What Is a “Blerd?” Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #56 Discusses Nerd Culture and Race with The Second City’s Anthony LeBlanc

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.