Drink and learn at July’s Nerd Nite East Bay with lectures on the history of public transit in the East Bay, incorporating art in medicine, and NASA’s worldwide network of spacecraft communication facilities.

  • $8 advance tix/$10 at the door
  • Monday July 30, 2018
    • 7PM: Doors and Games
    • 8PM: Talks
  • Club 21, 2111 Franklin St, Oakland
    • 2 blocks from 19th St BART
  • 21+
  • RSVP to the event on Facebook


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The Key System: East Bay Mass Transit in the 1900s

In the early 1900s, the Borax King consolidated horse cars and electric streetcars to serve Richmond, Albany, Berkeley & Oakland, allowing, in the words of retired radio announcer Fred Krock, “the East Bay to become a bedroom community for San Francisco”. Hear how the Key System provided over 50 years of luxury travel at almost the same rate-of-travel as BART and how it was ulitmately done in by the high costs of deferred maintenanance and a conspiracy of private automobile companies.

Allan Fisher is the curator of the Western Railway Museum Archives in Suisun City and supervises 32 volunteers who work in a 5000 square foot temperature and humidity controlled archives and library that houses corporate papers and images from the Northern California Electric Railroads. For 32 years, he was an Operating Officer and system executive staff member for the Penn Central and Conrail.

Can you hear me now? Communicating with the Deep Space Network

Welcome to the Center of the Universe. Or at least the central place we can communicate from. How do we talk to our fleet of robots that are exploring in and betond our solar system? How did we help confirm plate tectonics, bounce signals off the moon, and protect ourselves from near earth asteroids? NASA’s Deep Space Network is the hidden backbone of the space program. Discover how it works, how it sometimes doesn’t, and how we need to protect it from hackers and funding cuts.

Shannon Stirone is a freelance science writer based in the Bay Area. Her work has appeared in Popular Science, The Atlantic, Wired, The New Republic and others. She covers topics ranging from super-resistance space bacteria to planetary exploration and space policy.

The Art of Healing

Healthcare is broken. Doctors and nurses are burned out and leaving their jobs and the profession for saner waters. We are using risky, expensive medical interventions but not using cheaper and safer interventions (like Expressive Arts Therapy) to help people heal from illness. What are some examples of successfully using art to improve outcomes and how can this become the norm?

Alan Siegel is a Family Doc with over 20 years of practicing medicine with underserved populations in Richmond/San Pablo, teaching residents, and leading medical group visits. He founded and leads Art of Health and Healing, a program to bring the arts into Contra Costa County’s health system. He also leads an R&B/Motown/Blues band: The Rhythm Method.

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