We're previewing the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival and hyping Cloudy with a Chance of Science — on Wednesday, September 16 at 7pm at the School of the Arts, tickets $15 at rochesterfringe.com, so please come hang out with us.

Check out the episode on Just Can't Not wherever you get your podcasts or on Lunchador.org!

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/8c996717-0a91-49fd-bf2f-221f240ad740/

I’m Chris Lindstrom and I’m joined by Dan Schneiderman from the Rochester Museum & Science Center and Rich Coniglia, your friendly local meteorologist, plus Scott and Lisa Fybush — they mix straight-up weather science with jokes, audience games, and a little theatrics. Start with the basics — like what weather even is (big idea: moving air, temperature differences, moisture = clouds, rain, snow) — then zoom into Rochester-specific quirks, the eclipse mishaps, odd storms and why forecasts are a gamble of probabilities, not crystal-ball voodoo. The point is: science doesn’t have to be scary or boring; they use humor and real talk to explain process, cite sources, and get people asking better questions instead of yelling facts into the void. Also, heads up: the Science Center’s doing more adult stuff at Fringe (planetarium shows, liquid nitrogen, tattoos in the dome — yes, really), and we’ve got other Fringe picks to catch like Catharsis Time (Sept 26) and Night of 1000 Johns (Sept 15). Come for the laughs, stay for the learning, and bring your shovel — Rochester weather is a group activity and we’ll be celebrating that glorious gray with a grin.

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

Visit joebeanroasters.com to get fresh roasted specialty coffee either by the bag or with a Perpetual Joy subscription!

Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just Can't Not.

I'm your host, Chris Lindstrom, and we're doing previews for the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival, happening from September 15th to the 26th in scenic downtown Rochester, New York.

Go to rochesterfringe.com to buy your tickets for as many events as you can possibly go to.

And I'm here with some guests.

Guests, why don't you introduce yourselves?

I'm Dan Schneiderman, the community engagement manager at the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

And I'm Rich Connealy, a meteorologist at Channel 10 and happy to be taking part in this little show we're doing.

Beautiful.

So why don't you tell me a little bit about the show, Dan?

Like, what is this all about?

Seems like we're crossing a lot of different sides of things.

So our show is Cloudy with a Chance of Science, a night of science, weather and humor.

So we are bringing together three comedians and our good friend Rich to basically dive into the science and comedy of Rochester's weather.

Yeah.

So the show is on Wednesday the 16th at 7pm Tickets are $15 at rochesterfringe dot.

So when, you know, when you're thinking about coming together to make a show like this, how did you, how did you decide on the format?

Like, you're doing an hour but you've got all these people, like, this is jam packed.

This is, there's no fluff.

This is, this is a whole thing.

How did you decide on the format for what the show is going to be?

Admittedly, I was inspired by some of this other science and comedy pairing that I've seen pop up all across the US I personally first found out of LabX in LA, where they do a whole bunch of different science shows.

And then you have the caveat in New York City, where they're doing yet again another type of format off of this.

And just I love the concept of science and comedy.

Something we've been experimenting for a long, long time at the rmse.

Yeah.

And I think education is at a certain age.

Right.

So, you know, kids are part of an education process, but after you've become a certain, you know, become an adult.

Education is one of those things where when you're trying to force information at people, you know, there's this, you know, elastic pushback that tends to happen.

And even when people are receptive to certain kinds of information, when it's, you know, too aggressive a push, sometimes it doesn't get received the right way.

And especially, and especially when you're super passionate about something and you're diving in really deeply.

I know for me, as somebody who is you wants to bring my passion to other people, sometimes it's about not telling them.

It's about showing.

Right.

It's.

How do you depict this in a way that is balanced and is engaging to people where they want to ask more questions and not that you are forcing information at them.

I have to imagine that's a big part of it.

Yeah, it's very true.

You know, a great way to do that, obviously, is with some humor.

You know, people thoroughly enjoy having a few laughs and maybe they'll learn something along the way.

So it's kind of.

I get things kickstarted with a little bit of the sciencey side of things, the meteorology, you know, part of it related a bit to here in Rochester and where I've worked almost 30 years and should be a lot of fun.

So we'll do that and then we'll throw it open to bring in some funny people to hopefully get some chuckles and should be some fun night.

Well, I think that's the other thing too.

Right.

As a professional communicator.

Right.

And that's part of.

That's part of that whole experience is you are a professional communicator as a meteorologist.

Right.

You know, there's the science side and then there's the communication side as well.

It has to be a constant, you know, a constant balance of facts.

And also, hey, you want to educate people as much as you can in the time that you have.

Yeah.

And I'm no expert, but weather kind of sets itself up well.

Easy to humor.

Yeah.

Sometimes we're not always perfect in the forecasting.

And I guess I'm fortunate that I do have the job where I can be wrong all the time and still get paid.

I've been told that many times.

Yeah.

It is one of those constant challenges.

Right.

We're trying to.

It's all about the odds.

And it's one of those things like living in the gray area.

And it's not that, you know, science is precision, science is many things, but it's also like, hey, at some point you're playing odds, right, with this is happening, so this is more likely to happen.

And I think it also helps to explain the gray areas, you know, and maybe explain how things work and why things work.

And I imagine as you know, a science communicator as well, that has to be an important part of what you do.

I mean, we're always learning something new and that's one of the big things about science that people tend to forget is that science is ever changing.

I mean, we're always learning new information, we're always learning how to explore these topics, how to present these topics.

And often, much like a meteorologist, we have to explain the same thing in as many different ways as possible, depending on the audience.

Yeah.

And I think that's.

It's context, right.

Like this is.

Everything's very clear when there's one right answer and one wrong answer right.

Math shows that in many ways.

But the understanding of, you know, the complexity of the world makes everything live in the gray area, which is where context comes into play, where process comes into play and also comes to, hey, the arts.

Right.

How do we explain these things?

How do we help people feel things about things that might be scientific to those that have that kind of mentality?

I mean, I know I do.

I'm going to.

I'm an analytical monster.

Right.

That's how I explore the world is through that.

But not everybody does.

And we want to reach everybody in different ways.

And, you know, also comedy's part of this.

So also, thanks for jumping in partway through five bushes.

Hello.

Hello.

We walked in and said, oh, they're finishing up something else and they're just wait.

And I didn't realize it was us.

Yeah.

So I mean, bringing comedy to, you know, discussion around, obviously weather is a, you know, it's like the airplane comedy of the 80s.

You know, you can complain about weather always, but there's also lots of different ways to tackle it because Rochester is one of those, you know, you want to experience new weather, wait till tomorrow or wait till this afternoon kind of comedy.

But when you're trying to tackle this and you embrace some of the scientific topics, how does that process go?

So it helps, I think.

I have also done a lot with science.

And so I have sort of done it from both sides.

I mean, I was as you, you know, as, you know, I was the serious guy on public radio for all of those years that was feeling really good.

By the way, I would also like to.

Your tote bag is available right now for just a 10 doll pledge.

Also, I would like to point out that as part of the whole eclipse weekend, we did a.

An eclipse based and science based comedy show.

So we've had experience with this before.

Yeah, And I think it's kind of the, this is exactly the kind of show that one is very fringe.

Right?

We're, we're dabbling in, you know, science, we're dabbling in weather, we're dabbling in comedy.

This is the diversity that fringe can bring.

I'm kind of intrigued, like, how does.

When you're practicing for this and you're trying to fit it all in this.

Thing, you're supposed to practice, nobody cares.

In a 60 minute window.

How did you figure out the format for what this is going to be in the end?

It's been really pulling from a lot of the folks that have been playing around with the science of comedy format of like, okay, there's a little bit of a pattern to it of introducing everyone, doing a lot of the science content up front and then just letting the questions flow from both our comedians, from the audience.

And admittedly there's a few games to toss in and throw our comedians into a little bit of not quite a frenzy, but throw it back on them of every, you know, we deal with a lot of the fun comments in our work.

We get a lot of that feedback on the science and sometimes we just want to throw it right back at the comed.

And we are, you know, we are pretty well prepared for that.

I mean, one of the things obviously as a comic that you have to be able to do is think on your feet.

There are going to be some opportunities within this show for us to do that.

There are also some pretty well established models.

I'm not saying that Dan has shamelessly ripped off any existing shows or podcasts.

However, I have completely ripped off some of these and bringing them to the Rochester area.

I mean, we need more science comedy and this is something we've talked about for a while and, you know, producing more in this region.

There is a demand.

You know, we have always felt that there is a demand and we've talked about this before for smart comedy.

There is, there is a whole lot of, you know, lowest common denominator, low brow comedy.

And a lot of it is fantastic and I do some of it and it's fun.

However, it's nice to be able to make smart people laugh with smart things that also make them think at the same time.

And this is a great town for that because it's full of smart people and it's full of funny people.

Yeah, we're going to have smart people in our audience.

Well, I've been promised absolutely the goal.

Well, then I'm going to have to.

Rewrite My intro, I will say, I promise nothing along that sort for all of this.

I was told there would be an entry exam.

Maybe I was.

Maybe I was unclear about that.

Prerequisite courses, everybody.

An IQ test.

Yeah.

As part of the nice thing about fringe is you have people who are open minded who don't want to just go for the mass entertainment.

And when we marketed the eclipse show, I don't.

We didn't say, this is comedy for smart people.

But obviously the people who came to that had an interest in science, they were in town for the eclipse and so we just aimed high and they left.

Yeah.

And that's what I think we're going to be doing here, too.

And one of the same comics we should mention also the missing person in the room is our friend Sean Hennessy, who is a chemist by trade.

Beautiful.

So he comes to this armed with a wealth of scientific knowledge.

You're gonna love him.

He's great.

Yeah.

I had to take chemistry in college.

I just remember things blowing up at some point during the show.

And he's very into smart comedy anyway.

Well, it's a great start, blowing things up.

We do it on a daily basis.

I mean, it was only about a year ago that I almost blew my eyebrows off at work.

I mean, we've all done it lighting a propane grill at some point or another.

What?

I'm kind of intrigued.

Like, you mentioned bringing the comedy model and then you're somebody that uses models all the time in your work.

Right.

This is simulation and understanding.

This has to be kind of a fun opportunity to stretch a little bit and maybe go into the weeds, even just a little bit in this format.

Beyond what the minutes you have every day.

Oh, yeah.

There'll be an opportunity to actually talk about.

I'm planning on, you know, like, generally, what is weather.

Yeah.

So I'm going to start things off.

You know, people, you know, they have an idea of what weather is, but sure, you know, go into really why, you know, and so we'll spend a few minutes on that and we really are going to have a great show.

You know, it's an hour we're talking all with this comedy and everything, but it's obviously going to really toy with all emotions because we're going to spend some time talking about the eclipse.

Yeah, that was a great tragedy.

Yeah.

The second I came up with the title of this show, I realized, oh, something's going to come back and bite me.

In fact, a lot of images throughout the show are photos of, you know, that fateful day.

And I mean, to give a little bit of background, kind of bury the lead here, for three and a half years, my, really.

My first time working at the museum, my job was just the eclipse for, you know, that three and a half years, officially, even a little bit longer unofficially, where my only job was to get people ready for that day.

Yeah.

And of course, the obvious thing happened of clouds.

Yeah.

I mean, I got to say, like, one you could have done a better job setting up for that day.

We did.

I want.

It's all on you.

I got to tell you.

We did the sacred chant.

I tried.

We hit.

And as we were headed to where we were going to view, one of the locals said to us, this has just become our tagline.

He said to us, y' all have yourselves a good eclipse.

So I made sure before it started, before I got totality, I said to everybody gathered on our deck, you all have yourselves a good eclipse.

And I thought, that's just going to bring all the positive energy and the clouds are just going to go away.

And it didn't.

Sorry.

So here's the thing, though, too.

I mean, this is Rochester.

We are accustomed to some degree of hardship.

We are accustomed to some degree of things not exactly going the way we want them to go.

We root for the bills every year, et cetera.

And so in some ways, I almost feel like this maybe bound some of us even closer together than it might have if it had just been a sunny day and then not a sunny day and then a sunny day again.

You know, we are all still scarred in our own way, touched in our own way, moved in our own way by this shameless plug here.

Lisa and I are also in another show at Fringe this year, Catharsis Time, which we have talked about before here on the podcast.

This is, I think, the fourth year that our friends Matt Moore and Sarah Zavacki Moore have put this together.

Another great lineup of comics this year.

I am really kind of opening up the blood vessels, if you will, and talking about how I ended up leaving my career in public radio.

What has changed in me, it's kind of a deep dive.

But there is an eclipse reference in there, too, because how could there not be, really?

Yeah.

And I think that's kind of a.

September 26th, by the way.

There you go.

There's actually two catharsis time shows.

We're in one of them.

September 19th, we're not in, but it's going to be great, people.

September 26th, we're in it.

And the whole idea, for those who I know you remember, but for those who don't, you.

Everybody had to write a story about something really painful or embarrassing or whatever.

And then we read them and it's supposed to be cathartic.

And this is the fourth year they've done it.

We've been in it every year because it's just a great show.

Yeah, well, and I think that's kind of a.

Kind of an interesting pivot point.

Right.

So when we're talking about education.

Right.

When we're talking about, you know, adults trying to, you know, hey, you're going in, you.

Hopefully you're learning something.

Like, that's a wholly different format than a lot of the content at the Science Center.

So, you know, there's this, I don't know, this assumption or knowledge that the Science center is a.

It's a place for kids, which I think is a fundamental misunderstanding about the goals of what the organization does.

But I'm sure a lot of the programming that you're involved with is targeted.

There's a lot of targeting to kids and bringing people in.

This has to be a fantastic different thing to do to format a show specifically for adults.

It's been something we've been breaking out to more and more.

Funny enough, one of my roles at the museum is literally adult programs of like, what's that content that we can do?

It lets us stretch out a little bit more.

It lets us play in a very different way that we're normally used to.

Admittedly, some of the things that we do for kids, we will do for adults because they love doing the exact same things.

Oh, 100%.

You know, as we mentioned explosions earlier, adults love explosions just as much as kids.

I mean, anytime you can play with.

Baking soda volcano right now, if we had the stuff on the table.

Absolutely, totally.

I mean, explosions are fun regardless.

It's just a good time.

But we've been playing so much more in this space, and we've been trying out a lot of new things.

I mean, literally, coming up at the beginning of October, we're having our second public tattoo night, Tattoo day, where people can get flash tattoos in the planetarium.

How cool is that?

We are.

You know, we're playing around, we've done yoga, We've.

We're talking about bringing this show hopefully on the road throughout the next year of, you know, tackling other subjects.

We're talking about doing some version of Hot ones but talking about science topics at the same time.

I mean, one, I'm definitely game to do that.

I've done some of those hot eating challenges.

There was a place where they invited me to be the first person to do it, and I get to be a whole bunch of a mess doing that.

So it's always a delight.

I'm just looking over here at your shelf.

We could do Malort in mathematics.

Oh, yeah, that would be a good one.

Oh, we, we have talked quite a bit about as long as I don't.

Have to drink the Malort.

Yeah, we have talked so much about alcohol and science at the museum and sometimes we'll do it for the public and sometimes we just love talking about it ourselves because it's an interesting science.

Absolutely.

So I'm kind of intrigued, like when, you know, you're kicking off with some of the meteorological.

Meteorological side of things.

Can you tip a little bit about, like, hey, what's, you know, how are you, how are you kicking this off?

What's the topic du jour right now?

Well, it's just going to be a general, you know, to give people an idea of why does the earth have.

Whether it has.

Yeah.

And then, you know, focus it in on the Rochester area.

So we'll talk about, you know, our couple of kinds of weather, which is clouds and, and rain clouds and, and snow clouds and things like that.

Yeah, a couple of those things.

You know, we'll go over all that good stuff and then segue into a little bit, you know, about the eclipse because that's a topic to juror.

We may touch on some of the storms we had last week, a couple of tornadoes.

We don't always see that here.

Yeah, like, weirdly interesting weather.

My brother in the south towns of Buffalo last year, like, had one go through his backyard and tore out a bunch of trees.

It's like not the kind of thing you ever thought about when you were.

When I was a kid growing up in the south towns of Buffalo, it's like, oh, yeah, we'll never see one of those.

And then now we happen to be seeing those.

I have to imagine, like, do you, do you imagine this is also like, interactive from the audience or is that.

Like something we will be, you know, just polling the audience for questions and, you know, occasionally asking them what their favorite thing is, you know, do they prefer extreme hot or extreme cold?

You know, little fun things like that.

And it's, you know, as we've talked about, catharsis.

I mean, if there's one thing Rochester is united about, it's.

It's our Kartha Tharsis for weather.

I mean, Rochester's weather is unifying in both the best and worst ways.

Yeah.

I mean, we're all dealing with it all at the same time, and there's no escape from it in the end.

Right.

We still gotta go get to where we're going.

I mean, now the Spirit Airlines has stopped flying.

I mean, I thought we were actually getting to where we were going, so we shouldn't talk about that.

Well, it's one of those things where I think of, yeah, we all complain.

But one of my favorite things growing up and living here in Rochester has been the way I've gotten to know my neighbors, is we're all shoveling out at the same time.

We'll go help each other shovel each other's cars out, move on to the next car.

We're always there to lend a hand, especially during weather events, one way or another.

And we all have to be able to laugh about it or we would go absolutely insane.

Yeah, 100%.

What I kind of want to roll into as we're finishing up our time is, you know, I mentioned earlier, you know, science is trying to, you know, explain the way things work in the world.

And there's, you know, there's a lot of discourse going on right now about that opinions and feelings are as valid as science and practice and everything else.

And good communication, I think, is one of the best ways to dispel some of that.

That, yes, there are some things that are fundamentally true and that opinions are not the driver of how things actually work in the world.

But that's where, you know, the different methods of communication and communication with understanding and not demonizing becomes so important.

How does that balance work for you?

As now somebody who's organizing these kind of events?

It's always an interesting mix.

And I've done a lot of science outreach in the community, especially as I was talking about the eclipse on the community for years.

I have met every type of science denialism you can imagine.

I've met flat Earthers.

I've met moon deniers, or moon landing deniers, specifically.

Maybe some moon deniers.

Hopefully no moon deniers.

That's an easy one.

It's just a projection.

They get one day a month.

They can be, you know.

Yes, sure, yes, I looked up.

It wasn't there.

Yeah.

Actually, the Best story I heard is that the moon landing was staged by Stanley Kubrick, but because he is such a hands on, thorough director, he actually did go to the moon to shoot the footage.

That's pretty good.

But it's through these conversations that I've learned that, yeah, you have to just find that common ground and find that balance of you can't attack people when you're trying to explain the science.

Yes, some of it's going to be difficult questions and you're not going to always convince everyone, but if you can plant those seeds or even just challenge it just a little bit or, you know, get them to think about where they get their new sources.

I mean, one of my favorite things to say is, you know, just.

It reminds me of the old XKCD comic of citation needed.

Yeah, it's one of those, please think about your sources, think about where you get that info.

And just having these great conversations.

I still remember a time, funny, on the museum grounds, someone didn't think that we landed on the moon, but we still had a great conversation of it was such a lovely night.

I got them to look up through a telescope and they had a lovely time and said that they wanted to come back and visit.

Yeah, that is the best result I could have asked for.

As it turned out, you wouldn't have, you know, either way.

But to kind of bring this full circle, there is another show that we are not in this year at Fringe that is called Conspiracy Council.

And it is literally a bunch of people doing tongue in cheek slideshows, inventing conspiracies.

I was in one of these shows.

We were both in one of these shows and my conspiracy was the eclipse was faked, that it was big weather trying to get us to pay more attention to this guy.

So the ultimate, the outcome is whatever makes you actually pay attention to this, whether or not you go in believing, at least you're going to get a chance to come in and listen, hear something, get a few laughs, and hopefully get some facts that also set your head.

Yeah, well, you couldn't see it because of all the chemtrails from the Russians.

Exactly.

Oh, you gotta add that to yours.

I don't think you had that slide, but that's a good one.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

So it was the Russian meteorologists Yes, Evil communists.

So I'll give you the last word to talk about process for a second because I think that's one of the best ways to talk about things sometimes.

I mean, for me as a nerd, I love process, but I think it's the thing that describes it, right.

Like this is a process of understanding.

Right.

Like you have a process on how you parse things.

And that's been documented for a long time.

But I imagine process is one of the ways that you can help tell people, like, hey, here's the steps I go through and here's how I come up with this information.

Right.

The equations that go into meteorology are insanely complicated.

And the computations, the calculus and the stuff that goes into it, it's mind boggling.

That's why you need supercomputers to even attempt to solve these equations.

But it's my job to take that super complicated stuff and to simplify it so that, you know, you can understand it.

Yeah, that's what I'm going to try to do in a couple minutes at the beginning of this show next week.

Well, I love that.

So we are going to close out.

So the show is on September 16th at 7pm at the school of the Arts.

So great venue for that.

Dan, any plugs you want to get out for the Science center, otherwise?

The Science center, we have multiple fringe shows going on.

We have several at the planetarium and another one back at the School of the Arts where we'll be performing one of our science shows.

I believe we're actually going to have liquid nitrogen at that one.

So nothing.

That's a great one.

Not quite explosive, but very, very cold.

And then otherwise we're just working on all sorts of new adult programs.

Just check out the website.

Nice.

Where do people check out the finest weather in all of Rochester?

Yeah.

Please tune in 4:30am make sure you're up or wait till 7, I guess.

Yeah.

And five bushes.

So in addition to this awesome show, the 26th and also the 19th, but we'll be at a Rush concert in Cleveland, so we won't be at that one.

Right.

But yeah, the 26th is the 4th edition of Catharsis Time.

Spoiler alert.

There are really only three giants.

Yeah, that's true.

But yes, three comics named John.

Beautiful.

And John is hosting, which is one.

More than they might be Giants.

Exactly.

You're getting your money's worth.

Thank you so much for coming over, everybody.

Thanks for watching.

Check out the other shows on the Lunch Order podcast [email protected] and we'll see you out on the fringe.

This has been a presentation of the Luncharoor Podcast Network,.

Leidenfrost effect science words.