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