Visakan Veerasamy is a prolific thinker, writer & creator. As well as being the author of the books ‘Introspect’ and ‘Friendly Ambitious Nerd’, he is known for weaving huge, interconnected Twitter threads and for his mission to build “the greatest social graph of friendly, ambitious nerds that the world has ever seen.”
Important Links:
- Visa's Website - https://visakanv.com/
- Visa's Twitter - https://twitter.com/visakanv
- Visa's Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@visakanv
00:00 Intro
01:06 Main Podcast
02:12 The origins of Friendly Ambitious Nerd
11:09 “The most heroic thing you can do is not hate yourself”
20:58 Confronting the minotaur
33:16 Introspection & Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
45:16 Overriding human OS
56:19 Humour is the cure
01:04:05 How to demonstrate the power of humor
01:09:54 Dealing with judgment & criticism
01:26:20 Responding to requests for help
01:30:23 Enforcing a no-assholes rule
01:40:20 "Focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of."
01:46:25 “School is bullshit”
01:47:08 Question defaults & screw around
Books Mentioned:
- Friendly Ambitious Nerd; by Visakan Veerasamy
- Introspect; by Visakan Veerasamy
- The Science of Storytelling; by Will Storr
- The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It; by Will Storr
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces; by Joseph Campbell
- Shantaram; by Gregory David Roberts
- The Art of War; by Sun Tzu
- The Tao Te Ching; by Laozi
- The Lord of the Rings; by J. R. R. Tolkien
