About

What is GeekNights?

GeekNights is a podcast, in the style of a“late night radio talk show” Launched in October 2005, it has run continuously 2-4 nights a week for nearly 20 years. Every episode ever recorded is available free on the Internet. Even the old embarrassing ones.

They are also all covered by the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This means that you can share it, remix it, redistribute it, excerpt it, and do just about anything else you like, so long as you give us credit for the original content.

Who are the hosts?

Rym and Scott went to the Rochester Institute of Technology, one of the nerdiest schools in the world. They helped run the surprisingly large RIT Anime Club. As Rym would say, “I got too used to having an audience.” Podcasting was very new at the time, and they had the technical and (some of the) talking skills necessary to make one.

Scott put a tech pipeline together, Rym used his audio engineering hobbyist skills, and they started recording beta episodes in early 2005. These beta episodes are also available online, remastered and with commentary, thanks to a long-defunct Patreon goal that was reached.

Rym and Scott are both technology professionals with day jobs. GeekNights is for fun.

Why do they keep making these mp3 files?

They’re going to keep making these and you can’t easily stop them. There is a Patreon, but 99% of the content there is free and public. They’re really mostly in it for the fun and the free convention badges.

How did GeekNight start?

It all started back at RIT. One night Rym and Scott were arguing about something incredibly stupid in the bedroom of their campus apartment. A friend was spending the night and sleeping on the couch in the other room. This friend became invested enough in the argument to literally pull their bedding into the bedroom to spectate. “You guys could make a good talk show” or something to that effect. A few years later, they started GeekNights.

Why don’t you have ads?

Advertising is poison. GeekNights will never have ads.

How is GeekNights made?

GeekNights is recorded live-to-tape. This means Rym and Scott hit record and just start talking. There is no script and the show is published unedited.

The recording session is live streamed to Rym’s youtube channel. The final version of the podcast is uploaded and syndicated within a few hours and is 99% identical to the live stream (just with better audio quality and bumper/stinger sounds).

How can I get Rym and Scott to perform at my event?

Just email geeknights@frontrowcrew.com.

We can’t promise they’ll come, but they’ll hear you out. They usually perform at gaming conventions like the Penny Arcade Expo or MAGFest doing panels that are really lectures.

Why is your domain frontrowcrew.com?

At RIT, Rym and Scott (along with a bunch of their friends) sat in the front row of the RIT Anime club every meeting as freshmen. They were low-key loud and occasionally annoying. The people running the club referred to them behind closed doors as “that front row crew.” Within a year that same “front row crew” joined the club’s executive board and started running it. They liked the name and kept it.

GeekNights was originally intended to be one podcast among others under the Front Row Crew brand. But Rym and Scott were the only ones who really invested and it remains the only Front Row Crew thing.

So think of it as GeekNights, produced by the Front Row Crew.