Geekdom and Politics, Part II

This is an add-on to my earlier post on Geekdom and Politics, published a few weeks ago. In that earlier post, I just assembled my thoughts and didn’t do much research to back anything up or relate to things. At the time, I just did a quick google search to make sure that I didn’t throw this out right into a void of non-existing context. Encouragingly, that search showed me that the context was there.

Here and this time, I would like to relate to some stuff that the same google search and other things would have taught me already then, had I had the possibility to dive in and read a lot. I did’t then and still don’t have this possibility. Still, now I can at least spend enough time to get an idea of others thinking along the same line as I did.

Geekdom and politics via Google Search

Easily, everyone can do this search. It shows a number of immediate things like posts with pictures or short comments, but I was looking mainly for people writing along a similar line of thought as I was. Frankly, I couldn’t find anything directly related. This refers to a discussion of why something or somebody messing with our children’s future makes us parents so angry.

Naturally, in my sphere of incoming information, there is champion of geek culture Wil Wheaton, who discusses many aspects of the current situation on his blog.
I also found a few more blogs that have both geekdom and politics on their agenda, like Ellis Ink for example, but there, to be honest, I’d expect an Oxford comma in the subtitle, simply because I didn’t find a post related to the interplay between these two subjects 🙂

Anyway, I found a number of things and people related to the situation, and that is interesting, too. However, I did not quite find what I was looking for. Beyond the simple search, I kept my eyes open for related content and saw a few things. I put them here, also because they are interesting, but mostly as suggestions for future guests of @theGBBpodcast, in the direction I had mentioned in the previous post, namely talking to political (and similar) scientists. So, since Justin was kind enough to invite me to suggest guests for the future, here we go.

Suggestions for podcast guests to talk about geekdom and politics

Already via the search, I found some interesting items related to Douglas A. Van Belle, who appears in this search mainly via his book about political science, approached from an unusual direction. When I looked through the google-books preview, I got the feeling that he might be an interesting candidate for @theGBBpodcast. While he has a scientific background, he seems to mainly work as a writer these days, which Jamie will probably like as well 🙂

And then, I stumbled upon something similar via @wilw, who retweeted an announcement by @sarahkendzior of an article by @chaunceydevega about and the corresponding podcast episode related to a recent book with @TimothyDSnyder. That sounds pretty complicated, but it’s actually quite simple: The guest there, and my next suggestion for a future guest for @theGBBpodcast is a historian and bestseller author.

Naturally, just by looking at their twitter profiles, @sarahkendzior and @chaunceydevega are interesting candidates for future guests as well.

Which reactions happened to the original “Geekdom and Politics” post?

Speaking of all this: Dear Jamie and Justin, did you receive good reactions to this tweet of yours?

All the best, Andreas

P.S.: I really enjoyed the recent science-bunch of episodes, and thank you very much for the shoutout (“appearing together with” @BadAstronomer in a podcast episode is an honor)! I wanted to listen to these before I make more scientist-suggestions for future guests, so that has not been forgotten.

And here is the list of references for this post: