**Polygon Seminar** Over the past several years, it has become increasingly apparent that many interesting and tractable superconformal field theories (SCFTs) can be realized without resorting to a UV Lagrangian description. Although many of these theories have N=2 supersymmetry, these is an even larger class of N=1 theories that can be studied, certain aspects of which remain calculable despite the reduced amount of supersymmetry. In this talk, I will give an introduction to these N=1 theories, how they can be realized via M-theory and F-theory, and which tools we can use to explore them.