Frequently Asked Questions

Curiosity Guild is a group of researchers and storytellers who love the curious corners of history. We give engaging, interactive public talks that build community, instill a love of research, and celebrate the wonderfully weird. We particularly love stories of how we’re not so different from each other, or from the humans who lived here in the past.

No, although Curiosity Guild does aim to fill the void being left by Odd Salon.

Curiosity Guild is a new, separate entity from Odd Salon, which gives us a chance to make some changes. We plan to keep some of the traditions of Odd Salon while giving ourselves room to experiment, grow, and evolve.

At the moment, Curiosity Guild is helmed by four long term Odd Salon Fellows with experience in production, operations, and speaking, who are picking up the baton as Odd Salon winds down. See our About Us page for more details.

With Odd Salon ending, we were still hungry for more. There are still enthusiastic new speakers, many of whom are really good. There's still an audience that likes to get out for some talks, some drinks, some good-natured yelling, and then home in time for a decent night's sleep. Now especially we want to make sure there's a place for those people.

We will continue in the tradition of Odd Salon, having first-Tuesday events where we give talks on interesting topics from history, science, art, and adventure. As we ramp up into production mode, we’ll be recruiting speakers and volunteers.

There's not a lot to do at the moment, but we're emailing updates as we go. If you're reading this then you're probably already signed up… but if not then sign up! www.curiosityguild.org

As we build more, we’ll announce new ways to keep in touch.

As a new and separate group, fellowship status doesn’t “transfer”. On the other hand, if you’re an Odd Salon Fellow we'd be very glad to have you aboard, since you probably still enjoy this kind of stuff.

Yes! And we'd like to focus not just on speakers, but also the cadre of volunteers who make the show happen and our rowdy but loving audience. If someone volunteers at the merch table a half dozen times, that should be recognized. If someone has been at every event in a year, that should be recognized.

We're figuring out both how we want to structure the community and how we want to run the various social media platforms, so stay tuned.

For various logistical and paperwork reasons we’re not pursuing this in the near future. (Must survive Year 1 first!) However, we’re pursuing becoming a fiscally-sponsored group of a larger NPO, similar to how Interculture Foundation was a fiscal sponsor of Odd Salon.

Yes and no. We do plan to have a membership program for our enthusiastic audience members, that will include invitations to special events and outings. However we saw less engagement on Patreon - and having multiple forms of membership is confusing - so no Patreon.

We’re still considering how we want to structure our internal group of speakers and volunteers, but in short, yes. More details to come.

Psst, we announced the whole lineup ahead of time so anyone who wants to pitch a talk, or curate, or just plan to attend can see what's coming. (And also because it makes operations a lot easier for things like art production, etc)

The core group of Producers got together to decide roughly on a shape of the themes, and in a fit of desperate “omg DEADLINES” Laura and Isolde brainstormed, haggled, collaborated, and came up with the season.

You can read more about us on our website (curiosityguild.org), or contact our intrepid volunteer coordinator/concierge at hello@curiosityguild.org.

At present all we can promise is our gratitude, some number of drink tickets, and the adoration of the crowd. Books, pins, glassware,etc, all of that is still TBD. If you have a suggestion, please do drop us a line.

Visit curiosityguild.org/speak and fill out our pitch form. Make sure you include if your topic is for a specific event, or if it’s just a general topic you know a lot about and want to speak about.