Nerd from the Future

Ramzi Fawaz
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

It's time the university came to you. Nerd from the Future introduces you to the best ideas and insights from the nation's leading humanities professors. Each week, we tackle the biggest questions about higher education today: Is there such a thing as liberal bias on university campuses? Does humanities education matter anymore? What exactly is DEI and why are people so mad about it? Is there any point in getting a college degree these days? Like any great professor, we’ll try to make sense of all these issues with enthusiasm, playfulness, honesty, and lots and lots of nerdiness.

  1. 5d ago

    History is What Heals

    In this episode, I sit with two of my most beloved colleagues and favorite historians, Natasha Zaretsky and Don Romesburg. The three of us have spent a combined sixty years of our lives studying the historical impact of the radical feminist and queer 1970s, a period of astonishing political rebellion that changed the trajectory of American culture forever. We talk about the ways that studying history allows ordinary people to see themselves as part of a rich continuum of human struggle and negotiation across time; can force us to productively reckon with the most painful, beautiful, perplexing, and inspiring aspects of our national past; gives us an incredible tool box of political practices, concepts, and strategies that might have renewed life in the present; and remind us that all our present-day problems came from somewhere, and can only be solved with a clear-eyed understanding of their origins. One of the most persistent themes in our conversation is the idea that history—knowing it, questioning it, contributing to it—can heal individual people and entire communities. Decades ago, the cultural theorist Frederic Jameson famously claimed that“History is what hurts.” He meant that history, the hard realities of events and institutions beyond our control that shaped and constrained our present moment, sets certain, painful limits on our individual ability to change the conditions of existence. In my conversation with Natasha and Don, we flip Jameson’s vision on its head. We suggest that the painful confrontation with history is exactly what allows it to heal us: because a genuine encounter with our past and present reality is one way we can stop telling ourselves lies about why things turned out the way they did. In the light of this kind of truth-telling, anything seems possible. In this episode, we reference the following books and podcasts (in order of appearance): Natasha Zaretsky, No Direction Home: The American Family and Fear of National Decline 1968-1980 (2007) Natasha Zaretsky, Radiation Nation: Three Mile Island and the Political Transformation of the 1970s (2018) Don Romesburg, Contested Curriculum: LGBTQ History Goes to School (2025) Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future (2024) Maintenance Phase Podcast George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (1994) Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (2003) Julia Mickenburg, Learning from the Left: Children's Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States (2005)

    History is What Heals

  2. Sep 9

    The University is for Everyone: Season 2 Trailer

    Nerd from the Future is back for a second season! We’ve got nine brand-new episodes and an all-star cast of geniuses to help you makes sense of this wild, weird, wondrous universe we’re living in. Since our first encounter last Fall, the world of higher education has gone into a tailspin: the destruction of DEI, the federal slashing of budgets, the elimination of entireprograms in Middle East studies and ethnic, women’s, and disability studies, and the firing of professors for unfashionable political beliefs. Name any outrageous political attack you can imagine, and it’s probably shaking the foundations of your local college campus. But none of this has ever stopped people’s burning desire to learn about their shared history, culture, political values, fantasies, hopes, and aspirations for the future. In season 1, we made a passionate case for the value of humanities education to enlighten, transform, and heal people from a toxic culture. This season, I’m joined by some of the world’s most dazzling, generous, brilliant, and insightful film scholars, political scientists, medical humanists, anthropologists, literary theorists, and media studies experts; this time, we take for granted the value of the humanities and show you first hand the positive effects higher education has on students, faculty members, and entire communities beyond the walls of the university. In this season’s episodes, we help you get a handle on what’s happening with AI in the college classroom; we outline the responsibility scholars carry to be political activists for democratic freedom; we consider what it means to be a humanities professor in today’s political climate; we identify why it matters to study the art and culture ofsocial outcasts and misfits; we explore how humanities scholars thoughtfully question the authority of science; and we find out what former undergraduates are doing with their heard-earned education. Our guests include professors just starting their professional journeys; recent graduates pursuing careers in thelaw, medicine, creative writing, and the non-profit sector; internationally renowned performance artists; and faculty members of all ages and institutions who’ve changed state policy, drafted human rights appeals in congress, changedthe values of university donors, and founded digital media companies that support the television and film of marginalized artists. Through it all, we work toward a future where the university is truly for everybody. So, join us on September 14, when we bring the university back to you. See you in the future!

    The University is for Everyone: Season 2 Trailer

  3. 11/03/2025

    Thinking Like a Multiverse: Ramzi Fawaz on the Psychedelic Humanities

    On September 25, 2025, I had the incredible privilege of joining my colleague Ramsey McGlazer at UC Berkeley, my alma mater, for a public conversation about my recent research and writing in the psychedelic humanities. You heard right, there were two Ram-zee’s in the house that day, geeking out like nobody’s business. The room was packed with an amazingly diverse audience of faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and many Bay Area community members interested in plant medicines and psychedelic healing practices. You’ll see that I was fully in my element at this event, talking freely and playfully about these ideas with dear friends and former mentors in the room. The Q&A was passionate and energetic. The Nerd from the Future team felt this was a perfect way to top off our first season, with a live episode of your host nerding out in front of a live audience.

  4. 10/27/2025

    A Nerd from the Future Origin Story

    After a season of tackling some of the biggest hot button issues relating to higher education today, I felt it was time to share with you how I became the thinker, teacher, and public intellectual you’ve been listening to all these weeks. I couldn’t possibly do that without introducing you all to my nerd from the future—the person who convinced me I could make a living, better yet, a life, as an intellectual. In this very season finale episode, we sit down with my great mentor Dr. Kathleen Moran, Emerita professor of American Studies at UC Berkeley, and another one of her former students, Justin Gomer, a professor of American Studies at Cal State Long Beach. Higher education brought Justin and I into Kathy’s luminous orbit. In my case, as an eager, nerdy undergraduate searching for my calling, in Justin’s, as an early career PhD student building the confidence to pursue his intellectual passions. But our incredible life-long bond with this brilliant, energetic, bold, and loving scholar was the unexpected outcome of years studying and growing alongside Kathy. Though the three of us come from different generations, in a way we’ve all grown up together: first as students and mentor, then as friends, then as colleagues, and now as chosen family. Since I graduated from Berkeley twenty-two years ago, Kathy has been like a second mother to me, one of my most enduring champions and cheerleaders, an avid reader of my scholarship, and of course, a model of the kind of teacher I always aspire to be to my students. In our wide-ranging conversation, the three of us share how we each traveled a different road to becoming our own version of a Nerd from the Future, while somehow managing to cross paths along the way, forever transforming one another at crucial moments in our lives. Over and over, we return to a central idea that has animated this podcast since our first episode: namely, that the magic of getting educated lies in the spontaneous, unpredictable collision of people willing and ready to be changed by the ideas and perspectives of others. Kathy, Justin, and I were the beneficiaries of this unexpected collision, one that can technically happen in any walk of life, but that the university specializes in. I could spend hours gushing about Kathy and the astonishing impact she’s had on my life, but I think I’ll let you see for yourself.

  5. 10/20/2025

    The Wisconsin Idea

    In this very special episode, I rejoin my bestie Cindy Cheng alongside our esteemed colleague Armando Ibarra, to talk about our own slice of the world, the University of Wisconsin, Madison (or the UW as it’s often affectionally called). Depending on what poll you look at, UW Madison is either the 26th or 10th highest ranked public university in the world. Founded in 1848, the university is one of the nation’s oldest land-grant institutions, supported directly by the federal government as a public institution serving the people of Wisconsin and the Midwest more broadly. In any given year we teach a total of over fifty-thousand students with a combined faculty and staff of over twenty-seven thousand personnel. Despite being the most prestigious university of the state, we accept 61% of our Wisconsin-based applicants, which reflects our deep commitment to educating as many state residents as possible; compare that to the acceptance rates of UCLA and UC Berkeley, which respectively land at 9 and 11%, reflecting an increasing move toward public schools as elite universities. UW Madison is driven by a core mission called “The Wisconsin Idea,” a phrase said to be coined by UW President Charles Van Hise in 1904, remembered by his famous quote, “I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every family in the state.” The Wisconsin Idea website captures the spirit of this charge simply: “One of the longest and deepest traditions surrounding the University of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Idea signifies a general principle: that education should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom.” In this episode, we discuss the legacy of UW Madison's extraordinary work on behalf of the public good of Wisconsin and the toll that recent attacks on higher education have taken on the school's outreach efforts.

  6. 10/13/2025

    Teaching Sex

    In this episode, I join my fellow queer studies friends and colleagues Robert McRuer and Anthony Michael D’Agostino to make a case for why teaching sex matters more than ever to the intellectual and interpersonal growth of generations of American youth. In the absence of any standardized sex education at the K-12 level, and in the face of a growing loneliness epidemic exacerbated by social media addiction and our society’s post-covid emotional hangover, we discuss how studying the history of sexuality can grant Gen Z a greater sense of agency, freedom and awareness about how different groups of people across history have organized their intimate and erotic relationships. We especially stress how the history of LGBTQ sexuality offers many powerful examples of alternative community formation, including the celebration of long-term friendship and mutual aid that emerged out of different forms of exclusion from a predominantly heterosexual society. Not only does sex matter to higher education because it is a fundamental part of our species existence, but also because it provides equipment for living in a time of intense alienation and social atrophy. Moreover, in a world dominated by rampant sexual harassment, abuse and intimate partner violence, the study of sex and sexuality in all its dimensions (sociological, psychological, cultural, historical and political) has the potential to produce less abusive, more thoughtful, caring, and self-aware citizens who just might have healthier friendships, romantic relationships, marriages, and community networks because of it. We think the real scandal is how aggressively politicians and members of the public want to banish discussion of sex and sexuality from the very university spaces where those conversations need to be happening if we want a future where more people have better and more humane sex, and like it!

  7. 10/08/2025 ·  Bonus

    What is a PhD?

    In this week's Knowledge Drop, I reunite with my superhero teammate and bestie Anthony Michael D'Agostino to talk about what it means to get a PhD in the humanities. A PhD or Doctor of Philosophy is a terminal degree or the highest level of official education one can receive in a given field. Only two percent of Americans have a doctoral degree and it's nearly always a requirement to be a full-time university professor. We talk about the process of getting a Ph.D., the pleasures and challenges of contributing genuinely original knowledge to a field of study, and how the degree has been an integral part in shaping the scholars and teachers we've become. Our hope is to give listeners a picture of the kind of years-long training that professors go through in order to teach generations of college students.

  8. 10/06/2025

    Teaching Gen Z

    Today, I’ve brought together two of the most accomplished teachers I know to talk about the unique opportunities and challenges of teaching Gen Z, that awesomely diverse group of sixteen to twenty-eight year olds who are poised to inherent a wildly uncertain American future. On one end of the spectrum, Darieck Scott has been teaching at UC Berkeley for nearly thirty years as professor of African American literature; as he nears retirement, Darieck still celebrates the capacity of the university classroom experience to spark a life-changing encounter with the unknown—in his words, to experience something “mind-blowing”—including students’ interactions with literary texts and works of art that long preceded the digital age. On the other, my fellow UW Madison colleague Ainehi Edoro has been a professor for seven years; still at the start of her teaching journey, Ainehi has committed herself to training this generation of students in social media and AI literacy, encouraging them to be intelligent and inventive producers of digital media content rather than passive consumers of it. In our dialogue we share some of our observations about the long-term effects of Covid, economic uncertainty, and non-stop political upheaval on our students as well as our divergent strategies for responding to this generation’s shifting educational and career aspirations. Later in the episode, we invite the Nerd Form the Future production team, UW Madison English major Ella Rae Olson and journalism major Oliver Gerharz, to join our conversation. They help us debunk a series of myths about Gen Z, reminding us that this generation is incredibly hardworking, self-critical about their own overreliance on technology, deeply eager for more in-person interaction, and earnestly committed to making a more just world. We collectively arrive at the conclusion that we could all use a hefty dose of intergenerational dialogue to dispose of some of the narrow cliches we’ve attached to the most diverse generation in American history before they’ve even come into their own.

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About

It's time the university came to you. Nerd from the Future introduces you to the best ideas and insights from the nation's leading humanities professors. Each week, we tackle the biggest questions about higher education today: Is there such a thing as liberal bias on university campuses? Does humanities education matter anymore? What exactly is DEI and why are people so mad about it? Is there any point in getting a college degree these days? Like any great professor, we’ll try to make sense of all these issues with enthusiasm, playfulness, honesty, and lots and lots of nerdiness.

Information

  • Creator
    Ramzi Fawaz
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Ramzi Fawaz
  • Show Website
    Nerd from the Future