Nerd Nite London - April

Nerd Nite London is a monthly event where three speakers give 18-21 minute fun-yet-informative talks across all disciplines, while the audience drinks along.

What makes us so different from monkeys? Why should pandas get all the praise? Is the Tour de France getting easier? Join us to answer these, and other not really so important questions as we present another excellent night of learning and drinking. Be there and be square.

Why should pandas get all the praise?

Why should the panda get all the praise? The Ugly Animal Preservation Society is dedicated to raising the profile of the world’s most aesthetically challenged endangered species. Join biologist and presenter Simon Watt as we explore the incredible biology of the animal kingdom’s most monstrous.

Simon Watt is Head of The Ugly Animal Preservation Society, host of the podcast LevelUpHuman and co-presenter of Inside Nature’s Giants

Monkeys to Man – How Human is Human?

Whilst the classic line up of chimp to man is widely used to illustrate evolutionary theory, at what point along that queue of primates did we become people? How are we really any different to other large primates in our family tree? What is it exactly that makes us human, and is it necessarily something we should be happy about?

Els Merry Price has degrees in archaeology, anthropology and human evolution & behaviour. Having spent almost a decade at university she’s slightly concerned that she now finds people more bewildering than ever, and can only hope that people remain distracted enough by her hair and tattoos not to notice this fact

Sport: what the eye can’t see

It’s easy to be fooled in sport by prevailing wisdom and predictable punditry. But what happens when we use data to test out a few theories? Here are three sporting questions with surprising answers. Do basketball teams lose on purpose? Is the Tour de France getting easier? And what happens in tennis when the loser wins more points than the winner?

Rob Minto is a journalist and the author of Sports Geek: a visual tour of sporting myths, debate and data. He was most recently at the Financial Times for 12 years, editing and writing about markets, technology and other stuff. This is his second Nerd Nite talk.