Nerd Nite Los Angeles - January 2024
Event description
Nerd Nite is fun-yet-informative lectures at a bar. It's like TED Talks...but with beer.
We all know that learning is more fun when you’re drinking with friends and colleagues. Thus, Nerd Nite is a monthly event held in more than 100 cities across the globe during which several folks give 20-minute fun-yet-informative and easily accessible presentations across all disciplines – while the audience drinks along.
FAQ's:
- Doors open at 7pm. Intro at 7:45pm. Presentations at 8pm.
- The Brewyard Beer Company is a 21+ venue.
- There is free street parking surrounding the bar, but we recommend utilizing a ride share service.
PRESENTATION LINE-UP:
PRESENTATION #1: "I Have Seen My Death!" : The Invention of the X-Ray
by Julia Wilde
Summary: The discovery of X-Rays in 1895 revolutionized our understanding of life and death. For most of us, they signified scientific advancement and saving lives, but for others, they came with heavy costs. Bertha Roentgen, the wife of the discoverer of X-Rays, cried out “I have seen my death!” when she saw the first X-Ray image. In this talk, science communicator Julia Wilde shares the many ways in which X-Rays saved lives while its horrors remained hidden for decades.
Bio: Julia Wilde is a science communicator and actor in Los Angeles, California. She studied literature and biology and combined her passions to tell the wild stories of science. She’s worked for various non-profits including the Defenders of Wildlife and The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. She’s written for asapSCIENCE and was a host for The Discovery Channel’s YouTube channel. Her most recent research is featured on HBO Max’s High Science - streaming now!
PRESENTATION #2: Vampires Before Dracula: The Literary Undead Who Predate the Count
by Sean Rourke
Summary: Everyone has heard of Dracula, but he wasn’t the first vampire to grace the page. Before Bram Stoker put pen to paper, there had already been a cast of the undead - handsome and deadly gentlemen, restless brides, shadowy knights and lesbian lovers! Let’s drawn back the curtain on the revenant dead who preceded the most famous vampire of all!
Bio: By night, Sean Rourke is the host of “The Vampire’s Castle,” a YouTube Channel where he creates resources for writers and filmmakers who want to tell vampire stories, and he interviews icons of the vampire genre. By Day, Sean is a visualization editor in Hollywood, having worked on such titles as Avengers Endgame, Prey, and the currently running Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. He writes a series of vampire short stories called “The Crimson Moon Society,” and he has a dog named Kaylee who is just a little too smart.
PRESENTATION #3: Celluloid Adventures: A Writing Career in Hollywood
by Charles "Tab" Murphy
Summary: How does one go from wanting to be a forest ranger in the Pacific Northwest to writing a host of animated movies that in all likelihood defined most of your childhoods? Join Tab Murphy for a beer-soaked journey through an adventurous writing career that has taken him from the Virunga mountains of Rwanda to the Okavango Delta of Botswana, to deep into the heart of darkness of Mexico and beyond. Tab will shine a special light on his ten years at Disney Animation, writing the movies that scarred you for life. But despite having written one of the scariest and most perverted villains in the history of Disney animation (Claude Frollo), don't be afraid. He's actually a pretty nice guy...
Bio: Tab attended USC Film School and has been a working screenwriter since 1983. His major break occurred with a writing credit on ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ in 1988, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Tab wrote and directed the western fantasy ‘Last of the Dogmen’, starring Tom Berenger and Barbara Hershey, a love letter to his passion for Native American culture. Tab’s work in the world of animation is extensive. He spent ten years at Disney Animation, writing such feature length animated classics as ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’; ‘Tarzan’; ‘Atlantis: The Lost Empire’ and ‘Brother Bear’. He’s been nominated for several Annie Awards and ‘Brother Bear’ was additionally nominated for an Academy Award. To date, his Disney animated feature films have earned well over a billion dollars world-wide.