The Interim Executive Producer of The Second City joins your hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Erica Spyres, and Brian Hirt to discuss the scope of black nerd-dom: what nerdy properties provide to those who feel “othered,” using sci-fi to talk about race, Black Panther and other heroes, afrofuturism, black anime fans, Star Trek, Key & Peele, Get Out vs. Us, and more.
A few articles you might enjoy:
- “Blerd Defined” by Rod T. Faulkner
- “What Is a Blerd” by Angele Joubert-Johnson
- “The Rise of the Black Nerd in Pop Culture” by Mekeisha Madden
- “15 Black Comics Writers Whose Work You Need to Read” by Sam Stone
- “Why I’m Writing Captain America” by Ta-Nehishi Coates
- “7 Black Nerd Podcasts to Check Out” from trillmatic.com
- “The Hugo Awards Just Made History, and Defied Alt-Right Extremists in the Process” by Aja Romano
Some relevant videos and podcasts:
- The Rundown with Robin Thede: A Race Odyssey
- Looking Back at Tomorrow’s Afrofuturism episode
- Empire Blerd ep. 23 featuring Sinbad and his son
- A sample episode of King Vader
- Key & Peele on detecting alien impostors
- Anthony’s first appearance on Hello from the Magic Tavern
Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus discussion that you can only hear by supporting the podcast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This podcast is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network.
Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast is the first podcast curated by Open Culture. Browse all Pretty Much Pop posts.
