Big Brother's Guide to Life

Like many things in this world, all good things must either come to an end or must evolve.In this episode, I will reflect on how this show started, what I have learned from this experience, and more importantly how I can make it better. It has been a great experience, but now is the time for it to evolve.

Social Media has been the machine that has educated us, influenced us and inspired us for the past two decades. But social media also has a dark side to it.It can just as easily be used or interpreted to bring people down, make us think that we are not good enough and allow us to blame others for the problems we face. It can also paint a picture of the world, or our own country, that really is not a reflection of what is actually happening.So with that said, is everything really as bad as social media can make it seem? Are most people actually satisfied with the lives they are living?SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram linkBig Brothers Guide to Life on Facebook Intro Music:Nice To you- found on YouTube Music

Living to be 100. Who could say anything bad about living to be this age and still be able to not be dependent on others to survive?The world is changing. People are living longer and more children are surviving into adulthood than they ever have in our history. This has caused an unintended consequence. We have more people now than we ever had in our history and the numbers keep going up.Our planet was probably not designed to support this many people, especially with the way many of us live our lives. What do we do about it? Can we adapt? Is living to be 100 worth it? SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram linkBig Brothers Guide to Life on Facebook EPISODE LINKS:Hans Rosling talk at Think Global SchoolGapminder- Data driven educational foundation Intro Music:Nice To you- found on YouTube Music

The birth control pill. This little pill has had such an influence on human development and can also be seen as aiding in the advancement of many countries today. But do many millennials and Generation Z'ers understand just how big of a deal this is?Those of us in this generation have known nothing else other than this pill being a part of our lives. But what about our parents and grandparents. Do we really understand just how different the world was for them?When you really think about it, this pill allowed women to have so much more freedom and opportunities that previous generations never had. But like anything else, when you grow up not knowing how different things were, you probably don't have the same level of appreciation for it.  SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link EPISODE LINKS:Center for Disease Control website about birth control pill in the U.S. INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

In the western world, living the cookie-cutter life that our parents generation did had its ups and downs. for many people of this era, hitting a point in your life where you felt like there was nothing else to look forward too caused some people to lash out. We called this the Mid-life crisis. A response to the predictability of life. This usually happened around 40 years of age for our parents.The new generations are facing something different. A quarter-life crisis. A response to the unpredictability that comes when the path you chose for yourself was not what you expected. For us, this happens in our late 20's-early 30's.What does this all mean for us and can we learn anything from our parents generation about how to handle it?SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link EPISODE LINKS:Professor Mark Jackson’s lecture to the Royal Society INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

Nothing affects our young college-age members of society more that just how much their education is costing them. The systems that allow us at such a young age to even be able to take on this debt is a necessary evil. If you don't come from an affluent family who can afford to pay for your college, you will have to borrow the money that the colleges are charging if you want to get that prestigious degree. A degree that you envision will land you a high-paying job and set you in motion for a successful life. For the Millennials, we've had to learn the hard way how to deal with this. For the newer generations who are on the cusp of adulthood, understanding just how much your education can cost you is critical to you making the best financial decision to secure your future, post-graduation. Just how much debt are you willing to take to graduate from that one "big" school. Can you get the same education for a fraction of the cost and therefor set yourself up for a less-stressful future?SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link EPISODE LINKS:National Student Debt Forgiveness CenterUS Census Data Center INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

Generation Z: You are coming of age at at time where the world is dominated by technology. Way more than what it was for the Millennials. But the Millennial generation has a lot to teach you about what to expect and how best to prepare for it. Lessons that were not taught to them, especially because a platform like this did not exist.Your adult life is going to be challenging. Nothing anybody can tell you will soften that blow, but maybe this information will click with some of you. Enough to maybe prepare you for the hard road ahead. Pew research page SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

As our world makes it easier for us to do everything from the comfort of our own home, the increasing time away from interacting with other people starts to show its face.In Japan, there are people who decide to isolate themselves from the rest of the world, rarely if ever leaving their home. This is a huge problem in Japan that is only getting worse. But what about the rest of the world? Is what's happening in Japan a sign of things to come in the rest of the world? SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

Men need to change! Men need to step-up their game! Where are all the good men?As guys, we hear this type of talk all the time. More-so now more than ever before.Can guys really change who they are though? What is it about how we think that causes us to remain stubborn and not change the status quo?How and why would we do this? This episode is a good insight for men as to why we think the way we do. For women, this episode might give you some insight about how our mind works. SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

When we are young, we can be given a playbook to follow. Whether directly or indirectly, we can be told that if we just did everything a certain way, such as living the same life your parents did, that you will get the outcome you desire. Maybe something like having a loving family or a specific dream job. But as we all know, life is anything but fair. No matter how much you prepare yourself to get a certain outcome, inevitably, something can happen that can throw your long-term plans out the window. SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

For most, if not all of us, experiencing a level of unfairness within "the system" has been an all too common theme. We have experienced getting passed up on jobs or promotions when we think we were the most qualified. We have all been rejected by many in the dating world. In this episode, I look at the reality that we all experience unfairness at many times in our lives, and what we can and should do about it. SUPPORT:Support the channel here Instagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

Should I have kids or should I not? Should I have them early in my 20's or should I wait until my 30's? If I don't want them, will I be looked down upon? If I do, can I actually afford them without sacrificing my quality of life? These are questions that people in my generation always asked. So did Gen X and the baby boomers. But what's different today? Is it possible that this question is even harder to answer in a day where everything just keeps getting more and more expensive?  SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

More and more, it has become hammered into our heads that if we do not have our life together by the age of 30, we must be screwed. If we are not married with a family and at least one person has a good, stable career, then we've been left behind. As you might guess, this is not the case at all. In this episode, I briefly break down how my generation learned from Generation X about what the expectations are for people in their 20's and how in today's world, our lives don't begin until we are over 30.SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

We listen to our friends and those we trust to give us advice about what we don't know. We also take what little experience we may have in a subject and form an opinion on anything we see in the future that relates to what we had experienced in our past.We assume we know enough about many different topics. We assume that we have been educated enough to know that what we believe is true.But is it possible that many of us are leading lives with false assumptions about how the world works? If so, are we willing to listen to people who know a different side of the story? Maybe if we did, we would realize just how much of what we thought was true was actually more complicated than we knew. SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

The typical American life. At one point is was so simple. Two people would get married, the man would find a 30-year job, they would start a family and everyone involved was happy. That's what had happened for 3-4 generations in the U.S. after World War 2.A television show was even created to showcase what this typical American life was. It was called The Simpsons. The father in the show was called Homer Simpson and he represented so much off what the typical American man was comfortable achieving in his life.But was Homer Simpson's life something that was even possible anymore? Could all of the Homer Simpsons of the world do the same thing in today's world of technology and be satisfied with their life?  SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

 At any point in our life, we can cross paths with individuals that we never expected to. Very often we make assumptions of others based upon how they are dressed or where they are from. Very often as well, those other people can be surprisingly similar to us in terms of how we think and what our goals in life are. Once we give others an opportunity to give us their point of view, we start to see that we all are not so different from each other. SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

 As we advance out of our early 20's, we start to see how a lot of the decisions we made in our youth were not always the smartest. Sometimes we reflect on those decisions and say "what was I thinking?" or "why did I let that bother me so much". Life has its way of giving us the experience we need, provided we put ourselves out there, to build up our tolerance for hardships.But in today's world, like everything else, we try to have our cake and eat it to. We try to get as much knowledge and experience as we can without having to go through some of the difficult, and sometimes embarrassing, experiences that have built up our older siblings and our parents.But do we really think we can have everything we want without experiencing losing something first hand? Is life supposed to be all wins and no losses? SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

It's no surprise that for many young adults in the western world, taking the safe path throughout your life sounds like the best choice when it comes to having the life you desire. Whether that's marrying the "safe" choice, or having that job that you have simply to pay your bills, or even the decision to have children. The safe choices offer less chance that you will fall flat on your face, but they can also lead to boredom. At the same time, societies look down on those who make "bad" choices. Whether it's infidelity, working at a low wage job by choice, or purposefully not having children. Can we keep our sanity if we only make safe choices? Is the excitement and unknown that comes with taking chances worth it? How different could our life be if we took a leap of faith every now and then? BOOKS TO READ:12 Rules for Life- Jordan B. Peterson SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

Depression used to be something that we assumed only occurred in people who have suffered tremendous loss or who are suffering from a chemical imbalance in the body. While this can still be true for some individuals, the reality is that more and more of our young adults say that they are depressed.What's worse is that there are many more young adults who function normally in day-to-day activities and who secretly are depressed. So much so that those who know them best would never guess.In an era where the quality of life in the western world is at an all-time high, how can people who have access to these new resources possibly be depressed? Are we relying too much on our new technologies to solve all of our problems? Is there something that we have lost over time that may be responsible for this?  BOOKS TO READ:Tribe- by Sebastian JungerLost Connections- by Johann Hari SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

By our early 20's, most of us are either expected to, or we put pressure on ourselves to get that "real" job. The one that is supposed to define us. The one that we spent all that time preparing for in college. A job that our parents would have spent 30 years, or so, committed to. Times are different now and we don't stay at companies as long as we used to. But still, how do we get that first job? What if we can't find that ideal first "real" job by the time we are 23. Are we failures? Is the system against us? In this episode, I reflect back on getting my first "real" job after college and how it definitely was not what I thought it would be.SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link INTRO Music"Nice to You" found on YouTube music.

Social Media: A topic that has many different faces- too much to put into one episode. This is part 2 of 2 of my series about the media's influence on us. In this episode, let's look at how we get our news and other information from these platforms and also how our emotions can get triggered by just one picture or one sentence in a post.  Surely we would be able to tell the difference between factual information and someone's opinion right?SUPPORT:Support the channel hereInstagram link Intro music:"Nice to You" found on YouTube music

The media. We have all heard about how biased it is, but what does that actually mean? How did it come to this, and why does it seem to be dividing us? Is one outlet right and another one wrong? This episode is part 1 of a 2 part series about how media influences all of us. Part 1 is about the mainstream/corporate media. Lets see how money is used as the paintbrush to paint the picture of how any media outlet wants us to view the world.Links:Support the channel hereInstagram linkIntro music "Nice to You" found on youtube music.

You have heard many people talk about the importance of Integrity, but what does it actually mean? How does Integrity relate to what our problems are? Surely it's separate from the real world problems of money, relationships and a healthy work environment right? Well, lets dive into this and discover just how much this simple trait digs deep into our psyche. We will see just how much it affects everything we do, everyone we interact with, and even our own mental and physical well-being.  Intro music "Nice to You" found on youtube music.

This is part 3 of my 3-part introductory series. This is where I conclude my experiences growing up in the most confusing time for me (ages 13-25). Here I will reflect on my experiences in my early 20's, which will include meeting new people, finding out my path in life and seeking the guidance of a big brother figure.  Intro music called "Nice to You"- found on youtube music.ko-fi.com/bigbrothersguidetolife

This is part 2 of 3 in my introductory series. In this episode, I go back and explore my later teenage years. This episode focuses on my experiences in High School as well as my first experiences in the working world. By the end of this time, I started to realize that I was not ready for what lay ahead of me.Intro music "Nice to You" found on youtube music.www.ko-fi.com/bigbrothersguidetolife

Im going to begin this show by using the first 3 episodes to reflect on how I grew up during arguably the most confusing times in our life. This episode is part 1 of 3. In this episode I start with the end of elementary school and go through the Jr. High School years. Here I will reflect on my first experiences with hardship and with learning how to meet new people outside of my comfort zone. Intro music "Nice to You" found on youtube music.www.ko-fi.com/bigbrothersguidetolife 

Welcome to my podcast and thank you for taking time out of your day to listen! Rather than just jump straight into discussing the topics that are the focus of this show, I wanted to spend some time introducing myself to you. In this introductory episode, I briefly go over what I have been seeing in the world over the last 15 years that has changed the way we each interact with each other. I talk about how this was different that what I experienced and I also tell you why I felt it was important for me to speak up. Intro music "Nice to You" found on youtube music.