Well, well, well…if it isn’t a bunch of nerds. Thankfully, you’re in good company!
Spring is in the air and we hope that you’ll join us for three refreshing and vibrant presentations that’ll make Winter feel like a distant dream.
It all goes down on Thursday, April 10 at LIVE (102 S. First)! Doors open at 6:30 and we’ll get the show going at 7. No cover charge. And as always, libation and eats will be available at the bar!
Our enchanted evening will begin with Leif Laufeyjarsen and Tarot Unveiled: A Journey Through History and Meaning. Nearly everyone has an opinion on tarot—whether they believe in it or not, those opinions tend to be strong. But how many people stop to ask how it supposedly works? Is there a definitive guide or “bible” of tarot? If so, who wrote it? While tracing the origins and evolution of tarot may not change your mind, it will give you a deeper, more informed perspective.
Leif first began reading tarot in the 1990s. After stepping away for some time, he has returned to it and now reads professionally. With a BA in History from Eastern Michigan University, he has an insatiable curiosity about the origins of everything he studies. So when he picked up tarot again, he delved into its beginnings—seeking not just to practice it, but to truly understand how it works.
Next, Melissa F. Kaelin welcomes you into The Strangely Addictive Subculture of Chasing the Northern Lights, where Aurora is more than meets the eye. So you may already know it’s brighter on camera. But did you know about SARs or the Picket Fence, or a man named S.T.E.V.E.? You know, sub-auroral arcs? And what is the deal with Aurora’s pronouns, anyway? Find out why we call these nocturnal people Aurora Chasers, where it all began, and how satellites like the Ace Composition Explorer can help you get lucky tonight!
Melissa is a 13-year seasoned Aurora Chaser who once ditched her husband to hang out with the Milky Way. She accidentally created an AuroraCon and intentionally founded a community for Northern Lights, which now numbers over 127,000 people. As a child, she could barely hold onto a chemistry beaker, but last year, she was published in her first academic paper as a citizen scientist on “The Gannon Storm” of May 10, 2024. By night, she writes books like “Beyond the 45th Parallel: The Beginner’s Guide to Chasing Aurora,” and by day, she is a science communicator, taking calls with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
And to round out the evening: Paul Buzzard with Grumpy cats, urine-soaked socks and the Kardashians: Conservation of Pallas’s cats and other wildlife in Armenia. Pallas’s cats aka manul aka grumpy cats are a popular species in many zoos, but they are critically endangered in Armenia. This talk will look at work in collaboration with zoos to update their conservation status in Armenia and establish protected areas for them and other wildlife.
Paul is a Conservation Biologist, National Geographic Explorer, and Regenerative Farmer. His work in Armenia began as Director of Conservation with the Detroit Zoo, and continues as a regenerative farmer at Detroit Flight Path Farm and as a Conservation Technician with the Michigan Climate Smart Farms Project at the Washtenaw Co. Conservation District.
Hiya, Nerds! Are you ready for the one-two punch of the best nerdy way to end a week? That BIG first punch is our next Nerd Nite on Thursday, March 13 at LIVE (102 S. First)! Doors open at 6:30 pm, talks start at 7 pm and, as always, there’s no cover charge! (And then that second punch is Pi Day the morning after! Make your crust on 3/13, put it in the fridge, go to Nerd Nite, then bake your Pi on 3/14…what could be better??)
To begin, You’ll Shudder to Learn the Origin of Your Phone’s Shutter Sound (Well, maybe it won’t frighten you, but it’ll be illuminating.) Photo-Geek John Heider will lead his fellow Nerd Nite Nerdlingtons through a concise history of the genesis of the iPhone’s camera shutter sound effect, its analog basis, the sound engineer that grabbed it from the 35 millimeter film world, its initial intended use and how it’s probably the most-heard cell phone sound in the world.
John is a 37 year veteran of the photography business having started in the days of 35 mm film and darkrooms and now uses exclusively digital technology as he got tired of breathing the corrosive fumes of film developers. Due to that excessive chemical exposure he now believes that birds are A.I. generated and that his cat Pickle is the duly elected next president of the United States.
Then, we’ll go From Lead to Gold: How Alchemy and Computer Wizardry Create Better Drugs with Thanh Lai. There’s a reason why medicinal chemists are often referred to as “drug hunters” — it’s because the process of developing drugs feels like a literal hunt! Countless years and $$$ are spent testing hundreds of thousands of molecules to find the perfect drug in the haystack. But what if we can speed things up a bit with some computers and a little magic? Tune into how we revive the ancient art of alchemy to develop your favorite medicines!
Thanh is a fourth year Biophysics graduate student who loves frogs, cooking for people, and learning Spanish (hola). There was a distant time in his life when he wanted to be a lab chemist…until the day when his lab professor le gritó for flushing E. Coli down the sink. And when he contaminó his professor’s chemical reagents with his bare hands. And when he rompió his lab partner’s glassware. Anyways, Thanh does all of his work on a computer now and has yet to be a danger to his environment since (or so he thinks).
Closing it out, it’s time to watch out for Billboard Bandits. They estimated that 167 billboards were cut, chopped down, or chainsawed to the ground along highways surrounding Ann Arbor. The Canadian Black Velvet whiskey billboard atop the Main Street Party Store was the target of a separate attack. Hear tales of local billboard banditry from The Book of Ann Arbor author Richard Retyi.
Richard wrote The Book of Ann Arbor: A Very Serious History Book and is co-creator of the companion podcast Ann Arbor Stories. He works in marketing, so he thinks billboards are swell, but he also enjoys chaos, so dismantle the machine!
Nerd Nite is always fun and interesting, but this month, we also can claim to be TOPICAL! Whether you can’t stop thinking about last Sunday’s Super Bowl or if the preeminence of ChatGPT has you wondering about what AI can do for you (and what you hope it doesn’t), February’s Nerd Nite is on point! Join us on Thursday, February 13 at LIVE! Doors open at 6:30 pm, talks start at 7 pm and, as always, there’s no cover charge!
We’ll start out with sports and Eleanna Varangis with Get your Head [out of] the Game: How Sport Concussions Affect our Brain Health. Concussions frequently occur during participation in contact and collision sport from the youth through professional levels. As individuals with a history of multiple concussions enter retirement, we are learning more about the potential long-term negative effects of head impacts and concussions on brain health throughout the lifespan. We’ll talk about some of the potential benefits vs. risks of participation in contact and collision sports, how concussions affect our brain in the short- and long-term, and how we can potentially optimize the long-term benefits of sport participation while mitigating the long-term risks in current athletes.
Eleanna is an Assistant Professor of Movement Science in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan, and a member of the Faculty Council of the Michigan Concussion Center. Her research focuses on the long-term effects of sport participation and concussions on cognitive function and brain health across the lifespan. Outside the lab/classroom, she loves watching football and baseball (Go Yankees!), cooking, traveling, and encouraging her 5-year-old and 3-year-old to please stop hitting their heads on things.
We’ll switch over to the sunnier side with Molly Jones and Machines Making Music? In 1842, Lady Ada Lovelace speculated that, in the future, analyzing machines would “compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity.” In 2025, AI is making music, and…it’s going. It’s up to you to decide how successfully. We’ll talk about machine learning basics and how they can be applied to music, listen to examples of the latest AI-generated music, and look at independent artists creating their own original machine learning based work.
Molly is an improviser, composer, and data engineer. Her tools include saxophones, flutes, found sounds, and machine learning models, and she is the founder of Chicago Creative Machines, an initiative promoting the original and ethical use of machine learning in the creation of art.
Now to the potentially darker side of AI with Take Me to Your Leader: How AI Will Shape Power and Politics in the 21st Century. The aliens are here, and they want to know who’s in charge. In this talk, Frank Murphy will look at how these inscrutable models will shape our conversations and thus our political reality. He’ll conclude with some warnings and key observations from philosophers, engineers, and historians. Wisdom and learnings will be shared by all.
Frank escaped the Land of Increasingly Hot (Florida) to study in the Land of Endless Snow (Michigan Tech). He stands before you today a fully naturalized Michigan transplant. One of his teeth is backwards, but he’s otherwise a relatively modern thinker. He works for an ML startup and resides in Ann Arbor with his wife Emily, who he definitely did not bribe to get a speaker slot for his talk.
Here’s hoping you resolved to spend 2025 hanging out with great people, learning new things, and having a laugh or two along the way because Nerd Nite can help you get a great start on keeping that spirit going all year long! Join us on Thursday, January 9 at LIVE! Doors open at 6:30 pm, talks start at 7 pm and, as always, there’s no cover charge!
We’ll start things off by exploring The Mayfield Mystique. With its unbelievably understanding parents and black and white mid-century setting of Mayfield, USA, was there any semblance of reality to the TV series Leave it to Beaver? More importantly, can someone get a Ph D in history studying this question? The quick answer to both, according to media scholar Mike Kassel, is “kinda sorta” and “yes,” respectively.
Dr. Kassel is an administrator and adjunct lecturer in History and American Culture at UM-Flint, and an admitted 20th Century pop culture junkie who can’t wait to retire and watch TV all day.
Was that a sneeze I just heard? No, it’s just our next talk: Achoo! Epidemiology, RSV, oh my! Cold season is upon us and both influenza and the common cold are more widely known. If you’re not familiar with RSV, this talk will explain what it is, some of its interesting features, and what you can do with this information to stay well in the midst of respiratory virus season.
Sarah Bassiouni (she/any) is a PhD student studying infectious disease and social epidemiology at the University of Michigan. Outside of school, she enjoys trivia, gardening, attending crossword tournaments with her partner, and spending time with their three cats.
We’ll close out the night going to 17th Century France with The Sun and His Stars: the women who influenced King Louis XIV. Louis XIV is one of France’s most famous kings. The “Sun King” is known for his one-man-show approach to monarchy, but he could still be influenced by those dearest to him. We’ll look at three of the many women who shaped his life and his reign, and cemented him into posterity.
Nathalie Catchings is a DNA scientist by day, with many other nerdy interests by night. She’s grateful to Nerd Nite for letting her speak about one of them tonight!
Imagine, if you will, a loooooooooooong table, stretching all the way from the front door at LIVE to the stage. Sitting around that table are all your best nerdy friends, and the table itself is piled high with a cornucopia of tasty morsels of knowledge, made particularly palatable by engaging chefs and seasoned with just the right amount of humor.
It may be a metaphor, but that’s PRETTY MUCH what you’ll get when you attend our next session of Nerd Nite, on Thursday, November 14 at LIVE! Doors open at 6:30 pm, talks start at 7 pm and, as always, there’s no cover charge!
Our first intellectual course brings Jennifer German with Why Do We Need Timezones on the Moon? And if on the Moon, why not also on Mars? But not only why, HOW? Time doesn’t work the same on the Moon as it does on Earth . . . (You’ll have to show up to find out!!)
Jennifer is a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador to Michigan, mother of two, software engineer, medical school educated, hopeless space geek.
Next we’ll feed our brain with Work for Working Memory: Motivation and Cognitive Performance Across the Lifespan. Do you ever wonder why, as you get older, you have a harder time remembering things? Dahlia Kassel will share why that is a normal part of healthy aging and her research on boosting memory performance in older adults.
Dahlia is a PhD student in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Michigan where she studies cognition, motivation, and aging. She is a proud cat Mom to her nine-year old Maine Coon and loves to embroider, read, and bake in her free time.
And I hope you saved room for On the Relationship between Space Weather and the Close of the Vietnam War. On August 4th, 1974, over 4000 naval mines deployed off the coast of north Vietnam suddenly and unexpectedly detonated. On May 10th, 2024, the Aurora Borealis was visible directly overhead much of the continental United States, including Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dan Welling will explore the physics that connects these two events and how researchers at the University of Michigan are working to better understand space weather phenomena.
Dr. Welling is an assistant researcher at the University of Michigan’s department of Climate and Space. He uses computer simulations to both understand and predict the impact of solar flares and mass ejections on the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, including the development of the Aurora.
It’s been said (by me, right here, right now) that the best Nerd Nites take us on a journey. And, goodness, do we have a doozy of a journey for y’all on Thursday, October 10 at LIVE (102 S. First Street). Doors open at 6:30 pm, talks start at 7 pm and, as always, there’s no cover charge!
We’ll start things off on a vast note with David Robinson and How It’s Made: Galaxies. The night sky is full of galaxies in a variety of shapes and sizes, including our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The story of how these galaxies formed is played out on the largest stage in the universe, full of collisions, explosions, the mysterious substance known as “dark matter,” and much more.
David is a physics graduate student in his last year at the University of Michigan. Outside of physics, he enjoys reading novels, playing piano, solving crossword puzzles, and learning to cook new things.
Next, we’ll zoom in to the Soviet Union for Keeping Time Behind the Iron Curtain: A Visual History of Soviet Watchmaking with Jody Harnish. Join us for a storytelling tour of socialist timekeeping, slideshow style. We’ll get a crash course in horological history, then survey 70 years of the industry, designs, & fashion that defined watchmaking in former USSR. And we’re gonna look at so much cool dial patina (So. Much. Patina.) and party like it’s 1991.
Jody is a longtime AADL public library staffer, where he shops for, catalogs, prints, teaches, answers, makes, & occasionally breaks many different things! He once set off the Downtown Library’s fire alarms 2 hours after closing, and they were very cool about it.
We’ll end the night closer to home (but further back in history) with Esteban Touma and The Spanish Conquest: How the Americas were taken by Columbus, Cortez, and a Handful of Other Idiots. Much has been said about Columbus and the Spaniards that brought a genocide to the native populations of “the New World.” They were ruthless, ambitious, and relentless. But did you also know they were also f%#&ing idiots? In this talk, we will explore the ways their relentless stupidity in their words and action brought so much change and destruction and changed the course of the world forever.
Esteban is a teacher, content producer, and stand-up comedian who loves all things language. Besides being a Spanish teacher and media producer for Babbel, his writing and comedy has been featured on Comedy Central, NPR, Sirius XM, and The Moth. As a Babbel spokesperson he has been featured in The Guardian, the BBC, Newsweek, and many other publications. He’s also a recipient of the the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association award. When not teaching his language or telling jokes on stage you can catch him in a used bookstore, buying books he’ll never read.
Is there a better time of year to be a NERD than September? Back-to-school is our chance to SHINE, when education is on everyone’s mind and office supplies go on sale! Let’s celebrate by going to LIVE (102 S. First Street) and learning as a group! Join us on Thursday, September 12 for another wonderful edition of NNA2! Doors open at 6:30 pm, talks start at 7 pm and, as always, there’s no cover charge!
Isha Verma, Ph.D. will begin things with Speaking through stem cells: How these cells help us study brain diseases. Epilepsy is a brain disorder that results in uncontrollable seizures, and without proper treatment, it can be a life-threatening condition. Genetic abnormalities or mutations are one of the main causes of epilepsy. However, the role of various genetic abnormalities in the pathology of epilepsy is not clearly understood as there is a scarcity of brain samples of patients suffering from epilepsy. Therefore, we use stem cells derived from epilepsy patients as a model system to study epilepsy. This model system can also be used for testing drugs for the treatment of epilepsy. Ultimately, this can result in the development of personalized treatment therapies for patients suffering from epilepsy and can greatly improve the life quality of these patients.
Isha is a developmental biologist and neuroscientist at the University of Michigan. She is using stem cells to develop therapies for brain diseases.
We’ll keep the brain…well…on the brain with Makaila Furderer and Clocked out: How SCN dysfunction links sleep and mood disorders. She’ll explore the co-occurrence of sleep and mood disorders and how a small part of your brain—the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN—may be to blame. When the SCN is not working correctly, regular daily rhythms that keep us well-rested and enable us to tackle our day with a positive outlook are interrupted, leading to sleep and mood disorders. Understanding these relationships at a deeper level just might empower humanity to find a new treatment targeting the SCN that puts us, and our mental health concerns, to bed.
Makaila is a second-year PhD student at the University of Michigan primarily studying traumatic brain injury. Her studies don’t stop her from branching out into new (read, ‘many’) hobbies, which leads to talks like these and frequent weekend trips. Of all her recreational activities, archery, concerts, and water sports are her favorite.
Now we’ve done the brain work, it’s time for a drink! Or to learn about them, anyhow, in Happy Hours, Hops & Hootch: A Drinking History of Michigan. We’ve enjoyed beer for thousands of years but where did it come from? Who were its earliest enjoyers? Who were the earliest brewers in Michigan and Ann Arbor? Learn about the history of this delicious drink from Patti Smith author of Michigan Beer: A Heady History.
Patti is a long time Ann Arbor resident who has written four local history books, most recently Michigan Beer: A Heady History. She is a teacher and storyteller who lives on the east side of Ann Arbor with her husband and dog.
A quick Google might tell you that Thursday, August 8 is International Cat Day, National Sneak SOme Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day, or National Melvin Day (FOR REAL!), but here in Ann Arbor, we know it’s NERD NITE DAY! Celebrate this very important local holiday by gathering at LIVE (102 S. First Street) for another wonderful edition of NNA2! Doors open at 6:30 pm, talks start at 7 pm and as always, there’s no cover charge!
We’ll start things off by heading up to Isle Royale for Moosewatch: an unexpected, off-trail Isle Royale adventure. Isle Royale National Park, the least-visited and most-revisited of the national parks, is home to the longest-running predator-prey study in the world. Explore Isle Royale’s unique ecology, the current status of moose and wolves on the island, and what exactly happens when teams of volunteers are turned loose into the backcountry to collect moose bones with Erin Parker, former backcountry ranger and 6-time Moosewatch trip leader.
Erin gets to play outside and call it work with her role as an interpretive services supervisor for the Huron-Clinton Metroparks.
We’ll turn from searching for moose to searching for music in The Most Famous “Lost” Album Ever. Bill Bulger will tell the story of The Beach Boys’ “Smile” album. After the band was on top of the world following the smash timeless single “Good Vibrations” in 1966, the follow-up album was sure to be even better (or at least be released), right???
Bill is a Senior Director of Operations at MDpanel who frequently goes down nerdy rabbit holes and has learned a lot about PowerPoint in the last few weeks. He has a family reputation for making killer mixtapes, including for his niece Emily and her mom Linda, who got him into this Nerd Nite situation in the first place (with help from his wife, Jenny).
The night will close out with Daniel Joyaux and The Oscar for Best International Film: Why the nominating process is filled with bad ideas, and why they’re the best bad ideas we have. Every year, the five nominees for Best International Film leave even the most dedicated Oscar-ologists confused and despondent over a great category that refuses to make sense. Like last year, when Cannes Palme d’Or winner (and eventual Best Original Screenplay winner) Anatomy of a Fall was nominated for Best Picture, but not Best International FIlm. Or two years ago, when RRR, the Indian film that became a huge Zeitgeist hit on Netflix, was nowhere to be found in the category. What are the labyrinthine rules and processes that create these egregious snubs year after year, and why are they so seemingly unfixable?
Daniel is a film critic and journalist whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Ringer, IndieWire, Cosmopolitan, Roger Ebert, and others. He also wrote for A.frame, the now-defunct Oscars newsletter put out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Before becoming a full-time writer, Daniel worked at film festivals, including three winters spent in Utah working as a publications editor for the Sundance Film Festival, and two summers up north working for the (also) now-defunct Traverse City Film Festival.
Are you feeling what we are? That it has just been TOO LONG since you’ve heard a lecture in a Nightclub? If you’re experiencing that same longing, we’ve got GREAT NEWS! Nerd Nite is returning to LIVE (102 S. First Street) on Thursday, July 11. Doors open at 6:30 pm, talks start at 7 pm and as always, there’s no cover charge!
We’ll start off joining Matt DeJonge to puzzle over a philosophical stumper: The Enigma of Money: An Exploration of A Challenging Question. What is money? Really think for a second—what is this thing many of us spend so much of our time earning, but have difficulty understanding? Matt will cover the history of money and what it means today (or, at least, what it means to him!)
Matt is a Conservation Technician with over a decade of experience in forestry and agriculture spanning from time in a learning laboratory at Grand Valley State’s student farm, to working in the big west coast timber, to now working for the Washtenaw Conservation District. Matt’s always had a desire to learn and ask questions about natural resources. In his free time, he dives deep into the rabbit hole of asking questions and trying to learn about money, and spends a good amount of time discussing these ideas in the Bitcoin community.
Next we’re going Lac-to-basics with Oriol to learn about the simple science and surprisingly complex applications behind lactofermenting fruits and veg, including sauerkraut, pickles, and less obvious produce. Learn these highly transferable skills to feed your gut biome and social capital.
Oriol is a wineseller, AADL desk clerk, avid lactofermenter, and self-identified “food a-hole.” He has been lactofermenting for eight years with only minor regrets. Oriol intermittently streams video games and reviews drinks both hard and soft at twitch.tv/manbehindwinkies.
We’ll finish the evening by going back in time with Emily Murphy for This Isn’t Kayfabe: How an Ann Arbor Girl Brought Women’s Wrestling from a Joke to an Olympic Sport. In the 1970s, 9-year-old Tricia McNaughton wouldn’t take “girls don’t wrestle” as a satisfactory answer. Emily will share the Ann Arbor Story of Tricia’s grapples on and off the mat. Spoiler alert, even at nine, Tricia was unafraid to make history.
Emily is a librarian at the Ann Arbor District Library, where she works extensively with the Summer Game, the Fifth Avenue Press, and Nerd Nite (hey, that’s the name of the show)! When not at work, Emily loves to cook and bake, do crossword puzzles, and hang out with her husband Frank and dog Roy.
It’s time to journey to the Top of the pack . . . erm, the Top of the Park, for an EXTRA-AMAZING, EXTRA-ENTERTAINING, EXTRA-OUTSIDE edition of Nerd Nite on Friday, June 14 at 7pm! You didn’t misread the date—we’re Nerd-Niting on a Friday Night, Baby! Join us at the Annex at Top of the Park (915 E. Washington St.) for an evening of Nerdy Delights! (Want more info about how to get there and where to park? Check out A2SF’s FAQ)
Kayla Zochowski will start us off with Bingos, Phoneys, and Triple-triples: Learning the Babble to Dabble in Scrabble. Scrabble is a classic (dare we say beloved) board game we all have encountered in some way, shape, or form. However, the game is much more than a board and 100 tiles. Come learn more about the world of Scrabble from its history, to its dictionary, to the many facets of strategy implemented by the top (local!) competitive Scrabble players.
Kayla is a biologist who began her Scrabble journey after stumbling across a National Scrabble tournament over a decade ago. As a previous Nerd Nite speaker who has focused solely on the OPTICS of scientific TOPICS, she is filled with ELATION from her head to her TOENAIL to talk about a favorite hobby that RETAINS attention from ANTSIER RETINAS and even ORIENTS STONIER individuals to be LIGHTED with the DELIGHT of anagram solving (and beyond).
From the World of Words to the World of Space, things are handed off to Rich Retyi for Space World: A Total Entertainment/Awareness Experience for the Entire Family! In the 1970s, the Thomas Edison of cleanrooms (we’ll get into it, don’t worry) asked himself, “Why not make a Disney World but make it space-themed?” And why not put it in Ypsilanti? A monorail. Lunar buggies. UFO rides. It would be called Space World. They estimated that in year two, the park would draw 1.9 to 2.4 million guests and earn $20m in revenues for the park alone. Not to mention local businesses and jobs. What happened to the theme park that never was?
Rich is the communications and marketing manager at the Ann Arbor District Library and likes to write and podcast about local history stuff. For more stories of Ann Arbor’s past, you can buy Retyi’s Book of Ann Arbor which is available in fine Ann Arbor bookstores, or listen to his dormant but maybe returning soon podcast, Ann Arbor Stories, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Finally, we’ll close with Amir Baghdadchi with You Say Potato: the Great Hashbrown vs Home Fries Debate, and what it tells us about America. The USA is a nation of ideals, and one of the most important is the ideal plate of hashbrowns — but why can’t we agree on what they should be? Shredded, cubed, sliced? Fused into a disc or allowed to skate around the plate as free moving chunks? We look at the cultural significance of hashbrowns, and their complex role in the American psyche. We might just also explain the chemistry behind superior hash.
Amir is a writer, comedian, and host of The Moth StorySLAM in Ann Arbor. He has appeared at the Pickathon Festival and on the Moth Radio Hour, and was once hired by the San Francisco Bay Guardian to eat at every 24-hour restaurant in the city in a 24-hour period.