The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More by Nelson Dellis

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More by Nelson Dellis Nelsondellis.com What if genius isn’t something you’re born with―it’s something you build? Everyday Genius, by six-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis, upgrades your everyday life through practical skills, whether it’s memorizing names at a new job, doing lightning-fast mental math when it counts, honing decisive intuition, and beyond. Written by Remember It! author Nelson Dellis and with a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Barbara Oakley, Everyday Genius teaches you the skills that make genius-level thinking accessible to anyone. Better memory. Sharper focus. Faster learning. Creative problem-solving. No natural talent required, just the right methods. In 2009, after watching his grandmother struggle with Alzheimer’s, Nelson Dellis set out to strengthen his own mind. That mission led to six USA Memory Championships, two Guinness World Records, and a career dedicated to proving that anyone can develop genius-level cognitive abilities. Everyday Genius teaches you to memorize names and faces instantly, speed-read with deep comprehension, calculate mentally with surprising accuracy, and focus intensely when it matters most. You’ll learn strategies for chess and strategic games, techniques for acing exams and public speaking, and methods for creative problem-solving that help you see connections others miss. From mastering a Rubik’s Cube to holding complex ideas in your head, from reading a room to thinking on your feet―this book gives you the mental toolkit for a sharper, more engaged life. At a time when outsourcing our thinking has never been easier, Everyday Genius shows you how to reclaim and strengthen your most valuable asset: your brain. You have far more potential than you realize―an inner genius waiting to be awakened. This book unlocks it. Dellis breaks down complex mnemonic systems into digestible, actionable strategies. By following his lead, you will learn: Memory Mastery Speed Reading Focus and Concentration Learning Mastery Mental Calculation Problem-Solving and Creativity Strategic Thinking Social Skills Mastery Beyond Genius

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. In the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready.

Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. My folks is Voss here from thecrisvoss Show.com. Ladies, gentlemen there and latest things that makes official. Welcome to 16 years, 20, 100 episodes of the Chris Foss show.

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His newest book is out on March 17, 2026, called Everyday Genius, Hacks to Boost, Your Memory Focus, Problem Solving, and Much More. Nelson Dellis joins us on the show. We're going to be talking to him, getting all the insights of his books and how we can all be smirder, because it sounds from the title of this book, we all could probably use it. Nelson is a 4X USA memory champion and one of the leading memory experts in the world. Charles around the world is a competitive memory athlete. I did not know this is a thing. There we go. Memory consultant, published author, and highly sought after keynote speaker.

He's a memory champion, mountaineer, and Alzheimer disease activist. He preaches a lifestyle that combines fitness, both mental and physical, with proper diet and social involvement. Welcome to the show, Nelson. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming.

It's honored to have you. Give us dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, everything's linked through my website, nelsondelis.com. I'm pretty active on YouTube as well. A lot of brain memory content there. And you can just search my name, Nelson Dallas, and you'll find it very quickly. So give us a 30,000 overview.

What's in your book? Everyday Genius. Yeah. So Everyday Genius. is basically a compendium of all these mental skills that anybody can learn, but that seem like something that is maybe reserved for someone that would be, quote, unquote, a genius. So the whole premise behind the book is that we all can tap into genius abilities. It's something that can be trained and not necessarily that you're just born with.

Ah, they do say that we only use maybe at best for maybe the smartest people, I think. I don't know what the curve is. I'm just making shit up now. A 5% I think. Yeah, it's something like 10%. You know, it's just the ballpark figure. People on Twitter, it's more like 2% or something. It depends on the group of people, sure.

We do a lot of, we bash the old Twitter. We're not calling you an X ever. Tell us, how did you develop this technology that you espoused in the book, I guess, might be the best way to say it. Yeah, I started, you know, from average roots. And I kind of found myself stumbling into the memory world. That's really where I started. And I had an average.

I'm sorry? I forgot about that. Yeah. I get that all the time. But yeah, so I started in the memory world because I was watching my grandmother lose her memory from Alzheimer's. Oh, eventually she lost her life in 2009.

And it was at that point that I thought to myself, you know, I do not want the same thing to happen to me. or my parents or, you know, for my kids to go through that either. My future kids at the time I was just 25. But I started reading memory books and started reading about these memory competitions that existed and how there were people who trained their memories and, you know, had average memories before, but they used these ancient memory techniques to do these phenomenal, seemingly impossible feats of memory. And I was skeptical, but fell down the rabbit hole and lo and behold, the techniques work.

anybody can do them. And if you practice a little bit, just like any skill, you can actually become quite good at them and win championships, apparently. So the brain's kind of this muscle. You need to work out, stretch, do a little gym memory work there. Yeah, exactly. It's just like a muscle in the sense that, you know, if you don't use it, you kind of atrophy a little bit to lose that strength. But when you work on it, you're doing these difficult, seemingly difficult tasks a lot and figure out how to do them more efficiently with techniques. You can't can get better at them continuously. Wow.

Yeah, I have a fear of dementia and Alzheimer's and stuff. I mean, I don't have, it's not like it terrorizes me or anything, but, you know, there's like a subtle fear. It's kind of like, I don't want to fall off a building either, you know. It doesn't seem like a fun way to go. But, you know, my sister has got dementia with MS in a care center that she's been in for 10 or 15 years. Yeah, and it's hard.

And it sounds like you were kind of shaped by what your, I believe your grandmother went through with Alzheimer's. Yeah. That really had an impact on you. Yeah. It's just hard to watch somebody lose their memories. And she was such a storyteller in our family and had all the memories in her brain and they just disappeared. Yeah.

That's so sad. I mean, you think when you're old, you're, you know, you're going to spend probably less time doing stuff. Right. You know, and more time just kind of reflecting on your life and you're enjoying the things. I mean, I get great memories that come back to me, you know, some of the people. I've met in life. I'm like, oh yeah, remember that one thing. You know, that was really cool. The faces, you know, I, I've taken lots of pictures over my life and I, so many great stories have collected, I've, like, agree out, and I'd hate to lose them. And then, you know, I worry

about my mom, beginning to mention. She's doing really well, and seems to have some really great DNA. I hope and I carry on with hers. But, you know, I don't, I don't want to see any more people disappear. I watch that with my sister. And, yeah, it's hard. And so you, this is kind of interesting. I mentioned the bio that you're a memory competitor or champion or how it works? Yeah, yeah. There's a memory competition. Well, there are many different kinds of memory competitions out there. I've competed since my first one was 2009 after my grandma would pass away. And then I've been competing ever since. There's some years I took off, but over the years, I've won six times. Wow. I didn't know there was like a, I didn't know there was like events for this

sort of thing. Most people don't, you know, but it's kind of a quirky little competition, but most people forget there's an event. That's the problem. So you can't win the memory competition. You forget to show up. No, I will tell you that those people who forget to show up do not win. That's usually the life problem, too.

I always say with business, people used to say, what's your success, Chris? I show up every day. What is it, 80% of the thing for success? You've got to show up. But no, this memory thing's a big deal. Now, you know, being able to recall problems and stuff like that, have you ever beat the final boss where your girlfriend says to you, you know what you did wrong? I'm not going to tell you. And then you have to remember what you did wrong and you can't remember. Have you ever beat that final boss? You're referring to my wife. I don't know if I'm referring to your wife or just a wife. Yeah. No, no, she's undefeated. I think all women are in that when they use that negotiation. Yeah, exactly. No, my wife has a phenomenal memory.

I do have blunders from time to time. I still have to apply myself. And sometimes I will admit, I'm maybe thinking about something else when she tells me something and I'm busy. But focus is a big part of having a better memory. And most people should start there if they want to remember more. Now, let me, this is actually kind of, in my funny joke just kind of took us into something, I think. Now, is it true? I don't know how much you studied the science of memory.

I imagine you wrote a book, so maybe you've done the research. But I believe women's memory centers in their brains are bigger, and it's kind of designed that way for a biological survival of species sort of thing. And so they have a bigger, I don't know what the portion of the brain is, but that's why they retain memory more. But the other reason that they retain memory better women do is because they connect emotion to it. And we've had people on the show.

We've talked about this. a psychologist, anytime you can attach a lot of emotion to a memory, it, you know, you're going to have a, it's really going to stick with you, you know, your jog dyes. That really freaking hurts, whereas suppose if, I don't know, the flowers die in your guard and you're probably going to be okay with it unless you're a real green thumb. Yeah, have you studied that? Is that true? And then maybe is that a way that you use to boost your memory, attaching emotion to stuff? Yeah, I'm not familiar with the structure of women's brains versus men, if there's any distinction there, but potentially, I have seen firsthand at memory competitions

that the women competitors, I think, are stronger. They usually perform better. Some of the top memory athletes in history are women. And it's amazing to see. Sometimes I try my hardest and I cannot get to their level. But yeah, there could be something to the emotional side of things. One of the main techniques to make things more memorable is just that, right? take information that is dull and say abstract and turning it into something that you can visualize attaching sensory data emotion to it. So just exactly what you said, the more emotional emotionally charged you can make something as mundane as it may be. If you can infuse that emotional aspect to it, that's just like wildfire for your memory. Yeah. Research suggests this is

according to the internet, which of course is true at all times. Women generally have proportion larger and more active hippocampus, a key brain region responsible for memory and emotion. And, you know, that's why they have their emotions and work kind of more logic and reason. But it gives them that ability to remember stuff better and probably functions as a way, you know, survival technique and stuff. Yeah. And probably, you know, they have a lot of multitasking that have to do to take care of children that they're designed for to be able to multitask where we're kind of more on that focus thing.

But I know one of the things I had as I was aging was I started having brain fog. And I don't know when it started, but somewhere about two and a half, almost three years ago, two and a half years ago, I started testosterone therapy. And I woke up from severe brain fog. I mean, I was like a week out with brain fog. And I was at this moment of my life where I was starting to really, I just felt like I was waking up. And five minutes later, I was crawling into bed. and I would just be like, what the hell did I do today? And, you know, we do three shows a day.

I'm like, there's, there's record of what I did, but I would just sit there and be like, where'd I go, man? I just did the basics every day. I'm like fighting just to do, you know, the basics when there's other stuff that I envision and want to do. And so that really gave me, when I started taking testosterone, it brought me out of it fairly quickly within three days. and for the next week or so, I totally came out of it.

But living in that brain fog really scared me because, and realized I was living in it because, you know, dementia, Alzheimer's, all that sort of thing. You're not aware, you know, the fish can't see water. So you're not aware that you're in the fish tank. And, you know, that just made me go, God, man, I really need to exercise the old brain. What are some techniques and stuff maybe that you suggest in the book

that we can, you know, everybody, everybody can use to try and strengthen the memory, especially old people. Yeah, I mean, I think you're touching out some important things there that as we age and as life takes a hold of us, this thing, brain frog is a real thing. It's not as simple as just learn techniques to kind of get rid of it. I think it's a very, it's closed very tightly knit to the environment around you that you live, the diet, the amount of sleep, the stress, the amount that you use your brain. You know, so kind of keeping all those. things in mind, really the first step to having a better mind, better memories to take care

of your brain, right? We all recognize that what we eat, how we are physical and active in the day, like affects our body. You know, if you want to lose weight, we know kind of roughly what we got to do. And you can take that to the nth degree, you know, mildly diet, whatever, but sleep better, all those things. But the same things can affect your memory and your brain. And I think it's time that we start to think about our brains and what we put in there

and how we treat it. In terms of memory training and practice, that's a big part of keeping your mind healthy, right? If you use your brain every day in some capacity. Nowadays, it's so easy to outsource our thinking, right? We put everything in our phones. We don't store anything up here. How many people out there can remember a single phone number of somebody important, right?

I always worry about that if I ever get arrested. I'm like, you know, thank God I do know my mom's number and she's had the landline for 50 years. Yeah. But, you know, the more you use your mind and memory techniques can help that be an easier process, but the more you generally try to challenge and make your mind, you know, do some gritty, harder things, the more it'll pay off in the end. And that brain fog will start to go away.

Your intellect will increase. Your confidence in your mental abilities will also increase. But it's so tempting these days to not do it because there are tools, AI tools now that will just think for you in a second. But I don't, I don't think the, you know, the outlook for our brain health in the next 10 plus years looks very good if we, we ascribe to that. Yeah. We've had a lot of people on the show that have talked about, we have 20, 800, 20,000 interviews. Yeah, there's a few of everything, a few hundred of everything. But we've talked to ad nauseum about, not an nauseam, I think it's, I'm just joking, about gut health affecting brain health.

And how what you put in your gut can actually lead to swelling in your brain and different memory problems. And some people, I don't think there's science on this, but some people tie that to, you know, we've had physicians on the show that by reducing gut inflammation, it reduces brain inflammation and brains operate better. Sometimes people with autism run the spectrum will have some improvements in their functioning condition. it's not a cure-all, but, you know, I've, I've experienced putting all sorts of garbage in my gut for, I don't know, 45 years. I was eating, you know, out all the time, drinking 10, 15 Mountain Dews a day and then put some vodka in there at night every other night or so. And, you know, I experienced how shitty my brain operated during those years. And now that I've, you know, gotten on clean diets and eaten well for the past, I don't know, was it 10, 12 years, I feel, I feel like my brain. brain's better off. I can function better. I can memory better. I can do everything better.

And then, yeah, I mean, what you eat is, I think it has a big effect on your brain from what everyone says. 100%. You know, your brain is using a tremendous amount of calories a day. Is it really? Yeah. Yeah. So can I lose more weight if I use my brain more? That's a good point. I think we just found out why Americans are fat and stupid. Yeah, we're just dumb. No. I'm just kidding. They did some studies on chess. players who were just playing chess all day and the amount of calories they burnt just sitting there in intense thought. And I'll even mention some experiences I had where I've been in a three-day memory competition where we're spending hours just sitting there, you know, straining our brains.

And it is so tiring. I mean, part of it, obviously, you have to focus for that long and that can take a lot of demand. Yeah. But just just depleted, you know, I feel like I've done a workout a long marathon kind of thing. Yeah. Brain marathons, which is usually when I'm on when the girlfriend says, you know,

when I go, why are you mad? Why do I do wrong? And she's, you know, brain marathon now to figure out what I did wrong. Yeah.

Turns out it was existing. Yeah. Watch that, boys. Anyway, so now you, this impact, did you ever play that game, Simon,

when you were a kid? What sort of, what sort of things do you guys use of these hackathons where you guys are practicing your memory? And you remember that old Simon game? Yeah, yeah, I was looking around to have one right here because I'm always, I make content around it. Yeah, I'm going to grab it.

Hold on. Yeah, this guy. Wow, that brings me back to my childhood. Yeah. Wow. These are really fun as memory champions. There's a few of us who have made content around playing the Simon game. We can just keep going.

It's really an easy game to beat. It really depends how much time you have. If I had a couple hours to kill, I could get like over 100. Wow. But anyways, yeah. So unfortunately that event is not at the memory championships. Usually they'll choose things that are completely randomizable, although I guess that a sequence on assignment game is randomizable.

But it would be a lot of noise if everybody in the competitive room would be playing their own game, a lot of beeping going on. But they usually have us memorizing decks of cards, shuffle decks of cards. Really? And long strings of phone numbers, hundreds of digits, names and faces, poems that have been unpublished, list of words. things like that it's all timed there's a certain amount you got to memorize as much as you can um obviously as accurately as possible have you thought about going to acting that's the one thing

keeps me out of acting is memorize those lines oh man i could memorize the lines i'm probably a terrible actor that's probably i'm i'm the opposite i could probably act some bullshit out because i've been i don't know but i'd be like what's my line again yeah yeah no i wouldn't be that guy i just be like nelson The director would be telling me I'm just not believable. I'd be like Marilyn Monroe on the set. I wouldn't remember any of my lines, but I was hot enough that you didn't fire me. It didn't matter, yeah. Whatever that works.

Yeah, I'm not sure that's going to work in Hollywood with me. What are some other things we need to know about your book that we want to tease out to get people to pick it up that maybe I haven't asked? Yeah, you know, as I mentioned at the beginning, you know, obviously in the title, we're talking about genius here. So I really try to challenge what people think genius is. One of the reasons why I feel like I'm at a place where I can talk about it is because of my memory over the years, people have always seen me do these mind bending to them, feats of memory. Other people will encourage me to do things for them, be like their little show pony, you know.

But inevitably, somebody will say, wow, are you a genius? Is that that something a genius could do, right? And in my mind, I'm like, I am not a genius. at all. Like, I can be dumb as rocks. And, you know, I've just learned a technique. I've practiced the hell out of it. And the person kind of making that assessment just doesn't know what's actually happening there. And even if they do, maybe if I explain it, they think, yeah, I can't do that, Nelson. But they can. And everybody can. So it really led me to understand that genius is subjective. You know, if you're to think for the listeners out there, who you might label genius and then think

about like why. A lot of it, you may not have a very tangible answer to that. That's what I kind of challenge in the book because I want people to understand that you can tap into a lot of these things. I'm proof, right? I couldn't memorize a dang thing and now I can win memory competitions and I can play the Simon game up to infinity basically. And anybody can do that. So the whole book just goes through. We start with memory because I think that's a very important part to exemplifying genius. then we talk about reading faster, learning for the long term. There's a whole chapter on calculating with numbers in your mind a bit quicker. Oh, really?

Yeah. Problem solving, creativity, intuition, all these different cognitive abilities that can, to some extent, be trained. Wow. The brain trained. You know, I think it's interesting. We only use what people estimate is the 3 to 5% of our brains. Although George Carlin, I think his number was better. He said, think how dumb the average person is and realizing 50% of the people are dumber than that.

You've seen the news lately. Anyway, so this is really great. I mean, this is a book I want to read and learn more about because, you know, like I said, like you, I've watched the disappearance of a loved one. And it has a impact on you. In fact, my loved one is seven, my sister is seven years younger than me. So it's really weird to have her in a care center with a bunch of people that are twice her age. And she's been there since their 30s. And so to have someone young, you know, you kind of expect your older folks, you know,

there's age is going to happen. We have people living longer than they ever have before in human history. And so, yeah, we're experiencing some things. But seven years younger than you, you're just like, what the? This is just up. It shouldn't, but MS is an evil drug or an evil, whatever. And so tell us about some of the offerings you have on your website. Do you do consulting, coaching, speaking, training, things like that?

Yeah. You know, I started this whole journey for myself and honor of my grandmother and just this fear that I have for myself. But naturally, people, everybody has a memory. Everybody has a brain. And so when they see that I learned this for myself, inevitably people came to ask me, came to me to ask, can I speak to their school, to their businesses? And over the years, I've kind of transformed what I was going to do with my career. And now, for the last 10 plus years, I've been a memory consultant, memory coach, do one-on-one sessions, webinars, seminars, speaking engagements.

I have some memory courses. And I make a lot of content on YouTube. That's a very introductory forward to everything. So you're your YouTube channel. It's just my name, Nelson Delis. Okay. All sorts of musings and how-toes on. how to do memory related or brain related things. But yeah, I have a whole coaching program for people who want to improve their memories and sharpen their brain and tap into that genius intellect.

Again, everybody can do it. All sorts of, I work with all sorts of ages. I've worked with as young as a five-year-old to, right now I have a client who's 89. And it's so interesting because a lot of people will just label themselves and say,

I can't memorize anything. I'm well past my prime or I, I'm not good at names or whatnot. But at the time of time again, it just is very clear that the human brain can remember better than most people think they can. You know, and maybe this is laziness on my part. You're welcome to tell me what's wrong with me. But I've always had that problem for most of my life.

I'm great at faces. Like if I see a face, most times I'm going to remember that face. And I'm the same way. If I go somewhere, I know how to go there. Like, I don't have to consult with the map again. You know who else is great with recognizing? faces who pets dogs like dog any that's so many people say that and it's like i think that we are naturally great at remembering faces oh okay but it's the name it's the information that's the hard part

but we all can do it too so the fact that you can do that i think everybody can do that you just got to take advantage of it and add this bit that will connect the name to your already great ability to recognized faces. So do you do a mnemonic or how do you what's the thing you recommend? Yeah, you know, the idea behind memorizing names quickly is kind of tapping into a few of the things we've already talked about. One is that emotional thing. So you get a name, this word that represents the human in front of you. And the first goal is to turn that into some kind of mental picture. That's always the goal with memorizing and remembering. But when you come up with a picture, also in that technique is embedded this idea of coming up with something emotional and sensory.

So if you meet someone like a Nelson, right, what's the first thing that comes to mind for you when you hear that thing? Nelson. Perfect. Yeah. Nelson Mandela. Very memorable, iconic. You know, different people will have different associations to what they know about that image. You have a different Nelson in mind, Willie Nelson. I don't know. Oh, yeah. But whatever. You know, you come up with a picture. I do if the guy smelled like pot. Yeah. And now that you said that, you know, you can maybe imagine that pot smell and maybe even

smoking yourself. That's why I don't bat. So people remember my smell. Yeah, exactly. Jesus. When you tap into smell, taste, vulgarity, kind of disgust and even erotism sometimes. Brodicism. Yeah.

You can make it as kinky as you want, but that will make it more memorable. I tried the, I tried the, I tried the, tasting thing, and HR says I can't do that anymore. Okay. Yeah. I would lick people instead of shake their hands so I could remember. And I'd be like, I'm just trying to remember your name, man. Yeah, yeah.

Now, this is I should clarify, all of this stuff that I'm asking you to do is mental in your mind. Oh, mental. It is also, as the Brits say, mental, absolutely mental. But it works. But anyway, so the second part to it is when you're looking at a person meeting them, you're obviously looking at them. So you want the name to be attached to them. so you can choose a feature that you notice about them while you're talking to them

to attach the image to. So if you notice me and maybe, I don't know, you notice my, my beard, it's usually a bit more red in person, but just imagine that's what you notice. And then you have this image of Nelson Mandela. Now you interact it with the feature. You anchor it to the feature in your imagination, of course. And as we're going to be you, I'm going to call you Nelson Mandela. You know, listen.

I'm anchoring your bearded Nelson Mandela. Yeah. And the wilder it is, the weirder it is, the connection is, the more memorable it is. I know it sounds wild, but this is how we all do it. This is how I can memorize a room full of 100 people plus, you know, during a short amount of time. If ever bump into you, I'll be like, I love what you did in Africa, man. Anyway, you're like, you did it wrong, Chris. You got the name right, just wrong, wrong guy. You flip the wrong, but it put the

beard. Anyway, no, these are, these are great because I've, I've done that all my career of life. I read something once that they're the people that do it. They put more value in the person as opposed to making them a nameplate. And I'm genuinely curious about people. I love people.

This is why I do the show. I love interviewing people talking to people about their journeys because mine's boring as fuck. I'm tired of hearing about it. But no, you know, the only problem is I think there's a lot of people that I have attached and name Mononic to their face. and the problem is every time I meet them, I go, hey, how's it going?

I want to choke the fuck out of you stupid bastard. And anyway, it's a strange way to do a joke there about too. That's right. Kind of half work. Yeah, yeah, I get it. It seems like there's a lot of people on Twitter that I have that sort of name recognition to. Anyway, Twitter call-back jokes. How can people get a hold of you?

How can they onboard with you? It sounds like from five-year-olds to 90, year olds or potential clients for you, all that good stuff? Yeah, listen, I've been teaching my whole life and I have kids myself. So I'm used to any age, any problem you come to me with regarding your brain. I'm happy to work with you. But yeah, people can go to my website. There's a little forum they can contact me through and tell me what they're trying to

fix in their life with their brain and I can help. Yeah. I might just, I might just be referring to shit from people on all Facebook. Hey, fix this idiot on social media. So I got an endless supply of clients for you, buddy, especially the people that I can't ever remember why they're a hypocrite. Oh, man. Didn't you tell people not to do that?

And you went and did it? And you said it was hellfire and damnation if they did it, but you did it? Did you remember what you said? I don't know if that's a memory problem. I feel like that's just stupid. I don't know. I think that's a George Conway, or not George Conway, Carlin, big joke, the 50% reference there.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a curve people. Not everyone can be smart. That's what I see every day. But the one thing I was going to ask you, yeah, I need to work on that name thing because names are important. You know, we have people on the show. We ask them there are things.

You know, we don't want to, we don't want to sell people, but we also want to, you know, this is their name. This is their value. It's valuable to them. And especially when they're doing a brand. But, yeah, I think this is a great book. I've got it on my audiobook list there. And I'm probably going to maybe see if we can get one for my mom.

But yeah, this is really good. You know, it's so many people sit around and, oh, that was the other thing I wanted to mention if I squeeze this in real quick. Sure. You alluded to the AI issue. And there's been discussions within the AI community. I think everyone at this point, because we're all kind of wondering when we're going to die by AI, the terminators come, is that, you know, by relying so much on chat GPT and other things to kind of

think for us and do the hard work. you know, especially like research. Like research is kind of a pain in the ass, but you do kind of learn a lot of shit. Like sometimes you learn stuff in doing research for a book or something. Sure. You learn stuff that you didn't know. Oh, here's an added, you know, these kind of fingers or tree line limbs of concepts and ideas. You're like, oh, I didn't think of it from that area.

But yeah, it kind of has taken some of that gear away from us. Yeah, I think the important thing, you know, I'm not saying to eliminate AI and the that's advancing quite quickly these days. But I think there's a way to use it that still can preserve our cognitive abilities. And I think the difference is by using it more as a coach, as a guide, rather than a crutch. And I think while we can right now, we have that choice to do that. I don't know how much longer we have that choice. We may not get a choice if you use it or not in the way we want.

But as of now, what I encourage people to do, you know, it's so tempting to just, go flat out use it and not even have to think. Oftentimes that might be the fastest way. So in a crunch time, maybe that's what you got to do. But at what cost. So I'm always encouraging people, and this is what I do, is I will use my memory and brain first. Maybe it's not the best way. Maybe it's slower. But at least I'm using my brain and I'm not losing the ability to still be as creative as I used to, to be as well spoken when I craft an email, let's say, as I used to be as good as I was memorizing, you know, all these things I want to keep. And I'm always trying to do that first.

I'm trying to use this, this computer before I use that. Yeah. Yeah. And there's probably some good work to that. I've had my first AI computer run in this week, the first time where I've seen, okay, this, this shit can go bad. And it was really, it wasn't that big of a deal, but I was on the podcast, just a show like I do now. There's a giant camera that sits on the screen.

So I can't fully see everything, but I can kind of see stuff. And I've got the Gemini on the Gmail, I guess. I don't know what. It's always prompting me. Do you want to be an answer for you? Shut the fuck up. I haven't figured out how to disable yet. But if you're not careful and you hit like a return key or I think it's a backsy key,

it will put in a suggestion of what it thinks to your email should say. Yeah. And I had a model. I do photography, amateur photography. on the weekends. And I had a model that wanted to shoot on a shoot I'd advertise for. And I've shot her before, so I didn't want a shooter again because I wanted to, you know, vary my portfolio that I'm building. And so I was responding her during the show. So I was kind of not really engaged, but, you know, here we are with AI. And I was telling her, you know, sorry, we, thanks for applying, you know, we don't,

I want to vary my looks. I've already shot you. And, and I thought that's what I wrote. And I swear got, I wrote some of that effect. And then I hit return or maybe I hit some keys during the podcast that changed it to the automated response. Oh, gosh. And that AI booked her. Oh, no. Oh, wow.

It literally took our conversation because I'd booked her before and it just decided that he must want to book her again. And somehow I tap something that triggered the automating and then it sent. Oh, gosh. So I had to, and this was money. and, you know, these models, they don't make a lot of money. They're kind of between things. And so she was so excited because she'd been bugging me to get shot because she was like,

I need you get paid up and see jobs lately. I'd love to work again. And so here I had to call that back and break her heart. And she written me, the way I knew I was, I'd fucked up was she written me. And she says, oh, thank you. I'm planning, here's my outfits. I'm planning on this. And I'm like, what?

Well, so AI, you know. Yeah. Maybe we shouldn't rely on it so much. At least I can remember that what our way. What your attention really was, yeah. I can remember how it screwed me. You know, maybe we shouldn't have the Pentagon playing with AI. I'm just saying, I'm just saying.

Have you seen that movie, Idiocracy? Yes. That's from a long time ago. That's what my fear is that we're all headed down. I don't know if you notice, but it's been re-released in documentary form in 2026, evidently. Yeah, it's live around us, actually. That's pretty much where I'm at. with that idiocry. That's one of my

number one references on social media. Because that's how I just feel like the world's gotten fucking mad. Before, you know, in 2025, I said, I'm going to, or no, in 2024, I said, I'm going to trust my fellow Americans. And, you know, people are going to wake up and

hold their politicians accountable, I guess, is maybe the best way to say it. And they're going to give a shit. They're going to quit watching the Kardashians. And, you know, a lot of this media that we take in, you know, even like YouTube, you know, you've got a channel on YouTube, I got a channel on YouTube. One of the problems that I have with my channel that I've always had,

and I watched this develop with YouTube because I came up with YouTube, was just, it seemed like the more intelligent shit you put on YouTube and other social media places, that doesn't go as far as idiots that jump off of roofs and into tables and just mindless, mind-numbing bullshit. And people love that. Maybe we can blame what was the first show that kind of iterated that most of TV, but what was that one video, VCR thing? America's funniest home videos.

I just started the whole stupid craze of Google out the side of your mouth. Maybe when MTV switched to reality TV shows, that seems to made it stupider. But, you know, consuming that data, I think, and just not really thinking and imagining of ourselves, Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge. Maybe because you're using those brain juices. memory to you know stretch the that fabric up in your brain but I think sometimes just sitting watching this mind-numbing shit I don't know the Bachelorette you're sitting there just losing brain cells I don't know what do you think no it's just just falling us falling asleep not challenging the mind you're just like taking a seat on the couch there when you

when you watch that stuff other you know there's the time to relax and kind of unplug if you're balancing that out with you know some head heavy lifting with your mind. That's a different story. But I don't think many people are doing that. That's why I always do doom scrolling on social media because then it's attached to a lot of fear, panic, and the world is going to end tomorrow. We're all going to die. So, yeah. I remember all that stuff. Thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Give people a final pitch out, Nellis on ordering up your book and getting to know you and talking you about your services. Yeah. Yeah. Please check out my latest book, Everyday Genius. It just came out

and I'm really proud of this one. It's got so much in there. And I think people have a lot of fun trying out some of the techniques to make themselves smarter. And if you want to work even deeper with me, go to my website Nelson Bells.com and reach out. And I'll tell you what I offer, my coaching, my speaking engagements, group cohorts, stuff like that. It's been fun to have you on the show and pull all the memory jokes. I've got it in my audiobook library. And so hopefully I don't forget it's there.

I hope not. I'll have to mount it up. first because, you know, retaining stuff like books I read and stuff is important as well. Thanks for coming to the show. We certainly appreciate Nelson. Thank you so much. Thanks for us for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortess Chris Foss and all those places on the internet. Order up his book wherever fine books are sold. Everyday genius, hacks to boost your memory, focus, problem solving, and much more out. March 17, 2026. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.

You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right. There we go. Great show, Nelson. Thank you.