Depths of Wikipedia is bringing its cult-favorite podcast to the stage of DC’s Howard Theatre on March 6th. What started as comedian Annie Rauwerda reading obscure Wikipedia articles to her friends has become something harder to categorize: live entertainment built on the Internet’s least glamorous corner.
The premise is almost aggressively simple. Rauwerda, who runs the wildly popular @depthsofwikipedia Instagram account, walks audiences through Wikipedia’s stranger entries, like Victorian cheese controversies, obscure mathematical theorems, and the kind of hyper-specific historical events that make you question how anyone thought to document them. It’s educational in the way stumbling into a research hole at 2 a.m. is educational: accidentally, with no clear purpose, but somehow satisfying.
What makes it work is Rauwerda’s obvious affection for minutiae. She treats Wikipedia like what it is: a monument to human obsession with cataloging everything, no matter how niche. There’s something quietly hopeful in that– people caring enough about the world to document its strangest details, for no reason except that they exist.
The live show promises audience participation and the kind of tangents that make Wikipedia browsing so compulsive. You’ll probably leave knowing more about submarine design or medieval trade routes than you ever needed to.
Find tickets for Depths of Wikipedia Live! at The Howard Theatre here.
