It’s time the university came to you.

Nerd from the Future introduces you to the best insights from the nation’s leading humanities professors. If you never had a chance to go to college, but always wondered what it might be like. If you think university education is a big waste of time, but still secretly want to know what all those nerds are talking about on campus. Or if you graduated years ago, but miss the electric energy of the classroom . . . then this is the podcast for you.

In our first season we’ll tackle some of the most pressing questions about higher education today: Is there such a thing as liberal bias on university campuses? Does humanities education even matter anymore? What exactly is DEI and why are people so mad about it? Like any great professor, we’ll try to make sense of all these issues with enthusiasm, playfulness, honesty and lots and lots of nerdiness.

Latest Episodes

Meet your Nerds from the Future

Your Host Ramzi Fawaz

REsearch Ella Rae Olson

Ella Rae Olson is a writer and cultural critic from rural Northwest Wisconsin in her final year of study at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, where she is working towards completing a Bachelor of Arts in English, Creative Writing and a Certificate in Chicanx/Latinx Studies. Her research interests include Generation Z, temporality in late-capitalist societies, and the impacts of physical geography on the dissemination and development of knowledge. At the early stages of her career, she looks forward to further exploring these topics in her forthcoming essay collection.

Production and Editing Oliver Gerharz

Original Music and Sound Mixing Robbie Landsburg

Ramzi Fawaz is an award-winning cultural critic, educator, and public speaker. He is the author of two books, including "The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics," (2016) and "Queer Forms," both published by NYU Press. He is a contributing editor to the journal "Film Quarterly" where he authors "Imagination Unbound," a column which explores the radical democratic possibilities of contemporary film and media. He is at work on a new book titled, "How to Think Like a Multiverse: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World." In it, he argues for an understanding of humanities education as a form of psychedelic therapy, which uses art, literature, and media, instead of psychoactive drugs, to induce positive transformational effects on the wellbeing of generations of students.

Oliver Gerharz is an undergraduate studying Journalism at UW-Madison. In addition to working on Nerd from the Future, Oliver also is an editor for the Daily Cardinal, one of UW-Madison's student newspapers, and a host of two other podcasts through UW-Madison's student radio: You Seem Exceptional and The EMMIE Podcast.

Communication and Social Media Ray Kirsch

Ray Kirsch graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2025, where they studied journalism, English, and gender and women's studies. They currently are a court reporter in Wisconsin, and they are a poetry reading intern for Abode Press. Ray aspires to be a fiction author and enjoys pop culture and video games. Read more about their work at rayekirsch.wordpress.com.

Robbie Landsburg is a musician and visual designer from Nevada City, California. He currently works as the Design Director at Direct Message Studio (dmstudio.com) in Sacramento, CA, and releases music under the name Youth Medium (youth-medium.bandcamp.com/).