WHY NERDS ARE HERDING TO PUBS

"All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat," said the Logician in Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros.

- PRATIK KANJILAL

It was a deliberately broken example of Aristotle's syllogism: "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal." Socrates, Aristotle, Ionesco, cats, and absurdity could all be hot topics for Lectures on Tap, which have become popular in America's better-educated cities over the last year. A group called Pint of View is bringing the phenomenon to Indiaamong others, political theorist Rajeev Bhargava has done a show with them.

Lectures on Tap are ticketed popup events held in bars and restaurants, where a teacher from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, MIT, or similar institute delivers a 40-minute lecture about quantum gravity or Bertolt Brecht to a nerdy audience. It's popular because many of us have unrequited intellectual passions. Woody Allen published a story about it in 1974 in The New Yorker. 'The Whore of Mensa' was satirical noir in which a hardboiled gumshoe busted an extortion racket in which foolish men titillated by highbrow things were honeytrapped by erudite women in anonymous motel rooms: "For a price, she'll come over and discuss any subject-Proust, Yeats, anthropology. Exchange of ideas."

There it is: whether at a popup lecture or a motel tryst, the buyer is in search of intellectual stimulation. But why are university teachers becoming sellers of nerd entertainment? There is no causal link between these phenomena, but the demand and supply curves have met with a satisfying thump.