The History of Geek This

by Dave Clements

My first foray into podcasting came before podcasts were a thing, so maybe it was more on the “broadcasting” side of things. While spending the weekend with two of my closest friends one summer, back in the early 2000’s, we grabbed a cassette player and recorded an impromptu, goofy news show. It didn’t turn into much after the second episode, but that experience of collaborating with people has carried on all these years later.

Fast forward to 2010, I discovered podcasts. I don’t remember what the first one was, but there were two that had an impact on me: Strangers & Aliens and Stuff You Should Know. One was an independently-made show where three fans discussed pop culture and how it connected to biblical principles. The other was professionally written, produced, and hosted by a couple of guys that were probably friends, but they were writers first, focusing on how things in the world worked. Both piqued my interests and became favorites. They each led me to discover more shows and eventually pushed me to ponder how I could do the same thing: talk about the things I was interested in. The only problem I really faced was I didn’t have friends who wanted to talk about this stuff as passionately as I did. Oh, and I had no idea where to start. Thankfully I came across The Audacity to Podcast where I learned the basics of podcasting from someone who was extremely pumped about the subject.

On December 26th, 2012, I released the first episode of a show I was calling Geek This, Nerd That, a title parodied from the Eat This, Not That books that were popular at the time. I’d like to say the rest was history, but that’s not really the case. At that point, I was flying solo, trying my best to come up with topics someone would be interested in other than myself.

When I released my third episode, Adam McDorman, who I had met a year or so prior, joined me to talk about Star Wars and Disney purchasing Lucasfilm. It was the first time I had someone to talk to on the show and I loved it. Months later David Hunt jumped on an episode about The Superior Spider-Man that, unfortunately, didn’t get recorded and won’t ever see the light of day. Mike Kostrewa came in for a couple of nostalgia-centered episodes, and the show started transitioning from a one-man-behind-the-mic thing to something I was making with others. We – primarily David and I – teamed up with the guys at Strangers & Aliens and other pop culture podcasters to form The Podcast Initiative, where we released a few crossover episodes that are still some of my personal favorites to this day.

While we weren’t “popular” by any means, the show was hitting its stride and we couldn’t have been happier. Then, as is the case many times, life happened. Schedules were harder to align and episode frequency waned. I eventually turned the show back into a one-man-behind-the-mic format with news stories being the primary focus. By 2016, I was less interested in keeping the show alive and let months go by without anything new for those subscribed. This trend has continued through 2020, when the world decided it wanted to give up as well.

That’s not the end, though. As life continued to do its thing, David Hunt and I joined Mike Kostrewa in launching his own podcast, Boomstick Video Club, in early 2020. Doing that has brought us back to Geek This and where it should go moving forward. Be on the lookout for new content Fall 2020!

Learn more about Dave, David, Adam, and Mike in our Crew section.