#63. Don't Hate The Player
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com, Instagram, or WeChat. Today's episode is me, Howie, and Eric, and we get into a bunch of stuff today. We talk about monetizing the podcast. So in other words, we give our thoughts on how we might earn money through doing the podcast.

We talk about money and happiness. We talk about our empathy for Trump supporters. We talk about cancel culture and being too quick to rush to judgment. And Howie tells us a story that has to do with swastikas. So without further ado, please enjoy. And here we go.

Anyway, so we're in this apartment and it's like being remodeled

well not remodeled it's being modeled because it's brand new and i'm like looking at it i'm like and i'm like talking to the construction person and like everything they're putting in is like baller they're playing like the best piping from like the ground up and everything i'm like damn i'm like who's the owner i was like the owner is shanghainese and he's like no like he looks at me he's like i thought you knew who the owner was i'm like no he's like the owner is um i might be getting this name wrong li jia qi

- Oh. - Wang Hong. - Yeah, the Wang Hong. - Like the biggest Wang Hong in China. - Yeah, the lipstick guy. - The lipstick guy. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's his house. That's his new house. - Jesus. - So Li Jiaqi is like this young, like lipstick. He's like the number one Wang Hong in China, right? - Wait, you mean the guy that does like- - He puts on his lipstick, he sells cosmetics. - Does he do like Apple stuff too?

I've only seen him do cosmetics. But he sells shit, right? No, he sells cosmetics. He reviews cosmetics and he sells them, yeah. I think this is the same guy. He sells the most goods on... Is it Austin Lee? Austin, yeah, Austin. Yeah, Austin.

Li Jiaqi, right? So like Xiao Hongsu, he's like huge. Like the biggest one, the biggest Wang Hong in China. He moves products, yeah. That's crazy. He literally moves. He's like the Joe Rogan of Wang Hong in like China, like even bigger, right? Yeah. So like, this guy is making fucking bank. Bank. Because this penthouse, I'm like, and I calculated it would be like over 100 million. US? No, no, no. 100 million RMB, over 100 million RMB.

just to buy it without the remodeling and everything. Like, and this kid's young, right? Yeah, he's young. So I'm like thinking like, damn, dude, these Wong Hongs are fucking making bank. I mean, he probably charges like, you know, just a, you know, like a one TikTok or one whatever, it'd be like 500,000 RMB. Well, he's getting like all the biggest brands to the tool, right? but think about it, how many TikToks does he do? You know what I mean? Like, yeah. And then like,

like he makes bank on like swang si like oh yeah swang si holiday like he's fucking killing it like blowing out no what people pay for like traditional media placement they just go to him so do you think he makes all this money just for himself or do you think he's got like more powerful people behind them that are basically using him as a puppet I don't know

- That's a good question. - You know what I'm saying? - That's a good question. - It's hard to say, right? - Is there like some sort of like team or like-- - Well, he definitely has a team. - Yeah, I think it's him because, it's just him. Because I remember I was at, actually with Simon, his old company, Digital Domain, which is a post-production house. When I was at his room, he was like, "Hey, look across the street." So he just like opens up the window shade and you see all these like people running around, there's a little studio and it's like a really nice like floor, like a whole floor is like very open and bright.

And he's like, you know who that is? I'm like, I don't know. He's like, that's Li Jiaqi. That's like his little office, you know? And yeah, he just like took over. So the same guy. Okay. Yeah. So this guy's making bank, but that's a really good question because he could just be like the face of like this whole enterprise that's behind him. Right. He started off as like a KOL. He's a KOL. He's just like, you know, he's just,

He didn't have any sponsors or anything, right? Yeah, he was just doing his thing. And next thing you know, it just caught traction. And then, you know, obviously you grow. But the question is, like, yes, there is the organic growth model, right? But then I think more often than we realize...

when it gets to a stage, when there's like an inflection point, when a person is like starting off and they're growing organically to get some good traffic to when they're like a mainstream superstar, like huge, like in between, there could be a lot of...

additions of people, them working together with behind the scenes enterprises or people pulling resources to get them to flip over to this mainstream stratosphere, right? There are companies. Yeah. But do you know, I mean, let's play devil's advocate, right? Do you know anyone in any realm, in any industry that...

independently calls all the shots, controls, pulls all the strings and is like independently successful. Like in any industry, like Michael Jordan, did he do it on his own? Not entirely, no. Not even close. Like he was nothing like from North Carolina. Well, again, okay, I'm going to go back to it.

But the only person that I know of, I'm sure there's others, but the only person I know of, and this is why I always refer to him as like a success model, right? I know what you're going to say. It's Joe Rogan. Yeah. Joe Rogan calls his own shots. Yeah. At least before he signed with Spotify, he did. So he was, he called his own shots, did everything he did on his own terms, on his own time and how he wanted to do it. And he was fortunate enough and lucky enough and talented enough to make

a great career out of that. So, I mean, that was the example. He didn't have to answer to shareholders, you know, he didn't have to do any of this. So he just did what he want. Wait, like, so we mentioned Joe Rogan. Have we shared, like, have you given a brief synopsis of who Joe Rogan is? We've mentioned his name several times. We've explained who he is, but he's basically the biggest podcaster in America. Yeah.

And he, and what's fascinating is no one could be more different than Li Jiaqi. Yeah. Right. And obviously Li Jiaqi is not a podcaster, but they both use social media and then they distribute content to a huge amount of users, right? Or listeners.

Joe Rogan uses sponsorships and advertisements. And then Lee Jiaqi basically is sponsored by these brands that he's directly selling. So there's some correlation in terms of how he does it. Well, his role is he's specifically talking about using these brands. He's a reviewer. So he reviews cosmetics. So that model, and I was saying this earlier this morning, like that model is primed and designed to be

to commercialize because you're reviewing products. You're selling products. It's like home shopping. Yeah, exactly. So there's a very obvious, exactly. There's a very obvious pathway to commercializing it and selling, right? Whereas something like what we're doing, there's not that obvious of a pathway to monetizing. But he does cosmetics? Yeah. But, okay. So he's a dude. He's a dude. He's a dude.

And he does cosmetics. He's like famous for like putting lipstick on his own lips. I guess it's like the... And he's a character, you know? Right. He plays it up. So I guess it like, if you had a girl do it, then maybe the cosmetics would be too tightly associated. Because I'm assuming that mostly girls watch it, right? Yeah.

So then if you had another girl do it, then the girls watching it would too tightly associate the cosmetic with the girl. And then maybe it would detract from the actual cosmetic. But having a guy do it, then it really just highlights the actual cosmetic because it's a dude. Well, to that, but also the novelty of like the gimmicky novelty of a guy wearing lipstick. That's funny. His charisma, his likability. But then he does lipstick, but he does, he do like the other stuff. Yeah. I think he does like, you know, women's cosmetics, like the whole, the whole range.

Yeah. That's interesting. It's just like a perfect storm. That's all it is. You know, it's like you can't plan for it. You can't, you know, expect it. Have you watched it?

just briefly like Jessica showed me because I didn't know who he was right so I'm standing in his apartment and this is like Lee Jia Qi's apartment and I'm like and then everyone's making a big deal like oh Lee Jia Qi's apartment and Jessica's like oh wow I'm like who is this guy who the fuck is this guy and then she shows me she pulls out Xiao Hong Su and she shows me I'm like oh okay I get it I did a commercial where we mocked him not mocked him but you know we used him as a frame of reference you know because we're obviously not using him you know

I didn't know he was I mean I knew he was big But only recently In the last few months I've known I've started to realize How huge he was Huge Absolutely huge According to Jessica He is the biggest one Yep number one Like the number one Yeah Wang Hong Which is saying a lot huh 19 Okay so I'm looking at Fucking buying a 100 million dollar apartment man 1992 Or is it possible 28 And then it's like Fucking all these Wang Hong Quan Wang Fan Si Jie Jing Wu Qian Wan

As of last year. But my... Jessica, she's in... She does these big commercial real estate projects, right? That's what her company does. Investments and a lot... And she's saying a lot of these big baller apartments that are being sold in Shanghai are to all these young wanghungs. Yeah, sure. You know? They're buying up a lot of shit. It's all new money. It's not old money. This is global. This is new money. So, you know, this is like...

the pop stars and the rappers in America, right? Like Juice WRLD. I mean, those guys are like 18 years old, 19, 20 years old. Yeah, young, new money. It's the same phenomenon. And those guys are buying multi-million dollar apartments. Well, it's like the... Well, I guess it's not a direct coalition, but it's like being like Kim Kardashian or like Kendall Jenner in America. Although they started off wealthy, these Wong Hons didn't. You can't say that because, I mean, Americans have plenty of...

Wong Hung as well. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. There are nobodies. But that's what I'm saying. There's like Kardashians are basically Wong Hung. Wong Hung. Yeah. Paris. Well, Paris Hilton was from Hilton. Like the Hilton.

Yeah, what I'm saying, a lot of them started off rich already, you know? So it's like... Yeah, but I feel like that was kind of like a start because she was nobody. She was nothing. She was just like the heiress. That's it. That's true. You know? And all of a sudden, because she's sharing photos, her lifestyle, next thing you know... Or the sex tapes. Yeah, the sex tapes. And all these things, all of a sudden, everyone's following her, right? And next thing you know, because she's best friends with Kim Kardashian, Kim Kardashian starts getting...

like famous oh is that how it happened yeah okay is that what it was I don't know I don't even remember it anymore but anyway whatever the case is Kim Kardashian is nobody I mean like she was just a nobody you know what I mean and next thing you know look at who she is

And you have all these other young people, like YouTubers, and they have tens of millions of fans. PewDiePie. Yeah. And then they're literally riding around in McLarens. He's annoying. 22 years old. So annoying. But aren't they all annoying? I feel like they're all annoying. Yeah. But I don't want us to sound like all bitter old people. We sound a little bit like that. Let's not do that. We're just kind of tearing them down. Yeah. But I'm just saying, it's actually pretty amazing. It's amazing to me. I'm not tearing them down. I'm thinking it's amazing that...

that that's even happening.

And for people like us... We're just hating. We're just hating. We're being haters. We're being haters. Yeah, for people like us, it's like we look at it, we're just... I don't know, it's hard to grasp. No, it's fucking good for them, man. It's quite incredible and amazing. Bottom line is, if you're listening to this and you want to sponsor us, go ahead. Arms wide open here. If you want Justin to wear makeup...

Dress up. Anything you want. I think Justin needs to start reviewing dresses. Hey, there are real costs associated with doing this show. It doesn't pay for itself. So, you know, we're open to sponsorships and ideas or cooperative partnerships. For sure. Anyway. For sure. Cheers, guys. Cheers. This smells kind of peaty. It's very peaty. Look, the bottle says extremely peaty. Is it Isla? It's an Isla. It is.

And the name is Buhana Habahain. It sounds Hawaiian. Buhana Habahain. It's Hawaiian. Like it's, I don't know. How would you pronounce this name, this whiskey? I call it B-Diggy. B-Diggy-Diggy. B-Hain. B-Diggy? Buhana Habahain. Buhana Habahain. I thought you weren't about PD. I'm not, but you know, you got to expand your horizons. Get out of your comfort zones. Yeah. Yeah. Get out of your comfort zones. Totally. You got to have disruptive thinking.

No, but that's... So... It is easier. Like, you brought up a good point, Eric. Like, it's a lot easier to tear people down these days. And it seems like a lot of people, that's all they do without doing anything themselves, you know? Yeah. So, do you think that, like, kind of reflecting on ourselves, like...

we are also sort of a form of, or, you know, entertainment, right? Or we'd like to kind of claim to be sort of some entertainment. So are we digging at, you know, Austin Lee because we feel like we are a, you know, kind of a higher level, superior, more sophisticated form of entertainment than, you know, like lipstick? Or are we really just all kind of the same? Are you asking me? Yeah. I think we're all about the same. Like what's our position here?

I don't know. Well, we're not selling products. That's the biggest difference right there. Well, I mean, that's because no one's asked us to sell anything. We'd be happy to sell products. That's true. That's true, right? Like, what is the real difference, right? Well, if we just talk about the format of the show, obviously, completely two different things. One is reviewing products. Us, we're talking about topics and personal things. We're reviewing ideas, though. We are reviewing ideas. We're reviewing ourselves, ideas, personal issues, right? And hopefully people can relate to that. We're the most...

non-marketable look from the grand from the grand scheme of things i don't think there is a difference right yeah the big difference is he's making millions of dollars we're not you know i mean yeah so that that's all it was and i'm not tearing him down i think it's amazing well maybe he enjoys it like we're doing it for the enjoyment maybe he enjoys it what's there not to enjoy no i'm just saying like maybe he's doing it because he truly enjoys it and that comes across that's how he started yeah

Yeah. You know, he enjoyed makeup, you know, and like... He started off grassroots, like just him and his like little studio. Well, if you, I mean, if anyone wants us to review products, like I'd be happy to review products. Okay.

What would be relevant for us to review? Like alcohol, right? Well, that's what I'm saying. Books. We can review books. Audio equipment. No, Eric. I think we need to step back for a second. Step back for a second. It's one thing to be like, you want us to review, you want us to talk about it, we'll happily do it. Or no, because we have a passion where we have some sort of expertise about it. You know what I mean? And then we can talk about it. You know what I mean? Well, audio equipment would be perfect. Yeah. Because we use it and we do know a lot about it. We did say one of our goals. Alcohol too. Yeah. Yeah.

One of our goals early on when we were writing our goals for the show was potentially reviewing impactful books and films. We did talk about that. I mean, that was a personal interest. Yes. And due to a lot of responses we got from past episodes, people are interested in the books we've read and what we think about them. So, I mean, there are pathways there to doing book reviews and stuff like that. For sure. Yeah.

I would just have to read a lot more books. Yeah. It's going against the grain. We're like pivoting. It's running against the waves. We're pivoting from like self-improvement and better habits to like basically we'll do anything to make some more money. We're whoring ourselves out for money. It's like we see Austin like you go to Austin Lee's place and you're like, whoa.

No, because I was amazed. Because I was amazed. Because when I was in there, I'm like, oh, this has got to be like some old money. Like this kind of place. Yeah. Like this is nice, nice, you know? And then I'm like, and then he's like, and I look at him, it's like this young 20-year-old something kid. I'm like, fuck, dude. They're making that kind of bank? Damn. And that's probably not the only house he has. Yeah.

- Exactly. - When you say that, I'm just thinking to myself, how far do I go, would I go to, let's say, get to that? To be able to, let's say, make a lot of money and like-- - What compromises would you make to be that? - Yeah, 'cause I'm just asking myself, some people, like you were saying right now, joking around, like, "Oh yeah, we'll sell anything." Just like, "You wanna sponsor us?" Obviously it's joking.

But like... I wasn't joking. Well, for me, I asked myself that, right? Because, you know, the decisions I make personally...

are not really about money. Like, like then I don't even think about how to monetize, like what I do. Obviously I'm, I'm making, okay, I'm doing well, but like, you know, that's not the first thought in my mind. And, and because of that, my family always says, totally virtue signaling now, humble bragging. What I'm trying to say is that like, I do well. I know. Don't get me wrong. Like, yeah, I do well. Seven figures, R and B at least I do well, but that's not my point. Yeah.

Well, my fate has always been said to me through, you know, like a tarot reading and and swimming and stuff like that. I will never become baller. I'll just I'll always become like baller.

sort of comfortable. You know what I mean? And I feel like I'm living that. I don't think I'm in any path to become like a huge ball or anything like that, that I can buy an 800 square meter. None of us are. You're not alone. I know, but that's all I'm saying. I'm just saying like, I'm just thinking that. I'm just thinking out loud right now. We've talked about this before. It's the point of diminishing returns, right? Diminishing returns of success or financial gain is like past a certain amount of money

the more you make doesn't mean more happiness at all. And that number is surprisingly low, actually. It's not like, you would think like, some people might think like, oh, after a hundred million dollars, you know, no, it's like at like a million. No, it's not even a million. It's like 500,000 or something. Daniel Kahneman, I mean, they did this study like 10 years ago, literally in most like Western nations,

it was like 70K or something like that. After that, of course, feelings of superiority or certain feelings of satisfaction would go up, but actual happiness, if that's what you're after, is not. Like you're still gonna wake up and if you're feeling tired, you're feeling sleepy, you're still gonna have those feelings. Money's not gonna solve that. You're feeling depressed, depressed,

right? Your friends don't like you. You don't have any friends. That doesn't change. And the more money, more problems thing is absolutely true because they've studied that. Absolutely. Because what happens then is that let's say that you do make a lot of money. You get elevated into another social income bracket. Those new friends will not accept you because you're new money. Your old friends will feel like they can't keep up. And so then you get into this limbo land.

Yeah. It's like you're playing in a lower league, right? And you're killing it. Like you're a basketball player and you're playing in this G League. And you're just fucking killing it because you're just better than everyone. But then you make it, you graduate to the NBA and then you're like nobody in the NBA. And your skills aren't even that good. And then it's like...

like your level of happiness actually decreases because all of a sudden... You're comparing yourself. Yeah. And see, like you have the money, you don't have the social skills. So that's the thing. You can't gain those because you'll have the actual numerical wealth. But when you're with these groups, you go to the parties, you don't have people's respect because you weren't living in that type of world. Then you ask yourself, so who are the friends? Who are your true friends? Yeah.

So then you get to that money level. And so your true friends can't even play ball with you because you're at another bracket. You want to go to Michelin star restaurants every day because your standards have changed. Your friends just want to go to Shake Shack, you know, and then it's like you lose all your friends. So then you ask yourself, who's your real friend? Would you rather have a shitload of money? Would you rather have real friends? You know, I mean, I still choose the money. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah.

But they're not necessarily mutually exclusive, right? But it is hard to- If I made like $100 million, would we still be friends? Or if you made $100 million, would you still even like talk to me? Well, I think it's about not if you would have real friends, but you would question who your motives of your friends are, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some of them might be true, legitimate, loyal friends, right? That would stick with you even if you didn't have that money, but you would never really know for sure. And you would always question like, are you just here because I'm like fucking-

really rich and you're feeding off of me and that's i guess what a lot of really rich people go through i mean i don't know we're just guessing yeah who the fuck knows anyway that's a cone of silence here i know awkward silence okay are we done yeah okay bye guys peace

Usually when we do something, we slowly get into it. And then by the middle, by the 30 minutes, 40 minutes, we kind of hit a peak. I feel like we started off real strong. And then we just kind of busted our nuts. It was where there's gossiping in the beginning, right? No, but to be honest, if we ever did start doing sponsorships, this is something I've told myself before.

that I would only sponsor products that I genuinely believe are good products. Because, and I'm not trying to virtue signal, I'm not trying to prop myself up being like I'm so virtuous. I'm just saying just for the pure longevity of that kind of business model. Because people are smart.

When they know you're selling crap to them just for the buck, they're gonna stop listening to you. People are very intuitive like that. But they can tell when you're actually being genuine. Now, that doesn't mean they have to actually like every product you're pushing, but if they genuinely think you feel like this is a good product, they'll forgive the bad products because you were genuinely being honest with them. So,

I think that would have to be like a principle. If we ever started monetizing, if we ever had sponsorships, we would have to work with people like we generally believe like, hey, this could help you. This is actually good stuff, preferably stuff we use ourselves, you know? - Well, and then, you know, to your point, like we think of like product placement and that kind of stuff as physical products, but for us, it might not be like a physical product. They might be services. 'Cause we talk about fitness, we talk about health, self-improvement, like,

we talk about pushing ourselves beyond our limits you know it might be some type of thing it might even be free that's the thing right it might be something that like like like therapy or coaching yeah like we've talked to a lot of coaches we talked to a lot of therapists yeah yeah um but i did want to ask you um a quick question justin and howie perhaps as well um uh i think that we did a show last week so like

But before that, the last time that we were together, the three of us was Lights, Camera, Action. We were talking when Tenet came out, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that was a pretty cool show. We were talking about like Chinese shows and kind of versus American TV shows and stuff like that, right? Then since then though, you've gone on like kind of a Joe Rogan-esque sort of blast and you've talked to some really interesting people, right? I'm looking here at some of the folks, right?

like Theo Wa, Troy Andrews, Gabor, all kinds of people from different realms, right? And I'm trying to catch up on some of the episodes because I just want to kind of hear some of the conversations you had. You even had this guy, was it Per? Per? Per. Per Merced around like Ayahuasca. But I'm just curious, like, if I wanted to catch up on like the last 10 episodes just as a listener, what are like two...

that you would recommend for me and why? - Yeah, 'cause you've been so busy lately. - Yeah, I've been kind of busy. - You have to remind me who the last, some of the last guests were. - So I'm listening to Gabor and the Winners and Losers, and Gabor is like one of our friends. He's like an executive leadership coach, former diplomat. He's awesome. So I'm listening to that one, the second part of the series, right? But we have,

uh, Perry, we had James Wu, who's our buddy. That's a second in a series, right? Entrepreneur Julian Sicard. Is it? Okay. So like LinkedIn marketing agency, um, we have bloodline, um, George who from the, the, uh, Shanghai United family hospital psychologist, uh,

Also Maria Pastorelli, like a productivity coach. Troy Andrews, Science of Persuasion. And then Theo Watt, who does Drink Magazine or Drink Awards. So of those, which one would you recommend for me? For you, Eric, right? Because my list would probably be different for different people. Yeah, yeah. Knowing You...

And you can chime in on this Howie later because you were in some of them I think. I really liked the Troy Andrews one. That one was quite interesting to me. - That's a good one, yeah, for Eric. - Yeah, because we talked about behavioral science, nudge theory, like how we are persuaded and influenced.

to do things in society that we might not notice we're being influenced by. You know what I mean? So like hidden kind of influences designed in how companies run, designed in how campaigns are put together, designed in just, you know, like even civil engineering, like street signs and shit like that, right?

So that was a very interesting one. So like stuff that's embedded, like kind of Jedi mind tricks that are embedded. Yeah, exactly. How to captivate your audience, how to get your message across. So like Li Jiaqi probably has so many of these techniques in his thing. Maybe, I don't know. But I haven't seen enough of his stuff. But he also goes into the art of storytelling, like corporate storytelling, which I think you would like a lot because it's about how to tell a story to people where it's the most moving, where it's the most captivating and most...

convincing right so that would work for you personally in your line of work as well I really feel like now that you mentioned that if Eric was here like during that yeah because I was there for that for that episode I feel like Eric would just be I think he would probably be talking up the storm like he would probably we would not be able to say one word we wouldn't we wouldn't we could just leave the room we could just shut the fuck up and just leave yeah

- No, no, that's why he's-- - Hey, can we get him back on the show? - Yeah, yeah. That's why he was the, when you asked me, for you, he was the first name that popped in my mind. Okay, second one that stands out to me out of the names you listed, definitely,

I don't know if this will be for you, but for me personally, George Hu. - Oh, George Hu. - The George Hu episode was fucking awesome. I love that guy. And he was so, first of all, he's the fucking chief of mental health at United Family Hospital. - Damn, dog. - So that is a very prestigious position in Shanghai. - How did you, were you like a patient? - No, no, no, no, no. I forgot how we got connected. We got connected, I think through LinkedIn maybe. And then we started talking on WeChat.

Anyway, we got connected.

And no, I was not a patient of his, but he... So first of all, he's the fucking man over there, right? The chief of mental health at United Family. I mean, that is, you know, that's pretty impressive. Well, United and United is... The United Family Hospital is a significant, one of the most respected... One of the premier, like, prestigious, like, international hospitals kind of here in Shanghai. So, okay. So, but he gets, like, so down to earth, so personal. Yeah.

that it was so easy to talk to him because I wasn't like talking to this like this fucking chief of mental health, you know? Like he was just like a normal guy, right? And he's gone through so much mental health shit in his life and he's seen so much. And he was so honest and personal about it. It just blew me away, the conversation. And he's funny, so he injects humor into it as well. So it's very easy to listen to.

So I feel like a lot of people who are interested in the subject of mental health or who are going through issues of depression, anxiety, or even suicide, this would be an excellent episode to listen to. No, what I really liked about that episode, because I wasn't there, but I listened to it just as a fan.

I really like, well, obviously, yes, he was a great character as a person. He felt very warm and genuine and friendly, right? But also, you guys did not just talk about psychology or mental health from a Western perspective, but also in terms of locally, like what he sees. And that, to me, was very fascinating because we've mentioned that in the past as well about how important mental health is in our minds.

But sometimes it kind of gets into that gray area in China. So to me, that's a fascinating subject. And I would love to explore more of that. Hey, did he mention, I'm curious, like, was it all sort of external to him? Or did he mention like, just, you know, like himself? No, he talked a lot about himself. Like, you know, COVID and stuff like that. Okay, so he had attempted suicide earlier in his life. So he talked about that.

So I'm talking about that's a depth of personal and honest- - Vulnerability. - Vulnerability he went into. Like he talked a lot about himself. Actually, most of it was probably about himself, his own upbringing, his own mindsets, his own struggles. Even him as a chief of mental health, he sees

his own psychologist, even to this day. He has his own psychologist that he has to go see to talk about issues about himself. So he talks about that on the show. Like it was just a very open conversation. Yeah. Check it out. Yeah. What else? What other names were there? I think a fun one. I think just a fun one. James Wu? Was the James Wu one. Yeah. That was just a fun one, right? Hell yeah. No, yeah. So James Wu, but Eric, knowing Eric, he's going to, he will get so pissed off at that episode. Why? Because James Wu was pro-Trump.

And he tries to make arguments supporting Trump. Not all these arguments are, I feel, the most well thought out arguments. But hey, everybody for himself. But it was definitely really fun. It was fun in the sense that we were not just jerking each other off. It was just like... Because he would say stuff and literally Justin and I would look at... You would hear the sound in the microphone of us being like, what the fuck? Really? Yeah. But it was fun. And a lot of people like it because...

James has the balls to go against the grain. He has the balls to say things that are not politically correct. He has the balls to say unpopular thoughts. And that is special because it's easy just to go with virtue signal like we were talking about, right? And just go. And if we're all saying the same thing, we all agree on the same thing, then...

It's not really fun, but he can play that devil's advocate. And he's not just playing devil's advocate for the sake of it. He actually truly believes what he's saying. So it was a really fun conversation. Also knowing James, you know, he's out there. So it was fun. Yeah, he's back. He's back.

So that was a really fun one actually. That was cool. Yeah. That was really entertaining. We talked about guns. We talked about police. Yeah. You know, we talked about the election and that was right when the elections were going on. So it was, it was a good one. It's like all Asian people have at least one or two friends like James Wu. Like I knew this, I knew this guy named Happy and,

before and like you know he had guns like all this stuff he had to hide his stuff like he lived at home and then like his mom would be like and then he'd have to hide all his guns so like there would be one side of him that would be like super redneck kind of American but then there would still be the Asian side right so he'd be like you know probably typical Trump voter everything but then his mom like hey and then he'd be like okay hold on

But I feel like there's a lot of, I mean, if we're going to talk about that for real quick, I mean, there's a lot of Trump supporters that are Asian, you know, Chinese. Dude, there's a lot of Trump supporters, period. Period. But especially, I mean, just, I feel like it's very easy to transition to being a Trump supporter if you were born in China and maybe even raised in this type of environment because it's like the whole idea of what a lot of,

let's say a Chinese born living in America now, you know, they'd be like, well, yeah, I mean, I get it. You know, you want, you want self preservation, you know, I get it. You know what I mean? You know, let's, let's kick out the aliens. We don't need the aliens. You know what I mean? Like, like that kind of mentality and they're okay with it. Well,

Yeah. Go ahead. Even though they're an alien themselves. I think it's for a lot of the same reasons why a lot of people enjoy listening to the James Wu episode. Because it's refreshing to hear a person who's not tiptoeing around, who's not walking on eggshells, right? And who just says what he feels. Like whether you agree with what he says, it's very refreshing to hear someone who's not afraid to offend. Yeah.

And who just says what they feel without trying to be all PC and virtue signal, right? And that, to a lot of people, is what Donald Trump stands for. Like, we see him differently. We see him, he stands for a lot of negative things, you know, all these policies and the shit he does and things he says. But a lot of his supporters don't see him for that. They see him as a symbol of kind of

Fuck you to this ultra nerfed up PC environment that we're building around and someone who just goes out and says what they want. You know what I mean? And look, there is something captivating about that. There is something intoxicating about that for sure. But I feel like for, because look, Trump supporters run the gamut and a lot of people who are, let's say on the left, right?

want to demonize Trump supporters and view them as these kind of brainless, low IQ, racist, hillbilly, like fucking, you know, middle of America kind of people. Ignorant. Yeah. Yeah.

And while maybe there are a lot like that, but there are a lot of Trump supporters that I actually know that are actually really intelligent people. Like they're really smart. They're like captains of industry. They're smart business people. Like that I found out later were actually Trump supporters. And I was shocked. I'm like, damn, okay. I never thought you would be, okay. So that got my whole thinking kind of like got me thinking in terms of like, maybe there's more to this than I'm willing to.

to acknowledge at the moment. And there's got to be a reason why these people that I respect, these people that I deem as intelligent people that I look up to, some of them are Trump supporters. So I just feel like there's got to be something more to it. Well, I mean, and this absolutely reflects how we see things being so unique to us.

If we were to see things, if we had never come to China and we were asked to talk about certain issues, we would have a totally different lens on things. And then having lived in China, that's completely shaped and reshaped the way we look at the world. Analogy would be like colors. People see colors actually totally, totally differently, right? Like if you had some level of colorblindness,

the way you would see something is totally different. When we were growing up, do you remember there was that, like that photo that was- Of the dress. Yeah, like, well, there was a trick image, right? And one was a beautiful young lady with a dress. But if you look at it a different way, it was an old hag with a big nose, right?

- Oh no, I don't remember that one. - Do you remember that? - I remember the one with the dress and people were debating whether it was a gold dress or a brown dress. - No, what he's saying is when we were young, not now. - I know what you're saying. - The one that went viral. - With the blue and the gold, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Totally, and it's almost like a-- - It was so divisive. - It was so fucking divisive. - People were getting such unheeded arguments about it. Like, no, it's fucking gold. - And so, I mean, like we are, like the way we see things is totally shaped by our experiences, by our values, like by so many things, right?

And how we vote reflects this baggage that we have. It also reflects our priorities. So like when you vote, you're making a decision. Let's say that I'm making the decision based purely on racial politics. So then to me, it's black and white. I'm gonna vote for this person versus this person. But let's say someone else,

they live in a place where they're not even thinking about racial priorities, right? And they're only thinking about like they lost their job because we had to shut down that city and have social distancing. So they're only voting based on that. So we're assuming that people are voting based on the same criteria. Like we're all taking a test with five questions, right? We open a ballot and it's person A, person B voting.

Absolutely not. They're actually voting and we don't even know what criteria they're voting upon. So it just shows how completely subjective our decisions are. But having to, back to your point with James, right? I'm going to go back and listen.

He's a smart individual. We're friends with him. He's funny, et cetera. We need people to advocate different positions so our thinking doesn't become narrow. Absolutely. Because if we're in this echo chamber all the time, so what we need is people who are not the stereotypical hillbillies because we're not going to listen to them because they're not going to be able to offer any kind of storytelling that is compelling to us. But a James...

can be very compelling and it allows us to see colors in a different way so that if i'm looking at a picture and i look at it a hundred times eventually my brain is going to tell me it looks like this i need someone to tell me it could actually be something different it's not blue it could actually be gold it's actually healthy for us honestly because then we can actually debate the merits of the situation and what our priorities are 100 1000 well cheers well

How do we, we always get on this political Trump issue. Like how do we get to, oh, because we're talking about the James, because we're talking about the James Woo episode. Well, look at the newspaper. Look at the newspaper. We just love being critical. Well, it's, it goes to show like how quick we are to rush to judgment of others, right? Totally. We're always so quick to rush to judgment of others.

It's awful. It's sickening. - Well, especially as recent as the past five years, we've talked about this before as well, cancel culture, right? And I'm only bringing this up because we were just talking about this before we went on air.

Like, we can't talk, we were talking about a certain subject and then one of us was like, we can't talk about that. We're going to get canceled. You know what I mean? People are going to cancel us. I'm going to be canceled by a certain someone. We were actually talking about our wives slash fiancés and, you know, how... But I think that's okay. I think that's okay. Because we were about to mention something that happened recently regarding one of our friends and previous guests.

And that could be a deeper issue that probably, that's a discussion that probably needs to be treated with a lot more respect and reverence and thought. Because, and we would probably need like a female guest on to include into that conversation instead of just like three guys talking about it. But I think what we were actually talking about before that, when we're talking about our personal situations with our loved ones and our partners, is,

I think that's totally okay. Cause we were just pointing out kind of like the quirks of our relationship and how things have changed after we've gotten into serious relationships or even after we've gotten married. Right. And the things we found kind of like annoying. Right. But like,

I think that's totally fine, man. I think a lot of people might want to hear about that. But what I was trying to say is that even the fact that if we were to talk about it, right, and we were sharing our stories and we were sharing our perspectives, it very well could easily be misconstrued to be like a little bit

like some of the things you said. Chauvinist. Chauvinistic a little bit, right? Depending on, you know, on how we put things. And the minute that comes out, there could be a chance of, you know, a group of people coming out and be like, that's horrible. You can't say that. You can't say that. That's the whole cancel culture thing. So what people want to do is take things not at face value. And it's understandable, right? Because on one hand, let's go back to Trump for a second, right? So Trump will like, we all know he tweets things, right?

And he'll tweet things, but in an ambiguous way. So let's say that there was recently a very violent act between, you know, one group of people versus the other, right? And there was violence perpetuated against a minority, right? Then he'll tweet something that's sort of related that can be, that could only be really construed as he supports the people that are, you know, being violent against the other group. And he constantly does that. So, yeah,

Essentially what happens is people can then, they don't take what he's saying at face value because there's always a hidden message underneath. That's one scenario. But there's a lot of times and probably most of the time where we're just talking about a subject and we're just being frank and open and there's nothing deeper than that.

It's actually the anti-Trump. We're not trying to secretly embed a message into our thing, right? We're actually just like talking about a situation that happened on a certain day and we're only speaking in reference to that. However, it can be taken out of context and then cast as your belief system and then it becomes cancel culture because you made one comment about one thing and they've extrapolated that to be

your view of the world well here here's what i are we being vague right now people gonna be able to catch like catch what we're saying a little abstract but here okay here's we're talking about cancel culture right now yeah here's what i think about cancel culture all right justin what do you think about cancel culture what is cancel culture

Cancel culture is when, is like a movement to kind of discredit someone or censor, silence someone, censor someone or destroy someone's career based off of their actions or remark they made. You know, it's cancel culture. Look it up, right? Here's what I think. I think it's laziness. And why I say that is I think for people who are involved in cancel culture, right?

I think it's easier to tear someone down than it is to actually exercise intellectual horsepower, to have an engage in a conversation with somebody that you don't agree with, to try to find out, okay, where is this person coming from? How do I express how I feel? And to actually talk and debate about it, which is far more productive at the end of the day,

than to just be like, nope, I don't like what you're saying. I don't want to hear from you anymore. Cancel you, destroy you. I don't want to have to deal with that. I think it's laziness. It's intellectual laziness where you're not willing to go head to head and be like, hey, here's what I think. This is where I don't agree with you. Now defend yourself. And we go back and forth. But people are not willing to do that. Instead, they want to just tear someone down because it's easier to knock a building down than it is to build it from scratch, right? Yeah.

And that's what it comes down to, to me. Yeah. That's what it comes down to to me. It's laziness. I agree. So rather than actually have a discussion, you just want to shut it completely down. You just want to take the switch, turn it off. Why? Because you don't want to have, you want to avoid that discussion. You want to win. And so it's about power, right? It's about winning and losing. It's about, I don't even want to have

a conversation with you to debate the merits because I'm so confident that

that I have the correct position on this issue. I don't want to know what you're thinking and I want to shut you down completely and I want to win. So it is a power thing. That's true. There's a power thing involved where I want to assert my power over you. It's also around social issues pretty much, right? So it's not just about asserting your power because you're kind of hiding it.

Underneath this layer of social activism or whatever, right? Yeah, it's a way of wielding power. I mean, we're not saying that like, you know, like we're not debating the merits of the particular issue, but it is a way of being in a situation where you may not have overt power, but you can exercise power in a way by leveraging this notion of, you know, bringing...

bringing people together against something. Well, it's power and popularity too, right? Because like we see in Hollywood, like once like there's a social activist, like cancel culture, that's like leading the charge, like a celebrity or someone that's leading charge, all of a sudden they're relevant again. Their names are being brought up. They're in the media now and they have people supporting them. So it's just like addiction to not only just power, but to popularity and

being a celebrity and being relevant. - Let me ask you guys something. I'm gonna share something I saw today, and I just wanna hear your reaction to it and what you guys would do, okay? So this became like a little bit of a viral video this morning I just happened upon on Reddit, okay? And it was a video of a guy sticking swastika stickers, right? Saying we're everywhere, okay? Around a small town in California, okay?

And so the guy with his iPhone caught him doing it and went up to him and was like, the fuck you doing? You know, like get the racist shit out of my town. You know, get the shit out of my town. I was just following him and being like, throw that role away.

you know, and this and that. And the guy was like, look, I'll leave. I'll leave. Just stop recording. You know, like, just leave me alone. You know, and he's like, show me your face. Who are you? If you're going to be putting up stickers, reveal yourself. And just went on and on about like, and the guy's like, look, I don't want any trouble. Like, this is just my opinion. This is just how I feel. I'm not trying to like, blah, blah, blah. He's like, no, you're spreading hate. Anyway, it's like this and this, right? It's escalating. Escalating.

And basically calling all these other people, come here, we got a fucking Nazi over here. Right. And this other old guy comes over and this girl comes over and they're just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the guy's just like whimpering on the side. And then like, and then finally one of the old guys is like, look, do you even know what you're doing? Like, what are you doing? And the guy's like, you know, I was told to put up stickers. So, you know, he's like,

He's a kid, he's like a high school student. You know what I mean? Very easily influenced. - He was like a mule. Like a drug mule. - Yeah, yeah. But here's the thing. So okay, now I'm gonna stop for a second. Now, the guy recording the video was just like not hearing it. Was like, "Get the fuck out of my town. "You're looking at my kicking your ass." And stuff like that. "Show me your face. "I'm gonna get your face all over the news."

And the other old guy would be like, do you know what you're doing? Do you understand what, do you even know what Alcatraz is? You know what I mean? I mean, not Alcatraz. Sostica. The rock. Yeah.

That was the brain fart. Sean Connery. That was a total brain fart. But anyway, but he was just basically challenging him and basically like trying to talk to him and not yelling at all and being like, do you even know what it stands for? What the swastika stands for? And all this stuff. He's like, I lived through this. You know what I mean? This was real. You know what I mean? And so it's just like going on and on. And so I'm going to stop right now. Like, where do you think

like how would you guys have reacted would you be more on the guys like get the fuck out of here show me your face you know come everybody come here you know get the fucking mob or are you going to be the one talking to him honestly honestly this is about swastikas you know what i mean fucking well okay okay what like let's take it a little bit even closer to home what if it was like you know um the signs like you know no dogs and chinese people allowed right like i mean it was like

directly. Yeah. Okay. Relating to us. Directly. It was like swastikas and more emotionally. Yeah. Like Bruce Lee photos and like no dogs and, you know, and Chinese people allowed. Right. And you saw this. Well, I think, okay. Before we get to that, I think, I think it's, that's a very good example because those two different people and how they responded is kind of like a depiction of,

Are you open to having a conversation with this person you don't agree with versus cancel culture, shut you down right now, ruin your career, ruin your life. We don't want to hear from you, right? It's like, I don't even care what you're doing because it's so evil that there is no excuse. Yeah, you're emboldened and empowered by what you believe is the right of it all that it justifies you to do almost anything about it. You're dehumanizing this and you're basically, you're taking...

something that is clearly negative like the swastika or whatever and you're dehumanizing depersonalizing it right and you're saying this is not a person this entity in front of me now represents that thing i'm going to cancel it's unacceptable right i mean like the root of it it represents not necessarily be a negative thing but the the symbolism of it so i'm canceling the symbol without actually considering the human being behind exactly well how how we react to it i think um

Would you kick his ass? Would you just be- Justin, what would you do, Justin? Just put him in a headlock? Look, I think it, I don't know, in a way time tells all because it's like, I think when you were telling that story, my initial reaction was like, yeah, fuck yeah. I want to know who this fucking person is. I'll kick his ass. Like, that's my initial instinct, right? It's like gut reflex to do that. Of course.

But then when you pointed out, okay, there was this older gentleman, I was like, do you even know why you're doing this? You know, like, then I'm like, okay, well, that's the approach I agree with. Now, whether or not I would have acted like that is a whole different story. I really don't know. I could have very well

Honestly, I could have very well acted like the first guy and just been like, fuck you. Like, who the fuck do you think you are? Get the fuck out of here. I'm gonna fucking kick your ass, right? But intellectually, while we're sitting this down and while we're having time to think it through without being emotionally charged, right?

I agree with the approach that the latter person had because that is far more of an effective approach to me. Okay, so let me ask you, is it forgivable? Or even like, are you able to have this conversation with the guy? Because when I had the brain fart before, because basically what the guy was saying is like, do you think this really happened? Like this whole, what Hitler did and how many Jews have got killed and stuff like that in Auschwitz. And basically he was like, no, it never happened.

you know, there's no proof, right? And he's the guy that's putting up the stickers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the kid, right? And the guy's like, are you kidding me? Like, where did you get that? Like, I saw on the forums, they were saying that it doesn't exist.

So just that one comment already shows that he got influenced by some stupid website forum. Yeah. You know what I mean? Which means that he doesn't mean that bad yet. I feel like... That's where it starts. I know. I know. Look, if we unpack this, right? So we unpack that small piece of it. What do we learn or what have I learned from this short conversation? Is that...

We've made assumptions on how people acquire information and how people actually form their ideas. And so if you've grown up in an idea, if you've grown up in an area where you don't have access to information the way that other people have had, you don't go through the same types of learnings, you can easily formulate your thoughts that way. How would you know? I think...

whatever it's climate change or, you know, whether it's this type of like the Holocaust, right? There is so much information and evidence, et cetera. And people have learned and really, really, really smart people, right? Have collectively learned

that all of these things are legitimately real. And there's a lot of like evidence behind it, right? I mean, overwhelming evidence, right? I mean, it's like so much beyond just like you and me. It's a given now. But imagine if you'd grown up in a city of 4,000 people. Exactly. Like how would they have access to all that information? And so I think we're making a lot of assumptions and I think it's a great point. It's like...

like why do you feel this way? And having that individual conversation, if it is an individual. - Understanding. - Yeah. Now back to your earlier question of like, what would I have done in that situation? The way I would answer that is that it would be very similar to the way Justin responded.

The way I would have acted in that situation would be very much determined by my state of mind. And what I mean by that is that I've gone home from work in a bad mood and where someone on the subway like bumped me and I acted more violently and viciously than the person...

that you're talking about right like i've literally completely exploded and then like i might have gone for a 10k run and i'm feeling like fucking buddha and you can come up to my face and spit in it and i'd be like i forgive you and you would hug him right and so try that next time exactly next time you finish around i'm gonna come up to you and spit in your face yeah yeah kick you in the balls shit in a

That's so specific. It came from a TV show recently called Ted Lasso. It's a pretty great show. I love that show. Dude, it's the fucking best show. Jason Sudeikis. I watched the whole thing. The first season is amazing. It's fucking amazing. It's fucking amazing. It's fucking amazing. It's fucking amazing. That guy. Oh my God, Ted Lasso. T-E-D-L-A-S-S-O. The ultimate calm down, be optimistic. Folksy American, right? Dude, I wouldn't expect it.

It was such a great show. The first season, you have to watch 10 Lasses. Let's watch it together. It's on Apple TV, right? Fucking great show. Apple, if you want to sponsor us, please. It's the ultimate feel-good show. Yeah. Right? It's so awesome. So there's this one scene where...

So the basic premise, I'll try to be brief about it. So basically an American football coach, and he's like super folksy, like American guy, tells the corniest, cheesiest jokes, right? Eternal optimist. Eternal optimist. He's so funny. He's always like using puns and corny jokes. And he coaches like a division two American football college team, right? Like no one's even heard of like Wichita State in Kansas or some shit. He leads them to a championship.

Now, on the other side of the pond in England, there's a, like a Premier League, like football club, not very good, right? They just make up. It's AFC Richmond. It's not a real club. And basically, it was like, this woman now owns the team because she got divorced from her womanizing husband, right? He's a total dick, right? And so she wants to run the team into the ground.

So she hires like basically the worst possible coach ever to just totally fuck up. Who has no soccer experience. No soccer. He doesn't even understand. He doesn't even know the rules. He jokes about it. He doesn't even know like what offsides is. Yeah, he doesn't know the rules. So she hires him secretly with the malicious intention of destroying the club and the only thing her ex-husband loves. But she doesn't let everyone know. And she's totally setting him up for failure, right? So towards the end of the show, she has a change of heart.

Well, he ends up winning everybody over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the plot isn't important. We're not here to talk about the whole plot here. No, but let me, the punchline, right? The punchline without, we kind of gave it away, but it's totally worth watching because it's not a,

like a thriller. It is a great show. So she goes in and she basically says, Hey, I got to tell you the truth. And she's a total, like she's a six foot tall. You're going to way too much detail. I want to watch the show. So she goes up to him and she's like, yeah, I brought you over. I totally fucking sabotage you like everything. And just like late lays it on the line. And she looked and he looks at her and this is the pivotal moment. This, the reason we're giving away the season finale, stop, stop. And basically, stop, basically stop. Okay.

Well, what was the point you're trying to make though? The point I was trying to make was that it depends on your mood. And in that moment, Ted Lasso was very forgiving, right? Yes. So I would say that just like that person, that kid that was posting all these things, right? There was no absolute right or wrong or whatever. That person is a product of their environment, right? Yeah.

And so had it been me in that situation, I'm a product of my environment. I might have even been a product of that moment. And I could have reacted in many, many, many different ways. Now, I like to think that I could react in a sort of thoughtful way. But what if that guy was a total dick and you went up? It's like, hey, do you really know what this means? And he immediately escalated like,

I fucking course I know what it means. It's a fucking swastika you fucking changed. - That's a different ball game then. - You know what I'm saying? - That's a different situation. - We don't know what actually really happened. Maybe that kid did do that. - Or maybe that kid really feels that way, but he was just saying what he thought you wanted to hear to deescalate the situation and get out of this scene. - See, this is the problem with the media. No one was there. So the media can paint this in any way to rile you up. So the media could be like, oh, the kid was innocent.

Look, the media, even if it's a liberal media, will paint the kid as totally innocent to rile you up. I think here's the real question at the core of all of this is how far do you go or how long of a leash do you give to people who are ignorant? Like how – I don't know how to word this correctly. Like how much is ignorance a defense or is it not defendable? You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

How much leeway do you cut for people? Exactly. How much positive intent do you... So the guy is... So someone comes over your house, burns it down and puts crosses and has swastikas and Ku Klux Klan. You're like, oh, I forgive you. No, no, no. But it's not just people. It's like, how much leeway do you give for ignorance? Because what we're saying is...

- Ignorance, lack of exposure. - Lack of exposure, all these things, because it was like, oh, this guy was doing a terrible thing, but he didn't know any better. That's just the environment he was in. So we're giving, we're trying to justify it and explain it in a way to create sympathy for this person, right? - Yeah. - At the end of the day,

Is ignorance an excuse? Yeah. You know what it is? It can be one way to look at it is like plausible deniability. So that's what Trump does. Right. So Trump will like tweet this stuff and be like, oh no, I didn't really, I wasn't, I didn't happen to send a tweet precisely one minute after, you know, there was a massive racial incident and commented on something like plausible deniability. Like, like, you know, he's claiming ignorance. So that's obviously one side of the extreme. Yeah.

He's just very manipulative. Right. He's manipulative, but he can play that game. But these people that do this, they can claim ignorance? Like the media is portraying this kid as being ignorant, but do we really know that?

You know what I'm saying? Like the way you told the story was that the kid was just like, oh, somebody told me to do it and he didn't know any better. Was that really the case? Yeah, don't know. We don't know. We will never know. But the point is, individually, how far are we willing to go to forgive ignorance? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. If someone does something really terrible and they're like, well, I'm just ignorant. I didn't know any better. Or you, maybe they're not saying that, but you feel that way based off of what you've learned from this person. Yeah.

How far are you willing to go to forgive ignorance? Does it absolve you from like, you know, from the thing or does it take some of the edge away? Does it take some of the hate and maybe violent instinct away because someone is ignorant? Like, where do you draw that line, right? Versus someone who knows exactly what they're doing, but does it anyway versus someone who's doing something because that's just the way they were raised. That's what they were told, right?

I mean, is there really a difference? It's sort of like when we first came here...

At least for, I'll speak for myself. When I first came to China, I remember a lot of the pushing and shoving and stuff like that. And I'd be like, what the fuck? You know what I mean? Like this is, there's no excuse me and stuff like that. It's not until living here for a while, I understood where this comes from. - But it still pisses you off, right? Like it still pisses me off. - Sure it does, but then you have to understand it's just different. - I do understand it. That's why I don't do anything about it. But internally it's still like, ugh. - Because you're used to a certain other way.

Or you grew up around a certain other way. Or like when I'm in an elevator, right? And the elevator, no, no, no, the smoking is a different thing. But yeah, that is ridiculous. But when I'm in an elevator, right? And let's say it could be a really packed elevator and we get to the floor, let's say the lobby, the elevator door opens up and there's someone standing in the lobby trying to get into the elevator, like right there against the door, knowing that there's a whole elevator full of people that needs to get out.

And before they let anybody out, they just try to push their way in going against the grain. I mean, like that to me is just like, like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, like what, like what are you doing? So like, that's not any faster because like now it just becomes like, it takes longer for us to get out now. And then it doesn't make your time any shorter. Yeah. So it doesn't make any logical sense to me. If we cast this, if we cast this as,

I think sometimes we like to view this as like a judgment or a punishment. Like even the way we were framing this earlier, it was like, does this person deserve to be punished or not punished, right? Like because they're ignorant. Like did they have enough information so that they should be accountable for it? That's kind of what we're asking, right? What's the accountability? I wasn't asking that.

Well, I was asking that. Yeah, there you go. But the way we were framing it, I know what you weren't asking. Honestly, I don't know what we're asking anymore. I don't even know how we've gone to the subject, but go on. But the way we were framing it is that we were viewing this person as, are they accountable to the situation?

in the sense that did they have enough information or were they really not to blame? Because if we were in the same situation, we had the same level of education, we'd do the same thing. We're kind of saying that. I think another way to frame this is basically saying what would be actually more productive? Like forget about the accountability, forget about like, cause we like to take this punishment thing, right? We're very bipolar. We're saying that, okay, if it's not your fault, okay, we cut you some slack. We give you a pass.

But if you knew, then I'm going to fucking crucify your ass. Right? I mean, that's how we were unconsciously framing it. But what if we just said that that's not productive and casting it black and white is not really productive? And what if it was that there are people in this...

country that we need to influence in a positive way, what's the best way to do that? And so I think then like education and then taking a positive mindset and not looking at it case by case, but saying there's a group of people that are probably thinking a certain way collectively, statistically, is there a way where we can start having some campaigns to influence? You mentioned Troy Andrews, was it?

the storytelling thing, right? And so although I haven't listened to the episode, it sounds like you can use storytelling in a manipulative way like Trump and bringing 70 million people together, right? Or you can do it in a positive way. And I think what we're saying is that swastikas still exist in the world. We don't like them because they probably represent, more than likely they represent something bad,

whether it's ignorance or whether it's maliciousness, is there a way we can create a campaign of storytelling to educate people so that they view the world and they don't want a world of swastikas, they want a world not of swastikas, is kind of what we're saying.

Yep. And thank you for bringing it back to that. I think that's the key. Like what's for the ultimate overall good. Productivity. Because like if you think about it. Productivity, yeah. Because the reason why I brought those two different reactions, the boy and the older man, is to show like, well, what's the end result that you're looking for? Are you looking just to punish him? Or are you looking to abolish fucking swastika thought and ideology? Yes. Right. Exactly. If you're looking to abolish like swastika thought and ideology and that type of racism,

then that's not, just kicking somebody out of town is not going to do anything. Well, it's going to make it worse. It's going to create more division and more hate. Exactly. Yeah. That's what I'm, thank you. Thank you, Eric. That was very well said. You know, I was, coincidentally, I was having a conversation last night with my friend from Arizona and,

And we were talking and he was like... The cowboy. Yeah. And he was talking, he was like, man, this country is kind of going down the shitter right now. And he's like, it's pathetic. It's pathetic what's happening here. And I was saying to him, like, you know, from where I stand, you know, this is what I think that's going on with all the division. It's precisely kind of what we're saying. It's like the more... Like people...

Like he was saying like it's weird or it's strange or he found it really frustrating that a lot of people that he's seeing are just like they get an idea in their head and they just run with it and they close their ears off to any other thing and they just like kind of dig their heels in and run with that idea and go all out about it, right? And it's ignorant. And he's frustrated with that. He sees that around him. And I'm like, well, I feel like it's because...

It's not that people are necessarily ignorant. I think it's people are defensive. So when there's so much division and so much attacking on both sides going on, your instinct as a human being is to defend your own beliefs and your own ideas. Just for the, really kind of just for the sake of defending them, right? So what that does is that puts your attention towards defending your ideas instead of questioning your ideas, right?

You know what I'm saying? Because as you're getting attacked, you have no time or no patience or whatever or no energy to think about your own ideas critically. Your first instinct is to protect yourself, protect your ideas. Your ideas is yourself. Exactly. And that's only becoming, that's only the case because there is that pressure of an attack.

If there wasn't an attack from the other side about you, you wouldn't feel the need to defend it. And then you might have the chance to be like, hey, and time to think about, hey, what about my ideas? And rethink them and critique them and analyze them and maybe come to some sort of other conclusion. But when you're being attacked and you're under siege, you're purely about defense.

So that's what I think is happening on both sides, especially in America. Everyone's attacking each other. So no one's thinking critically about their own thoughts anymore. They don't have time for that. They can't afford to do that. All they can do is defend themselves. And the more attack, the more pressure that mounts up, the more they're going to dig their heels in on their position, right or wrong. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing play out. Absolutely. Like imagine you're the kid and you're,

like you're doing this stuff and then this guy and not to defend anyone, right? But you know, someone's basically like attacking you. I mean, cause it sounded quite aggressive. Yeah. Right. And you have to assume that regard like,

Maybe not that specific instance, but imagine like all the different instances where something is happening and then someone else comes over and makes a judgment and attacks, right? Like you said, when you're under siege, you're totally about defense. And so we're not even giving people the opportunity, the space to actually act positively. We're basically assuming automatically carte blanche, you are an asshole, you are a negative, you are a racist, whatever. And so what we're doing is casting everyone as a racist when maybe they're

Half of them are racists that could be changed and half of them are not actually racist, but you're pushing them into a corner. There's no possibility of reflection and change. And then ultimately you have polarization, right? You have your, you're basically creating a divide and saying, no matter what, if there's, if I see this thing here, you are on the other side.

When it's actually much more subtle, there's much more gray. But if you're not virtue signaling, right, you're automatically on the other side. And that's a terrible world because things will never get better because there's always going to be negative conflict, not positive conflict. And you're never even giving them the space to have a breath, to breathe, to breathe.

to be like, okay, let me rethink what I'm thinking. Like, you know, you don't even give them the opportunity because you're right in their face screaming down their throat the whole time nonstop. And then they get, you know, and then of course they're going to defend themselves. Like, how many times have you done something? I know this has happened to me a million times where I said something, I did something and the next morning I woke up and I was like, God, like, that's not me.

And so basically it happens to everyone, but we're taking all those people and we're putting them in a box and saying, you guys are bad people. Well, there's a scientific explanation for that. You know what I mean? You know, for when one reacts that way, because you're, I mean, I don't know the exact explanation for that, but basically it's just... Did you just pull that one out of your ass?

What? Yeah, pretty much. No, but there is. It's like basically like your... I'm curious. It's like the instinct comes in. It's like your instinct comes in. You know, it's like when... Fight or flight. It's like when you say, you know, you only see red. You know what I mean? So like your conscious kind of like takes a step back. Eric sees red a lot. Your conscience takes a step back, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're just purely reacting. It's like...

Your brain has multiple parts, but the amygdala is the one that all animals have, right? And the amygdala, basically, it's like if I see a lion jump out, I'm immediately... My amygdala is the fastest to react because that was the one that would keep me from being eaten. Is that the same as the reptilian brain? Yeah, I think so. We'll talk about the reptilian brain. You know what we should get is...

Let's try to find a... A neuroscientist? Yeah, or a behavioral psychologist who kind of understands the wiring of the brain. And because we've talked a lot about our behaviors at an emotional level, at a philosophical level, we want to actually get down into the brain science. Scientific level. So like, what could we do differently? Like, could we eat differently? I would love to do that. Right? Could we eat something differently? Can we exercise in a different way? So that...

And the reason I say this is that I mentioned earlier that depending on my mood, I could be, you know, I could act like a demon or I could act as like that older guy who was very thoughtful. But how can we train ourselves so that the majority of our time we're in a mood where we can be more mindful about the situation and be more mature about things rather than being that demon? Yeah, I don't know.

But I definitely want to get into the science of it all to kind of back up

a lot of the things we talk about or even disprove a lot of things we talk about. The myths. It's like when we got Oni on the show and then it was like, oh, like running is bad for your bones. And it was like, actually, no, if you don't run, your bones will get more brittle. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like she totally missed this. Running is actually healthy for your bones and your joints. It strengthens them. By the way, like Oni, right? Like she recently posted something that I thought was very insightful and

Um, and it's, it's for, you know, cause we've been talking with some of our fans in the, in our, in our WeChat group about like, you know, exercise and like getting six packs and abs and stuff like that. So she basically said like the reason that you need to exercise after, like, let's say you eat a Big Mac or something like that. Right. What she's saying is that like, if you eat a Big Mac or something unhealthy, the amount of fat in there, right. When you run or exercise, it doesn't burn that fat.

She was saying something like, if you eat a Big Mac, you'd have to run like three hours to just burn that fat. That's actually not the purpose. The purpose of exercising is that when you exercise, it tells your body to generate muscle and rebuild bone rather than generate fat.

So it's not about burning the fat. It's about the usage of the fat. Yes. It directs the usage towards other things rather than creating fat. So if you just sit there, then your body will just take everything you eat and store everything as fat. Whereas if you exercise, it's a cue. So it's not so much about not eating or cutting down what you're eating. Like let's say you cut down and you don't really eat anything.

Right? If you still don't exercise, your body will still produce fat. So that's why exercise is such a critical thing. And we hear all kinds of stories about, you know, people trying not to eat and like, you know, all this stuff. It actually doesn't help them become more fit. Mm-hmm.

So you can actually eat like a decent amount. You just need to exercise all the time. And then your body will then consciously produce muscle and direct resources to muscle building rather than fat storage. Sure. But that doesn't mean you can just eat anything you want either. Right, right, right. Like, look, I work out all the fucking time. I'm fat. You know what I mean? So it's like at some point, like, yes, I believe that.

But that doesn't mean you can just like go all out. Right. You have to do both. Yeah. What you're saying, like, I mean, the other, you know, you're saying the flip side is, okay, you work out a lot, but you also control your eating. And I'm saying like the people who only control their eating and torture themselves, but they don't work out, it's not going to do a good job either. So I just wanted to share that. It's a tip.

So I'll get some ripped abs. You know, this reminds me, I don't know why, because we were talking about racism. We were talking about swastikas before. Now we're talking about eating. This reminds me of a joke that I heard recently that I thought was fucking hilarious. Do you guys know who Sam Morrell is? Sounds really familiar. Yeah, go on YouTube and look up Sam Morrell. He's a stand-up comic from New York. Fucking hilarious, this guy. Mm-hmm.

And during COVID, he did all these rooftop shows, like these small little standup shows on the rooftop of like in Brooklyn during COVID. Right. So it was like kind of creative a way he can still perform and get some, you know, do his job. Yeah.

He told this one joke, and he was talking about racism and how a lot of people defend racist comments or racist rhetoric with the freedom of speech, right? The First Amendment, like the freedom of speech. Is that the First Amendment? That's the First Amendment, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So people are like, you know, like whether you agree with it or not, they have the right to say these things because in America, you have freedom of speech. You can say anything you want.

And so he's like, a lot of people use that as an argument, right? And he's like, I agree with that. But at the same time, that's like calling, that's like tomato being a fruit. Technically it's true, it's a fruit.

But if you put tomato in a fruit salad, it kind of fucks up the salad. So he kind of painted that analogy with racist rhetoric. It's like, it's true technically. Yes. But when you put it into society or you put a tomato in a fruit salad, it fucks the whole thing up. Totally. Right? So I thought that was really funny. It is funny. It is funny. Yeah. Don't ever put tomatoes in your fruit salad. Well, I want to add another asterisk right now. Justin hates tomatoes.

Tomatoes. Yeah. Oh, I fucking, I despise tomatoes. That joke kind of hits home. It resonates. It resonates. Because I'm like, yes, it would fuck it up. It's an irony. It would fuck it up. Tomatoes in general fucks everything up. It would fuck it up. Justin's like, don't ever put tomatoes in a tomato salad. See, I love tomato sauce. I love tomato sauce. I just can't eat like tomato tomatoes. Whatever. All right.

Anyway, hey, that was a good one. That was fun, guys. Yeah. Well, happy, I guess, Thanksgiving is over. Post-Thanksgiving? Post-Thanksgiving. Oh, this is going to be post, post, post-Thanksgiving by the time this is launched. Let's make a couple announcements. What do you think? What announcements do we have to make? Well, not announcements, but a couple of heads up. I want to say something. Okay, go ahead. All right. Well, firstly, I mean, we've been saying this before. Feel free to add our WeChat, the Honest Drink. You can see it in the liner notes.

and join our WeChat group. Secondly is as we continue to do our podcast, we would love to have even more interaction with our fans and also maybe even working together on some of our podcasts in the future. So some of the things that we'll be looking out for in the future, and maybe we can announce this later on, is how we can work together with our fans is maybe like some translation, some transcription stuff

stuff like that, because we have a lot of people asking for that. We have a lot of people asking for that. Yeah, and we all work, and we're all very busy, and it'd be great to have some support, because this costs a lot of money to do this podcast, and it'd really help us as well. Well, one of the things I've seen, and that could be a need, is that...

we forget that we've been doing this for like a year and a half now. And we've talked about a lot of things. And like by my count, like almost, you know, 70 shows, uh,

And there's so much stuff in there, right? And I've noticed that like, you know, people are busy, right? They don't have time to listen to all the shows. So sometimes they've just found out about Honest Drink. So they're just listening to the newest ones, right? But there's actually some real gems in some of the older ones. And so if we had something like a transcription, if we had some other types of things, we could search for them.

And so it's like we need a better way of organizing and cataloging the material so that people... Like keywords and stuff like that. Yeah, keywords so that people can go straight to the content that they want because these are long form. They're like 90 minutes. And we understand people are super duper busy. So even me, having been just from work perspective, unable to join you guys for several shows in a row, I want to go back and listen to all the good shit because we constantly learn together and we're like...

you know, trying to improve our game. Right. So I think it's, Oh, there's some good, there's some good stuff. Yeah. We don't want to just like record and then forget about it. Like this show is about incremental improvement and learning. So like Justin, you've done, you know, you've got all these guests on the last 10 shows. It's like, I want to then be able to like pick up everything you learn from them so that I can up my game so that we can keep improving, improving. Right. So by the time we do a hundred or 200 shows, like hopefully we're better human beings and hopefully we're,

and even more importantly, like the people that listen are, are,

better human beings and then are able to contribute new ideas so that we can collectively build a community. Yeah, and I think that's a big goal for us that we've talked about off camera is how do we work together with the people who listen to the show? How do we better everybody as we better ourselves? So this is a two-way communication for sure. It's to empower our listeners as well. It's like you guys can be a part of this. You guys can be a part of this more than just

joining our WeChat group or listening or being fans of the show, if you want, you guys can reach out to us and really kind of be a part of this. If you guys want to help create the content, you know, you guys, we're open to that conversation. So, you know, if you really want, you can be really involved on a deep, deep level. If you personally know someone that you feel like would be great for the show and that, you know, that,

could share their thoughts like feel free to you know like raise some names like i know justin's always sourcing for top talent and elevating the bar for who comes on the show yeah so basically uh to sum up you know we have open conversation you can add us on wechat um leave us a message you can email us um there are many ways to contact us and we we watch and look at every single message so

Yeah, we may not always, you might not see every one of us respond, although I know you guys make an effort to respond all the time. But we're listening, we're absorbing what everyone is saying, for sure. And we appreciate it, definitely. Thank you, everybody. But on that note, yeah, guys, have a good one.

Have a great time. I hope you're enjoying the show. We love all of you. And I love you, Eric. I love you, Howie. Love you guys. Cheers, guys. Cheers. What's your name again? I forgot. My name is Justin. Okay. I just remembered my name is Eric. And I am Howie. And our voices are different. Come on. Yes. We are three different people, guys. We're not all one. Anyway, love you guys. Cheers. Be good. Be well. Bye. Bye.

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