Late last year, via Twitter I heard of an unusual event taking place and as soon as I heard about it, even as tired and sleep-deprived as I was, I knew I was going to have to organise a babysitter, grab the fiancé by the elbow, and take myself off to a recording studio in an eastern suburb of Christchurch on a Wednesday night. That event was the recording of the first ever episode of panel show podcast with a pop culture slant, ‘The Nerd Degree’.
There have now been five episodes and many, many puns. For me, it’s sort of like listening to the kinds of conversations my friends and I have about pop culture things but instead of it being out on someone’s deck with a beer or two it’s in a studio with actual teams and games like “who would win?” (the classic debate about which fantastical creature/superhero would win in a fight with another fantastical creature/superhero). Heated debate? Oh, my word, yes.
The other main difference is that these assembled nerds really know their stuff. On any given episode you’ve got a lean, mean, nerdy, trivia-filled machine. All that brain power… and they’re waxing lyrical about the paradoxes of filmic time travel and trying to figure out which Tolkien elf-sounding names are made up and which ones are legit.
Want to know more? Read my interview with Nerd Degree host Brendon Bennetts.
Oh, and I am to be one of them. Though I am vastly underqualified (does attending your polytech graduation ceremony in a Princess Leia outfit count as a qualification?), I’ve been invited to have a go at being a panellist in April on this, the most nerdy of nerdsome podcasts. I’ll post links and info closer to the time.