Nerd from the Future

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...

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 i...

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...

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 a...

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 b...

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 A...

As economies tumble, as the Earth burns, and as governments implode all around us, it's become easier and easier to dismiss higher education as elitist, irrelevant, and out of touch with reality, that place where ordinary people have to face everyday uncertainty without the privileges or comforts of the classroom. In this episode, my colleagues Elisabeth Anker, Kristina Huang and I bring the u...

In this bonus episode, I join my life-long pal and fellow professor Anthony Michael D'Agostino in a hilarious, honest, and passionate conversation about what it's like to teach college students these days. We talk about the importance of meeting students where they're at by speaking directly to their greatest hopes, fears, and desires, while pushing them to questions their most tightly...

One of the most enduring myths about the modern universityis that humanities education—understood broadly as the study of human history, language, and culture—no longer offers a reliable path to employment or financial stability for the millions of students who seek out higher education. In my conversation with professors Sarah Ensor and Matthew Tinkcom, we argue otherwise. We point out that the m...

This is the first of a two-part Knowledge Drop about the role that university professors play as genuine mentors and guides for generations of youth, rather than ideologues who force their values on their students. We'll take you behind the magic curtain of the university classroom to show how professors facilitate the dynamic, free exchange of ideas among students. In Part I, we focus on distingu...

Public debates over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at university campuses has tended to focus on the question of fairness : is it fair for some groups of people to have unique advantages in the university application process? Is it fair for some groups of students to have university resources allocated to support their learning? It’s understandablethat the debate so often takes...

In our first bite size bonus episode, Nerd from the Future explains the concept of academic tenure. Tenure refers to an employment protection offered by many colleges and universities that is meant to uphold professors' intellectual freedom of thought. We explain where this concept came from, how tenure is professionally achieved, and the variety of historical factors undermining its effective...

In our first episode, I talk with professors Melani McAlister and Matt Brim about the perceived liberal bias of university campuses and the faculty who teach there. The debate over liberal bias at America’s most prominent universities almost always seems to focus on the political views or party affiliations of college professors, who many argue are statistically more progressive or left-leaning th...

It's time the university came to you. I’m Ramzi Fawaz, a nerdy English professor with nearly twenty years of teaching experience, and I’m here to reignite your passion for thekinds of ideas, conversations, and perspectives that could change your future. I know firsthand how much the college classroom transforms people’s lives for the better. That's why I think you deserve to learn about ev...