Nerd Farmer Podcast

Latest Episodes:

A Guide for People Thinking About Teaching Overseas — Brian Lettinga, Search Associates — #203 Sep 25, 2023

Show notes

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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Writing a Multigenerational Crime Masterpiece — Brian Panowich, author of “Bull Mountain,” “Like Lions,” and “Hard Cash Valley” — #202 Sep 09, 2023

Show notes

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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A 2023 Sounders Mid-Season State of the Union — Jackson Felts, KJR Radio — #201 Aug 29, 2023

Show notes

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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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts

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On the Culture of Conspiracy in America — Sarah Kendzior, author of “They Knew” and co-host “Gaslit Nation” — #200 Aug 22, 2023

Show notes

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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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts

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

A $47 Trillion Dollar Hole in the US Economy — Carter Price, the Rand Corporation — #199 Aug 14, 2023

Show notes

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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The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts

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Running a Small Biz in Tacoma Series, Part 3 — Cassandra Williams, Love by the Slice — #198 Jul 31, 2023

Show notes

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

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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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Running a Small Biz in Tacoma Series, Part 2 — Umi Wagoner, eTc — #196 Jul 11, 2023

Show notes

This summer we are hosting a series highlighting small businesses and their struggles and triumphs in Tacoma. In part two, we have a conversation with Umi Wagoner from eTc, the Tacoma-based rareware retailer and design shop in downtown. eTc is in their ninth year of operation, now located at 116 South 9th Street.

eTc is what Tacoma wears.

Going Further

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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

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

Running a Small Biz in Tacoma Series, Part 1 — Russ Heaton, Doyles Public House — #195 Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

This summer we are hosting a series highlighting small businesses and their struggles and triumphs in Tacoma. Opening the series, we have a conversation with Russ Heaton the proprietor of Doyle’s Pub, named one of the best bars in America by Esquire. Doyle’s has been open in the heart of the Stadium District for seventeen years.

Doyle’s is a Liverpool and Sounders bar and as you will hear Russ wears his heart on his sleeve.

Admin

This Thursday, we’re hosting Channel 253 Fest. A few tickets still remain to join us for a live episode of Grit & Grain, shenanigans from the hosts of IWL, and for Episode 200 of Nerd Farmer. You won’t want to miss this!

Going Further

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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

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

Reporting on a White Supremacist Hate Group in Centralia — Isabel Vander Stoep, The Centralia Chronicle — #194 Jun 11, 2023

Show notes

A social media post by the mayor of Centralia and recent reporting by our guest, Isabel Vander Stoep, revealed the existence of an Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) group in Centralia. So, this week we invited Vander Stoep to talk about her reporting on the group and their activities in the area. The AFA are a hate group that wraps their white-supremacist ideology up in Nordic traditions and folklore.

Here’s the overview from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

They defend neo-confederacy and traffic in the Great Replacement conspiracy theory:

Being a Confederate is no longer about where you live or even on which side your ancestors fought. You can be from Ohio or Pennsylvania or New York because what is now happening in New Orleans and elsewhere in the South, is your battle, too… The people who want more immigration for the precise reason that it will ensure a non-white majority in America. … These people are not just after Southerners, they’re after you too.

They also traffic in the adjacent white-genocie conspiracy theory:

While AFA leadership has often couched the group’s bigoted views in “cultural preservation” rhetoric, the “Declaration of Purpose” on the group’s website belies those curated claims in stating: “If the Ethnic European Folk cease to exist Asatru would likewise no longer exist. Let us be clear: by Ethnic European Folk we mean white people.” Such beliefs in white genocide undergird the AFA’s adherence to ethnocentrism and rigid gender roles, two through lines connecting AFA’s ideology to that of the broader far right.

For women they preach gender traditionalism against a “guereilla feminist” agenda:

It can be hard to know where we, as women, fit in today’s modern society; what exactly our role is; our purpose. Guerrilla feminism has torn the fabric of collective female self-awareness, and we are all led from birth on a journey away from ourselves, destined for confusion and depression via mass media marketing. We are brainwashed from birth to believe that our value as women is dependent on a combination of base sex appeal and a willingness to imitate our male counterparts in both personality and lifestyle.

Going Further

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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

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

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