Before I give you that link, huge thanks to Sheila Poole for her fascinating talk on Darwin’s research at Down House, into orchids, cross-fertilisation, mimicry, and insectivorous plants in Beauty, Sex and Death — Darwin’s botanical obsessions, in which she explored Charles Darwin’s fascination with botanical deception and carnivory.
Sphinx moth feeding on Darwin’s Orchid
Now, to business:
November’s PubSci with Professor Marcus du Sautoy
If you’ve checked out our current events programme or follow our Google calendar, you’ll have noticed that November’s talk is a bit special.
He’s the author of nine popular science books, and his latest book, Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity, was published by Fourth Estate in 2025.
On Wednesday 18th November 2026, Marcus will be exploring the amazing maths that subtly underpins much of art and creativity.
After the talk, Marcus will be signing copies of Blueprints – now out in paperback.
The event is already booking fast. You can head to our NEXT EVENT page for more information, or go straight to Eventbrite to reserve a spot.
Marcus is also my interview guest for next episode of The Science Show (see below), to be broadcast on Monday 2nd November. We’ll be looking at some of the nine popular science & maths books he’s published, discussing AI in maths, and exploring the amazing maths that subtly underpins much of art and creativity. If you miss the live broadcast, you can catch up on all episodes on Mixcloud.
The venue is PubSci’s regular home, The Old King’s Head near Borough Market, which offers a great range of drinks, has a happy hour before 7pm, and opens the kitchen serving classic pub grub especially for us. Doors open at 6.30 for a 7pm start. Talks generally run for ~45 minutes and are followed by a Q&A session. Full address on the booking page.
As most of you know by now, PubSci talks are pay-what-you-can: You can make a contribution when booking on Eventbrite. We have no other source of funding. There are two ticket options:
Book for one + Support PubSci (max 1 ticket) if you prefer to contribute when booking – this option also reserves you one spot at the event. You may need to scroll down to see this option on Eventbrite.
Book without donating (max 4 tickets) if you prefer to put cash in the pot on the night.
The Number 1 Science Podcast – again!
The Science Show is a magazine-style miscellany packed with news, interviews, chat and discussions, plus great music and cultural crossovers. Episode 11 was broadcast on Monday 5th October and is available to stream or download on Mixcloud.
Deborah Rowe joined me to discuss the science news while Danielle Green and I took a Random Walk though the miasma, mosquitos, gin and tonic, and a Soho water pump. Historian of mathematics (and former PubSci speaker) Snezana Lawrence discussed how future historians might look back on the AI explosion in the maths world.
Episode 11 of The Science Show hit the top spot in Mixcloud’s science chart within a day of release, and broke into the Top 10 of the overall Podcast and Talk charts for the first time. I’m delighted by this unexpected success but what matters more is what you think of it. Please give it a listen and follow the show. If you like it, do please tell your friends!
If you follow us there, you’ll be notified when Episode 12 with my interview with Marcus du Sautoy is available to stream or download from Mixcloud.
Well that’s it for this post. Hope to see you at the Old King’s Head on 21st October, and don’t forget to put Wednesday 18th November in your diary.
Richard (Science communicator and PubSci organiser/host)
In this post, I preview July’s PubSci talk (now booking) and other great science events coming up, we reflect on June’s PubSci and share details of a ticket offer for the coming weekend. Read on!
Our next event is only 2 weeks away
On 16th July, PubSci explores how scientific truth emerges and why it sometimes falters.
July’s PubSci talk is booking up fast, with 25% of places already snapped up – head to the booking page now if you don’t want to miss out – but before looking in more detail, we’ll serve up some other science-based goodies. There’s lots of science poetry in this edition of the PubSci blog, some great events, some sad astronomy news and some good astronomy news, a look back at June’s topic and an exclusive discount code for a super astronomy talk at the Royal Institution on Saturday 5th July.
Last month we previewed a botanical photography exhibition at Ken Artspace and I’ve found another super photo exhibition for you this month. Since 1997 Wellcome Photography Prizehas been celebrating compelling imagery that captures stories of health, science and human experience. This year the winners will be announced on 16th July (the same day as PubSci) and the top 25 images will be on show at The Francis Crick Institute close to London’s King’s Cross from 17th July until 18th October. The Crick is worth a visit just for the fabulous modern architecture and a very nice cafe.
The Poetry of Science and the Science of Poetry
This is a bumper season for poetry and science. The Brilliant is an annual competition celebrating poetry which expresses scientific wonder through verse. Alas, entries closed at the end of June for this year’s competition but you can read last year’s shortlisted entries and the 2024 winners here.
If you’d like to try your hand at writing poetry with a science theme, perhaps with a view to entering next year’s competition, I strongly recommend signing up for the CPD short course on Science Communication Through Poetry run by Sam Illingworth. It’s delivered live via Zoom over four Wednesday lunchtimes and costs just £50. There’s even a bursary for those on low income. Sam, a professor at Edinburgh Napier University, is also one of the judges for The Brilliant competition and has written several books on science and poetry including The Poetry of Physics published earlier this year. I’m hoping to tempt Sam down south for a PubSci event before too long.
If you enjoy the crossover between science and poetry and/or science and art, I recommend looking into a beautiful online journal called Consilience (referring to the convergence of thought between different disciplines). Consilience is free to read but you can support it by subscribing to their Substack. If you’re already a science poet or artist, and looking for somewhere to publish, Issue 22 of Consilience is now open for submissions of poetry and art exploring the scientific topic of ‘Waves’ – but do hurry, submissions for the coming issue close at noon on Sunday 6th July.
EVENT TOMORROW: Live Poetry and Live Neuroscience!
What happens when a poet and a neuroscientist get together to see if they can make sense of their connections?
They create an event called Verse and Worse, with Professor Sophie Scott and Will Eaves, both from the Neuromantics podcast.
On Wednesday 2nd July, at the Bloomsbury Theatre, Will and Sophie will be conducting live neuroscience experiments related to poetry. It looks like being a brilliant event, and it’s only £8, but there are lots of unsold seats at the time of writing, so book a ticket now and I’ll see you there.
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An Astronomic look back at June
Fireball over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 (The Planetary Society)
At June’s PubSciStuart Eves delighted us with “How the Universe is Trying to Kill Us – and How We can Stop It” in which he considered possible mechanisms to explain the surprising periodicity of global mass extinctions, with a focus on the way our solar system moves through the warped plane of the Milky Way every 30 million years or so.
If you want to read more about the effect of distant stars on our own solar system (and by implication, what encountering more of them as the solar system passes through the galactic disk) might mean for the stability of orbits, check out this article calledPassing Stars Altered Orbital Changes in Earth and Other Planets, with its lovely illustration of the uncertainty of Earth’s orbit 56 million years ago that arises from the passing of a sun-like star 2.6 million years ago (which is about when we last passed though the galactic disk).
The world’s most powerful camera captures its first images of space
The Vera C Rubin observatory in Chile, home to the world’s most powerful digital camera, has released its first images, and to quote the ‘Super Soaraway Sun‘* (sorry!: WHAT A STUNNER!
*Let’s hope it doesn’t soar away in the light of the previous topic.
The Trifid and Lagoon nebulae 9,000 light years away, captured by the Vera Rubin Telescope
The observatory is tasked with detecting potentially deadly earthbound asteroids in time for us to take protective measures (if you came to June’s PubSci you’ll have some idea what these might be and what the pitfalls are). It will also be seeking concrete evidence for “dark matter” which is the standard cosmological explanation for the way galaxies spin. You can read more about that – and learn why the observatory is named after Vera Rubin – on this page.
A farewell to the world’s oldest radio astronomer
The former Astronomer Royal, Sir Francis Graham-Smith who died at the age of 102, was the world’s oldest active radio astronomer according to Jodrell Bank Observatory where he was director from 1982 to 1990. Graham, as he was known, was only the second director of Jodrell Bank after Lowell himself, and technically retired in 1988 but he continued working as emeritus professor of radio astronomy at The University of Manchester. Graham published his final astronomy article earlier this year. You can see Sir Francis Graham-Smith’s photo and read his obituary on the BBC New website.
HOT NEWS: Exclusive ticket discount for a talk on the aurorae of Earth and beyond
If the recent aurorae over central and southern Britain have piqued your interest, head to the Royal Institution this Saturday evening to discover what they are, how they happen, and why it’s so significant to the search for extraterrestrial life that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede experiences aurorae.
The speaker, Marina Galand, is Professor of Planetary Science at Imperial College London. I met Marina a few weeks ago and was bowled over by her knowledge, enthusiasm and energy for this subject. It’s going to be a brilliant talk and to make it even better the Ri has kindly offered PubSci a whopping 25% discount for this event with the code LIGHTS25 (feel free to share).
The nest PubSci talk is just 2 weeks away, on Weds 16th July, and we’re delighted to welcome Professor Adam Kucharski to explore the ideas behind his latest book, Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty.
How can we weigh up noisy evidence to decide how safe is an autonomous vehicle or judge somebody’s guilt or innocence?
Adam will explores how scientific opinion is formed, how to convince others of the facts, and what links wine and university exams, royalty and Guinness, cricket and robot racing.
Full details and the booking link are on PubSci’s Next Event page or you can book straight away on Eventbrite.
With over 25% of tickets already snapped [now at 30%] up at the time of writing, the best way to be certain of a place is to book yours today. Copies of Proof will be on sale at the event.
1/7/25 Posted by Richard Marshall, PubSci organiser and host.
PubSci: Sipping • Supping • Science
• • •
PS In case you haven’t checked it out yet, science communicator and PubSci member, Ushashi Basu, recently wrote about PubSci in her excellent blog and interviewed me to find out how I came to be booking and introducing speakers for a public science outreach event in a pub, what led me into science communication, and what motivates me to communicate science.
It was a pleasure to chat with Ushashi over a coffee and look back at seven years of programming, promoting and hosting PubSci. You can read that interview here and see Ushashi’s other blog posts at https://ushashibasu.com/.
Hope to see you all at the Old KIng’s Head on Wednesday 16th July.
• • •
Keeping Up With Future Events
To make sure you don’t miss out on future events, subscribe to our Google Calendar to be the first to know when new talks are scheduled, and follow PubSci’s events on Eventbrite to be notified when tickets are available. You can also sign up to our own mailing list on any page on this site.
PubSci is organised and hosted by science communicator, Richard Marshall, assisted by Mike Lucibella. Events are held upstairs at the Old King’s Head, near London Bridge tube. No specialist knowledge is required, just curiosity. Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Talks run for ~45 minutes and are followed by a Q&A session. The Old King’s Head has a happy hour before 7pm, and the kitchen serves excellent pub grub.
There is no charge for attending PubSci talks, but we have a cash whip-round to cover expenses on the night – consider it “Pay What You Can Afford”. As few of us carry cash these days, you can make a donation when registering for ticketed events with Eventbrite. Please help us continue putting on events. PubSci has no other source of funding.
We aim to keep PubSci accessible for all, although it is unsuitable for under 18s as we meet in the function room of a pub. Regrettably, there is no wheelchair access.
In this post, I preview June’s PubSci talk and other great science events coming up, plus we reflect on May’s PubSci and share details of a special offer for anybody free this Friday. Read on!
Have you ever thought about how we engage with technology? Do you worry that you spend too much time online… or that your kids do? The Tim Arnold Company is offering 2 for 1 tickets on tonight’s performance of Super Connected, Tim’s multimedia show/film/gig/theatre /show at the Marylebone’s Cockpit Theatre, featuring the voice of Stephen Fry. The show starts at 7.30, so you might make it!
Are You Super Connected…?
Super Connected, the album, received rave reviews from the likes of Mojo and The Times for the music alone – however, it was conceived from the start as a feature film and theatre piece as well. Beyond entertainment, it’s a life-affirming challenge to how we interact with smart technology and how easily we let it monitor and control us – highly pertinent to anybody with kids today – and Tim has been all over the news with his campaign to liberate kids from screen addiction. Check out the showreel/trailer.
I’m telling you all this because I saw it last year, and it really is powerful as theatre and as a gig (as well as important and life-affirming). Use the code “super241” to get two tickets for the price of one. Why? It’s a press night and they want to fill the place with lovely audience! Booking via The Cockpit website.
Looking back at last month’s PubSci, on Wednesday 21st May we welcomed welcome Michael Cutts from the Royal Institution of Great Britain‘s demo team, famous for televised Christmas Lectures and live shows in the Faraday Lecture Theatre.
Taking us through through the Ri’s 225-year history of demonstrating science to audiences, Michael treated us to some great live demos, assisted by Professor David Ricketts, including two demos carried out by Michael Faraday himself.
Demonstrating that a flame is hollow, to the evident surprise of Henry VIII (Photo: Nithin Anand)
Many thanks to Michael, David, and the Ri’s Head of Heritage, Charlotte, New for sharing their passion, flair, and deep knowledge with us. As you can see, King Henry was quite entertained too.
It lives! Michael demonstrates the plasma toroid built by David (Photo: Richard Marshall)
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Looking forward to this month’s event, I’m delighted to say that Dr Stuart Eves returns to PubSci on Wednesday 18th June with “Doomed? How the Universe is Trying to Kill Us – and How We can Stop It!”
Fireball over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 (The Planetary Society)
Stuart will be exploring whether there’s a cosmic pattern underlying global mass extinctions found in the geological record and consider what role astronomers can play in preventing the next Big One. Full details on our Next Event page. Booking via Eventbrite. Don’t delay, half the tickets are already gone.
Other sciencey things happening in the next few weeks
Birkbeck Science Week: From Monday 9th June, Birkbeck, University of London, hosts a serious of public talks followed by a drinks reception, starting with How The Brain Invents Your Reality with Dr Daniel Yon. Do try and get to one of these talks if you can.
Seed Pods by Rob Kessler (Credit: Rob Kessler)
I just found out about a wonderful exhibition in south London by renowned science artist Rob Kessler. Rob is a fellow of the Linnean Society and former president of the British Science Association’s Science and the Arts Section. The work includes ink drawings, videos and highly magnified micrographs of plant specimens. Rob will be studying and working in the space throughout the exhibition, surrounded by his botanical library and herbarium specimens. STUDY suns until 28th June and is open only Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Details and times here: https://www.kenart.space/
• • •
Finally,science communicator and PubSci member, Ushashi Basu, has written about PubSci in her excellent blog and interviewed me to find out how I came to be the bloke introducing the speakers and what led me to science communication. It was a pleasure to chat with Ushashi over a coffee and recall how it is that I’ve been programming, promoting and hosting PubSci events for the past seven years. You can read that interview here and see Ushashi’s other blog posts at https://ushashibasu.com/.
Have a great June, and don’t forget to book your place for Wednesday18th.
Posted by Richard Marshall, PubSci organiser and host.
PubSci: Sipping • Supping • Science
• • •
Keep Up With Future Events
To make sure you don’t miss out on future events, subscribe to our Google Calendar to be the first to know when new talks are scheduled, and follow PubSci’s events on Eventbrite to be notified when tickets are available. You can also sign up to our own mailing list on any page on this site.
PubSci is organised and hosted by science communicator, Richard Marshall, assisted by Mike Lucibella. Events are held upstairs at the Old King’s Head, near London Bridge tube. No specialist knowledge is required, just curiosity. Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Talks run for ~45 minutes and are followed by a Q&A session. The Old King’s Head has a happy hour before 7pm, and the kitchen serves excellent pub grub.
There is no charge for attending PubSci talks, but we have a cash whip-round to cover expenses on the night – consider it “Pay What You Can Afford”. As few of us carry cash these days, you can make a donation when registering for ticketed events with Eventbrite. Please help us continue putting on events. PubSci has no other source of funding.
We aim to keep PubSci accessible for all, although it is unsuitable for under 18s as we meet in the function room of a pub. Regrettably, there is no wheelchair access.
