Boston’s hottest ticket? A bar seat for a lecture from a professor.

Local News

Lectures on Tap series brings professors and other experts into Boston restaurants and bars for talks that mix big ideas with food and drink.

By Annie Jonas

October 30, 2025 | 5:00 AM

1 minute to read

If spending your night in a cozy bar in Boston surrounded by curious minds and listening to a talk titled “Hearing Death at the Movies,” sounds like your idea of fun, you’re in the right place.

Lectures on Tap, an event series, brings ticketed lectures from local professors and experts to restaurants instead of classrooms, pairing big ideas with food and drink.

Tickets — which go for about $40 — tend to sell out quickly, and each session is shaped by the speaker. Past talks have ranged from a deep-dive into local shipwrecks, exploring the mystery of dark matter, and the history of vampire movies. There’s only one rule: arrive curious and leave even more so. 

The idea came from husband-and-wife duo Ty and Felecia Freely, according to The Boston Globe. After moving from Washington, D.C. to New York for Ty’s psychology degree at Columbia University, the couple found themselves eager to meet like-minded people — and thus the concept was born. Boston.com reached out to the Freelys but did not hear back in time for publication.

Their first event took place in June 2024 in New York City. Since then, Lectures on Tap has grown into a five-city series including New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and since the summer, Boston.

Boston joined the lineup on Aug. 20 and 21 with two sold-out lectures on 19th-century madams and the Gilded Age, held at Lamplighter Brewing Co. in Cambridge, the Globe reported. Tickets sold out within 30 minutes.

The series produces roughly 30 lectures a month in each city, and depending on venue size, events draw between 60 and 250 attendees, the Globe reported. Events typically run two hours from start to finish, with each lecture lasting around 40 to 45 minutes, followed by a 15-minute Q&A to wrap up. No academic credentials are required to attend; just curiosity (and sometimes a valid ID, since many venues are 21+). 

Boston’s November lectures, which released Oct. 26 have already sold out, but eager attendees can stay tuned for December dates at the Lectures on Tap website and social media platforms.

Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.