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The Real Brian Show

What are you nerding out on? That's the question I ask you, my guests, and even myself. You never know what you're gonna get on each episode! We hit record and see what happens!
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Now displaying: March, 2018
Mar 30, 2018

Let's be real: sometimes people say stupid things. I mean, we don't, but some people do. In this Superhero Friday episode, Tony joins Brian to talk about some of those situations in which we're confronted with a need to start a conversation in an uncertain environment. Since we live in an uber sensitive environment in which everything we say has the potential to offend someone, how do we go about having small talk with people we just met?

In This Episode

  • March Maaaaaadness
  • Pet cancer is real and getting realerer
  • Taking care of your pet(s)
  • Awkward introductionss...
  • ...topics to talk about with people you just met

Really dog?!?

We can't control how other people choose to engage in small talk, but we can manage our own approach. Tony and Brian get heavy into different options for starting up conversations with people we've just met or don't know well, that can help us avoid awkwardness of offense or bringing up sensitive topics, so instead I want to dive into the other side of this.

Since we can only control ourselves, we can make adjustments to handling introductory conversations. We can select questions, take a different approach, try to make people feel at ease. But we cannot control how other people choose to approach small talk. I wrote at the top of the blog that culture, as a whole, has become increasingly sensitive to comments people make, to such a degree that it sometimes seems better not to talk to anyone than to talk to someone and fear saying the wrong thing. The conversations that may seem innocuous to us are sensitive to others, and vice versa. The things we think will be fun will be uninteresting or annoying to someone else. It happens all the time.

There isn't a way to avoid it entirely (unless you become a hermit and only talk to frogs... but even then you'd better be careful, they make look happy but that's only because they eat whatever bugs them). So the best we can do is learn to control our own responses. I can have terrible reactions to things, and the reaction is almost never due to just what was said but of mounting stressors that precede whatever information I just got causing me to react badly. I was reading a little from Jerome Kagan recently, specifically about the three general categories of child temperaments, and I was surprised (and not surprised) to realize that we all tend to revert back to our child-like temperament under stress. Without honing our reactions, we are all a bunch of babies.

Be excellent to one another! My challenge to you, and to me, this next week is to not make anyone feel bad for asking a question that they couldn't possibly know is a sensitive topic to us. Rise above and treat them with respect and kindness. Let's change the way we react, and change the way we converse!

Links

Mar 16, 2018

That's quasi-nerd, not queasy-nerd... though we understand why you might make that mistake! Welcome back Captain Influence, aka Tony, to this mad March installment of The Real Brian Show! Our classic lineup of conversations includes music, movies, gaming, and, of course, a strong shot of espresso.

In This Episode

  • It's St. Patty's Day!! Tomorrow...
  • The Corrs. It's been too long, man.
  • What type of nerd are you? Quasi-nerd... apathetic nerd... full-on nerd...
  • Espresso Shot!
  • Chvrches (My Enemy). Sia (Magic).
  • And, duh... Alien: Isolation

Quasi-Nerd

The prefix quasi just means something that is almost, but not quite the thing that's being defined. Someone who is a quasi-nerd probably meets a lot of the parameters, but not all of them... or not in the classic sense of it. We've really pimped out the word "nerd" in our culture, tossing it around both as a compliment and as a dig, to the point where it has almost lost its meaning. We've glamorized the term. We use phrases like cute nerd.

Literally, of course, a nerd refers to someone who is socially inept, unstylish and unattractive. I experimented a little bit... wondering what the most popular references to nerd were out there on the internet, and I got some surprising results. In my circles of influence, I probably most commonly hear people use the word "nerd" in contexts outside its literal definition, though I know it's literal definition is still its most common usage. So naturally, I was curious.

The top hits for an image search for "nerd" in Google are facetiously-dressed people pretending to be an unstylish and unattractive social pariah, Steve Urkel and N.E.R.D. (amongst a smattering of images that could be featured next to the word in the dictionary). On Pinterest, however, I found that the search for "nerd" yielded results that were much more my sphere... cutesy, not-unattractive people wearing large glasses and holding books pretending like they hate people AND also a bunch of quotes about the superior intelligence of nerds that gives them a pass on being rude to the rest of humanity. To me, this discrepancy speaks more to the users on each of these platforms rather than the true meaning of the word... But that's just me.

So what kind of nerd are you? Can we really be a quasi-nerd? It's interesting, because a large part of the conversation in this episode centers around our surprise, and non-surprise, that opinions among friends about movies and music vary to a great degree. Tony really dislikes the JJ Abrams-produced Star Wars films, but Brian likes them. And both opinions, while being totally valid, are in direct competition with each other. It seems like, historically, nerds have risen up in areas where this direct competition lies but without the social skills that enable them to be... civil... about their differences!

And I think that's a large part of the reason we embrace the idea of being a quasi-nerd. We love the differences our community has, it's literally what keeps us going. Without the differences, we'd be super boring. But we don't want to be so foolish in our pursuits that we ignore the valid opinions of others. We don't want to be so boring in our single-minded pursuits that we forget to go out and have new experiences. So we continue to branch out! And we're so glad you want to join us in that!

Links

Mar 9, 2018

For the second week in a row we're glad to welcome back Tony, aka Captain Influence! In our typical Superhero Friday fashion, we've got the fun and we've got the serious, but this week we want to circle back to reminding each other of how important it is for the two to overlap from time to time. We're a people of extremes, aren't we? We tend toward extremes and finding a balance can be our primary focus in life. But it's exhausting, isn't it? Sometimes we just have to take the fun when there is fun, take the serious when it calls for serious, and not force either when they seem a little too far out of reach.

In This Episode

  • Welcome back, Tony!
  • Dirrrty chai
  • Weekend of gaming and junky food
  • Show for the Almost Famous!
  • We all want to be someone
  • Alien Isolation
  • Moosik

Never Surrender

Realizations about the somebody we are trying to be can come in spurts over a long period of time. We learn a little bit more about ourselves, then express that part of ourself to the world. When we express ourselves, we unconsciously gauge reactions to our personality and those reactions can either make us retreat inward and stay the way we've always been or make us change ourselves. Neither reaction is wrong, they're both very natural, but one of the things we love to celebrate here at the Real Brian Show is the fact that you can continue be who you are in spite of the reactions from others if who you are is who you want to be.

Brian talks about being a somebody to other somebodies and how discouraging that can be when we're not immediately accepted. Changing ourselves to be accepted by someone else is still a rejection. We reject ourselves. Continual improvement, betterment, increase in emotional intelligence... these are all good things and I do not want to draw a fine line at never changing ever! Change is good, but changing to meet the expectations of others or because of someone else's dissatisfaction is not the good kind of change!

In our society which is quickly being eaten up by social media we seem to have reverted to a middle school mentality of pleasing others by striving to meet ineffable qualities and standards. The qualities and standards are subjective and fluctuate based on someone's mood or someone's circumstances. We like to celebrate individuality and having fun and nerding out while simultaneously exploring the realness of life because it only seems to be then that we start to capture the full picture of life.

Links

Mar 2, 2018

Welcome back to The Real Brian Show! We're pleased to welcome back Tony, aka Captain Influence, to kick off the month of March. We're going to be hearing about a colonoscopy in this episode, but before you cringe and veer away let me assure you that it is definitely G rated. If you've ever been concerned about getting a colonoscopy or it's on your list of things to do and you've been putting it off... hopefully this will put your mind at ease. To balance out the fun, we'll talk some movies, tv shows, and the stuff we're nerding out about right now.

In This Episode

  • WELCOME!
  • Setting fear aside and take the probe plunge
  • You get a colonoscopy. And YOU get a colonoscopy.
  • Black Panther
  • The Tick has returned
  • YouTube TV

Colonoscopy

Googling "colonoscopy" yields these top 4 questions:

  • Does a colonoscopy hurt
  • What can I expect from a colonoscopy?
  • How long does it take to get a colonoscopy?
  • What happens during a colonoscopy procedure?

Well, guess what? We're going to touch on all of these questions AND have fun doing it! Take THAT Google. Colonoscopy is one of those medical procedures that yields a lot of clarity, but is dreadfully unpleasant to think about. Examining the colon is necessary, but the methodology by which it is accomplished makes everyone cringe.

Have no fear, our conversation is not graphic. In the same vein of learning how to live healthy, we're advocates for taking care of the body even when it seems uncomfortable or unpleasant.

Links

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