Fat Guy, Jacked Guy

This week, your brothers aren't teaching...they're getting taught! That's right. For the first time in the history of this podcast, we have a special guest: our brother-in-teaching and Mobile Suit Gundam enthusiast, Mark Sturdivant! In this episode, Mark teaches us all about the somewhat underground craze that is Mobile Suit Gundam model kit production. He gives us a brief history of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise and helps us understand why these kits are growing in popularity. Since we have no prior knowledge of this whatsoever, we also ask Mark a lot of questions about the kits and what makes him keep coming back for more. This was a real learning journey for your brothers, and we're sure it'll be one for you, too!

It's our 20th episode (!!!!), so we thought we'd go big for y'all. This week, we took on a topic that's a little bit of a point of contention for your favorite brothers: the work of M. Night Shyamalan.  We ranked our top 5 Shyamalan films, and then, in this episode, we discuss our rankings and broke down why we made those choices. Overall, Brendan has a hard time really buying what Shyamalan is selling (for good reasons), while Stef is a bit more forgiving and is all-in on Shyamalan and the worlds he tries to construct in his films. It definitely doesn't get as heated as some may think, but it's not NOT heated, you know?

Did you ever completely bomb an assignment that, in retrospect, seemed really easy for your young self to do? Well, in this episode, Brendan is taking us back in time to his 4th grade classroom in order to redo his state project on the state of Louisiana. Brendan blasts us with facts about the amazing Bayou State, and in between, we talk about our experiences in Louisiana and what we love about New Orleans. It's sure to make you nostalgic, and maybe, just maybe, it'll give you the confidence to right some wrongs of your own.

OK, no, we can't help you do that. And we're sure you can probably guess that we wouldn't want to help anyone do that, anyways! What we can do and what we DID do is discuss the people who capitalize on claims just like the one in our title. This week, we're diving into one of the most annoying and shameful grifts of them all: LIFE COACHING. That's right, we decided to break the life coaching profession down for y'all so you can see just how dangerous and predatory it is. In this episode, we discuss the culture and history of life coaching, along with how life coaching became so popular and how it's been evolving over the years. We also visit some of the most well-known life coaching literature to make fun of it a bit, as we do! Join us!

Episode DISCLAIMER: We had some trouble with the audio for this week's episode. You'll notice a little static in the beginning up to the 5:20 mark. PLEASE do not let it get in the way of listening to this week's goofs.

Things are heating up in South Florida, and all we can think about is relaxing on the beach with our friends and a couple of brews. This isn't an unusual feeling for us but it does make us wonder...what do we really know about how we got there in the first place? What made people brave the elements and make beachgoing and beach vacations cultural mainstays around the world? In this episode, we discuss our own personal connections to the beach, what brought people from the cities to the beach in the first place, and how beachgoing has evolved over the last three centuries (and over the last two millennia!) all over the Western world. As it turns out, there was a ton of stuff we didn’t know, and as usual, there were lots of things to laugh at along the way.

This week, we're taking a ride up the coast of the great Northeast to visit some of Brendan's regional mainstay: the Maine lobsterman. We discuss the history of lobster eating, the history of lobster fishing in New England, whether lobster is really all that fancy, and what might be in store for the future of the industry. Throughout the conversation, Brendan teaches Stef of about different aspects of New England, and the brothers make connections between the lobstermen and climate change. It's a fun conversation on a topic people don't think as much as they should about! Join us!

And where have all our conversations about stunt acting gone? Why don't we see as much stunt acting in action films as we used to? BETTER YET, where have all our mid-budget blockbuster action films gone and how do we get them back? This week, your brothers are talking all things stunt acting and action films. We discuss the history of stunt acting in Hollywood; our childhood fascinations with the wild fights, car chases, and explosions of some of our favorite action films of the 80s and 90s; and what the present and future looks like for these kinds of movies. Of course, because we are who we are, we also connect everything back to something much deeper than ratchet pulls and free falls.

This week, we're taking a little trip to one of the places in the world that people seem to "know" but not know anything about: Papua New Guinea. In this episode, we discuss some basic Papua New Guinea facts about what life is like there; about the diversity of the people, the plants, and the wildlife there; and we discuss many aspects of the culture that we're sure you know very little about. Of course, we also talk about how places like Papua New Guinea are exoticized and fetishized, and how we contribute to that problem without fully recognizing it sometimes. Whatever knowledge you think you might have, we guarantee you'll walk away from this episode having learned something you didn't know before. Join us!

This week, we're exploring one of the most important creations from Stef's home state of Florida: the Key Lime Pie, king of desserts. We discuss how key lime pie came to be and what makes it such an important facet of Florida's culinary culture while decrying the Florida legislature's most recent decision to make strawberry shortcake the official state dessert of Florida. Along the way, we make connections between this and the larger, more detrimental attacks currently happening on the people who have made Florida the whacky, wondrous, weird ass place that it has become. You'll probably be wondering, at first, if any of this matters...but we assure you that it does! Join us!