On May 1, we will inaugurate a new kind of Improbable Research event: a series of public readings of extracts from studies and books that won Ig Nobel Prizes.
This will be at the beautiful new Cambridge Public Library, as part of the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Science Festival.
Ig Nobel Prize winners and other splendid persons will read short selections from their, our, and your* favorite, juiciest Ig Nobel Prize-winning studies and books.
There will be four separate sessions, each with a different theme:
10:00 am — How Animals Behave
Noon — How People Behave
2:00 pm — Things & Inventions
3:30 pm — Boys Will Be Boys *
All four events are FREE.
*CONTENT WARNING: The 3:30 event will feature subjects that are either, depending on your viewpoint, “adult” or “very adolescent”. Everyone is welcome — but… if you have a delicate sensibility about research that is either “adult” or “adolescent”, you will want to avoid the 3:30 pm session.
BRISKNESS NOTE: To keep things moving briskly, eight-year-old Miss Sweetie Poo will preside at the first three sessions. The 3:30 “Boys Will Be Boys” session will, instead, be under the dominion of the very grown-up Miss Naughty Poo.
YOUR FAVORITES: Got a favorite Ig-winning study or book you’d like us to include in the readings? Consult the list of all past Ig winners. Email your recommendation to: <Events.Readings AT improbablecom.wpcomstaging.com>
READERS: Here is a partial list of the readers:
- Marc Abrahams, editor, Annals of Improbable Research
- Rebecca Waber, Ig Nobel Prize winner (expensive placebos outperform cheap ones)
- Julia Lunetta, Improbable Research webmaster, minordomo at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
- Neara Russell, singer/pianist, a featured performer at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
- Christin Hart, MIT student
- Robin Abrahams, “Miss Conduct” columnist and Improbable Research psychology editor
- Dany Adams, biologist, Tufts University
- David Kessler, stage director of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
- David Pitman, MIT graduate student
- Deborah Henson-Conant, jazz harpist, composer
- Debra Wise, artistic director of the Underground Railway Theater
- Gus Rancatore, proprietor, Toscanini’s Ice Cream
- Jean Berko Gleason, professor emerita of psychology, Boston University
- Jeff Hecht, science writer and science fiction author
- Joe Maguire, technologist and author
- Karen Hopkin (and Christopher Hopkin), biochemist, author, and creator of the Studmuffins of Science Calendar
- Leah McIntosh, Executive Administrative Dean, Tufts University
- Lisa Mullins, anchor of WGBH/BBC’s “The World”
- Maggie Lettvin, author and philosopher
- Mark Kramer, author, teacher and scholar of narrative journalism
- Michael Frank, curator, Museum of Bad Art
- Micheline Mathews-Roth, biomedical researcher, Harvard Medical School
- Peaco Todd, cartoonist and author
- Steve Nadis, science journalist
- Susan Flannery, director, Cambridge Public Library
- Tom O’Keefe, actor