Happy Superhero Friday! Brian's guest today may sound familiar to you... and if so, then you are definitely one of us; if not, please, please go check out his podcasts! You can hear him on The Packers Fan Podcast and The Blacklist Exposed, as well as others (which we will definitely be talking about in the episode). We first connected with Troy while podcasting for TV Talk, and continue to enjoy his friendship through a handful of networks.
It's interesting how context and environment can change the way someone sounds, isn't it? Troy's story of getting the crap scared out of him when Brian's voice comes on in the car is a perfect example of this. A voice can sound so different when it's whispering versus yelling, different in a small room with no one in it versus a large open room with no one in it.
It also changes because of what we're expecting, though. Like when you get in your car expecting the radio to come on but instead your ears are met with Panic! At the Disco blaring from the CD player (this may have happened to me this week). Expecting one thing and getting another can make an otherwise ordinary circumstance set your nerves on edge!
We never intentionally try to scare you on this show, but we take what we can get when we can get it!
Science Fiction is awesome for many reasons. All stories make caricatures reality in some way, either to draw parallels or to exaggerate points in order to draw out differences. But science fiction, for me, is different and more poignant because it is capable of showing simple truths on epic scales.
Unfortunately, this is the only clip of the scene from 12 Monkeys I could find: Jennifer's speech to the daughters. If you've never seen the show, I'll briefly recap: Jennifer is nuts. But she's not nuts for no reason. Time is like gogurt in her brain and she sees and supposes things well outside the normal, linear timescale that most humans do. Regardless of her knowledge of the past and present, she's come to care about, in her own Jennifer way, that Cole and Cassie succeed (the time travelers trying to save the world).
In the darkest and grittiest of times, she demonstrates to her followers what she calls the most important rule of all: "Be excellent to each other." I love this on so many levels, and not just for what it represents at this stage in the show... but on the granular, human level. Pluck her out of context and you see this crazy, ragged woman trying to rally a bunch of women you know don't respect her; backdrop of the scene looks grim and dark. But it's not actually her speech that inspires her followers, it's her actions.
Every day we have a million choices to make. What to eat, wear, how to respond to emails, which projects to pick up and which to set aside, what route to take home from work. But hidden within each choice is another decision, and that's how we choose to behave while we're making those choices. Do we make decisions and say things at the expense of others, or make them in order to make our immediate surroundings a better place? Maybe one day it seems more appropriate to skip lunch so you can talk with a colleague who seems to be struggling, or sacrifice work on your own project in order to help someone else who is falling behind.
Be excellent to each other. Look for the hidden decisions in the obvious decisions.