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  • Tom: Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory.

  • Youre here because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless but you know

  • that having potential is not actually the same as actually doing something with it.

  • Our goal with the show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help

  • you actually make good on your potential.

  • All right.

  • I’m really excited about today’s guest because he thinks about shit deeply.

  • He crawls inside important ideas like an intellectual archeologist and roots around grubby fists

  • and all until he finds the narrative thread that makes those ideas accessible in an era

  • where people would tell you the only thing that matters is entertaining people.

  • He’s built a widely successful YouTube channel with roughly one million subscribers that

  • proves there’s still a huge market for depth.

  • His powerful essays on an absurdly wide range of topics from Batman and Rihanna to politics

  • and moral issues provide viewers with kinds of insights that can truly shape one’s worldview.

  • Recognizing his unique gifts, MSNBC snatched him up to produce for them when he was still

  • in his early twenties and the Discovery Channel tapped him to write and host a show on the

  • digital network Seeker Daily where he produced a hoard of breakout content.

  • He is, in my opinion, everything that is good about the internet and he’s proving that

  • creators from anywhere armed with a simple camera and a willingness to work their asses

  • off cannot only make a living as content producers but they can alter the very direction and

  • flow of cultural discourse.

  • Please help me in welcoming the man whose entirely self-made treasure trove of content

  • has been viewed more than 48 million times by people all over the world, the creator

  • of the smash hit YouTube series, the Nerdwriter, Evan Puschak.

  • Evan: What an introduction.

  • Tom: Dude.

  • Evan: I want that on my tombstone.

  • [crosstalk 00:02:04] I would love it.

  • Tom: Cool, man.

  • Well honestly, that, the intro was sort of the hurdle for bringing people on the show.

  • It’s like, "Am I willing to do enough research about the person to be able to write that?"

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: Am I going to get something out of it?

  • The researching, it was really awesome so Jason Silva put you on my radar

  • Evan: Jason’s a great guy.

  • Tom: … and I’m eternally indebted to him for that and not being super familiar with

  • the essay format on YouTube is really, really interesting to see the diverse range of topics

  • that you cover which, of course, then led me to try to find out like what is the mission

  • statement that you guys have.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: The concept of cultivating worldview, what exactly does that mean?

  • Evan: Well, it was something that launched the whole idea of the show and that was that

  • when I had graduated College of Boston, I had this very strange frustrating feeling

  • that I knew lot of things but I just didn’t know how they all connected.

  • I felt like I was constantly consuming contradictory information.

  • It just really just bothered me because I felt that I didn’t have a foothold on my

  • own knowledge.

  • Worldview for me was a kind of organizing principle of how do all the things that you

  • know connect.

  • How do you build a worldview in which you are building bridges between the different

  • spheres of things that youre learning?

  • Cultivating is what you know and how those things connect and that’s what the show

  • is and that … I want to show people how I built my worldview not so that they can

  • adopt it but so that there can be a template for doing it yourself.

  • Tom: I love though that you've said and this is actually interesting, I want to go into

  • this, but you said that, "It’s okay if you want to adopt my worldview."

  • I think that’s how it starts.

  • You steal somebody else’s.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • That’s how I did it.

  • Tom: Walk me through that because I think seeing the way that you do it is maybe it’s

  • certainly as important, maybe even more important than the actual worldview that you present

  • which is very coherent and very compelling.

  • How does that process look if it starts with stealing somebody else’s while you get the

  • momentum going like how do you progress beyond that?

  • Evan: Well, you have to learn how to think.

  • I mean that’s the first part of it.

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson who’s one of the early thinkers that really blew my mind, said that

  • The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than

  • he is.

  • That is the perfect way to think about being young and trying to build a mindset for yourself

  • is that when you read the great philosophers or just the great thinkers about anything,

  • what is so enlightening about them is that they knew how to say these things.

  • They articulated them in a certain way that when I read ... I mean a lot of Emerson, almost

  • all Emerson, when I’m reading it was like this series of revelations where it was like,

  • "Yes.

  • That is what I was thinking about this.

  • This is what I want to say about it."

  • so Emerson is right.

  • He was more me than I was at that moment because he was articulating those things.

  • You start off by adopting the beautiful thinkers and beautiful articulators of the past.

  • Then by just applying a bit of critical thinking, youre going to carve out your own statue.

  • Youre going to carve the way the things that don’t mesh with you and youre going

  • to add on the things that do.

  • I mean that’s a long process of cultivating something that you can have and use to judge

  • all incoming information against.

  • Tom: It’s interesting because without that eloquence was how I put things together in

  • my own head people often talk about thinking unique thoughts, right, and that’s a big

  • obsession.

  • It’s not a unique thought, whatever, and I thought, "Wow.

  • I’m not sure that I ever really have unique thoughts."

  • What I’m trying to do is take in enough information that I can make unique connections,

  • right?

  • What youre saying paring away the sculpture until only you remain.

  • It's actually pretty beautiful.

  • Was it Michelangelo that said that?

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: I carve away the pieces that aren’t David or whatever until its form is finally

  • revealed.

  • Actually, it’s really interesting way of thinking about it.

  • Why do you think cultivating a worldview is useful?

  • Evan: I think it’s useful because it provides the foundation through what you can act.

  • It’s hard to act in the world in an intentional way without having a base or a foundation

  • in which you feel stable and youre comfortable with.

  • That was the anxiety, the cosmic anxiety, I was feeling at that time when I was a little

  • bit younger was that I don’t know how to move forward here because I don’t feel like

  • I’m stepping on something that's, "Oh, I feel like I’m stepping on so many clouds."

  • It was disorienting.

  • When you start figuring out what your worldview is which is just another way to say, "When

  • you start to figure out what your morals are and what your philosophy is as an individual

  • person but also how that relates to the world, the way forward looks a lot more clear because

  • it almost becomes inevitable what you have to do."

  • When you make a moral decision, youre making a decision based on how you should act.

  • Once you get a hand on it, I think the world becomes a little bit less scary and your actions

  • in it become a little bit more certain and intentional.

  • I think that’s what were all trying to do.

  • At least, that’s what I was trying to do back then.

  • Tom: Really great answer.

  • I love that metaphor that youre using of it feeling like youre stepping on clouds

  • that squishy marshy like, "Am I about to fall through," like ...

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Exactly.

  • Tom: ... [crosstalk 00:08:08] very much I had in my early twenties for sure.

  • Do you know Pete Carroll?

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: I’m not a big sports guy but he happened to be the coach of USC and then the Seahawks

  • and beingEvan: Of course.

  • Tom: … from Tacoma and having gone to USC made my radar.

  • Then do you read Angela Duckworth’s book Grit?

  • Evan: I haven't.

  • Tom: He comes up in that and she really lays out his philosophy.

  • He was the coach of New England, the New England Patriots, and didn’t do well, ends up being

  • fired, goes to college football, ends up crushing it at USC and then going on to the Seahawks

  • and winning Super Bowl.

  • People ask him like, "What the hell, like how did you go from getting fired to having

  • such a crazy career in college and then back to the NFL’s winning coach?"

  • He said, "Somebody told me you lack a life philosophy."

  • He said it was really realizing that I needed a life philosophy, I needed that base that

  • youre talking about to have the firmness under my feet, the way forward as you said

  • like the way forward becomes really clear.

  • I think when people are really thinking about likeso the question that I asked, "More

  • than anything, how do I find my passion," which actually maybe a side step to what youre

  • really doing with your show.

  • Evan: That’s a crazy silly question, I think.

  • I mean that’s the question I hear a lot too.

  • I think that’s something that were inculcated to think about when were young and in college

  • or in the schooling system, how do you find your passion.

  • It’s something that youre going to find under a rock which is not the way.

  • I think the great tragedy of modern society is that there is no thing for every individual

  • person.

  • You have aptitudes like if you can draw, then you have aptitude for that.

  • There are certain things biologically that youre going to be given and youll be

  • lucky to have them.

  • In terms of finding your passion, everything in modern society because it does not push

  • you in certain direction, that’s what being in a free society means is a choice.

  • Because it’s a choice, it’s a tragedy.

  • It’s so arbitrary.

  • Tom: Why do you say it’s a tragedy?

  • I don’t understand.

  • Evan: It’s a tragedy because in a society where you're pushed to do a certain thing,

  • if youre … 300 years ago, if your father was a cobbler, youre going to be a cobbler.

  • You didn’t have many prospects outside of that but you didn’t have a chance to fail

  • at choosing something in your life.

  • Youre going to be a cobbler.

  • Your identity was stable from the start.

  • For us in this society where we are not only not told what to be but were not told how

  • to learn what to be which is to say were not told how to learn what your passion is,

  • it only comes down to a choice and the choice is arbitrary.

  • I think people and myself, there’s a difficulty in overcoming that fact because we want to

  • believe that the message we're given is that there’s a passion out there for you that

  • you have to discover and wait for it toTom: Right.

  • Like a soul mate.

  • Evan: … reveal itself like a soul mate.

  • Yeah.

  • The real truth is that you just have to choose.

  • Choosing is when it’s not based on anything is scary.

  • Tom: Let me follow that logic then.

  • Get worldview, realize then, based on worldview, that youre going to pick a path leans to

  • passion?

  • Evan: Yeah, I mean passion will come, I think.

  • When you do something that you develop an expertise in

  • Tom: Do you read Cal Newport’s book, " So Good They Can't Ignore You?"]

  • Evan: I haven’t, no.

  • Tom: I think judging by the way youre saying now, youre going to love it.

  • He goes to that thing where gaining mastery is a fundamental part of passion and if you

  • don’t get mastery, good luck.

  • Evan: Well, that’s the wholeJason Silva who we both know and who is so intense and

  • so awesome, he loves talking about flow.

  • I love it as an idea.

  • When you pick a lane for yourself, you develop a mastery, you feel great about it.

  • If you have to you, you course correct.

  • I don’t think that it reveals itself to you, like something that was waiting for you

  • to find it.

  • That’s where people go wrong.

  • Tom: Youve talked really powerfully about your own course corrections so really cool,

  • by the way.

  • For those of you who don’t know, he literallyhe creates a video for this thing called

  • the K.I.N.D.

  • Project making desks for these underprivileged kids in Africa.

  • The video is just a smash hit, starts getting a lot of attention, gets on the news, goes

  • to MSNBC literally live in the broadcast.

  • The woman says, "Hey, somebody here should basically hire you."

  • [inaudible 00:12:46] which is incredible.

  • Then you realize, not loving this.

  • Evan: No, I didn’t.

  • MSNBC was great to me so I have to say that first and individual people there are extraordinarily

  • smart and very cool and all my bosses were great.

  • That experience was crazy because I waswork as a telemarketer selling car warranties just

  • absolutely hating my life and I made this one video and Lawrence O’Donnell, the host

  • of The Last Word, which is the 10 o’clock show, saw it, had me on the air.

  • Then the next day, he was in Burbank and asked me out for lunch and at that lunch, asked

  • me if I wanted to move to New York to work for them.

  • Tom: Wow.

  • Evan: He said, “Would you like to do … ?” I don’t know if he had the authority to do

  • it.

  • I don’t think he did.

  • They spent like five months trying to build the job for me there which I eventually took.

  • When I got there, I thought, "Maybe I’ll work my way through the ranks here and find

  • that this is what I love."

  • Then within I'd say a few months, it started to rub me the wrong way.

  • Tom: Well, so before we just gloss on, walk me through the mindset.

  • Youre there.

  • You're not loving it.

  • A voice in your head is very much saying this isn’t for me.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: Most people say that for years, years and years and wouldn’t leave until some

  • kicks them out.

  • Evan: Well, I did.

  • Here’s the thing is that once I checked out of being a good employee at the company

  • which is horrible to say, but that’s the truth, is I would spend hours in an office

  • hidden way working on the Nerdwriter doing work.

  • Now, I don’t suggest that to people because you want to be a good employee but I had a

  • lot of free time there and so I was thinking I have to double down on my homework.

  • I just started working on that show all the time and then I quit when I thought that MSNBC

  • might be my path.

  • I left the Nerdwriter for a few months.

  • Then when it was not so great, I started up again and I was like, "Okay, I renewed my

  • passion for this."

  • I worked and worked and worked and then someone at Discovery saw the video.

  • They just said, “Were launching a new show called Seeker Daily and would you be

  • interested in writing the show with a cohost and hosting it and launching it for us?”

  • I heard that and I felt the same way.

  • I felt like this could be my path.

  • We talked about sort of how does the show scale, I thought, "Well, maybe this is the

  • way.

  • Maybe I leave the Nerdwriter and work for Discovery where I’m like the higher leadership

  • position.

  • My editorial influence is greater.

  • Maybe, I’m the voice behind the show and I make it exactly like what I want with the

  • resources of Discovery.

  • Another learning experience that wasn’t …

  • Tom: Not quite how it went.

  • Evan: As soon as I checked out of there and started phoning it in, I started paying a

  • lot more attention to the Nerdwriter and what I really wanted to do.

  • Tom: It’s such a fascinating thing and so were sort of on opposite sides of the room,

  • right?

  • Evan: Sure.

  • Tom: I’m an employer so I know what it’s like to have a large group of people and have

  • this huge enterprise that can only work if you can find people that can feel their most

  • alive, right?

  • If there’s one thing I promise you is that it works for some people and other people

  • fucking hate it, right.

  • Youre constantly like, “Jesus, what do I do?” because you want people to be alive

  • and you wanted to be the thing that they want to do.

  • Like when I was told people as be here for the most selfish reason ever, like, don’t

  • come to work for me, right?

  • I'll think about me, I’ll obsessed about me, what I’m trying to do I’ll make sure

  • the company is fine.

  • You come for you because when somebody is in the room grinding it out because their

  • passion happens to align to what the show needs to be successful, unbelievably amazing

  • things happen.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: Were talking before we came on camera about boil things down to the physics, right?

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: The physics of being human is when you feel connected to something, when you feel

  • passionate, it makes you feel alive.

  • You want to do it, right?

  • Youre moving towards something.

  • No one has to tell you to do it.

  • There’s like this pull through demand ofThis is my callingor whatever.

  • Evan: Absolutely.

  • Tom: It’s fucking tricky.

  • It’s tricky on both sides of the fence.

  • Evan: It’s tricky because people like you say some aren't built for that and for me,

  • I studied film and narrative filmmaking and I thought I was going to be a future film

  • director.

  • One of the huge things about filmmaking that makes it so great that I hated was that it

  • was collaborative.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Evan: Okay?

  • Tom: Know thyself.

  • Evan: Know thyself, all right?

  • When I used to direct short films, I used to give the speech to my whole crew and I

  • was always the director I say, “Listen, I’m going to be a benevolent dictator here,

  • right?

  • I’d love what you say but I want to make it very clear that I have the final say on

  • everything and this is my vision that were all helping to realize my vision.

  • If that’s not for you, fine like we can get on to another film.”

  • I’m such a protective perfectionist about my own work that I work best when I am by

  • myself doing a project.

  • That’s why I quit filmmaking and started writing fiction because you do that by yourself.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Evan: Now, the Nerdwriter is a similar thing which is there’s nobody on the team.

  • It’s just me.

  • Collaborative in my life with my, not in my work.

  • In my life, I let people in.

  • There’s a give and take.

  • I love people.

  • They love me back.

  • It’s a very, very integrated thing.

  • There’s people out there who youre never going to convince to be a part of that larger

  • thing, I think, and that must be the most difficult thing as a manager or a leader of

  • a company because people need jobs too.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Evan: What are they going to do?

  • Tom: Yeah, I mean that’s really fascinating.

  • It’s like parents, when they think about, "Okay, the techniques I used on Child A worked

  • but the techniques I used on Child A don’t work on Child B, so now what?"

  • That was actually interesting like my sister and I grew up in the same household different

  • outcome.

  • We have the same parents but some things work out really well for me and some things work

  • really well for her but there wasn’t like a lot of crossovers.

  • That’s what it’s like running a company is your natural techniques and I think that

  • the goal of a leader has to be to transcend your natural techniques to find something

  • like Pete Carroll says a life philosophy that allows you to figure the stuff out and to

  • tie back to what were talking about with cultivating a worldview.

  • You need to filter, right?

  • You need to know what to say yes to and what to say no to.

  • Whether that as a leader, whether that as an employee, whether that as an artist or

  • just somebody trying to make it through life figuring out what decisions to make, right,

  • from a moral standpointEvan: Of course.

  • Tom: You need to have that filter.

  • It is really difficult to when you start talking about a mass of people and this is what another

  • thing were talking about off cameras, so I’m looking at the Nerdwriter and I’m

  • thinking, “Fuck, like this content is on another planet like it's so good!”

  • I can just sit there and watch.

  • The real question that you should be asking is why do I think it’s good because it’s

  • going to be very different for other people.

  • For me, usability is all that matters.

  • I’m watching the content and I’m saying, “Shit, like I can really use this piece

  • of information,” like you totally fucked up my life.

  • You changed it in the most beautiful and amazing way with the Hemingway quote and the notion

  • of, was it [Kentagi 00:20:38]?

  • Evan: Kintsugi.

  • Tom: Kintsugi, thank you.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: I’m watching that episode about Kintsugi.

  • The record player of my life skips grinds to a halt and I’m like, “This is unbelievable.”

  • The Hemingway quote that you threw in which I had never heard immediately put it on my

  • list of like life-changing quotes is life breaks everyone and some were stronger in

  • the places that broke.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: I wasEvan: Great quote.

  • Tom: ... “Whoa.”

  • Evan: Great writer.

  • Tom: Walk us through that concept that art form, what it is, how it’s impacted you.

  • Evan: It’s so interesting because that’s a video that I’ve probably got the most

  • personal feedback about.

  • The concept is simple.

  • In Japanese culture, they have a craft art called Kintsugi where when ceramics are broken,

  • they don’t throw them out and buy another or create another one from scratch.

  • They put the ceramic piece back together.

  • The way that heats them is with gold, a kind of gold, adhesive gold sparkly ...

  • Tom: Seems like a mortar.

  • Evan: … material.

  • Yeah, it’s beautiful.

  • You get these pieces that are broken but at the cracks are more beautiful.

  • I thought that is such a perfect metaphor.

  • It’s not my metaphor because it goes into the Buddhist concept of wabi-sabi.

  • The idea that we are going to go through trauma and it’s particularly relevant for right

  • now in the post-election period, we are going through trauma.

  • Trauma is an opportunity to change and to reorganize the elements that made up your

  • life.

  • I gave a speech in Singapore a couple of weeks ago and when I spoke about was that when a

  • person’s mind is traumatized, it’s like the story they were telling themselves has

  • ceased to be persuasive.

  • When the story stops being persuasive, it is disorienting and that I think is what trauma

  • is, the period between when your old story breaks apart because of this last straw on

  • the camel’s back thing and were going to continue to tell ourselves the old stories

  • until it’s so glaringly contradictory that it doesn’t hold up.

  • Trauma is the period between when that breaks down and when youfrom the pieces of the

  • old, build something new and well never glorify the trauma itself but recognize that

  • in that period, you have a very unique opportunity that will only come along a handful of times

  • in your life to reorganize the story that you tell about yourself to yourself.

  • That for me is what Kintsugi is all about.

  • I think a lot of people just really connected with that idea.

  • Tom: For sure.

  • The idea behind my entire life and certainly the idea behind the show is that humans are

  • constructed, right, which is why I think Jason knew I would resonate with you the concept

  • of cultivating which is that you say cultivating worldview, right?

  • There’s something so active in cultivation.

  • It’s choices and youre talking about the narrative and I’ve never heard anybody

  • say before the trauma is the moment where your old story breaks down, you can’t cling

  • to it anymore and you have yet to build the new one through Kintsugi.

  • That’s fucking beautiful, by the way, and thank you for that.

  • Evan: Thank you.

  • Tom: I’m a big believer that you have to open yourself up to being changed.

  • That really changed me.

  • That’s really fucking cool.

  • Thinking about this notion, I’m going to take an active role in rebuilding myself and

  • doing it in a way that becomes an art form like that’s super, super interesting to

  • me, so I’m going to wrap up really fast why I brought it up but I want to come back

  • to it.

  • Evan: Sure.

  • Tom: I brought it up just to talk about scalability.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: Youre having this big impact on people which I think is important and I think were

  • living through a revolution right now.

  • The revolution is that the medium is changing so much that there are no gatekeepers anymore.

  • The only gatekeeper is your ability to get my attention.

  • That’s like when people really understand what that means ...

  • Evan: Huge, huge opportunity that should not be glossed over, yeah.

  • Tom: Yeah, it’s a paradox.

  • Evan: For creators.

  • Tom: Youve risen up and there are other people like you.

  • Evan: Like I was born in this era ... Tom: Yeah, for sure.

  • Evan: ... for those reasons.

  • Tom: For sure.

  • Then, the next question becomes so how do you scale it?

  • I asked that from the position of somebody who wants you to touch more lives.

  • Evan: You know scaling for me is the thing that I’m constantly thinking about in the

  • business.

  • I mean 90% of my mental energy is going towards creating the videos which is all I really

  • want to do.

  • Now that the business side has become

  • Tom: Is that really all you want to do?

  • You just want to create the videos.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • I mean I’m a film director at heart, like, I’m a creator at heart.

  • The impact that comes out of it is so very important to me.

  • I try to engage with it as much as I can.

  • The business side of it particularly, it makes me cringe a little bit.

  • That said, I do think about scaling the show and what’s the way forward because I want

  • to make the most impact for work.

  • When I think of scaling, I think of it that way.

  • Tom: Yeah.

  • It’s interesting because I think that

  • I look at the world in, let's say, if we were Venn diagrams like there’s 90% overlap.

  • I was watching your content and I’m like, “Yeah, I find this is interesting too like

  • it’s amazing like this guy’s DJ-ing my brain.”

  • It was like so much fun.

  • There’s like this area that doesn’t overlap where we see things differently.

  • When I look at anything, right, the first question I’m asking is scalability.

  • Now, that speaks to my personality.

  • It speaks to my worldview, not that objectively it’s right.

  • When I think about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, right, you had one guy, all he cared about

  • was scale.

  • You have the other guy who’s so enjoyed the art of being on the motherboard and wiring

  • things together that he actually asked to be a mid level engineer.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: You own the company and you

  • Evan: He’s a fascinating guy.

  • Tom: …even request.

  • Evan: Even now like the things he sort of toils away with ... toils away are small but

  • you know it’s amazing.

  • Tom: Were living through a time right now, the entrepreneurial generation

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: Now, to really be an entrepreneurial, to be the lead, to be the alpha in an entrepreneurial

  • organization, it takes a certain personality type and not everybody that is going to enjoy

  • it.

  • I think a lot about my wife and I…

  • My wife and I co-founded the company.

  • She puts this whole show together.

  • Literally, I am the talent.

  • I am not just saying that, like, I’m the talent of her show, but the show what you

  • see like that’s her and the team.

  • I think about her personality type.

  • She has no interest in leading, right.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: She wants to follow my vision

  • Evan: …by the way.

  • Tom: Interesting.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: I mean it speaks to your interest in Wozniak and just the desire to really create.

  • The funny thing is I went to film school.

  • I used to want to be on set.

  • I wanted to direct.

  • Then one day, I think it was my wife had asked me like, “Would you ever go back to directing?”

  • I saidNo, I could never do that.”

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: The reason that I couldn’t go back to directing is for me, for my personality

  • type.

  • Once you taste scale, there’s no going back.

  • As youre like talking about Nerdwriter and wanting it to be less content and more

  • impact, I’m like, “Fuck you, less content and more impact, that’s awesome.

  • So I'm going to put Evan on thatand then I’m going to have somebody over here doing

  • the daily content because we [inaudible 00:28:31].

  • It’s changing, bro.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: You got to stay on that.

  • Evan: YouTube is changing.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Evan: I hear that and I might need to partner with a you-type figure in the future to do

  • this.

  • Seinfeld always says like the relationship with the show was so white hot that he knew

  • he had to stop after nine seasons because were going to offer him like $100 million

  • for Season 10 and he just knew that a little bit of too much can ruin the whole experience.

  • I want to make sure that I’m doing things right but I’m also not turning away from

  • the opportunities that are coming at me.

  • Tom: Sure.

  • There are a lot of self-awareness.

  • If you had to teach somebody how to be self-aware like that, what are the steps?

  • Evan: Oh, god.

  • That’s a good question.

  • You have to be brutally honest with yourself, I guess.

  • I mean put yourself around the people who will support the journey that youre on.

  • For me, introspection is a one great source of the content that I make.

  • Tom: Do you have a strategy for introspection?

  • Do you put headphones on and listen to the sound of the rain?

  • Are there things that you do to facilitate that or…?

  • Evan: No, I hate the rain.

  • No.

  • Love the rain.

  • I don’t.

  • For me, there’s always a conversation happening

  • Tom: In your head?

  • Evan: ... in my mind so it’s like my personal belief is that the mind is made up of language.

  • I am constantlyyou are constantly telling a story to yourself about yourself and about

  • the world.

  • It’s got these two facets.

  • If you just take the time, you can listen to it and make it explicit.

  • Best way to do is to write it down because you don’t think without writing.

  • There’s no thought without languages.

  • You have to make it explicit.

  • When I was just graduated school, one of the first things I did is I read all the philosophy

  • that there was.

  • I started from the pre-Socratics and I went all the way down to the 20th century and try

  • to just get all the big benchmarks and read all the books.

  • Tom: With a particular bend for Albert Camus, if I remember correctly.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • He was definitely a watershed moment.

  • After that, I wrote this thing called Discourse on Truth.

  • I had it bound up at Kinko’s and it looked really nice.

  • It had the perfect font and I got a A4 paper and I made like 100 copies of it.

  • This was like very highfalutin kind of very pretentious leeward thing that went through

  • truth and ways to know it and things like that.

  • I gave it till all my family and my friends who are like, "What is this thing?

  • You know, this looks like you just, you know …"

  • It was so important for me.

  • When you learn how to listen to your own story and write it down, I think self-awareness

  • is like an inevitable byproduct of that because you get addicted to knowing what you think

  • about something.

  • I think there's this weird state we all have operating on old memories and we're operating

  • on things that we read but we haven't really retained.

  • As soon as you start transferring that whole messy cloudy misty area of knowledge into

  • explicit knowledge, you're going to start seeing a lot more in yourself and what's out

  • there.

  • My advice is to write, just write and the rest will follow.

  • Tom: The story that you were telling about the journal that you wrote is, what was it,

  • the Truth what?

  • Evan: Discourse on Truth.

  • Tom: The Discourse on Truth.

  • Evan: At all [inaudible 00:32:22] bookstores.

  • Tom: It's actually pretty interesting in that it made me think about how people because

  • I know what your family was thinking when they read it like, "Oh God," right, like it's

  • pretentious [crosstalk 00:32:35] … Evan: He graduated from school.

  • He doesn't have a job but he's going to do this.

  • Tom: Right.

  • Here's the thing like when people see little kids learn how to walk and like they stopped

  • peeing in the bed, "Oh my God," right, they're ecstatic.

  • They're over the moon.

  • We should be thinking the same thing about intellectual development, right, because maybe

  • that was like a little cringe-worthy or whatever.

  • Evan: Certainly.

  • Tom: What it's actually really important exploration.

  • I went through a similarly cringe-worthy thing in my late teens in high school when I got

  • really into Eastern Philosophy.

  • I had the [crosstalk 00:33:11] ... for everything, right?

  • Be like water, my friend.

  • You know I mean that kind of shit.

  • I remember like I was convinced I was going to go to college, get my degree is like the

  • safety net but then I was moving to the wilderness in China.

  • Evan: Dude, I am so with you.

  • I have the same thing.

  • Tom: My man.

  • Evan: I was like ... I got to this point where I was like, "Oh I have to work my body out

  • like I have to be a farmer."

  • I went to work on a farm for like a few months because I was like [crosstalk 00:33:39] this

  • is the inevitable last step of this journey that I have to go and so I have to do it.

  • Then, I thought, "I'll probably have to just be a monk for 10 years," and I was like considering

  • the ways of telling my family that I wasn't going to be able to contact them because in

  • monk school, you can't contact them.

  • Tom: Monk school.

  • I like that.

  • That is badass.

  • Tell me about the farm.

  • Evan: I went to Normandy in France through a program called [Help X 00:34:00] which is

  • like you live in someone's farm and they feed you and work for them.

  • Eventually, I got over that.

  • Thank God.

  • [crosstalk 00:34:08] Tom: I'm going to guess you actually learned

  • some lessons from that kind of hard-ass work?

  • Evan: Yeah, you do.

  • You learned to persevere through pain because working a whole day moving branches or moving

  • heavy pieces of wood it's so exhausting.

  • People who do that for their whole lives, I only did it for a very short period of time

  • but it was very illuminating in that way is that you just have to keep working at it and

  • eventually, you'll finish.

  • That was a direct outgrowth of the philosophy thing that we were talking about.

  • It was like, "This is the path I have to take."

  • Tom: Yeah.

  • That's really fascinating.

  • That's how I think of the gym by the way.

  • For me, it's like [crosstalk 00:34:58] ... Evan: I haven't mastered that yet.

  • Tom: When I was a kid, I always have a job during the summers and because I was so insanely

  • lazy, I would take whatever job my parents will get from me because I don't want to go

  • apply for a job so that meant it was always manual labor.

  • I worked in a paint factory.

  • I did a paint store.

  • I worked doing literal like hard labor.

  • There was one summer where all I was doing was odd jobs so I spent some time smashing

  • concrete with a pickaxe and like just doing all the stuff that is your mind literally

  • is if you have a certain personality type and I think that we share that like your mind

  • is just racing, "Get me out of here," or you go into a Zen state, right.

  • You find this way to separate your mind from your body so that your brain can like go explore,

  • go daydream, be somewhere else, be creative while your body is set to this task.

  • It's actually one of those periods where your mind has a lot of really productive thinking

  • because you so want to escape the reality of what you're doing at that moment that the

  • only place to go is in.

  • I actually found ... I loved you explanation about write it down that makes it concrete

  • and it takes this sort of a [inaudible 00:36:10] mush and turns it into something very real.

  • I felt that way about having manual labor to do because my body was taken care of.

  • There were no distractions.

  • Oddly enough, there were no distractions from my physicality.

  • I was totally engrossed in this thing, right.

  • This amount of cement has to be broken apart.

  • This vat of paint has to be cleaned out, like whatever it is, you set your body to that

  • task.

  • You read Kurt Vonnegut?

  • Evan: Of course.

  • Tom: All right.

  • I forget which story it's in but there's one where the people can move their body in the

  • direction and then send their mind in the opposite direction, they can actually exit

  • their body.

  • That felt so true to me because that was what manual labor was for me.

  • I would send my body over here to do something and then I would turn my mind to this way

  • to deal with some intellectual pursuit, some other film idea or who knows?

  • In doing that, really learning to go deep.

  • That's why I was asking you like what your process is that one of the first questions

  • I wrote down that I wanted to ask you was, what is your process?

  • You've done such a good job of taking a subject, like Rihanna's Work, work, work, work song.

  • Like you've got a whole fucking like show about that song.

  • Evan: I love that video.

  • I love the [crosstalk 00:37:19] … Tom: How is this happening?

  • He made a show.

  • He spent a week on this song and it's really interesting.

  • Evan: Hardcore week.

  • Tom: How did you train yourself to go deep like that?

  • Evan: I think when you write a lot, it makes it a little bit easier to compose a story.

  • That part of my brain is ... and mind is still is primed for taking information and composing

  • it into something that is persuasive and like a story.

  • Every week or whenever I come up with something for the Nerdwriter, It's usually a combination

  • of some kind of introspective thought process that I want to talk about and something from

  • the world that I've consumed that I think is interesting and like talk about and it

  • was like, "Oh, there's a, there's a good interaction between those two.

  • Let's see what I can do there."

  • Once I have that, which is the hardest part, because ideas are just a bitch.

  • Then, I researched very intensely for a week or two weeks

  • Tom: Do you give intention to your subconscious at all?

  • Forget who it was that said it.

  • Maybe Einstein.

  • Oh god, it was one of the like big scientists who said, "Never go to sleep without making

  • a demand of your subconscious."

  • I thought, "Wow.

  • Well, this guy has accomplished a lot in his life so I'm going to take that pretty seriously."

  • Evan: Well, I mean there is a truth in that your mind works out problems when you sleep.

  • Yeah.

  • A lot of times, I will be totally stuck on something and go to sleep and wake up the

  • next morning finding that I've solved that persuasive problem whatever it is.

  • Tom: That's awesome.

  • Evan: Yeah.

  • Tom: All right.

  • What's the impact that you want to have with your life?

  • Evan: With my life?

  • I don’t know.

  • You said earlier in the interview that you saw something that was in one of my videos

  • and it sort of stopped you in your tracks and helped you think a different way.

  • I've been talking about a lot in this interview.

  • For me, we learn by saying not thinking.

  • We learn by articulation and articulation is what makes the world go round.

  • The impact I want to have is I want to articulate things in such a way that people actually

  • view a different world than they viewed before they heard what I said about it, because the

  • world and our minds are made up of language and when you find a new way to write that

  • language, you change the world and you change people's minds.

  • Tom: Man, thank you so much for coming on the show.

  • Absolutely incredible.

  • Evan: It's been awesome.

  • Tom: That's fantastic.

  • All right.

  • Where can these guys find you online?

  • Evan: You can go to the Nerdwriter on YouTube.

  • If you just type in the Nerdwriter in Google, you'll find it.

  • I have a Twitter as well but I mean it's all happening at the Nerdwriter Show so watch

  • it.

  • Subscribe.

  • Tom: All right.

  • Guys, be sure to do that.

  • You're going to want to go deep in this man's world.

  • I promise you, it doesn’t matter what you are interested in.

  • He has gone down that rabbit hole and he has come back with the nuggets of gold that you

  • need to understand, in his words, to open a new door for you and show you things in

  • a totally new way to help you put unique connections between things that you never would have imagined

  • before.

  • The idea of actively cultivating your world view, of building that platform and translating

  • it from clouds that really feel like you're going to fall, you're on unstable ground and

  • making it this platform that's actually going to let you find out what you want to do, how

  • to move forward, pivot.

  • If you're later in your life, it doesn’t matter.

  • Going in and learning how to think, learning how to objectively critique these things and

  • really go in and discover truth that you don’t see when you're skipping across the surface

  • and what I love is he will do the profane, the profound.

  • He will go on pop music and make you realize that there is a layer of depth and interconnectivity

  • that you never could have imagined, but then, he'll also break down Gotham City through

  • the ages and deal with comic books.

  • It is fucking incredible.

  • It is a whole universe unto this man and the most amazing thing that you're going to take

  • away is you're going to realize that there's a whole universe unto you and he is going

  • to help you tap into that.

  • Subscribe, drink deeply of this man's stuff.

  • It is unbelievably great.

  • Evan, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.

  • Evan: It's my pleasure.

  • Tom: Please, give it up.

  • Evan: Thank you.

  • Tom: Guys, you know this is a weekly show.

  • If you haven’t, already be sure to subscribe.

  • We are trying to get as many amazing people like this on the show as humanly possible

  • and if you rate and review that will help us out.

  • Go to iTunes, Stitcher, let us know what you think.

  • Tell the world about the show and until next time, my friends.

  • Be legendary.

  • Evan: Subscribe.

  • Tom: Thank you, man.

  • That was awesome.

  • Evan: [crosstalk 00:42:07] a lot fun.

  • Tom: Thank you.

  • Hey, everybody.

  • Thanks so much for joining us for another episode of Impact Theory.

  • If this content is adding value to your life, our one ask is that you go to iTunes and Stitcher

  • and rate and review.

  • Not only does that help us build this community which at the end of the day is all we care

  • about but it also helps us get even more amazing guests on here to share their knowledge with

  • all of us.

  • Thank you, guys, so much for being a part of this community and until next time, be

  • legendary my friends.

  • How did we do?

  • If you rate this transcript 3 or below, this agent will not work on your future orders

Tom: Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory.

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パワフルな世界観を育むナードライター|インパクト理論のエバン・パスチャック (The Nerdwriter on Cultivating a Powerful Worldview | Evan Puschak on Impact Theory)

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    鄭小鬼 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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