Design Icons: Christian Watson, Founder of 1924us and Creator of Mr. Skelly, on Traditional Design Craftsmanship & Viral Content Creation

In an era of instant gratification, Christian Watson is what we would consider a radical outlier. 

He’s the founder of a boutique branding studio called 1924us and the creator behind the mega-viral, animated social media character Mr. Skelly. 

His studio crafts brand identities using pencil, paper, and a compass – a nod to the methods of creative work done in the 1920’s. 

And his character, Mr. Skelly, spreads messages of hope, meaning, self-acceptance, and love in a time period where almost everything feels like one big doom scroll.

Having built a massive digital footprint—over 7 million followers across social media platforms —Christian’s journey stands out for staying human in an overwhelmingly digital world.

We sat down to interview Christian and take a deeper dive into the philosophy of old school craftsmanship, the viral success of Mr. Skelly, and why Christian is optimistic that it’s all going to work out in the end.

You can hear the full interview on the Design Icons Podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

Key Points Covered in Our Interview with Christian Watson, Founder of 1924us and Creator of Mr. Skelly

Non-Traditional Career Path: Christian transitioned from being an architecture school dropout to co-founding a menswear store (Manready Mercantile), eventually combining his love for drawing with design to start his branding work around age 17.

Reclaiming Mental Health from Social Media: Christian is no stranger to building a major presence on social media, from being known in the early days of Tumblr to becoming one of the most viewed designers on Instagram. Despite reaching 700,000 followers on his first Instagram account, Christian deleted it because it had a negative impact on his mental health and relationships. He later returned with a new account focused on separating his emotions from his work, eventually growing his presence to over 7 million followers.

Adapting to Video Content: Christian initially fought the shift toward short-form video but realized he had to “lean into it” to remain relevant. He evolved from photography to cinematography and animation, which significantly boosted his engagement and reach

The Viral Success of Mr. Skelly: The creation of Mr. Skelly—a rotoscoped, animated skeleton—was a turning point that launched his brand into a “whole other stratosphere.” While this character brought in a massive new audience, Christian notes the “catch 22” of managing a multifaceted business where different audiences are hungry for different things.

Strictly “Old School” Craft: Christian identifies as a “true old school artist,” using pencil, paper, and a compass for his branding work. Unlike most digital artists, he vectorizes his designs directly from paper sketches rather than sketching digitally.

Selective and Transparent Business Model: He prioritizes radical transparency, listing his service prices clearly on his website. He is highly selective with clients, often rejecting those who use AI for communication or those who prioritize affordability over the creative process, as he believes this leads to “nickel and diming” that stifles creativity.

Perspective on AI: While he finds AI useful for organizational tasks like analyzing contracts or drafting emails, he views generative AI in art as “abhorrent.” He argues that skipping the creative process strips artists of their power and the satisfaction of “a good day of hard work.”

The “Plastic-Eating Fungi” Philosophy: To combat the “doom scroll” of modern social media, Christian aspires to be a mortal filter. Much like mushrooms that eat plastic and output biodegradable material, he consumes bad news and tries to output hopeful, meaningful, and organic messages with Mr. Skelly.

Advice for Emerging Creatives: Christian encourages artists to be proactive by offering to do work for free if they are passionate about a project, rather than waiting for opportunities. He also stresses the importance of being honest and clear about money upfront to remove the fear often associated with financial discussions in the arts.

Radical Optimism: Despite current global hardships, Christian remains hopeful for the future, particularly inspired by a younger generation that is choosing to be a “light” in the world. He believes that “humans have always figured it out” and will continue to do so.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nick: Christian, thanks so much for taking the time to talk today, man.

Christian: Oh, man. It’s honestly such a pleasure. Thank you.

Nick: Can you share your background for any listeners that aren’t familiar with you yet? How did you get your start and what is your main focus now?

Christian: That’s a great question. I started in architecture actually. I went to school in Boston for a number of years and then dropped out and never got my degree in anything. Then I moved down to Texas, lived in Houston and started a menswear store with some buddies. During that time, I was working on branding and just doing little bits of logo design for people. I’ve always drawn my whole life, like just pictures and things. My parents and grandparents were always like, “You should do something beneficial with drawing. You can’t just be an artist. You got to make a living.” So, I combined my love of drawing and my failure of completing architecture school with graphic design and found a middle ground that I really loved. I just started doing branding full-time, I think back in 2012. I mean, we’ve changed a lot since that point, but we’re still very heavily focused on doing branding and identity design now. It’s been phenomenal.

Nick: That’s so cool. I didn’t realize you had started a menswear store, too. How was that experience?

Christian: It was called Man Ready Mercantile. They’re still around. I started it with my buddy Travis, who was the founder and he brought me on to give some love to the social media page. Added in some photography as well as some of my design expertise with styling interiors because up to that point I was well on Tumblr, if you remember that platform. They’re still going strong. He found me on there and he was like, “Hey, you know, I’m starting this thing. I’d love to have you help out and come on down.” And I did. It was a very awesome learning experience. I mean, very hands-on. And they’re still crushing it. Honestly, I’ve been really—if you look at any of my work, you can probably see a bit of the love for—I love dressing up, like wearing a suit every now and again, and trying to have a bit of self-respect for me. I love dressing like that. So, it all made sense that everything kind of tied together. Moving from menswear into graphic design full-time was a very interesting leap, but it was really cool because I was able to bring a salesmanship, when you’re on the floor running a store like that, into how do you sell your skill set to a client? It’s not easy, but it’s fun. I find it really fun.

Nick: Retail is one of the most valuable experiences that I’ve ever had in my career. Like just doing sales face to face is a totally different experience.

Christian: I agree completely.

Nick: Well, you’ve built a massive social media following now. I know that you’ve done it more than once, too. I saw in one of your posts recently that you deleted an account you had a while back after hitting 700,000 followers, and you’re now at over 7 million followers across different social media platforms, which is insane. I think many creatives that are listening in would love to understand how you approach this medium. Is there anything that you can suggest to help other designers reach more people on social media? What do you bring into that space?

Christian: That’s a great question and it’s nuanced because while everything I’m doing now is still a full-time brand studio, it’s definitely less of our focus. As we’ve kind of geared towards animation and venturing into what social media is requiring of us, which is now video focus, it’s a very hard thing. I tried to fight it for a long time. I’ll go back a little bit and just kind of discuss how I basically deleted my first Instagram. Essentially I had built this brand and it was around photography, design, and art back in 2012 to 2016. At that point, I just realized how much time it was consuming in my life. I was in my early 20s and I think it had a really big negative impact on my mental health for a number of reasons, but mostly from an egotistical perspective.

I was pretty self-involved and I don’t think it helped my relationships and definitely didn’t help my artistic endeavors. Although the things that I was doing at the time I was really proud of, I think I was so focused on work and social media that life kind of took a secondary backseat approach unfortunately. It wasn’t until I realized like, “Oh, I’ve got this thing has power over my life and if I don’t exert myself over it, it’s just going to continue to do that.” So I deleted it. Then about a year later I started a new one with the thought that I’m going to just focus on my artwork and my branding. Really my emotional self was so involved in Instagram that I basically didn’t have a life outside of it.

So when I deleted it and decided to start a new one, I tried to make sure that moving forward, I’m going to focus mostly just on my work and not try to invest so much of my emotions into the front face of it. That worked up to a point; I got to about 170,000 followers and I stayed at that metric for a number of years. Then videos started coming out and I’m a true old school artist. Everything I do is by hand. All of our branding is done with pencil, paper, and compass. Most artists sketch out and then bring it in and vectorize it, but we actually vectorize it from paper. Anyway, that’s a whole other thing. I was just trying to showcase that process along with the photographs and trying to keep everything traditional. But Instagram and social media started gearing the way of TikTok, which is all video heavy.

As much as I wanted to fight it—and I did fight it for a number of years—I had several people who were also on board, saying, “Yeah, we want the old Instagram back and we want to just do this stuff.” The truth is I found myself watching videos more and more often. I was trying to argue this medium that I was then consuming. So, I thought I would just go away from this and try something different. I started turning my photography into cinematography. I was consuming the type of media I was trying to fight. I was looking at reels all the time and I wasn’t really on TikTok or anything, but I did find myself kind of drifting towards consuming that and I was interested in how this media form was taking over the world. Now it’s at this pinnacle point and I wondered, what else is there? How do we evolve from short-form video content?

It’s pretty impossible to do, but I couldn’t really think of a beneficial way to approach it from a branding perspective. I could do tutorial videos. I see a lot of brand artists or branding studios that I really respect have gone into the video space, showing what not to do or how they took a brand from this to that. None of that really was of interest to me. So, I thought I would just try to learn a new medium entirely and showcase it as an attachment to my branding.

That was animation and how I could animate logos and turn those into moving things and then share those with my clients and share them as video. I have a background in photography, so I thought we could do the same thing: move into cinematography and do some cool beautiful videos. That started working really well for us. My wife and I were based out of Australia and we were traveling through Scotland at the time, and we started doing video there and posting it, just thinking, “Maybe people will like it.” And then it had that exact effect where essentially at that time, even with almost 200,000 followers, I was getting maybe 2,000 likes on a post. I’d be like, “Oh, this engagement really sucks.” Then as soon as you post a video, you get 10,000 likes. I thought, “What the heck? That’s crazy.”

I just felt like you have to lean into it because all of my background is combined to define my role as a marketer. I feel like I’ve been able to market every medium that I’ve been involved in to a degree that it at least puts food on my table. So I thought, let me just follow this call and continue to do things that do well. In that case, it was videography at the time. It started to really increase our following count. So we got up to about 400,000 followers from just doing these videos. Then I posted an animation when we came back from Scotland to Australia. I was kind of in a funk and I wanted to try something new because you know how hard it is to take a picture, let alone to go out and set up a video on a tripod and edit it all. I was like, I’m going to try to just animate something and see how it works.

I animated a skeleton over a video of myself, rotoscoped it, and I shared it and it blew up to an unimaginable point. It’s still my most liked video I’ve ever posted. That just launched the brand into a whole other stratosphere. Now even though we still continue to do branding and design every day, I haven’t marketed it in forever just because it just doesn’t do well. It’s like no matter what you try to do, it’s unfortunately sort of like art for artists. Other designers and other artists really appreciate it, but for the most part, the layman doesn’t really understand or engage with it. That’s no slide at them; it just is what it is. If they’re not hungry for it, how am I expected to force feed them?

No matter how beautiful I make something, it felt like it wasn’t right in terms of branding and design. But anyway, this is a very long-winded answer to your question. I apologize, but social media has always been a place to play around for me, and I’m at this level now where I’m just kind of being able to sit back and enjoy trying new things.

Nick: I totally understand the comment about art for artists and having to go an uphill battle on sharing the branding side of things. I’m curious though, is there a connection between Mr. Skelly and the work you do with brands? Are you able to build that side of the business with Mr. Skelly? Because for me, that’s how I discovered you, but then I’m a marketer. I work at a brand and I immediately started looking at what’s the deal with the branding. I’m curious if that’s happening more or if you still have to do a separate job there.

Christian: That’s a great question. It’s really interesting because I find myself as I’ve always—when I started the brand, I would say I was 17 years old. So, I was kind of young.

Nick: Wow.

Christian: And I always wanted to do something that was multifaceted. Obviously people say that terminology a lot, but I really did. I wanted to do photography. I have an antiques business. I love selling antiques and collecting them and getting inspired by them for graphic design. I want to do graphic design. And I want to do all of these three things together. I don’t want to start separate businesses for each one. I don’t want to start separate websites for each one or separate social medias. I want to be able to do everything together. And now I’m at this stage 15 years later. And I’m like, okay, that’s a really beautiful, albeit naive thought. You really want to be as effective as possible in sharing all these things in one place. Unfortunately, you have different audiences for different things.

So, in some ways, the Mr. Skelly audience does bring in new clients because I have a whole new access of people. When they find out that I do branding, they’re like, “Oh, cool. We can hire him for branding because this is what he does.” But I would say that the pool I’m choosing from is much smaller because the people who are reaching out aren’t necessarily those hardcore brands or businesses that were on the hunt for branding. They weren’t hungry for it. Some people just come along and think, “Hey, this is something maybe I should try doing.” And because of that, there’s a bit more play and experimentation on our part that makes it really fun. But there is also a managerial side to it that really sucks because I have a lot more clients that I have to walk through the process of what developing a brand really is and explaining to them. It’s sort of a Catch-22. In some ways you get better clients and other ways you get worse clients and obviously that’s all arbitrary, but ultimately I still believe and hope that everything can coexist in one place.

But as I move forward I now realize it’s important to be able to separate things and have intention behind each one individually, but I’m one person and I have a small team that I work with. I’m the only one in charge of the social media and so everybody has ideas and thoughts on what we should do, but at the end of the day, I’m just trying to enjoy my life to the best of my ability, which is not necessarily indicative of a successful business. This is my approach to it.

Nick: Personally speaking, I found it really refreshing. I jumped on your website and the pricing is all laid out, the service is all clear and everything. I think it’s hard to find that in that space where it’s just super transparent and you can see all the work being done right there. It’s not just the finished product showcased; there’s a lot of process tied in, too. Personally, I looked at that and I was like, “Wow, this kind of really clicks with me.” It’s refreshing and also rare and I think it’s really cool. I hope it’s giving you the balance that you want because from a spectator standpoint, I think it’s a really cool approach and really unique.

Christian: Oh, thank you. That means honestly that’s so refreshing to hear. That’s really nice to hear because I’ve been in the design industry for many years now and actually not very many people have ever reached out to me for our design expertise from a public outspeaking point of view. A lot of people will follow us for the photography and invite us to do photography workshops or things like that, but not design conferences or anything of that nature. This is interesting because it’s been my priority for over a decade and I’ve designed so many brands over the years. So it’s really nice to hear someone say, “Hey, it’s cool to see that you guys are doing this because honestly I believed in it and it’s been fun.” It is really nice to have it recognized now and again, so thank you for that.

Nick: Oh yeah. And not to give you one more platform to think about, but I think social media can be a place where people kind of just absorb stuff and they’re not necessarily shopping all the time. But a platform like LinkedIn maybe could potentially open up a ton of new business-to-business opportunities for you guys if you ever find yourself looking for that. I think that you would definitely blow up on LinkedIn personally.

Christian: Wow, that’s really good to hear because I have heard that before and you’re right, it is one more platform and I think I’ll be a chaotic social media person. But I really appreciate hearing that. Now I’m like, “Oh, now you got the wheels turning in my brain.” Thank you for that.

Nick: So, what does working with you look like? How do you choose the brands that you work with? Are you saying no to any opportunities or what makes you say yes?

Christian: That’s an awesome question. You may have experienced this in recent years, but with the advent of AI and how common it is, one of the biggest issues I’m running into now is actually people submitting brand inquiries with AI. People are basically putting their business through an AI platform and asking what they should say to this person. We’ll get an email and it’s very clearly AI because they’ll have left things out and they tell us what their budget is, and it seems really good, but I have a really hard time believing that someone’s going to be involved if they’re skipping a very basic step of just trying to be involved from a communication level. Because I’m old school, I’m not trying to deny that AI has awesome benefits, but I just feel like when it’s the foundation for which you’re reaching out to develop your branding, it’s not really a great start.

That’s hard for us. I have this concern that it’s going to go wrong or go sour halfway through a project. So, I’m just trying to be more selective of the brands that we work with and those are ending up being a little bit more old school, like just getting on the phone call and just feeling out what their vibe is and what they’re hoping to achieve. If they’re keen on it, truly keen, then that’s pretty much my only limitation. I’m saying yes to a lot of people. I’ve been selective and I think it’s just important how passionate the brand is when they come to us. If a brand comes to me and they say, “Hey, Christian, we love what your studio is doing. We love the price. It all looks good, but there’s this other company that charges about 50% of you. What are your thoughts on that?” I’m like, “Okay, you can go with them. That’s the best bet for you guys if what you’re looking for is affordability.” If they say, “Oh, no, actually, we’ll go with you instead,” I actually find it really hard to continue the project from that point because I feel as though everything that I do is going to be nickeled and dimed to the point they’re going to watch every dollar that goes out. They’re going to be like, “Oh, was this really worth it?” That is a really hard thing to work from in my opinion.

Nick: No, it absolutely does. I think it’s really hard to do your best creative work to begin with when the leading indicator or the leading factor there is money. Obviously everybody’s thinking about money at some point, but yeah. I do want to hear more about your stance on AI because I’ve read in your posts that you’re not using AI in your art. You’re animating things by hand. I’ve seen your process. You’re doing it by hand on paper and then vectorizing it afterwards, which is incredibly cool to watch and see images of, especially now, because everybody’s kind of running to the AI side of things. I just love to hear your feelings about how that technology is changing the creative space. If you’re not using it, what advice would you give to other creatives that are feeling the pressure to use technologies like AI?

Christian: This is a great question. I’m in a very privileged position now as a designer. I think I came in at a good time where the niche was still interesting enough that I was able to get clients and make a decent living, and here I am able to try new things and that’s a blessing. I’ve got kids now and a family, so it’s a bit more difficult to take risks, I think. If you’re younger and you’re listening to this and you’re starting out or you’re halfway through your design career and you’re not really sure what to do with AI, hearing from me is probably not the best thing because AI for me is not something that I find beneficial from a creative perspective.

I find it really beneficial from an organizational perspective. ChatGPT for helping me answer lawyer emails or helping me analyze contracts—I love it for that, but that’s more on the language learning language model side of things versus the actual generative imagery that we’re seeing come out of creative studios. I’m not going to fight the AI craze one way or the other, but I would say that it is frustrating when people take my work and they put it through AI filters and they’re like, “Make this be this logo, make it have this word instead,” or they put the Mr. Skelly artwork through AI and use it in ads. There are tons of things where I really find it abhorrent to creatives, not just myself, but to artists of all kinds.

I would say that if you’re trying to use it to help your business, it would be organizationally through learning language models. Whereas if you’re trying to use generative AI—and again I don’t know because Adobe is kind of embracing AI now as a generative process of existing content—I feel kind of really sick about it all, to be honest. I feel really torn. Mostly I find it—if you love to create and you’re skipping over that process, what are you doing?

I feel if you’re just using it for the pressure of having to keep up in order to make money, which I completely understand and it’s a valid reason, it still sucks that it’s stripping you of your ability to be a powerhouse creative and to try new things and to challenge yourself to learn something new or to fail at something. AI feels like pushing a button and there it is and, well, let’s push another one and write these prompts. To me, that’s not a great feeling. I don’t think anybody’s coming out at the end of the day after doing AI all day and being like, “Man, what a good day of hard work.” I feel like it’s very, very rare that someone’s coming out unless they’re the ones that are selling it. Coming from a marketing perspective, I see all of the money going in to build the backend, but I see very little money from the people being able to make money off of it unless it’s through really sketchy ways. I could go on about this for a long time.

Nick: I appreciate that. It’s hard because the tech industry has this echo chamber where we need to push this technology in everything. I mean the podcast software we’re using, I’m sure, is trying to put AI into every single feature right now. But then on the other side, it’s interesting because on Instagram or something, people are not kind to it. People are very harsh towards AI and it’s this friction point where people are asking who’s really benefiting from it and who really wants it. I’m sure that there are great use cases in the creative space for it, but creating in and of itself—I’m happy to hear that it’s a process that you’re not happy to give away because that’s the art, that’s what it is, and when you give that away what is it really that you’re doing?

Christian: Exactly. A lot of people imagine that they’re going to be able to create more quickly or more efficiently with this stuff, but I have not seen that be the case. In fact, I did a test a while ago because I did a post that went soft viral where people were arguing about AI and I said, “Look, if you can recreate like a background of Mr. Skelly and be able to animate it so that it’s fluid and everything, by all means, be my guest. I’ll pay you $1,000 if you can create something that would be indistinguishable from my own work if you can do it without uploading my work first into it.” It was really funny—nobody could do it. Nobody was coming close. There were some interesting ones that came out of it, but at the end of the day what are you even trying to do? You’re skipping so much of—I don’t know—if you’re going to steal from me, at least do it the old school way and just draw it all by hand and figure it out. It’s hard.

Nick: Conceptually, there’s something really refreshing and therapeutic about the messages in your work. Especially right now in the world, I feel like many people feel like the world is one big doom scroll, especially here in the US. Your art has very clear messages of hope, meaning, self-acceptance, and love. Where do those messages come from and what’s inspiring you to broadcast them?

Christian: That’s a great question. I’m a Christian. My background is very much faith-based, but I was also an atheist for a big period of time when I was in my early 20s and had a lot of cynicism and then I became a really cynical Christian. I have just been obsessed with social media ever since I was a teenager. To that point, I agree that everything is one big doom scroll and I find myself on the receiving end of it all the time. I thought, what if we just didn’t do that? What if we were really aware of the fact that we’ve only got one life and we’re spending all of this time on crap and eating junk food essentially in the cyber world?

So I was talking with my wife one day about what if I just started being the antithesis of the things that I consume and just started sharing good vibes only sort of things? I thought it was a bit cheesy at first. There are times I still look at my stuff and think it could be cheesy. But then someone will message me and say, “Oh, this radically changed my day,” and I’ll be like, “Well, that was worth it then.” It’s a dichotomy because I do create this nice messaging, but on the other end, I’m constantly in politics and reading what’s going on in the news. I bundle that all up and I think what’s the opposite of this vibe right now on this day and how can I put that out?

That’s essentially what I’m trying to do—it’s like the new plastic-eating fungi. Basically they found that this mushroom that’s organically developed eats plastic and doesn’t output anything that’s plastic. It’s fully organic, biodegradable material that it puts out. That’s kind of what I’m seeing myself as now, where I consume all this crap and then I hopefully put out something decent at the other end. That’s where it comes from.

Nick: I love that. That’s such a cool metaphor for what you’re doing. I’m curious in terms of being able to make things work as a career, what do you wish more creative people could hear early on? What do you think are the less obvious opportunities?

Christian: I would say that a lot of people even now don’t realize I will still do work for free. If there’s a project that you’re extremely excited about that you need to have your hand in to some degree, do it. Do it for free. Offer it. Go ask. I think the problem is we wait for opportunities to come to us. But if there’s something that you think could use your touch, go offer it.

I also think that people should be way more clear about money upfront just for themselves. When I was young, I was deathly afraid of money because I grew up really poor. I had a bad negative experience with it a lot of my life. Like many artists, I hid my costs and all of this stuff. I was like, “I’ve got to be protective because I don’t know what anybody else is charging, and I don’t want to put anybody off.” I would be afraid to open up my bank account and look at where I was, and it didn’t feel good. It felt like I was constantly in fear of this thing that I have to live with. I would say if you can learn to live with money, whatever situation it is that you’re in, whether you have $300 or $3,000, just live with it and be open. Be honest. It’s going to help your career a lot more than you realize by just being honest with yourself and with clients and with everybody about money. It’s been one of the best things that I’ve ever done.

Nick: I love that. On the business side of things, sometimes we push that earning more is always better or trying to figure out how to maximize everything is the way to do it. But there’s something beautiful about just being like, “This is what I need to live and I’m not going to obsess over trying to squeeze a penny out of every single thing that I’m doing.” I love that advice.

Christian: To expand just a little further, it’s like I’ll charge $10,000 for a brand system, which to some people is crazy money. Then to other people, I’ll have them message me and say, “Yeah, we had a budget of 200,000 and I’m really glad that we found you.” You can’t look at money or lost money as this gut punch because if it’s not meant for you, it’s not meant for you. That’s my philosophy. I know that sounds cheesy, but whatever you’re happy charging, be happy charging. If you’re not happy charging it, charge more or charge less. Just do what makes you feel comfortable and I think everything else is fine. Don’t be sad that you missed an opportunity to make more. We’re constantly in that client and branding studio battle where they ask for a budget and we ask for cost. I’ve done that dance for so many years and it exhausts me. At 33, I really want to be clear and if someone’s got more money, cool. If they don’t, cool. I just want to make stuff and I don’t want to fight about the dumb things. To me, money is really dumb. I try to look at it like that.

Nick: Once your needs are being met, it’s hard to put a price on peace of mind.

Christian: Exactly right.

Nick: What gives you hope for the future? What are you looking forward to?

Christian: That’s a great question. I feel we as humans live in cycles and right now we’re in a pretty crappy part of the cycle. It doesn’t feel like the good part. It feels like everywhere you look it seems like doom and gloom and hardship and poverty. I realize how privileged it is for me to even have this conversation with you and I’m grateful for it.

But I would say that there are people—and a growing number of them—who are coming out on the other side and thinking, “I don’t need to be on my phone right now. I don’t need to be connected to the internet. I want to go outside and be nice to others.” They’re seeing that there’s a darkness in the world and that they can be some form of light. They’re not just going to add on to the pile of what’s already crappy. I really love that mentality. I think we’re especially seeing it in the younger generation, in Gen Z especially, which is giving me a lot of hope. Honestly, I just feel like humans have always figured it out and we’ll always figure it out. So much of it is like, “Oh no, AI is going to destroy the world” or “This war is going to end everything.” I just feel very hopeful that people are going to get their act together and that things are going to be better from here.

Nick: I love it. The strongest case that things are going to work out is that they always have.

Christian: That’s exactly right.

Nick: Christian, I really appreciate your time, man. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you today.

Christian: Thank you so much, Nick. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.c