Chinatown 2.0 Richard Yan

Olivia Xing is an actress, standup comedian, artist and student based in LA, and she recently did a one-hour comedy special called Party School where she told jokes about China, the US, politics in both countries, and the immigrant experience. 00:00 Teaser 00:44 Intro 02:48 How Olivia got started with her Party School comedy special 08:19 Chinese debate show 奇葩说 12:12 How Chinese comics and rappers deal with censorship 16:26 Olivia's biggest takeaways from her comedy special 18:38 Richard's f...

Indigo was co-founder of Sina Weibo, or China’s Twitter. After Weibo, he started doing angel investments and incubating new projects. One of his main investments included the largest off-line art selling platform in China. Recently he got into the world of web3 and NFT. He writes a blog about frontier tech, and teaches online courses on stock investments in these areas. He is based in Vancouver. I spoke to him about China’s startup environment since 2009, his takeaways from doing angel invest...

Peng Dang is a standup comedian based in Texas. Peng moved to the US from China in his twenties, speaks absolutely impeccable English, and more importantly, tells jokes like a local pro. I find his sets funny, educational, and wholesome. I’m not sure if a comedian wants to hear their jokes described as “wholesome,” but I mean that as a compliment. We talked about how his English got to be so good, what life was like for him in Alabama, Atlanta and Dallas, how he honed his comedic skills, his ...

Amy Yu is a bilingual standup comedian based in Canada. We talked about how standup comedy changed her life, how she thinks about telling jokes in Chinese vs telling in English, and how to properly tell a dirty joke. I also had a pretty serious debate with her about the role of artificial intelligence in comedy. 0:00 Amy’s standup set 01:04 Debating the role of AI in art creation 22:31 How comedy helped Amy with mental health 28:17 How to deal with bombing on stage 31:48 Amy’s (and Richard’s)...

Dan Chan is a magician that has performed at corporate events at fortune 100 companies and lavish parties hosted by celebrities. He recently got to perform for Elon Musk at the PayPal 20-year reunion party, hosted by Peter Thiel. Prior to his illusionist career, he was an employee at PayPal, where he met Thiel. Dan has also been grooming his 14-year old son to become a magician, who has been doing his own $1000 shows in the San Francisco Bay Area. We talked about how Dan decided to become a m...

Alec Sorensen is a career coach who helps people take action on life-changing business ideas they've been putting off. Alec is also a follower of the Mormon church, a Japan-living American at one point, a California-to-Texas transplant, among other things. We discussed how he got into career coaching, his faith, cultural shocks in Japan, why he moved to Austin from the Bay Area, and more. 0:00 Intro 1:20 Alec as a Coach: His thoughts about the coaching industry, and how he uses habit building...