Nerd Farmer Podcast

Victoria Woodards is the incumbent mayor of Tacoma and running for re-election. Her opponent Steve Haverly is a small business owner. He is a newcomer to the political scene and a relative unknown.

Haverly is running on a campaign with the slogan “It’s Time for Unity” and talking about ending division in Tacoma. But among the most divisive issues in Tacoma is the conduct of Tacoma Police, including the murder of Manuel Ellis. One of Haverly’s largest donors is Josh Harris’ Integrity Construction Group. Harris is the contractor who bailed out the Tacoma Police officers charged with murdering Manuel Ellis.

Allison Needles is a reporter for the Trib. She recently did some reporting on the race, the background of both candidates, and the major contributors to their campaigns. We invited her to dump out her reporter’s notebook on mic.

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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 

Back when Washington State first started voting by mail in the 2010s, I started hosting Bring Your Ballot Parties. These were gatherings where we would discuss  the merits of various candidates and ballot measures in my living room with friends and eventually a larger audience at King’s Books.  They were kind of a proto-Adult Civics Happy Hour.

This episode is that meetup, for all you late voters, but in audio format, featuring Evelyn Lopez, host of Channel 253 show Crossing Division and avid peruser of PDC Reports.

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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

Democratic erosion is the process by which democratic states drift, inch by inch, into authoritarianism. On paper, Russia has among the best democratic systems out there. In reality, like in the US, things are a bit more complicated.  On the show, we’ve twice visited the book “How Democracies Die,” a self-explanatory title about eroding democracies, including ours in the US. We wanted to have a conversation about how the democratic system put in place after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s became the Russia of today under Vladimir Putin.

Our guest is Jeff Hawn, a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics. He’s a contributing author at Newslines Institute.

Cast of Characters

Going Further

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

Anne Lutz Fernandez is a former marketer, investment banker, and recently retired English teacher. Her 2015 book Schooled, is a collection of stories from teachers across the US about their experiences and challenges in US classrooms.  

In July, Anne and Nate both appeared on the EdTrust’s podcast and discussed the Critical Race Theory moral panic. In some ways, this episode is a continuation of that conversation.

This episode begins with a brief host commentary about the vacant senate seat in the 27th legislative district and why Nate has withdrawn from consideration for the seat. The conversation with Anne begins at 8min 17sec.

 Cast of Characters

Going Further 

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts and is brought to you by Pacific Luthern University

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

Claudia Rowe is a long-time journalist, currently writing opinion pieces for our friends at Crosscut. She recently published a piece detailing how Seattle Public Schools has shed 2000 students during the pandemic to private schools, homeschooling, and neighboring districts.  As a reminder, schools in Washington are funded annually on a per-pupil basis, so this could have an eventual impact of upwards of $30 million. She joined us to discuss this and her upcoming book about how we completely fail children in foster care.

This conversation was brought to you by our friends at LibroFM (use promo code “TACOMA”).

Cast of Characters

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Claudia’s prior show appearances

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

This conversation is the final of a series of episodes we will be releasing along with the ladies from IWL in preparation for what will likely be another very weird school year. This time we’re hearing from a student and a parent.

Silong Chhun is an activist in Tacoma’s Cambodian community and an advocate for refugees everywhere. He is making his third appearance on the show, this time joined by his son, Harlem. Harlem is a rising ninth grader at Lincoln High School in Tacoma and came on to give a student perspective on back-to-school.

In addition, this episode contains the first ever Nerd Farmer game show called Is it Older than my Dad?, which Harlem absolutely dominated–much to my surprise.

This conversation was brought to you by our friends at Pacific Lutheran University.

Cast of Characters

Going Further 

Silong’s prior show appearances

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

This conversation is part of a series of episodes we will be releasing along with the ladies from IWL in preparation for what will likely be another very weird school year. 

Robin Lake is the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. CRPE is a non-partisan research and policy organization based at the University of Washington. Robin is a researcher; her work focuses on scaling policy initiatives to improve academic outcomes across districts and states. 

In the spring of 2020, she was an early voice calling for schools to close and was an even louder advocate for reopening in the spring of 2021. She joined us to talk about that fall ahead and how school systems are and should be preparing for the year ahead. 

Cast of Characters

Going Further

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

This conversation is part of a series of episodes we will be releasing along with the ladies from IWL in preparation for what will likely be another very weird school year.

Bill Hanawalt is the former director of education programs at Peace Community Center on Hilltop and the current development director for Degrees of Change, the organization behind the Act Six Scholarship program. Act Six provides scholarships and ongoing support for Puget Sound students to attend Gonzaga, Northwest University, Pacific Lutheran University, Saint Martin’s, and Whitworth.

Bill is also a candidate for the Tacoma School Board this November. He came on to offer a perspective as a community partner.

Cast of Characters

Going Further

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

Last week Pierce County held its August primary. Turnout was weak and progressive candidates struggled locally and across the state. This is a familiar pattern in odd-year elections in Washington: turnout is low, but the olds vote in droves, and we all collectively lament our options in the November general election. This week we brought on two guests who are fighting to change this dynamic in the community.

Sharlett Mena is a recent (and hopefully future Democratic) candidate in the 29th legislative district. Darryl Crews is up to his neck in the local music scene and is the curator of “the New Pacific Northwest” playlist on Apple Music.

They’re the organizers behind Voter Turn-UP, an upcoming event and ongoing campaign around voter engagement in the South Sound. We brought them on to debrief the primary and discuss their upcoming kick-off event on August 28.

Cast of Characters

Going Further

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

In my Government & Politics classes, I have taught students about debt and deficits in a doctrinal way for nearly a decade. But recently I have started to question what I (and likely you) learned from the zeitgeist, media, college, and US politics about debts and deficits.

Today’s #NerdFarmerAcademy episode is a conversation with economist Dr. Fadhel Kaboub, Associate Professor of economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is a noted expert in Modern Monetary Theory, heretofore MMT. MMT is an economic theory that posits our approach to debts and deficits is just wrong. MMT economists believe that the concerns frequently expressed about the US debt are basically economic concern-trolling. They note that because the US government, unlike you and I, is a currency issuer, rather than a currency user, the limits on government debt are much higher than most of us have been led to believe. They call on the government to use debt to do great things. MMT-ers believe we can afford a much more generous government that can make a meaningful difference in the lives of working people.

Cast of Characters

Going Further

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