If you just joined an upcoming science riot workshop, we have one piece of advice:

Don’t Panic!

You’re a professional and you’ve probably given a presentation before which means you are already confident enough to bore an audience to death. Why not make them laugh instead?

That’s all we’re going to do here, give a science talk but make it entertaining with humor. See? That’s not so bad. Even though we’re here to work on your grasp of comedy, nobody is writing an HBO special. The end result we’re shooting for is in the vicinity of “Funny TED Talk” but without any powerpoint slides.

Our program is designed to start from scratch for the average scientist who may not even know what they want to talk about.

This is a month-long program

Our workshops is an immersive and intensive experience in comedy writing and performance. We will meet once weekly for a hour-long classroom lesson to practice stage presence, microphone technique, and receive feedback from professional comedians.

The catch is that we won’t be writing any of your material during lessons which means you will have homework. But to help you along we provide you with a 22-page workbook complete with a step-by-step tutorial and plenty of writing exercises so that you can present your expertise with your authentic voice. Our coaches are available to make up any lessons that you miss and for extra one-on-one instruction as needed.

Our goal is not only to educate and entertain, it’s to give you the confidence to be an engaging science communicator. All you need to show up with is a notebook and an idea of what your favorite topic is – leave all of your joke ideas at home! Your talk will be a success if you:

Teach something

Worry about your science first and take the audience on a deep dive into your topic.

Be funny

This is actually the easy part, so don’t worry about it yet.

Have a conversation

Speeches are boring and we want you to have fun with the audience!