Nerd Nite #70

Wednesday August 19th Howler (7-11 Dawson Street, Brunswick) Doors: 7 pm Show: 7:30 pm Tickets: $15 + BF – Available Now!! 3 presenters share a topic they are NERDY about while the audience shares a drink. Seventy shows in, and we’re still finding wonderfully weird things to obsess over. For our 70th Nerd Nite , we’re celebrating National Science Week the only way we know how: by filling a Brunswick bar with curious humans, brilliant storytellers, and facts you’ll be repeating to your friends for weeks. For our 70th show, we’re celebrating National Science Week the only way we know how: by filling a Brunswick bar with curious humans, brilliant storytellers, and facts you’ll be repeating to your friends for weeks. This month, we’re welcoming back some beloved Nerd Nite alumni! Join us as we take a tour through the biggest shopping mall on Earth (and the strange history behind it), point our telescopes skyward to explore the universe from a backyard perspective, and hear from a real-life astrophysicist. Expect fascinating science, unexpected history, space nerdery, questionable capitalist fever dreams, and plenty of laughs. Whether you’ve been coming since show #1 or you’ve never set foot in Nerd Nite before, there’s no better time to grab a drink, embrace your curiosity, and celebrate National Science Week with us. Be there. Be Square. Wade Kelly The Mall That Ate a City: The strange story of the biggest mall on Earth Description: For more than two decades, the biggest mall on the planet wasn’t in New York, Tokyo, or Dubai. It was in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In the 1980s, a city of barely 600,000 people decided that what the Canadian prairies really needed was the world’s largest shopping mall. Not just a mall, either: more than 800 stores, a pirate ship, dolphin shows, roller coasters, a water park, submarines, an ice rink, and enough parking for a small country. And somehow, it worked. This is the story of West Edmonton Mall: how it became the biggest mall on Earth, why malls became one of the defining inventions of the twentieth century, and why so many of them are now disappearing. Along the way, we’ll explore the strange dream at the heart of the modern mall: a fully enclosed world where you can shop, play, eat, swim, skate, and never have to step outside. A place that was part theme park, part public square, part capitalist fever dream. Come for the world’s largest indoor wave pool. Stay for the accidental history of late capitalism. Bio: Dr Wade Kelly is a social scientist, research communicator, facilitator, occasional MC, and full-time enthusiast for making smart people slightly less confusing. By day, he works with academics on generating impact from their research. By night, he enjoys the nostalgia of yesteryear, a good pub and quality lighting (5000-6500K lights should be illegal!). He’s a former Nerd Nite Boss in three cities, and the founder of Sci Comm Along. If you see him walking his dog around Fitzroy, yes, his dog Oli would l