🛡️ Sword Fights, Security & Memes: Meet Alex “Yellow Dart” Poiry

In this wonderfully offbeat episode of Nerd Show and Tell,  Matt chats with Alex Poiry, Head of Security at Font Awesome. But don't let the job title fool you — this isn’t just firewalls and protocols.

Alex dives into how a background in history and German led him to a career in tech, how a classic Homestar Runner video gave him the nickname “Yellow Dart,” and how swinging a longsword in VR gave him tennis elbow.

Yep. It's that kind of episode.

🧠 In this episode, we explore:

• The role of a Head of Security at a globally used icon toolkit
• How analog circuit metaphors help explain digital concepts
• Why early 2000s memes still live rent-free in Alex’s brain
• Nerdy passions: from Klingon to Tolkien to longsword combat in virtual reality
• How storytelling shapes tech, marketing, and public trust

If you love cybersecurity, weird tech journeys, or just want to hear a security lead talk about Klingon, this one’s for you.

⏱️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:08 – Meet Alex Poiry: Font Awesome’s Head of Security
• 03:44 – From liberal arts to lock-downs: how Alex got into tech
• 07:56 – What “security” actually means at Font Awesome
• 12:30 – Data privacy, metaphors, and teaching tech
• 18:42 – Klingon, Lord of the Rings, and meme nostalgia
• 23:26 – Geek Squad war stories & unexpected repairs
• 27:25 – HEMA swordplay and VR: a nerdery crossover
• 33:22 – How storytelling influences PR, security, and connection

🔗 Links & Credits

• Font Awesome Security Info
• Homestar Runner – Yellow Dart
   🎵 Theme by Ronnie Martin
  🎶 Music segues by Zach Malm
  🎛️ Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions

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HIGHLIGHTS

"At what point in time when you get to a certain age, how do you tell if it's you getting old or if some things actually are worse? Because there's a definitive period in American cinema that's not as good as some of the other periods.  There's a fantastic storytelling section of American cinema that starts in the 1970s and kind of goes into the it goes into the then you start to hit that era of the blockbuster.

The MCU is great. It's fun, and it's nice to see all this expansive stuff. But I wonder, are we going to look down the line in, like, 30 or 40 years and we're going to be like, these movies were fantastic storytelling, or if it's just going to just kind of be, like, fluffy." 

"What is your form like when it comes to historic European martial arts? And then you could do like a super hot thing where you just put a character up in front of it and just like whack him with a sword and he breaks and falls down or he blocks and you can try that stuff. So then you can actually work on your form without getting sword elbow."
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NOTES

• Spintronics
• The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger (original narration by Randall) 
• G.I. Joe PSAs 

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