Vince Ebert

Vince Ebert is a graduate physicist (studied at Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg from 1988 to 1994), science comedian (also performed his own show in New York for nine months), comedian, best-selling author and presenter. As a keynote speaker, he covers scientific and economic topics in German or English. He is a popular TV guest and one of the most astute free spirits in the German-speaking cultural scene. He is an advocate of independent thinking and promotes a mindset that supports a free society and opposes a return to pre-Enlightenment times.

From 2011 to 2022, he was the face of the ARD programme ‘Wissen vor acht – Werkstatt’ (Knowledge before eight – Workshop), which aired shortly before the daily news. The programme explained physical phenomena as he explored the large and small phenomena of everyday life.

In 1998, he began his career as a cabaret artist. His aim: to convey natural and social science concepts using the laws of humour.

Ebert shows what we can learn from nature about strategies for success and how successful scientists and company founders have deliberately used chance to their advantage. He talks about the corporate strategies needed to respond flexibly to unpredictable events and thus remain innovative in the future. Do you believe in chance? No? Then think about how you met your partner. Or how you got your first job. Was it really all planned? Using humorous examples from science, neuromarketing and chaos theory, Ebert explains where we encounter the future everywhere and why we find it so difficult to deal with.

Ebert is deeply committed to science education for children. He is patron of the Galileum Solingen, the ‘Youth for Technology’ initiative of the Technoseum in Mannheim, ambassador of the ‘MINT Zukunft schaffen’ initiative and the ‘Stiftung Rechnen’ foundation, and a fellow of the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Parasciences (GWUP).

He is regarded as a scientific observer and cabaret artist with a classical liberal orientation. He defends critical reason motivated by the spirit of the Enlightenment. Ebert is highly intelligent and by no means self-absorbed; he prefers precision and, as a voice against intellectual conformism, avoids maliciousness. However, anyone who attacks open society, driven by immaturity, will find in his witty humour a potent adversary who does not accept that the central element of the current zeitgeist is the conviction that things are as one feels them to be.

That reality is no longer defined by facts and the field of socio-political discussion is left to fools. He warns: ‘The culture of enlightenment is like a sinking ship. But we should still stay on board until the last moment. Because there are no lifeboats.’

His entertaining lectures cover a wide range of topics. He explores questions such as: How will our working world change in the future? Will computers soon be more intelligent than us? Will they even rule over us? He advises us to be more relaxed and dispels popular myths, promises of salvation and horror visions of tomorrow's business world. Using humorous and surprising examples, he shows where humans are superior even to the most intelligent computers and how imagination and creativity will continue to be the keys to entrepreneurial success in the future.