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INTRODUCTION

For 21 years, Nerd Nite has delivered to live audiences the most interesting, fun, and informative presentations about science, history, the arts, pop culture—you name it (we're modest, too)—as there hasn't been a rabbit hole that our army of presenters hasn't been afraid to explore. Curious about the science of The Simpsons or the cuisine of ancient Egypt? We've had presentations about those. Cyborg feminism? Check. Math feuds? Check. The history of the jumpsuit? Check! Nerd Nite has made hundreds of thousands of people in more than 200 cities across the globe a little bit smarter, and tipsier, by bringing them in-person, fun-yet-informative presentations while they drink along.

And the whole time, we toyed with various ways to expand Nerd Nite. TV shows. Documentaries. Rock operas. Puppets. Interpretive dance. If you can think of it, we batted it around. But we think we've stumbled on the optimal method of spreading Nerd Nite goodness—good ol' print. Timeless, classic, tree-murdering print.

Though we have a YouTube channel that features a few dozen nicely edited Nerd Nite presentations from around the world, we've still only scratched the surface when it comes to sharing our presenters' insanely fun-yet-informative content. For example, if you weren't able to attend the in-person Nerd Nite Miami about Where Shark Babies Come From, it doesn't mean you should never be able to learn about its contents ever again. That's just mean.

So here we are. Alone. Just us. Hello.

 

"But why a book?" you may ask. Or "Why now?" you may wonder. We'll tell you.

First, because you're smart. We know that. You're insatiably curious. We know that, too. You like to laugh and maybe even prefer to drink while you learn. We definitely know that. And most important, we know you're under-served when it comes to heavy, thick books that cater to your delightful wit and natural curiosity about the world. Though it may be easy to find information about animal sex in one place, birdsong in another, the first vaccine in yet another, and the science of the hangover in a fourth, it's much more difficult to find in-depth, quirky content about multiple scientific subjects in one spot. Therefore, we think this book will fill that void of underservedness. With plenty of quirkiness and silliness along the way.

Second, the problem with which we've wrestled since Nerd Nite began expanding, particularly internationally, is how to bring such a diverse and broad array of content to everyone across this big blue marble of ours. We've been told countless times that most Nerd Nite presentations in one city would be perfect for fellow nerds in all our other locales. For instance, in March 2022, Nerd Nite New York featured a presentation called Maggot Therapy: How I Learned to Love Maggots in the ER, and in April 2022 Nerd Nite Pittsburgh showcased What I Learned About Dating Apps (Generally) After I Spent Five F**king Years Studying Them for a PhD—but we were in Alexandria, Virginia, and Los Angeles, respectively, unable to travel the thousands of miles necessary to witness these presentations in their natural habitats. And we've never even come close to figuring out how we could take a few weeks off to travel to our Nites in Amsterdam, Melbourne, Tokyo, London, and seemingly everywhere in Germany. I'm sure many New Yorkers and Madisonians were equally disappointed that they couldn't visit Nerd Nite San Francisco in May 2022 to learn about Godzilla: History, Biology, and Behavior of Hyper-Evolved Theropod Kaiju.

And even though we sporadically videotape (yes, we realize we just wrote "tape"—we're now both comfortably middle-aged Gen Xers) some of our presentations, we still have a difficult time disseminating all the content from the nearly 200 of them that Nerd Nite hosts each month. Therefore, we believe How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi: Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math from Nerd Nite will allow us to share the exhilarating content from our presenters worldwide.

As an aside, almost since the inception of Nerd Nite in Boston in 2003, we've had two dueling taglines: "Be there and be square" and "It's like the Discovery Channel(TM) with beer." So now our challenge is to figure out how we can ensure that these identities translate from an in-person event to the printed page. Because you can't actually "be here" (and thereby "be square") when leafing through this book, we must defer to our other tagline. So in the spirit of "It's like the Discovery Channel(TM) with beer," we certainly wouldn't mind if you help yourself to a cocktail or three while reading these fine pages. In fact, this very book might even make a nice coaster or place mat on the off chance you can actually put it down.