The Better Half

0. The Pilot

• Bradley J. Halverson & Carly Corio

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Join Bradley and Carly as they embark on the ultimate passion project. In this episode, Bradley and Carly discuss their origin story, what they mean to each other, why they are starting a podcast, and what listeners can expect from future episodes. 


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Bradley:

Welcome to The Better Half. I am Bradley J. Halverson, and here with me, she's my better half. It's Carly Corio. Hi, Carly.

Carly:

Hi, Bradley. H

Bradley:

Carly, we have a podcast!

Carly:

We are doing it!

Bradley:

We're here live in the studio. I

Carly:

I know, I really love this studio. I'm really excited to be here and to be doing this. And I can't wait to tell everyone what we're doing and why.

Bradley:

Yeah, so let's... Let's break it all down. So we're starting a podcast, which we know that there are an infinite number of podcasts.

Carly:

So many.

Bradley:

They say it's the new lower back tattoo.

Carly:

Who said that?

Bradley:

I saw it as like a headline. It might've been like an Onion article or something. It was years ago where they were like, having a podcast is the new lower back tattoo. And I do wonder maybe like 20 years from now, will that be true? I

Carly:

I don't think people will regret podcasts as much as people regret lower back tattoos.

Bradley:

I would agree.

Carly:

a In my humble opinion.

Bradley:

Yeah, it's true. Although we are putting this onto the internet and there it'll stay forever. y

Carly:

You're right this could cancel us.

Bradley:

Yep.

Carly:

And that's a risk where I'm willing to take.

Bradley:

t So yeah, we both agreed we wanted to do sort of an introductory sort of episode to our podcast. Why are we doing this? Who are we to each other? Who is this for? A

Carly:

A little who, what, when, why.

Bradley:

Yeah. And so Carly and I, we met 10 years ago in grad school at Kansas State University. Go Cats or something

Carly:

s Yep, yep. You're right. good job

Bradley:

and it was basically a platonic love at first sight

Carly:

at first sight I walked into the room wearing a yellow central perk shirt and Brad said my god

Bradley:

yep I this is my social tactic in life I just need to find one person and and go all in

Carly:

but I wasn't your one person right away I don't think

Bradley:

no but um

Carly:

eventually I got there and I won I won

Bradley:

yes after considering all of my options and yeah you were You were definitely a front runner.

Carly:

There's a story you've said that we were in a room with friends and everyone was really laughing at me and you had one look and you're like, that's it.

Bradley:

That's

Carly:

it. That's who I want to be best friends with.

Bradley:

Yeah. I mean, really, that first day, because I mean, like, I had never set foot into Kansas. Like, this was going to be a brand new adventure. I knew I was going to be there for two years. Yeah, I had interviewed. I accepted this job, had seen the university already. But there was a lot of jitters those first few days of like, what is this really going to look like? It's Kansas, a place, you know. I never thought I would willfully go to

Carly:

them.

Bradley:

And for you, I know, like born and raised in Ohio, like choosing to come to Kansas. I'm still kind of...

Carly:

If it wasn't Ohio, it wasn't going to be. But I did it.

Bradley:

You did it. So I think as soon as I saw that you were wearing a Central Perks shirt, which Friends is a huge influence for me, has huge presence in my life for such a long time, it was sort of like, it was like a sign that I needed that like, okay, she's safe. She's going to be a safe one to be around. She gets it.

Carly:

And I'll say my first impression of you was... they sent out an email um with all of the new grads and i was looking and i immediately was like oh well i love any of these people yeah and i think you were like at the top because it was like bees and but you were one of the first people and i was like oh my god am i gonna do i am i gonna love him

Bradley:

yeah

Carly:

and so i was like okay i'm kind of excited to meet this brad guy and of course i like other people but

Bradley:

right

Carly:

um little did i know you were the love of my life

Bradley:

yeah but you're right just like instant instant connection instant chemistry and we really became a strong duo uh in kansas like i don't know how much i i influenced this but we really became a package deal and i made other people perceive us as such too

Carly:

and actually call us that package deal

Bradley:

it'd be one of those things where like in the group chat people would be like who wants to get lunch and i'd be sitting at home being like i don't feel like going to that and then as soon as carly would be like yeah i'll go suddenly i'll be like oh i'll go i love that idea

Carly:

oh lunch

Bradley:

People will be like, okay. And one of our favorite stories to tell is like, you know, went to grad school for higher education to work at a college university. And big in higher ed is icebreakers, team builders, so many different exercises and so many different meetings. And there was one in particular where we were forced to all sort of partner up, find a partner, and then sit back down to demonstrate visually that like you had found your partner.

Carly:

And this was after one year of grad school. So this was right in the middle of our two years. People knew us as a package deal.

Bradley:

Yeah, we're well established.

Carly:

Yeah. there was not Brad there was not Carly there was Brad and Carly always

Bradley:

so Carly and I are doing our due diligence of finding our own partner and everybody it's like that classic high school example where like everybody partners up real quick and they all sit down and suddenly Carly and I just look around and we're the only ones left standing and then the most unbelievable thing happened the entire room of our peers our supervisors our colleagues booed us

Carly:

actual boos no boo not you guys oh my god how could you How could you do this? How could you do this? And then we looked at each other across the room like, what did we do?

Bradley:

Right.

Carly:

Oh, sorry. Also, shame on them for no one picking us. You know? Right.

Bradley:

Yeah. Like, yeah, exactly. So I like thinking about that as a reflection of the fact that, yeah, we were, I think, so well established as a partnership that people wanted to tear us down.

Carly:

You could say a power couple.

Bradley:

Power couple. So, but yeah, we did our two years in Kansas and we felt that like, okay, like at this point, you know, you go through your job search you never know where you might end up but thankfully for us we just did a couple search. I just followed you where you went.

Carly:

In higher education housing where we were often times if you're a couple you know you have to live somewhere so you have to search with your partner and they call it a couple search and Brad and I both knew Bradley knew he didn't want to be without me. I would have very sadly gone without Bradley but I knew I wanted to come back to Ohio. I have deep roots here. My family's here. I knew this is where I was coming back to or at least as close as I could get

Bradley:

yeah I think for me it's a little easier because I am a military brat I have I don't necessarily feel at a strong pull or an affinity towards one place I've lived in so many different places which is why like going to Kansas was I think easier for me because I'm like I know what it's like to just live somewhere for two to four years so I think for me I had a lot more freedom to sort of follow you and I did try to interview at other schools you did but yeah you you had been accepted at your dream school the Ohio State University you're heading out there and thankfully Ohio just has a craptown A school. I did not end up at the Ohio State University. I did end up at the Kent State University. And now I live in Akron, Ohio. And Carly has since left the higher ed field. And you are here really on the east side of Cleveland. Yeah. And so really, I mean, for the past like seven years, eight years, we this is where we've been. In future episodes, you're going to hear us reference Kansas and Ohio. And you're going to wonder why we care so much about that. But so far, that is the setting of our entire journey is those those two places so

Carly:

well and in Kansas we hung out daily yeah like there weren't very many days that went by that we didn't see each other yeah and when we moved here I think we've done a really good job it's when what you said seven about seven years we've both lived in Ohio we never lived more than a couple hours apart and we've always done a good job of hanging out monthly

Bradley:

making the time making the commitment and it never really feels like work it really does feel natural and easy which is my favorite thing about you and about our friendship is that it's not riddled with insecurity I never feel paranoid about you or that one of us is greater than the other that we're truly like just equal partners and I love that and I firmly believe that like gay man straight woman dynamic is like one of the most powerful ones on the planet like even stronger than like parent and child siblings I think gay man straight woman is the power source of the universe

Carly:

absolutely absolutely this is the strongest I am is with you

Bradley:

Carly who loves her family is a strong child just readily agreed

Carly:

to that statement I'm just looking at Brad blinking and nodding an agreement. Yeah, I'm not questioning any of my other relationships that I've had in my life, just this one. But we are coming up on, I mean, in July, July 2nd will be our 10-year anniversary of meeting each other in person.

Bradley:

Yep, yep. So we met in 2015. At the time we are recording and launching this podcast, it is 2025. Bit of a bleak time. So we were really looking for a way to celebrate 10 years of just pure friendship. And we had ideas of maybe, you know, traveling abroad, going somewhere exciting. but ultimately like we wanted to do something that felt maybe more impactful and would um last a lot longer so here we are at a podcast and it's

Carly:

something we could afford more

Bradley:

yeah yes

Carly:

we were gonna do a world cruise but

Bradley:

please send us money listener so yeah so we uh we settled on a podcast and we also decided like this this podcast really is it's for us we know that there are again like an infinite number of podcasts out there covering every topic you can ever imagine even the one that we are doing I'm sure is covered by other gay male straight female

Carly:

pairs out there

Bradley:

so but Carly and I one of our connecting points is our love of movies our love of cinema our love of television shows we often in our weekly FaceTime chats we're just debriefing about each show that we are both watching and what's going on and how we went to so many movies in Kansas and we loved it because they you press a button and somebody just would deliver food to you you could have get a wristband get beer like we love

Carly:

we loved this place

Bradley:

loves that movie theater even though you know we have different favorite genres of films and you know Carly certainly has her taste in movies and I have a much better taste we love we love movies so really when it came to like what do we podcast about I've always had it in my head too and something that's been on my to-do list is like I have always just wanted to watch all the best picture winners and in fact you Carly like introduced really watching the Oscars and like caring about it the first Oscar I watched was with you when, you know, La La Land won and then they were like, actually, sorry, it's Moonlight.

Carly:

A true pop culture moment in pop culture and we were there for it. Yeah, exactly. Everyone always says, like, where were you when La La Land won and then unwon the Best Picture Oscar and I'll always say it was with Brad. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the Oscars have always been a huge thing since I was young. I can remember the first one I ever watched was with my mom and she was such a Tom Cruise fiend and we, like, rushed home to go watch them and I just remember since then I've always loved them. I've always loved movies in like in college my family would text me like happy Oscar Sunday and it was just like a big day so I had I don't watch them as religiously anymore just because life and stuff but love movies love just pop culture in general and that's always been a big part of our relationship is pop culture movies actors mostly TV is ours our thing but so it's cool to talk about something and have this to be just something we're doing together

Bradley:

yeah and I think you may not watch the Oscars or look forward to it as much I think I'm the opposite I think I'm like yeah I'm getting into each year I try to like anticipate which movie movie could be nominated could win I try to watch it before it actually wins just to I guess glow about it to my cat my cat

Carly:

haha I knew it

Bradley:

but I really do think it's fun and it's I've had the feeling twice now of seeing like a movie that I really loved and to like win with everything everywhere all at once and Oppenheimer was rooting for both of those and those were back to back and I'm like wow we're killing it in the Oscars so I'm getting really into it I really enjoy it so it's always been on my i just think it's fun that there's like a list of literally like 90 plus movies um that won best pictures and not i'm a little dubious that the best picture winner is necessarily the best picture of that year but i don't really know because i haven't seen half of them or really the majority of these movies so i just thought it would be fun and a lot of the podcasts i consume now are related to reality tv and like they go over each episode of survivor or big brother and like these recap in a podcast

Carly:

recaps are everything

Bradley:

i i was like if i'm gonna do this and commit to it i i personally need need to be excited about it so I think that's where we landed on watching every best picture winner recapping each one

Carly:

yeah and I think Brad came up with the idea and I mean it was like yes like that's something I could do would love to do and then our next thing was what do we call it

Bradley:

took us a very very long time

Carly:

a very long time but it's weird we kind of and I think this is what happens a lot it kind of ended up being what we originally like one of our first ideas yeah you know we and we went through I think we talked about like the award goes to like Oscars best or something and we quickly realized we would probably be sued by Oscars and Academy Awards of America or whatever so yeah we and then we kind of turned to let's make it something that relates to one of the best picture winners and we looked up quotes from a lot of them and we as in our friendship I think I've always said this because it's one of my and my family's favorite lines from Titanic is the better half when she's right Rose goes up and says to evil cow half of the half of the people on the ship are going to die and then And Cal, the villain, says, not the better half. And so we've always just kind of said not the better half to random stuff in our friendship. And we were like, what about the better half? And it just kind of like ended up working. And I think we really like it.

Bradley:

Yeah, yeah. Certainly we are referencing a very unlikable character. But yeah, it is a bit of an inside joke. But yeah, we can really kind of twist its meaning to whatever we need it to work.

Carly:

Like we are each other's better half.

Bradley:

Yep. And these movies were deemed, you know, in the better half of... movies that year so we make it work but yeah that that took us probably the longest i i figured out how to actually like do a podcast find the recording equipment that we need like how we actually do this and then carly's like let's get going i was like but we we need to know what

Carly:

we need a name we can't not call it what it is

Bradley:

we're we're very excited about this project and we imagine you know for the most part it's gonna be our friends and family who you know care enough who who know us and know our relationship and are big fans of us because i know we have fans

Carly:

we have them out there love you

Bradley:

love you thank you for being here

Carly:

send us money

Bradley:

our venmo

Carly:

is no that's not why we're doing this yeah

Bradley:

no we're this is truly a celebration of 10 years of friendship me personally i i need something to just brighten my day a little bit and hanging out with carly always does that so i'm doing this podcast genuinely this project has been like the most fun i've had in a long time yeah um it's been super cool to like learn the ins and outs of podcasting there's still like more to learn i think but it's been like and I'm even someone to it who's never like loved hearing the sound of my own voice but like it's just nobody is funnier to me than Carly and I and like listening back to our episodes like I just giggle to

Carly:

myself this is truly the better half of podcasting yeah 100% we do and I know it's probably gonna be the funniest to us too but that's totally fine but I do think we just like to spread joy and if this brings any joy to anybody at all that would be so awesome yeah but also if not we have these for us and I I agree. It's a very bright part in my weeks when we decide to do this. I love recording them. I love listening to them. Yeah, it's just a very cool thing that we're doing and I love it.

Bradley:

Yeah, yeah. We're not here to change lives. We're not here to even leave you better informed in some ways.

Carly:

We can't stress this enough. We don't care what you get from this.

Bradley:

It's for us. The target audience is the two people recording

Carly:

it. The two people that are here. We just hope some people enjoy it and listen and it brightens your week so little bit but if not we totally get it but it's also a fun thing

Bradley:

yeah i'm excited to see where it takes us you know you know we got 97 movies to get through um currently and of course every year a new one

Carly:

because the longer we put put off the movies the more movies we'll have

Bradley:

yep we have a lot of war movies we have a lot of musicals uh we have to get to best picture winners love being you know three hours plus and that's okay because i'm here with you

Carly:

yeah i wouldn't want to do with anyone else

Bradley:

oh no

Carly:

and even i mean at this rate we'll be doing it when we're 45. Yes,

Bradley:

which is a very long time away for both of us. Just to be clear.

Carly:

We are not close to 45 at all. But if we at this rate that we're doing them, we'll be here for a long time and so will the podcast.

Bradley:

Yeah, I can't wait to see what this looks like. If people do take anything away, I'm curious to know what that is and who knows, there could be even further opportunities that can be spun off from this idea. Brad

Carly:

and I have thoughts and feelings on everything so the more you want, the more we'll give

Bradley:

yeah that's what's so great there's like literally so many movies we could we could do them all yep tackle this list and then we'll go on to like bring it on and just the first one

Carly:

that well we had talked we had talked about doing the the razzies which are like the worst movies of the year and do it going through and doing all those but i don't know we'll see yeah we'll see what the fans want

Bradley:

so yeah um every episode you can you can expect to hear us going in depth superficially with high level thought over one best picture winner we are not going in chronological order we are starting with the very first best picture winner winner just to really kick us off and then from there we are going to be jumping through time tackling these one at a time so

Carly:

and at the end of each episode we will tell you what movie we're doing next episode so if you want to follow along with us you can watch the movie before we do it or if you don't want to watch movies we'll fill you in on everything you need to know and more

Bradley:

yeah the the first half of the podcast episode the better half is me recapping the movie you'll hear my voice a lot and then the second half of the podcast we go in in depth as to what happened at that year's Academy Awards. Did anybody get slapped on stage? You know, did anybody have their Oscar rescinded after winning it? And then I like to do a little bit of a director spotlight. We answer important questions whether or not this movie is for the gays or for the girls. And then Carly fills us in on our leading stars and any juicy gossip.

Carly:

They're just like us. Sometimes.

Bradley:

So that is basically the structure of our podcast.

Carly:

There will be spoilers too. We are not going to hold back. If there's a movie if you still haven't watched Titanic. You should watch it because we're going to spoil it. We're going to tell you what happens. Yeah. Same with every other movie we're going to talk about. So don't come here wanting a spoiler-free zone. This is not it.

Bradley:

Yeah. Go watch the movie if you're that invested to listen to an hour-long podcast about it. Right. But yeah, I think that's a lot of it about us and about this crazy adventure that we're on.

Carly:

Yeah. We're excited. We hope you're excited. And if you're not, we don't care.

Bradley:

We don't care, but please pay us.

Carly:

Please listen And yeah, if you have thoughts, if you're listening and you have thoughts, you probably have one of our numbers. So text us, follow us on Instagram and comment below and subscribe. It'll only help us get more money out of this.

Bradley:

And at the time you're listening to this, episode one should already be out and available to you. So

Carly:

go listen to Wings.

Bradley:

Go listen right now. All right. Anything else, Carly?

Carly:

I don't think so. I love you.

Bradley:

Yeah, love you too. And love you, audience, especially if you pay

Carly:

us.

Bradley:

Bye. Bye.

People on this episode

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Bradley J. Halverson

Co-host
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Carly Corio

Co-host