Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An aspiring chemist goes to college, realizes she’s not good at chemistry, and bombs her dissertation. She takes a class in standup comedy and decides the best way to talk about STEM is to make jokes at its expense.
This isn’t a punchline. It’s Freya McGhee’s life. Based in London, the comedian had a strong interest in science as a kid, but after attending the University of Brighton to study chemistry, she realized that she liked learning science more than she liked applying it. Her thesis dissertation—“Synthesis of Iron Nitroxide radical species using radical derivatized ligands and its use as a single-molecule magnet”—flopped. She evaporated her results in the lab.
“I was like ‘I don’t know what to do anymore,’” McGhee says. “I feel like if someone else did it, they might get further along with it, but for me it definitely didn’t work. It was a nightmare.”
As she was finishing her degree she started studying stand-up and turned that nightmare into a pretty good bit. It’s gotten 4.4 million views on Instagram. McGhee’s stand-up sets regularly get hundreds of thousands or millions of views—and lots of fun comments. WIRED reached McGhee at home in London to talk about what it takes to make STEM funny.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
ANGELA WATERCUTTER: Obviously you made a pretty abrupt turn from chemistry to comedy, but when you first started doing stand-up were you joking about STEM then, or did you find your way there over time?
FREYA MCGHEE: When you’re newer I think it’s easier to get laughs for dating jokes and stuff that’s relatable. But if you’re coming onstage, especially in front of a non-science crowd, trying to get them to laugh at science stuff is really hard. You have to explain the science and then tell the joke. You lose momentum.