{"id":119,"date":"2026-08-05T21:44:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T21:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/?p=119"},"modified":"2026-08-05T21:44:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T21:44:59","slug":"july-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/?p=119","title":{"rendered":"July 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wow, two posts in two months! Incredible! I’ve never been so up – to – date!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

July projects included One Year of Science Tonight!<\/strong>, Rogue Objects<\/strong> working day, and another anniversary, as a resident speaker for Lectures on Tap<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rogue Objects Working Day<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To explain Rogue Objects, let me start by introducing you my friend Janani<\/a>. He is a multidisciplinary artist, and I describe his work as science-y stuff in cool places. We met when he was the resident artist of the research group I’m part of at AMNH, and have appreciated each other’s work over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rogue Objects is going to be a planetarium show<\/s>, sorry, planetarium Opera<\/em> about Brown Dwarfs, a quantum mechanical solution to not getting squished by gravity that exists in between planets and stars. Janani has been working on this for years when I was brought in during 2024 as a science advisor. I love this project to death, Janani has put so much thought and care into the script and vision, and it’s a joy to play with him on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We met up with the projects animator Molly Schwartz and hung out in her apartment for two days while we buckled down on the visual language, and Janani and I went through the scaffolding of concepts in the script over and back again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, Janani and I did our usual post art\/science intensive working day – got out of our heads and into our bodies with some rock climbing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking forward to more development on this soon once we can announce the institutional partner!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LoT – All the Light in the Universe<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Lectures on Tap is a casual lecture series at bars, and as a resident speaker I do a monthly talk of my own creation. I get to write and deliver on a topic I want, and they get the butts in seats! Win-Win!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first LoT was last July, and it’s kind of bizarre to think I’ve been doing them for a year. It’s kind of cool to call myself the resident astronomer at Brooklyn Brewery \ud83d\ude0e Not only that, but I’ve come up with 10+ talks at this point! All astro related, which means I always need to do a primer on light in each of them. This time, I decided to do it exclusively on Light! Specifically, all the light in the universe!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds like a big concept (and I guess it is) but I built the talk around 3 things, Olber’s paradox, why star’s give off light, and the leftover light from the big bang. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter how you frame it, the universe is getting dimmer. I struggled a bit in how to end the talk, because framing it as “light go down” can read quite pessimistic. However, I settled on an angle of how precious light is! How our language and culture celebrates and savors it, how we ourselves are products of starlight. My final slide was an Amanda Gorman quote, which I’ll share here!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThere is always light.
Only if we are brave enough to see it.
There is always light.
Only if we are brave enough to be it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

One Year of Science Tonight!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finally, my comedy talkshow Science Tonight! hit a huge milestone, one year of existence! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I won’t lie, this show is a lot of work. In fact, I often feel like it is killing me \ud83d\ude05 We started as a monthly schedule at the start of the year, and while it was exciting, it was a lot of learning on the go (I got a PhD in physics, I was now learning theater marketing!) and even as things were getting easier, they were still extremely challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided we were taking August off, but needed to still do July. Looking for a theme, I kind of stumbled on the fact that the first show was back in July 2025. I was happy with the theme of a “Revolution” around the Earth for the show, and then I actually had to sit with what that meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I had created a science comedy talkshow. Something that felt so intrinsically me, drawing on all the aspects of my being, and which took the efforts and brilliance of dear friends to execute. And we had done it for a whole year!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to share some of that feeling in the monologue, and found myself holding back tears. There is a reason this show is my tentpole project for 2026, and this episode being that milestone for it truly meant something. As a final beat for the show, I invited anyone in the audience who had been part of the show on stage to take a bow with me. It would have been 30+ folks if they all could have made it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shoutout to our guest Garima Raheja, and for Kit and Deion for giving us the high energy reporter segments we needed to close out the show! And a special mention to one of my best friends Will. He’s been the set designer for the show since the beginning, but eventually a stage hand, then “henchman” and finally had a cast role on the episode!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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August is off for the show, so that I can have a month off of it “killing me”. However, its not only for relief! We’re gonna take the month to book out the fall, work on our online presence, and even make some merch!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow, two posts in two months! Incredible! I’ve never been so up – to – date! July projects included One Year of Science Tonight!, Rogue Objects working day, and another anniversary, as a resident speaker for Lectures on Tap. Rogue Objects Working Day To explain Rogue Objects, let me start by introducing you my friend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markpopinchalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}