Rabbit Hole Club

A curiosity club at the University of Pittsburgh

So what have you been up all night reading about?

Bring it here. Somebody takes up to ten minutes on whatever they have been reading about, and everybody in the room fills out an anonymous card for them. No minimum, slides optional, and nobody ever gets called on.

Next meeting

Tuesday, October 13 · 9–10 PMDavid Lawrence Hall 231, second floor

Different day, time and building from the 8th, so here’s a map. What we’re doing is a surprise.

Sign up to present

Join the club How to go down a rabbit hole →
The Rabbit Hole Club rabbit, coming up out of its hole

What we do

A club for going way too far into one thing

Every meeting somebody presents on a topic they picked — the kind of thing you would normally look up for four minutes and forget, except they spent four hours on it. Up to ten minutes, no minimum, slides optional. Everybody in the room fills out an anonymous card for them afterward.

Meetings also make room for whatever is coming next — picking topics, digging, and actually building the thing you signed up to present. The presenter is not an expert either; three weeks ago they had not heard of it. That is how a question with an obvious answer turns out to have a hundred-year-old fight underneath it.

It is 2 a.m. and you are eleven videos deep into Belgian railway gauges with no memory of how you got there. Come do that in a room with other people.

Every major Engineering, nursing, history, undeclared. Every presentation assumes the room knows nothing about the topic, because it usually does not.
Nobody gets called on You present when you sign up for a date in advance, and never otherwise. Come every week and never sign up for one if that is what you want.
Fall and spring, every couple of weeks The day and the room move with whatever we can book, so every date is posted here and emailed out. Come to all of them or come to the one about lighthouses.

If you sign up

How presenting works

  1. First

    You claim a date

    You pick a specific meeting you know you can make. Nobody is ever assigned a week, and nobody is ever called on. If something comes up, you claim a different date instead.

  2. Then

    You have the floor

    Up to ten minutes, no minimum — a three-minute talk is a real talk. Slides optional. Show the room what you found, where you found it, and why you could not stop.

  3. Next

    Everybody fills out a card

    Anonymous, and it goes to you: one thing that worked, one thing to change, one question they still have. Whoever is in the room writes down the thing they would have said out loud, including the one about maritime law.

  4. Also

    You do not have to stand up

    If the presenting part is the part you do not want, bring the topic and a few questions and let somebody else run the room with it. You still get the cards. That counts as a turn, not a consolation prize.

On the board

Holes we’re queuing up

We are a new club, so nobody has presented any of these yet. Each one has something strange at the bottom. Turn up with your own and yours goes first.

  • Why does every banana taste exactly the same? They’re clones of one plant. A fungus already wiped out the variety your great-grandparents ate, and a new strain is working on this one.
  • Who decides how long a second is? A specific number of vibrations in a cesium atom, agreed on by committee — a committee that has spent decades fighting about whether to keep adding leap seconds.
  • What actually happened at the 1904 Olympic marathon? Rat poison administered as performance enhancement, a competitor who covered eleven miles by car, and another who stopped to nap. It gets worse from there.
  • Why is the keyboard QWERTY? Everyone confidently repeats the jamming story. Historians who went back to the 1870s patents and the telegraph offices are much less sure.
  • How did a font decide a court case? Documents dated 2006, typeset in a typeface most people couldn’t get until 2007. The forensics of that one are all public.
  • Where does the water in Pittsburgh’s taps come from, and who checks it? A river, a treatment plant, a pile of service lines older than the University, and quarterly test results published by law.
How to take one of these apart →

Join

Come to the next one

Five short questions: your name, your school email, your major, a rabbit hole you’ve been down lately, and whether you’d ever want to present one. That fourth answer goes straight on the board.

Fill out the sign-up form Sign up on ExperiencePitt Follow on Instagram

The form is the mailing list — it’s how we tell you when a room changes, and we don’t send anything else with it. ExperiencePitt is where the University counts you as a member, which is a separate step and one tap if you’re already signed in. Instagram is where the next topic gets posted. You can also just walk in and skip all three.

Next one
Tuesday, October 13, 9–10 PMWhat we’re doing is a surprise, so the topic isn’t posted.
Where
David Lawrence Hall 231Second floor (map). The room moves with whatever we can book, so check here before you head over.
Presenting
Sign up to presentWhat you would present on, and which date. We email you to confirm it.
Schedule
Tuesday the 13thDates go up a couple at a time, because the day depends on which room we get.
Who
Any Pitt studentUndergrad, grad, any major, any year. Faculty, staff, and alumni can join as associate members.
Cost
No duesNothing to pay to join, and nothing to pay to stay.