You’re 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 you’re 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, you’re going to carve out your own statue.

You’re going to carve the way the things that don’t mesh with you and you’re 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 you’re 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 you’re 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, you’re 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 we’re 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 you’re using of it feeling like you’re 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 being … Evan: 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

you’re 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 like … so the question that I asked, "More

than anything, how do I find my passion," which actually maybe a side step to what you’re

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 we’re inculcated to think about when we’re young and in college

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

It’s something that you’re 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 you’re going to be given and you’ll 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 you’re … 300 years ago, if your father was a cobbler, you’re 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.

You’re 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 we’re not told how

to learn what to be which is to say we’re 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 to … Tom: 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 you’re 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 you’re saying now, you’re 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 whole … Jason 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: You’ve talked really powerfully about your own course corrections so really cool,

by the way.

For those of you who don’t know, he literally … he 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.