Lectures on Tap - "Scientific Benefits of Side Quests"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Scientific Benefits of Side Quests: Why You Should Do Weird Things"

🎤 Speaker: Dr. Andrea Jones-Rooy

Forget the standard “pick one passion and grind” advice. In this energizing lecture, Dr. Andrea Jones-Rooy reveals why your so‑called “weird” interests and side quests aren’t distractions from success—they’re essential to it.

Drawing on research from neuroscience, complexity science, political science, business, and biology, Dr. Jones-Rooy shows how doing things that don’t “make sense” for your career—silly hobbies, wild experiments, or long-secret ambitions—can supercharge creativity, problem-solving, adaptability, and even performance in your main field.

You’ll tour cutting-edge and classic-but-forgotten science that reframes detours as engines of discovery and growth, and you might just walk away ready to finally try that thing you’ve always wanted to do.

Andrea Jones-Rooy, Ph.D., is a political and data scientist focused on polarization, misinformation, and democracy. They use media and performance to boost data literacy and help people think like scientists, and host two podcasts: Behind the Data, about how data shapes our world, and Political Reality, which promotes critical and scientific thinking about politics.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.