Nerd Farmer Podcast

You know how we say “Black Twitter,” “Legal Twitter,” “Academic Twitter,” or “Soccer Twitter”? What if those were real and distinct communities? What if there was a smaller “[Whatever You’re Into] Twitter” free of ads, SPAM, and corporate ownership by Meta and Elon Musk? That’s Darius Kazemi’s vision.

Darius is a computer programmer and digital artist. He is also an outspoken critic of corporate social media companies and the creator of Friend.Camp, a decentralized social media network he built and moderates. He’s an evangelist for these kinds of communities, networks run by groups with shared interests, shared values, and diligently moderated by members of the community. He joined us to talk about how people can build these sort of communities. He’s even written a guide on how to do so. Give this a listen and see how you can Run Your Own Social.

Cast of Characters

• Darius Kazemi – Twitter

Going Further

• Darius’ Website – Tiny Subversions
• Run Your Own Social
• Done with Facebook and Twitter? Try building your own private social network – Fast Company
• Mastodon – the Open Source Twitter Alternative
• Scholar.Social – the Mastodon Server for academics and educators, discussed in the episode

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Vilson is a veteran of the classroom, a math teacher from the Bronx, and the author of This is Not a Test, Jose is currently away from the classroom pursuing a Ph.D. from Columbia.

He and Nate discussed lessons they’ve learned from their past education advocacy, finding your voice as an advocate, and how we can reclaim the narrative from the moral panickers and conservative race hustlers on issues of race and gender in schools. 

Cast of Characters

• Jose Vilson – Twitter

Going Further

• This is Not a Test

• EduColor Movement

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Tori Douglass is an ex-evangelical, ex-conservative anti-racist educator. She was born and raised in the Portland Area and since 2015 has been an outspoken critic of American evangelicalism and the racism present in many evangelical communities. We brought her on for a conversation about Black conservatism. We tried to categorize the varieties of Black conservative activism we are seeing in US politics.  In segment two, Tori addressed the electoral peril the Democratic Party faces if it can’t better address the needs of Black communities across the country.

Cast of Characters

• Tori Douglass – Twitter

Going Further

• Tori’s Project – White Homework
• White Homework on Instagram
• White Homework Podcast

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google are swimming in an absolute ocean of our private data. In any ways, we have been worn down and lulled into a sense of helplessness about it. They track our searches, to sell us ads; they track our movement, to aggregate our location data; they track our purchases, sharing them with God knows who. But it’s more than that. Many tech companies share info about us with us with law enforcement agencies and other questionable actors, oftentimes without a warrant or our explicit consent. We tacitly agree to all this, when we accept the Terms of Service for online platforms, but who ever actually reads those? Is that really informed consent?

This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately, so I hollered at Bill Fitzgerald. Bill is a a former teacher an online privacy activist. We welcomed him on the show to help us all think about how to reduce our digital data footprint.

Cast of Characters

• Bill Fitzgerald – Twitter

Going Further

• Bill’s website
• Brave Privacy Browser

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Ramadan begins April 3. Millions of Americans and millions of students in the US will be fasting during daylight hours for a month.

We invited on Amy Daraiseh, a teacher and life coach from Chicago, as a Jordanian-American and observant Muslim, she’s offering her perspective on how we can do our best to support people in our lives who are fasting during Ramadan.

Cast of Characters

• Amy – Twitter

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Melissa Santos is a political reporter for Crosscut and a regular guest on the show. She joined us this week to talk about what passed and what didn’t in the 2022 Washington State Legislative Session.

Cast of Characters

• Melissa Santos – Twitter

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Tom Rademacher is the 2014 Minnesota Teacher of the Year and the author of two books: It Won’t Be Easy, An Exceedingly Honest (and slightly unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching and Raising Ollie. The last time we spoke to him was in the early days of the pandemic for a conversation about anti-racist teaching.

He returned to the show to talk about the state of the teaching profession, burnout, and his most recent book. 

Cast of Characters

• Tom Radamacher – Twitter

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

1. Jeff Hawn is a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics with an area of expertise in US/Russia relations. He previously joined us in October on episode 143 to talk about democratic erosion in Russia in the post-Soviet era. In light of events, we invited him back on the show to discuss the rapidly evolving situation in Ukraine.

Note: During the show, Jeff accidentally mixed up the cities of Kursk and Kharkiv, one of which is in Ukraine, the other is located in Russia 

Cast of Characters

• Jeff Hawn – Twitter

Going Further

• Jeff at LSE 
• Russia’s Adaptive Authoritarianism
• Sources to follow and organizations helping support people in Ukraine

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

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

The Portland Timbers are a men’s professional soccer team playing in Major League Soccer (MLS). The Portland Thorns are literally their sister club, a women’s team, playing in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). Both teams are owned by millionaire Merritt Paulson, son of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and both teams have recently been rocked by scandals. In each incident, women were harmed by people employed by the team and in each the team was less than forthright with supporters and the public, arguably engaging in a cover-up. 

The teams’ most passionate fans are members of two supporters groups: the Timbers Army and Rose City Riveters. We brought on one of the leaders of those groups, Sheba Rawson, to talk about the scandals, the lack of transparency from team management, and how the club’s actions are souring the relationship with their most committed fans. 

Recommended Reading:

• Paul Riley’s pattern of abuse – The Athletic
• An Open Letter from team owner Merritt Paulson
• Domestic abuse allegations against Andy Polo – ESPN

Cast of Characters

• Sheba  Rawson – Twitter

Libro.fm Book Recs: Join using promo code “Tacoma” 

• Firekeeper’s Daughter
• 1619 Project

This episode is brought to you by the generous support of Microsoft and their campaign to support civic conversations in Washington, Pacific Lutheran University, and Libro FM

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Tacoma Safe is a new group spearheaded by Angela Connoly. Connoly is a wealthy, socially conservative, activist, who previously led and funded an anti-LGBT effort called the Just Want Privacy Campaign. That campaign sought to restrict access to public bathrooms for transgender people, forcing them to use the restrooms of their sex at birth. 

She is now targeting our local homeless population, leading Tacoma Safe, an apparent copycat of Safe Seattle. Both groups think we can “cop homelessness away” and see increased law enforcement budgets and patrols as the only solutions to current public safety issues.

Safe Seattle was established in 2015, but came to prominence in 2017. Safe Seattle is an anti-homeless, rather than an anti-homelessness organization. It has been criticized by many in the Seattle community as an anti-homeless hate group and has encouraged increased sweeps and the harassment of homeless people, rather than addressing the causes of homelessness.   

Below are Tacoma Safe’s policy recommendations, they largely mirror Safe Seattle’s, and center mainly around policing, offering nothing to address the escalating housing issues in our region. In this episode, we discussed why this is all wrong-headed and ultimately dangerous.

Cast of Characters

• Alicya Ramirez – Twitter
• Evelyn Lopez  – Twitter

This episode is brought to you by the generous support of Microsoft and their campaign to support civic conversations in Washington, Pacific Lutheran University, and Libro FM

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS