Eight Years of Nerd Nite DC!
Where: DC9 Nightclub at 1940 9th St NW, Washington, DC 20001
When: Saturday, December 2nd – Doors at 6PM, Show Starts at 6:30 PM
Tickets: $10 – Buy them here!
December is the 8th anniversary of Nerd Nite DC. That’s eight awesome years of being there and being square with all of you. Come join us for a special night of great talks, spirits and the sounds of science as we ring in another year of Nerd Nite DC!
Prospects for Life & Habitability Around Nearby Stars: Many Possible Homes for Our Elder(?) Race, But the Neighbors Are Likely Bacteria by Carey M. Lisse
What do we know about the current “big picture” for the formation and evolution of life on Earth, from the standpoint of its astronomical, geological, and chemical requirements? Multi-cellular life on Earth has gone through at least 4 huge upheavals due to giant impacts. Without those upheavals, bug-eyed monsters, trilobites, or giant lizards would be ruling the Earth.
Bio: Carey M. Lisse is Senior Research Scientist in the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to assuming his current position he held a variety of posts at APL and NASA. Currently a New Horizons (Pluto!!!) mission science team member, Casey has been focused primarily on comets, asteroids, X-rays from planets, and searches for asteroids and comets around other stars. The asteroid 12226 Caseylisse is named for him.
Dating as a Data Nerd in DC by Tristan Atwood
Dating is complicated and (sometimes) terrible! Tristan has used data and statistics to attempt to understand this, but mostly ended up with this talk.
Bio: Tristan Atwood moved to DC seven years ago from the Pacific Northwest, where he got tired of people not doing things. A compulsive cook, home improver, and Wikipedia spiraler, Tristan spends days with his beautiful wife Jessica, spoiled cat Peek, and dog-adjacent creature Arlo.
Fantastic Beasts and What to Feed Them by Kali Holder and Rachel Pendergrass
Preturnatural pet-keeping! Mythic menagerie management! Xenobiotic zoology! We are here to answer your questions about your dragon’s dietary needs, how to rid your fields of vampires, and the appropriate age to spay your tribble. Brought to you by the real science and drunken bar rants of wild nerds.
Kali Holder is a Veterinary pathologist, making her a master in the fine art of Poking Dead Things with Sticks. Trained in dragon dissection, zombie prevention, and Nazi punching. Handy to have on your apocalypse survival team. Makes a mean bread pudding. Rachel Pendergrass is a writer, humorist, and science communicator. She also hosts/produces the nationally touring Solve for X Science Variety show. Her writing can be seen on McSweeneys, HowStuffWorks, Eater, Martha Stewart Living. She is a three-city Nerd Niter and also hosts the quarterly writing show Scribe Night at the Pinch in Columbia Heights and the annual Science Town Hall. She has touched many sharks and been incredibly drunk with many esteemed scientists.
Music by Sarah Stardust
Sarah Stardust is a comical music project dedicated to spreading enthusiasm for science. Favorable mentions can be found by ‘I F*cking Love Space’ and scientist-turned-comedian Tim Lee. Reviews of Stardust’s tracks can also be found on podcasts ‘Too Many People’ and D.C.’s very own ‘Hometown Sounds’. In 2016 WAMU listed Stardust’s video ‘Water Bears’ in their top 10 picks out from 5K district-wide submissions to the NPR Tiny Desk Music Contest. The Sarah Stardust EP is available now on your favorite download or streaming platform.
Nerd Nite DC is partnering with the DC Podfest to bring you the best of nerdy audio entertainment, including two live shows and a brain-warping exploration of foreign accents. It’s Nerd Nite LIVE, a very special audio-visual podcast-tastic experience, with special host Ben Taylor, formerly Nerd Nite’s Madison, Wisconsin boss and now one of our rocking DC guest hosts!
Where: DC9 Nightclub at 1940 9th St NW, Washington, DC 20001
When: Saturday, November 11th – Doors at 6PM, Show Starts at 6:30 PM
Tickets: $10 – Buy them here!
America is adapting: Stories from the front lines of climate change by Doug Parsons
America Adapts – The Climate Change Podcast will host a panel to discuss what adaptation means for society and some useful examples of what’s happening today, including how our very own home town is adapting to climate change!
Doug Parsons has been working on climate adaptation for many years, starting in Queensland, Australia. Later, he worked at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, where he developed a first-of-its-kind climate change course that’s used by California and federal agencies. He carried on his adaptation work at the National Park Service and the Society for Conservation Biology and nowadays, he’s running his podcast as a fully fledged non-profit, reporting on climate adaptation in Africa and the United States and hosting interesting – and provocative – conversations around our future climate.
Don’t trust your brain: why foreign accents are all in your head by Mari Sakai
We all have the same lips, tongue, throat, and larynx…so why is it really difficult to hear and pronounce some sounds in a foreign language? Our brains are masters at statistically tracking every linguistic sound we hear, but usually only for our own native language. When we try to add a new or foreign sound in, ours brain may or may not open the door. Instead, they dump acoustic information that seems unimportant, and – here’s the cool part! – our brains will warp what we hear. This talk will focus on how the brain really rules what we hear and how we pronounce it. And we’ll get some tips on how we can train ourselves to learn difficult foreign language sounds.
Mari Sakai has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University and is currently a Fellow at Georgetown Law, working with international lawyers on their English pronunciation and oral communication skills. Mari loves watching standup, sewing, her fifteen houseplants, and hiking.
How to be a space advocate: the Ad Astra Guide to Aiming for the Stars by Jack Kiraly and Newton Campbell
Space…it’s awesome. But getting there can be a hell of a job, both for NASA and the private companies that run launches. There are plenty of people who want us to go back to the Moon and Mars and beyond. The Ad Astra podcast team will talk to us about what space advocates are up to and what they think the future holds in store for space exploration.
Jack Kiraly is a Michigander, living and working in the nation’s capital. He has a Master’s in Space Policy, and currently works in and around advocacy for science and space policy issues. Alongside hosting the Ad Astra podcast, Jack is an aspiring amateur musician and has recorded a number of to-be-released songs.
Nerd Nite is Going Electric!
Can you hear that buzzing in the air? It’s almost electric! For October Nerd Nite, we are going to see what’s vibrating in the air – from music to electricity to good ol’ radio waves. So tune into Nerd Nite at 6:30pm EST to hear Nathan West get nitty gritty about Telsa vs. Edison, Lavanya Ramanathan wax about how the Beatles rocked DC and we will interrupt our regularly scheduled program to geek out about radios with Tom Rondeau. Be sure to tune in to be there and be square.
Where: DC9 Nightclub at 1940 9th St NW, just south of U St.
When: October 14th, 2017. Doors at 6PM. Show starts at 6:30 and ends around 8:30.
Tickets: Get your tickets here. $10 each.
Tesla & Edison to Marconi & a Magician: Early problems of wireless communications and why they still haven’t been solved by Nathan West
Tesla revolutionized high frequency used in wireless communications. The Marconi telegraph company quickly capitalized on his discoveries to transmit wireless telegraph signals; their marketing, however, took several liberties in technical speak only to be “found out” by a magician. Telsa was further foiled by Edison persuading the US Navy to adopt his methods about the needed infrastructure for communication. These old feuds still pervade the wireless landscape we see today.
Bio: Nathan works at a small company designing wireless modems and formerly worked at the Naval Research Laboratory. He is currently slogging through a PhD applying machine learning to wireless communications and can’t get enough of the surprisingly colorful characters that shaped the communication revolution. He also thinks Edison wasn’t such a bad guy.
Beatlemania began in a hockey arena in Northeast D.C.: The strange tale of the first American Beatles concert By Lavanya Ramanathan
Two nights after their landmark “Ed Sullivan” appearance, four slightly overwhelmed young men boarded a train for Washington D.C. for their first live performance stateside; a show that would take place in, of all places, a hockey arena in Northeast Washington. Al Gore was in the audience. The concert was almost derailed by a major snowstorm. Tickets were less than $5. Hear the whole story of how Beatlemania in America kicked off with a very loud, very short concert right here in Washington.
Bio: Lavanya has been a reporter for The Washington Post for 13 years, and a music-head since birth. She’s covered everything from police stories to food and dining and now, what a reader has described to her as “the American mood.” She’s actually agnostic about the Beatles’ music, preferring the Stones. But she loves a good story.
How an actress and composer laid the foundation for the future of wireless communications by Tom Rondeau
Within the field of wireless communications, Hedy Lamarr’s story is one of the most well-known. But it’s worth telling again and making sure her story is known by many. This is a story of art, culture, and technology and how it created one of the most important inventions in wireless communications. We’ll explore why the technology is still relevant, and why this story is an inspiration for DARPA’s upcoming Bay Area SDR Hackfest.
Bio: Tom is a Program Manager for DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office where he continues to work on software radio — the intersection of connectivity and computing. Formerly, Tom was the lead programmer and project maintainer of GNU Radio, a Free and Open Source software radio framework and ecosystem. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech in 2007 for his work in artificial intelligence and wireless communications (ask him about the award he won for it, we’re sure he’ll be happy to tell you). And second only to Popeye, Tom’s forearms may actually be more famous than he is. I’m sure he’s going to have his sleeves rolled up for everyone to see why.
