Meet your Nerds from the Future

Host Ramzi Fawaz

Ramzi Fawaz is an award-winning queer 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 (2022), both published by NYU Press. He is a contributing editor for the journal Film Quarterly, where he authors a column titled "Imagination Unbound," which explores the democratic political visions of contemporary film and media. Fawaz is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he holds a Romnes Faculty Fellowship for advanced research in the Humanities. He is currently completing his third book, How to Think Like a Multiverse: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a diverse world. In it, he argues for the value of seeing humanities education as a kind of popular psychedelic therapy, which uses art, media, and literature instead of psychoactive drugs to induce positive, emotionally transformative experiences in multiple generations of students.

Research Ella 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 Oliver Gerharz

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.

Sound Design Robbie Landsburg

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.

Social Media Ray Kirsch

Ray Kirsch graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 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.