Show reviewed: 06/03/26

Show rating: Beam me up, 4.5 stars

Secret Time Travel Meeting is a comedic, science communication infused adventure that fans of Project Hail Mary and Star Trek: Picardwill very much appreciate. Comedian Shawn Wickens, author of Time Machine Blue Prints, is a masterful storyteller and harks back to a time when science and the arts were taught side by side as part of the philosophy of an an educated mind.

Wickens is self deprecating but he is the sort of humanist intellectual that the arts needs. He is not an academic but a genuine science communicator who can interest everyday folk with how the science effects immediate futures and lives such as developing ethics for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ranging as far as the idea time travel tourism. I guess we are not in a vintage year?

It is an optimistic, kind and insightful show that is much more than a stoner has deep thoughts on impossible things. Wickens grapples with some incredibly complex scientific ideas while keeping it accessible for the general public and the crowd are very much invited by Shawn to participate in the discussions, a rare situation where the dialogue is not heckling but a purposeful debate. I came away hopeful and impressed by the power of what a comedian can do with complex material and respectful crowd work.