Science and comedy with Robin Ince

Through his stand-up and broadcasting  comedian and all round science enthusiast Robin Ince has done much for the public engagement of science. We caught up with him and threw a few questions his way... So, just how did a comedian come to be the toast of the scientific community? I am not sure I am the toast, I am not very smart but I am curious and very passionate about trying to cure my ignorance even though I know that is an impossible task, I will at least start the journey. I hope it is because a lot of the silly ideas I come up with are fun to do and you see the effect very quickly when you have rooms of 12 to 87 year olds wanting to know more about quantum mechanics or epigenetics. I think much of the mass media doesn't know how inquisitive the general public are, so we get a lot of telly tat and not enough stuff that pushes you. Not everything has to be easy. Your incredible enthusiasm for science is clearly genuine – if you had your time again would you like to be a scientist?  I don't think my mind and patience suit the delayed gratification of science, I enjoy being an enthusiast as I can flit about. I just don't have the concentration for theoretical physics.  Science popularisers like yourself are very important in the public engagement of science, but why is it important at all that the science community explain their work to a wider public? We live in a civilisation that sits on the shoulders of the very best in human imagination, we should not be passive users or we soon forget what the world was like before clean water, vaccination, electricity. Yourself, Dara O'Briain, Dave Gorman, Ben Miller (and many more!) – why is it that the ‘science savvy’ make for such great comedians? Is there a link between the logical and the humorous? Comedians look at the world and stand on stage asking, "why do we do this? why does this happen?" so it natural to turn that inquisitiveness to the cosmos. Simon Munnery once said “if the audience is behind you, you are facing the wrong direction”, so… a room full of scientists or a room full of religious zealots – what is your audience of choice? You need an audience that are at least open minded enough to listen. And you have to be ready to argue in the foyer afterwards. Darwin and Russell-Wallace square-up for a fist fight (…its being brewing for a while I think it is fair to say) which of them walks away the winner? There's no fist fight, they look each other in the eye, agree that humanity's upper faculties allow for confrontation without recourse to fists and have a cup of tea. Catch Robin during his keynote speech at Lab Innovations in November.