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What do these things have in common?

Vultures

Sea Slugs

Mad Cow Disease

Florida’s Ecosystem

Indigenous Beer

The answer can be found in an unlikely place:��

New World Tampa on East Skagway Avenue, home to the Pints of Science lecture series, where scientists share their expertise and passions — everything from sea slugs to mad cow disease — with a curious crowd in an open-mic-like environment, complete with hot pizza and cold IPAs.

The event started in 2022 and is the brainchild of Nancy Bird ’93. She thought it would be a quarterly occurrence at the biergarten, restaurant and live music venue she and her husband, Steve Bird MBA ’91, own. Since then, it’s turned into a most-intellectual, midweek night out in north Tampa. The sell-out lectures take place on the second Wednesday of every month.

Nancy Bird, a NICU nurse retired from Tampa General Hospital, uses the term “open science” to explain the mission of Pints of Science. She wants to help bridge the scientific community to actionable outcomes, she said.

“When we can discover and then discuss common or overlapping areas of our scientific disciplines, we all become more knowledgeable and make progress as good stewards of ourselves and our Earth,” she said.

Pints of Science, which takes place on New World’s music hall stage, follows a regular routine. Three scientists or science enthusiasts from different fields of expertise each prepare a 20-minute presentation. Talks can go long. Kevin Murdock, a friend from their volleyball league who is a retired behavioral analyst and sometimes a Pints of Science speaker, politely stands in the back and raises a whiteboard with the words,

“Please finish up,” when it’s time.

After each presentation, there is a five-minute question-and-answer period. Between speakers, patrons trade opinions and order more rounds from the generously tattooed wait staff. Ten minutes later, Murdock, playing master of ceremonies, introduces the next speaker, interjecting a few of his own thoughts.

“Now is the time to advocate for science,” Murdock told the audience on a recent Wednesday, ahead of introducing�� a local anthropologist who then took the audience on a slide-deck tour of Ethiopia, explaining his work studying indigenous beers.

Apparently also an expert at reading a room, the anthropologist opened with, “Beer is one of the most important foods in the world.”

He got no argument from the 100-or-so people in attendance, unlike the pushback offered to another speaker that night, a pediatrician who ventured into hot-button territory when he brought up autism.

“It's a critical time for science,” Steve Bird said, “And to have 100 people who are quiet and listening ... it’s tough to scare up an audience like that that is really paying attention.

“And it's really a beautiful thing to see.”

Steve describes New World patrons as “a pretty literate crowd,” and the venue caters to them. A free book box hangs in the entryway to the biergarten (current titles include Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Carl Hiaasen’s Chomp), and the bar’s décor evokes a wide worldview. Globes fill nooks on shelving in the bar area. Also in the bar, maps, compasses and Latin phrases are painted in what looks like chalk on a floor the color of a chalkboard.

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UTAMPA SCIENTISTS ON TAP

While New World’s East Skagway Avenue location is fairly new, the business has long been a staple on the Tampa bar scene. Ybor City was its home for 25 years until 2020. The venue has always been known for original, live music, and that’s how the Birds got acquainted with Michael Middlebrooks, a ska band front man with a day job teaching biology at UTampa.

It was Middlebrooks, an associate professor known for his research into sea slugs, who helped Nancy line up the first slate of experts for Pints of Science.

“I wrote to him, and then I never looked back,” Nancy Bird said. “We had 65 people come the very first time, and then shortly after that, we had a full house every time.”

It’s proved easy to get speakers, too. Audience members trend “science-y,” so, often, someone will attend and then ask to speak next time.

UTampa Sociology Professor Ryan Cragun and Ana Maia, associate dean of student affairs program effectiveness, also have been Pints of Science presenters, as have Emily Durkin, assistant professor of biology, and Christine Theodore, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

“There is a large segment of the population that is very interested in the work we do,” Cragun said. “Learning about it directly from the source makes for a wonderful night out for the science-curious."

Not all the speakers are academics, though. “We’ve had naturalists who come and talk about the wildlife corridor or the Green Swamp,” Nancy Bird said. “We’ve had people with bachelor’s degrees and people who make presentations about invasive species on the roadways.

“It’s just a good variety,” Nancy Bird said. “I haven’t ever really said you have to have a degree. If someone has a passion, then I ask them to send me a paragraph about that passion. There have been very few that I didn’t think, ‘This fits.’”

Last September, Middlebrooks shared the stage with a dietitian and a mathematical oncologist. His talk was titled “Magnificent Mollusks,” and he introduced people to color-changing cuttlefish and solar powered sea slugs.

“You get very different questions than you get at a scientific conference,” he said of the audience. “Sometimes, kids are there, and you get different questions from children than from adults.”

Like, “What’s your favorite sea slug?” (It’s the lettuce slug, his main research animal, of course.)

Nancy Bird said Pints of Science is geared toward adults, “but we welcome teens who are interested in science. … You might hear a foul word, but, you know, I think most teens have heard that.”

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A NATURAL PATTERN

Science night is on-theme for Nancy Bird.

She got the idea after attending similar intellectual-leaning events at other venues, but those were not focused entirely on science, and they were not in Tampa. She saw a niche to fill that would also fill her own head and heart.

Her 37-year career at the hospital had been steeped in science. And evidence of her eco-centric interests and hobbies is planted all over New World: gorgeous, native greenery around water features; beekeeping equipment (the hives are at the back of the parking lot across the street, the honey behind the bar to make bee’s knees cocktails); colorful ceramic fish and other nature-inspired art she created in community art classes; herb gardens in rustic planters.

When Steve brings her a “bouquet” from the Sanwa Farmer’s Market, he hands her a small bunch of radishes, the leafy green tops tied neatly. He knows her. She’s delighted.

New World itself was born out of a similar gesture. One Christmas, Nancy gifted Steve a home-brew kit. “I wanted to brew, like every guy who ever drank a beer,” Steve Bird said.

A few batches later, he stood one night in the back yard, stirring the pot, so to speak, with his brother-in-law, Greg Kralis. The men, then an insurance adjuster (Steve) and an engineer (Greg), said to each other, “We should do this for a living.”

It was the mid-’90s, and Florida was “a little bit of a beer wasteland,” Steve Bird said. Armed with his UTampa MBA, he, too, had noticed an unfilled niche.

New World was successful from the start, Steve Bird said, and before long, “We were a big deal in beer.”

“We were number one or two in the state on everything that we had on draft. We were brewing beer 30 gallons at a time. But that’s like baking a single loaf of bread — it’s gonna be good, but are you gonna get up and do it every day?”

Ultimately, no. New World hasn’t brewed its own beer in a while, instead finding a groove in the music and events scenes. The business celebrated its 30th anniversary in April with four days of live music and festivities.

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FINGERS IN THE DIRT

The New World site — it’s really more of a campus with the two main buildings, a barn, gardens, a patio, fountains and plenty of parking — had been vacant for years when the Birds bought it.

A total renovation was required, which took almost two years, and 10 days before the pandemic was declared official in 2020, New World, the north Tampa edition, opened.

Still working in the hospital at the time, Nancy Bird found respite at New World. “I just wanted down time in the garden because I worked in neonatal intensive care, and the alarms — well, just let me stick my fingers in the dirt,” she said.

Two years later, Nancy retired, and she now focuses with Steve full time on New World and its events, especially Pints of Science and its inspired offshoots: an annual Earth expo with exhibitors, vendors and music that received a Tampa Bay Estuary Program mini-grant; a Juneteenth event hosted with the Urban League of Tampa; Ideas on Tap, a lecture series for “thinkers, doers and storytellers”; a Tuesday happy hour with a tater tot buffet, called Tots 4 Teachers; and more. But especially Pints of Science.

“Scientists, I love them,” Nancy Bird said. “I really do appreciate what they do.”