The Cultured Nerd was first established in early 2013 as a branch of Waking Ideas, a digital production group that began in 2005. Its goal was to provide daily breaking news content, weekly editorials, and a bi-weekly podcast. As time passed, a video production group called "Sweet Bagel Productions" was implemented, with the intention of creating original video shorts and maintaining the podcast and eventual evolution into a video podcast.In December 2015, TCN's founder and editor-in-chief, Taylor Murphy, was offered a role in a predominant and recently launched news site. After much discussion with the team, a decision was made to temporarily close up shop. But, that was short-lived; in July 2016, Taylor parted ways with the site and decided to take a break from the industry.In 2017, the TCN Instagram was established, and now, due to popular demand, TCN is coming back in full swing. With the website relaunch taking place in October 2019, and the podcast, video podcast, and exclusive videos due to follow quickly after, TCN aims to bring back what drew the team to start this passion project to begin with.