#71. Stephen Yuan: Wet Cement
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com, Instagram, or WeChat. If you've been enjoying this podcast, go ahead, rate, comment, and subscribe.

Our guest today is the host of the Shades of Yellow podcast. He has another new podcast out now called Bone Broth Soup for the Soul. He is also the creator of a new animated cartoon series about cryptocurrency called Ned and Nash. He will be debuting soon his first short film titled Two Thirds. I mean, this guy's just working on a bunch of things all at once.

In this episode, we talk about our learnings from hosting podcasts, the importance of public speaking, the implications of generalizing entire cultures. And we also talk about blockchain, cryptocurrency, and Elon Musk. We cover a bunch of ground on this one. We did this over Chinese New Year, and we drank a ton of Baijiu, courtesy of our guest. So without further ado, please give it up for Stephen Yuan.

I didn't do anything for her. It was amazing.

That's the key. That is the key. As little work as you can put into a podcast is the best. Podcasting is actually deceptively a lot of work. It's good though, man. You learn a lot, right? I mean, you guys have both come on mine and that's grown a lot since then. Arik's got to come on next. So you were on his show too? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, only you weren't invited. I know. No, no, no. Don't invite him out of guilt. It's fine. You really shouldn't. Don't invite him out of guilt. It's okay. You'll talk for two minutes and then nothing. Yeah.

No, I'm sure that's not true. There's just so much we haven't commented. That's why he had to go on Clubhouse to get his podcast fix. So, but like who has more hits?

Of the two of you. Oh, that's a good question. What do you mean more hits? More listens. Who's more popular of you two? What do you mean? For his show. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I also do not know. I'm sure Howie. Yeah. I'm sure Howie because they actually talked about something. We were just like fucking around with like Baijiu. We got wasted. Really? Me and Steven got wasted on the show. Very much. Are we drinking? What is this? Let's drink this first. What is this? To celebrate Chinese New Year. It's Baijiu.

Baijiu? From 19, I saw the label. Yeah, what kind of Baijiu is this right now? I don't know, to be honest with you. Literally someone took a paper bag, wrote 1983 on it and wrapped it. Like he had to like, when he was pouring it, he's actually like hitting the bottom because the stuff wouldn't come out. And it's gasoline. It's gasoline. We're drinking gasoline right now. 53% alcohol. Yeah, it's gasoline. All right, well, we're drinking Baijiu. Cheers. It's Chinese New Year. It's fitting, right? Cheers. Chinese New Year. We've never been more honest drink.

Oh my god, Jesus. Oh, shit. Should we switch to whiskey or? No, no, no, no, no. We got to see this through. You poured it out already. We got to see this through. What does it smell? Smells like gasoline. This is going to be tough. Yeah. This is why I brought the xiao cai, you know? How have you guys been?

I need to catch my breath for a second. Um, you like how he's turning the tables? Like, like, cause he's like the podcast is like, well, so how's it going? It's like, no, Justin asked the questions. Sure. He brings the bio. He puts us on the spot. Um, yeah, we've been okay, man. Um,

We've been okay. I mean, I really don't know what else to say. We just, it's a journey. It's a grind, right? Yeah. Has your podcast, because you guys have different experiences, right? Like you do this, you're on every episode and you guys come on as much as you can. Sometimes it's just the three of you, right? Sometimes it's with a guest, sometimes it's with two guests, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Has there been like a...

One that worked out better than the other or they all have their different purposes, I guess. I don't know. I mean, I think we've kind of caught our stride with this podcast a little bit, but we don't have any kind of consistent format in which it's like, okay, how many hosts or how many guests?

It's just whatever it is, man. I mean, like we said before, like we just try to have fun. That's our main thing. We just try to have fun on each episode. Right. Oh, I think that's the, that's an important thing. Like as long as you're trying to have fun, it comes across right. Yeah. We don't have to try to make every episode like this, like mind blowing revelatory kind of life lesson, you know, because sometimes it's just sitting back, sipping some baijiu and having fun. That's when the learnings come. Yeah. When you, when, what we found was that when we're,

you know, a little like tight about things. Cause like, I mean, we've done collectively, right. You've, you've been on all of them, obviously Justin, but like the, the, the show has been on for what? 70 episodes. Yeah. Over, over almost two years now. And time really flies. Um, but, uh, I think we know when we're really tight, um,

And, you know, just having fun is a big part of like not sort of, you know, feeling really uptight because then we don't learn. We're not curious. We're not having, you know, engaging dialogue, et cetera, et cetera. So I think we kind of have reflected on what works and we're still trying to refine the formula a little bit. But having guests on is awesome because we're naturally curious. But when it's the three of us, sometimes we struggle a little bit. Sometimes, you know, and then we get a little bit uptight and, you know,

- Yeah, when you try too hard, it never goes well. That's one thing, one lesson I've learned doing this podcast. Like whenever you try too hard, it never works out well. The best episodes in my opinion have always been the ones that were like super natural. Like we weren't trying, you know? And it just came across, it comes off natural. - Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with that. Those are probably some of the better ones. I've also found that some of the ones that I have thought went really well

have been have performed less well to the public yeah yeah yeah which is interesting really yeah yeah yeah sometimes when you're recording an episode and you're like oh this is going really well yeah or the reverse sometimes you're having a recording episode you're like okay this isn't gonna be good right sometimes those are like the ones that have like the most like the best listens which means you can't predict this you know what is steven what is your um like basic

I guess, standard for whether or not you feel like a show is good before you listen to it again. Before I listen to it? Yeah, because you notice the mismatch. Right. Am I allowed to plug it? Can I plug my podcast? Go with that, man. All right. So I have a podcast called Shades of Yellow, you know, and I think I feel that way when we stick to the theme that we're trying to build.

My podcast was designed to kind of not show that there are different Asian people, which I feel like is something everybody should know by now, but rather that every Asian person has different shades. So whenever we achieve that, I feel like we accomplish it. - Yeah, you know what's ironic?

It's that our listeners who are Asian can't even tell the difference between us. You know, Asian people can't even tell the shades of yellow. They can't. Or the voice. They're like, 谁是谁啊? Not for the life of them can they tell the difference between us. We haven't heard that in a while, though. We haven't heard that in a while. Well, I think it's just because it's like a video given. They just gave up. They're like, 哇,这个人好牛逼啊。 Justin, 这个人真厉害。 他可以演三个人。

Dude, you'd be a great voice actor, man. But you know, what's interesting to think about since we're on the topic of your podcast, our podcast, is like what have you taken away so far in terms of like improving yourself through doing the podcast, right? For example, me, I feel like my communication skills, even off air, have improved because you kind of learn more

I used to be the type where when I would engage in a conversation with somebody, I'd always be wanting to get my point across. And so what would happen is you're so caught up in what you want to say, you're not even listening to what the other person is saying anymore. You know what I mean? Howie and Arika are giggling right now. Yeah. But it's like...

But through doing this podcast, you can't do that. You practice not to do that because when you really want to engage with a guest, you have to practice like true curiosity. You have to be honestly curious. Otherwise, it's not going to be a good episode. It's not going to be a good conversation. So I think what I've taken away from this podcast is just like,

is just being a better listener and absorbing what people are actually saying before I kind of just give my take on it. And sometimes what they're saying changes my take, you know? So it's really good for communication skills. - It's definitely good for communication skills. I have absolutely learned a lot. I think I learned that.

about when How We Came On, which is like 12, 13. I think up until that point, we had technical reasons to begin with. And then by about episode eight, I learned that I cannot be blackout drunk every episode. That's one. We were blackout drunk on our episode. Yeah, right? But I can't keep doing this. I just have to learn how to do this better. And a big part of it is listening. You said it's true. You can maybe fake it for 10 minutes. You can just be like, mm-hmm, really? But if you're doing...

two hours like both yours and Howie's were close to two hours you know and it's just me and you like there's no phone ring there's no waiter in the background there's no jazz to distract us it's just me and you sometimes there's a dog barking on my show it's you the guest and dead air yeah oh that's that's it right so if you're not actually here you know I absolutely agree like when I have a long day it is so much harder to to do this at the end of the day um

Yeah. You got to be present. For sure. Yeah. And it's easy to say because we always say, oh, be present. But like to truly practice it and execute it is a different story. It really is a different story. Especially when you're talking to people you don't know. Sure. And they're strangers before they come on your show. Sure. And so you have like nothing in common that you know of yet to really kind of bounce each bounce

bounce off one another, right? So it's just like starting cold and it's like, okay, hey, you know, how are you doing? And how do you get from that point into like a really deep and developing kind of conversation is key. Anytime that

You know, you are, you know, intentional. Oh, sorry. Cheers. Cheers. I'm like, I'm pretty much like half, I'm like blackout drunk already from like... Isn't it, aren't your stomachs warmer? Yeah. Everything is warmer. I actually feel like this is great because it just hits you all of a sudden, but I feel lucid. The thing I noticed about drinking Baijiu is that you get all the benefits of...

that really nice, warm, fuzzy feeling, but you're still lucid. Whereas I feel like other types of alcohol make me groggy. Cut to like 10 minutes later. Yeah, we'll ask you after. No, but Baijiu is like a winter drink. Like I only drink this in the winter, like when it's cold out. It makes you feel warm. Yeah. Yeah.

Was that your excuse to drink Bajel? No, I don't need an excuse to drink Bajel. The dumplings are the excuse. We had it last time, right? You know, anytime you like build a habit, like, and I consider like this podcast thing sort of a habit, like you build a habit and you're constantly trying to get better and improve and reflect on,

you know, what was working, what's not working, where are you getting stuck? And then you keep sort of working on it. Life lessons come out of it. And what you mentioned, Justin, just now, like this being a better listener, being more curious, we've talked, we've had many conversations about this and,

And from a podcast perspective, it really serves you, serves all of us because when we get tight and we're not listening and we're talking, the shows become very difficult and they're not fun. Right. But that skill translates, like you said, to the rest of your life. And so you start building like life lessons. So anytime like you're building these habits and routines and working on something, you're kind of like incrementally getting better week over week, you know, episode over episode. And it's like a life lesson. I think we've learned that.

so much from the show. And being someone who also, like, I like to just, you know, like in different environments, I'll go off on this long soliloquy. In the moment, it feels good. It feels like you need to get it out. But once it comes out, then you're kind of like, man, I fucking talk too much. Right? And then you listen to the show itself and then you're like, fuck, I really, like, I'm an asshole. You know? And so I think like...

It's really weird because talking feels so good and when it comes out, but then it's only after it happens that you realize, man, I should have just shut my fucking mouth. Yeah. Well, that's what they always say, right? In any type of conversation, if you, well, number one, rule number one is if you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk. Yeah, shut up. That's number one. That's it for you, Howie. Listen, listen. And then number two is, I mean, it's always better to ask questions. Right. Right.

Just like what Justin was saying, one thing that you've grown, Justin, throughout this whole time is learning to listen. And one of the things that you also do a lot is summarizing and then asking questions back to continue the conversation. And that's where even more conversations come out. So I think that's, I mean, I don't know about you, Eric. You definitely go off sometimes, but I'm always totally fascinated by what you're saying. I never think that you're off on a tangent. I never think that you...

go too long, you know, personally. That makes one. Yeah. This should be your next poll. I appreciate that. But I think we can all, you know, get better. Yeah. It's just natural to want to speak. Well, I think public speaking is not only kind of becoming more and more of a lost skill,

but it's an important skill that doesn't go, like you don't, when you're growing up, no one really focuses on your public speaking skills, right? You go through school, you wanna get good at math or chemistry or athletics or whatever it is you're doing, but like public speaking is not something that, at least in my upbringing, was ever brought up. No one ever brought up public speaking. There was no public speaking courses in my school.

- Really? You didn't have like speech and debate in your school? - We had a debate team. We had like Model UN and stuff like that. So yeah, that incorporates, but like public speaking, like focusing specifically on your public speaking and bringing attention and shining a light on that skill was never something that I experienced or saw. But as you grow up and if you wanna work in teams, work in a company, a business, start your own business, do a project,

or just engage with people, like public speaking is a really important skill because if you think about all the great leaders that were able to motivate people, it's not necessarily because they knew more than others. It's more about that they were able to articulate their thoughts in a way that resonated with people, you know? So sometimes like you don't know, like even if we take, you know, this is a cliche example, we take Steve Jobs, right? Right.

And he was not like the tech guy behind the business. There were other people who knew much more about computers and technology than he did. But he was the leader because he was able to articulate the ideas and the vision. And if you're able to do that, that can bypass a lot of other, not weaknesses, but like kind of

uneducated areas of like, if you don't know, right? But if you're able to articulate, able to get a point across, then all of a sudden you become that leader. You have a lot of power. More so than the engineers and people working under you. Is that what you're learning with this podcast? Yeah. How to be the next Steve Jobs? No, no, not at all. I mean, I still suck, but like, I just feel like...

I just feel like it's something that I realized how important it really is. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And public speaking, like, and especially I feel like here in China, public speaking is even less of a thing than let's say in America, because I think in America, the culture is like kids are just more vocal to begin with. Right. You know, they'll say whatever they want. You know, they'll express their opinion. They oftentimes talk too much. Right. Right.

But here, it's like, you know, we had Dr. Ryan Thorpe on the show in his class. He said, like, he would raise questions to the class and no one would respond. Right. You know, it'd just be silence. Yeah. Don't a lot of, like, Chinese corporate meetings go like that, too? I mean, you work in corporate, right? You probably have a lot of those meetings where, oh, I guess maybe for you... Back in the day. You just tell people. No, back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, anytime you're holding a meeting... I mean, unless you're talking with other senior people. Right. But, I mean, just...

I guess in general, the general staff would not speak up because number one is they don't want to say anything wrong. Right. You know, number two is maybe they're not as confident in what they're thinking and stuff like that because they're still learning, you know, quote unquote. Sure. And even though maybe, you know, I would pave out a path of,

allowing you to say things wrongly and it's okay, you know, we can work it out, but they wouldn't get it in general. I'm speaking in general right now. And I think it's just part of the culture. And just like you said in that episode with Dr. Thorpe,

That was a big culture difference that was found between in the West and here. Did you spend time in the Chinese education system, Stephen? Six months between Germany and Canada. So while we were waiting for our Canadian, whatever legal entry method of acceptance, I did five months of school in Zhengzhou. And what age? Grade four.

Grade four. Grade four, yeah. Was it very interactive with teachers? No. But honestly, it was some of the happiest time of my life. Nice. How so? It was...

That's a great question. I was a pretty happy child. I didn't get like incredibly emotionally depressed and angry until like I was a teenager, you know, until I started drinking alcohol. No, I'm kidding. But it was, I think in, this was 99 in China, you know, and I think in 99 in China, it was not that competitive at grade four then because just not that many people had the chance to go abroad then at

Now kids are starting their shit at grades younger than four. They have like XYZ after school. When I was in grade four here, kids still had fun kind of after school. Were you like in an international school? No, no, no. It's like a local... I had the whole red... The scarf and everything. Little bandana. Had my school outfits, man. Look at you, Steven. Little Steven, little cutie. Yeah.

We were in Zhengzhou. Yeah, it was a different time, man. Honestly, it was wild. Well, what I was saying before about the whole, let's say, the culture difference between East and West in general. I mean, do you resonate with that at all? Yeah, for sure. I think education is a big part of it. But, you know, I work in a Chinese company. This is the first time I've worked in a Chinese company. After being here for eight years, this is my first time working in a Chinese company.

And we had a team dinner a month ago, and my team is, everybody else is Chinese, and they're all younger than me. They're like mid to late 20s. And it was just really- You're so fucking old, Steven. Thank you. Eric sounds real bitter. He's so bitter. He sounds so bitter. He's so bitter that we're bringing up age. It's okay. Especially when he's saying- He sounds so bitter. Yeah.

You know, we'll all get to you. No, because like Eric's like 68 years old right now. My heart is like 68 if that helps, you know, and my liver too probably. But no, it was just, it was really interesting because this was the first time I was out with Chinese corporate, the Bailing, right? What do you call it? Bailing. Yeah. And just like how they reacted over dinner. Like it reminded me of like high school.

What do you mean? It's like night and day between who they are at work and at dinner. Not necessarily in a bad way. They loosened up, you mean? Yeah. It goes back to what Eric was saying earlier with sometimes people feel tighter in these corporate situations, but night and day. If you and I worked together, we would hang out over lunch or whatever, and if we grabbed drinks, we'd be more or less the same person.

Not for them. But how are they different? Much looser. I think some of the topics they discussed, the way they discussed some of the topics. I work with them. We're not going to go down this road in case one of them listens, you know, but it was just...

Be specific. What's his or her name? What is their darkest secret? The type of things that you would maybe more likely gossip over when you were in college or like in high school, those tend to be more prevalent topics of discussion. But when it's work, they're just like straight up like professional. They don't like talk about anything. Like there's no gossip. They just like... Correct. Yeah. They're just all about work. But are they like very opinionated at work? No. No.

It's a big problem. Let's unpeel that. I feel some contrarianism coming from me today, but maybe it's just the by joke. It's probably the by joke. Yeah. My name is Justin and I'm going to be the devil's advocate right now. Okay. So one thing that I tend to naturally sort of push back against is any kind of generalization in terms of culture. It just doesn't, you know, like, because the implicit bias, unconscious bias is

you know, the way that we're all hardwired to think, our environments, all shape,

you know, things. And I think we need to be very precise in our speech as Jordan Peterson would say, right? We really need to kind of articulate the context, the background, and really have, you know, an intelligent conversation. And so I don't disagree with some of the comments, but I think that we can't be lazy with the way we communicate, right? Education, let's use education as an example. Education in China has a lot more history than most places in the world. So there's certainly a context, background, and a purpose for education.

So the setting is so powerful that the people in the educational setting, whether it's a teacher or the student, probably find it overwhelming to overcome that environment. And so their role in that setting is already dictated. I don't think that Chinese people drink any less, have any less fun or talk any less than any other culture. So we can just put that aside, right? Like these generalisms, it's just, they're not true.

But in that context, we can say, okay, in an educational environment where there's a teacher and an authority figure that's fucking respected, like he's motherfucking Confucius. Yeah, okay, maybe I won't talk as much. Or in a work environment. And also depends on what kind of company. Is it a state-owned enterprise? Is it a multinational company? Is it a local Chinese company? Is it a big company? And so sometimes when we're not as familiar with our surroundings, we generalize because we don't know much about it. But if we were to make the same comment

in a context like the US where like big companies obviously act differently than small companies, but we would never make that generalization because we're familiar with the context, right? So I think the education is a big one, I think. And, you know, to kind of build on a lot of the Ryan's conversation, it's a massive institution. It's like one of the most important historical traditional institutions in

you know, in all of China. And so to then take our Western lens and say, okay, kids don't interact with the teacher. You're kind of, it's actually a lack of our understanding of how that environment works. I'm sorry. I have to kind of jump ahead because that's not what I said. No, no, no. I was actually tearing, I was attacking Howie. Yeah, okay. I just want to make sure we were on the same page. What did I say that made you say that then? You just said, you made the generalization that, oh, like the culture is different here. You used that term a couple of times. And I said I generalized.

And I did say I generalized. Anyways, it's the... But it's not a bad thing to say a culture is different. I mean, it is different to be like, oh, no, all the cultures are the same. We were labeling a little bit on that one. I feel like we were labeling a little bit, you know? Okay. But you actually... Like, I actually very much agree with what you were saying. You actually sparked that point is that in that work setting, in your particular work environment, people are, you know, a bit more reserved. And...

when you actually put them in an environment where they can express themselves, they're as expressive as anyone else. So I think I was trying to support that point. - No, I'm sure you were, but just to clarify, I think I was asked a question from Howie and I explained my personal experience, right? I said, this is my first time working at a Chinese company. This was what it was like when I went to school. General, I can't even say that word. - Generalizing. - My English is not very good these days.

When I drink more Baijiu, I have found that my English gets bad. No, do you find a deterioration in your English the longer you stay in China? Oh, sure. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. My English has gotten worse the longer I stay here. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, I forget words. I just don't know how to articulate myself. But has your Chinese gotten better? Have you benefited from it? I've plateaued.

So like in the first like five years, it like went really high up. Right. But then now I'm plateaued where I feel like I'm not really improving anymore. You need a new challenge. I think what it is, is you need to use, you need to go out and talk more and interact more and light up that part of your brain. Yeah. You know, because maybe you're not interacting as much. You're consuming.

You know, and during the day and stuff like that, and you're doing your work and stuff like that, sometimes you have these calls and meetings, right? But in general, maybe the interaction is a little bit less, so you're not lighting up that part of the brain as much. Maybe. I don't know, but I speak more Chinese than I do English on a normal basis. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Well, I don't know. I mean, I have a random idea. Maybe you can host a podcast in Chinese. I don't know where we can do that. It'll be a terrible podcast. Just drink more Baijiu. Then I'll be an expert. So going back, you were saying... Because you didn't finish. You were saying about your generalization. Well, no, like it's...

I agree with what Arik said, but I also feel like there's a certain point where generalization is kind of what we're designed for. And more or less, that's what culture is. It's a bunch of people doing something, right? And we're designed to kind of take shortcuts. Evolutionary, it helps us process faster. I'll make a small point and please continue. But we don't generalize for others.

Like I can have my culture and all that stuff and we can have general concepts and similarities within my culture. Like, you know, sometimes people eat whatever kind of food, et cetera. But,

That's for me to say, right? That's for me to have that, not for someone to generalize someone else and be like, oh, you're like this. Yeah. Well, I think as long as you're talking through your own personal experiences, that's fine. Sure. And you were talking about your experiences at work. But yeah, the key is not to generalize that and be like, take that one small step

uh sample size and be like okay well that's the entire culture right but i don't think anyone was really really doing that like yeah like we we kind of say things loosely i guess sometimes on the show and they could be construed the wrong way but i don't think i feel like knowing us like none of us truly mean like okay every single person's like absolutely we we talk from our personal experiences i agree we none of us have negative intent i i maybe the reason that it kind of came out was that um we've been we've been um

I wouldn't say called out, but we've been, we've gotten feedback from our listeners on different platforms that, oh, wait, no, that's not the case. Right. You know, and we've learned from that. It's like, no, like Chinese people, like, you know, and from Ryan's episode, and you saw the different points of view, like, no, we're not just like taught to be workers, you know, like we actually know how to think for ourselves. And there was a little bit of debate there, you know? So I think we just want to be careful that we're not generalizing the

you know, given our personal cultural backgrounds as well. But I think, I mean, just what is the word generalize? You know what I mean? I mean, generalize the meaning itself is not saying everyone. It's average, isn't it? More or less. But,

But people take things in different ways, right? Sure, sure. I took that one as, oh, the Chinese education system is a certain way. And it just brought back that earlier conversation, like, oh, like, no, people in Chinese classrooms, they're just stupid. They don't talk. You know, like, people can... No one said that. People can perceive that if we're loose with our language. Hmm.

or maybe they're perceiving that now because you said it yeah no one said that anyone's thinking that you know what you know what as somebody go back and listen to this episode right kind of dissect that right blame it on the alcohol you know cheers oh cheers yeah the um it is really cool that you guys have these these listeners having these discussions at least though like i think that that says a lot you guys should be really it's awesome it really is it's awesome like when we first started the show i didn't think in a million years

anyone will bother to listen, let alone like actually try to engage with us. So the comments and having that engagement is fucking, it's really motivating. It's motivating to keep doing this. But going back, I think we're opening up a can of worms on a really interesting kind of conversation about, okay, you know, we talked about generalizing, but if we even peel it back even more, it's just about being opinionated, right? And if you have an opinion on something,

big or small, it can be construed from any angle as, oh, well, you're just generalizing. Well, I'm just speaking my opinion, right? If I say, oh, I think cab drivers are really nice in Shanghai, right? Someone can be like, well, you're just generalizing because a lot of them aren't nice. A lot of them aren't, yeah. But so anything can be construed that way. But I think opinion is also something that's really important in anything you do,

Because when you think about it, if you take opinion or opinionated talk out of a conversation, that conversation becomes fucking boring as hell. Right. Right? If you look at almost everything that content that we find interesting, that's engaging, it's often because there's an opinionated spin on it. Sure. Now, whether you agree with that opinion or not is a different story. Right.

But it's about having kind of, I don't want to say courage because I don't want to make it sound like, oh, it's like a really courageous act because it's not. But I think it's having kind of the will or the confidence to be opinionated sometimes, even especially when you might think it might be an unpopular opinion. But to speak it anyway, as long as it's coming from a good place, right? An honest place. That is crucial sometimes.

to any sort of communication, especially if you're doing a podcast or public speaking or trying to get a point across. So instead of always trying to walk in the middle of the road, being like, okay, why don't I want to offend anyone, right? Which is what you see so often now in media and even in America, especially with like kind of the cancel culture and everything, like everyone walking on eggshells. It's like,

You want to be like, you want to have the balls to kind of stand your ground and stake your flag on one side of the line or another. Sure. Right? Especially if it's something you believe in instead of only trying to placate everybody. Yeah, I just think we're looking at it wrong though. Like I think too many people, and I think this is my issue with it, just they look at opinions like dry cement when in reality they should look at it like wet cement. Mm-hmm.

you know, it's still a very strong thing, but like it can change, right? Like even if you generalize that all Chinese cab drivers are nice, you should be open to the fact that that's not true. Right. Well, tying this back to a comment, how we made earlier, you know, and going back to what we've learned from the podcast, you know, about listening more and being more curious is like you mentioned that it's better to ask questions, right?

And it is better to ask questions because when you throw a wet piece of cement at someone, they can catch it and they can reshape it. If you throw a hard piece of cement at someone, then it hits them in the face. So I totally agree. Like I know that Justin feels, from what I've learned from,

some of your points of views is that, you know, we should be honest and we shouldn't sort of mask what we truly think in this new era of call out culture. And there's a certain level of integrity. And I know it bothers you when, you know, people that are great people, you know,

I sound like Trump all of a sudden, but when, when, when, when people that, you know, have a good point of view kind of express things in a certain way and then they get torn down unceremoniously for that. And so, no, I don't think that's the right way. Right. Um, I want to pose a question to you guys because we're really learning. I mean, as much as we like to talk about, we're great listeners and we're curious. I always fall into the trap where no, I become a preacher. And so there was a great, so, um,

So I'm enjoying his stuff. We talked about this last week, but the new Joe Rogan is Dax Shepard, right? And so he had Adam Grant on. Adam Grant is a really famous professor. I started listening to that one. Yeah, it's awesome, right? Did you like it so far? Yeah, I like it. Adam Grant is someone we've talked about on the show. He's one of the...

He's a cool guy. He was on Clubhouse. He was going off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was awesome. So he was one of the youngest professors granted tenure at University of Pennsylvania. He's actually a cool dude. And although he's an academic, he's really respected as a researcher and scientist.

but he's actually like a really smart guy that you would want to be friends with. But he studies how organizations work, works. He studies like organizational culture and he has a podcast where he talks about like, well, how do we make work not suck? Which is a very relevant sort of topic on the show. He was promoting his new book, uh,

One of the concepts that came on was sort of like, well, what kind of mindset should we have? And how do you keep an open mind and curious? And so his book is called Think Again. I have not read it yet, just disclaimer. But he comes up with this idea, I think he got from another scientist, about preacher, prosecutor, politician. Three Ps, right? Preacher, politician, prosecutor, politician. And it's sort of like...

we tend to take on the persona of one of these three sort of characters when we talk. So preacher, meaning I'm just preaching. And you're not even fucking listening and I get on my high horse. It's really uncomfortable for the other person, you know, and then you feel good in the moment as the preacher, but then afterwards you're just like, fuck, I'm an idiot, right?

prosecutor, you're judging, you're reading into people's stuff. You're basically falsely attributing things to that person, maybe as a projection of yourself, right? I do that all the time. I get angry, but it's really because I'm projecting myself onto others. And then politician, right? Well,

politicians can do great things but then sometimes they just say what you want to hear and it doesn't actually do you any good because they're just pandering to you so I thought this was a brilliant metaphor for the pitfalls that we get into when we're communicating with people public speaking whatever it is we become a preacher prosecutor politician and when I reflected on myself I realized that I'm guilty of all three and it actually just killed

kills my interactions with people because it makes me feel bad. And I don't think I'm really engaging with the other person. So I'd love to get your thoughts. That's so brilliant. I love that. I love the three Ps. Yeah. I really do. Because now I'm thinking about it in like the context of us, right? The podcast. Yeah. Well, it's like, like none of us conform 100% into entirely into one thing. But-

If we were to. If we had to assign one P for each of us, I'd be the preacher. Wait, wait, wait. Can I do it? Okay, no, no, no. Stephen, it's better for you. You're outside. By the way, and for the listeners, Stephen is our guest today. No, he's just our homie, man. No, no, no. I'm not going to do that. I feel like that would end the podcast. You guys do it. No, you should do it. You should do it. I think it would be better coming from you. Okay, so you're the preacher.

me being who you have to call out our names Justin sorry right nobody can tell your voices apart you self-proclaimed to be the preacher so I will happily give you that one but no did you agree if I hadn't said it would you agree I sure yeah I can see that point of view yeah I can see that point of view for a lot of ways like I think when Arik said he kind of relates to all three I can see that as well you know I can probably relate to all three and so can Howie probably right

it's a very political answer you know you were just being the politician right now okay trick question yeah but i'll do it it's good to get the perspectives i think if we had to assign a hat to each three of us i'd be the preacher you'd definitely be the prosecutor and you'd be the politician for sure yeah eric would be the prosecutor and how would you be the politician 100 percent i was even though we fluctuate my reflection was like if we had to yeah 100 i i was a bit aggressive at howie today for that comment and

It's not even you. It's me and things inside me that I'm prosecuting. I'm prosecuting my own ass. I know. You do it all the time. It's who you are. Yeah. As long as I've known you. You come off like you're prosecuting others, but you're just prosecuting your own demons.

But for people who don't know that, it comes across like, oh shit, like you're jumping on me. You know what I mean? Like you're pouncing. I'm getting better though, right? Because we did have- Yeah, you've gotten a lot better. You've gotten a lot better. We had a few episodes where we would go at each other. Yeah. Because you're the devil's advocate. Especially in the beginning, yeah. You would push that. Well, the other thing is there's a fourth category called button pusher and that's you. I feel like it's like a game of werewolves now is what this is. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I just feel like your buttons are very easily pressed. Like, too easily pressed. Like, where I'm not even trying to press your buttons, but your buttons get pressed. And I don't even know I'm pressing them until it's too late. Like, that was earlier on. You know what I mean? Yeah, Steven, you'll definitely see what we're talking about right here. The more time you spend with us or the more you listen to us, you'll definitely...

No, I think it's really cool, man. You know, like you guys have such a great dynamic here. I think it really works. Very happy for you guys. I don't know if it works. I don't know if it works. We're hanging on by the skin of our teeth. I like how where this conversation is going. Let's see where it's going to go after another. Yeah, let's take another shot here.

Thanks for bringing this. Happy New Year. I'm thanking you now, Stephen. I'm going to hate you probably at some point and then love you again. That's okay. You can text me. Just let me know. Are you going to be in Shanghai all of January? I'll be here. Yeah, I'll be here for sure. I'm going to take a couple days off and probably get back to work over the weekend. I want to pivot a little bit here. And I want to talk about something you recently put out. I like that, Howie. A little pivot. Yeah.

Ned and Nash. Sure. What's that? I think that's fucking awesome. You guys don't know who Ned and Nash is? How dare you? What's Ned and Nash? Don't speak so fast. Oh, okay. Is that the animation? Ned and Nash. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw the one that you sent me. Yeah. So you started a cartoon series. What? An animated series. Yeah.

called Ned and Ash let's call it a guilty pleasure at this point is probably what it is but it's around crypto isn't it it is yes I mean I work in blockchain during the day so I'm in the space and I'm up to date and it's just you know one of the things I learned very early on is you don't control macro things bull runs you know trends when things are hot when things are trending you don't control these things

So you got to strike when the iron's hot. In terms of crypto, right? In general, I would say. Cryptocurrency right now. Right? Like, I mean, we've talked about, for like the Asian film stuff, we discussed this on our podcast, right? Like it's, we don't control that now. There's spotlights on Asian cinema and Asian filmmakers. We just got to make the most of it while it's on us right now. You don't control the tides. We don't control the tides. You can just ride the wave. Exactly, yeah. And you got to, you know, be ready when those waves come. But no, it's, look, it is a really, I describe it as a very shitty cartoon. That's like, honestly, how I describe it.

in so many ways. But shitty in the way where like South Park can be called shitty as well. It's minimal. And yours is a pilot still, right? Yeah, so we just dropped a third episode, you know, and this doesn't exist in this space, most importantly. You know, it gives me, in many ways, it's catharsis for me because like so much of my writing now is non-

freestyles call it like I miss writing comedy you know I mean we've talked about this writing stuff when you're writing other script stuff it's just different than when you're writing comedy because you're just fucking throwing shit on the wall we have a joke in there with something like um like Ned talks to Nash it's like you're not one of those like religious people are you you know like you're you're not what I call like Mormons no not morons morons you're not one of those morons are you right so there's like things like that I I enjoy doing more yeah

Wait, so you have to write... Wait, what...

When you write, do you have to write for work or something like that? No, so this is just a... Justin should write. We have had very primitive conversations about this. Justin would love to voice and I would love to have Justin voice as we grow my characters. Voice characters? Please, can I get on as well? It would be so fun, right? I would love to do a voice. When I first saw your pilot for Ned and Nash, it reminded me of...

Like Rick and Morty, but about crypto. Oh, thank you. What? Yeah. Rick and Morty is something I've not seen, but I've been... You haven't watched Rick and Morty? No, but they say it's awesome. Oh my God, so funny. About crypto? Well, actually, I've got a great voice. He does have a good voice. I mean, you guys all have great voices. You have podcasts, right? But you wouldn't be able to tell. No one would be able to tell the difference. I would do the comedic voice for sure. Just give me one. Just give me one.

No, I would love to have guest voices for sure. You know, but it's just, we moved so fast that I didn't want to voice this. We just didn't, we couldn't move, you know, any slower. Um, well, I had the idea about second week of January. We launched our first episode last week of January. That's how we can probably tell you animation is not exactly the easiest or the cheapest thing, you know? So the fact that we were able to, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you, how did you get it animated? Like who does your animation? Like how does it, how does it work? Um,

Can you shed some light on that? Sure. So I have a great animator in the name of Carlos. He's in Ningbo right now. And I pay him a very cheap rate, to be honest with you, because... Don't say that. No, I'm just kidding. Why? Because he's going to be like, I pay him a cheap rate. No, he knows. He understands. I mean, like, I'm very transparent with my freelancers that I work with, right? This is my own money. This is what I can afford. There's upside in this. If we execute well, this is something you want to be a part of. It's a choice. Yeah.

But animators make a lot of money. I was saying, Howie will tell you. Animation is not cheap nor easy. So we've gotten about nine minutes out over three weeks from writing to release. That's a lot. Honestly, yeah, for a very low budget. That's a lot. Right. So in creative work, there's three things. There's the trade-off between speed, price, and quality. So I decided to trade off on quality.

- Two for one. - Yeah. So the quality, I mean, Carlos has done a great job giving his resources and time. - I think the animation quality is really good actually. - He's done a great job. - Where is this? Where can I find this? - It's on YouTube. - And you do the voices for both NetIn and Ash. - I do the voice, yeah. And it's, that's not fun. And it's not good, just to be clear, it's not good. - Are you like really self-conscious when you do the voices? - Oh, very much. Yeah, this is my first time doing this. I had to like watch 20 minutes of fucking, oh, you just pull it up, yeah. We just had a Nigerian Prince episode.

So I do a third voice. So it's all about crypto. It's all about... I think how you described this is exactly how I want it to be. Very Rick and Morty dynamic. And how we want to monetize this is also like Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty do their ads outside of the episodes. It doesn't interfere with the story. Well, the fucking cartoon looks amazing. Oh, thank you. Yeah, Carlos did a great job. Yeah, right? It looks legit. It looks like a legit thing. Yeah. You guys can watch it afterwards through audio. Really good.

We have a couple episodes come out and then I'll probably renew Carlos' contract. It's mostly just because I'm in this space now, so I know how much money is in this space right now, how hot the market is, and how this doesn't exist. So who's the audience you're trying to appeal to?

Probably more hardcore crypto people because a lot of the jokes that we make are probably more deeper level. Like, you know, we had a joke about... Like vocabulary used? Just like with market stuff, you know? It's like when you watch comedy or even Rick and Morty, if you don't have a good grasp on pop culture, you know, you're just, you're not going to enjoy Rick and Morty as much, right? Yeah. Like you can be like, OMG. Yeah. They'd be like, oh, Misco? No.

No, no, no, no, no. Oh my God. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Well, that's what I got when I, because I don't know shit about cryptocurrency. Right. But,

But when I watched the episode, I sensed that. I sensed that I would find it, I would probably be enjoying it a lot more and be getting more of the jokes if I knew more about it. Because you use the lingo, you're talking about kind of current events that happen within the crypto industry. And you kind of have to be in the know. Yeah, I mean, look, we do a lot of inside jokes. There's a thing in crypto where the inventor of Bitcoin, nobody really knows who he is.

who the fuck is Satoshi, right? Yeah. So we have like a running joke on like everybody where they meet in the alt world is like, are you Satoshi? You know, it's things like that. Yeah. Is cryptocurrency something you just had a passion for to begin with? No. Fuck no. But you must know a lot about it to write about it. Well, now, you know, I've worked for a company full time since September and I got in, essentially like I got in, if you talk Internet of Bubble, I got in maybe 1997, right?

Got in what? Like in crypto. 1997? No, no, no. He's taking it as an example. Oh, oh. Like getting in that, like when you got in for crypto would be the same as if he had gotten that 97 for the dot-com. Which is basically the fucking beginning. Yeah. Well, close to it. Not the entire. So when was it? When did you get in? September.

Market moves fast, man. It's fucking crazy. When I got in, Bitcoin was $16,000 and I bought some. It just shot to $48,000. I've had multiple coins that do $10,000, $20,000. I trade in it now too and it's just...

These macro trends you don't control, right? You just got to do your best. So, okay. Enlighten me here. Sure. Because there's actually a lot of questions I want to ask you about this. Because on our last episode, on our very last episode, we were talking about crypto. And if you listen to it, you clearly know that none of us know what the hell we're talking about. Dogecoin, yeah. But we're talking about it anyway, right? So we do talk about Dogecoin, but that's a separate thing.

I wanna get to later. - Sure. - Right now is, okay, this is, again, I'm gonna generalize, right? But my opinion when it comes to whether it's stock trading or even crypto, all these kind of things,

It's like they're just numbers. They're just numbers on a computer. Right. Right. And the numbers go up. Numbers go down. Right. And when the numbers go up, people are saying like, oh, I made so much money. Right. But you don't really actually make that money until you really cash out. Yeah. You got to realize your gains. Yeah. Like when you actually cash out into like cash. Can you cash out right now? I can cash out. So have you cashed out or do people usually cash out? Because I feel like, and this is not based on any real life experience.

or example or information, but I just, because I take parallels from like the stock market, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And I know so many people. - You trade, right? - Well, I don't really trade, I got out of it, but I know so many people that do and then, you know, they're only saying like, "Oh yeah, I made a bunch of money on this thing," or, "It went up so many times, I made a huge bunch of money." I'm like, "Okay, well, did you catch out?" Like, no.

My stock's still in there. So I'm like, okay, well, the numbers went up. You didn't really make the money yet. The numbers just went up. And then if you keep it in long enough, the numbers are going to go back down sooner or later. So...

are most people kind of in the crypto game actually capitalizing on the gains and cashing out and getting the cash or are they just making hedging their bets and just being like okay well this is just going to keep going like a bubble right well i mean i think for now we're in a bubble you know we're on a bull run right now so i feel like anybody who got in within the last four months will have made a boatload of money and it's really about how much money you would have made

But this is the big difference between stock and what we do and why I don't really want to go into stock is we can operate any second that we want. We don't have to wait for the markets to open. You can set your stop limits at whatever you want. So in many ways, you have much more ways to protect yourself.

Yes, it's more volatile, right? But it's much more liquid with markets. The higher liquidity rate that you have, the better the markets will perform. Well, the volatility can be a good thing depending on how you're looking at it. For some people, they love the volatilities.

They make the money because of the volatility. Yeah, that's me. Risk-seeking assholes like me. Yeah, but don't you think that the recent acquisition of 1.5 billion Bitcoins from Tesla legitimizes Bitcoin? I think Bitcoin was legitimized much before then. Okay, so when I got in, I got in when it was hitting around 11,000, 12,000. Cool. Virtue signaling. That was like the first. Yeah.

Why am I paying for the Baizu? How we should be getting the Baizu? Virtually, secretly, humble bragging. No, no, listen, listen, listen. When it went to, no, but listen. When it got to 1112, right? Listen, preacher. And then it went down, right? And then it went down. And then that's when I, that was back when I was all into crypto, right? When it was 1112. And then it went down. I just like, fuck it. I don't even listen to it anymore. So I just left it there. I don't even care. Right. Right.

But back then, I remember, because I was really into it at the time, was nobody really knew. It was very volatile. Sure. That was definitely a buzzword, volatile. Nobody really knew where it would go, but everyone was saying, well, worse comes to worse.

hedge on bitcoin because that's like it's going to be good everything else you don't know i mean it's got up and downs you got to ride the waves you know you gotta you gotta really read the market and you can make a lot of money right but i'm like i don't have time for that and then um but bitcoin is like it's it's it's the og of of digital currency it's the first right so it's like

That's a safe bet. But then you never know. And then all of a sudden it just drops down to like $3,000, $4,000. And I'm like, what the fuck is this bullshit? And now it's at $48,000. And now it's at $48,000. And Tesla bought 1.5 billion Bitcoins. And back then when it was at $12,000, there was no huge movement. There was no huge purchase. Did you cash out at that point? No, I just left it there. Okay, so you gained it back. So you're great right now. Yeah, but I didn't have a lot.

to begin with because I didn't believe in it. But you're just like a casual observer. Very casual. Yeah, that's different. Yeah. I took out a margin. Oh, shit. Like, I'm a little... It's just, like I said, it's a bull market right now. I don't really know what's going to go. Nobody really knows. But I just feel like it legitimizes it. It can't go down unless Tesla itself sells a bunch of its Bitcoins. Right. It can't go down that. They're not... Like, 3,000 again. They're going to accrue more, actually. Yeah. Like, they bought the one point...

because it's simple there's a limited supply it's a limited supply yeah yeah but why wouldn't it go down unless they unload a huge amount if people lose faith in the currency it doesn't work that way though it's not like stock

So you're a little past that point at this moment because the majority of the Bitcoin that is being held right now is institutional, you know, and they invest for very different reasons than I do, you know, and they have a different set of rules than I do. But can it go down? Absolutely. It absolutely can go back down to $11,000. Will it? Probably not. Well, I'll give you an example, right? Because I don't know anything about this. So, you know, 10 years ago or more than 10 years ago, we had the financial crisis, right? Yeah.

And the stock market, like, I mean, it fucking tanked. And then a little bit less than 10 years before that, all of the tech stocks, like, completely tanked. And so for those who had Amazon, if you sold, I mean, then, you know, whatever, right? But, I mean, if you'd held on to it. So market sentiment versus the underlying fundamentals, right?

is a very tricky thing that I know very little about. And then with Bitcoin, it's even more tricky to your point. And so how can you say categorically that, oh, it can't go down? Yeah. Like anything can happen. I mean, Citibank was at 97 cents like,

you know, X number of years ago. Right. No, it can definitely happen. I just, I wouldn't bet on it. And I think there's one of the smartest thing I've heard about this recently is that crypto and blockchain have a huge branding problem.

And I think when we started this conversation, you asked me about this too. And I said, no, I don't work in crypto. I trade in crypto. I work in blockchain. These are two very separate things. And it's very poorly branded because the underlying technology has now gotten to a point where it's there, where DeFi just isn't going to drop. So take what I do. I trade a lot of the coins that I trade. I trade at a 10x margin. What does that mean? Because I don't know anything about margin. I don't know.

I used $1,000 as collateral, hypothetically, right? And I borrowed $10,000 against that $1,000. So now I have $11,000, right? So every stop that it goes up, I gain more because I have $11,000 of it. And I get charged interest, which is very low. It's kind of like shorting.

It's margin trading. I take long positions. But basically, you can't do this on an actual stock trader because no one's going to give you 10x without a credit check that will last you months, if not years. I can do it like this.

So you have much higher liquidity. Yes, the risks are higher, the volatility is higher, but you have much more liquidity. And this is the key here. You can make bigger bets. Right. You can make bigger bets whenever you want. And it's instantaneous. Correct. And it's all on a ledger. You can trace it and I can borrow from you. I can borrow from Howie and I can do it like this.

So that part has gotten there now where you have millions of people doing that where it's just not going to crash. Not to the points where it'll ruin the entire industry. Sure, it might dip.

And then my plateau, and you got to find things elsewhere. There's just nuance of timing. Yeah. That's how an industry grows. I get it. Look, my issue, my personal issue with crypto has never been that it's not legitimate. I know it's legitimate. I'm sure there are, and I know there are a lot of people making a bunch of money on it, right? Yeah.

For me, though, it was just like, call me old school. I just can't... I just, as a principal, I tend not to get into things that I just don't understand myself. Sure. Right? And so that's why I never really got into stock trading. I never got into crypto. These are just things I just don't understand. You look like grandpa. Well, it's not even like that. Like, I don't understand the technicality of it, but I just don't even understand like the...

The principle, the idea of it. You know what I mean? Like, I just never got my head... I'm like a caveman when it comes to this shit. Like, I never got my mind around things that just were not tangible. Right. And it was built all on people's confidence and confidence in the market. And that stuff was just so foo-foo to me. You know? It was just never, like, solid for me. If you can't understand how something works, then...

I mean, how could you invest in it? I mean, like, take Buffett. Take Buffett, right? He has been on, he's been interviewed, I mean, probably as recently as a few years ago, that he doesn't buy gold and, you know, or that kind of stuff. Because it's not really a tangible asset that's doing something. He buys businesses because he knows that this business has people involved.

that have skills, that has resources and networks to be able to

monetize. So he's like, I mean, gold. I mean, there's a great, like, you know, some videos of him on YouTube where he doesn't even believe in that. We're taking this to the next level, which is Bitcoin, which is even more intangible. So, I mean, I guess I don't, I'm not saying I don't believe in it. I wish I was in it, you know, early on. You still can. Yeah, yeah. But like, if you don't really, like, for someone like Justin or myself, where we don't understand this,

I just, how could I invest in it? - Well, the question, I agree and I'm the same way, right? So that's why I invest in real estate, right? I'm a real estate guy because I can actually go to the property, look at the property with my own eyes, walk in the property, feel its walls, right? And be like, okay, this is what I'm buying. This is what I'm investing. I get it, you know? But like, if it's not something like that, I just can't really wrap my mind around it.

But I guess the question is, are we just being lazy at the same time and being like, oh, we don't understand this. We're not going to invest in it because we can make the effort to understand it. Right. But we're not. I'm not. Do you want my honest answer? Yeah. Yes. So, Stephen. Honest drink, right? Help us understand why.

more about, get us to the point where we can maybe see Bitcoin or some of the crypto as something tangible, like looking at real estate, which is a proven thing. Sure.

- Sure. - Over many, many thousands of years. Like if you had found the right properties, there are formulas for this kind of stuff, but help us understand why there's an equivalent. - Yeah, so I think where I would start is to just to make sure that you understand why you're doing this, right? I think anybody who goes into investing or trading, they have to understand, is my goal to make 10X? Is my goal just to do something on the side and make casual money? Or is this like actually something I wanna pursue?

So that's probably the first thing. But Bitcoin, like what you were describing earlier, I thought was really accurate. Bitcoin is very similar to gold. It doesn't actually do much.

But like a lot of the other stuff, especially, you know, in decentralized finance, like Polkadot, for example, is I've been into them since they were at $4. They're about $25 now. And that was three months. Polkadot is relatively new. Yeah, they're their own chain. Is that another cryptocurrency? What is that? Yeah. Okay, so the best way that I can explain this, this is good practice for me. I need to learn how to do this. You can think about blockchain like different internets.

Like imagine if AT&T had an internet, Verizon had an internet. China Mobile. China Mobile, right? Different networks. Right. So now you're on Google and you're searching stuff. But when you're on Google on China Mobile versus, say, Sprint, there are different speeds. There's different frequencies.

You know, every internet has their own specialization. Like maybe, you know, China Telecom's internet is the best gaming one. That's where most gaming ones go. It's the less fees. There's different technology behind it. Is this what we're talking about? Is this where blockchain is? So these are the different chains.

Right. So Ethereum is a chain, the most popular chain right now. You know, so when you want to look at tangible things, you look at the number of people that trade and borrow on Ethereum. So this is why this was unlocked last year, because money got poured into it. When decentralized finance came out last year with yield farming, which is essentially just lending, like I deposit a thousand dollars into your bank.

You give me an interest rate that is much higher than anything out there. It is safe. And then I also get extra rewards. Like imagine if you give me $3,000, you know, and then I pay you back 20% every month. And in addition, I give you some chocolate. That then you can use that chocolate to go somewhere else and trade that chocolate for a brownie, right? Or if I give you euros and then now you can use those euros to spend, right? So there's not only are you getting interest,

And at the same time, your dollar is going up. So you give me $300. By the time you take it out, it's worth $500. And then I give you 30 euros that then you can go and use and buy Spanish ham. So think about what you just got there. You got extra money. You got Spanish ham for literally doing nothing.

Does that make sense? I'm sold because of Spanish ham. No, the jamon. There's risks. If the market goes down, you got liquidated, right? This is the best case scenario, you know, but this is all based on the market. No, I'm saying like there's got to be a catch, right? Like if as a chain, I'm offering all these great incentives. The catch is there's no guarantee. You might not get the jamon. Yeah. Yeah.

The hormone is the key here. Right? Think about it. If you don't get the hormone, it's the same shit. No. Okay. No. Okay. Wait. But okay. So no, like thanks for, okay. Like number one is thanks for opening our minds. Cause like, I feel like regardless of,

if this thing is going to pan out long term. There's enough people backing it that we shouldn't be close-minded and grandpa's about it, right? Sure. But being a grandpa is fine. Like Warren Buffett's a grandpa. It's fine. But tell me, when are you going to get out? What's your exit strategy? I have numbers in my head. And I set stop limits. I don't want to give actual numbers. But I've more than...

I've tripled my money since Monday. Monday? Today is Wednesday. Since 6 o'clock. Since February 8th of 2021. Correct. Since we started this episode. That is how insane some of this bull run is right now. And I don't know how long it's going to last. You have to understand, Elon's one announcement for the Bitcoin thing, it shot it up, what, 20%? That's not a small amount.

No, of course not. Okay, so when we say Bitcoin, when we say Ethereum, when we say Dogecoin, are these all the different currencies or are these the different chains? So Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Doge are different chains. And those are the primary currencies for their chains, right? The thing is Bitcoin doesn't have a programming language. So Bitcoin is literally like gold. Ethereum has a programming language where you can do stuff on the chain.

Dogecoin is the same as Bitcoin. So is there a differentiation between the currency and the chain? Or are they just the same thing? Well, the currency is usually like the thing that, like if you want to send me money, right? If you want to send me money on Ethereum, you have to pay a transaction fee, essentially, like you do at normal banks. And you have to pay that in the native currency, which is Ethereum. Okay. Yeah.

So if you don't have Ethereum, you cannot send me money. So Ethereum is both the name of the currency itself, but also the name of the blockchain, the chain. Correct. Yeah. The ticker price is ETH, right? So this is how these chains work. If you want to use my chain and I do anything on there, you have to pay a tax to me.

for everything that you do under. - Steven, what's the equivalent of like a chain versus an ancient civilization that produced its own currency? Is there some connection there?

Wow, that's a very deep question. Or even a chain in a bank. Like, what's the difference between the chain and a bank? Well, I mean, I think one of the things with blockchain is it's all public, right? So at any point, you can check a transaction from you to Howie. You can make sure that that happened. You know, it's decentralized. So, for example, in DeFi right now, I'm not borrowing the money from, you know, Bank of China. I'm borrowing the money from you and Howie. Mm-hmm.

So not only is that better rates and more customizable, but it's all done through smart contracts on Ethereum. So like how he doesn't have to approve, how he can just say, I will lend you as 4% and then just leave it there and how he doesn't have to worry about it. And then I can decide whether or not I want to take the 4%. And then with the technology that ensures that that actually goes through.

With central banks, you still have to manualize that. You still have to check. You don't have access to Bank of China's records. You can't check how often times they've been paid out or whatever. So openness is like a benefit of the platform. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, that seems to me like the biggest differentiator. So it's not like one government that controls it. It's for libertarians. I mean, people that don't want a lot of government control. It's for people who are in the game to be...

So, okay. So why is blockchain the future versus like the government stuff? I'm not sure it is. And to be honest with you, this is probably where I differentiate is the reality is the majority of people in blockchain right now are in there for the money, not for the technology. The overwhelming majority. Sure. A lot of purists are, and there's a lot of promise in technology, but like we were just talking about the Oculus. There was a lot of promise in VR three years ago. You know, there was a lot of diehard engineers who were like, this is the future.

So the reality is the majority of people that are working in this space are in this for the money. And there just happens to be a lot of money in it right now. So who are some famous people that are in it? Like, who are people that we may reference as someone to learn from that are in it right now? Like, other than Elon. I don't even think Elon's a good example. Like, Elon's like a fanboy of this. He came in super late, you know? Yeah.

I don't know. You can just play around on Twitter. I'm not on there very much. But the fact that they even bought it at $33,000 per Bitcoin. Per Bitcoin, yeah. I mean, well, I mean, it's $1.5 billion. You know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, it sounds like a lot. To me, it's a lot. But, you know, in relation to like my net worth, it's like about $0.15. Yeah.

But it's still a lot. I mean, at the end of the day, it's still a lot, right? And the fact that they bought in when it hit at 33, as opposed to when it was rising, you know what I mean? Or as opposed to when it was 3K. He's speaking like an owner, isn't he? He's speaking like an owner of... Which platforms do you own? Dude, why are you prosecuting nonstop? Just chill. He's such a prosecutor. So I'm trying to save people at the stake. I know, right? Man, chill, dude.

It's witchcraft. I mean, just the fact that they came in at that point, right? Doesn't that symbolize something? Yeah, I mean, there's this ongoing meme in blockchain where...

People lining up at the door when Bitcoin's 2,000, there's like zero. And then people lining up at the door when it's 30,000, there's like 100 people lining up, right? It's a crowd mentality. But that's how everything works. People, like the majority, the bell curve, right? The majority of people are going to get on. The adoption curve. Yeah. Early adopters. And they're named early adopters for a reason because they're adopting it early when no one else is really adopting whatever that is, right? But that's everything. But there is a danger in, I think, the kind of...

There's a comfort, but there's also a danger in the mindset of being like, well, this is a very notable person and he's doing it. So it's got to be legitimate now. Right. I mean, to fall into that loop is also dangerous in a way as well. I mean, it's a lot of money and that money makes you feel like, okay, well, Elon's a smart guy.

And if he's gonna invest that much money into Bitcoin, he's obviously doing it for a reason. He's obviously probably thought it over. - Must have done his research. - Yeah, he must have done his research. He has a whole team behind him and he has all the data and information and he's still doing this. So it's gotta be like- - That's gonna affect the bottom line of Tesla. - But at the end of the day, we really don't know what his kind of mental processes are with that particular move, right? Like we just don't know.

And Elon is not like, we put him up on a pedestal as we should because this guy is just a fucking crazy genius. But he has in his past, you know, made moves that were not, didn't really pan out. Like he's not perfect, right? So, you know, and how much of this is also kind of because Elon is also the kind of guy who likes to, he's like a nerd, right? But he likes, but he's...

recently got into this role of where he's like influencer as well and he's a cultural icon now right much so yeah so from a guy who came as a background of like kind of a nerd that no one really paid attention to girls probably weren't all jumping all over him to now he's the fucking man sure right and

Like, you know, and he's smart enough to make moves where to kind of keep his not only relevancy up, but his brand. Like, he's a brand. Elon himself is a brand name now. And he's always going to make moves and investing in something like Bitcoin is...

plays right into that brand image of being like into tech, being into like that fringe kind of thing, even though it's not entirely fringe anymore. But doing kind of like these crazy tech moves into like these cool spaces is part of his brand. So part of it could be like a publicity stunt. You know, I'm not saying it's entirely a publicity stunt because that's a lot of fucking money to do just for a publicity stunt. I'm sure he sees real growth there.

But a part of his motivation might also be because this helps build my brand as well. And there's value in that. Yeah, I think it's a very insightful share. I mean, just to add on a couple of points, right? So just because Warren Buffett invests in the company doesn't mean it's the right decision for an individual investor because the terms and the conditions...

And the context of that investment, it's just, I mean, it's kind of difficult to compare. Yeah. Right? The other data point, I mean, let's just do some math, right? Tesla at the latest, at the closing yesterday, $815 billion company, $1.5 billion. If you were worth $100,000 US, which I think is a significant amount of net worth for most people, that would be equivalent to $184 billion.

give or take a couple of cents. So when you kind of look at the 1.5 billion, again, in the context of like 1.5 billion, yeah, great. But if you were worth 100,000 US, again, not a small amount of change. But one is worth and one is in your bank account. No, no, no. I'm saying... Wait, what are you saying right now? I'm not following. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So...

Tesla is worth $815 billion as market cap and et cetera, et cetera. It's got like $20 billion in the bank, right? If we wanted to use that as a proxy. So I'm playing around with a proportion of,

of my market cap. Cause I, you know, I can sell stock, I can raise funds, I can do a lot of things. And I agree how it's not directly commensurate with that, but let's just say it was 815 billion, 1.5 billion. What's that relationship. If you were a company and you were worth a hundred thousand us as Tesla is worth $815 billion, uh,

making that Bitcoin purchase, you'd be buying $184 of Bitcoin. So it's negligible is what you're saying, right? So it's like pocket change. Yeah, pocket change. I mean, the other thing you have to understand here is their price is already appreciated by about 20 plus percent. I mean, this is the same guy that said, I'm going to take the company private for $420, right? I mean, he does completely agree. He does have a track record of really bending the rules, smoking lots of weed and making money

you know, interesting decisions. But anytime we compare ourselves to a billionaire, that's when you fuck up a little bit. This is pure speculation, right? I am no expert.

But you know how a couple of weeks ago he was tweeting about Dogecoin, right? And you have neck deep in Dogecoin. No, I'm not anymore. I got out. Well, Ned and Nash has a Shiba in the cartoon. Our second episode was on Dogecoin. It wasn't designed that way. It just happened that way.

Okay. So what I was saying is that, I mean, one of the main reasons why Dogecoin suddenly became a household name, I mean, for a couple of days at least, was because Elon Musk tweeted about Dogecoin. Consistently. Yeah. And all of a sudden it was like rocket ship, right? The value of Dogecoin went up.

Almost think just I just thought about this right now when you're talking about this I was like well What if he was just using as a test right? He's like testing the waters a little bit and he saw his effect on that right and then he's like master He's like but BAM. I just bought 1.5 billion Bitcoin right raising the value of Bitcoin And maybe he will pull out like and just ride that wave group gain that profit Yeah, right and then pull out

Maybe. Yeah, he might. There's the other side of the argument for that. He definitely might do that. Or the flip side, maybe because he knew that he was going to have an effect on the cryptocurrency, that if his company came in and bought that much, you know...

that maybe it would become a catalyst for other corporations to come in or other big ballers to come in. Well, speaking a little bit closer to home, I like your thought process, right? Speculation leads to some interesting ideas. So I have a... How should I not divulge this person's identity? Okay, I have a family member that at one point was managing a bit of...

money and investment like we're talking like you know billions or whatever right and it was a very legitimate sort of business and they're investing in companies and all that stuff but i was surprised when this family member told me at that point this was a while back that they were also investing one or two percent of their fund into bitcoin or into crypto yeah uh as a kind of oh so

You were asking me if you wanted some. No, no, no. As a type of hedge as well. So when you're that wealthy, yeah, you can hedge. But again, like I said, we're not investing $1.5 billion. We'll never be worth $1.5 billion. Well, let's change gears a little bit, but keep on this topic of kind of...

and Elon Musk. Like, at a certain point, I mean, you're human, right? Right. Like, imagine if you're in his shoes, do you feel like he almost kind of has maybe developed... And I'm not saying this as a judgment thing. I'm just saying I think anyone in his position might...

Like a little bit of a God complex? Like when you can have that much influence over like world markets and entire industries and entire cultures, right?

Just through like your tweets or you're like, you know, just putting something out there and you can shift entire landscapes at your will. Like you got to have a little bit of a God complex at that point, right? Like, I mean, how do you feel like he controls that? Well, can I add something? This is another topic that we've been talking about recently and a lot of it goes back to Elon Musk.

So recently we've been talking a lot about this app called Clubhouse. Right. Right. And like a week or so ago, Elon Musk just did a surprise drop in on Clubhouse and basically just like opened the floodgates. Yeah. Right. And totally went to the max capacity and then some and all these other people like, what the fuck? And all of a sudden for that week right after, Clubhouse.

clubhouse was just like every on everyone's radar to the point where china even got into it right and all of a sudden everyone's talking about clubhouse are you right no i'm not on clubhouse yeah yeah i probably will be but yeah you get on well but it was like a flood right and a lot of a lot of people attributed to elon musk because he was the first person to cause a room to hit the max in like like five seconds we fucking interviewed the robin hood guy he interviewed vlad

And they were saying, Elon was like, I would just come and check it out. It was like, you know what I mean? Yeah. And going back to what you're saying, Justin, you're like, well, you get to a certain level where you do these little small movements that literally move mountains. Yeah.

What else are you going to do? But let's flip this backwards, right? Or flip this upside down. So would this be a case of him showing generally tremendous amount of restraint given his...

massive massive influence okay and what I mean by that is think about the comments that you normally make on a regular basis and think about if you were then Elon Musk and based on your daily behaviors what kind of ripples those would cause and should the case then be made that Elon Musk is extremely restrained in

for the level of influence that he does have. Like that he's not like turning into a Donald Trump or something like that? I mean, if you just took my daily comments and you've aired them, the markets, and I had the influence of Elon Musk, the markets were probably just fucking fluctuate

100,000 times more. Well, I think it's natural because public scrutiny inherently puts restraints on people, right? So like when you're in the public's eyes so much, you are more measured in what you say, hopefully. I mean, maybe not some people, but...

But like usually like celebrities, we see them like once you're in the public's eye and you're famous, there are a lot of social pressures, expectations, constraints around what you do in this. You have a whole team of people. You have PR people around you telling you what not to say, what to say, when to say it, where to go.

You have all these things. And so, yes, and to your point, I think there definitely are a lot of restraints. And he is, given the amount of influence he has, he could be doing a lot, probably like a lot more damage. Not that he's doing any damage, but he could just go all out, which he's probably not.

I think he's much better, like, maybe just to kind of personalize this, he's way more better behaved and restrained than I would ever be with his level of wealth. Yeah, yeah. Hey, Stephen, so do you think, I mean, in terms of the cryptocurrency world, I mean, his actions were quite meteoric, right? It was like, who's,

Pretty big. Elon has made me a boatload of money. That's about what I'll say on this. He has made me a fuck ton of money. It rocked the world. Everyone was talking about it. It made people talk about cryptocurrency again. I'm talking about cryptocurrency and it isn't doing shit. I think you have to look at the actions, the frequency of the actions, and the extreme...

or not extreme tone of the actions in the context of all of their actions. What? No, okay. Before the Tesla move. Like, based on what Steven just said, if Steven was fucking Elon Musk and he came on a fucking podcast and he just fucking said everything that he said, it would be, you know, I just think we have to kind of be a little bit more realistic about like what's going on, what's actually going on here, you know? Before the Tesla move.

Was because you guys I thought cryptocurrency was a hot topic forever You guys saying before Elon or Tesla bought the 1.5 billion in Bitcoin It was kind of losing popularity. You want me to go? I think the market pick up last summer So I think once decentralized finance got into current blockchain and crypto it really changed the game So there are these things now called stable coins. I

right, which is literally digital currency. So, you know, USDT, USDC, DAI, you know, there's three ways to do them. But most of them are essentially if I have 200 million US dollars in a bank somewhere, I can issue Howie or our market 200 million dollars in equivalent because I have the collateral. So this has really changed the game because, you know, you essentially got rid of the only problem, which was the volatility.

Right before, if you held Bitcoin and it started crashing, you had to trade out into something else that also might be crashing. Now you can trade it out into a stablecoin and relatively, you know, within 99 to 101 cents,

Have it be stable. Why is it so stable? They can have it in collateral. So there's two to three ways of doing this. The most common way is to have it in collateral, right? The equivalent version. So, you know, Tether, which is a company behind USDT, which is the most common stable coin, they have hundreds of billions of... Basically, it links to the US dollar. Correct. Yeah. That's one way of doing it. Another way is to do it through a basket of goods. So you have some gold, some oil, some euros, and some US dollars, and you have some sort of algorithmic factor.

And a third way of doing it is through in a smart contract that automatically gets executed based on supply and demand. So if the price is too high, they buy more. If price is too low, they supply more. So it's like bonds, automatic bonds. Okay. It's fun. Yeah.

I still don't understand. And that's where Justin goes, I'm going to stick with real estate. Well, let me... As you should. I think that... Cheers. I think this opens up a lot of interesting conversation. Eric, maybe you want to share some baijiu since you're babysitting your baijiu. Sure. Thank you, Eric. Eric is coddling. That's okay. Okay. So I'm going to try to be neither a prosecutor, a politician... Impossible. ...or preacher. But I'm going to try to think more like a... Zero confidence in this working out. Yeah.

I'm going to try to think a little bit more like a... Mission Impossible. Okay. Yes, that's a good one. Oh, that's really good. Ted Lasso. You are like... But that was like first level Ted Lasso. I would expect a little bit more. What do you want to say, Steve? Can I just quickly cut in to Howie? Yeah. So apparently, because we're talking about Elon Musk, Tom Cruise and his producer bought two seats on one of their missions to outer space because they want to shoot part of the next Mission Impossible movie. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.

And Tom does his own stunts, right? That's crazy. In space. Yeah, so it would be like a two or three person crew. That's crazy. Oh my God. They just bought the seats. It's so crazy that you say that because today I just watched the Super Bowl trailer of Top Gun. Oh. Of the new Top Gun. The extended trailer special for Super Bowl. Look good? It's fucking ridiculous. Really? I'm sure. It is so ridiculous. Is Tom Cruise in it? Yeah, yeah. What do you mean? I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know anything about the new Top Gun. Have you not heard about the new Top Gun coming out? Oh my God. Yes, Tom Cruise is a star. And he is flying the fucking jets. Is he reprising his old role? Yes, Maverick. Okay. He's Maverick. But he's older now. He's like the older. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's still himself. And they had like a short, like a minute or minute and a half, I think, of every end of like behind the scenes.

And Tom Cruise is literally flying his own fighter jets. He's flying his own fighter jets, doing dogfights in the air. It's fucking ridiculous. It's insane. That got me so hyped. I've never been more hyped about a movie after watching it. I was like, oh my God, this is insane. I'm so hyped. When you say they're going to do it in space, that's insane. I'm going to draw a connection. Tom Cruise, Tom Brady.

Yeah. I mean, both of them have extended their... I mean, their brilliance into an age where, you know, no one goes to... Unprecedented. Un-fucking-precedented. I mean, like... And, you know, they're... I mean, they're incredible. They are...

They are legends, right? They're already legends. He was already the GOAT. Now he's like the GOAT GOAT. Tom Brady. Yeah, the GOAT GOAT. But also Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise.

It's definitely like Goat Goat. Can we talk about, for the people who don't know who Tom Brady is, who's Tom Brady? Tom Brady is an American athlete in American football who has achieved something that no one has ever achieved. And for those of you who know who Michael Jordan is, Tom Brady has achieved, he's surpassed the accomplishments of Michael Jordan in his respective realm with seven championships.

And Michael Jordan won six. He surpassed. He surpassed. And in the U.S., the American football business is much larger than the basketball business. Yeah, but this is... Okay, I'm not going to be... I was about to be prosecutor. I was about to be prosecutor slash preacher. Yeah.

We got to remind each other of the rules again because I forgot them by now. Because that's opening a whole can of worms that I can debate on forever in terms of the comparisons between football and basketball and what each of them have achieved between Michael Jordan and Tom Brady. I still feel Michael Jordan has accomplished more in his respective sport than Tom Brady has. But that is an open-ended debate. It's not a debate.

Okay. Some people might want to debate that. Acknowledged. Absolutely acknowledged. Also, I'm biased because I'm a New York Giants fan, so I've never really liked Tom Brady. But you have to give it up. You have to give it up to Tom Brady. He's a go. You guys defeated him a couple times, including the— Hell yeah, we did. Hell yeah, we did. Yes, yes. I personally defeated Tom Brady. Can I tell you, I read this thing where you guys might be in the Deshaun Watson race.

Oh, shit. Yeah? I'll send it to you after. Hey, man. He's got to leave the Texans. He's going to leave. I mean, they're going to have to trade him. He will, for sure. Anyway, sorry. Is this football talk? Yeah. I know nothing about football. So, first of all, acknowledge, it doesn't reflect my own personal view of who's the greatest of all time. But,

The fact that they can be debated is the point that we're trying to make with our listener base who probably doesn't have the full context, but the goat of the goat, which is like the best of the best. What is goat? Yeah, when we say goat, that is an acronym. Greatest of all time. The greatest of all time is called the goat. Yeah. G-O-A-T. Yeah. So it's like you are the Confucius to the Confucius. Confucius.

You know what I'm saying? There was a guy there, right? There was a guy. There's a guy there. He uses Confucius in every metaphor. Yeah, he has to vote on Confucius. He's a very smart guy. I like Confucius. I was just drawing a facetious comparison, but

Tom Cruise, Tom Brady. And then the other piece of this is that Tom Cruise is like xie jiao, like a Scientologist, right? So he's a Scientologist. Is he still? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not judging against it, but like in Chinese, like we would consider him as part of a xie jiao. And Tom Brady, you know, he's in his 40s. Is xie jiao cult? Yeah, cult. Kind of like.

And Tom Brady, he's in his 40s. He's in a sport. Mid-40s. Mid-40s where he's in a sport where people retire when they're 27, 28, 29. Yeah. Right? He's 43, 1977. He's 44 now. Unprecedented. Yes. Unprecedented. And his guru, right, the person that he relies on, something Guerrero, is also known as... Confucius.

Is no Confucius. For a first name? And then Guerrero. No, no, no. Confucius Guerrero. Alberto Guerrero. I can't remember the name. Basically, this guy is banned from the sport for maybe having performance enhancing issues.

types of techniques. Of course, I'm not accusing Brady. Like, Brady is... He seems pretty legit. But he also has his sort of xie jiao kind of thing because this guy has been completely banned from the NFL. His trainer, his personal trainer. Well, even before that, it was Deflategate. He was part of that, right? So, like, he's not clean of conspiracy and, like, little... Like, you know, these scandals, I guess. Right.

But, I mean, he's still the GOAT, right? Like, the GOAT's the GOAT. Yeah. He's still, like, fucking incredible. Yeah. So, anyways. But, yeah, no, I think that was an interesting conversation, the two Toms. Just quickly pivoting back to Bitcoin. Wow, we're just jumping around right now. We are. Let's get back to Bitcoin. Let's get back to Bitcoin.

From Confucius to Tom Brady to Bitcoin. Let's go. I love it. Let's go. These are my favorite types of episodes. Just do what you're good at. Listen. What an asshole. I will say Howie's a pretty good listener. I will support that statement. Thank you. You've been a pretty good listener too, Howie. I want to hear more from Stephen. Howie's the guy that I called up back in the day.

Because, I mean, first of all, he's such a great friend. But man, when I was like, I had fucking shit going down, I would call his ass up and tell him the shit that was going down. You know, he is a good listener. And a friend. Steven, I just, if you didn't know already. Right. I mean, you should know this already. But if you didn't know already, when Eric and I and Howie get on a roll.

You have to fight for your air time. You have to fight for your talking time. Bro, man, listen. Don't ask permission to talk. Don't ask permission to be like, oh, can I cut in? No, just cut the fuck in because you need to shut us up. You need to shut us up. Jump on the table. No, man, it's cool. It's cool because you guys have a very different dynamic. So I think for me, I'm just happy to be here among peers. Yeah.

We're just hanging out. Don't be a politician, man. I'm just happy to be here. No, but there's got to be a big difference because on your podcast, you are the lone host. It's just you. It's just him. Does it feel like when you sit here and you join our podcast, do you get a desire to want to have co-hosts? Or does this give you the opposite desire? Be like, no, I don't fucking want co-hosts after watching us. Yes.

- What, yes to what? - The latter. - The latter. - I don't want to host. - No, but also I think it's just, you know, like I think what you guys have is really special.

this should be the Justin Yang show yeah it'd be a great show probably you know I think you guys have such a great dynamic no one knows who Justin Yang is I'm Justin Yang he's the goat you know goat of the goat it's you guys have such a really cool dynamic here man you know I think the pastor preacher fucking prosecutor thing really exemplifies that it's not prosecutor it's prostitute get it right

Was it? Actually, I'm not sure at this point. It's a preacher, politician, and prostitute. Protestant, actually. I hate Catholics. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no. I...

Dude, I'm happy to listen. This is cool. Watching you guys do this, it's really cool. I'm just happy to be here, to be honest with you. Well, look, we always have a good time when you're on the show, man. I mean, you're one of our boys. Like I said to you on several occasions, you have an open invitation to attend our podcast anytime. Just hop on whenever you want. Just shoot me a text. No, man. We will invite him. Regularly.

You know what I like about Dax is he has like the blah, blah, blah returns thing. We should steal that and be like, Steven Renner returns. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? I like that. I like that. Returns part two. Please don't. Can we change my name this time? Can I be like Jack Cho or something? Yeah.

You could be blockchain. Wait, Bob, one second. We've touched upon a little bit about what he's been doing. He's doing his podcast. He's got a new podcast, Bone Broth Soup. He's got his animation, Ned and Nash. Yes. And then you have your normal podcast. You got so much shit going on. Yeah, dude, that's one thing. I was about to be like, what else you got going on? You got enough. That's one thing I've always admired about you. You have so many balls up in the air.

You're juggling so many things. What about the noodle shop? That's the umbrella, right? Is the noodle shop still going on? Yeah, the noodle shop is more or less just like a slogan at this point, to be honest with you. It's something where media is in a stage where it's reinventing itself and we're just along for the ride. I'm much more of a product person, so I'd rather build from the ground up rather than top down.

Can I just say something really quick? Sure. So, I really like your design sense. Oh, thank you. So, the posters that you put out, the Instagram photos, stuff like that. I like the... I mean, obviously, the color... It's a lot coming from you. No, the color palette is... It's shit. It's very...

I mean, fitting for what you're doing, but also the fonts you're choosing and the layout you're doing. It's really nice. I like what you're doing. But Howie, you know, I think you're the only one here that knows that none of this shit actually matters, right? The only shit that matters is what I'm trying to do next week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I know. Let's talk really quick about that. What are you trying to do next week? What can wrap up? Let's talk about it. I'm shooting my first short film next week. Oh! We're waiting for that. This is a long time coming, right? Yeah. This is a whole

And I said, I'll be there if you need me. How we inspired this. To be 100% honest with you, how we learned how to drink about six months ago and that kind of inspired this journey.

pivot but no I'm trying to shoot my short film next week we're still waiting on location and actor availability because when you have no budget you gotta wait on actor availability dude I'm right here I'm right here I'm right here you know what next one give us give us a synopsis a brief synopsis of what this short film is gonna be about I essentially took the first five minutes off the social network and I tried to recreate it in my own tense um

So it's like an alternate storyline? No, no, no. Just a conversation. It's literally just a dinner conversation. Literally two people, man and female, with some sort of relationship.

Because for me, like I came into this with an angle, right? Like I really admire Sorkin. You know, I just watched his latest film and that's how I got into this. So for me, this is dialogue. For me, this is can I execute the dialogue and can the dialogue drive the story? Howie and I essentially had a conversation six months ago where he told me about one of his experiences with somebody senior than him. Yeah.

And he's just like, we're sitting here and where we were, we're at the Barbarian. It's romantic lighting. And as we're having that conversation in my head, I'm just like, I pride myself on writing dialogue. I can drive a story through dialogue. We can keep it very short, which is one of the things that Howie said. So we're trying to get this up five minutes. And it's really just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It'll probably be really terrible. To be 100% honest with you, really terrible.

But I think it's an important step. Well, all first-time short films or first-time films are terrible. I'm not saying yours is going to be terrible. Not necessarily. I think the most important... Howie's was great. Howie's was great. No, I think the most important... But that wasn't entirely his first verse. Yeah, sure. I think the key is it's not about putting yourself in a...

in a corner where you're saying what I'm going to do is terrible. I think it's about looking forward and looking at the big picture where you're saying that I'm going to create this film. The film's topic is this. The basis is around that. The execution process is this. And it's all part of my journey. So once I create this film, this film is going to exist. It's going to have a certain meaning and whatever it means...

that's what you define amen that's it and you keep doing it it's not about it's gonna be bad your film is your first film is gonna be wet cement well just like our first podcast like everyone's first podcast it's gonna be it's fucking terrible it's like it's really really bad yeah we'll see but i mean it'll come out early march but to go back to your initial like really really brilliant metaphor i mean it's wet cement right like we're not here to produce like this perfect thing it's

It's, you're going to do something. It's going to be wet cement. You're going to learn from it and you're going to build something else and you're going to build something else. And then one day if this is really what you are passionate about, it's going to be great. Yeah. That's going to be the title of this episode, Wet Cement. Yeah. That's a great title. I was just going to say something real quick. I was just going to say something real quick. So when he first talked about the wet cement metaphor, wet cement and hard cement, right? I said that.

Yeah, but then he took it to the next level and he started talking about you're throwing the wet cement and you're going to manipulate the wet cement into something. He did a great job. So you know what went through my head? I don't know why, but he was saying that. All of a sudden, I'm picturing this anime magician, some guy throwing wet cement. He's like, oh, Bungai. He takes this whole wet cement and turns it into something. Dragon Ball Z. Yeah, right? And meanwhile, you throw this hard cement. He's like, oh, fuck. You can't do anything. So it was a very different process. And I think I'm going off on a tangent. So I'm going to go back to you, Steven. Okay.

Wow. Wow. That's what Clubhouse... That is what... Wow. That's what Byjo does to you. That's what Byjo does to you. That's what Byjo does to you.

So check out my short film that'll come out two weeks after this. No, no, no. Check it out. Do you have a title for the short film? It's called Two Thirds. Two Thirds. We're going to plug it. We're going to plug it. All right. Do you have anything else? Any top secret projects in the works? No, dude, I am a little swamped. That's why I really want to come out tonight because it was like, oh my God, I don't have to host for once.

You know, like that's why I was so happy to be here with you guys, honestly. Dude, being a guest is actually kind of more fun than hosting. It's so much more fun. Really? Being a guest is so much more fun than hosting. So much more fun, yeah. That's much more relaxing. Anyway, okay. Steven, you're fucking awesome. Thank you. Love you, brother. You guys too. We went literally everywhere on this podcast. I don't even know what the fuck we talked about. We did a little House of Pain. Bye, Joe. Let's finish it up. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers. Happy Chinese New Year. Who are we? I am the preacher.

Justin. Justin Yang. I am the politician, Howie Lamb. And I'm Eric, the prosecutor. And by the way, my grandfather was a prosecutor in the Chinese government. So it runs in the family. Cool. I am happy to have witnessed this role assignment. Yeah.

Thanks for having me on, man. Yeah, happy Chinese New Year. 恭喜发财。 恭喜发财。 身体健康。 Happy New Year. 新年快乐。 Okay, everybody. Peace. Be well. Be good. Have a great fucking happy Chinese New Year's. And we will see you guys soon. See you 明年. 明年。 明年见。 明年见。 Okay, guys. Bye. 拜拜。

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