CATALYST CLUB - SCIENCE FESTIVAL SPECIALS

Speakers on night 1 / Speakers on night 2

Three engaging talks each night designed to provoke and amuse. Lively discussion, tapas, late bar. Make a night of it - food from 6pm.

Catalyst Club
Joogleberry Playhouse, 14-17 Manchester St, Brighton, BN2 1TF. [ map ]
7.30pm – 11.00pm
Tickets £6.00 on the door

Three leading lights, with amazing tales of science; one informative, one controversial and one plain weird. All will make you think, laugh and debate.

MONDAY FEB 25TH

Jonathan Hare Jonathan Hare, famed Rough Scientist, sends a voice on a beam of light, and explains optical fibres along the way.
Piers Bizony Piers Bizony, award-winning popular science author, gives a fascinating illustrated tour of robots in popular culture - both real and imaginary.
Dr Sarah Forbes-Robertson Are you a morning person or an evening person? Sarah tells of pioneering research into the genes that control sleep.

TUESDAY FEB 26TH

Tonight is Institute of Unnecessary Research night Brighton is the city where Art meets Science, and Anna Dumitriu’s Institute of Unnecessary Research (IUR) has pioneered the cross-over, giving an artist’s view on science and the scientific angle on art.
Anna Dumitriu Anna Dumitriu introduces the work of the Institute, and why unnecessary research is really very necessary.
Monia Brizzi Monia Brizzi (Head of Joy at the IUR), discusses the part emotion plays in science.
Blay Whitby Blay Whitby (Head of Ethics) talks on the ethics of science communication - how much should the public know? Is ‘a little knowledge a dangerous thing’? Can anyone have enough knowledge to be ‘out of danger’?

WEDNESDAY FEB 27TH

Michael Brooks and Jim Al-Khalili book-end 30 Second Theories 30-Second Theories is a book Ivy Press are researching. Wouldn’t it be great if you could sum up a big theory in a few well-chosen words? Jim Al-Khalili, TV presenter and top science communicator, sets the ball rolling. Others will follow; a relatively short summary of relativity, a vague notion of the uncertainty principle, a light-weight view of gravity or a wild stab at chaos theory. Everyone wins a prize. Michael Brooks on the Things that Don’t Make Sense; dark energy, homeopathy, cold fusion, the placebo effect... It is the unknown that holds the key to the future of science. See the competition page for details.

SUNDAY MARCH 2ND

Nicholas Harrigan Nicholas Harrigan, this year’s Fame Lab winner at the Cheltenham Science Festival, shows us what we should NEVER do with a microwave oven, using a colour change T-shirt, a light bulb, mobile phones, balloons and a model of Stingray to teach us a thing or two about particle physics.
Paul Levy Paul Levy The Theory of Contentment. Are you wretchedly content? What is the nature of happiness and does suffering have any useful role to play in the process? Paul Levy knows his audience, and serves up a heady mix of empirical observation, cheap philosophy and collusion breaking. This talk will hopefully leave you happily discontented, or restlessly relaxed.
James Williams - Flawed Science James Williams - Flawed Science. James explains how easy it is for scientists to get it horribly wrong, From the flat earth of Aristotle, through Newton and Darwin and beyond. They all did it, and are still doing it today.