Nat Chat
44 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 21 ratingsNat Chat is a wide-ranging podcast hosted by Nat Eliason. It includes his weekly roundup, the Monday Medley, as well as interviews with various guests, solo-episodes on interesting topics, and much much more.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Medley 233: Solving Problems, Chicken, Youtubing, Double Life, Business Partners, Almanack, Fasting...
October 27, 2020 03:45 - 4 minutes - 4.42 MBHappy Monday! Glad to have you back for another episode of Nat Chat, an audio version of my newsletter Monday Medley. Join me in recapping my best finds from across the Internet with topics ranging from nutrition, finding good business partners, and sleep tech. Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter if you prefer a readable copy of this podcast! Resources mentioned: 6 Big Nutrition Lessons (0:18) How to Migrate from Notion to Roam (0:26) The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (0:31) The...
Medley 232: Ketchup, Signaling, Modern Empires, Almanack, Meat, Signature Moves, Mediocrity...
October 19, 2020 22:05 - 8 minutes - 8.12 MBHappy Monday! Glad to have you back for another episode of Nat Chat, an audio version of my newsletter Monday Medley. Join me in recapping my best finds from across the Internet with topics ranging from empires, fruit and vegetable classification, and mediocrity. Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter if you prefer a readable copy of this podcast! Resources mentioned: The Mental Model Behind Every High-Performer I Know (0:21) Starting a $400,000 Side Business in 1 Month (for Free) (...
Medley 231: Sweating, Making Habits, Wildfires, Energy, Lean Meat, Hedge Funds, Privacy...
October 12, 2020 21:31 - 8 minutes - 7.78 MBHappy Monday! On this week's episode of Nat Chat, I'm covering this week's Monday Medley newsletter. Join me in recapping my best finds from across the Internet with topics ranging from energy, wildfires, and privacy. Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter if you prefer a readable copy of this podcast! Resources mentioned: 9 favorite tools I use for better sleep (0:12) Humanity's relationship with energy (0:18) "Student Mindset" podcast (0:31) Making future habits easy (0:45) ...
Medley 230: Commitment, Books, Frequent Fliers, Journaling, Eye Strain, Missions, Contagion...
October 05, 2020 21:38 - 10 minutes - 9.95 MBHappy Monday! On this week's episode of Nat Chat, I'm covering this week's Monday Medley newsletter. Join me in recapping my best finds from across the Internet with topics ranging from airlines, journaling, and limiting beliefs. Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter if you prefer a readable copy of this podcast! I've sent one out every Monday for 230 consecutive weeks now, so don't miss out. Resources mentioned: Why you shouldn't try to read 100 books per year (0:13) Sovereignty (0...
Medley 229: Tropical Storms, Dreaming, Investors, Bicycles, Gourds, Sleep Tech, Supersonic Jets...
September 28, 2020 18:43 - 8 minutes - 7.83 MBOn this week's episode of Nat Chat, I'm talking about a wide range of topics featured in my Monday Medley. From supersonic speed to a good night's sleep, join me in recapping my best finds from across the Internet this week. Make sure to subscribe to the newsletter here if you prefer a readable copy of this podcast! And don't forget to subscribe to my Youtube channel. Resources Mentioned: My YouTube channel (0:23) Helping David Perell migrate from Evernote into Roam (0:30) Highligh...
Medley 228: Angel Investing, Physical Ability, Youtube, Housing Prices, Purpose, Intellectual Honesty...
September 21, 2020 20:57 - 11 minutes - 10.2 MBToday's episode of Nat Chat features an audio version of my September 21st edition of the Monday Medley, an email newsletter where I provide interesting finds from around the Internet. Make sure to subscribe to the newsletter if you prefer a readable copy of this podcast! Resources mentioned: The Brain (0:44) Infinite Jest (1:02) Sovereignty (1:24) Purpose (1:33) Why I Stopped Angel Investing (2:11) Exercising your options at an early stage company (3:28) Best income produci...
Medley 227: Archery, Blue Light, Terry, Paradigm Shifts, Notion, Live Action Remakes, Sunscreen...
September 14, 2020 21:05 - 18 minutes - 17.3 MBNat Chat is back! I am excited to bring you an audio version of my Monday Medley, an email newsletter where I provide interesting finds from around the Internet, spanning as broad of topics as the rest of my website. Resources mentioned: 75% Rule (1:04) Scale by Geoffrey West (1:52) The Brain (2:09) I sent the authors a couple questions (2:36) Sovereignty (2:51) Their "Dream" product (3:19) Original animated movies and the live action remakes (4:46) Why the "Karen" meme nam...
37: Reframing the Way You Learn and Becoming a MetaLearner with Nasos Papadopoulos
December 22, 2017 17:15 - 50 minutes - 46.6 MBIt’s the consistency over a long period of time where you really start to see the breakthrough. In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Nasos Papadopoulos. Nasos attended Oxford University, where after a while, realized that being on the path with finance and economics just wasn’t for him. He took a long break to travel and explore new opportunities, eventually getting into meta-learning and the science of learning. He started the site Metalearn.net where he educates other people on lea...
36: Isaac Morehouse on How to Get Any Job You Want and Fixing Education
December 14, 2017 16:19 - 56 minutes - 51.9 MBWhen you understand what people are trying to do with a college degree, which is buying a signal that says ‘I’m worth hiring’, you realize that signal is really not that strong. And if you set your mind to it, you can create a better, more powerful signal in a much shorter amount of time and for much less money. In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Isaac Morehouse. Isaac’s the founder of Praxis, an alternative education system, which focuses on giving participants a lot of applicable...
35: How Vincent Nguyen Ditched College to Better Learn from Work and Mentors
December 07, 2017 16:45 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MB“If you can get into a job that has a really small team where you can work closely with the founders, you learn at a much more accelerated rate than if you were working in a much larger company dealing with managers.” In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Vincent Nguyen. Early into his college career, he already knew that the traditional college path wasn’t for him. He started a blog on the side called Self Stairway and over the course of seven months, he began posting on publications...
34: Hacking Your Time, Habits, Productivity, and More with Sebastian Marshall
November 30, 2017 11:00 - 1 hour - 66.5 MBIf you’re spending less than an hour a day on whatever’s most important to you, that’s something you can pretty easily take up to ninety or a hundred and twenty minutes and get more than fifty to a hundred percent more on results. In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Sebastian Marshall. Sebastian and I delved into a lot about productivity, life and habit tracking, and developing really good systems for achieving your highest output. He’s been writing on his blog for eight years and r...
33: Top Twenty Poker Professional to High-End Productivity Coach with Chris Sparks
November 24, 2017 13:00 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBFind one thing that if you did it every day, would ensure that you move forward, and then make sure that it happens every day. In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Chris Sparks. Chris shares his story with getting heavily involved in poker while still in college. Chris had planned to get into advertising but instead went all in with playing poker. After a year, he was living in a multi-million dollar mansion in Los Angeles up until 2011 when the US shut down online poker, seizing all...
32: Starting Your Own Media Company and Skipping College with Hannah Phillips
November 16, 2017 11:00 - 40 minutes - 37.4 MBJust work on doing things for you and developing skills while doing it. In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Hannah Phillips. Hannah started her own media company while still in high school which began with photography. Not long after, it quickly grew into branding and social media management, as well. By the time she was ready to go to college, she was making enough money to support herself and decided to focus on her business instead. She did end up going through Praxis, which was ...
31: Quitting College to Learn Programming in 7 Months with Bekah Lundy
November 09, 2017 11:00 - 38 minutes - 35.6 MBThe most effective way of learning for me was just failing over and over again. Being in a place where you don’t know anything and where you have to force yourself to learn. In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Bekah Lundy. Bekah started off as a student of The University of Minnesota, where after a year, she started to get into web development and realized normal college just wasn’t for her. She left and went through a coding boot camp called Turing. Seven months later, she started ...
30: How an Ideal Mentorship Can Teach You More than College with Cory Ames
November 02, 2017 10:00 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBSeeking out experiences where you’re forced to learn, will create so many of these moments, where you’re going to look at things completely differently when you’re done. In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Cory Ames. Cory was going to college at Gonzaga University where he took on an apprenticeship with a marketing agency. His apprenticeship with that agency quickly earned him bigger and bigger roles, where within a couple of years, he was actually running the whole company while be...
29: What If Students Learned What They Want To? Unschooling and More with Blake Boles
October 26, 2017 10:00 - 53 minutes - 49.4 MBUnschooling is more about self-directed learning, finding out what you’re interested in, and going really deep into something. In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Blake Boles. While in college, Blake stumbled upon a book that really opened his eyes to the world of unschooling, alternative education, and how students could be learning better outside of the traditional systems. Shortly after graduating, he worked in California doing outdoor education and then ran off to South America ...
28: Creating a Career from Art, Travel, and Instagram with Tasha Meys
October 19, 2017 10:00 - 41 minutes - 37.6 MBTaking action in anything is going to have a much better result than doing nothing. In this episode, I’m joined by Tasha Meys. Tasha grew up in New Zealand and studied psychology, which she quickly got out of when she realized it wasn’t for her, going on to study food and nutrition instead. Around her sophomore year of college, she decided that she needed a portfolio for getting jobs post-graduation and got really into Instagram. Shortly after graduating, she began to get solicited by larg...
27: When to Quit Your Job and Pursue Your Passion with Aaron Watson
October 12, 2017 04:10 - 52 minutes - 47.8 MBGet with the people who are a couple steps ahead of where you want to be, and learn from them. In this episode, I’m joined by Aaron Watson. Aaron and I were introduced via Zak Slayback, who came on for episode 25. Like Zak, Aaron is also passionate about the education, self-education, and self-improvement scene. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and went straight into an insurance sales job. Pretty soon into it, he realized that it wasn’t for him and left to start a podcast ca...
26: Escaping Boring Jobs to Jump Rope and Look Good Naked with Zen Dude Fitness
October 05, 2017 10:00 - 54 minutes - 50 MB“Different things are going to work for different people, but eating too much is bad for everyone.” In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Dan Witmer and Brandon Epstein, who together, are Zen Dude Fitness. Zen Dude Fitness is essentially a health, fitness, coaching, and lifestyle brand that’s specifically focused on jumping rope for fat loss and health. They have millions of views on YouTube, have done meetups all over the country, and have a really inspiring story. They both turn...
25: The End of School and Building a Valuable Skillset with Zak Slayback
September 28, 2017 20:22 - 1 hour - 59 MB“For a lot of jobs, it’s actually a lot easier to get hired, promoted, and to continue growing in that job without the degree than you think it is. You just need to be creative.” In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Zak Slayback. Zak dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania when he realized that college just wasn’t for him. Since then, he’s worked on business development, published his own book, become the head of publishing for an online publication called The Mission, and much...
24: The Most Effective University in the US: Minerva Schools at KGI
September 21, 2017 10:00 - 1 hour - 62 MB“If your child needed to have brain surgery, you would not take them to the hospital that makes other people think highly of you. You would take them to the best hospital you could find. Well, education is brain surgery. It rewires your brain.” In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Ben Nelson, founder of Minerva and Minerva Schools at KGI. I’ve been excited to have Ben on the show from the beginning, since Minerva is one of the few education startups out there that’s truly changing an...
23: Timeless Strategies to Achieving Mastery: Mastery by Robert Greene
September 14, 2017 15:04 - 1 hour - 89.8 MB“It’s never going to be easier to just learn and to make little money, than when you’re young and in the beginning.” In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined again by Neil Soni to do another one of our book deep dives, this time on Mastery by Robert Greene. Mastery is the best book that either of us have found at becoming a master of your craft, getting mentors, learning through experience, and reaching the top of your field. If you’re serious about self education and becoming known for y...
22: How to Fund Your Passion through Side Gigs with Shelcy Joseph
September 07, 2017 10:00 - 56 minutes - 52.1 MB“Having many hobbies and interests can help because you end up developing a variety of talents which helps in always having something going on or always having some way to make money.” In this episode I’m joined by Shelcy Joseph. I found Shelcy through an article about her and her sister and how they’ve been building a lifestyle and fashion brand while living in NYC. Fashion does not seem like an easy business to get into, so it was interesting to hear about how she got into it and is buil...
21: Becoming an Expert Marketer in Record Time with Matthew Barby
August 31, 2017 14:13 - 59 minutes - 54.2 MB“The most value you can get at this moment in time that’s such an easy reach, is to find someone that’s doing the exact same thing as you right now and that’s in a different company and just ask them ‘What are the problems you’re facing?’” In this episode I’m joined by Matthew Barby. Matt leads the global Growth and SEO strategy for HubSpot, a public company with thousands of employees, and has one of the best marketing and startup growth blogs on the Internet. He got that job when he wa...
20: Turning a Love of Sports into an Exciting Career with Chris Chaney
August 24, 2017 10:00 - 1 hour - 71.7 MB“If something doesn’t fit or feel right, it is ultimately not what we want to do or want it to be. It’s okay to say ‘I’m going to do something else." In this episode of Nat Chat I’m joined by Chris Chaney. He currently runs Chaney holdings, which is a combination of sports marketing and financing for sports related companies and teams. It all started when he graduated from college. He’d dreamed of working in the NBA, but when he got there, didn’t feel like it was the right fit, and quick...
19: Are You an Excellent Sheep? A Chat with William Deresiewicz
August 17, 2017 16:27 - 48 minutes - 44.6 MB“If you talked about class, you’d have to acknowledge that most of these students are in an extremely privileged class position, and then they would have to see themselves as being part of the problem and not part of the solution.” In this episode I’m joined by William (Bill) Deresiewicz. I reached out to Bill because I loved his book, Excellent Sheep, and thought it provided a fantastic heuristic for college students to evaluate whether or not they’re thinking for themselves. It’s espe...
18: Hacking Free Uber Rides and Reaching Out to Anyone with Kevin Miller
August 10, 2017 12:15 - 58 minutes - 53.7 MB“If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. If you err on the side of asking, more opportunities will come your way.” - Kevin Miller In this episode of Nat Chat I’m joined by Kevin Miller. Kevin was the director of marketing for Spire when we had this conversation, and I wanted to bring him on for the interesting series of jobs and experiences that led him there. Kevin attended Georgetown University, and while everyone else there was focusing on the big typical careers, he was much more intere...
17: Q&A Time! My Thoughts on Escaping the Road to Nowhere
August 03, 2017 10:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MB“When you stop taking college seriously, treat it as a game, and treat everything you do while you’re there as exploring and trying new things. You get so much more out of it.” In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined again by Josh Lilien. As I mentioned last time, Josh reached out with a few questions for me around self-education, entrepreneurship, and breaking out of the traditional college path, and when it became obvious that he was thinking deeply about these issues, I suggested he int...
16: Sidestepping College to Pursue Your Interests with Josh Lilien
July 27, 2017 10:00 - 41 minutes - 38 MB“Study something where you approach problems in different and interesting ways.” - Josh Lilien In this episode of Nat Chat, I’m joined by Josh Lilien. Josh reached out to me after I started the podcast, sharing a few ideas of his own for how students can hack college, work on their own projects, and learn outside the classroom. After a few emails, I heard more about his story and wanted to bring him on the show. We covered a lot in this episode, including: Self-educating yourself when t...
15: How to Profit from Chaos: Lessons from Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
July 20, 2017 10:00 - 1 hour - 99.8 MB“Perhaps being deprived of poison makes us fragile and the road to robustification starts with a modicum of harm.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb This is a new, experimental format for Nat Chat. Normally, I’m interviewing someone who broke out of the traditional college and post graduate career mold, but for this episode, I wanted to do something different. Neil Soni, who came on for Episode 7, rejoined me to do an in-depth breakdown of the book “Antifragile” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It’s a bo...
14: Finding Work You’re Passionate About with Thomas Frank, the College Info Geek
July 10, 2017 03:26 - 57 minutes - 52.7 MBYou meet people, you get yourself out there and you constantly try to get better. Because every time you do that, you expose yourself to potential lucky opportunities.” - Thomas Frank In this episode of Nat Chat I’m joined by Thomas Frank. Thomas was one of the people I’ve really wanted to have on since the beginning. While he was a student, he started “College Info Geek” which has become the most popular blog on practical tips for college students, whether they want to do better in scho...
13: Learning Spanish (and more) in One Month with Connor Grooms
July 06, 2017 10:00 - 59 minutes - 54.6 MB“In the real world, people don’t care about a piece of paper. They care about the results you can generate for them.” - Connor Grooms In this episode of Nat Chat I’m joined by Connor Grooms. Connor is a master of learning things quickly. When he moved to Medellin a couple years ago, he set out to learn Spanish in One Month, which he filmed and turned into a documentary which has nearly a million views on YouTube. He took what he learned from that endeavor and started a Spanish tutoring c...
12: Practical Strategies for Dealing with Depression with Angela Ma
June 29, 2017 10:00 - 54 minutes - 50.1 MB“I think that it’s more important in college to go after things that you truly love, have fun, and just to experience the most that you can.” - Angela Ma In this episode we have Angela Ma. Angela and I connected over an article she wrote titled “I Have a Problem with the Nation’s #1 High School.” In it, she discusses the issues of hyper competition and focusing on winning things that don’t matter that’s rampant at Thomas Jefferson high school, but also at elite high schools and colleges in...
11. Secrets of Memorization, Flow, and Rapid Learning with Lucas Miller
June 22, 2017 10:00 - 54 minutes - 50.1 MB“Figure out the basics of a skill, focus on a specific element, push out of your comfort zone, and get feedback.” - Lucas Miller In this episode of Nat Chat we have Lucas Miller. I found Lucas through Max Friedman, who came on for episode 5, since Lucas used Max’s platform GiveButter in order to crowdfund his book Beyond Brilliance. As a student, Lucas went deep on the science of learning and memorization to figure out how he could rapidly accelerate his learning and make college effort...
10. Value Compounds, Mediocrity Doesn’t: a Chat with Justin Mares
June 15, 2017 10:00 - 1 hour - 59 MB“When you put in the effort to make something exceptional, the value you put in keeps compounding.” - Justin Mares In this episode of Nat Chat we have Justin Mares. Justin has had a wild journey through the entrepreneurship and marketing world since his sophomore year of college when he started a company to help incoming students find better roommates. After that shut down, he collaborated with Gabriel Weinberg to write the best selling book Traction, he ran growth for Exceptional Cloud...
9. Replacing Tech Degrees with Hands-On Learning with Darwish Gani
June 08, 2017 10:00 - 49 minutes - 45.7 MB“You gotta pick where you want to go, if you don’t, you’re going to go nowhere.” - Darwish Gani In this episode I’m joined by Darwish Gani. Darwish started down the investment banking path in college, but as he approached graduation, decided he wanted to work on something he was more passionate about. After starting one company and working as a product manager at another startup, he started an alternative education company focused on supplementing college students education with more pro...
8. Lifelong Learning and Building Self-Discipline with Scott Britton
June 01, 2017 10:00 - 55 minutes - 50.7 MB“There is such value while going through that period of uncertainty with your business to have someone there with you to help you overcome the insecurities and doubts that you have.” - Scott Britton In this episode of Nat Chat we have Scott Britton. Scott is currently the co-founder and head of growth for Troops, a slackbot that helps sales teams integrate easier with Salesforce, and his path there was all but conventional. When Scott graduated, he went to work for an athlete management...
7. The Marathon of Beer, Books, Philosophy, and More with Neil Soni
May 25, 2017 10:00 - 2 hours - 162 MB“Trust the process, follow your curiosity, and don’t get to wrapped up in what other people are doing.” - Neil Soni In this episode of Nat Chat we have Neil Soni. Neil and I originally connected over Twitter a few years ago as members of a startup incubator alumni network. While Neil was an undergrad, he started a company called “College Zen” to help prospective students get matched up with current students to get a real feel for the school. That startup didn’t work out, but the people h...
6. Ditching Wall Street to Change How We Eat with Helen Guo
May 18, 2017 06:30 - 56 minutes - 51.5 MB“Just because you fail once, doesn’t mean you’re always going to fail.” - Helen Guo In this episode of Nat Chat we have Helen Guo. Helen attended Georgetown University and was on a pretty typical path until the last minute. She’d interned with and accepted a full time offer from the investment bank Morgan Stanley, and then right before she would have started working with them, she reneged on her offer and decided to work for herself instead. Since then, she started a company providing on...
5. Self-Taught Coding and Starting Up in College with Max Friedman
May 11, 2017 15:44 - 1 hour - 67.9 MB“Find the thing that gets you excited, because that’s the thing that’s going to drive you through the hard times and the good times.” - Max Friedman In this episode of Nat Chat we have Max Friedman. Max and I first got in touch three years ago when he was still in college, working on an app for finding local events called “Happening.” The app didn’t work out, but he’s worked on a number of startup related projects since then including his latest, GiveButter, which is a fundraising platfo...
4. Getting Your Dream Mentor and Beating Anxiety with Charlie Hoehn
May 04, 2017 02:38 - 1 hour - 74.5 MB“The irony is that you do so much better, when you stop caring about the outcome and start connecting in the moment and being your best.” - Charlie Hoehn Charlie graduated in 2008 into one of the worst job markets in history, and after a few months of fruitlessly throwing his resume out on Monster, started cold emailing entrepreneurs he wanted to work with. That soon led to working with Ramit Sethi, Tucker Max, and eventually Tim Ferriss who he worked with for three years. Charlie took...
3. Useful Skills, Silent Risk, and The End of Jobs with Taylor Pearson
April 29, 2017 22:25 - 1 hour - 67.3 MB“Spending ten hours a week putting together a portfolio of your skills in college will often turn into a business before you even get the degree.” - Taylor Pearson In this episode of Nat Chat, we have Taylor Pearson, author of The End of Jobs and writer on business, psychology, philosophy, and other related topics on his site taylorpearson.me. Taylor is a super-smart, young guy, who I wanted to bring on because he has a very interesting history and set of experiences that are relevant t...
2. Learning Anything One Project at a Time with Adil Majid
April 28, 2017 21:26 - 1 hour - 59.4 MB“If you think you are interested in something, do it and validate or invalidate it as quickly as you can, it’s fine if it’s haphazard.” - Adil Majid For the first real episode of Nat Chat, I sat down with my close friend, housemate, and co-conspirator on countless projects, Adil Majid. Adil had an unconventional and wide-ranging college experience that would give reassurance to anyone who feels like they don’t have a plan. After spending his first two years focused on a more traditional ...
1. Intro: College is Broken, So What Should Young People Do?
April 28, 2017 04:08 - 3 minutes - 6.82 MBWhat do you do if you’re a college student or recent grad, who feels like they don’t fit in the world of grades, lecture halls, and one size fits all careers? What do you do if… You don’t like classes and don’t learn well in them? You feel like the typical career prospects aren’t exciting? You’re depressed from being locked into a one size fits all system? You feel like your peers and parents don’t support you going a non-traditional route? You want to be an artist, entrepreneur, ...