Science Comedian

Science Comedy at the Purple Onion, San Francisco

August 9th, 2010

Thurs­day, Sept. 23, 2010

An evening of sci­ence com­edy – and a cou­ple guests on the show.  More details com­ing soon!

San Francisco’s Pur­ple Onion, in North Beach, is an awe­some venue with a lot of history.

140 Colum­bus Avenue
San Fran­cisco, CA 94133
(415) 956-1653

Sacramento Comedy Spot

August 8th, 2010

Fri­day, Sept. 24, 2010

Sci­ence Com­edy at The Sacra­mento Com­edy Spot

1050 20th Street
Sacra­mento, CA 95811
(916) 444-3137

More details soon!

SkeptiCal 2010 Science & Skepticism Conference

April 19th, 2010

I will be speak­ing at Skep­ti­Cal 2010, the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Sci­ence & Skep­ti­cism Con­fer­ence in Berke­ley, April 24.

Other speak­ers include Euge­nie Scott, Seth Shostak, Kirsten San­ford, Brian Dun­ning, and more.  See the list of speak­ers.

• Date: Sat­ur­day, April 24, 2010. 9AM to 6PM.
• Loca­tion: Brower Cen­ter, Berke­ley, California.
• Spon­sors: Bay Area Skep­tics and Sacramento-Area Skep­tics
• Tick­ets: Tick­ets are $40 for the reg­u­lar reg­is­tra­tion and $55 for reg­is­tra­tion and a t-shirt. See the fan­tas­tic t-shirt design by Ranch7 Cre­ative. This event is expected to sell out, so please reserve your ticket as soon as possible!

They Might Be Giants Video for Time

January 19th, 2010

Here Comes Sci­ence is sup­pos­edly a kids’ album but it’s my favorite They Might Be Giants album.  I love it.  And I had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view John and John at their Brook­lyn rehearsal stu­dio, and attend one of their fam­ily shows at the Amer­i­can Museum of Nat­ural His­tory in New York City.  It’s our newest video for Time Magazine:

Link: They Might Be Giants of Science

Is Time Travel Possible?

January 9th, 2010

With so many recent movies and TV shows about time travel – Star Trek, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Lost, Flash­For­ward, Heroes – I thought it might be fun to explore the sci­ence behind this sci­ence fic­tion device.  Our most recent video for Time.com asks, Is Time Travel Possible?…

Science Cookies

December 13th, 2009

Awe­some sci­ence cook­ies in a series of posts to a food blog by a bio­log­i­cal anthropologist.

Aren’t all anthro­pol­o­gists bio­log­i­cal?  I’m a bio­log­i­cal comedian.

Ooh, she also has Space Invaders!

Videos for Time Magazine

November 20th, 2009

You can eas­ily access all the sci­ence videos I’ve made for Time Magazine’s web­site at this link – the results from a search on my name (Brian Malow) at Time.com.

Science Comedy Show in Sunnyvale

October 13th, 2009

Sci­ence Come­dian Brian Malow

presents

Ratio­nal Com­edy for an Irra­tional Planet

An evening of sci­ence humor

8pm, Wednes­day, Octo­ber 28, 2009

Rooster T. Feather’s Com­edy Club
157 W. El Camino Real
Sun­ny­vale, CA 94087
(408) 736-0921

I've Been Scooped Again

October 9th, 2009

A cou­ple of the pre­sen­ta­tions at today’s “Let’s Have An Awe­some Time Doing Sci­ence” con­fer­ence were con­ducted via Skype video.

Uri Alon of the Depart­ment of Mol­e­c­u­lar Cell Biol­ogy & Depart­ment of Physics of Com­plex Sys­tems at the Weiz­mann Insti­tute in Israel, gave a par­tic­u­larly fun pre­sen­ta­tion enti­tled, “Peace Love Sci­ence Hap­pi­ness.”

He per­formed his song “I’ve Been Scooped Again” – with audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion from across the globe.  Here’s a snippet:

Music & Lyrics ©2009 Uri Alon

“Let’s Have An Awe­some Time Doing Sci­ence” was a 3-day sci­ence con­fer­ence (and part uncon­fer­ence) held at UCSF’s Mis­sion Bay Cam­pus, Oct. 8-10, 2009. Sci­en­tists from var­i­ous fields and at all stages of career devel­op­ment met to dis­cuss ways to help make sci­ence as fun, sup­port­ive and nur­tur­ing as possible.

Visit the web­site

Ten Things I Love About My Academic Job

October 8th, 2009

Wrap­ping up a great first day of the “Let’s Have An Awe­some Time Doing Sci­ence!” conference/unconference, Ron Vale, Chair of the Depart­ment of Cel­lu­lar and Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­ogy at UCSF, endeav­ored to impart some opti­mism and pos­i­tiv­ity to some pro­ceed­ings that would no doubt also explore some of the chal­lenges and down­sides of doing science.

He began by telling us that he has friends in more lucra­tive jobs that are anx­ious to retire.  They’re always talk­ing about how they hope to be able to retire five or ten years early – not because they have some­thing in par­tic­u­lar they long to do – they just don’t enjoy their careers and want them to end so they can do some­thing else.

Ron said that some­day he will retire from his posi­tion as a uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor – but he doesn’t look for­ward to it.  Like his fam­ily, his job is inte­gral to his life and who he is.

His pre­sen­ta­tion was enti­tled, “Why I Love My Job,” and was struc­tured around a Letterman-style Top 10 List (though in no par­tic­u­lar order).  He spoke for sev­eral min­utes on each point, and the list itself doesn’t really do the pre­sen­ta­tion jus­tice, but he suc­cess­fully con­veyed how much he loves his job.

Ten Things I Love About My Aca­d­e­mic Job
by Ron Vale

1.  Free­dom to choose your own direc­tions (like Ira Mell­man said ear­lier, “I am seri­ally inter­ested”)
2.  Rein­vent­ing one­self through­out one’s career – flex­i­bil­ity
3.  Par­tic­i­pat­ing in a great era of dis­cov­ery
4.  Being part of an inter­na­tional com­mu­nity joined by com­mon inter­ests
5.  Pleas­ant trav­els
6.  A social and “youth­ful” job
7.  Many mea­sures of “suc­cess”
8.  Flex­i­ble daily sched­ule (“I don’t have to report to the office when the stock mar­ket opens”  “I own one suit and a bunch of t-shirts”)
9.  Doing some good
10.  Scholarship