Placeholder Image

字幕表 動画を再生する

  • 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.