Guides
Things Nick built on camera, written out
Each guide is a companion to one video: the short answer, the steps, the questions people ask, and the moments to jump to.
How do I automate Slack workflows with an AI agent? The full promptThe complete prompt Nick pasted into Muse to build a meeting-notes router in Zapier — Granola records the meeting, two AI models independently decide whether it is safe to share, and only notes both models agree on reach Slack. Copy it free, no email required.
What should a parent do if their teen is being sextorted?Brandon Guffey lost his 17-year-old son Gavin to an online sextortion scam in 2022 and then wrote the South Carolina law that carries Gavin's name. What NCMEC says to do in the first hour, what Guffey tells parents to do before anything happens, and what the laws do and do not do.
What study methods actually work, according to Make It Stick?Stop rereading, start self-testing. Make It Stick authors Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel on retrieval practice, mixing up problem types, and the AP class that went from a 20% to a 60% pass rate.
Where do AI assistants get the answers they cite?Brett Farmiloe runs HARO, Connectively and Featured, and measured 22,000 AI citations across 405 audits. 64% came from earned media rather than a brand's own website, and 34% came from sites with a domain authority under 40.
Why do kids blank on tests they studied for?A psychiatrist and neuroscientist explains the physiology: under a perceived threat, about 80% of blood flow goes to skeletal muscle and roughly 5% is left for the brain. The material is still there. The retrieval system is offline.
How do you route customer email automatically? A five-step build with Jev and ZapierA keyword filter flags a furniture ad and misses the client who is locked out. Jev is a model that never writes text — it reads a message and returns a decision with a confidence score. Here is the five-step build.
Is AI replacing writers? What actually happened, three years inIn 2023 the big consulting firms forecast that AI would come for writers first. Joe Lazer bet the other way and wrote the book. Three years later he points to job listings for storytellers more than doubling.
Is superintelligent AI inevitable, or can it still be stopped?No. Max Winga of Control AI argues superintelligence is a choice a few companies are making, and that governments have the leverage to stop it.
Gen Z is the first generation to have less sex, says a sociologist with 33 years in the fieldA guide to sociologist Dr. Jenn Gunsaullus's view of the sex recession: why Gen Z is pulling back, how AI companions and porn shape it, and what helps couples talk.
Will AI replace your doctor? What a medical futurist actually saysNo. Dr. Bertalan Meskó says AI is covering a global shortage of health workers, and it moves your doctor from gatekeeper to guide.
How do you build an AI news monitoring workflow? Nick's six-step competitor monitorBuild a news monitoring workflow in six steps where only one calls a model: it reads the item and says what it means in three sentences.Is Zapier worth it? A cost test from Nick's own AI workflowsZapier is worth it for steps with a right answer you can write as a rule. Pay for a model only where judgment is needed. Here is how to tell.Why is my AI bill exploding, and which steps actually need a model? A 6-step testBreak your workflow into steps and mark which ones need judgment. In Nick's example, one of six did. Zapier modeled 24 workflows: 71% average savings.
Most People Think They Can Spot AI Fakes and Are Wrong; Rosenbaum Gives the Skill Six MonthsSteve Rosenbaum on why our confidence in spotting AI fakes is misplaced, what that does to trust in news, and why he still thinks the future of truth is human.
From jail, Dirty John Meehan ordered a hit on two officers: $10,000 for eachJulia Bowman, the Laguna Beach detective who arrested John Meehan, explains how she built the stalking case, what police found, and how he plotted from jail to have her killed.
Can a treaty actually stop the race to superintelligence?MIRI CEO Malo Bourgon says yes: a US and China led agreement capping training compute, monitoring AI chips, and buying time for alignment work.
Should an AI workflow use more than one model? How to stay model-agnostic with ZapierYes. Build the workflow so the model can be swapped, and keep your data, tools, approvals, and business rules outside any one AI company.
What is Zapier and what does it do? Zapier's CEO explainsZapier connects the apps a business uses so work moves between them on its own. CEO Wade Foster explains what it does now, and where AI needs a human.
How do you get your business recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude?You get recommended by being cited: answer your customers' real questions in depth on your own site, then show up on YouTube, Reddit, and review sites.
Does posting every day on social media actually work?Fantasy author T.D. Orel posted every day for 14 months and averaged about 12 likes a video. Then he made his content narrower instead of broader, and one video about a single scene in a 1,200-page novel got around 200,000 views.
Why does billing by the hour stop working, and what do you charge instead?Hourly billing prices you as a commodity. Alan Weiss prices the client's outcome instead: agree on objectives, metrics, and value before any number.
How do I build an AI board of advisors that tells me the truth about my work?Wire five AI advisor personas to your real transcripts and performance data, tell them to disagree with you, then ask the questions you avoid.
What skills should kids build that AI can't replace?Ryan Kiick, CEO of Revolution Prep, draws the line between offloading a skill you already own and never acquiring it in the first place, and names what he thinks holds up: real-time communication, executive functioning, and the habit of learning itself.
Why do I care so much what people think?Dr. Michael Gervais, the performance psychologist who spent about eight seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, has a name for this: FOPO, the fear of other people’s opinions. He explains what is actually at stake when it fires, and why it is identity rather than performance.
80% of AI Use Cases Drive Only 20% of the Results, Says Geoff Woods: Start With the Strategic OneGeoff Woods, author of The AI-Driven Leader, explains why most AI use is low-yield and how his CRIT method, with its interview step, turns AI into a thought partner.
Will AI replace your job? What an AI risk researcher says is actually comingAI labs openly aim to automate all human labor, but Nate Soares argues the real danger isn't lost jobs, it's minds nobody knows how to control.
Can we keep control of AI? An Oxford neuroscientist answersProbably, but only if people keep the value calls: Christopher Summerfield says the real AI risk is a slow loss of control, not extinction.
How do I build an AI agent that does real work for me, without writing code?Nick built a working research agent in Zapier Copilot from one plain-English prompt: it finds five guests every Monday and drafts the outreach emails.How do Zapier AI agents work? What Nick's build showedHow Zapier AI agents work, seen through Nick's build: plain-English instructions, a weekly trigger, Sheets and Gmail actions, and real limits.
Is the 10,000 hour rule real, and what actually builds mastery?No. 10,000 hours was a number Malcolm Gladwell chose, not a finding. Dr. Alex Auerbach explains what actually separates good from great.
How ready are we for the next pandemic?Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm says we are not ready, and that the science is further along than the funding or the leadership.
Who owns the AI economy, and why does that decide who wins and loses?Economist Justin Wolfers says AI is an ownership problem: the same tool frees the worker who owns it and impoverishes the worker whose boss owns it.
What does college become in the age of AI, according to Howard Gardner?Gardner says campuses turn into lifelong learning centers: a small floor of reading, writing, math and coding, then coaching toward what you care about.
How do you get a perfect SAT score?Dr. Shaan Patel barely got above average on his first SAT, then studied across three years of high school and scored a perfect SAT in October of his senior year. He walks Nick Standlea through what that actually took, and what he tells students now.
Sleeping Six Hours or Less After 45 Makes a Heart Attack or Stroke 200% More Likely, Dr. Paul SaysER physician Dr. Paul Rohdenburg explains how short sleep affects the heart, memory, mood, appetite and immune system, and what he does each night to protect his own sleep.
What is a fixed mindset? It is the belief that your ability is a set trait you cannot changeThe definition, plain examples, what the research found, and Nick's case that a fixed belief you earned is not the same thing as one you assumed.
Does trauma define you? Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman on the victim mindsetKaufman says being victimized is real and separate from a victim mindset, and that you still get a say in what happens next.
Why do good things stop feeling good?A cognitive neuroscientist explains habituation: the brain's shrinking response to anything that repeats or stays constant. Dr. Tali Sharot on why you stop smelling your own perfume, why vacation happiness peaks at 43 hours, and what brings the feeling back.
How do you calm nerves before a big game or performance?Nerves and excitement feel close to the same in the body, so the lever is interpretation rather than calming down. Micha Shaw, a mindfulness coach who won the US Olympic Trials in open water swimming, explains the shift and the one-minute daily practice underneath it.
How does FC Barcelona's La Masia academy actually develop players?La Masia develops players by making daily improvement the target, coaching decisions before skills, and letting young players struggle on purpose.
How much of your life will you spend looking at a screen?Dino Ambrosi's lifetime-time math: the average American 18-year-old has about 334 months of free time left and is on pace to spend 312 of them on non-productive screen time. Where the number comes from, and what he asks students to do about it.
How do you know if you're playing the wrong game?Seth Godin gives two plain tests for whether a game is worth playing: skip any game the other side only wins if you lose, and spend your hours where there is abundance rather than a crowd. From his conversation with Nick Standlea about This Is Strategy.
What is flow state, and how do you get into it?Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named flow and spent a career measuring it across more than 8,000 interviews. This is his own account: the seven conditions, why your sense of self disappears, and the one rule that predicts when you will be in flow.
What are the modern etiquette rules that actually matter?Etiquette expert Myka Meier says modern etiquette is social and emotional intelligence: put people at ease, read the room, match the environment.
Positive Psychology: What It Is, the Five PERMA Elements, and How to Use ItPERMA has five elements and flow has three conditions. We explain both in plain words, name the limits of the research, and show how to use them. By The Nick Standlea Show.
The teen suicide rate nearly doubled from 2007 to 2019 and tripled among 10 to 14 year oldsA guide to Nick Standlea's talk with swimmer Hank Wise about losing his left eye, and the teen suicide figures Nick reads on air that make the case for honest sharing online.
Raising an ACT score from 25 to 31 earned one student a $112,000 merit scholarshipA grade-by-grade college admissions plan from Jenn Curtis of FutureWise Consulting and host Nick Standlea, including the test score story that ended in a $112,000 scholarship.
Does the brain create consciousness? Donald Hoffman says it doesn'tDonald Hoffman argues the brain doesn't create consciousness. He says consciousness is fundamental and the brain is just part of the interface.SAT and ACT scores beat high school grades at predicting success across nine UC collegesA guide to Nick Standlea's case that SAT and ACT scores predict college success better than grades. He draws on Forbes and New York Times reports and says scores still shape who gets in and who gets aid.The Four Colleges Ranked Top by US News in 1983 Have Never Left the Top Six, 40 Years LaterNick Standlea explains where college rankings came from, why the same schools stay on top, and why he says families should build a college list around fit instead of fame.With UCLA at 8.6% and Michigan at 8%, the College Essay Is Now the Last Variable That DecidesA guide to Johnny Rastello's view on The Nick Standlea Show: why low admit rates leave the essay to decide, how AI shakes that up, and what he tells families.
What Do You Say the Night Before a College Decision? One Letter, 8 LinesThe 8-line letter two parents wrote their daughter the night before her first college decision, plus how to write your own. By The Nick Standlea Show.Editorial guides
Longer pieces that read across several conversations — what the guests agree on, and where they genuinely do not.
AI Safety and Superintelligence: Where the Researchers DisagreeNate Soares, Malo Bourgon, Max Winga and Christopher Summerfield disagree about AI risk. A guide to where they part ways, and the episodes that show it.How It Feels Is Not How It Is: The Show's Psychology ConversationsThe hub for nineteen psychology conversations on the show — learning, stress, flow, habituation, identity and what a mind is — with the single-episode guides that go deeper.Practical AI for Business: The Model Was Never the BottleneckFifteen Nick Standlea Show conversations on putting AI to work in a real business: context, what to automate, getting cited, and what still needs a person.