As we draw closer to Thanksgiving, join Nerd Nite NYC on Saturday November 15, 2025 to gorge your brains – instead of your bellies – by feasting on three fun-yet-informative presentations about silly academic jargon, the misunderstood fedora, and using group theory to find alternatives to reality. Did a fedora kill JFK? Let’s probe this show’s discourse! Tickets here.
Nerd Nite NYC
Saturday November 15, 2025 at 7pm (doors at 6:30pm)
Caveat NYC: 21A Clinton Street (Lower East Side)
$16 early bird (until Nov 8, 2025 at 7pm) | $21 standard | $26 at the door
Tickets here: https://www.caveat.nyc/events/nerd-nite-11-15-2025
Back to the Lectures At-Hand:
*Presentation #1
The Top 10 Objectively Best Jargon Terms In All Of Science
by Ben Lillie
Description: When we talk about science in public we’re always told to take out all the jargon, and that’s a really good idea. But… some jargon is amazing. Come hear about 10 of the most wonderful jargon terms in all of science. These have been selected by a fully pre-registered randomized controlled trial and passed a t-test with excellent p-values reflecting careful epistemology of the underlying ontological reality, and are definitely not just the presenter’s favorites.
Bio: Ben Lillie is the co-founder of The Story Collider, where people tell true, personal stories about science, and Caveat, the home of smart and nerdy comedy. He hopes very much that he used “ontological” correctly in the talk description.
*Presentation #2
Prince Edward, Indiana Jones, and Neckbeards: A Very Brief History of the Fedora
by Erik Schechter
Description: The fedora dates back to at least 1891, but it really got popular in the mid-1920s, and would remain so for the next few decades. However, by the 1960s, the fedora finally went out of style. Of course, the hat is still worn here and there. But nowadays, the fedora is often associated with neckbeards, fuckboys or insular religious communities. In this presentation, we look at what is (and what isn’t) a fedora and address such questions as “Was the fedora originally a woman’s hat?” and “Did JFK kill the fedora” and “What makes neckbeard fashion so cringe?”
Bio: Erik Schechter is a public relations professional and menswear enthusiast. He owns a number of berets, newsboy caps, and, yes, even a fedora.
*Presentation #3
The Topology of Octonion Hypersurfaces and Your Moral Responsibility
by ‘Tony Frank’
Description: First, you will briefly meet a kind man who is working on some weird video game that he is incapable of describing. That man will then serve as a medium, permitting his body to be possessed by the spirit of our special guest: a non-corporeal entity named Tony Frank. Tony will disclose, with some urgency, his findings on the mathematical structure of our relationship to the spirit world, the details of which are classified and only cleared for oral transmission.
Bio: Tony’s last Earthy incarnation was as a remarkably high-achieving crocodile whereby he accumulated sufficient karma to live a life as a human being, but he turned down that offer. Instead, during his disembodied state in Devachan, he accepted a position in the United States Internal Service, a network of souls tasked by the federal government with the application of de-individuated consciousness to the American dream. By borrowing bodies from a series of psychic mediums, he completed the equivalent of a PhD in chaos theory and now specializes in fostering communication between humanity and elemental beings. He will be visiting us via the body of a volunteer from Hypothesis, a New York City based company that is interested in this kind of shit.