Episode for August 26, 2026
My conversation with Gil starts at 35 minutes after headlines and clips
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Get “The Nerd Reich” Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy
The Nerd Reich is a newsletter about tech authoritarianism, billionaire extremism, the Network State and the meta politics of California. While this publication mostly focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area, it will also cover these topics wherever they occur. This newsletter started as my public notes on what’s happening as tech billionaires and propagandists attempt a takeover of local politics. Longer explanation here.
Gil Durán was born in Tulare, California, in 1976. The grandson of Mexican immigrant farmworkers, he got his first taste of work in the fields, but took an interest in journalism after winning the local newspaper’s “My Mom Is the Best” contest in the fifth grade. In the tenth grade, his family moved from California to Kentucky, where he dropped out of high school for a year, then returned and befriended an English teacher who encouraged him to apply to college. He graduated DePauw University in 1998 and started his journalism career at the San Jose Mercury News. As the newspaper industry hit turbulence, he pivoted to politics and spent ten years as an advisor to politicians including Jerry Brown, Dianne Feinstein, and Kamala Harris. In 2018, he returned to journalism as California opinion editor of The Sacramento Bee, and then became editorial page editor of the San Francisco Examiner. Now an independent journalist, he publishes two newsletters: The Nerd Reich, focused on extremist tech politics, and FrameLab, focused on political language.
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