Tom Rademacher is a prior Minnesota State teacher of the Year, author, and parent to a really rad kid. Recently his family made the decision for the safety of their family to move to Spain. 

This is a conversation about what led him to leave and what’s happening in his native and beloved Minnesota. 

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I had the chance to sit down with Douglas Sackman, a history professor at the University of Puget Sound, for a conversation that feels especially timely.

Professor Sackman joined me to talk about the Gilded Age — that turbulent period of rapid industrialization, staggering wealth inequality, labor unrest, and political corruption that reshaped the US in the late 19th century. It’s a chapter of American history often reduced to robber barons and railroads, but as we discuss, it’s also a story about workers organizing, democracy straining, and ordinary people pushing back against concentrated power.

As we look around today  at our tech oligarchs, monopolistic  consolidation,, and battles over the meaning of democracy, it’s hard not to hear echoes of that era.

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Ramadan began this week. Somewhere around 2 billion Muslims around the world will be engaging in a day time fast for the next month. Living in the Gulf, Ramadan contorts my life in so many ways. Our work day is shortened, life slows way down, and there’s time with friends and chosen family. Ramadan has become my favorite religious holiday, even though I’m not a Muslim.

This Best Of episode is a conversation from 2022 with my colleague, Amy Daraiseh. Amy is a  special education teacher from Chicago and all around great human being.

Cast of Characters

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In December, I came across a post on the r/Tacoma subreddit that stopped me in my tracks. It was titled “Black Deported Veterans film screening” and invited people to a screening of the documentary, Bring Them Home.

As a veteran, it immediately caught my attention. I also noticed the screening was being held at my alma mater, The Evergreen State College’s Tacoma Campus. Although I wasn’t in a position to attend in person, I reached out to the organizers.

The short version is this: the U.S. military regularly recruits people with green cards into service, but often fails to help them navigate the naturalization process during and especially after their service. Instead, many are discarded after and often subjected to deportation. Unsurprisingly—given the reality of systemic racism—this happens at much higher rates to Black veterans.

This is that conversation.

James L. Smith is a journalist and the co-founder of BDVA (Black Deported Veterans of America).

Rob Young is a musician behind the song Excuse My Accent and the producer of the award-winning film Bring Them Home. Rob and James have collaborated to continue advocacy and uplift the issue.

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State Senator Marko Liias represents Washington’s 21st Legislative District in North Puget Sound, which includes parts of Edmonds, Everett, Lynnwood, and Mukilteo.

He currently chairs the State Senate’s Transportation Committee and previously served on the House Education Committee, where he and Nate first crossed paths.

Senator Liias joined us to discuss the legislative session that began on January 12. He offered a clear overview of the state’s fiscal outlook and outlined his priorities for the Transportation Committee.

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Professor Nick Brody teaches Communications at the University of Puget Sound. His research focuses on digital communication, cyber bullying, and the social implications of technology. 

He joined us to talk about the concept of Morally Motivated Online Mobs, which are bands of internet users driven by moral grievance and political polarization. We discussed the role of the internet in connecting and activating these people and how online mobs are warping our political discourse and information environment.

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Logic Amen widely targeted by conservative commentators

Attacks on Philanthropy and Not-for-Profits – Cole Leiter, Americans Against Government Censorship – #254

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Leiter joined us to discuss the growing pressure nonprofits are facing amid escalating threats and enforcement signals from the federal government.

We talked about how bluster from the Department of Justice can shape philanthropic behavior long before any formal action takes place, and how those shifts ripple outward to affect the services nonprofits are able to provide in their communities. A big takeaway from this conversation: a war on not-for-profits is a war on the communities they serve.

Leiter is the Executive Director of Americans Against Government Censorship and a political strategist with more than a decade of experience in government, nonprofit leadership, and political campaigns.

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Guardian correspondent Jason Wilson joined us to discuss his reporting on Elon Musk’s new Grokipedia. 

The service, an online encyclopedia and purported rival to Wikipedia, serves up white nationalist talking points, pseudoscientific racial theories, and sanitized profiles of extremist figures. The encyclopedia’s articles are written by Musk’s Grok AI, which has its own problems with racism and pseudoscience.

Later in the episode, Wilson described how a new “transparency” feature on Musk’s Zombie Twitter (X) inadvertently exposed that many prominent “MAGA” and “America First” accounts had been run from abroad, including accounts operated from Russia, India, and Nigeria. 

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Republicans in Washington DC control the Whitehouse. 

They also control both houses of Congress, majorities on every Congressional committee, and they chair every Congressional committee. The federal government is shut down on their watch.

Marilyn Strickland is the representative of the tenth congressional district in Washington State which runs from Tacoma to Olympia. She joined us to talk about the ongoing government shutdown and the legislative agenda she and her party are pushing for in Congress.

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This episode is an audio voters’ guide featuring Evelyn and Joe Lopez from Crossing Division: Tacoma’s Talk Show.

We covered the following races in this episode: Tacoma Mayor, Tacoma City Council, Tacoma Civil Service Board, Tacoma School Board, and the Metro Parks (Parks Tacoma) Board. 

Note: Please vote early! Election day is November 4, but if you drop your ballot in the US Mail there could be delays due to the federal shut down. Drop your ballot in a ballot box, or make sure it is postmarked before Nov. 4.

Over on Crossing Division there’s also a conversation about the people running for the County Charter Commission.

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Let’s Talk About the 2025 Election–Part 1, Crossing Division and Nerd Farmer Voters Guide

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