Uncovering The Biggest Fraud Scheme In America - Nick Shirley

Chris Williamson 0:00 Who were you on the phone to this morning?

Nick Shirley 0:02 A lot of people have been calling me. I actually can't even keep track of all the numbers, and so today, I just got asked to go talk in front of Congress just a moment ago. So people are just calling me saying, "Hey, we want some information. Can you tell us about this? We're just trying to gather information." And for instance, today, someone just called me and said, "Hey, we have a, a meeting. We'd like you to testify in fr- front of Congress on January 21st." So I'll see if I'll do that.

Chris Williamson 0:27 Right. So it's starting to hit the bigger levels of sort of real law, real government now?

Nick Shirley 0:33 Yeah, I mean, within just one day of me posting my video, well, it got over 100 million views in 72 hours. But within the first day alone, you had Elon Musk retweet it, you had JD Vance retweet it. You had quite literally every major politician retweet it. The next morning, Kash Patel puts out a post on X about it, and then that same day, Attorney General Pam Bondi also pos- puts out a post, uh, mentioning my name in that video, and same day, Mike Johnson as well. So it spread across the entire internet, and it's the most viral video, the exposé on fraud in Minnesota. It's the most viral video by anybody not named MrBeast in an exposé format. Over 100 million views in 72 hours.

Chris Williamson 1:19 Did you end Tim Walz?

Nick Shirley 1:20 I did end Tim Walz. [chuckles] He is no longer running for re-election of governor.

Chris Williamson 1:25 Tell me the story, then.

Nick Shirley 1:26 So Tim Walz, everyone knows him. He, he was almost the Vice President of the United States, and he has a record going on in Minnesota talking about fraud. Ever since 2019, he's known about fraud. He's been talking about how they've been fighting fraud, and he's been enabling this fraud to happen, and so I go and make this video, and what ha- I showed the fraud happening, and you would think people would be like: "Oh, amazing! This kid just showed that fraud's happening." Instead, Tim Walz goes on TV, he calls me a white supremacist, calls me far right, and he also calls me a delusional conspiracy theorist.

Chris Williamson 2:05 Are you any of those things?

Nick Shirley 2:06 No. And so then Tim Walz, after calling me all of that, he drops out of running for re-election of governor. So I was right. I show people the truth, and Tim Walz, he couldn't handle it, so therefore, he went to deflecting mechanisms of calling me far right, delusional conspiracist, del- delusional conspiracist, and, um, a white supremacist, when I was just talking about fraud.

Chris Williamson 2:32 You think that the reason that he's not running for re-election is exclusively because of this story?

Nick Shirley 2:36 Yeah, 100%. He knows the baggage is so much that he cannot-- he can't run from it, and he's hoping probably people would think less of it, and so he's gonna step sid- step aside and not run for re-election.

Chris Williamson 2:49 How much is he culpable? 'Cause Minnesota's a big state. There's lots of stuff going on. He had an election campaign to look after not long ago. Is it his job to be paying attention directly to this sort of stuff?

Nick Shirley 3:02 He's obviously part of it. There's obviously larger communities like the DHS inside of Minnesota.

Chris Williamson 3:07 What's the DHS, sorry?

Nick Shirley 3:08 The Department of, uh, you know, the Department of Homeland Security, but then you also have DHS that receives the money, and they kind of give the money t- money to the welfare, Medicaid programs, everything like that.

Chris Williamson 3:22 So not entirely unculpable then?

Nick Shirley 3:25 No. I mean, his office kind of... He's, uh, he's said it himself, the buck stops with him. He said that multiple times, and he's known about the fraud forever.

Chris Williamson 3:33 It is an interesting challenge, right? Because you have some people... Y- y- anybody that is running for office wants to show, "I've got agency, and I make things happen inside of my state," and it kind of sounds powerful, ubermensch-y to say, "The buck stops with me," but when it turns out that the buck is kind of messy and on fire and deserves investigation, you become culpable for the promises that you've made in the past.

Nick Shirley 3:58 Yeah, and at the end of the day, he knows about- he knew about it. He knows that there's daycares all around Minnesota. He actually bragged about that in a debate with Tim Walz. He said, "You can go visit them." I visited them. There was no kids.

Chris Williamson 4:11 Give me the story from the start of how this came about.

Nick Shirley 4:14 So last June, every week for the past one hundred weeks, I've been y- doing, making YouTube videos about something happening in the US or other countries. And so back last June, I went to Minnesota to make a video about the rise of Islam, 'cause I've heard how mosques were replacing Christian churches and how the Somali population was growing, and so I wanted to go do a video on the rise of Islam, and while I'm there, I'm talking with locals, and they're like, "Nick, you have to do a video on the fraud. There's these daycares, these, there's these adult daycares, there's assisted living homes popping up right next door to us, and they're all ran by Somalians. You need to do a video on the fraud." And I said, "Well, I can't just come and just paint fraud to be happening and bring no evidence." So I made my video about the rise of Islam, and I saw it firsthand. I saw communities that had been overtaken by Somalians. Um, actually, me and my mom, my mom was my camera woman for that video.

Chris Williamson 5:09 [laughing]

Nick Shirley 5:10 She comes onto me-- she comes with me on a lot of trips. We got jumped in Cedar-Riverside. They snatched the camera, and they threatened me and my mom, and so I, after that-

Chris Williamson 5:21 Who's "they"?

Nick Shirley 5:22 Somalians inside of Cedar-Riverside, 'cause inside there, they also have rivalry gangs, and there's a kind of a whole gang thing going on-

Chris Williamson 5:29 Mm

Nick Shirley 5:29 ... inside of these Somalian communities. And so I knew there was a, something there, and I went back home, and I kept trying to do my invest- own investigation to get the, get down to the fraud, and I couldn't really get the numbers specifically, and then a man by the name of David, who's in the video, he reaches out to me, and he says, "Nick, I have all the information. I've been researching this for years."

Chris Williamson 5:51 Why did he reach out to you?

Nick Shirley 5:53 Yeah, so he's been trying to get the story out for years.

Chris Williamson 5:56 But did he reach out to you before you did your documentary?

Nick Shirley 6:01 ... Well, he had seen some of my other videos on YouTube-

Chris Williamson 6:03 Right

Nick Shirley 6:03 -as well, so he kind of just knew maybe this kid would be interested, 'cause he's been trying to get it from local people, and local news has been reporting on the fraud for years. And a lot- so they've been reporting on it for years, but it's never blown up on a national level. And this man, David, had all the numbers. Somebody from inside the Capitol had given him the information on the CCAP funding, which is, uh, federal and state money that goes to these programs. It's called the, I believe, the Childcare Assistance Program. So he had all the information, and he said, "Nick, I have been looking into this for years, and I have never seen a single child at one of these daycares." And so we went and made this video about the fraud that was taking place. And I-

Chris Williamson 6:46 When did you make it?

Nick Shirley 6:47 Uh, December 16th is when we filmed it.

Chris Williamson 6:49 Oh, wow, so you really turned it around quickly.

Nick Shirley 6:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:52 Wow.

Nick Shirley 6:52 Within just a few weeks.

Chris Williamson 6:53 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 6:55 And so I had no idea. I thought we were just gonna go to these daycares, and I thought you'd be able to open up the door and go to the reception, receive a brochure for your child, and that the first daycare we go to, it's, uh, one building that has two of the same daycares inside of it. Had... It was named Mako, and there was another one that's also inside of that daycare. They had both been receiving money from the government, upwards of $5 million. And it was strange 'cause all the windows were blacked out. The sign above it said, "Open 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m." You open the door, nobody would answer. You ring the doorbell, nobody answers. And then a Somalian woman comes up, and we're asking her: "Where's the kids at?" She says, "I don't know." I was like, "What the heck? Like, what's wrong with these daycares?"

Chris Williamson 7:37 She came out of the-

Nick Shirley 7:38 She drove into the parking lot-

Chris Williamson 7:40 Right

Nick Shirley 7:40 ... and she went into a store next door. And I was like: What the heck is going on with these daycares? That was weird. Okay, let's go to the next one. Let's see what happens. We go to the next one. They also received a million dollars. They're licensed for 40 children. All the windows were completely blacked out. I knock on the door, and I hear a lady talk, and I said, "Well, hey, I'm trying to enroll my son, little Joey, into daycare." And she's like, "No," and she wouldn't give me any more information. And so you would think that even if they didn't want to talk with me, that they would maybe give you a brochure, right? Just to kind of show that they're actually a legit daycare. And they're licensed for 40 children. It's funny 'cause then after that, I post my video, uh, local news, CBS, then tells that daycare they're gonna go, and they film a video, and there's 12 kids inside the daycare. Well, either way-

Chris Williamson 8:31 It's still not 40.

Nick Shirley 8:32 What?

Chris Williamson 8:32 It's still not 40.

Nick Shirley 8:33 Yeah, it's still not 40, so what's the point of giving them a million dollars?

Chris Williamson 8:37 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 8:37 Yeah, so I believe that's fraudulent. And then we go to the next daycare, and this one had received $3.45 million.

Chris Williamson 8:46 Can I ask about where this is? You mentioned Cedar, Cedar Park.

Nick Shirley 8:50 Cedar Riverside-

Chris Williamson 8:51 Right

Nick Shirley 8:51 ... that's like the well-known community inside of Minneapolis, but this is, this video I filmed is all throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Chris Williamson 8:58 Right.

Nick Shirley 8:58 And so then we go to the next one. It's actually right where George Floyd happened, just a few blocks away from it, $3.45 million. And, uh, this lady opens the door. I kept all the... I kept all my security. I kept the other vans. I, I put David kind of far to the side. I was like: All right, we're gonna have a genuine interaction. I don't want anyone to make any excuses.

Chris Williamson 9:17 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 9:18 So this lady opens up the door, and I say, "Hey, I want to enroll my son, little Joey." [chuckles] And she says, "No." I'm like: "Well, can I at least get a brochure?" She says, "No." I said, "Well, can... Well, would my f- son have friends here?" She said, "No." And there were no kids, no snow, no, no footprints in the snow, and she was the only one there, broad daylight, I believe, on December 16th, which I believe was a Tuesday. There should be children inside the daycare.

Chris Williamson 9:48 What time?

Nick Shirley 9:49 We were there, hers was around 12-

Chris Williamson 9:51 Hmm

Nick Shirley 9:51 ... I believe.

Chris Williamson 9:52 Mm-hmm.

Nick Shirley 9:52 And then also Quality Learning Center. [chuckles] Th- this one is so bad because they had received $1.9 million. They had over 90 violations, and they're just a few blocks away from downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks away from where the Timberwolves play.

Chris Williamson 10:07 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 10:08 And their sign literally said, "Quality Learning Center." [chuckles] Like, imagine that. You're trying to teach children to learn, but you can't even spell learning right on your sign.

Chris Williamson 10:18 Hadn't that been incorrect for nine years or something?

Nick Shirley 10:21 F- for many years.

Chris Williamson 10:21 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 10:22 'Cause they were originally inside on the road, and then, and then they, like, cut out this door, and they opened up a restaurant where Ilhan Omar has photos of her outside that same restaurant. And the, the owner also has photos with her and the mayor, and the guy who came out saying that my video was false, he has videos of him partying with the mayor of Minneapolis.

Chris Williamson 10:43 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 10:44 [chuckles] Like, it's all intertwined. And so there's all this fraud happening. The millions of dollars are being given out to these daycares, and then on top of that, you have adult daycares, you have autism centers-

Chris Williamson 10:56 Adult daycares?

Nick Shirley 10:57 Yes.

Chris Williamson 10:58 What is that?

Nick Shirley 10:59 Adult daycares, a place to, for adults to get taken care of.

Chris Williamson 11:02 People with special needs?

Nick Shirley 11:05 I don't know. There's no-

Chris Williamson 11:05 What, what... Okay, how do you advertise an adult daycare? What is it? It's literally called adult daycare?

Nick Shirley 11:10 Adult daycare. And then you have assisted living, so that's kind of confusing. You have adult daycare, and you have assisted living.

Chris Williamson 11:16 Right. Yeah, 'cause they can't be the same thing if you've separated them out and if you've got stuff, 'cause there's, like, loads of stuff happening with autism.

Nick Shirley 11:22 Autism.

Chris Williamson 11:23 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 11:23 Like, there was not just a random surge in autism, but there was an increase from $1 million to $200 million in funding.

Chris Williamson 11:31 For autism?

Nick Shirley 11:31 For autism.

Chris Williamson 11:32 In Minnesota?

Nick Shirley 11:33 In [chuckles] Minnesota.

Chris Williamson 11:34 $200 million?

Nick Shirley 11:35 Yes.

Chris Williamson 11:35 Wow.

Nick Shirley 11:36 In 2024, there's $200 million.

Chris Williamson 11:38 Compared with?

Nick Shirley 11:39 Uh, I think in 2017, there was a million dollars.

Chris Williamson 11:42 Oh, wow! So it's in, what, seven years, you-

Nick Shirley 11:45 Yeah, so just in a short period of time, it went from a million dollars to $200 million. Autism wasn't just springing up like that. [chuckles] And you don't- and you didn't need to prove that, uh... Like, you didn't need a license. Like, it came out just the other day that, like, the Biden administration opened up, um, these systems, and you didn't have to really prove much in order to get the funding.

Chris Williamson 12:05 Mm.

Nick Shirley 12:05 And so a lot of people just took advantage.

Chris Williamson 12:08 Yeah, I think my first question is-... What is it about Minnesota, or Minneapolis in particular, and the bylaws and the small print, which has caused this particular scheme to flourish?

Nick Shirley 12:24 Yeah, it doesn't really make sense, much sense why Somalis would go to Minnesota. Somalia, their- the temperature and the climate's completely different than Minnesota. I think, uh, people realize sh- like, Minnesota is known for being Minnesota nice. Everyone is accepting. They brought all these refugees, and it wasn't a problem until it became a problem. And so then you get politicians like Tim Walz and the mayor, Little Frye over there, who start panhandling to the Somalian community, who's just a small percentage of the population there. It's about a- anywhere from eighty to two hundred thousand. Um, no one exactly knows. The ranges are from eighty to two hundred thousand people.

Chris Williamson 13:03 So it's not a big number of people.

Nick Shirley 13:05 No, it's not, but they go into certain areas, and they pretty much move out any other race or religion, and it just becomes a Somalian area.

Chris Williamson 13:16 Mm.

Nick Shirley 13:17 And so it's not-- So it becomes an issue when you don't feel like it's still your city, or you don't feel like you're being represented by your politicians.

Chris Williamson 13:27 Mm.

Nick Shirley 13:28 And so Tim Walz and Ilhan Omar, they kind of started panhandling to this group of immigrants, one, for votes, and then also they, they attached on to the welfare programs. Like, I believe, uh, eighty-one percent of Somalis in Minnesota are on welfare. Eighty-nine percent of the fraud being committed by people inside Minnesota is by Somalis.

Chris Williamson 13:53 Mm.

Nick Shirley 13:53 And then, if you come out and speak against the fraud, you'll be called a white supremacist-

Chris Williamson 13:59 Mm.

Nick Shirley 14:00 -like Tim Walz did with me.

Chris Williamson 14:01 Mm.

Nick Shirley 14:01 He'll call you far right. He'll call you a delusional conspir- s- conspiracy theorist.

Chris Williamson 14:06 Mm-hmm.

Nick Shirley 14:06 And so all this political correctness made it to where people kind of feel like they couldn't speak out. That's why David, he had been trying for years to get this story out, to tell people, and I was one of the only people who would listen to him and give him the time of day to go show what was happening.

Chris Williamson 14:21 So I understand that you've got this unusual microcosm of a very particular demographic in a very tightly dense area. What I don't understand is what is it about Minnesota? Tim Walz has been saying: "You can come here. They're kind of nice," but there has to be a specific loophole or, or legal... I mean, is this available everywhere? If I just dumped two hundred thousand people from one particularly innovative culture into an area, would they be able to scheme and do that a- across the whole country?

Nick Shirley 14:56 Yeah, well, I talked to some of the Somalis, and they tell me, "Well, if one Somalian moves, we all move, essentially." So, like, they kind of move in these groups. So there's, like, groups of them in Texas, there's groups of them in Minnesota, and I think they just saw how much money you can make from these welfare programs that are going unchecked. I mean, Quality Learning Center, they had ninety violations. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 15:17 Stop calling it Quality Learning Center. [laughing]

Nick Shirley 15:18 That's what it is.

Chris Williamson 15:19 [laughing]

Nick Shirley 15:20 Quality Learning Center. And they, and they learned their lesson. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 15:27 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 15:31 Fuck. Okay, can you explain to me the exact journey of a dollar, uh, where it comes from, where it goes to, and what you think is going on? I'm... I imagine that there's a variety of different paths that it can take, but money has to come from somewhere, go to somewhere, get fed back to some- what, w- what's the, what's the, the story there?

Nick Shirley 15:53 Yeah, so for instance, the when... So for instance, with childcare, there's this thing called the HHS, and that's a federal, it's, uh, I believe it's Health and Human Services. So they allocate a certain amount of funds to stuff like, uh, childcare. For instance, they allocated, uh, a hundred and eighty-five million dollars to childcare. And then that money, you then go submit, you go get licensed for your daycare, and then you say, "We want this many children," and then you're able to receive this money for these daycares 'cause it's part of their... Like Tim Walz openly bragged, even on X and in the debate with, with, uh, JD Vance, like, "We're gonna give childcare and daycare a raise."

Chris Williamson 16:31 Mm.

Nick Shirley 16:31 Like, why would you do that?

Chris Williamson 16:32 Mm.

Nick Shirley 16:33 There's a lot of hard-work, hardworking parents that are paying to put their kid in childcare.

Chris Williamson 16:37 Mm.

Nick Shirley 16:37 And so that's kind of how they go about making their money, and then they've realized, "Well, daycare is great. Let's do adult daycare. Let's do assisted living."

Chris Williamson 16:45 Hang on, hang on. So you've got this fund that can help to, uh, uh, pay for daycare, but somebody needs to create a business and file a business, and w- what's the structure of what's going on on the ground there? Who's working there? Are they being paid in cash? Are they being paid-

Nick Shirley 17:07 Yeah, so that's kind of the problem right now. That's why the federal government has surged Minnesota with investiga- with investigators to figure out what's actually happening. 'Cause it's been, like, this kind of weird liquid thing where no one really knows.

Chris Williamson 17:19 Mm. Mm.

Nick Shirley 17:19 And so that's kind of the problem. That's why you're seeing it's kind of hard to track down what's actually happening.

Chris Williamson 17:25 You know that there's money going in, but you're unsure where it's coming from or how it's being distributed?

Nick Shirley 17:30 Yeah, so I went to a fraud committee meeting, and this one lady, she's a Republican representative for the state, she laid out one of these frauds that was happening. You had one man, he also, he also ran a daycare, assist- assisted living, and he had multiple violations, but the government kept giving him money. And so somebody from inside the state DHS was cutting the checks, and they continued to, uh, give these people money even though they're violating and having violations.

Chris Williamson 17:57 Mm. Mm.

Nick Shirley 17:58 And so that's why they had been enabling this fraud to happen for so long. That's why Tim Walz, he needs to be held accountable for it-

Chris Williamson 18:05 Mm

Nick Shirley 18:05 ... 'cause like you said, the buck stops with him. [chuckles] And so if someone's stealing a hundred thousand dollars, a, a million dollars from your bank account, how fast are you gonna find out? Pretty quick. And Tim Walz has been saying they've been fighting fraud since 2019.... and so six years later, he's been enabling fraud.

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Nick Shirley 19:59 Now, it would probably be a lot harder-

Chris Williamson 20:00 Yeah

Nick Shirley 20:00 ... 'cause of everything, but, I mean, people were starting up, starting them up everywhere. I mean, if you just drive around Minneapolis, and you pay attention to all the daycare centers, or whether it be daycares, or adult daycares, or assisted livings, or home health services, you'll be shocked. Like, literally, almost every block, there's some sort of welfare program, whether it be autism daycare. You're like: "What is going on?"

Chris Williamson 20:20 Mm.

Nick Shirley 20:20 And they're not, like, nice buildings. They're like these almost like warehouse-style buildings, and they just slap a daycare on top of it, and there's no children to be seen anywhere.

Chris Williamson 20:29 Have you looked at the landlords of these buildings? Who owns them?

Nick Shirley 20:32 I haven't looked into whose landlords are.

Chris Williamson 20:33 That'd be interesting to work out w- how culpable it sort of goes back. Okay, so that's, I suppose, the business side, and it's kind of obvious. You find a loophole inside of the government and some of the subsidy money which can be paid to these kinds of facilities. You start one, you gain all of the money to pay your costs, but because you're not operating it fully, you don't have to pay the costs, and you're able to arbitrate. You just scrape off the top of-

Nick Shirley 21:04 Yes

Chris Williamson 21:04 ... whatever's left.

Nick Shirley 21:04 It's tax-exempt.

Chris Williamson 21:06 Right.

Nick Shirley 21:07 And so, like, for instance, a lot of the women working in there, there's videos of... This is-- You can look this up. There's videos of men going in, women bringing their children, and then there's a man who gives them cash. And so a lot of these guys, and this is also makes me, uh... I have some theories about this. So, for instance, Muslims, they can marry four wives, and so all these people inside of these daycares, a lot of the women are probably related or married to the man who's receiving the checks.

Chris Williamson 21:36 Okay.

Nick Shirley 21:36 Right? So he's receiving Quality Learning. He's receiving one point nine million dollars. He has all these employees. "Well, I'm not actually gonna give him, put him on a W-2 or a 1099, 'cause then I have to report their taxes, and they're gonna have to pay taxes on that money. So let me just pay him cash."

Chris Williamson 21:52 Mm.

Nick Shirley 21:53 "And then what will we do? We'll collect welfare." Eighty-one percent of the population's on welfare inside of Minnesota-

Chris Williamson 21:59 Because-

Nick Shirley 22:00 ... or Somalian are on welfare.

Chris Williamson 22:01 Because you-

Nick Shirley 22:02 'Cause they're not-

Chris Williamson 22:03 ... haven't registered the employees as employees, they still get to be paid in cash from the front end and receive the benefits from the back end?

Nick Shirley 22:11 Yeah. So now I'm thinking about it. If they do put them on taxes, they're probably paying them bare minimum, so they can still receive those benefits. So whether it's, like, thirty thousand dollars-

Chris Williamson 22:22 Mm

Nick Shirley 22:23 ... just the bare minimum to get by, to still be able to receive those benefits.

Chris Williamson 22:26 And you think the multiple wives thing, you're just saying that's kind of free and easy labor from somebody that you know, which happens to be in your house. Have you got any evidence of guys that have got a whole family of wives that are working in a single place?

Nick Shirley 22:43 Well, it's kind of just a theory I have, but, I mean, they're able to marry four, and all the women inside the day-- all the people working inside the daycares are women.

Chris Williamson 22:52 Mm.

Nick Shirley 22:52 And then when you think about how many-- what percentage of people are on welfare that are Somalian, kind of makes sense, and then you see, like, their economy they have there, whether with all of these welfare programs.

Chris Williamson 23:06 Mm.

Nick Shirley 23:06 How are there so many people living on welfare

Nick Shirley 23:09 still?

Chris Williamson 23:09 Is this money being sent back to Somalia at all? Have you got any idea?

Nick Shirley 23:12 Yes. So some of that money has been traced back to go back to, to Al-Shabaab. A reporter found that out, and I actually talked to a man who worked at TSA. This is coming out in my part 2. So, and there's a video from 2017 from, uh, Fox Local News there, where they had reports of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash going through TSA. Literally in cash, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So they then take this money, they get it through TSA, they then take them to the back of a room, they then claim the money, whatnot, 'cause you can't, you can't... Me and you, we can't go through without saying we-- if we have more than ten thousand dollars, you have to let people know. And so then they let them go through, and all they have to do is get to a country like Dubai, where they can then send that money and wire it over to a place like Somalia-

Chris Williamson 24:04 Mm

Nick Shirley 24:04 ... and it can go through.

Chris Williamson 24:06 I was gonna say, 'cause it's all cash.

Nick Shirley 24:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:08 This is cash, cash, cash, which is a kind of a bit of a nightmare. It's good that it's untraceable, but when you start shifting big volumes of it around, up to nine hundred and, uh, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars, uh, yeah, you're gonna have to have a pretty sophisticated operation to distribute it.

Nick Shirley 24:24 Yeah, and so that's why-... Like, for instance, that's why I think a lot of the women there aren't actually getting paid money or aren't getting paid legally, 'cause they just give them cash.

Chris Williamson 24:35 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 24:36 Um, 'cause it's a way you don't have to report, and if you, if you work in cash, everyone knows that you don't- you can kind of move around taxes if you're working around a cash primarily business.

Chris Williamson 24:45 Have you got any evidence that it's coming back into the government at all?

Nick Shirley 24:49 Yeah, so it is interesting, for instance, that Ilhan Omar, she's outside of the daycare with the lady who operates another daycare, who then is also giving the mayor a tour of her daycare. And there has been funneling to some of these campaigns, allegedly. For instance, Tim Walz. It was very weird when Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz to become the vice president to run with her. Nobody really knew who he was.

Chris Williamson 25:13 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 25:14 And, uh, I wanted to make sure I had the right stat for when I came to talk to you about this. So Tim Walz, the day he's chosen to become vice president, he raises a record high, thirty-six million dollars in one day for his campaign with Kamala Harris.

Chris Williamson 25:28 Record high...

Nick Shirley 25:30 In one day.

Chris Williamson 25:30 Of all vice presidents or all-

Nick Shirley 25:33 Yeah, like the first day-

Chris Williamson 25:34 Mm-hmm

Nick Shirley 25:34 ... that's like the most mon- amount of money a vice president has brought into a campaign.

Chris Williamson 25:37 Wow!

Nick Shirley 25:38 Thirty-six million dollars. Tim Walz, he's a football coach. He's from Nebraska, and how does he raise thirty-six million dollars in one day?

Chris Williamson 25:47 Mm. Mm.

Nick Shirley 25:48 They're anti-billionaires. They're anti-Elon Musk.

Chris Williamson 25:52 I suppose the argument might be, uh, maybe some rich donors on the left are able to, or they're, they're concerned about the, uh, potential of a second Trump term, so people are gonna dump- Do you need to register where that money comes from? Do people need to register donations in that sort of way? Is it trackable?

Nick Shirley 26:09 I think so.

Chris Williamson 26:11 That should be pretty easy to work out where that's come from then.

Nick Shirley 26:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:13 And if there's a ton coming from Cedar River, the Quality Learning Center, um, you'd think, okay, well, we could trace that back. Or-

Nick Shirley 26:21 But we've also, like, how are they not able to trace down all this fraud that's happening right now?

Chris Williamson 26:25 Yeah, that's true.

Nick Shirley 26:26 It's just like ki- it's kind of been disheartening to see on both sides, Republicans and Democrats side. One, you had De- Democrats coming after me and to start defending fraud.

Chris Williamson 26:34 Mm.

Nick Shirley 26:34 And then you had Republicans like, "All right, how do we crack down on this fraud?" It's like, well, aren't you guys, like, government officials? Like, how did you guys just let this happen as well?

Chris Williamson 26:42 Mm. Mm-hmm.

Nick Shirley 26:42 So it's like both side issue, and, uh, nobody likes to these fraud to be happening.

Chris Williamson 26:48 D- disheartening is a good way to put it. I think that no matter what your perspecti- I mean, unless you're somebody who is benefiting from a scheme like this, nobody-- e- everyone feels crappy about how much money is taken from them for taxes. Everybody does. And the prospect of seeing so much waste go on must just drive people insane. I know it does for me. I mean, when I was living in the UK, the different deductions that we have for taxes are so insane, and I, I... People get pissed at the fact that the roads aren't very good. Your, my taxes go toward these roads, and there's potholes in my roads, or my bins won't get collected, or et cetera, et cetera. But when you see schemes like this, that just feels like, how much of that could be back into the pockets of people who really, really need it and are working hard to basically do this weird, like, trickle-down pyramid scheme, where a small number of people, a relatively small number of people who aren't working, are taking tons of money from a pretty big number of people who are?

Nick Shirley 27:54 Yeah, and it feels like we're being robbed, the hardworking, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.

Chris Williamson 27:58 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 27:59 It, it's, it literally is robbery. I mean, they're stealing our money. It's happening everywhere across America, come to find out.

Chris Williamson 28:07 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 28:08 Elon Musk, he tried to do DOGE, and who was one of the proponents who was most against Elon Musk? Tim Walz. He know-- Like, all this stuff happening now, it's, like, starting to make sense.

Chris Williamson 28:20 Well, with stuff like that, I, I, I get what you mean. Um, Tim Walz realizes that there's skeletons in his closet, and I am going to push back against a potentially very invasive investigation, which is gonna find out what's going on. I, I get the sense that especially if you're sort of caught up in the furor of popular politics, and you're on the front page of CNN every day, and you're potentially gonna be the vice president, I think it's more likely to be, "Elon is the bad guy. He's on the other side. Maybe this will benefit me a bit behind the scenes." I always get a little bit skeptical of, like, attributing to real personal aspirations, shit that's going on when someone is mega, mega time. Because they're so concerned about optics and, and how does this play? Uh, maybe, maybe this is the, the driving force in the back of his mind. I just get the sense that when there is a big tsunami of stuff happening, you're playing much more for kind of the big game than the smaller personal stuff back home, but I could be wrong.

Nick Shirley 29:21 Yeah, and it's just interesting because, for instance, something as simple as government efficiency, that's what DOGE stand for-

Chris Williamson 29:26 Mm

Nick Shirley 29:26 ... Department of Government Efficiency.

Chris Williamson 29:27 Mm.

Nick Shirley 29:28 Shouldn't that be something we all celebrate? And so when you hear these politicians come out and speak against this stuff, it's like, okay, has common sense left your brain? 'Cause, uh, we all just want more efficiency inside of our government. Like, three to seven percent of all taxes go towards fraud.

Chris Williamson 29:43 Tell you what's interesting, I did the first long-form podcast episode with anybody from DOGE ever, and it's a guy called Sam Korkos, who is currently the CIO of the Treasury Department. So we did the episode on the same set as the McConaughey one, but instead, we had the US debt calculator on the big video wall [chuckles] behind us. And, um, I was asking him just how sort of inefficient... And he's, he's very much on the technical side of this. What are the algorithms that we're using? How are we tracking these things? Um, you know, he's very much sort of in the matrix of this, trying to reprogram it to make it more efficient from a technical standpoint. He's got a big technical background. Uh, but if you just think, okay, that's the system-... which is designed and relatively easy to be able to investigate, relatively easy to, to, to investigate. We've got all of these different systems, how-- let's put them all out on a whiteboard, and we can work it out. If you're, okay, you need to fly to Minnesota, go to this place, investigate this. Is there a person there? When do the kids arrive? When do they leave? Has this guy got four wives? What's going on? Is the money being paid in cash? That's so much more arduous. It's like that's Whac-A-Mole, as opposed to what Sam's doing, which is much more like an atomic bomb of trying to improve efficiency. And he was having challenges. He was hitting limits. So I guess, the first thing it makes me think about is, when you have a country of this size, the diseconomies of scale of three hundred and thirty million people, there's gonna be so much slippage in the system and so many holes and little exploits and speed runs that you can go through. This is kind of inevitable. This isn't me, uh, excusing the fact that it happens, but just how could it not? How would it not? But the point is now, okay, we have found this, so we play Whac-A-Mole, and this is not a small mole, right? What's the total amount of fraud?

Nick Shirley 31:37 It's estimated above nine billion, with a B, nine billion.

Chris Williamson 31:41 Right. Yeah, that's a significant amount of money.

Nick Shirley 31:42 It's a lot of money.

Chris Williamson 31:43 Just in, just in Minnesota?

Nick Shirley 31:45 Just in Minnesota.

Chris Williamson 31:48 Wow!

Nick Shirley 31:49 And so it makes you think, like... One thing I'm super proud about my video, is it's the first video you've ever seen where r- journalism really created instantaneously change.

Chris Williamson 31:58 Mm.

Nick Shirley 31:58 You had feds go and launch multiple investigations. They decided to freeze all childcare funding for the state of Minnesota-

Chris Williamson 32:07 Mm-hmm.

Nick Shirley 32:08 - outright.

Chris Williamson 32:08 They've frozen all-

Nick Shirley 32:09 Right

Chris Williamson 32:09 ... childcare funding for the state of Minnesota?

Nick Shirley 32:12 Yes.

Chris Williamson 32:13 Okay, well, that sounds good.

Nick Shirley 32:14 Hundred and eighty-five million.

Chris Williamson 32:14 That sounds good, but that, that has got to impact people who are legitimately trying to get their children looked after.

Nick Shirley 32:20 My next point is they said, "We'll give you back the funding once you prove you're a legitimate business."

Chris Williamson 32:25 Okay.

Nick Shirley 32:26 To this day, time of this recording, no businesses have submitted to prove legitimacy.

Chris Williamson 32:32 None?

Nick Shirley 32:32 None.

Chris Williamson 32:33 How are you tracking that?

Nick Shirley 32:34 The department of-- the HHS made a video about it just the other day.

Chris Williamson 32:39 The HHS made a video. Have they got a YouTube channel?

Nick Shirley 32:42 Uh-

Chris Williamson 32:42 They should probably.

Nick Shirley 32:42 Probably. They, they've been, they've been tagging me in their post on X.

Chris Williamson 32:46 [chuckles] Okay, that's interesting.

Nick Shirley 32:47 So-

Chris Williamson 32:47 Are they, are they-

Nick Shirley 32:49 Health and Human Services

Chris Williamson 32:49 ... adversarial with you? Are they collaborative with you? How, what's the tone like with this?

Nick Shirley 32:54 I think they're just appreciative of the effort because they saw how obvious I made it to the American public that fraud was happening.

Chris Williamson 33:00 Mm.

Nick Shirley 33:00 And so I think it's amazing what they're doing, and I think this kinda could help combat fraud in a lot of states and across America. Is, all right, obviously, there's a lot of fraud happening. Let's take a week break. Let's freeze the funding, and now everyone show us proof of legitimacy, and if you can't-

Chris Williamson 33:19 Mm

Nick Shirley 33:19 ... we're not gonna give you the money.

Chris Williamson 33:21 Have you got any idea what proof of legitimacy looks like?

Nick Shirley 33:25 Probably showing, like, there's kids inside the daycares, [chuckles] maybe.

Chris Williamson 33:28 Mm-hmm.

Nick Shirley 33:28 Maybe that'd be a-- that'd probably be a good place to start.

Chris Williamson 33:30 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 33:31 Like, "Hey, here's our video cameras of us receiving our ninety kids that we have a capacity for."

Chris Williamson 33:34 Mm.

Nick Shirley 33:35 That'd probably help prove they're a little bit more legit.

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Chris Williamson 34:52 Okay, so what's been the rest of the fallout, sort of structurally, of what's gone on in Minnesota?

Nick Shirley 34:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:58 Childcare stuff's been halted until you prove, and then you can get it back.

Nick Shirley 35:02 Yes. That's been a fallout. Just the other day, there were protesters stormed ICE, and ICE a- actually killed a protester.

Chris Williamson 35:11 I saw, was that the lady in the car?

Nick Shirley 35:12 Yes.

Chris Williamson 35:14 Yeah, I wanted-

Nick Shirley 35:14 That was very sad to see.

Chris Williamson 35:15 I wanted to talk about this, dude, 'cause I think one of the concerns that everybody has is we've already got some pretty sort of tight tensions around this sort of stuff at the moment, the UK maybe even more so than here. Uh, do you think-- how much do you think your video contributed to the tension of what happened in Minneapolis the other day?

Nick Shirley 35:41 Well, they surged the city with federal agents, and they launched these investigations, which is a good thing. Do we want crime to be happening? Do we want illegal migrants running rampant in our cities? Do we want millions of dollars being funneled across to other places? These are all good things, but now the left is saying that you're a bad person for trying to crack down and to uphold the law.

Chris Williamson 36:03 Mm.

Nick Shirley 36:03 And so for that lady to be out there and impeding law enforcement, and then attempt to run him over... Like, the video is pretty evident that she was going to-- her target was to run him over.

Chris Williamson 36:17 Mm.

Nick Shirley 36:18 And he shot her. Super tragic. I was super sad when I saw that video. I s- like, it, that didn't, that did not need to happen. She didn't need to put law enforcement in risk. She could have supported [chuckles] law enforcement-

Chris Williamson 36:31 Mm

Nick Shirley 36:31 ... and she could have abided by what they said. They told her to get out of her car, and then she goes and-... hits the ICE agent, and he's fearful for his life, and he shoots her. Super sad, right? No one, no one wants to see that happen. And, uh, it's just gotten to a point where people need to really come to their senses and think, "Okay, this is law enforcement. If they're gonna tell us to do something, we should probably do it."

Chris Williamson 36:56 Listen, yeah. But-

Nick Shirley 36:58 But now you're, but then you're seeing these politicians come out and say, "ICE, get the F out of our city." Little, Little Guy Frey says that, the mayor of Minneapolis.

Chris Williamson 37:06 Mm.

Nick Shirley 37:07 And then Tim Walz is calling this a, a war against the federal government. Why can't they de-escalate and say, "All right, you guys, fraud's bad. Illegal migrants, if you're here, local law enforce- federal law enforcement's here. If they get you guys, you're gonna go back to where you came from"?

Chris Williamson 37:24 How many of the Somali people are there legally versus illegally? Is there any idea?

Nick Shirley 37:30 I don't know.

Chris Williamson 37:31 What's your estimation?

Nick Shirley 37:33 Well, with Biden, a lot of people came into the country, over 10 to 20 million, and so there's a lot of them. And then people, undocumented, people have been doing their asylum cases, so who knows exactly how many?

Chris Williamson 37:45 You had no indication of how many people were actual citizens versus illegal?

Nick Shirley 37:51 No. [inhales]

Chris Williamson 37:52 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 37:52 But 'cause some... For instance, some of them came out here, like Ilhan Omar, she's a naturalized citizen of the United States. She was born in Somalia, brought over, she became a US citizen, now she's in Congress. And so there's a lot of people who are naturalized citizens, and because it, this happened a long time ago, people like Ilhan Omar then have kids, and then those kids are born citizens.

Chris Williamson 38:14 Mm.

Nick Shirley 38:14 And so that's what makes it super complex, um, with the topic of illegal immigration, 'cause you have parents who are illegal, kids who are illegal, and the option is, "Well, if we find you, you have the option to go back with your children-

Chris Williamson 38:27 Mm

Nick Shirley 38:27 ... and, or your child will be here." It's very, like, the topic of illegal immigration is super hard. That's why you should do it right.

Chris Williamson 38:34 Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a, a brutal situation. So the, the influx of ICE agents, that was specifically kind of in response to this?

Nick Shirley 38:44 Yeah, and ICE was already there.

Chris Williamson 38:46 Mm.

Nick Shirley 38:46 They had been there for, since back in June. When I was there for the first time back last June, there was a ICE raid that took place, and they've been operating there for months f- since Trump took office. 'Cause a lo- a lot of people that came over the border, we didn't just have immigration from Latin America. We had people coming all the way from Africa. All across the world, they came over, and so there's a high likelihood that tens of thousands of people from Somalia also came in, and where do they go when they get here to the United States? A place where they feel like they're being represented-

Chris Williamson 39:18 Mm

Nick Shirley 39:18 ... Somalia.

Chris Williamson 39:19 Mm.

Nick Shirley 39:20 Or to [chuckles] not Somalia, to-

Chris Williamson 39:21 It might be now

Nick Shirley 39:22 ... Minneapolis

Chris Williamson 39:23 Little, little Somalia, yeah.

Nick Shirley 39:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:24 Um, have you got any idea who masterminded this? Are the Somalis that innovative, that they just kind of played the system over and over until they found an exploit and stood next to a spawn point and started to generate, like, free government money?

Nick Shirley 39:40 Yeah, I'm sure someone just saw that it was easy. No one was really checking. I mean, they had, they had fraud tourism.

Chris Williamson 39:49 Mm.

Nick Shirley 39:49 People were coming all across the country to move to Minnesota to commit fraud-

Chris Williamson 39:52 Mm. Mm

Nick Shirley 39:53 ... 'cause it wasn't getting stopped.

Chris Williamson 39:54 Well, I think... I, I, I remember when I was in downtown San Francisco for the first time, and I was looking around, and I couldn't believe how many homeless people there were. And, you know, I come from Austin, where there's a pretty big homeless population, but it's not, it's not that much. And I realized that, well, you've got basically the perfect climate. Like, meteorologically, you've got the perfect climate. It's not gonna get too cold that you freeze. It's not gonna get too hot that you get cooked alive. And, uh, I suppose this is kind of the equivalent, but it's a fiscal, financial, legal loophole, uh-

Nick Shirley 40:33 Weird

Chris Williamson 40:34 ... that's perfect. Yeah, and [clears throat] that was kind of my big, my big question coming into this was, like, why Minnesota? Why Minneapolis? And it just seems like, well, maybe this is available elsewhere, but someone found it and then just rinsed and repeated and told their friends and told their friends, and now... I mean, there, there very well may be some sort of blueprint playbook that someone's got printed out on, "This is exactly where you need to submit. This is exactly what you need to say. This is exactly what you need to do."

Nick Shirley 40:58 Oh, I'm sure of it, and also, like, that people are very s- scared to speak up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in general. You had George Floyd that happened there, and you saw what happened. They let the city burn, and so pe- politicians especially, they're afraid of being politically correct and calling things out for what they are.

Chris Williamson 41:15 Mm.

Nick Shirley 41:16 And so I think that kind of helped cultivate that fraud and enable it to continue.

Chris Williamson 41:22 Because everybody's scared of being called a racist, so no one wants to call out something legitimate for being seen as being xenophobic.

Nick Shirley 41:29 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 41:30 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 41:31 And, I mean, that happens all across the world. That happened in the UK with the grooming stuff that happened, that took place.

Chris Williamson 41:36 Mm.

Nick Shirley 41:37 And, uh, I've talked with Tommy Robinson before, and he, he's like, "It... Political correctness got so bad that British men and women let their children get you know what."

Chris Williamson 41:47 Mm.

Nick Shirley 41:48 And it's, it's sad that people are afraid to speak truth, but now I believe since we have freedom of speech back with X, um, [chuckles] Trump, he, he'll say whatever. And so people feel like they can say what, how they really feel, and if it's a fact, it's a fact.

Chris Williamson 42:01 Are you concerned that this could result in xenophobia around a particular, like, an entire community of people, when it's only one small portion of them, Somalis that live in New York or Somalis that live in Austin, Texas, or whatever?

Nick Shirley 42:16 Well, I don't think if you're, if you're not committing fraud, you shouldn't be worried. It's just a, kind of a blatant fact that y- y- you shouldn't be worried unless you're committing fraud. Some man came up to me in part two, and he comes after me, and he says, "Are we the only community that commits fraud?" I'm like, "Well, you just, uh, admitted you commit fraud. [chuckles] Like, come on, man." And so it's like-

Chris Williamson 42:39 Stop investigating my fraud.

Nick Shirley 42:40 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 42:40 Investigate their fraud.

Nick Shirley 42:41 Exactly. I'm like, "Well, it just happens that 89% of the population-... uh, that are committing the fraud are Somalis here.

Chris Williamson 42:46 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 42:47 And, uh, there was a lady who got- who, who got charged for, uh, committing fraud with- it's called, uh, Feeding Our Future, and she was the head, head honcho of it. She got charged, and she's in jail. However, there was a man inside Minnesota who got caught for seven point two million dollars. Somali man, he was charged, found guilty, and the judge overturned it and let the guy walk.

Chris Williamson 43:09 Why?

Nick Shirley 43:11 I don't know. Interesting, right? Why would you, after finding a man being charged guilty of seven point two million dollars in fraud, why would you let him walk?

Chris Williamson 43:21 When was this?

Nick Shirley 43:22 Just a few months ago, maybe a year or so ago.

Chris Williamson 43:25 Wow!

Nick Shirley 43:26 Medicaid fraud, I believe.

Chris Williamson 43:27 Have you seen any displays of this sort of wealth? 'Cause if we're talking about millions, tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars going to a community of people, which is at most two hundred thousand, I have to assume that there's some other communities. It's not-- the Somalis aren't gonna be able to completely ring-fence this around themselves. I have to guess that there's going to be some other groups that have done this too. Have you seen-- Is there anyone driving around in a Lambo? Someone got a, a big house?

Nick Shirley 43:56 Outside one of the daycares, there was, uh, three BMWs and one Range Rover.

Chris Williamson 44:01 Okay.

Nick Shirley 44:02 Midday, during a weekday. That was interesting. I believe some kid-

Chris Williamson 44:06 No, no kids, but three cars.

Nick Shirley 44:07 No kids here, but four really nice luxury cars.

Chris Williamson 44:11 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 44:11 Uh, someone here also in LA, they did a video, and they went and found a daycare, and it was an Iranian man who was in a Rolls-Royce.

Chris Williamson 44:19 Okay, that's pretty good.

Nick Shirley 44:20 And so it's kind of like there's that one movie, I can't remember what it's called, but there's that one movie where they steal all the money, and they start buying houses, and then, then people are wondering, "Well, how'd these hicks start getting rich?"

Chris Williamson 44:30 Mm-hmm.

Nick Shirley 44:30 And then they find the fraud.

Chris Williamson 44:31 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 44:32 And I mean, the lady who got caught for Feeding Our Future scam, that was a two hundred and fifty million dollar fraud scam. She was driving around a Porsche.

Chris Williamson 44:39 I'm pretty sure that the... didn't the, the lady or one of the ladies that founded BLM, she got investigated quite aggressively.

Nick Shirley 44:47 Bunch of mansions.

Chris Williamson 44:48 Huge, huge houses everywhere, yeah. Yeah, what a shame, dude. What a shame, because I think two things can be true at once. There can be loads of fraud, and we should actually invest more to make these sort-- legitimate versions of these sorts of businesses available for people who really need them. And, uh, and my question about, is there gonna be a challenge if you're a normal, law-abiding Somali? W- uh, what if you're a normal, law-abiding daycare?

Nick Shirley 45:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:14 You're gonna get scrutinized. The kids are maybe gonna be a little bit disrupted or maybe a lot disrupted. You're gonna be worried about security concerns, and, yeah, I... It's weird when you think about this 'cause what people would say, I can imagine one of the criticisms would be something like, "This is going to make it harder for legitimate businesses to do the thing that they need to do." Like, yeah, that's true, but I, I don't know what the solution is. I don't know how you step in and investigate misuse without there being a blast radius of scrutiny around people who aren't misusing.

Nick Shirley 45:49 Yeah, I think transparency is very important. So if you're operating a daycare, and you're operating legally, if someone asks you for a brochure, have that brochure for them.

Chris Williamson 45:58 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 45:59 Don't come after them and then cry victim after it happened, but be running your business legitimately. And so that's why I was like, I was really happy to see that they froze the funding 'cause it gives every opportunity for every business to prove they're a legit business.

Chris Williamson 46:15 Well, I mean, it does sound like, [chuckles] i- in retrospect, because the businesses have already been running, it sounds kind of, uh, intrusive or restrictive in some sort of a way. But if you were to say from the get-go, "In order for you to get funding to open up a daycare, you need to prove to us that you have adhered to this list of things," you go, "That seems like a reasonable request for a daycare." The problem is that these daycares have been operating without that, and then when you bring the scrutiny in, you just have anchoring bias.

Nick Shirley 46:45 Exactly, and I mean, Biden literally, like, [chuckles] it came out just the other day, like, the, the restrictions, the guidelines to get a daycare going was very low when he was in office. So a lot of this fraud has been en-- been enabled to happen, and now people are saying, "Nick, you need to go do fraud here in California. You need to go to Ohio, or Seattle, Washington."

Chris Williamson 47:07 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 47:07 "There's all this fraud taking place." And so I think now you're gonna start seeing a lot of people speaking out against fraud 'cause, I mean, some people are paying upwards of m- more than fifty percent of their paycheck to the government.

Chris Williamson 47:21 We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus, and your performance. But most people have no idea where theirs are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with Function, because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them, gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it's just four hundred and ninety-nine dollars, and right now, you can get a hundred dollars off, bringing it down to three hundred and ninety-nine bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that hundred dollars by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. What are the places, if you were to create, based on the messages you've got, and you were to make a, a hit list of the top few places that you would go to, where would they be?

Nick Shirley 48:35 California, really bad, obviously. The next one would be Ohio. I've heard that one's really bad, and New York's bad as well. So those would probably be the top three.

Chris Williamson 48:48 What have you learned about those places? As someone said, it's a particular d-- it's a different ki- is it the same scheme, different one?

Nick Shirley 48:53 A lot of it is the welfare scams. Here in California, you had twenty-four billion dollars randomly, randomly go unaccounted for, for homelessness. You have that-... train they've been trying to build for years upon years.

Chris Williamson 49:04 From Calif Road. Yeah.

Nick Shirley 49:06 Y- and then Ohio, you have welfare programs as well. New York City got welfare programs as well, where people are just kinda stealing from the government.

Chris Williamson 49:15 Who are the highest profile politicians or departments that are working with you now or that have reached out?

Nick Shirley 49:22 Well, I'm not working with any of them. Uh, people have reached out. For instance, I was on Patrick Bet-David, and he's like: "Nick, put out a tweet right now calling out Cash Martel and [chuckles] Pam Bondi, and ask them how you can help." And so then I'm, like, driving to the airport, and I get a phone call, and I could re- scr- I scr- screened it before, and it said, "This is the FBI calling." And, uh, I was in an Uber, so I didn't wanna answer and have the Uber guy overhearing it.

Chris Williamson 49:45 Mm-hmm.

Nick Shirley 49:46 And so I was like, "Okay, I'll wait to answer it." By the time I had gotten to the air- airport, by that time, I had received five or ten other calls, and I couldn't figure out what one [chuckles] it was. And so, like, a lot of people have been reaching out to me, but also at the same time, I'm like, "Okay, well, I'm not a fed. I'm not gonna do your guys' job for you."

Chris Williamson 50:03 Mm.

Nick Shirley 50:05 Um, I g- I showed you guys what was happening. I'm willing to talk, but I'm not a fed. Like, this is kinda your guys' job-

Chris Williamson 50:11 Mm

Nick Shirley 50:11 ... to go in. I'm willing to do my job as a citizen to give you guys as much information as I can, but at the end of the day, you guys are the ones with the papers [chuckles] and you guys are the ones with all the, uh, who, who have all the, the laws in your power to go and find these fraudsters.

Chris Williamson 50:27 So you ended up speaking to the FBI?

Nick Shirley 50:29 No, I didn't actually.

Chris Williamson 50:30 Oh, you had so many missed calls but just never could call them back?

Nick Shirley 50:32 Couldn't find it. Like, this week, my phone, I can't even keep up with it, 'cause I- if I fall asleep for two hours or go to bed at night, I wake up, and I have 100 text messages. I, I could show you-

Chris Williamson 50:42 Mm-hmm

Nick Shirley 50:42 ... but my phone's in the other room.

Chris Williamson 50:43 Mm.

Nick Shirley 50:44 But I have just, like, 300 messages that I haven't even gotten back to.

Chris Williamson 50:47 Wow.

Nick Shirley 50:48 [chuckles] Just 'cause there's so many people.

Chris Williamson 50:50 Yeah. What's been the response of the mainstream press to this?

Nick Shirley 50:53 Yeah, so you think they'd be happy that somebody goes in and goes and shows what, that fraud is happening. But instead of investigating the fraudsters, they investigated me. [chuckles] They tried to come in and debunk my whole entire story. They couldn't do it 'cause it was true, and, uh, they labeled me as a MAGA YouTuber, conservative, right-wing journalist. All right.

Chris Williamson 51:16 Would you call yourself conservative?

Nick Shirley 51:18 Yeah, I am conservative. I think, uh, a lot of the values from conservatives are stuff I just share, uh, equally as well. I just think it makes the [chuckles] most sense.

Chris Williamson 51:27 Mm.

Nick Shirley 51:27 But, um... but I had this conversation with a left-leaning journalist. I said, "Well, are you a journalist, or are you a left-wing journalist?" He's like, "Well, I'm a journalist." I'm like: "Okay, same thing here. I'm a journalist, too." [chuckles] And I'll, I'll talk to the liberal, I'll talk to the homeless man, I'll talk to the guy running the daycare. I'll talk to the person who's been living in the neighborhood for eight years. I'll talk to everyone inside my video, and that's why my video, I think, resonated with so many people, 'cause I was showing, and I was talking to quite literally everybody-

Chris Williamson 52:00 Mm

Nick Shirley 52:00 ... from the daycare owner to the man who's been doing his own viga- investigation for years, to the guy who's been living in this, living in Minneapolis for eight years, who's never seen a kid inside a Quality Learning Center, and then [chuckles] the crazy liberal who's yelling at me, telling me I'm ICE. [chuckles] So I'll talk to everybody, and I'll go to these protests, and I'll do these live streams, and I'll talk to the protesters, and I just let people talk. And if they wanna come after me, so be it. But I'm there to give each and every single person I interview an opportunity to explain what they're doing, what they think, and why they're, ul- ultimately, why they're behind the cause that they're behind.

Chris Williamson 52:37 Why do you think it is that the mainstream press had such a problem with it? Is it just a good optics to seem like you're sort of fighting for the underdog brown person, or is it- is there something deeper going on?

Nick Shirley 52:49 I think it's 'cause they're trying to delegitimize me, 'cause I pose a threat to everything that they are. I pose a threat to their viewership, to their dollars, to their fan base, and so why would they want me to get credit for a story that they should have been reporting on? They have thousands of employees. Mmm, uh, I have me and myself-

Chris Williamson 53:08 And your mum.

Nick Shirley 53:09 My mom. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 53:11 [laughing]

Nick Shirley 53:11 And that's pretty much it. I'll have my cameraman-

Chris Williamson 53:14 Yeah

Nick Shirley 53:15 ... and that's it. And we just did over 100 million views on an exposé that they should have covered as well.

Chris Williamson 53:22 Mm.

Nick Shirley 53:23 But instead, they come after me. So I think that's kind of why, and so that's why you're see- And they know that the mainstream media, it's dying. Like, their viewership is g- getting less and less each and every single year. And so if they can come in, and they find somebody like me, who goes and does this story, gets way more views than they did, why would they want to say, "Oh, good, good job, Nick Shirley. Like, that's amazing reporting you, you just did"?

Chris Williamson 53:47 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 53:48 Let's do everything to make people know that, at least try to make them know, that whatever Nick Shirley did was not true. But it was true.

Chris Williamson 53:57 Yeah, I t- there's certainly a, a rivalry between independent and legacy media in that way. I would say, at least, again, the m- the immediate benefit that these people get, in the same way as the immediate benefit that Tim Walz perhaps got, is the optics, that if you're not seen to be pushing back against this, you're seen to be implicitly agreeing with and endorsing the worst possible explanation of why you could have done it, that you don't like brown people, that you're the secret agent for Donald Trump, that you're a fed, that you're a whatever. Um, I think that, to me, makes the most sense, but I don't, I don't disagree that, um... For the first time ever, it was really funny, there was some, uh, gossip in the evidence-based fitness community a couple of months ago, and, um, it was the first time that I'd ever seen the press commenting on a really niche internet story. So typically, YouTubers, we would react to shit that happened in the real world or that's in the press. Press does an investigation, we talk about it, right? "Today in the New York Times, did you see the article about such and such?"... This was the first time where it happened the other way around. It was like some niche internet beef had gotten sufficiently big that the press had gone, "Oh, that's a story that we can have." And that was when I, I really realized that sort of the flow of traffic is moving in the other direction. It very much is that the independent media stuff- I'm s- still hesitant about, like, completely sucking off everybody who's doing independent stuff. Mainstream press still gets a ton of reach in places that we simply can't. Like, we just can't reach most of Middle America soccer mom people. There's not-- They're not gonna hit your algo, no matter how many times Elon Musk retweets it. The only way it works is if NPR pick up on Musk's tweet. But, uh, there is definitely a rivalry going on, and as with any sort of dying institution, it tends to not go down without a fight.

Nick Shirley 55:56 There's a rivalry going on, and it's competition at the end of the day for them. They're trying to keep up with people like me and you. I mean, we're able to run our operatives a lot smoother and smaller than they are. Just think about what they have to do to go out and get a story. They have to book a cameraman. They have to carry around this huge backpack. They have to get approval from the senior editor, and then when they want to post a video, then it goes through two different hands, and then they have to approve it, and then it goes live. Versus me, I book my flight, I get to the location, I film, I edit, and I post.

Chris Williamson 56:31 Well, the frictionlessness is a, is a massive advantage. It's why you were able to basically turn it around in ten days. Um, the criticism of that would be, well, because you're not going through the appropriate amount of scrutiny with having higher levels, this could ca-- There will be an error, some sort of an implication error or many in the video that you put out, and in the next one, and in every podcast that I have ever done because it's not gonna go through an entire team of fact-checkers. I think the reason that people feel particularly aggrieved when the mainstream media make errors, it's the same reason that you feel super pissed if you ever to see a cop texting while driving. You're like: Hey, you're supposed to enforce the law. Because you enforce the law, you're kind of meant to adhere to it more rigorously than we are.

Nick Shirley 57:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:14 Um, but, you know, the concern that people have about citizen journalism is that it's fast and loose with the facts, and if it just gets clicks, it doesn't matter. So I think, you know, if I was to give you a piece of advice, I think certainly as you move forward, which you're probably already doing, you need to, unfortunately, become increasingly squeaky clean with your own fact-checking as you go on, because the amount of scrutiny, the amount of eyeballs now is just gonna keep getting more and more. And if you fuck up, what's gonna happen is that's gonna be used. That, uh, is gonna be, um, a microcosm to try and smear the rest of the world... Oh, see? See the error that was in there? Actually, he's not a such and such, and then, [whooshes] that's the rest of it.

Nick Shirley 57:55 Yeah. I mean, I've made my mistakes, too, and when you're ma- going through and making a video like that, the editing process is long, and that takes a lot of time to edit, so you're also doing fact checks as well when you're editing it.

Chris Williamson 58:06 Mm.

Nick Shirley 58:06 Because I edit all my videos. I'm also going through, and if something's not true, I'm not-- I'm gonna call it out for what it is. And, uh, everything in that video that I posted was true. And have I made mistakes before? Yeah, I have. I'm twenty-three years old, and I've been doing this sort of journalism for about two years now. Like, I'm not gonna say I've never made mistakes, but in this case of the Minnesota fraud video, it's been proven to be completely true, not only by me but by the government, by the locals. I mean, Quality Learning Center, it just got shut down the other day, got closed on January 6th. And also, when the same, the same day that that guy came out, and he was talking about Quality Learning Center, we're open, and, uh, that same time, the Commissioner of Children, Tiki James, was doing a live stream, and she announced that the daycare had been closed, while he's out there telling people it's open.

Chris Williamson 59:00 Wow.

Chris Williamson 59:02 Talk to me about the security concerns that you've got now.

Nick Shirley 59:06 Yeah, so security now, I have to have it because I exposed fraud [chuckles] and, uh, right now, I have somebody with me twenty-four/seven. I have somebody at the house as well. It's super expensive, and as a YouTuber, I don't make enough money to be able to afford it, unfortunately. So I was able to, to raise some money. Uh, I don't know if you know him. His name's Officer Tatum. He has a nonprofit side of a security company, and, uh, people can go ahead and donate to that, donate to that, where it's helped me. It's called Black Line Guardian, and they have a security side, uh, a, a go- they have, like, a nonprofit side of it where people can donate to.

Chris Williamson 59:42 So your big, scary dude with the beard outside is, uh, organized by him?

Nick Shirley 59:46 Yes.

Chris Williamson 59:46 Wow, cool.

Nick Shirley 59:47 So that helps a lot, and so that's been critical because of just, like, the threats that I've received, whether it's-

Chris Williamson 59:53 Talk to me about those. What have you got?

Nick Shirley 59:55 Yeah, so for instance, somebody sent me a photo of somebody in a ditch dead, and they said: "Well, this will be you on, uh, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:00:01 A text?

Nick Shirley 1:00:02 Y- just on a, just through private messages-

Chris Williamson 1:00:05 What?

Nick Shirley 1:00:06 ... like DMs. People are posting, "You'll be Kirked." Um, people on certain platforms just went ahead and doxxed me, so that was great.

Chris Williamson 1:00:19 Which is why you now need the security at your house?

Nick Shirley 1:00:21 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:00:21 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 1:00:21 Luckily, we got the info taken down, but it just sucks that there's people who get so mad about you doing something or the point where they want to kill you. I mean, we saw it with Charlie Kirk. Rest in peace to Charlie Kirk, and now it's very dangerous. Like, being well known in politics is different than being well known for having an amazing song, 'cause politics is now very polarizing. And so I thought on an issue of just fraud happening, I didn't think I-- To me, I was just making another YouTube video for my weekly uploads. I've uploaded a YouTube video every week for the past one hundred weeks. And so for me to post that video, then all of a sudden, kind of my life to be changed overnight, to the point where I have to have a twenty-four/seven security guy with me right now, and it's not the funnest thing to have to go through and-

Chris Williamson 1:01:07 Mm

Nick Shirley 1:01:07 ... try to navigate and plan s- stuff. It feels like you're just going from point A to point B now, and you're-- you kind of have to figure out how to live life a little bit different for at least this, these past few weeks, and-

Chris Williamson 1:01:16 Mm

Nick Shirley 1:01:16 ... going forward for the next few weeks as well.

Chris Williamson 1:01:19 What's that been like emotionally to navigate?

Nick Shirley 1:01:23 ... weird. I'm not a very emotional person. I think what was harder was going through, like, constantly defending yourself and, like, fighting back against all this fake news that was coming out, or people trying to debunk me. It just felt like you're kind of, like, fighting a war online, and that- it's just- it, it was weird 'cause you feel like- 'cause I actually never really gave my opinions on the internet before this. I was just interviewing people and talking to people, and then when everyone comes after you, you, you feel like you have to stand on business.

Chris Williamson 1:01:52 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:01:52 And so I had to do that, and, um, I gained millions and millions of supporters, literally, who support me, and it's been amazing, and it's also been pretty exhausting. Uh, like, I think the three days after I posted that video, I maybe slept for ten hours for the three days combined, and so I just ba- have barely been catching up on sleep. And, uh, yeah, it does take a bit of a toll on you emotionally, but it's just a battle you have to fight.

Chris Williamson 1:02:19 Does it make you hesitant about doing more if it means that your life's gonna be in jeopardy?

Nick Shirley 1:02:25 Yes, and now you're trying to think of different ways to do it, or if you're gonna go film this video, what security measures do you have in place beforehand? It's just stuff you didn't have to think about before. Before, it was just, I'd run around, I'd grab my GoPro and my camera, and I would go.

Chris Williamson 1:02:39 No one knows who you are. No one cares.

Nick Shirley 1:02:41 No one cares, and it increasingly started to get, like, a little bit more dangerous. For instance, the riots here in LA, people were singling me out, trying to kick me out of the, of interviewing people, and then I go to a-

Chris Williamson 1:02:52 Because they know who you are, they've got an idea about the sort of perspective you're coming into this with?

Nick Shirley 1:02:57 Yes. Protest in New York City, I'm live streaming it. I'm live streaming a protest that's happening in New York City, just asking people questions, not even giving my opinion. NYPD has to pull me out 'cause a bunch of protesters surround me. They start throwing stuff on me. NYPD pulls me out.

Chris Williamson 1:03:12 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:03:13 And so it had increasingly been getting to that point, and then someone also in this sphere, they're like: "Well, Nick, it was just a matter of time before this happened, especially with the topics you're covering."

Chris Williamson 1:03:23 Mm. Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for as long as I can remember now, because it is the simplest way I've found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition, and that is why I partnered with them. Just one scoop gives you seventy-five vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients in a single drink. Now, they've taken it a step further with AG1 Next Gen, the same one scoop, once a day ritual, but this time backed by four clinical trials. In those trials, it was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels in just three months, and increase healthy gut bacteria by ten times, even in people who already eat well. They've upgraded their formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients, and clinical validation. Plus, it's still NSF certified for sport, so you know that the quality is legit. Right now, when you first subscribe, you can get a free bottle of D3K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit, plus bonus AG1 travel packs, and for a limited time, US customers also get a sample of AGZ and a bottle of omega-3s. Just go to the link in the description below, or head to drinkag1.com/ModernWisdom. That's drinkag1.com/ModernWisdom. I think... I don't mean to call you naive. I think you're right. Um, doesn't need to be said, death threats aren't, aren't cool. But if you're talking about taking away hundreds, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and up to billions of dollars from people who are potentially criminally minded, the prospect of you having death threats does not surprise me. Like, this is- I mean, there will be-- there is an one hundred percent certainty that organized crime, like proper, proper, proper organized crime, is involved at some point in some portion of this or maybe in a big chunk of it. Because no one is able to come up with a scheme, allegedly, that is this good, [chuckles] that is able to churn out this sort of cash and it not be picked up on by some big, burly guy covered in tattoos, who wants to have a piece of that. So yeah, man, I mean, I get it. I get that it feels, and it is, um, that's scary and unfair, but yeah, if you start, if you start attacking that kind of resource, there's gonna be a lot of people that are very upset.

Nick Shirley 1:05:45 Yeah, no one likes to get their money played with.

Chris Williamson 1:05:47 No. Well, including the taxpayer. Isn't there a, a movement at the moment for a tax strike? Aren't people tax striking, whatever that means?

Nick Shirley 1:05:55 Yeah, we'll see if it happens. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:05:57 Yeah. Well, I mean, it is kind of a bit like, "I'm not giving you my money because y- you're giving it to the, the daycare centers that I don't like." It's like, okay, go to jail. Like, you need to pay us your taxes. I don't, I don't know whether a tax strike works. You can't ethically object to your taxes being taken. You can just try, and then the law comes up against you.

Nick Shirley 1:06:16 It's gonna be interesting if people actually hold their word onto it because no one wants to go to jail. I mean, the Boston Tea Party, we fought over-

Chris Williamson 1:06:23 [laughing]

Nick Shirley 1:06:23 ... just a few percentages.

Chris Williamson 1:06:24 That's a very difficult day for me. Be careful with that.

Nick Shirley 1:06:27 Sorry.

Chris Williamson 1:06:27 Um, have you got any lawsuits coming your way?

Nick Shirley 1:06:29 As of right now, no.

Chris Williamson 1:06:31 No lawsuits? Well, I guess it's still kind of early days.

Nick Shirley 1:06:34 What I did was, it was true, and if someone wants to prove me otherwise...

Chris Williamson 1:06:38 Well, I think the issue that you have is lawsuits don't need to be predicated on anything that's untrue.

Nick Shirley 1:06:45 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:45 They can be predicated on truth and just drown you in paperwork, try and send as much, um, worry and concern your way. I mean, you saw- did you see, um, Shaun Ryan and Dan Crenshaw? They are in a big f- fallout at the moment, um, and then it didn't happen. It felt like I'd been edged up to the point of orgasm, and then it didn't, it didn't end up occurring. Fucking nightmare. Uh, uh, th- that entire process on, on Shaun's side is, uh, somebody is using the legal system to bully me in a way, bully a journalist, to bully someone who's investigating, uh, in a manner that is not because I crossed a line, but is because I'm just inconvenient.

Nick Shirley 1:07:23 Yeah, I pray it doesn't ever get to that point, and that's why I had, uh, avoided stuff like this for so long, and that's why I always feel like in my videos, I just-... kind of give other people the option to voice their opinion, whether it was the daycare lady or whether it's-

Chris Williamson 1:07:36 Hmm

Nick Shirley 1:07:36 ... whether it's at talking to people at the border, just giving people their opinions. And so I really hope I never have to get in any of that.

Chris Williamson 1:07:45 Have you got a legal team, or is, are people reviewing stuff that you put out now? Like, w- the next video, is that gonna be filtered through, or is it still just you again, camera, Premiere Pro, caffeine, and just shipping it?

Nick Shirley 1:08:00 Lots of caffeine.

Chris Williamson 1:08:01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Shirley 1:08:01 Uh, no, I- [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:08:02 I'll put you on the rotation for Neutonic. It'll help.

Nick Shirley 1:08:04 I'm, uh, I'm changing a little bit how I go about things.

Chris Williamson 1:08:08 I think that's a smart idea.

Nick Shirley 1:08:09 Yeah, it's kind of necessary.

Chris Williamson 1:08:10 I think that's a smart idea.

Nick Shirley 1:08:11 But it's been amazing to see the support as well. A lot and lots of people want to support me, 'cause a lot of people's lives are being affected by this fraud stuff. A lot of people are getting pushed out of places for-

Chris Williamson 1:08:21 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:22 Tell me about part 2.

Nick Shirley 1:08:24 Part 2, [chuckles] yeah, so the daycare fraud's only one part of the fraud.

Chris Williamson 1:08:28 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 1:08:28 And what really holds the fraud together is these transportation companies. And so-

Chris Williamson 1:08:33 Like shipping?

Nick Shirley 1:08:34 No, they're called non-emergency transportation.

Chris Williamson 1:08:38 Okay.

Nick Shirley 1:08:39 And so, for instance, these daycares and these home healthcare companies, adult daycares, they need to be able to prove that they're doing stuff. So they have created these, um, transportation companies. You'll see them all across Minnesota, all across Minneapolis. You'll drive, you'll see a van, and there's never anybody in these vans. It's just always a driver. So in order to make it look like they're doing stuff, they get these drivers. They'll send-- they'll say, "All right, here's our client." So imagine, you have an adult daycare center-

Chris Williamson 1:09:08 Okay

Nick Shirley 1:09:09 ... and then you have a healthcare clinic. In order to kind of prove that you're doing legit business, okay, well, we're gonna take this adult, "adult," to healthcare clinic, and we're actually not really providing a service, and there's no person to actually take, so we'll have the transportation company. We'll f- we'll write it up that they took that person there, they got that service, and then they brought her back. And nothing actually ever happened. It's just the transportation moving from one place to the next-

Chris Williamson 1:09:38 Hmm

Nick Shirley 1:09:38 ... to be able to continue this fraud. So it's like the-- it's like what keeps the hamster wheel going.

Chris Williamson 1:09:45 Why is the transportation so important? Is that an... Is that a crucial part of logging the activities?

Nick Shirley 1:09:50 Yeah, so it's basically so they can log the activities, and then the transportation company also makes money, and it's logging what's happening.

Chris Williamson 1:10:00 Right.

Nick Shirley 1:10:00 So it makes it a lot harder to kind of prove that something fishy is going on because, "No, we, we, we, we had the transportation company take the client. This is the proof."

Chris Williamson 1:10:08 Hmm. I suppose the problem is because, uh, every business doesn't talk to every other business, what you would pretty easily be able to do is say, "Well, go to the healthcare," and say, "Did this person come in at this time?" W- that's not... It's not the job of the healthcare company to work with the benefit company to see that the daycare company dropped the person off with the transport company and, you know-

Nick Shirley 1:10:29 Yeah, but they're all in on it.

Chris Williamson 1:10:31 I- including the healthcare?

Nick Shirley 1:10:33 In one building, in my video, twenty-two healthcare companies inside of one building.

Chris Williamson 1:10:38 Right. Okay. [chuckles] Okay, so, so i- is it right to say that the transport thing is part of the crux of this because it is one of the areas that's scrutinized by the, the, the government? Is that what's going on? I just don't understand why the vans and the minibuses are so important.

Nick Shirley 1:10:59 Yeah, so, well, like you said, it helps log.

Chris Williamson 1:11:01 Yep.

Nick Shirley 1:11:01 And so that way they can then... If someone was like, "Well, show us the proof-

Chris Williamson 1:11:04 Mm-hmm.

Nick Shirley 1:11:05 -Oh, well, look, um, Safari Transportation took Mohammed to the doctor." I guess it makes it harder, but-

Chris Williamson 1:11:14 Mm

Nick Shirley 1:11:14 ... in my part 2, we go to these transportation companies, to their addresses, where they're listed on the State of Minnesota website, and there's no company. There's no vans-

Chris Williamson 1:11:25 Hmm

Nick Shirley 1:11:26 ... yet they are then- we did the math. It's about fifty dollars per travel, one way to the next, and an average NEMT, uh, transportation company, has about twenty vehicles. So on average, every day in Minnesota, about two million dollars is being sucked out from these companies.

Chris Williamson 1:11:46 Wow!

Nick Shirley 1:11:46 So it's just part of the welfare pr- [chuckles] fraud.

Chris Williamson 1:11:49 Wow! So the next, part 2, is primarily about the transport stuff?

Nick Shirley 1:11:53 Yes-

Chris Williamson 1:11:53 Cool

Nick Shirley 1:11:53 ... and some daycares as well. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:11:55 Okay, okay. That's already been filmed?

Nick Shirley 1:11:58 It's already been filmed.

Chris Williamson 1:11:59 'Cause there's no way that you're getting back into Minneapolis.

Nick Shirley 1:12:01 No, just to go back, I had to have four security guards.

Chris Williamson 1:12:04 Yeah. You couldn't get... And when was that?

Nick Shirley 1:12:06 Just the other week.

Chris Williamson 1:12:08 Okay.

Nick Shirley 1:12:09 And so I had legit people stopping at intersections. At a red light, their car's parked in the middle of the intersection, they're coming out, coming for me, and security's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" And stops the guy. [chuckles] This is what's funny. They... Meanwhile, I'm speaking to a Black man, and then this other Black Somalian's calling me a racist. I'm like: Yo, I was just talking to-

Chris Williamson 1:12:29 I've got a Black friend.

Nick Shirley 1:12:30 Yeah, [chuckles] I got a Black friend right here. This isn't a race thing. Like, it's, it is all just about fraud.

Chris Williamson 1:12:35 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 1:12:36 But it got politic, it got political for some reason.

Chris Williamson 1:12:40 Well, of course it did, 'cause everything gets political.

Nick Shirley 1:12:42 Nowadays, it does.

Chris Williamson 1:12:43 Uh.

Nick Shirley 1:12:43 But wouldn't you think it'd be, like, a good thing to kind of show that fraud's happening?

Chris Williamson 1:12:46 Look, I, I, I totally get it, man, the inefficiency and anybody manipulating the system, especially if you're the sort of person who really cares about the working class. If you're supposed to be rai- raising those up out of poverty, who don't, uh, don't deserve to be in it, shouldn't be in it, well, if someone is illegitimately taking funds and using them, that is fewer funds going to the people who genuinely need them. And then I... When you start to sort of spin in, well, these people might not be here legally, they might be sending money back. Okay, so we're literally exporting, potentially, allegedly, US taxpayer dollars through Dubai back to some country in the Middle East.... It doesn't surprise me that people have got super passionate about it. Like, if what you're saying is true, this is, this is wild. And I, I mean, you, you have to have predicted that this is basically going to be an entire new content matter for probably the next two years.

Nick Shirley 1:13:46 For sure.

Chris Williamson 1:13:46 There are gonna be many Nick Shirleys. The, the one in New York and the one in- there'll be one in Toronto, and there'll be one in LA.

Nick Shirley 1:13:54 People need to be careful, too, 'cause I did my due diligence when I went and did that video. I've seen a lot of people just, like, go into daycares. I'm like: "You guys, no, you don't just do that."

Chris Williamson 1:14:02 What was your due diligence? What did you do?

Nick Shirley 1:14:05 So I'd been investigating it for a while, and then David had all the paperwork, and it had testimonies from other people as well.

Chris Williamson 1:14:11 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:14:11 So I knew that it was happening, and I wasn't just showing up to random daycares. We had all the numbers with us-

Chris Williamson 1:14:16 Mm

Nick Shirley 1:14:17 ... in hand when we went to them, and we had done our due diligence.

Chris Williamson 1:14:22 What would be your-- what are the ways to do it right and do it wrong? If there's a mini Nick Shirley that thinks, "I'm gonna go and give this a crack in Austin, Texas," what should they and shouldn't they do?

Nick Shirley 1:14:35 You- I would look up, do all my due diligence. A lot of the information's on the state's websites. You don't just go to a daycare and say, "Hey, are you guys committing fraud?" [laughing]

Chris Williamson 1:14:46 [laughing]

Nick Shirley 1:14:46 That's what CNN did, though-

Chris Williamson 1:14:48 Yeah

Nick Shirley 1:14:48 ... is in my-- they came after me, and they're like... And then we called seven other daycares that Nick Shirley-

Chris Williamson 1:14:52 They didn't say that they were committing fraud.

Nick Shirley 1:14:54 And only one of them answered, and they said they weren't committing fraud.

Chris Williamson 1:14:56 Okay.

Nick Shirley 1:14:57 But, um, yes, be very weary of what you do, and make sure you do your due diligence because, one, you don't wanna accuse somebody of doing something that they're actually not doing.

Chris Williamson 1:15:07 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:15:07 And you don't want to put yourself in a place of danger.

Chris Williamson 1:15:10 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:15:11 So people should be very careful, and that's why you just don't go up with a camera and a microphone, start talking to people and about fraud, if... You have to know, and there's a way about carrying, carrying yourself about it.

Chris Williamson 1:15:25 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:15:25 A lot of people come across confrontational, which is not good. You don't wanna come across, across confrontational. You just wanna act like you're going in to get the truth, 'cause that's what you are doing. And, uh, people, I've learned something over the past few years as I've been doing this, just people will kinda show themselves for who they really are after a few conversations, [chuckles] after a few sentences-

Chris Williamson 1:15:47 Mm

Nick Shirley 1:15:48 ... and, uh, after a few questions. So know a lot- I feel like I'm very well socially. Like, I can kinda get the gist of the vibe of places and who I'm talking to, and a lot of people don't. So it does take... You just can't go and do it.

Chris Williamson 1:16:01 You need to test the temperature a little bit before you steam in. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned you, you tried to be kind of low profile with filming equipment as well. I think that's a smart move.

Nick Shirley 1:16:13 Yeah. I just want people to feel like they're inside the video.

Chris Williamson 1:16:16 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:16:16 And, I mean, having a big camera, this is why the news isn't successful. If you watch any news person, they got these huge cameras. They got another guy holding the microphone on top. They got a light they're putting a-- [chuckles] you'll see them in New York City, the news anchors. They're, like, standing on a box. They got a light brightening up their face.

Chris Williamson 1:16:33 Changes the dynamic of everything.

Nick Shirley 1:16:34 Changes the dynamic of everything. And what do people want more than anything nowadays? Just pure authenticity.

Chris Williamson 1:16:39 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:16:39 And so I like to do that by my style of filming, where it's just kinda like run-and-gun. Like, I know it's not the best quality, [chuckles] but we're running.

Chris Williamson 1:16:47 Yeah, it'll work.

Chris Williamson 1:16:48 Uh, I heard that you'd also been to CECOT as well.

Nick Shirley 1:16:51 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:16:51 What was that like?

Nick Shirley 1:16:53 Craziest experience of my life, probably.

Chris Williamson 1:16:55 Tell, tell, tell people the, the story behind that.

Nick Shirley 1:16:57 So CECOT's this maximum security prison. It's actually, like, the centr- central of terrorism in El Salvador. El Salvador used to be run by gangs completely. Grandmas couldn't go from one street to the next to go visit their nieces and nephews 'cause gangs controlled the areas. So Nayib Bukele, he actually created his own political party inside of El Salvador called New Ideas, and part of this was that we are gonna go down, and he doesn't... He's, he's rich, so he actually doesn't need funding. So he-- that's, like, how you can tell a political person isn't, can't be really corrupted, because they don't need the money. So Nayib Bukele, he, he goes in and he says, "We're gonna fight the gangs, and we're gonna lock all the prisoners up. All the gangsters, we're putting inside of CECOT, and they are never leaving."

Chris Williamson 1:17:42 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:17:43 So they go through, and they lock up all the prisoners. They turn El Salvador from the most dangerous country in the world to the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, and they put all these prisoners inside of CECOT. And this prison, it's like a bunch of massive Costcos [chuckles] for prisoners, and they're never leaving. And no, uh, American YouTuber had ever gone in, and I saw that Luisito Comunica, the-- he's the most popular La- Latino YouTuber, he went in. So I was like, "Oh, there has to be a possibility to go." And so I went to El Salvador. I made a separate video, and I had in the back of my mind, like, "I need to find a contact, so I can figure this out." And I ended up meeting with one of the mayors in my video. He said, "No, but maybe here's this phone number. Text this person." That person says, "No." I'm like: "Well, where do I go?" They're like, "I don't know," kinda just gave up on me. And so I started following people on X, and I started sending messages like, "Hey, I wanna come into this prison." And finally, just a random person was like: "Okay, I'll put you in the- I'll put you in contact with the secretary of press." And I was able to go in, and in that video, you'll see me walk in, and right as you, right as you walk into CECOT, anything that you were feeling good about before just leaves your body.

Chris Williamson 1:18:58 Wow!

Nick Shirley 1:18:58 Like, complete, completely emp- complete emptiness fills, fills your body, and then you look these prisoners in the eyes, sh- emptiness.

Chris Williamson 1:19:09 Why?

Nick Shirley 1:19:10 Pure emptiness. I think, uh, any goodness of them had been taken away from what they committed.

Chris Williamson 1:19:17 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:19:18 And so, like, whether it be, like, the light of Christ or just any good vibes they had, gone.

Chris Williamson 1:19:23 Is it designed in a way that's meant to make it more soulless than a, a normal place?

Nick Shirley 1:19:29 100%.

Chris Williamson 1:19:30 Right.

Nick Shirley 1:19:30 The lights never turn off. You're given a sheet. You eat the same meals every day. You get no protein.

Chris Williamson 1:19:36 Right.

Nick Shirley 1:19:37 Like, you get rice and beans and tortillas, I think-

Chris Williamson 1:19:39 Mm

Nick Shirley 1:19:40 ... and milk.... and you have no form of entertainment. You don't have books, and the only time you actually get to leave your cell is to touch your toes and do some push-ups and work out a little bit, or to listen to somebody preach the gospel. And if you wanna go pee or poop, you have to do it in front of everybody inside your cell. And these gangs, rival gangs, MS-13, Barrio Dieciocho, they're all in the same room. You're locked up with your enemies.

Chris Williamson 1:20:07 How many people are on site, do you know?

Nick Shirley 1:20:10 I think upwards of a thousand probably inside. I think there's around seven-- I can't exactly remember the number, I don't wanna say.

Chris Williamson 1:20:15 Right.

Nick Shirley 1:20:15 But I think there's more than 10,000 of them.

Chris Williamson 1:20:17 Wow!

Nick Shirley 1:20:17 And they used to literally control that country.

Chris Williamson 1:20:21 I remember when it first happened, uh, I watched some videos about it, and it, it basically looks like football stadiums, right? These huge, like, m- monstrous constructions. And then this morning-

Nick Shirley 1:20:33 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:20:34 ... I wanted to have a little look at what it was like inside, and it does... Look, these people are allegedly criminals and have done horrible things, and the country is undeniably better now. Is there some collateral damage? Yes, I'd absolutely heard that, you know, two people are criminals in a house, and five other people are also whisked away. [scoffs] Not great. Would it be nice to be more precise? Yes, it absolutely would. But when I looked at that photo, and it's, you know, the bunks are super high, the, like, four or five bunks high. If you fell off the top, you would really damage yourself. And it's just this sort of wall of humans sort of peering and looking through the bars. I was like, "Fuck me, man!" Like, the fact that human civilization has got to this stage, it's a really shocking image. I, like, that's how prisons work. I get it, right? But to just see that image of h- humans locked up, k- a lot like animals... In fact, animals have got better conditions in some ways. Again, not excusing what fucking criminals do at all, but I found that, I found that image to look at pretty difficult to see. Like, holy shit!

Nick Shirley 1:21:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:50 It's a lot.

Nick Shirley 1:21:51 And by the time-- when you're l- about to leave, you do almost feel sympathetic for these people.

Chris Williamson 1:21:56 The conditions are so brutal.

Nick Shirley 1:21:58 Well, you're like: Dang, that would just suck! Like, could you imagine that? Like, no lights, you never see your family, you have no contact with the outside world.

Chris Williamson 1:22:06 And then never getting out?

Nick Shirley 1:22:07 Never getting out.

Chris Williamson 1:22:09 So everyone's in there for a life sentence?

Nick Shirley 1:22:10 For life.

Chris Williamson 1:22:12 Oh.

Nick Shirley 1:22:12 And if you are, if you do have proof that you are innocent, you can then al- you can then prove that you are innocent from inside there. So there is, like, a system-

Chris Williamson 1:22:20 Mm

Nick Shirley 1:22:20 ... 'cause they did just go round up. They checked for tattoos. If you have a MS-13 on your chest, goodbye.

Chris Williamson 1:22:26 One of my friends tried to get a free trip to El Salvador by getting MS-13 tattooed on his thigh. Didn't work.

Nick Shirley 1:22:33 Oh, that's a bad idea.

Chris Williamson 1:22:34 But he's still got the tattoo.

Nick Shirley 1:22:35 Oh, no. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:22:35 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 1:22:35 That's a bad idea.

Chris Williamson 1:22:36 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Shirley 1:22:37 And, uh, they do have a s- whole separate prison system that rehabilitates these people. Not the gangsters, but there's also a lot of other criminals as well.

Chris Williamson 1:22:45 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:22:46 And, uh, that's pretty amazing to see how a country had once been controlled and ran by these gangsters, to a country being entirely, entirely liberated by one man. And the people there are just, like, ecstatic. Like, you go there, and it's the weirdest feeling because it's like we have freedom here in the United States, so we take it for granted. These people didn't.

Chris Williamson 1:23:05 Mm.

Nick Shirley 1:23:05 Now they do, and they're able to live great lives. They're able to just to live free, like how we are able to live here. And so it is like, uh, you do feel like there was liberation that did pla- take place.

Chris Williamson 1:23:20 Unreal.

Chris Williamson 1:23:21 What's next? You've got part 2.

Nick Shirley 1:23:23 Got part 2.

Chris Williamson 1:23:23 Any idea of a publish date?

Nick Shirley 1:23:26 Hoping for this coming week.

Chris Williamson 1:23:28 Cool.

Nick Shirley 1:23:29 It's been super hard to even edit with all everything I've been going on. I've went from Nashville to Florida, back home, to here. Tomorrow, I'm going back to Florida, and it's just been... Someone just called me right before this podcast to have me go testify in front of Congress, so it, it's just a lot, and I need to maybe up my team a little bit. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:23:47 Mm. So part 2 at some point in the next week, hopefully, and then what?

Nick Shirley 1:23:52 I would love to go to Venezuela.

Chris Williamson 1:23:55 Mm, mm.

Nick Shirley 1:23:56 But we'll see what happens there. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:23:58 Okay, that's-- I think that's El Salvador on steroids at the moment.

Nick Shirley 1:24:01 Yeah. I do have a lot of other videos planned, but now a lot of things have changed as far as how I go about filming. Um, lots of fraud to expose here in California, lots of fraud to expose across the world. Has-

Chris Williamson 1:24:12 Well, yeah, I was gonna say, do you wanna rinse and r- do you wanna become known as kind of the fraud investigator guy for a little while, to keep on rinsing and repeating that before you move on to something else?

Nick Shirley 1:24:19 Yeah, I'll do another fraud video. Those just take a lot of time, because you don't... Like I said, with my video, I did my, I did the due diligence. David had done his proper investigation. I had done mine.

Chris Williamson 1:24:28 You need to find a David for each city.

Nick Shirley 1:24:30 A little bit, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:24:31 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 1:24:31 And, uh, you can just- you can also just continue to find that information. It just takes a lot longer.

Chris Williamson 1:24:38 Well, if you had a even partially competent team behind you, they would very easily be able to, nicksherleytips.com, submit your stuff here. They can go through and verify everything, and you've just got a pipeline of portfolios of, "Wow, we've got this many from this particular street and this city. It seems like this is the next place to go." But, uh, yeah, dude, the rapid ascension from being degenerate solo YouTuber with Mom as camera person to needing security around you is, uh... I think you'll look back on this period and, and kind of just look at it like a fever dream. It's gonna be, it's gonna be the wildest month, the few months of your life.

Nick Shirley 1:25:20 Yeah, it's been super weird. A- and, I mean, I already had a million subscribers before, and now I'm at, like, 1.5 almost. And, like, on X, I had 200,000, now I have 1.2 million followers. YouTube, uh, Instagram, I had 800, and now I have 2.3 million.

Chris Williamson 1:25:36 Wow!

Nick Shirley 1:25:37 So I was already somewhat popular on the internet before. Like, that, that's still a lot of people watching you, but now it's new level because you had-... the whole entire mainstream media come after me. Like, for that entire week, you couldn't turn on the news without hearing my name or seeing my footage. You had the leftists on X coming after me. You had people like Elon Musk sharing my videos. You had JD Vance sharing your videos. So it was almost undeniable, impossible to not see my video that week, and it turned out to be controversial. Tim Walz decided to step down from running for re-election because of that video.

Chris Williamson 1:26:16 Yeah, anybody that says that the internet doesn't cross over into the real world just needs to check out the last couple of weeks. Yeah, one video, and then the subsequent aftershocks of that is crazy.

Nick Shirley 1:26:27 Yeah, a lot of people were calling it, like, [chuckles] a modern-day David and Goliath, just from you have the Goliath, who's Tim Walz, and you have a little David just throwing some stones- [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:26:37 Yeah

Nick Shirley 1:26:37 ... and took out-

Chris Williamson 1:26:38 That's it

Nick Shirley 1:26:38 ... one of the, one of the top Democrats in the United States.

Chris Williamson 1:26:42 Yeah. What, uh, what do you want to achieve? Because it, it, it seems to me like there is an obvious, like, anti-woke or anti-progressive bent to some of the stuff that you're doing. Um, what is it, what is it that you want to achieve? Let's say that you look back on 2026, what would success look like to you?

Nick Shirley 1:27:03 I think helping more people come to sense on common sense matters, such as fraud, providing and creating real change within the country. I mean, no, no video has ever created so much change in such a short period of time. Literally-

Chris Williamson 1:27:17 Mm-hmm

Nick Shirley 1:27:17 ... millions, potentially billions, of dollars could have been saved for that one video.

Chris Williamson 1:27:20 Yeah.

Nick Shirley 1:27:21 And so I think creating that change, uh, helping people see stuff for common sense, bring some more common sense into the world, [chuckles] you know, and just make it a better place. And it stinks that stuff's getting politicized by this, because I really just want to be able to live in America, where I feel like I can afford things. I feel like my fellow friends and people around me can afford things, that we have hope that our taxes are going to the right place, and that for generations like myself, that we can have the same opportunities that our parents and grandparents had.

Chris Williamson 1:27:56 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 1:27:56 And we're seeing this corruption, making it very hard. Between corruption and the influx of migrants, and it's made it very, very hard for people to be able to buy houses, to just live in a country where you feel like you're being represented. You have people on the left who are more passionate about protecting illegal migrants than going after fraud.

Chris Williamson 1:28:19 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 1:28:19 And we just want to be able to have the same opportunities that our parents and grandparents had. And so when I think about what I want to accomplish, is I just really do want to see America be better than where it's been, and to support and to get behind causes that really do make changes, 'cause I now have the opportunity to. We just saw what I just did, and we'll continue to see me make effects in other ways, whether that be through talking with people one-on-one, giving a speech, presenting a video that gets millions of views, or simply just helping that old lady get into her car-

Chris Williamson 1:28:53 Hmm

Nick Shirley 1:28:53 ... pick up her groceries. Just being a good person and creating real-world change, and I think that's possible.

Chris Williamson 1:29:01 Yeah, man. I-- look, I, I don't know if exclusively corruption and migrants are the reason that the cost of living is as high as it is at the moment.

Nick Shirley 1:29:09 I think it's a great factor, and I think it's something that we can talk about.

Chris Williamson 1:29:13 It's something you've got more control over than what's the price of milk? Uh, so I agree in terms of that. Dude, I, uh,

Chris Williamson 1:29:21 I-

Nick Shirley 1:29:23 We got breaking news.

Chris Williamson 1:29:24 We have got breaking news. Holy shit! JD Vance announces the Trump administration will create a new assistant attorney general position, who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud, focusing first, primarily in Minnesota, and then expanding nationwide.

Speaker 1:29:38 If you're a young parent struggling to afford childcare in the United States of America, there are programs that we have to make it easier for your kids to get in daycare, for your kids to get in preschool. Those programs should go to American citizens, not be defrauded by Somali immigrants and others, make it hard for you to get the access to the resources you need. But number two, making it easier for people who shouldn't even be in this country to fleece the United States and our taxpayers to begin with. We've actually activated a major interagency task force to make it possible to get to the heart of this fraud. We have Department of Agriculture resources that are focused on SNAP fraud, so that people who need food benefits can get them, but illegal aliens and other fraudsters don't. We have, uh, over fifteen hundred subpoenas the Department of Justice has issued to get to the heart of the fraud ring. We've done almost a hundred indictments, mostly Somali immigrants, but also a few others, and of course, we're looking in with broad investigatory authority to a number of the r- the, the, the instances of wrongdoing that we've seen in Minneapolis. But we also want to expand this. We know that the fraud isn't just happening in Minneapolis, it's also happening in states like Ohio. It's happening in states like California. And so what we're doing in order to help coordinate this remarkable interagency effort from the Trump administration, but also to make sure that we prosecute the bad gu- bad guys and do it as swiftly and efficiently as possible, is we are creating a new assistant attorney, uh, general position, who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud. Now, of course, that person's efforts will start and focus primarily in Minnesota, but it is going to be a nationwide effort because, unfortunately, the American people have been defrauded in a very nationwide way.

Chris Williamson 1:31:26 What do you think when you see that?

Nick Shirley 1:31:28 Journalism that's creating change. I mean, the f- issue of fraud has been there, [chuckles] but it's not new that we've been being... It's not new that we've been being defrauded.

Chris Williamson 1:31:38 Hmm.

Nick Shirley 1:31:40 It's a complete result of my video [chuckles] showing that fraud's taking place, to the point where the Vice President of the United States needs to create a new role for Assistant Attorney General to go after fraud.... It's crazy, actually. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:31:54 Dude.

Nick Shirley 1:31:55 I think, think about that, like-

Chris Williamson 1:31:56 It's wild

Nick Shirley 1:31:57 ... have you ever thought, ever seen a video? We've been-- there's been lots of reports for years. Has there ever been a point in time where they froze funding, sent in feds to launch investigations, and created a new job for the attorney?

Chris Williamson 1:32:09 No, I was thinking about, I was thinking about some stuff maybe during COVID, where pe- people that had scrutiny around mask efficacy, transmission rates, vaccine stuff, perhaps, but it was nowhere near as direct. It was much more kind of little pebbles here and there, as opposed to this massive boulder that's just created it. Yeah, dude, I mean, this, this could be the beginning of a, a really huge tsunami of, of investigations around this stuff. So, uh, Nick Shirley, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, get some sleep for me, please.

Nick Shirley 1:32:40 Do I look tired?

Chris Williamson 1:32:41 No, I just want you to sleep.

Nick Shirley 1:32:43 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:32:43 I think that you-- I think that it's important for you to sleep so that you can keep on doing... You look fantastic. Um, I, uh, I think the other, the other lesson, at least to take away, uh, that I have from this, is that you cranked out a video a week for two years, and then you had the one that hit, and that's kind of the way that it tends to. Not that you hadn't accumulated an audience before, but this is the one that really, really hit.

Nick Shirley 1:33:07 Yeah, I think it's just like, I remember listening to your podcast with Hormozi, and it's just like you need to treat yourself... I remember one thing that really struck to me is he's like: "You need to treat yourself like you're the best athlete," and whatever it may be, whether it be making YouTube videos or making sure you're the best person at your job, wh- at wherever it may be. But, uh, j- like, I've dedicated essentially all my time and the past few years of my life to making these videos and creating conversation, and it wasn't a surprise that it just happened to be the fact that I made this video. It was just inevitable that something was gonna happen.

Chris Williamson 1:33:44 Sometime it was gonna happen. Yeah, dude. Yeah, that's, that's the way it works. All right, where should people go to keep up to date with your stuff, support you, do all the rest of the things?

Nick Shirley 1:33:51 Nick Shirley on all platforms. Shirley Defense, if you want a leery hoodie to leer a little bit. But yeah, just Nick Shirley everywhere.

Chris Williamson 1:33:57 Okay. Nick, I appreciate you. Thank

Chris Williamson 1:33:59 you, man.

Nick Shirley 1:33:59 Thank you. Got any advice for me?

Chris Williamson 1:34:01 Get some sleep. Um, I think that's important. Honestly, dude, g- get some sleep and go for walks. Uh, like, will just keep you fresh. What else advice would I give you?

Nick Shirley 1:34:13 You're a wise guy.

Chris Williamson 1:34:15 I think, I think you need to try and delegate as quickly as possible, uh, in order to allow you to keep doing the thing that you're the best at, because the sheer volume of inflow that you're gonna get is gonna cause you to miss the stuff that you really need. So what you, what you could do with is an assistant who is just with you at all times. And again, this is gonna be hard, 'cause you need the money, and you're gonna get it funded from something. But assuming that you had the resources to do it, and fuck me, text Elon. I'm sure he can spare a couple of mil. Um, somebody who's just always on your phone and is scrutinizing everything, sending it through a team. You probably need, I don't know, two or three people that would be really great to run in the background. Uh, and then it means that you can focus on: Where am I gonna go? What's the story? How's the edit look? Uh, so I would look to delegate. I would definitely get some rest as best I could. Uh, and I would see this period as kind of like your Super Bowl, because you're not going to be... Uh, you may be, but the likely it is that this is the most relevant that you're ever going to be. So I think continuing to put your foot on the gas, which is why getting the sleep as best you can, is good, so that you can keep on going pretty hard. Keep on publishing at a rapid clip. Be careful about what you say. You don't wanna have some horrible soundbite of you saying something horrendous that kind of smears the rest of your, uh, your image, because that's exactly what opponents are going to look for. And I would say keep on reaching out to people, because i- it's evident that people wanna support your work. So if you have the desire to try and make something happen, just keep on... You've already, you've already got, like, the shameless DM gene that I also have, which is good. So just keep on sending that out, 'cause I think people are gonna wanna keep supporting you.

Nick Shirley 1:36:11 Awesome. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Chris Williamson 1:36:12 Fuck, yeah. Appreciate you, bro.

Nick Shirley 1:36:13 Modern Wisdom, baby. [upbeat music]

Chris Williamson 1:36:15 Thank you very much for tuning in, and congratulations for not being so TikTok-brained that you actually made it to the end of a full podcast. Hooray! Uh, maybe another podcast with the one and only Naval Ravikant would also be good for you to watch. It's right here.