ticking over by host Steve Cross.

When: May 4th, 7pm-10pm
Where: Hackney Attic, Hackney Picture House, 270 Mare St, London E8 1HE
Tickets: £20.  Available here

Photo by Full Circle Photography Calgary https://www.facebook.com/fullcirclephotocalgary?__mref=message_bubble

Quantum Mechanics, 1950s video projectors and giving cash away in rural Nepal

Nerd Nite London is a monthly event where three speakers deliver a 21 minute talk about, well, pretty much anything, while the audience drinks along. It’s evidence-based entertainment in a bar.

At April’s Nerd Nite there’s Quantum Mechanics; find out how particles can be two places at once, totally nerd out learning about 1950s video projection technology and discover why giving money away led to intrigue and deception in rural Nepal.

Address: Nerd Nite, Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA

Date: Wednesday April 20th 2016

Tickets: Early nerd tickets £6, general admission £7.50.  Tickets available here

Doors (and bar) open 6.30pm Event starts 7.30pm

Quantum Superpositions: Parallel universes and Revolutionary Computing

The world is quantum mechanical but the world as described by quantum mechanics is very different from the world we’re familiar with. You’ll have your mind bent all out of shape with this talk finding out about ‘Superpositions’. Find out what Superpositions are and how these lead to particles that seem to be in two places at once and cats that are neither dead or alive. You’ll also learn how superpositions could revolutionise computing.

Ben, Zoe and Chris are postgraduate students at Imperial College London. Like all budding scientists, they are addicted to coffee, free food and arguing about the nature of reality.

1950’s video projection technology : hot oil, high voltages and vacuum pumps

Mike Harrison is fascinated with how things work and has an entertainingly ranty YouTube channel where he takes apart things (e.g. airport X-ray machines) or explains why it’s a really bad idea to explore a hydrogen cell.

Mike will explain about the Eidophor. From the 1950s-90s, a single company dominated the large-screen video projection market with a barely practical device called the Eidophor. This used highly complex optics, involving high voltages, hot oil and vacuum pumps to project bright, high quality images for live music, sports and news events. It monopolised the market until the 1990s when it was made completely obsolete by modern projection technologies.

Mike Harrison likes vintage technology, dangerous high voltage experiments and other random electronics.

The challenges of implementing cash transfer schemes to pregnant women in rural Nepal

More than 10,000 pregnant women in rural Nepal were given cash and researchers wanted to evaluate if this improved mother and child health. In order to understand whether women could actually keep control of money at home, Lu interviewed wives, husbands, sisters-in-law and mothers-in-law. The results paint a fascinating picture of intrigue, deception and power struggles in poor Nepali households.

Lu is a PhD student at the Institute of Global Health, University College London. He is currently writing up his thesis in his final year in Nepal and desperately hoping someone will give him a job when he finishes.

About Us

Nerd Nite London is a monthly event where three speakers deliver a 21 minute talk about, well, pretty much anything, while the audience drinks along. It’s evidence-based entertainment in a bar.

Previous talks have included ‘The technology of terminator’ delivered by Leila Johnston, ‘What it’s like to be a freedom fighter’ presented by woman of the year Diana Nammi, and ‘How to avoid a hangover’ explained by Wellcome science book prize winner Dr Richard Stephens (unfortunately the answer was to drink less).

@nerdnitelondon

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, Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA

Details: Wednesday March 16th

Tickets: Early nerd tickets £6, general admission £7.50. Tickets available here.

Doors open 6.30pm

As part of British Science Week, this month we’re sciencing the shit out of nerd nite. You’ll learn how your brain is able to tell you where you are (and how to get to the pub), what happens when you go fossil hunting in the Yemen, and why evolution is more awesome than you could possibly imagine.

How your brain knows where you are and what happens when it goes a bit wrong

Although you might think you have a terrible memory or sense of direction the truth is that even the most inept of us rarely get lost. We’re very good at keeping track of where we are relative to our surroundings: we recognise familiar places, can take shortcuts, and deal with unexpected obstacles. In fact so seamless is this ability that it seems trivial – after all when was the last time you got lost on the way to your own toilet or finding your way to work? This presentation will cover how the brain pulls off this trick. We’ll look at how memories for places and events are stored in the brain, what goes wrong when they get messed up, and most importantly how you can find your way to the pub (really).

Dr. Caswell Barry hails from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. He studies rats’ brains for a living, using this knowledge to pick apart the human mind and develop an understanding of what makes us tick.

No need for a creator: how the inherent creativity of the universe invokes awe and explains life on earth.

Around four billion years ago, somewhere on earth, a set of chemicals began to build patterns that recreated themselves. These simple patterns were the progenitors of life on earth, spreading across the planet and building layer upon layer of complexity into life on earth today. This presentation will include reasons to believe that such pattern building is an intrinsic property of our universe, and how from this perspective the spontaneous emergence of life might not just be possible, but inevitable. Using examples from personal research we’ll understand how awe-inspiring evolved living systems can become, and how resorting to a ‘creator myth’ can actually diminish our sense of awe in the universe.

Dr. Morgan Beeby leads a research lab at Imperial College, London, focusing on the evolution of the wide diversity found in the biology of bacteria. Prior to Imperial College he studied at Caltech, UCLA, and the University of Birmingham.

Archaeologists Without Borders: Fossil Hunting in the Yemen

Some parts of the world’s potential contribution to science and exploration is written-off due to instability, this is a story of how we need to fight for incredibly good science no matter where it takes us, this is the story of fossil hunting in the Yemen.

National Geographic Emerging Explorer Ella Al-Shamahi is a palaeoanthropologist specialising in Neanderthals and in fossil hunting in caves in unstable, hostile and disputed territories— she also just happens to be a stand-up comic.

All proceeds from Nerd Nite go to charity. This month’s charity is the Running Charity. More information about Nerd Nite London can be found by following us on Twitter @nerdnitelondon or liking us on Facebook

February 24th: Nerd Nite London

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, Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA

Details: Wednesday February 24th

Tickets: Early nerd tickets £6, general admission £7.50. Tickets available here: https://www.designmynight.com/london/whats-on/date-night/nerd-nite-february-2016

Doors open 6.30pm

This month a scriptwriter, a radio producer and an archivist join us for a night of nerd miracles. Learn how they proved and disproved miracles in the 17^th Century, how an illiterate, untrained Native American created a written script for the Cherokee language, and what makes the soundtracks for ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jaws so magical. While drinking beer.

Steven Spielberg & John Williams: The Ultimate Composer/Director Partnership?

Alfred Hitchcock & Bernard Herrmann, Tim Burton & Danny Elfman, Christopher Nolan & Hans Zimmer….the list of successful film director and composer partnerships goes on. But what are the qualities that make them so fruitful, and what’s so special about the working relationship between Steven Spielberg & John Williams?

 

Jenny Nelson is Executive Producer at Classic FM and produces the film music show, Saturday Night at the Movies. Every week, the programme focuses on a particular theme, genre or anniversary, and the subject of composer/director partnerships is one she find particularly fascinating. She was once told off in the cinema for crunching on her popcorn too loudly so she now has an irrational fear of eating during films.

Signs and Wonders: Miracle Hunters and the 17th century X-files

Learn about the weird and wonderful from the time of the Cavaliers and Roundheads, when the miraculous was part of everyday life in England, Europe and North America. Monstrous creatures, bizarre coincidences, divine interventions and heavenly apparitions were a staple of common culture. This belief in providence prevailed until the twentieth century in a tradition of fasts, thanksgiving and prayer. The authorities began to grow wary of these stories and their power over the crowd, however, and they set out to investigate them systematically and critically in order to expose cranks and frauds- laying the foundations of modern scientific method in the process.

Following a short lived and abortive career as an historian, Geoff became an archivist, which isn’t a dry and dusty career at all (well, maybe a little bit). He currently works for King’s College London, and looks after old and rare collections of stuff relating to the history of war, empire, science, medicine and the arts. The job entails searching out hidden stories up and down the country, from garden sheds to stately homes, supporting TV, film, books and theatre productions (most recently, Nicole Kidman and the cast of Photograph 51 in the West End.)

Sequoyah – Linguistic Genius of the Cherokee

In the early 19th century, there was no way to write down the Cherokee language. A man called Sequoyah decided he would change all that. He was completely untrained and wholly illiterate. Find out how he did it anyway. And how it very nearly got him killed.

Andy Riley is an Emmy-winning scriptwriter, and bestselling author and cartoonist. His script work includes Veep, Black Books, Tracey Ullman’s Show and Little Britain. His books include the Bunny Suicides series which has been published in more than twenty countries.

All proceeds from Nerd Nite go to charity. This month’s charity is the National Literacy Trust. 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

 

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, Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA

Details: Wednesday January 20^th

Tickets: Early nerd tickets £6, general admission £7.50. Tickets available here: https://www.designmynight.com/london/whats-on/date-night/nerd-nite-january-2016

Doors open 7pm

New year, new knowledge: Come join us for the first Nerd Nite of the year –you’ll learn about the sociological significance of a German pedestrian crossing symbol,the role of volcanoes in human evolution,and the amazing [/terrifying?] implications of developing robots as care workers. All at the Museum of Childhood- with beer.

Pedestrian Crossing Signals Used in the German Democratic Republic (Gdr): 1961 -1990

Designed by a traffic psychologist in East Germany, the Ampelmännchen have moved from pedestrian crossings to symbols of East German identity, and have now become a global brand. Does the popularity of this little hat-wearing figure illustrate capitalism’s ability to co-opt everything it encounters, or does his success over his western counterpart demonstrate the resilience of the human spirit?

James Ward is the author of Adventures In Stationery: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case and the founder of the Boring Conference, a one-day celebration of the mundane, the ordinary, the obvious and the overlooked

Our robot friends

This presentation will cover the very real and very current endeavours to get robotic personal assistants into our homes, especially where people needing care have few alternative options. Can robots care with compassion and what does this mean for dignity? Will robots steal our jobs? Once robots begin to take on humanoid forms, what will that do to our sense of individuality, or adequacy? This presentation may or may not revisit the issue of sex with robots, and will try not to scare you with predictions about the Singularity.

Jobeda Ali is the founder and CEO of Three Sisters Care, which provides home care services to your grandparents so you can do something more nerdy instead. Three Sisters Care has over 100 human care staff and is building robots to supplement its workforce. Jobeda may also be known to you as the founder of London Geek Chic, a Meetup.com group for science lovers. In her spare time she is an astronomer, comedian, sci fi writer and a some time steampunk samurai.

A handful of really bad days – a history of the human species in four volcanic eruptions

The occasional, episodic volcanic eruption has always provided Planet Earth with a way to release its inner heat. During humanity’s ≈200,000 year residency on its surface, we’ve had some close encounters with some hot rocks.

By telling the geological and archaeological stories of a handful of carefully chosen eruptions I’ll take you from an explosive event that made life difficult for our Palaeolithic hunter-gathering ancestors, through some of the darkest days of Crete’s Bronze Age Minoan civilisation, a brief hello to how Iceland contributed to the French Revolution, and winding up in 1980s USA when Mt St Helens reminded us it was there.

Simon is a PhD candidate at Birkbeck, University of London where his research is focused on volcanism in the Canary Islands, and previous to this he worked for 8 years at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. While he really likes both excavating artefacts in arid, dusty countries, and analysing the end-products of magmatic events, he finds it much, much more fun when he gets a chance to combine the two.

All proceeds from Nerd Nite go to charity. This month’s charity is Mind. 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

 

November 18th: Nerd Nite London- Brains!

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, Paper Dress Vintage, 352a Mare Street, Hackney, E8 1HR

Details: Wednesday November 18th Tickets £7.50. Early nerd tickets £6 (limited availability). Tickets available here: https://billetto.co.uk/en/events/november-18th-nerd-nite-london-brains

Doors open 7pm

Forget how much your brain knows, how much do you actually know about your brain? In three informative and entertaining presentations we’ll learn about how the secret messengers of your body can control your brain, how your brain lies to you, how neuroscience has shaped our understanding of art, and how art has shaped neuroscience. Nerds, brains, beer. It’s going to be a great nerd nite.

This is your brain on art

What can a famous piece of music reveal about the diseased brain? What can a painting by Ingres tell us about how our brains perceive beauty? And how did a surrealist painting influence a Nobel-prize winning breakthrough? Join me as I explore the impact that our understanding of the brain has had on the way in which we perceive art, and perhaps more curiously, the influence that art has had on the emerging science of the brain.

Iain Mackie studied Neuroscience before entering the pharmaceutical industry to study the molecular pathology of neurodegenerative diseases. Swapping test-tubes for teenagers, he headed north to embark on initial teacher training at a comprehensive school in a former mining town (the former alma mater of Paul & Barry Chuckle). He is currently STEM & Bioscience Coordinator at a school in East London, where his workplace duties also include making sure the staffroom is suitably supplied with ketchup and moaning about the heating.

How your body controls your brain

Vikki will explore the secret messengers of the body that talk to your brain and manipulate how you feel. You’ll find out why cancer drugs are helping us understand depression, why it might not be your fault if you’re fat, and how you can help prevent social deprivation damaging a child’s health forever. Oh and she’ll also smash some eggs.

Vikki is a sport scientist who doesn’t know much about sport anymore. Instead her interests occupy the middle point of an obscure Venn diagram of psychology, immunology, exercise, and social justice. She spends most of her time either supporting students to link their academic knowledge to real world problems or procrastinating on Buzzfeed

How our brains lie to us

Julia will take us on a trip through the various ways in which our brains deceive us into believing that we can reliably form memories – particularly memories of our life experiences. In a turbulent overview of the rich world of the science of our personal past, she will discuss the neurological, perpetual, and social aspects of memory illusions. By the end of it she’ll have you questioning all your memories, and wondering whether you may not be who you think you are.

Julia Shaw is a memory scientist at London South Bank University who loves to dispel misconceptions and challenge notions of reality. In her ethically-borderline research she convinces people that they committed crimes that never actually happened. When she’s not hacking into peoples’ memories, she is ineffectively Tweeting, or pouring her heart into her upcoming popular science book “The Memory Illusion”, due to appear internationally in 2016 with Penguin Random House.

All proceeds from Nerd Nite go to charity. This month’s charity is MOAS- Migrant Offshore Aid Station. 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

 

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, the Attic, Hackney Picture House, 270 Mare St, London E8 1HE

Details: Wednesday October 21^st Tickets £7.50. Early nerd tickets £6 (limited availability). Tickets available here: https://www.picturehouses.com/cinema/Hackney_Picturehouse/film/nerd-night-london

Doors open 7pm

We’ve always thought that the attic is the spookiest part of a building. Come join us to test that theory with a Halloween special at Hackney Picture House. Our speakers will cover the psychology of ghosts and hauntings, the zombie stars of the silver screen, and the history of the occult in London. All proceeds go to charity.

The psychology of ghosts and hauntings

Opinion polls repeatedly show relatively high levels of belief in ghosts even in modern Western societies. Furthermore, a sizeable minority of the population claim to have personally encountered a ghost. This talk will consider a number of factors that may lead people to claim that they have experienced a ghost even though they may not in fact have done so. Topics covered will include hoaxes, sincere misinterpretation of natural phenomena, hallucinatory experiences and pareidolia (seeing things that are not there), and the fallibility of eyewitness testimony.

Chris French is a professor of psychology and head of the anomalistic psychology research unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. What is anomalistic psychology? It is essentially the psychology of weird stuff – everything from alien abductions to zombies – but starting from the working hypothesis that such claims can best be explained in psychological, rather than parapsychological, terms.

 

Zombie stars of the silver screen

The zombie apocalypse – that vision of sluggishly moving grey swarms, cut through with veins of impossible colour and gore – has entertained movie audiences for decades, capturing imagination while chomping on brains. I will talk about the zombie in horror film, picking out shifts and variations on the theme, particularly since Romero. From biker zombies, to chatty zombies, to hopping body-parts… the ‘zombie spectrum’ has featured some lively dead.

Krista Bonello is an Assistant Lecturer in the School of Arts at the University of Kent. She has been a dedicated horror fan for as long as she can remember, and writes horror film reviews for various publications.

Magic in London

Dusty old London has had magic weaved into it from its mythical beginnings to the present day. Join me for a brief gazetteer of occult London including magical stones, a witch and her squirrel, wizards vs. an undead baker, weird scenes at the séance and neo-pagan spells on the London Underground. I will attempt to unwed history from the mythology.

Scott is the author of London Urban Legends: The Corpse on the Tube and writes irregularly on ephemeral London for Londonist. He’s the co-organiser and host of the London Fortean Society. He spends way too much time thinking about the Hackney Bear and the Peckham Ghost.

All proceeds from Nerd Nite go to charity. This month’s charity is Cake for Kids in Hackney. 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