Is the Sitcom going away?  What do you think, Brick Room Listeners.  It seems like the multi-camera sitcom shot in front of a live audience and featuring a laugh track may finally be going extinct.  We’re pretty happy about that, despite the fact that we’ve enjoyed some sitcoms in the past.  We believe TV has evolved beyond the level of the traditional sitcom.  What else is evolving in the realm of TV?  Well, virtual reality is coming.  One day, you’ll sit on your sofa with a pair of VR goggles on your face and experience your favorite TV show or video game as if you were actually there.  We talk about both of these issues on today’s podcast, as well as the impact “nerd” or “geek” culture has had on pop culture at large.  And what is a nerd these days anyway?  What does that word mean?  Finally, we finish up by talking about the use of CGI blood in movies, as opposed to squibs and blood packs.  If you’ve heard our podcast before, you can probably guess our feeling on using CGI blood as opposed to practical effects in movies and TV.  We want the real fake blood.  Tune in, then share your opinions in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.

Over time, humans have grown and evolved to develop society, language, learning, and technology, among other things.  What if other creatures, over a long time, also grew and evolved to have those things?  What would a planet ruled by wolves or spiders look like?  What would their society and technology be like?  Some insects kill their mates after they reproduce.  If that insect evolved and developed language and schools and politics, what would everyone think about one sex murdering and consuming the other one?  One day, we might even develop the ability to travel the stars and visit other civilizations.  What would a technologically advanced civilization of pandas be like?  These are the important questions of our day and on this episode of The Brick Room we explore this topic.  Listen in to our discussion and learn about the science of animals evolving to human levels of advancement.  That’s right, we’re scientists.

This is the red panda video Marc and Chris watch during the podcast:

We’re back and today we’re talking about space tourism and space advertising.  We’re both looking forward to the day when space tourism becomes an affordable thing.  We’re not looking forward to the day when space is filled with advertisements and billboards.  Some amount of space advertising is already allowed and taking place.  A company could buy space to advertise on the side of a rocket, for instance.  Some space advertising is outlawed.  You can’t put a big billboard on the moon that’s visible from Earth.  We discuss our thoughts on space advertising today.

Then we discuss what we think are the coolest vehicles that have ever appeared in movies.  What’s the coolest car?  What’s the coolest spaceship?  The coolest airplane?

We also have a great discussion about James Cameron and Christopher Nolan (two people responsible for some of the coolest things seen in pop culture) as well as Batman and his moral code.

Grab a beer and let’s preemptively mourn the day we look up into the stars and see an advertisement for Target circling us in low orbit.

It’s episode #79!  That means we’re mostly discussing Terminator:  Genisys today.  We start out the episode by talking about fragile ocean ecosystems.  If you are scuba diving in a cave and need to take a leak can your pee upset the balance of nature?  We not scientists, but our answer is yes.  From that discussion we logically move on to talking about the Terminator franchise.  We saw Terminator:  Genisys in preparation for this episode.  Spoiler alert:  we talk about pretty much all of the movie’s plot points in this episode.  We talk about our love for Arnold Schwarzenegger and our love for the Terminator movies in general.  We were surprised by Matt Smith’s role in the new movie as well as some interesting choices made for the plot.  The terminator protecting Sarah Conner basically becomes an expert in physics.  We take issue with this.  Are the terminators self aware or are they just programmed robots?  Aren’t these things just killing machines?  How could a terminator come to be smarter, not just more knowledgable but smarter, than every human physicist on the planet?  In the end, we come to the agreement that James Cameron is great at creating a universe for whatever movie he is making and acting in a consistent way within that universe.  If Terminator:  Genisys had to be made, we wish James Cameron had made it.  Finally, we briefly discuss the possibility of Star Wars spin off movies.  Enjoy this episode and tell your friends about us.  We’ll be back.

** Update:  To hear Marc’s explanation of how the Terminator Paradox isn’t actually a paradox listen to

Brick Room Episode #49 **

Previous guest, Eric Sablan, is back for this week’s episode of the Brick Room.  The conversation starts off with the disgusting ways fast food companies come up with to make new menu items and the damage those “food” items can wreak on your digestive system.  Then the conversation turns to zombies.  On a previous episode of the Brick Room Eric pointed out that just about any monster or undead creature can be killed by cutting off its head or stabbing it through the heart, therefore, any creature you kill should be killed in that manner.  Solid advice.  Today we discuss the best cities to survive the apocalypse in, as well the fashion sense of zombies and other undead creatures.  Following that we observe how the internet is turning people into impatient ignorant assholes and then discuss what a Golden Girls themed bar would look like.  Finally, we finish up by talking about accents and impressions and doing a few of our own.  Brace yourselves, I don’t think any of us will be performing as impersonators in Vegas any time soon.  Grab a drink and thanks for listening!