Nerd Farmer Podcast

Jeremiah Oshan is a recovering newspaper journalist and the editor-in-chief of Sounder at Heart. Sounder at Heart is the most read blog in US club soccer. The website was previously a part of Vox’s SB Nation but Oshan and the team took the site independent earlier this year. 

He joined us to talk about that story and the roster questions facing the Sounders in the coming off season. 

Channel 253 Members, you can find an additional conversation with Oshan on the Off the Record feed where we shared our MLS era best XI..

Cast of Characters: Jeremiah Oshan – Sounder at Heart

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Manuel Ellis was murdered by Tacoma Police on March 3, 2020. The long-delayed trial of the police officers that killed him is underway and this week we’re checking in with Peter Talbot from the News Tribune. 

Peter covers crime & justice for the paper. He came on to talk about the state’s case so far in the trial of officers Burbank, Collins, and Rankin.

Cast of Characters: Pater Talbot 

Going Further: 

• Charging Documents from the AG’s office
• My pre-trial op-ed in the News Tribune

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In March, on episode 188, we welcomed Azeri journalist Sevinc Osmanqizi on the show for a conversation about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

On September 19, that conflict was reignited, with Azerbaijan winning a decisive victory and forcing over 100,000 ethnic Armenians out of the region. Some commenters called this the end of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a dispute that’s been raging on & off since the fall of the Soviet Union, but has roots even earlier.

So earlier this month we reached back out to Sevinc for an update and to hear her take on where things stand. But because I was traveling to Armenia last week, I thought it was prudent to hold onto this episode until I got back on solid ground here in the Gulf.. 

We made it back safe & sound and here’s our conversation.

Cast of Characters: Sevinc Osmanqizi – YouTube Channel

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Representative Marilyn Strickland is a former member of the Tacoma City Council, the former Mayor of Tacoma, and two-term member of the US House of Representatives. She joined us to discuss the recent dismissal of Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and GOP hostage taking over the federal budget.

We tackled listener questions about transportation, infrastructure, and legislation around qualified immunity in the second segment.

Cast of Characters: Marilyn Strickland

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In 2019, my wife and I departed the US to begin our overseas teaching career. When I made the transition, I used a service called Search Associates. They helped me navigate the application process and land my current gig in the Gulf. 

Now in 2023, it’s the early days of the hiring season for the 2024-2025 school year. 

I will have to decide on my intention to return by the end of next month. Teachers around the world will face similar choices this fall and winter because of the nature of international school hiring and moving people across the planet, international schools hire early. 

This episode is for folks wondering what it looks like to make the transition. 

My guest Brian Lettinga joined Search Associates in July of 2020 following his 24-year career in international education. Brian spent his early years in international education teaching as an elementary school teacher, grades four and five.

Cast of Characters: Brian – LinkedIn 

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I belong to a group chat. It used to be about the Seattle Sounders but as they began struggling last season it became more about crime novels, in the vein of Elmore Leonard. We now spend almost as much time talking about writers like SA Cosby, past show guest Eli Cranor, and today’s guest Brian Panowich, than we spend lamenting the Sounders’ inability to score goals at home. 

Our guest this week, Brian Panowich, is the author of Bull Mountain, a novel that has been hailed as the “Hillbilly Godfather”—a description Panowich bristles at. Bull Mountain and his followup, Like Lions, are the story of the Burroughs, a family with a three generation long history of crime and mayhem on their homestead, Bull Mountain in McFalls County, GA. 

Panowich is also the author of Hard Cash Valley, a story about a three way hunt to capture an ill begotten fortune from the Slasher—the World Series for cockfighting.

I’ve read and reread each of Panowich’s novels. They are propulsive page turners with emotional highs and deep lows. Panowich, a firefighter, turned flash fiction writer, turned novelist hails from Georgia and his upcoming novel Nothing But the Bones, from Macmillan, will be released in April.

This is a spoiler free conversation. Even if you haven’t read his books, feel free to dive in.

Also, join us for the next #NerdFarmReads Bookclub: Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond.

Cast of Characters: Brian – Website & Instagram.

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The Seattle Sounders are possibly the least convincing third place team in the history of world football. They’re about three fourths of the way through what can best be described as a Jekyll & Hyde season. They started 5-1-1 but now they’re on a bad run of form, winless since July ninth in all competitions. Their best paid players aren’t producing and the beating heart of the team, Cristian Roldan, is on his second stint in the league’s concussion protocol. They are a team at a crossroads with no easy answers ahead of them.  

Our guest, Jackson Felts, covers the team, hosting pre and post-game on KJR. We invited him on to talk about the state of the team, prospects for the remainder of the season, and the pivotal off-season ahead, arguably the most important in team history.

In this episode, we announced the next #NerdFarmReads Bookclub selection: Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond.

Cast of Characters: Jackson Felts – Instagram

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Our guest, Sarah Kendzior, is a scholar with an focus on authoritarian Central Asian states. She leverages her academic background in her work as a journalist and commentator, offering unique insights about anti-democratic tendencies and movements at home. She is the author of three books: The View from Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight, and They Knew. She is also the c0-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa.

She joined us to talk about her writing, the culture of conspiracy in the US, and the ongoing threats to American democracy. 

This is our late/summer fall #NerdFarmReads discussion and our 200th episode! 

Guest: Sarah – Twitter and Author Page

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Carter is a co-author of the paper Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 along with Kathryn A. Edwards. The paper lays out how the average American’s wages would be $50,000 higher if income growth had continued at the same rates as before the period of wage stagnation, tax cuts, and de-unionization that has typified our time period. That $50,000 per worker, per year works out to a total of somewhere around $47 trillion dollars in wealth that has instead gone to high-income earners.

Carter has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, University of Maryland; M.S. in applied mathematics, University of Maryland; B.A. in mathematics and physics, Hendrix College. 

Cast of Characters: Carter – Publications

Going Further: Time Magazine on Carter and Kathryn’s paper

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This summer we are hosting a series highlighting small businesses and their struggles and triumphs in Tacoma. In part three, we have a conversation with Cassandra Williams, the owner and proprietor of Love by the Slice. Love by the Slice is a Black-owned business, located on Hilltop, directly across the street from 1111 and is the best bakery in the city.

Cassandra talked about how she got her start, selling cakes for church fundraisers, learned to decorate cakes from YouTube, and landed her space in early 2020… right on time for the world to fall apart. But she persevered and the bakery is thriving. 

Her pound cakes are ah-mazing and legendary on Tacoma’s Eastside.

Going Further

• Love by the Slice on Insta
• Love by the Slice
• Cassandra on IWL in July 2020

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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts and is brought to you by Libro FM 

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