Think bigger! Secret Science Club presents “A Whale of a Night” with Comparative Anatomist Joy Reidenberg of Inside Nature’s Giants, Wednesday, June 20, 8 PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

Dr. Reidenberg discusses her work dissecting big animals from sperm whales to the giant squid and hosts a special screening of Inside Nature’s Giants

As a scientist, Joy Reidenberg is a rare specimen. She has probed the innards of everything from beetles to human beings, but she specializes in big—whales and their kin. In pursuit of knowledge (and cetacean parts), she’s been chased by sharks, gone through the Lincoln Tunnel with a dead dolphin leaning out her passenger window, and plummeted into the carcass of a beached blue whale to retrieve its 25-foot-long larynx. It’s all in pursuit of studying body structures in order to better understand vertebrate biomechanics and the evolution of life on our planet.

Star of the PBS series Inside Nature’s Giants and professor of anatomy and functional morphology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Reidenberg asks:

--How does the mammalian body work and what are some incredible adaptations seen in extreme environments? 

--How is whale song produced?

--Can studying and discovering animal adaptations lead to biomimetric medicines and future machines? 

--Who put the “gross” in gross anatomy?  

Before & After

--Sample our capacious cocktail of the night, the Blue Whale . . . it’ll blast your blowhole

--Sway to humongous grooves and the murmurs of mermaids

--Stick around for the colossal Q&A

This ginormous edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, June 20, 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St

Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+. No cover. 

The Secret Science Club presents Neuroscientist and IGNORANCE Author Stuart Firestein, Wednesday, May 16, 8 pm @ the Bell House, FREE!

Five hundred years ago, it was possible for one human brain to contain all the world’s scientific knowledge. Since then, the number of scientific papers has been doubling every decade—and it’s barely possible for an individual to master his or her own field of study. In the Information Age—when tens of millions of “answers” are at your fingertips—sometimes it’s the questions that we need to pursue. “Knowledge is a big subject,” says neuroscientist Stuart Firestein. “But ignorance is bigger.” 

Chair of the department of biological sciences at Columbia University, director of the Firestein Lab which researches the vertebrate olfactory system and its role in perception and memory, and author of the new book Ignorance, Stuart Firestein asks: What do humans have absolutely no clue about? How can acknowledging the unknown make us smarter? How will ignorance drive science and exploration forward?

Before & After
 --Saturate yourself in our cerebral grooves 
 --Try our quizzical cocktail of the night, the “WTF?” 
--Revel in the Q&A (emphasis on Q) 
--Snag a signed copy of Ignorance, Dr. Firestein’s brain-boggling new book!

The next brainy edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, May 16, 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St. 

Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+.

 No cover. Just bring your smart self.

Think again! The Secret Science Club presents Leonard Mlodinow and SUBLIMINAL, Thursday, April 26, 8 PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

A large portion of your brain is devoted to unconscious activity. Bombarded as you are by 11 million bits of sensory information per second, it’s just more efficient for many neural processes to take place automatically. For example, you don’t decide something looks green or tastes sour—you just get the message that it is. However, as scientists continue to learn about the brain, they are discovering that hidden mental processes may be far more influential than previously suspected.

In his latest book, Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, physicist and best-selling author Leonard Mlodinow probes the brain’s most mysterious territory. 
Dr. Mlodinow asks:

--What types of (tricky) new experiments and technologies are neuroscientists and psychologists using to explore unconscious processes?
--How accurately do you perceive yourself and your motives? What really influences your choices? Does your order-loving conscious mind ever create cover stories to explain unconscious decisions?

--What are emotional illusions? How reliable and malleable are your memories? Do you ever unconsciously confabulate?

Leonard Mlodinow received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and now teaches at the California Institute of Technology. He wrote The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, co-wrote The Grand Design with Stephen Hawking, and was once a staff writer for Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Beam us up, Dr. Mlodinow!)

Before & After

--Try our dopamine-spiked cocktail, the Mind Meld

--Groove to synapse-stimulating sounds

--Snag a signed copy of Leonard Mlodinow’s awesome new book

--Stick around for the thought-provoking Q&A

This cerebral edition of the Secret Science Club meets Thursday, April 26 at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+. No cover. Just bring your smart self!

The Secret Science Club presents a frightfully free screening of THE TINGLER starring Vincent Price, Wednesday, March 28, 8 PM @ the Bell House

Join us for an experiment in terror!!!

Dr. Warren Chapin is investigating the scientific nature of fear. What makes the spine tingle when we’re afraid? Is it possible to die of terror? Not prone to scare easily himself, the doctor uses drugs to self-induce hallucinatory nightmares. As coroner, he finds disturbing, unexplained marks on the vertebrae of corpses and a mysterious creature lurking on an x-ray … Is fear something more than a passing emotion? To his horror, the doctor learns that fear is a frightfully LIVING force—and the only way to kill it is to scream. Don’t miss this cult classic from director William Castle in glorious black-and-white. And don't forget to scream . . . scream for your lives!

Before & After

--Learn Five Facts about Fear
--Groove to pulse-pounding tunes

--Try our fiendish cocktail of the night, the Chiller

--Win creepy-crawly door prizes!

This "mad scientist" edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, March 28 at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St. 

Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+  FREE! 

The Secret Science Club Dives Into Inner Space with Molecular Geneticist Alea Mills, Wed, March 14, 8 PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

Our genes inform everything from the color of our eyes to the thousands of biochemical processes that construct and maintain our bodies. With rapid advances in gene sequencing technology over the past decade, scientists are increasingly working to pinpoint the specific functions of genes in both wellness and disease.

Molecular geneticist Alea Mills of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is among the most preeminent of these gene hunters and a pioneer in the field of chromosome engineering. Traversing the microscopic world of the cell, she has discovered DNA hotspots that play a critical role in aging and cancer, and most recently, uncovered a genetic cluster that, when deleted, may be a cause of autism. Dr. Mills asks: Where will the future of genetic technology take us?

Before & After

--Groove to genetically altered tunes

--Try our experimental cocktail of the night, the Mutating Martini
--Stick around for the scintillating Q&A

This brainy edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, March 14 at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+ 

Free! Just bring your smart self.

The Secret Science Club presents Cognitive Neuroscientist David Carmel, Wednesday, February 22, 8 PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

There are things known, and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception . . . 

Our sensory organs are what connect us to our environment, allowing for our survival, relationships, and experiences. But how is all this sensory data — light, shadow, the motion of molecules — interpreted? Do your eyes ever deceive you? Is your mind playing tricks? Neuroscientist David Carmel of NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science uses brain imaging and behavioral experiments to explore how the brain constructs our perception of the world and how those perceptions can be manipulated. He also addresses the latest scientific research on consciousness, which attempts to answer the question, “How does brain activity make humans self-aware?”

Before & After

--Groove to wet-wired tunes

--Stick around for the sensational Q&A

--Try our synapse-stimulating cocktail of the night, the Gray Matter

This brain-boggling edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, February 22, 2012, at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+. 

Free! Just bring your smart self.

The Secret Science Club presents Astrophysicist and Cosmologist David Hogg, Wednesday, January 18, 8 PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains at least 200 billion stars and 50 billion planets. It is just one of about 350 billion galaxies in the known Universe.  And astronomers believe that closer observation and mapping of our own stellar neighborhood may help unfold the story behind the Universe’s evolution.

Cosmologist David Hogg peers into the night sky and asks:

--What can new space missions and digital surveys tell us about Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

--What came before the Big Bang?

--How are Black Holes detected? And how do we know the Universe is expanding?

The co-author of over 100 scientific papers, Dr. Hogg is an associate professor at NYU’s Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, and works with the Gaia Space Mission, an international effort to create the largest and most precise ever 3-D chart of the Milky Way, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, and the citizen science project, Astrometry.net.

Before & After

--Groove to heavenly sounds

--Stick around for the scintillating Q&A

--Try our cosmic cocktail of the night, the Red Shift

The Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, January 18 at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9^th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+

Free! Just bring your smart self!

Hot off the presses: Check us out in this NY Times article, "Continuing Education, at the Bar." Cheers!