How Cool Is This?

How Cool Is This? takes a tiny question and keeps finding larger rooms inside it. Is fame cool? Are avocados cool? Is not caring cool, or is it just another way to care too much? Brian and Nick use those prompts as a doorway into short, quick-moving conversations about taste, acceptance, identity, and social belonging. The format can sound casual, but the show has a clean editorial engine: ask people to define cool, then listen for the values hiding underneath the answer. At South by Southwest, the guest list stretches across actors, founders, therapists, creative directors, startup connectors, and product builders. That range matters. Mike White talks about events, adrenaline, and putting humanity back into professional spaces. Haley Grace turns coolness toward courage, self-permission, and the life experience a performer brings to the work. Larry Combs links cool to groups, usefulness, and the difference between being awesome and being impressive. Nikita Fernandes gives the premise a social and therapeutic charge, framing cool as acceptance, in-groups, burnout, rest, and power. Harley Jeanette makes the conversation messier and funnier, especially when music, journalism, social habits, and friendship collide. Chris Ritter brings in creative work, brand values, conviction, and the danger of bland integrity language. Andrew Einaudi and Mike Brylawski ground the question in product design, authenticity, utility, and the hard work of making simple things. The show’s charm is that it does not force these conversations to become grand statements. It lets people contradict themselves. Cigarettes can look cool and still be uncool. Caring less can seem cool, but caring deeply may be the real signal. A window shade can be discussed beside guitars, wildfires, remotes, and purpose. That looseness gives the show its texture. How Cool Is This? works best for listeners who like culture talk that is funny on the surface and quietly diagnostic underneath.