Nerd Farmer Podcast

Cameron Harwick is a professor at State University of New York Brockport. He previously joined us in 2022 for a conversation about the causes and impacts of the inflationary crisis in 2022. 

My goal in this episode was to help listeners better understand the various economic data and indicators that we encounter on a daily basis. There’s often a gap between the story these indicators tell us about the economy and the popular sentiment among the public. 

This discrepancy has significant implications for the upcoming elections and beyond.

Cast of Characters

• Cameron Harwick – Website

Going Further

• Cameron’s Inflation Explainer – YouTube
• Should Inflation Measures Include Borrowing Costs
• Direct download link

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Emmett O’Connell is a recovering journalist, who writes the blog Olympia Time and hosts the podcast Olympia Standard. He recently published an article examining the hoovering up of homes by corporate and institutional landlords and the impact this is having on communities.

Cast of Characters

• Emmett O’Connell – Olympia Time & Olympia Standard

Going Further

• Emmett’s Article – Re-examining the out-of-town (or just corporate) real estate investment in Thurston County
• Blackstone Video – from show intro
• This Machine Kills, #207 – Rent High? Blame Bob

Going Even Further: Prior Nerd Farmer Episodes about Housing

• Everything in Real Estate Just Changed — Jasmyn Jefferson, Designated Broker and Co-Owner of Windermere Abode Lakewood — #217
• A Call for a Tenant Bill of Rights — Zev Cook and David Galazin, Tacoma 4 All — #193
• Understanding the Housing Market in Pierce County — Marguerite Martin, Move to Tacoma — #183
• The US Housing Market is Not Okay – Nicole Beauchamp, Engel & Volkers NYC – #180
• Why We Need Regional Housing Solutions – Rep. Jessica Bateman, Washington State Legislature, 22nd District – #154
• The Bottom End of the Housing Market Has Been Destroyed — Will James, Special Projects Reporter, KNKX FM — #150

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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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In this episode, we are joined by Randy Girdner, an educator, filmmaker, and the comic artist creator of the web comic Maurice the Beaver. 

This is a conversation about AI and my trepidation about its mainstreaming. I don’t have many answers but I have a ton of concerns. At the same time Randy and I are both regularly using AI programs despite our shared reservations about the technology, its creators, and the place it may come to occupy in our society.

Cast of Characters

• Randy Girdner – Website

Going Further

• Randy on Bluesky
• Randy on Threads
• Graceland West on Reddit
• UAE Student Film Festival

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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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In this episode, we dove into recent shifts in real estate with Jasmyn Jefferson, Designated Broker and co-Owner of Windermere Abode Lakewood. Jasmyn gave us her take on the Tacoma Housing market and the low-down on the recent NAR settlement. She talked about its impact on commission structures and what’s to come in the industry as a whole. 

Jasmyn is a realtor but she sees the field through a different lens than most folks in the biz and I think that comes across in this conversation.

Cast of Characters

• Jasmyn Jefferson 

Going Further

• The Case of the Missing $64,000 Homes – Takes & Typos
• The NAR Settlement Explained – Yahoo! Finance
• Jasmyn’s prior appearance on the show: The Housing Market and the Ethics of Real Estate, Part 1 — Jasmyn Jefferson

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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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This month observant Muslims around the world are fasting in observance of Ramadan.

Jasmine El Shear is an Egyptian-American school counselor in the Gulf, advising Emirati students in navigating an American school system. She joined us for a wide-ranging conversation about the holy month of Ramadan, life for Muslim students in US schools, and her recent Umrah trip to Mecca. 

Cast of Characters

• Jasmine Elshear

Going Further

• What Everyone (Especially Teachers) Should Know About Ramadan – #160 
• Experiencing Ramadan in the Gulf – Takes & Typos

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Nathan Perl-Rosenthal is an historian of the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. He focuses on the political and cultural history of Europe and the Americas in the age of revolution, with a emphasis on the transnational influences that shaped modern national politics.

He’s the author of the recent article Revolutions Take Generations in the Atlantic and the book The Age of Revolutions. He joined us to talk about the lessons we can learn from the series of revolutions that took place in the 18th century and the lessons we can learn from them today.

Cast of Characters

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal – USC

Going Further

• Revolutions Take Generations  – The Atlantic
• The Age of Revolutions

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We invited Professor Michael Artime from Pacific Lutheran University back on the show to discuss the upcoming election. In this conversation we covered several topics:

• Ezra Klein’s suggestion that Biden step-aside as the Democratic nominee
• The 14th Amendment challenges to DJT for along insurrection grounds
• The state of our ever more fragile norms 
• The mainstreaming of Dominionist Christian-Nationalism, with the rise of Speaker Mike Johnson

Cast of Characters

Michael Artime – PLU

Going Further

• Ezra Klein – Democrats Have a Better Option than Biden
• Artime on Episode #77 – What a second Trump term might look like?

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Over the winter holiday, Matt Driscoll, columnist and opinion editor at The News Tribune,  reached out to talk about the firing of Claudine Gay from her role of President of Harvard University. Gay was brought down in a right-wing witch hunt following a much publicized plagiarism scandal. But underlying Gay’s firing was a coordinated campaign by conservative activists.

We brought him on the show to discuss these serial moral panics. In the conversation, he asked almost as many questions as I did. This is a discussion about how media covers politics in our digital age but also about what we as citizens owe ourselves and each other.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this one, you can hit me at nerdfarmpod@gmail.com. 

Cast of Characters

Matt Driscoll – TNT Profile

Going Further

• Driscoll on Gay’s firing – TNT
• 50% of Biden voters say Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians – Business Insider
• Ezra Klein on the State of Journalism – The New York Times

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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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Happy New Year and go Huskies!

This week’s episode is a discussion about navigating the internet in an era of misinformation. Our guest is Dave Clark, founder of Sounder at Heart. He also writes at Full Moon Storytelling.

We talked about navigating the social media landscape, given the decline of Twitter. We also discussed why blogging and RSS feeds are the answer for many of us and we closed with a conversation about how to avoid outrage and clickbait in the 2024 election cycle. 

Note: this episode begins with a brief discussion of the Seattle Sounders roster moves, if you don’t need that in your life skip to 5:48.

Cast of Characters

Dave Clark – Full Moon Storytelling

Going Further

Mentioned by Dave in the Interview: How to Run Your Own Social — Darius Kazemi, Creator and Moderator of Friend.Camp — #164

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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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Happy New Year!

Recorded live in the Moonyard Studios in gorgeous North Tacoma, this episode is the second of our two part 2023 Year in Review. If you missed Part I, you can find it here.

We were joined again in the studio by Erik Hanberg, President of Channel 253 and host of Citizen Tacoma and Evelyn Lopez co-host of Crossing Division. 

In this episode we each gave end of the year awards for:

• Tacoman of the Year
• Story of the Year
• Things we’re watching going into 2024

Cast of Characters

Erik Hanberg – Citizen Tacoma

Evelyn Lopez – Crossing Division

My newsletter Takes & Typos is now brought to you by Buttondown. Subscribe here!

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

Please consider supporting the podcast by joining Channel 253 as a member

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