#10 Kevin Lee: Being critical isn’t about tearing things down, but finding wisdom and truth. (pt.1)
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Hello there, welcome to Casticle. I'm your host, Hu Hu. While some of you may find it very funny when you hear me introducing myself as Hu Hu, but I feel a little bit reluctant to even mention my English name as in Mavis because for friends and listeners of Casticle, if you've been following us since the beginning, you must know who I am and my name on the show.

Bringing in a new name for the same old me doesn't seem necessary. And if you are new to Casticle and if you happen to be a native English speaking listener, actually, it would be very easy to remember me as Hu Hu. So let me just dish my English name and stick to Hu Hu, whatever language I speak and use for the show, all right? Okay, so let's get back to the right track.

I'm 100% excited and happy today to introduce the very first English-speaking guest of Casteco to you all. His name is Kevin Lee, and he's the Chief Operation Officer and Managing Partner of China Youthology, a top-notch innovation consultancy in China that provides China-oriented cultural foresight and youth-driven change to help world-famous brands and businesses create value and meanings.

And apart from this, actually, there are still numerous kinds of titles, briefings, and ways to describe Kevin because he's super versatile, super sharp, and super eloquent. He just excels in so many areas and so many fields.

Especially when it comes to podcasts and podcasting, Kevin has a lot to share. He's absolutely a critical thinker in terms of listening to and digesting podcasts. And here, when I say critical, it doesn't mean that he's judgmental or even cynical. It means that Kevin knows what he's looking for in podcasts and other media as well, and that he can totally identify the real, the creative, and the worthy content.

So today on Casticle, Kevin selects three podcasts out of his favorites and they are Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders from Stanford University, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Podcast, and Jordan B. Peterson's podcast. And Kevin also introduces his own podcast called Thrive based on a research project that he's been focusing on over the years and explains why he conducts such a research in the first place and makes the podcast.

Along his recommendations, what's even more important is that we can learn from his personal stories, thought processes, and even his own growth trajectory. All of these are very impressive and fascinating, and I really hope you don't mind sparing some time listening to the full conversation in two episodes.

And please don't forget to check the show notes for podcasts that Kevin recommends and other useful and informative links that help you better enjoy everything we have mentioned. If you have any questions or feedback, please send us an email to casticlefm at gmail.com or get in touch with us on major social networks. If you like Casticle, we'll be very grateful if you can share it with your families and friends and rate us 5 stars in Apple Podcasts.

So now, please enjoy the first episode of Casticle with Kevin. It's just very exciting to have you on Casticle.

even though it is just the second time that we actually talk to each other face to face. But I mean, the first time I should have recorded the entire conversation. I enjoyed it very much and it's just very inspirational for me. And I guess it probably would be a better chance for the audience of Casticle to know you and to know what you're doing right now, what you're going to do to promote more projects

proactive changes, especially among young people in China. And this is just very, very important. So could I just ask you to probably introduce yourself a little bit briefly, because I know there are like a million things as far as I can come up with like,

numerous titles and numerous ways to describe you. Well, I mean, first, thanks for inviting me onto this podcast. It's an honor. Thank you. Even though I talk to many different types of people every day, it's part of my work and it's part of my life. But that's the most important thing to me.

and this is something that i've learned over years of experience which is when somebody wants to sit down and really open up and listen to you and basically they open up their heart to you or open their life to you so that you can speak into them that is worth everything you know we we work so hard every day to try to change people's minds and change those lives

And we try to think big, but when one person wants to come and really know you, it's so valuable. And I love this chance that we can have this conversation and also with your listeners today.

Kevin Lee:

So I was, of course, still in Canada. I had visited China once as a young person and

My experiences of China in the 90s was it's dirty and hot and stinky and poor and all these things, of course, as a native Canadian who's not prepared to go into a different environment, would think and feel. So I never had imagined that my future would be in China. But actually, over a few years of, of course, self-reflection and self-exploration, I had

from high school determined that I was going to come to China. And so I've been in China for the last 15 years, and I've done a number of different things. In short, my first job in China was teaching at Peking University. I taught cross-cultural studies in the Graduate School of Software Engineering. And then I did a number of jobs

roles as marketing manager and product development manager in a couple of media companies and eventually doing strategy work in media. So my professional work in China early on was in media.

And I went back to Canada, did my MBA, and then I came back. And for the last 10 years, I've been with my partners. I'm now a managing partner and the chief operating officer for a company called China Youthology. Me and my partner started this 10 years ago, so we're 10 years old today. And we are researchers, first and foremost. We research what is the forefront of Chinese youth education.

We research how, who are they? What is young people's identity today? How is that changing? How is the world changing around them and how do they go out and engage that world? And of course through all of that research we find opportunity. That opportunity of course is first and foremost for young people. What we're hoping to do and what we've been doing for the last 10 years is finding the opportunities of where young people are headed and

Imagining with them what their future could look like and might look like and should look like. And then we bring those opportunities to companies and corporations and brands because they have a role to play or they should have a role to play.

And so today we're not just researchers, but we are consultants. And so we consult with, uh, companies and brands and organizations and actors in society, um, to come together, to try to innovate on the future of, uh,

the life of young people. And by innovating the life of young people, you're really just innovating the future of your society. And that's what we hope to do. So that's what I've been doing for the last 10 years, really on the ground, you know, with young people in their homes, at the bars, at the clubs, in the schools, at the office, you know, everywhere with them, understanding them.

And then, of course, in the boardroom with brands and business leaders trying to figure out what they can do to really play a role in society and in the lives of the next generation. So I guess it's not a short, but a somewhat introduction of who I am as a Canadian. But of course, for the listeners, I'm Chinese. So I'm ethnically Chinese. My family comes from the southern China region, from Hong Kong. But yeah.

farther back from Guangzhou and then even farther back from I think it's like Hefei or something I don't know but so ethnically Chinese so my blood is Chinese but I come from the western world

and very bicultural. I've always grown up with both cultures, and I think that has served me well. Now being here in China, now that China continues to grow and to advance, and in many places, advance farther than the Western world, it's a wonderful middle ground to bring different perspectives. Sure, of course. I guess when you are...

When you were still probably just graduating from your undergrad studies, your parents should be very, very proud or very satisfied with your original track. Like probably staying in the West, find a very good job in Canada or the States or something.

So why did you choose to come to China? Because that would be like a challenging decision for your parents, I guess. Yes. To accept, for them to accept. Well, it was, you know, I mean, my parents had immigrated from Hong Kong back in the 70s. So they were the first generation to immigrate. And they immigrated, of course, to give us a better life. And so, you know, in the 90s, when I told my parents, hey, I'm going to go to China, they said,

They looked at me funny, you know, and they scratched their heads and they were like, well, we work so hard to give you a better future. Why are you going over there? You know, and my parents were hoping that I'd either go to Wall Street or Silicon Valley. And those options were, of course, open. And I was a very good student. You know, I had many opportunities, but...

My background, specifically, I am a student of the arts, and I'm also a student of history. Those are just my passions ever since I was young. And so, actually, I started doing art when I was young and had a...

private teacher all throughout my youth, 20 years of visual arts. And I came out of some specialized visual arts programs. So I grew up as an artist. I grew up doing conceptual art. I grew up tackling and exploring very interesting abstract questions about the person, about society, just about issues and about how to express that in really interesting ways through artistic form.

On the other side, I'm just very naturally a history buff. I just love history. I think partly because I'm a visual person. So when I read history, when I hear history, it becomes alive in my mind. I can see it. I can see it very clearly. I can see the lives of people. I can see what the world looks like. And so for me, it's a very vivid experience, history.

And it's not just stories. For me, history really gives us, all of us, a sense of direction. Because the only way to really understand where we are going is to first understand where we come from. And if we forget, if we lose...

what we had learned before, then we are actually just making the same mistakes or making the same decisions again without any hindsight or reflection in the future. And I had hoped to avoid that. And so I'm those two things, an artist and a historian. And so actually back in high school,

I was figuring out what to do, what to study and where to go, you know, going into university. And I was thinking about Wall Street and then I was thinking about Silicon Valley and those are very good options.

And a few things happened to me when I was young. Again, I was thinking as a young person, and the theme of my life has always been about impact. And so since very young, my values and the values of my family has been about how do you bring impact to the world? How do you bring value to the world? And so, of course, I was thinking about, well, I could be an artist and bring value to the world. I could put art on a wall in a gallery and I could impact people.

And so that was one idea. But I was thinking about, well, are there other ways of doing it? And I took my first economics course in high school. And it blew my mind. Because before that, all I thought about business was numbers. And I'm good at numbers. I have no problems with it. It's just boring compared to art. So I just thought numbers was just a boring thing. But then I all of a sudden realized through economics that the world...

looking from the lens of economics and looking through the lens of business, it's not about numbers. Underneath those things are humans and relationships. And if you're able to understand those relationships and then, of course, understand those numbers that are with that relationship, you are armed with a lot of very interesting things to have impact. And so all of a sudden I realized that actually business is an art form and it spoke to me as an artist.

that I could do business and I could be very creative in business. I could create new products and I can create new services, but more importantly, I can create new business models. And we understand that we live in a modern world that's actually a capitalist world and we thrive on economics. And so the business unit is one of the most impactful entities

in our society today. And so I was very attracted to that, to think about how can I bring, or using the business unit as an entity, it's a tool to bring impact to the world.

And so it really spoke to me as an artist, that part. But then the historian in me kicked in as well. And as a historian, I learned as a young person. If you look at different eras and centuries, one of the things that I learned as a young person looking at history was that in every generation, there's usually just one or two places in the world where history

everyone is gathering. And when I say everyone, I mean smart people, bright people, creative people, thought leaders. There's just one or two places in any generation that every young person or every bright person really hopes to go. Now, if you ask somebody, hey, 100 years ago, where should you be? Well, the place that you should be 100 years ago, if you study history, you

you should be in America. You should be in New York or you should be in California. A hundred years ago, if you wanted to get to the forefront of what's going to happen in the next century, you should be in America. But here's the interesting thing. A hundred years ago, if you went to London and you asked a Londoner, hey, Londoner, you should go to America. You should go to New York. The Londoner a hundred years ago would say, ew, no, it's...

It's dirty and it's stinky and it's full of poor people and blue collar. Look at us 100 years ago. We're the British Empire. We own half the world. We're the strongest navy. We're the epitome of civilization. There's nowhere to leave. You shouldn't leave London.

And of course, as a Londoner thinking like that, you would miss the boat, you know, 100 years ago. And so you really learn that in every generation, there is a place and a time that is building the future. You know, again, like if you just take it 200 years ago, if you asked yourself 200 years ago, where's the place to be? Well, 200 years ago in the 1800s, that's the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And if you study history, you know that the Industrial Revolution really was coming out of

the UK, right? The British. And of course, that's why some of the most famous and the most richest and the most powerful people out of the Industrial Revolution were all British people because they really led the way. And that's, of course, the backbone of the British Empire. But 200 years ago, if you went to France, if you went to Paris and you said, hey, Parisianer,

You should go to London because the future for the next 100 years is in London. The Parisian are 200 years ago. Again, think about this. This is the 1800s. We're talking about Napoleonic France. We're talking about post-Louis XVI.

or 14, you know, height of continental Europe, you know, French culture, French empire. They would look at London 200 years ago and say, ew, no, London is full of dirty people and poor people and, you know, just, it's below us. We are the height of civilization.

And so again, if you look at history, you see the recurring patterns. The recurring patterns of people that feel that they are at the height of civilization and they completely miss the next place to be. And so as a teenager in high school, I asked myself as a historian, well, for our generation, where is the place to be? What century is the next century? And it was very obvious already. At that point, I said, well, it's China.

Now, mind you, in the 90s, you would still go to Silicon Valley and it's still a place for people to gather. But the right time to go to Silicon Valley was actually the 50s.

Right. So, yeah, of course. Yeah. So why the 50s? Because that's really when everything started, you know, 50s and 60s is really when everything started. By the time you get to Apple Computer or Microsoft, you're already three generations into Silicon Valley innovation. You know, you would you would have missed the microchip, you know, boom, which was basically the 70s, the microprocessor boom. You know, that's Intel and everyone else. You would have missed Hilary Packard. That was all out of the 50s and 60s.

If you don't know history, if you don't know your history, you don't know these things. And you don't know the stages of innovation. So when I looked at Silicon Valley back in the 90s, I knew we were already probably in our fourth generation of innovation in Silicon Valley. Highly competitive. Very difficult. And also it was attracting a different type of person. It wasn't just attracting the most brightest minds anymore. It was attracting...

the yuppies and, you know, the people that will gentrify the place, which is of course why today's San Francisco and the Bay area is so insanely expensive because you have people that, you know, are trying to live the life without really trying to create. No, I'm not discounting also Clown Valley. It's still a great place. And there's a lot of bright people and there's a very unique culture there. But I had to ask myself, are there other places in the world that might be just on their first generation of innovation, their,

their first generation of gathering that really might set a course and a path for the whole world in the future. Because Silicon Valley has already had several decades of doing it, but there must be other places. And as I looked in the world, I saw China. And it just so happens that I'm Chinese ethnically,

And so in the 90s and the early 2000s, a Chinese person like me who has grown up in a different culture, has different types of educational background experience, might have a more unique value offering coming here. And so that's why I came out. That's why I chose China, because I believed that...

that this was a place that was going to see radical change over the next few generations. And I wanted to be a part of that. I just hoped coming out here that I could be a part of it. I didn't expect to...

be the next Bill Gates or something or single-handedly change the world. But I came with a lot of hope to find and to explore what this radically changing, rapidly changing place could mean and maybe how my small contribution might be a contribution. And so just thinking about impact, I wanted to be in a place where the individual in their contribution might be most important

and most valued. And I thought that China would be one of those places. And quite honestly, in the last 15 years, I believe that China

my thinking has been correct. And I think that my life and the career has so far shown that. Yes, yes. I believe so too. That's why I'm so attracted to everything uthology has been doing all along. And I think that's very clear. There's a very, very clear and neat message in uthology or things that you're going to share next. It's about making...

active and making powerful impact and try to guide people, try to encourage people to think out of the routines and then try to innovate something out of nothing. This is the second time that I hear your gathering series because last time when we met each other, we mentioned this and this was very mind-blowing for me because I've never...

talk to someone with a very clear idea of, um, of gathering. I think it has a lot to do with you being a, uh, history fan or being a history learner all along. If you decide to move to somewhere else, especially, you know, somewhere that is so distant from your home and your, and your family, you gotta, you gotta be crystal clear, like what's in there for you to, to, to make yourself heard. And this is super, super important. So, um,

Back to the days that you decided to come back to China and then settle down, that should be right before the Olympics. Yeah, I came in 2004, so three years before the Olympics. But already in 2004, I mean, the entire horizon, I mean, for those that are listening that actually were in Beijing at that time, I mean, the horizon of China was all just...

construction cranes, if you remember it. It was just construction cranes and dust everywhere because the entire city was being transformed and just built up. I remember when, again for the Beijing listeners, I remember when Guomao was just one road. Really? Yeah, and I remember when the city stopped at Dawanglu. East of Dawanglu was just farmland and fields. I remember that.

That's 15 years. It's only 15 years, right? But it's just radically changed a lot. So yeah, it's been a lot of fun being here to see those changes. Yes. And then you adopted a very, very correct way to make yourself heard. That is writing vlog. And yes, so Mon...

All the titles that I can come up with describing you, I think blogger or content creator is probably the brightest one because it's so independent and it's so edgy. It's like an edge. And it's just well-rounded because as a writer, and then you manage your own blog, and then you can attract attention on your own. Sometimes you ended up in nowhere, but as you, you...

ended up in a very successful place and helping you to, you know, carve out a totally different career as a, as a researcher, as a consultant. So how do you feel about that period of history? Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's an amazing, it was amazing time. Uh,

And just to backtrack it as well so that everyone understands, my partners at China Uthology, how did we meet? A lot of people ask us this all the time. How did our visions come together? It came through that. I met my partner who's the founder and CEO of Uthology, Lisa Lee. I met her on a radio show. It was BBC. And I had been doing radio shows for a couple of years at that point.

But it was BBC doing a radio show in 2005 or 2006 about youth in China and youth marketing in China. And so the BBC, of course, was trying to find people who were talking about youth in China. And in those days, there was nobody talking about youth in China except for two people, me and my blog and Lisa and her blog. But here's the little secret, which is for me to write my blog, I was just reading Lisa's blog.

Because Lisa is a hardcore researcher. I mean, her education is as an anthropologist. So she's a hardcore ethnographer and anthropologist. She's a professional researcher. So I mean, her stuff and her insights are right from the ground. And so I use her stuff as part of my signals for me to write some of my stuff and to be inspired. And so I was very nervous in meeting her at the BBC radio show. I just thought,

I'm a novice compared to an expert and there's no way that we could have a discussion together. But it turned out through that radio show, we had a lot of things in common. We looked at things from different angles, but we were heading in the same direction. And so we fast became friends from that BBC radio show. But it came from us blogging, both of us as bloggers. That's how BBC found us. And, you know, my other partner in youthology, his name is Zafka. I met him through Twitter.

And again, this was 2006, 2007. Twitter had just started. I think I was like user number, like less than 10,000. So early, early day Twitter. And again, you know, the number of people that were using Twitter in China,

Was maybe a dozen people so we were all on Twitter. We're like, hey, this is a cool platform I like to talk to you, but we're like, why am I talking to you on this platform? I know you in real life, you know, but this was a community of early adopter technology people so early like early tech adopters in China and so

Zafka was one of the other people. He's always been an early adopter of anything tech, anything media. And so I found his post to be amazing. He's just such a deep person. And his trade, he grew up as a sociologist. His double master's is sociology.

And so I met him through Twitter. And when I met him, we actually met up at a Twitter party. And only then when I met him at a party that I realized, oh, he's actually married to Lisa, the other person I met. And so we all became friends. And so it's really interesting because up until that point in China, of course, I had a full-time job. I was working in media, again, because I was trying to explore impact, the idea of impact. And I thought going the media route,

would have been a good way to understand impact. I actually very quickly learned that media is good, but more powerful than media is the idea, is the content. And so I realized that I want to step away from media specifically or in general, and I want to focus more on, again, being a creator.

And so that's why I started to do things like blogging and stuff. And honestly, sitting in China, when you see all these things changing around you, and again, me, growing up as an artist and as a historian and trained, my undergrad and my MBA were all in business. And I was focused on entrepreneurship. I learned everything from marketing and finance and everything else. So when I see all these changes in my mind or in my eyes, all I see is opportunity.

But they're all in my head and I can see all the trends of, wow, this is a business opportunity. That's a category opportunity. And I had nowhere to. And so that was part of it. It was just because I was bubbling up with so many ideas and so many interesting perspectives. And I just want to put them somewhere. I just wanted a place to put my ideas down. And I just thought, well, I can actually write a journal for myself or I can just put it online and I can just share my internal dialogue with other people.

And I had set an expectation on myself. I said, well, I don't really care if nobody reads my blog.

Because it's a blog for an audience of one, which is me. For me to go back and reread my perspectives and my hypotheses and for me to test myself to see whether my point of views stand the test of time or whether they have to change because the world changes. And so first and foremost, the blog was for me. It was for me to write. And so that actually released me from the pressures of trying to create interesting content and attractive content to have a lot of followers. I didn't care. Mm-hmm.

I wrote it. And that's why, you know, my blog is very long format as well. I wanted to write out my thought process for me. Luckily, people started to read it. I don't know why they did, but people started to read it. It was also partly because in those early days of blogging, it was new for everybody. It was just a new part of the internet. But also specifically when it came to China, there was just very few people writing about China in English. There was nobody writing about China in English.

And so really, honestly, in those days, if you were on the early days of Google or something, you typed in like China or whatever, like my blog would probably pop up right, you know, somewhere very close to the top because I

In those days, there was just not that much content available about China in English. So that's why I got a lot of that media attention. Luckily, I was also writing things that they thought was interesting. So they would actually contact me and follow up. But I didn't write it for that purpose. I wrote it first for me. And here's the thing that I share with a lot of people who are thinking about getting into self-publishing or whatever or blogging.

The biggest benefit that blogs have had for me is, you know, suddenly when you have to write things down and you know that potentially somebody else will read it, it immediately forces you to

to be really clear about what you're saying, not just in terms of articulation and writing clearly, that's, of course, very important. But also, have you thought through everything? What, and once you write it down, immediately, you'll realize what are things that are just hypotheses and just like half baked intuition? And what are the things that you've actually thought through thoroughly? And can you back it up? And so oftentimes, when I started to write, I was like, oh,

That's just the hypothesis. I better flush that out. I better do some quick research and find some links or something credible to bring some credibility to this part of the topic so that I can build my argument on top of it. And that's where, of course, reading blogs like Lisa's blog came in because she was doing primary research.

And so it was really helpful for me writing blogs because it really clarified my thought process and it helped me to be very clear about my point of view of the world. You know, those are really early days when social media wasn't really social media. I mean, it was just media and people were trying to figure out how to make it social. You know, there were starting to be open APIs. People were starting to create this and that kind of widget. So it was a very exciting time.

It was, yes. And what you have just shared is very heartfelt and it's just very correct to all extent, like to basically 100% extent is totally correct because...

Creating content is just like that. You need to pass your self-examination and then you can click the button and publish it. Or else you won't be able even to click that button. And back to the days, probably like a decade ago, the entire atmosphere for independent writers, for blog writers, was very simple.

It's just like, it's just pure. It's just like a pure environment for people to exchange ideas. It's so different from probably the current like WeChat writers or WeChat marketers or

That's what we call it, like Weibo Duanzi show. It's like joke makers. Yeah. You're right. I mean, like the environment completely sets up your expectations for what's good and what's not. Yes. You know, in those early days, the people that were writing were people that actually had something to say. Yes. And so you're surrounded every day by reading really good blogs. Yes. A lot of them long format. A lot of them well thought out. Mm-hmm.

And of course, that raises your own expectations about the kind of writer or the kind of person you want to be. Yeah, it is radically different today. With the type of platforms that we have, it's all short format media. It has to be a one liner. It has to be a hashtag. You have to say everything in one image. Well, if that is how a new person coming into the media landscape understands what is good, then that's where their mind goes.

But, you know, of course, I'm dating myself now. I'm saying I'm a different generation or at least a few more years difference where long format was something still celebrated. I think long format or a long form is actually on the rise currently because for me, like personally, I don't know if I'm absolutely correct, but I just dare to share that...

a lot of popular things in China actually originated from the West. Like, it just calmed the West. You know, the wind blows from the West. And right now, especially in the States, there are like a lot of independents who are really good writers and who write long-form independent blogs and they live on...

or subscribers, sponsorships, and they're making a good living and they are really getting more and more famous. And for a lot of, you know, well-educated or bilingual Chinese, especially young people, they started to probably to assess like what they are reading, what they are taking in every day and they are trying to do a sort of like a cleansing. Yeah.

thing for themselves including me because I just you know spent quite some time cleansing you know all of my subscriptions and try to try to judge what is really beneficial what is really positive for me I think as long as it's good content as long as it is authentic it's sincere it's original there must be a market like there must be a market segmentation for the

you know, very talented and very sincere creators. So, yeah. I mean, the thing is that, again, if you look at history, you'll start to realize that the market for smart ideas and bright ideas and well thought out stuff has always been there. Okay. But the market has always been small. Yeah. It has never been the mass market and it will never be the mass market unless...

society changes and what i mean by that is the percentage of people that are um feel encouraged and empowered to expand their mind that has always been society's one of society's key struggles right which is how what percentage of the society is enlightened right if you want to use that word what what percentage of society is

Another word would be critical. And then what percent of society is not critical? And just trying to live a very different and simple life or just having expectations placed on them and then their entire life is just about meeting other people's expectations. That, if you look at history, has been through all of civilization. Just because we're in a very different and fast-paced media environment today doesn't mean anything because...

Even when we talk about three, four hundred years ago, even with published books, right? Like the market for actual published books was small. You know, the number of people that actually read Dov Sayesky or any of these other major writers is small, really, in comparison to the full population. The majority population wants to do what?

watch TV, you know, or entertainment, right? Or before that watch plays, right? Or something else. So that has always been a key theme and pattern in society. Uh,

And I don't know, I mean, this is just a question that, you know, can be explored further, which is the rise and fall of societies. Yes. You can perhaps look at it from an angle of, you know, what percentage or how much of the emphasis of that society is pushed on expanding the population's critical nature or enlightened nature versus the, you know, what...

Percentage of that society is just focused on entertaining the masses, if you want to call them masses. And so today, I don't think it's any different. I think today, the only difference is we don't have to look within national walls. Today, you can attract very bright people, but they just can't come from all over the world. That's what we get today. So that makes the individual...

creator have more possibilities today. It's not because in their own specific society, it's a unique society where everyone is enlightened and everyone cares. No, it's because one individual person can probably connect and engage a much wider, broader group of people from around the world because of the technology that we have. Yes. So if we come back to your blog and

Even though you're super busy, would there be a possibility that you will resume blogging or ex-blogging? Because, you know, there are like a different kind of methods to get your ideas expressed. Yes. The short answer is yes.

I had blogged from 2007 right through to about 2011-12. And then I stopped. And I wasn't just blogging. I was at that time also writing for Forbes and I was writing for a number of other publications because they were asking me to write. And the reason why I stopped was just because I just got way too busy with work, with the company and everything.

we have been growing the company, uh, you know, for the last 10 years and it really takes all of your time and effort. Um, and so, but in the last, you know, year or so, year plus I have, there has been a resurgence of an urge to get back to, um, creating content. And, uh, and of course we'll talk about it in, in, in our discussions today about podcasting. Uh, but in terms of actually writing, yes, there's also, uh,

I'm looking forward to doing more writing, doing more writing through my company and also doing more writing outside of the company. Youthology is in a wonderful season now, and I'm in a different season now where we're not satisfied with only letting our clients know our point of view. And having said that, as Youthology, we've always made public our point of views.

Almost every year we publish publicly for free key research. That's part of ethology. So, for example, even last year, 2018, we actually published a book like you can buy it on some of the key book buying platforms. We published a book about the next generation of China. And that's just an update of many reports that we've continually released over the years. A lot of our ideas and a lot of our perspectives are there.

And again, just like for my blog, you know, I wrote it for me. The reason why Uthology, we publish things for free is for young people. What we want to do is we want to give young people the research that we do is not just for clients. The key research that we do is for young people. We want young people to have a window experience.

and a mirror to reflect on themselves. And we want, through our research, through the stories that we tell of how we see how young people's lives are changing today and how they see the world, we want them, through reading the work or experiencing our work, to have a deeper self-reflection about who they are, their identity, and their life, and also the possibilities of what they can

what they can do. And so that's why we put out the work. It's really to impact young people directly. We do it in one way, and there's many ways to do it, but one of the effective ways is, of course, through creating content. Yes, of course.

So getting back to the very theme of Castacola's about podcasts, and you just mentioned that's how you've been listening to podcasts, like as a very hardcore fan of podcasts. I have to say that like time after time. I've been sharing with my friends right before our conversation today that I'm going to interview a very hardcore podcast.

podcast fans, probably the most hardcore podcast fan I've ever met so far. Seriously, because you listen to serious stuff.

That's a one-sentence conclusion if I have to put anything on top of what we're going to discuss later on. But it's just different. It's just different because when others, especially young people, they are trying to listen to podcasts as a form of entertainment or as a form of light information, you are listening to podcasts in a way that is so compelling and that is really...

trying to broadcast serious stuff about life, about self, about history. So it's just very, very different. So what's your understanding towards podcasts? Do you feel tired? Like, do you ever feel exhausted, you know, listening to hour-long podcasts?

No, I don't. I love it. And by the way, I didn't realize I was a hardcore podcaster. I've never been called that before. But you are the expert in meeting so many people that listen to podcasts. So you definitely know better than I do what category I fit into. I can only say that I just like listening to what I like listening to. I really didn't realize that I was quote unquote hardcore podcaster.

But yes, it probably has a lot to do with how I understand podcasts as well as how I understand media and what I need it for. And of course, I can explain it. And having said that, like, so I only listen to a few, right? I mean, I have probably about a dozen podcasts that I subscribe to, but I probably only listen to a few, like, like,

or religiously, if you want to call it that. I think that has a lot to do with because I'm very particular about what I want to listen to. Like even, for example, you know, like NPR and even TED, they come up with stuff, like TED Talks, right? They come up with their podcasts and I listen to it. Or like, for example, like the BBC or something, they come up with podcasts like, oh, how this is made and like, you know, this thing in the moment in history.

And they're great. I mean, they're fine, but a little too light for me. You know, it's just every episode is something completely different and it's only touching the surface. And the reality is that's not what I need from a podcast. And I think that has everything to do with the context, right? The context is, number one, when and where am I listening to podcasts? Podcasts is probably one of my only alone times.

because of the work I do, how busy I am, and also family life, you know, and all the other demands that I have in community. I'm a community leader in many different areas. And so I'm pulled in many different directions. I have lots of responsibilities, and most of the time it's with people. So the time that I have alone is very, very seldom, and it's very precious.

And so when I have time alone, the most important things for me is to

learn and to have a deep self-reflective state. Learning doesn't necessarily mean always just reading new stuff about new subjects. The key of learning is really about reviewing your process and figuring out whether or not there are whole new processes that you haven't considered yet. That's a lot of what the podcast is for me. For example, I listen to podcasts when I'm

doing the dishes, you know, in the kitchen, you know, when I'm when I'm doing chores, and especially when I'm running. And so I love long format podcasts, because then I can listen for like an hour or two hours, and I don't have to stop running, you know, and I can just run for a long time. You're a great runner. Well, I used to be these days, it's different. But yeah,

Yeah, for me, it's the personal time. And as I was mentioning already earlier, I get headlines from other places. I have other media that can help me understand trends and, you know, this and that. I don't need podcasts to do that for me. You know, and of course, having said that, I work in a cultural research company. I see new stuff every day. I see trends every day. So I have no shortage of that. You know, that's my work. That's my life.

But when I'm alone, I want to be able to step back from all the fast stuff, all the surface stuff, and I want to be able to go deeper. I want to be able to make sure that I am

understanding myself better. And I am critiquing my own point of views of the world. And I'm challenging myself in terms of how I process the world. And that requires deep and long focus and deep reflection. So my podcasts, I guess, reflect that. And they also, of course, feed into the few pleasures I have. And the pleasures I have are things like history. Now, I don't read history books because...

I spend my reading time reading other things that I need to read. So reading for me will be about learning a specific theory or a specific practice that is more applicable for either work or family or the organizations that I lead outside of work. They're very strategic. The books I read are strategic. By the way, I have not read a fiction book since...

I don't know, maybe since I was a kid. I decided other than Harry Potter, I did read all of Harry Potter, okay? But other than Harry Potter, which was an anomaly, other than Harry Potter, I have not read a fiction since I was a kid. I just realized that my time was better spent reading nonfiction. It's just there's so much more there. So for history as well, I like listening to other people talking about it, having their two cents on things, going way deeper. Okay.

So in terms of the general themes of what I listen to, I mentioned already history. It's one of my key opportunities to really dive deep into history. And you really need it. You really need to dive deep. You need to go really deep into the different what-ifs, the different theories, the different contexts. And as you listen to it through podcasts, you can imagine it, and then it can bring up a whole bunch of different ideas to your mind. So history is one area that I listen to. The other area, of course, is still business.

But what I'm listening to is not business news. I'm listening to, I would call it business reflection. That includes leadership reflection. That includes all that stuff. It includes innovation reflection. It's just about, actually what it is, it's smart people reflecting because that will give me a chance to reflect on myself and how I do things. So I like to listen to innovators and how they reflect.

The last part I listen to is spiritual matters. So again, that's a very deep and fundamental area that everyone needs to spend time on, which is to know yourself spiritually. We are physical and we're mental and we're emotional, but we're also spiritual, whether we like it or not, whether we've realized it or not.

And it requires attention. It requires focus and it requires time. And so I listen to a lot of spiritual matters to also help me

explore and to go deeper into my spirituality because i was just about to ask like why you think audio content is the ideal format for you to digest or to receive any information or any interesting reflections or analyses of history spiritual topics or business reflection as you call it the

People just say or people just don't appreciate podcasts that much because they think it doesn't help them to focus. Like it doesn't help them to occupy all of their attention and to force them to focus like video or it doesn't.

It doesn't read well because you just can't flip the page. Like if you're imagining that you're reading a book, you can always go back and go forth to check. But podcasts can't do that. But I think, you know, the latter part, you just explain the reason why you appreciate podcasts that much. Yeah, I mean, part of it is also, again, because I'm so busy, like usually with my eyes and with my hands. But there is a special place where my eyes, my hands are busy, like chores or running. Mm-hmm.

and I don't need to be doing work,

and I don't need to be, let's say, face-to-face with other people, and that's my time. And so the great thing with, I can be in my mind without using my hands and my eyes. That's the great thing. And actually I can, because sometimes life is like that, we have to do things that don't require our brains. So I can do that, and I can still use that moment to utilize my brain to do other things. So a lot of people, they think it's really weird. Like for example, when we go to the gym,

And a lot of people like to listen to like pounding music to get them excited. Yes. Pumped up. Yeah. And I looked at that and I was like, that makes no sense to me. This is the moment for me to shift myself, to disrupt myself. I can get a good workout.

And I can feed my mind at the same time. I just need to be able to, the word I would use is splice. I can splice different opportunities together. And actually that makes me much more productive. So a lot of it has to do with productivity. Yes. You know, like my life is, and the way that I design my life is one where it's

It's highly productive. And so part of that is being smart about what you're doing at any given time and how you can use some of that moment to do some of the other things you don't get a chance to do. So like learning. Yes, I totally agree with you on that. So basically it's about multitasking. It's about, you know, like for each minute you have, how many resources you have at hand and then how to allocate and distribute your attentions and your energies.

Exactly. Or how do you make that moment the most valuable that it can be? Sure. And so honestly, podcast is a great solution to make some moments that originally might not be so engaging mentally. Now I can add a whole mental quotient on top of that. And that makes the whole moment much more valuable. So...

We are recommending three episodes and one is business, one is history, one is on the other, the other one is on spiritual spirituality and religious like studies. Let's call it that way because it's definitely more than religion because especially after me, like trying for a couple of times and finally, you know,

getting my own takeaways from the content. And then I started to realize it's not just about religious. It's totally not just about religion. That's right. So, um, could you just tell us the three podcasts that you're sure? Yeah. Uh, so one that I, that I recommend is, uh,

Entrepreneurs Thought Leaders series, which is made by Stanford University. So it's Stanford. It's actually a course or something. And so undergraduates and graduate students will go and it's an interview format. And every single time they interview a luminaire,

from Silicon Valley. So, uh, you know, some amazing people who are either entrepreneurs or business leaders or innovators. And it's an interview from some of their most, um, seasoned professors, um, that dives deep into whatever the issue is. Oftentimes it's an innovation based issue. A lot of times it's a leadership based issue. Um,

But anyways, it's a Stanford University podcast. And you get to listen to and meet, basically. You get to meet some of the great minds that are in Silicon Valley. So that's the first one. The second one is Dan Carlin. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. It's my favorite. It is truly hardcore history. And the reason for that is it's not just talking about history. He goes so deep into

Into the minutia of everything. And he really asked the what if questions. He really brings the different types of perspectives together. And again, just to have the listener understand. Each of his episodes these days. Each of his episodes is about four to five hours long. One podcast episode. And for one topic, he might do a four part or five part series. So think about it. It's like.

Looking at, let's say, for example, right now it's the Japanese in World War II. It's like, I don't even know how many parts to it, but we're already in part three. Each episode is five hours long. So, you know, it's Dan Carlin's hardcore history. I've been listening to it since the early days. I love that to bits. I get so excited every single time he has a new episode up. The last podcast I'd love to introduce to you guys is Jordan B. Peterson's podcast called

Jordan B. Pearson is an academic out of University of Toronto. And he comes from a lot of different schools, whether it's about evolutionary psychology, whether it's about sociology, whether it's about philosophy, whether it's about just spirituality. And he's dealing with deep, deep subject matter through a historical lens still, but really trying to unravel that.

how human beings understand their world through, in part, some of the most ancient stories and some of the most ancient learnings that we have passed down through generations and how we understand them differently today and how we're actually misunderstanding them today. So he sheds a lot of different light coming from so many different schools of thought to pick through

um, what we might have known, but actually maybe what we did not know clearly enough. Right. Yeah. So, uh, Jordan P. Pearson, um, does a lot about understanding and helping us understand, for example, myths. It helps us understand, um,

what are the values that we're really getting from the stories that we built our lives on, what we built our societies on, helps to decode and to unwrap even religion and religious texts and help us to understand not just from a secular view, but truly from somebody that's pursuing truth and

what those spiritual texts should be offering to us. So it's a really radical way of looking at some things. And he really looks at many different types of spiritual texts. So it's really, it's a thrill. Really thick, really dense, very, very academic. You really should know a little bit about things like evolutionary psychology or biology or science

or you basically need to know all the ologies in some form or fashion, a little bit of it or enough to be able to listen to him because he's really on a very different level. He's drawing from all those different understandings and he's applying it in a very complex and sophisticated way to unravel our society and how we as humans work. So it's a thrill to listen to him. ♪

So let's start with the Stanford podcast, the business one, because it's probably something that is most relevant or related to the majority of my listeners. Probably they are, you know, catching up with the tech industry all the time. And the podcast invites a lot of, you know, tech speakers from different industries.

different well-established tech companies. So the episode is quite a while ago, like seven years ago. It's an interview or it's a keynote speech given by Melinda Gates, wife of Bill Gates, but it's not a ideal title because she herself is a very successful entrepreneur, innovator, and community contributor because she's

I have to say, just a week ago, I didn't even appreciate her role that much, but I'm watching a series of documentaries made by Netflix these days. It's called Inside Bill's Brain. So it's about Bill Gates, but it's not just about Bill Gates. Melinda was in the documentaries and then I started to appreciate how smart, how intelligent she is. And then you just came back from

the Goalkeeper Conference. Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, it's a great talk. And actually, I was surprised as we're listening to it again, how many things are consistent about what she talked about in 2012 during this episode with Stanford and what I hear her saying even just last month. So yeah, last month I was...

with the goalkeepers in New York during the UN General Assembly. And that the goalkeepers is something that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does. And so I was invited to go and join them. Actually, I met Bill and Melinda before. I've actually been to their house in Seattle.

And that was during I spoke at a private conference with Microsoft. And so they are smart and they are some of the most amazing people. They really deserve the respect and also just the inspiration that people see for them. They're really amazing. Yeah, I mean, so the reason why I like the Stanford podcast is because

sitting here in China. And the great thing about being here in China is I get to meet all these amazing smart people and bright people in China. But I also knew 15 years ago, choosing to come to China, that I was missing out on things happening in Silicon Valley. And so one of the core things I was looking for in the early days was how do I keep up with Silicon Valley?

And what is the right thing that I want to keep up with on Silicon Valley? There's a lot of news you can read about what's happening in Silicon Valley. But the thing that I would not be able to get being out in China so far removed is meeting the people in Silicon Valley. The news you can get...

You know, tech trends, who's doing what. But what you don't get being in another part of the world is knowing the people. And so I want to try to fix that in some way. The Stanford podcast is important because it's an interview model and they don't just talk about what you're doing. They really talk about who you are and how you came to be. And for me, that's really important.

important. It's really important in terms of self-reflection to be able to compare and contrast to these really amazing people in Silicon Valley, not just because they're successful, but really because they think differently and because they do things differently and they're innovators. I really want to constantly

learn from them, just from who they are, how they see things, and also their process. It's really just about learning. And I just want to surround myself constantly with the smartest people in the room. Now, the room I'm talking about is the world. So I think I am surrounded by some very smart people here in China, but there are some really smart people in other places. So one way to solve that is to get in touch with them through media. And this podcast is great because we really get to dive deep into their minds and

Linking to this episode with Melinda Gates, you know...

We'll talk a lot about, of course, what they're doing and the key themes. But, you know, even right out of the gate in this episode, what you hear first, which I love, love, love. The first 15, 20 minutes of this episode is just Melinda Gates talking about how she grew up. For the most of us who don't know Melinda Gates personally, we don't know her background. We just think of her as the wife of Bill Gates, even though it is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It has been that way for 20 years. But...

But we assume that Bill is driving the ship and we just do not notice or look at Melinda in her story. But in this episode, you hear the first 15, 20 minutes, Melinda really talks about how she grew up. And to me, as a researcher, as well as, of course, in the research I'm doing with Thrive, it speaks loads. It shows me again and again how

The right themes or the important themes, the unique themes that create such a unique and such a bright person. So those are the things like I know some people might just be like, OK, let's just get to what you want to talk about. Just get to the technology or just get to the company. But you miss all the good stuff. The good stuff is in the human story. The good stuff is in the human being.

That's what I'm looking for because everything else is just trends, you know, and that's fine. But what you really want is the process and the way people frame things and understanding why they frame things that way and figuring out whether or not that framing makes sense to you and whether or not you should adopt that framing yourself. Only in that way do you become smarter. It's not about knowing trends. That doesn't make you smarter. Making you smarter is about always disrupting your framework.

And figuring out what are the other ways of framing and growing the way you frame things in the world. That's what makes you smarter. And so that's what I look forward to every single time with ELT. On top of that, understanding what they're working on. That helps. But to me, it's about finding the themes that make a successful innovator. Finding the themes of the person, of the life that puts you on a path and a course towards success.

perhaps creating value that impacts other people. That's what I care about. So that's very much what I took away first from the Melinda Gates stuff. The other thing I really loved about that episode was how consistent it was from 2012 to what I heard last month in 2019 in New York. Because Melinda Gates said that

What she and Bill care about is everybody having equal opportunity. Yes. That is their thing. You know what? I heard it again and again last month when I saw them in New York. That's what they've been talking about. So it's amazing to me, and I'm so impressed how consistent they have been in these many years about what they're doing. But here's the added thing that I want to comment from that podcast, which was,

you realize that everybody, all your decisions should be and are built around what the theme is of your life and what you've identified for your theme. So for Bill and Melinda, it is about...

Making equal opportunity and equal access for more people in the world. That's their values and that's the entire bill and Melinda Gates foundation all the projects they select that to do all the work that they choose to get involved with including all the Metrics that they use is all about equal opportunity. That's pretty amazing because it's not just like any old philanthropy It's not just because they had money and so they're just thinking about how do I use this money?

Their entire life and everything they do is built around and starts from identifying their core value. And here's the thing to think about, which is if you think about for yourself and I think about myself, not everyone's core value is equal opportunity for everybody. Right?

Which is totally right. Right. And so but that's so amazing because then it makes me think about it makes you think about it should make you think about what is your core value and what direction does that put you in? There's no core value that's better than the other or like, you know, it's not like Bill and Melinda Gates's core value is more right than yours.

It's just to start to realize that everyone's core values truly defines the world that not that they just live in, but also the world that they're creating and the direction they're headed. And so, of course, that has deep self-reflection for me about my core values. And my core values are different than the Gates's. And so that has defined then how I have been creating the work that I've been creating and what's important to me to do. Right.

But that's something that I picked up just listening to the Gateses. They have been consistent and clear about their core values, and they make all their decisions based on their core values. The time they invest, not just the money, but the time, which is actually more valuable than the money, and their thought process, their energy of their minds,

Everything they choose to invest in is based out of their core values. Yeah, this is totally right. Especially the thing that you mentioned as recognizing the core value in yourself, no matter what it is, is definitely in the speech of Melinda. Because throughout the one-hour episode, she was constantly inspiring everybody out there, no matter if it's in the hall or as an audience.

to see like where your passion would be like where your enthusiasm would be and then try to leverage the creativity or curiosity in yourself trying to innovate something so this is

totally consistent. And this is entirely the same message that's being delivered in the documentaries by Netflix or in any other podcast that Bill Gates was on. Because Bill Gates was actually on one of Ray Hoffman's Master of Scale like several days ago talking about tech history. But as he just forwarded his idea in this episode, can still sense the very message in his speech that is so...

Right. That is so the same with what Melinda is trying to say like several seven years ago. And but what surprised me in this episode the most about Melinda's interpretation in terms of innovation, one sentence I memorize is so deeply and so clearly is that innovation doesn't have anything to do with technology. That's right.

But this is something that is so mind-blowing because I always think that innovation should be technological. It should be new in terms of means, in terms of formatting, in terms of probably nowadays in terms of algorithm, in terms of models, in terms of machine learning. But to her and to them, the innovation is not like that.

So how do you understand innovation? Well, I completely agree. And I mean, it speaks to why at Youthology, you know, we're an innovation consultancy. But the way we frame innovation, we come from a cultural perspective. So we understand and we help our clients understand and they realize it too that innovation

innovation. There's so much innovation that's not technology-based, right? In the end, you have to go back and you really have to ask the fundamental questions, which is what is innovation? What's the point of innovation? Like what is the end objective of innovation, right? It's not just to change things just to change things. That's not the point, right? That's spinning wheels and not going anywhere. So ever since, for example, fire or the wheel, the whole point of innovation is about improving lives. There

There are many ways to improve lives. Our society is not built on technology. Our society is built on relationships. And our society, meaning human beings, are built on how they understand the world and how they understand themselves. There is a massive, massive space for innovation, meaning improving someone's life, by just helping the person see themselves differently. Right. And helping the person understand

See their life differently. You don't need technology that now technology is powerful and it helps disrupt you because it might change a behavior it might change a context which then Hopefully in turn helps you to realize yourself and your life differently and of course, you know Because the technology is working on a behavioral level It's more easily measurable because you say look I moved everybody from the Walkman to the iPod and

You know, it's countable. Or I moved everyone from buttons on a phone to a smart screen. That's measurable. So you think, oh, that must be innovation.

But in the end, innovation truly is about is there progress in how a person is living? And the reality is in the Melinda Gates episode helps you really realize that the majority, the majority of the problems of our lives in how we live, the majority of the challenges of how we live are built based on our expectations of ourselves and other people and how we have so far evolved.

engineered or managed that relationship. Some of that relationship is codified into laws. Some of that relationship is just habitual into culture. Some of that relationship is just force of habit.

All of those are room for disruption. All of them can be innovated, right? You can innovate when it comes to policy and laws. You can change the way society works just by a top-down approach in laws. But you can also change a bottom-up in terms of how people approach relationships or how they approach relating to other people. Because here's the thing. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but I see it all the time in my out-of-work videos.

life scope. I do a lot of counseling. I help a lot of people. And I speak into their lives. And the amazing thing is I see this time again and again and again, which is once somebody realizes something different about themselves, their identity changes just even a little bit, it radically overnight changes their whole lifestyle.

You don't have to bring technology into it because when they see themselves differently, all of a sudden they do things in life differently and they approach life differently. That's innovation. But again, like you said, most people today, we only attach innovation to technology innovation because, well, that's what's talked about in news. The other types of innovation are actually much older and

And actually much more relevant. And so Melinda Gates talks about it, but she also talks about it from an Africa example. It's very real, right? And we can see it, right? Which is it doesn't take technology to fix a lot of the issues in Africa. It takes a change in social environment, a change in social relationship, a change in expectation. And all of a sudden, a society can start functioning differently. You don't need technology to change how society functions. You need a change in expectation to change how society functions.

Exactly. So that's what Melinda calls it, social changes via cultural practices. Yes. So this is so impactful, like this is so full of power. And she just shared a lot of firsthand experiences when they try to do good things in underdeveloped countries, for example, in India, or in Africa, especially some, you know, women related issues, for example, try to promote the usage or the

you know, adoption of contraceptives and how to convince women to adopt contraceptives. It has nothing to do with technology because, you know, it's just, you know, very simple words. It's just very simple descriptions. So it's such like a very...

interesting learning journey even for Melinda and for Bill to realize that how people talk or how people communicate each other matters the most in terms of promoting progress. That's right. Yeah. So that's why, for example, we even have to take back, we have to reclaim the word social innovation. Hmm.

Today, we think of social innovation, we just automatically think NGO. But that's not social innovation, right? Social innovation and on top of that, cultural innovation is just about how can we rethink and redesign the way people interact with each other. I mean, that's the whole school of, for example, design thinking, right? That is pushed by companies like IDEO and stuff like that, design schools.

And the D school in Stanford, right? All the same thing, but they just come from it from a different standpoint, which is human-centered. I can design my way to changing the way people engage. But not just from a design and a behavioral perspective, but again, from an identity perspective, from a values perspective. If you can introduce different values to a person or to a population, you can radically change the way that whole society engages each other. That's true social innovation. Mm-hmm.

And so, like I mentioned, that's actually what we focus on in ufology. But do you think that's enough? Like what ufology is doing on itself or on yourselves is enough? Because I think there is a lack of innovation or at least there is a lack of motivation to participate in innovation. A lot of young people nowadays are still very occupied by their work.

personal issues, whether it is education or it is career development or their personal relationship or family-wise, anything like that. All these troubles are really, really bothering and young people are not available or not capable to do more things radically. If you convince me to

participate in so-called like social innovation if I were a high school student preparing for college entrance examination I think that's totally out of my mind like to even think about it that's right you know and so actually that's where me and Melinda Gates that's where we have a little bit of a gap

You know, she's focused on and the Gates are focused on equal opportunity for everybody. But exactly the situation you mentioned, high school kids or whatever, like let's say you're not in Africa starving, right? I mean, that's important. And that's hundreds of millions of people. That's important. But this person you're talking about is not the starving African, right? You're talking about maybe a middle class person, you know, and how can they...

Right. And that's and that's where that's actually where I'm focused on. Right. Which is it is the

The gates of the world have the resources and also the time and also the exposure to maybe work on equal opportunity for, let's say, impoverished peoples all over the world. But there is a whole other group of people that might not be impoverished in that way. But in terms of opportunity, a lot of opportunity is passing them by. And the reason why it's passing them by, it's not because of lack of access, but it's actually lack of motivation.

Again, it's because the issue is not about they can't reach for it. It's because they don't even know that they have the strength to reach for it. It's because they don't even know how to take their arm and then extend it forward. And that has everything to do with how they see themselves and how they see the world. And so like coming back to your question about what is euthology doing? How can euthology do?

how we see the problems is different there are different tiers to the problem i think i think the gates foundation is working on the most lowest and broadest tier which is the physiological equal access which has to be done and somebody has to do it and thank god that the gates are going to do that but after or on top of the physiological um issues there are high

higher level issues, right? Which is like, how do we break through from just being so pressured into just doing things that please our parents or please society, you know, or just...

just trying to get ahead and just get a salary, you know, instead of really knowing who I am and maybe what I should be doing in this life, you know. And if a young person, doesn't matter if they're teenagers or, you know, into university or afterwards, if they're consumed in those 10, 15, 20 years, all just about keeping up with everyone else,

In that way, pretty soon they're going to be like 30, 40, 50. They're going to turn around and realize they didn't focus on the actual things that mattered. And they will have spent their lives just trying to run a race that actually doesn't matter.

And to me, that's the biggest injustice. What I'm focused on is this other injustice, which is those that have access but don't take it. That for me, I get angry when I think about it. I feel sad when I think about it. And again, those are things that are completely solvable. Right?

Those are solvable problems. It's not like what the gates are solving really hard problems, like things like literal access and how do you create the systems in place to offer that access. But this one is the systems are already in place. You can have options. You can go different places. You can think about the world and think about yourself differently, but you don't. It's like somebody that has been hungry for so long and you put food in front of them and you say it's yours for free and they just look at it.

and they don't pick up a chopstick or fork and put it in their mouths, what's the problem there? The problem is all in their mind. It's all in how they see themselves. Maybe they think, this food is not really for me. Or maybe they think, if I eat it, then they'll charge me money. Or maybe they think, I don't even have the strength to lift up a chopstick, right? It's all in their mind. To me, that's an injustice. To me, that's a problem. And it's not solved after you have a million dollars.

It's not solved only after you're successful in your career. It needs to be solved when you're a young person. The younger, the better. Because then you can really have impact on the trajectory of your life. If we only start thinking about these issues only after we're quote-unquote successful in society, most of us, by the way, won't be successful in the way society looks at it. Totally. We will spend the rest of our lives...

you know, figuring out how to live. Okay. But it doesn't mean that that's our entire life. And if we can attend to the issues, the true valuable issues earlier in life, it might put us on a very different path that we might never need to actually be concerned about those, you know, societal success issues. So, so that, that's where I come from. It's, it's different than the gates. It's a different injustice. But I found, especially being in China and looking at,

young people all over the world. It's a really big one. Indeed. So the volunteerism that Melinda endorses is something to achieve, is something to acquire for basically everybody out there, especially the young. I don't think I'm the only one who would be confused or who would be very, very upset seeing social news, especially in China. There are a lot of

sad and upsetting social news in China like every day about the aftermath of bad education, aftermath of bad parenting. So it just seems volunteerism or such innate motivation to make contributions seems very far-fetched. Yeah, well, you know, this is how I would frame it. Volunteering is important, but a lot of people frame volunteering as this is my part in making society better.

Now, that's true. I mean, when you volunteer, you are definitely adding value to some value into making society better. But a lot of people don't.

don't realize what the true value is of volunteering and when they don't realize it that's why they don't volunteer the point is not just about helping that issue you're doing that by spending your time the key value of volunteering is still about learning yourself and now the majority of a lot of young people that i meet every day you know at youthology we meet lots of young people the way they look at their time today it's like i need to be working on something that creates my future

Right. But when they say that, what they really are saying is I need to figure out how to make money because they have equated future to money. Now, of course, you do need money to survive and to thrive. But the young person today, especially here in China, is really concerned about this money issue really young now. Like we're talking about like primary school. And so we're hearing lots of the next generation talk about like, I don't want to spend time on hobbies and interests anymore.

I don't want to go and have fun. Everything I do has to be about giving me skill sets that gives me a career. And it's because nobody's taught them, nobody's shown them what is the true path to finding value in life. And also, honestly, what is the true path to finding good money in life too?

Melinda Gates talks about it, right? The path to finding a great life is through knowing yourself better. Right. And you only know yourself better through your hobbies and your interests...

And also through volunteering. That's actually the value of all volunteering that most people don't understand. When you volunteer, you get to know yourself better. And this is the same thing with things like hobbies and interests. Actually, hobbies, interests, volunteering, and fun are all one thing. They really are all one thing. And I truly hope that everybody focuses on that.

That they make it a very high priority and a high value in their life to make sure that they have hobbies and interests and volunteer, like serving other people. Because it is through those things that you can really start to know yourself. And only through knowing yourself in our modern day can you truly find the path that's right for you. And that path might not be directly, oh, there's a job description that fits me. But the path is much more about knowing

These are the things or the environments or the types of activities that I was created to shine into. Or maybe I bring more value than the other person. And when you can find the areas that you bring a more unique value, a more distinctive value, you have just a better ability to

that's where, honestly, the money is. That's where, you know, I mean, you know it and I know it, right? Like my whole life has been the same thing. My whole life has been following and pushing on the things that I'm passionate about, being passionate about them. And it has created an entire career for me that I had never imagined. If you had told me 15 years ago,

Coming to China, that I would be today a consultant and you told me that I would do it from doing research and doing culture, I would laugh at you because I would never have imagined that. It's so far beyond what I had ever seen as a young person. But, you know, that's life's journey. Life's journey is about pursuing the things that you're passionate about, not just because you're passionate about that, but really because through it, you can really know yourself better.

And know yourself better, you can make better decisions for yourself and go forward. And, you know, so that's where I think volunteerism is. And Melinda Gates really talks about that, you know, how volunteering is important. She thanked a lot of the volunteers that helped get their stuff done. But you really need to understand that each of those volunteers are actually on their own journey. They are on their own journey figuring out what does this cause and what does this issue mean to me?

And it goes back to what we were talking about before. Really what all this stuff does is help us to refine what is our core values. Yes. If we don't know our core values, we don't have a direction in life. Yes. If we don't, if we haven't found our core values, we do not know how

how and in what direction should we be building. I totally agree with you on this, even though this kind of like integration is still a luxury to young Chinese people. But I believe that there will be a possibility where there will be a lot of potentials for everybody to know themselves better and to follow their own learning curve, which is another thing that Melinda has said

constantly talking about in this episode. It's about learning journey. For the foundation as an association, as an organization, or for individuals like you and me or others, we have our own learning journey. We have our own learning curve. As long as we started to realize the value in ourselves and started to realize that we can integrate or combine different things together and then achieve that goal,

in our life, I think is still very promising. It's not that pessimistic. No, it doesn't have to be pessimistic and also it doesn't cost a lot of money. That's the amazing thing. Nobody tells you this but the reality is that you don't have to go to the most expensive private school or Ivy League school in the world to get a chance to really know yourself and to really...

explore how to integrate all these things, it costs almost nothing. It just requires effort and courage. And I agree with you. There is lots of opportunities. And that's one of the things that Uthology does. The reason why we work with brands is because we believe that brands have a role to play in offering meaningful experiences that young people can use to explore themselves. That's why we upgrade brands. That's why we upgrade their services and their products

It's not just for them to make more money, but it's really so that they can offer something truly valuable and truly provocative to young people. Like you said, maybe right now the environment's not perfect, but we believe that actually companies and brands in their products and services can play a part in that so we can start to offer something and in some areas to really break through and disrupt for a young person.

Okay, that's quite fantastic. So now let's move on to the second recommendation, which is the Hardcore History Podcast. As we just mentioned, Hardcore History Podcast has been nominated as one of the top one by Pocket Cast, which is a mainstream podcast app, as one of the top show of 2019. So I don't think bilingual listeners in China actually ever tried that

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. But it seems that it's very popular in the West for English natives. So you just talked about Dan Carlin's podcast just a while ago. So the specific episode that we are recommending right now lists the one about step. So this step is S-T-E-P-P-E, right? It's not taking a step. It's not about that step. The step story that we are going to introduce now lists really prehistorical

It's really like a long time ago, right? It's amazing because it sounds very mysterious to me. I can't even imagine that period ever existed before. It's so far away. Yeah. So the reason why I chose that episode to talk about today, so it's called Step Stories, right? Yes.

And the steppe, of course, we're talking about is a geographic area that is basically covering the stands and covering Mongolia. Yes. That's what we call the steppe. It's a place where historically we have lots of nomadic tribes. Yes. And, you know...

different groups that have come out of that place. And so the part of the reason why, the two reasons why I selected this to talk about today, one is because it's not five hours long. So for anyone that wants to dip their toe into hardcore history, this is a good one. It's just, I think it's an hour and a half. Yes. So it's okay. It's not so extreme. It's not so hardcore. Yeah. So it's a nice entry-level way. The other reason why I chose this is because

It was just one of the most memorable episodes for me because it was something I learned something new. I learned something new with every one of his podcasts. But, you know, again, because I've been a student of history for many decades, so I know a lot of history.

So most subject matter I'm quite familiar with. It doesn't matter if you're talking about the ancient Greeks, you know, fighting the Persians, or you're talking about World War I or World War II, or you're talking about, you know, most things I will have known quite a bit. You know, I study a lot about ancient history. I know a lot about the Roman times.

But this is just a geographic place and this is a specific time period that I've always been curious about and I've never been able to find either a book or somebody that can give me a good synopsis, a good overview, and also a really powerful point of view of what has happened.

I don't know if you want me to summarize the key thing because it's going to ruin the episode for everybody. I don't know. We don't need to leak anything. I don't want to leak it. I don't want to leak it. But the reality is that it... Okay, I'll just say it this way. This episode helped me, one, understand that entire region for about a thousand years of history.

And these are tribes that are famous today. We're talking about tribes like the Goths and the Visigoths and the Huns, you know, and the Scythians and the Turks, and of course, the Mongolians. But it's not just that it helped me truly understand and appreciate how Europe was formed.

This episode gives you a clear understanding of why it happened. You know, all those what we call barbarians in Western culture. We call them barbarians. They're not barbarians. And Dan will help you understand who they really are because they're not barbarians.

So it radically helped me reset and reframe a part of history that I had some misunderstandings on. So it helped me re-understand what barbarians are and they're not barbarians. And number two, it helped me really understand the beginnings of Europe and how Europe is formed. So it was an aha moment for me. And for somebody that strives to know everything or as much as possible history, this was a victory. This was a whole new thing. So it really made me really glad. Okay.

Right before trying this podcast, everything is absolute. Like everything has a definite description or everything has a definite process to understand. But this podcast just allows you to understand that actually everything is just relative.

Like it just, what matters is what perspective or viewpoint you take to access or to evaluate the whole thing. Because Scythian is one of the most described tribes in this episode, in this step stories. And I used to think they are just like monsters, to be very honest. It's like very fierce and very strong and very good at military matters. Some media call them horse lord.

because they are so good at riding horses and fight battles. But what's amazing about them is that they are very good at art as well. Because for Sissians, they are tattooed basically almost from head to toe. And their tattoos were very unique. And the patterns were very, very mystic and very cultural. And it's...

just these tattoos just symbolizes the gods or the spirits that they worshipped back then. So this is everything is like interconnected, is interrelated. So it's just, you know, fascinating to know that even in that ancient period, people were so creative. They have their ways of expressing thoughts. And even though they don't have a written language, so how does it even, it's just hard to even imagine like,

It's something like a fiction, actually. It's not like a piece of fact. Well, I mean, that's why I love Dan because, and I mentioned before, I'm a very visual person. So Dan, when he does these episodes, he's very detailed in the descriptions.

And so I'm able to imagine like you just talked a lot about you talking about the tattoos and you talk about exactly where they're from. Like that's Dan's mastery. You know, he's able to describe things in a way that you can actually visualize. You know, one of the things that you said, which was like, you know, all things are relative. I would have a different opinion about that, you know.

What Dan does is... And the reason why it takes so long for each episode to come out is because he literally reads everything about the subject. He reads every single book. He reads every single other historian. He knows what every single point of view is. Okay. And so what he does is in his episode, he is telling you all the different points of views, all the different ways of looking at the same situation. But actually... And you'll hear this again and again in many of his episodes...

he's actually looking for

He doesn't believe there's no such thing as absolute truth. Actually, what he really cares about is to get it down to a level where we can feel the human being. We can feel the human condition. So you're right. There are a lot of relativeness if you're looking at things from a military perspective or an economic perspective or a social perspective or a cultural perspective. And he brings all those perspectives in. But his goal is to get down to...

empathizing, walking in the shoes of that person. So, you know, for example, in this episode, he talks about, of course, the Romans and how they felt when the barbarians were at the gates. But then on the other side, he also talks about who these peoples were and what they did in their everyday life and how they felt when

leaving the steppe and going into the lower lands that the Roman Empire was inhabiting, how they felt looking at these walled cities that Rome had built, you know, and what it means for them to say, I can't turn back. I'm not here just to take you over. I just...

I'm fighting for my own life. It's not that everything is relative. He's actually going for one specific perspective. He's going for perspective about how can we understand the actual human being that lived it. And for me, that's really important. It's important not just for history, but it's, of course, important for us today. It's important for us to continually expand how we understand the human condition and how we understand the human experience, especially the one that's not our experience.

We today are getting into a world where everyone's experience is so unique and so different because it's molded and crafted by our social media that we've curated, our way of life.

to the point where we're starting to realize and feel that we have less and less ability to empathize with the life of somebody else. And so, you know, going through history, one part of it is, of course, understanding history and understanding where we come from and how things worked and how empires rose and fell. But on the other side, it's really about how did people experience? How did people suffer? And Dan spent a lot of time exploring suffering.

how do people dream and hope? How do people make decisions on the everyday life in the middle of these massive changes of society? And that brings a lot of reflection and understanding about where we are today. It gives us greater understanding on, for example, the elections coming up in the US and why people would be voting for somebody like Trump versus somebody else or Brexit or, you know, you can start to empathize with the human being that's right there at that time and

Not thinking about the course of history, but just trying to make the next decision for the next day so they can live their life. That's what Dan does on a few different levels. And so it's extremely meaningful. You know, it helps me when I look at a German, I don't look at a German. I see...

A thousand years of history of them being nomadic and them trying to figure out how to integrate into a land that wasn't theirs. Right. Or a people that had built aqueducts and coliseums and looking at them and saying, you guys know nothing.

Right? That's a German. But you wouldn't know that unless you really understand where they come from. And then you start to understand why and how their culture formed the way they do. And then, of course, why their values formed the way they do. It gives us deep self-reflection about ourselves as Chinese people. Of course, a lot of it deals with our recent history of the last hundred years. But then we still have to connect it back to...

who we were in ancient times why is it that we always loved emperors and we loved the bureaucracy why is it that we cared so much about eunuchs and studying through exams like we've done that for thousands of years why

If you read Confucius, if you read them, then you start to realize that our values are very old. And it has everything to do with our living situations 3,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago. And it brings great perspective to how we live our life today as modern people, as Chinese people. And so those are the questions I always think about. Those are the journeys in my mind that I think about.

Because it gives me deeper understanding of myself and also gives me deeper understanding of the people around me. Hearing that, I think I was just scratching the surface.

when I was listening to this podcast because, you know, obviously I didn't have such a perspective of the overall view, like how to appreciate history and how to absorb history. Because honestly speaking, I haven't been following any history

podcast so far and I'm not a you know typical history fan which is very dangerous for me I think eventually I need to you know study or spend some time learning history because when I just used up all my spare you know originality creating stuff I need to you know go back to

the history or somewhere else that's deeply rooted in our culture to find new originalities. That's right. History and knowing what was done before and how it was done is the way for you to find originality and creativity today. If you don't know history, you actually don't know

whether what you're creating has been created before. Sure. And when you know how other people experience things differently, then you know why your creativity is relevant and also new for today. Right. So my question would be, would you feel a little bit lost in history? Because as much as you listen, as much as you think about it, you probably would be confused or very puzzled by what has happened historically.

So in my mind, the way that history is built in my mind is I have a map and a timeline of the entire world. So I have an entire story in my mind about how the world was formed and what is happening. Basically, in any given century or any given era, I can probably have a pretty good sense of what's happening all around the world. That's just what I do. So for me, it's...

Yeah.

There are some areas of African history that I don't know as well as I should. I was starting, I've been starting an entire, I started watching a whole lecture series from Yale on the history of Russia. Because there's a whole area in Russia's history that I'm not particularly clear about. So to me, they're just puzzle pieces that once I fit it in, then it actually makes more sense about where these people came from and what they're doing now. Like, have you ever wondered why the Russians are the way they are? Mm-hmm.

having a run why putin you know handles international affairs the way he does it why does his people support him for that you need to look at history to understand how they understand themselves in the world so to me i never feel lost actually i get more clarity from it diving deep into the minutiae of the human being again i put it in a different bucket right i put it into a bucket of um helping me understand myself and understanding other people but

But as I level it up to larger themes like value themes or societal cultural themes or political themes or military themes, then I can link it back to the context of the world that we live today. So my mind is very macro. And then going deep into the personal is more of a personal reflection. And then I can still link it back to the macro stuff. And actually, that's a lot of the fun. It's a lot of the creative fun that's happening in my mind.

And it helps me have deep understanding. Right. I think Dan Carlin really does a fantastic job in trying to tell stories, especially history stories that way. Even though for a lot of audience, they may think that the way he talks or the way how he presents the audio content is a little bit retired or even outdated.

outdated because he barely edited anything and he speaks really slow like he speaks very loud and slow and it just reminds me of another podcast called Above Avalon it's a podcast of technology specifically on analyzing anything about Apple

so that speaker that podcaster talks really slow too when I was listening to Above Avalon I would always fast you know I will always speed up a little bit and then try to follow what the podcaster was saying but yesterday I re-listened Dunn-Collins I would re-listen to Dunn-Collins step story and then I tried to you know speed up a little bit but I couldn't even follow even though that was the second time that I tried that episode so I

So I think there must be... Content-wise, it's very challenging. It's not easy. It's no easy. It's no entertainment. It's definitely something that you really need to allocate a lot of attention and following his lead and trying to get through what he's trying to deliver. So, yes. I mean, even myself, there are times where I have to...

you know, rewind 15, 20 seconds, you know, or a minute. Cause sometimes like I'm listening and I get a little bit distracted, you know, I'm, I'm doing something and I'm like, Oh, what did he say? And he's already off to some, on some other topics. I'm like, I had to rewind and catch up. I think he more than anyone else probably influenced the way that I approach my podcast. Um,

And again, I'm dating myself. Like you said, it's old and retired. I don't know. I just like listening to his style. To me, it feels very personal. It feels very intimate. Yes. You know, it's not... I mean, here's the thing. His content is polished, but he's not polished. Sure. Which I really appreciate. You know, it makes me feel like I'm sitting beside some amazing history expert and we're having a great conversation. Like, that's what I want. I don't want...

Some dry, perfect class. Like, I really don't need that. I need, I want brilliant people. So that's, I think, influenced the way that I approach my podcast, which was just shoot from the hip. Yeah. Just record. I don't care if it's raw. Yeah.

Because I guess I'm the type of listener that doesn't care if it's raw. Yeah, sure. I don't mind raw materials. It's just like there's a general trend that people are starting to pay attention to a lot of post-editing and music stuff. And that's a bridge between conversations that's sort of like narratives or how people, like wordings and stuff like that. I have a concern about that.

Well, I don't know. I mean, I think perhaps it's because this medium and format is attracting a different type of listener today. The different type of listener we're talking about is more of a mass listener. So the mass listener demands entertainment. Right. And they demand it to be shorter and lighter. Right. The listenership is different, right? I mean, like you said, the type of listeners that listens to Dan or listens to the other podcasts I'm seeing, it's

It's a highly focused person who can sift through very thick materials. So it's a very different type of listener.

Right. So, you know, for those that want to go for a more mass audience, then you're going to spend a lot more time thinking about how to make it shorter, how to make it lighter, how to get the gist of it within two minutes. Yeah. You know, and then how and then how can it be dropped by? Like, how can you just share with other people like that's that's their metrics. Fine. If that's what you care about, if that's the audience that you want and that's.

that's who you want to surround yourself with, then fine. But that's the thing. Like, really? That's really what you want to surround yourself with? But of course, it's because those types of people are trying to make a business out of it. And they're trying to... And the way they want to make a business is...

the most amount of people listening, then they can take those numbers and sell advertising. Now, Dan did it a different way. His content is so good. He now has a library and people go and buy his library of stuff. So he actually stopped. So his older podcasts, he doesn't even offer free anymore. I was surprised, right? Yeah.

And people still go and buy it because it's so good. It's a good thing to do, actually. It's definitely a good thing to do. But if you think about the people today who are doing like these super short whatever media, how many of them are going to want to buy that stuff and review it again? Very few, right? So for Dan, it's not just about business. It's really a way of life. And it's about the people that he cares about and the people that he wants to be surrounded with. This is totally correct.

some media has been commenting or appreciating Dan as the best history teacher in the States. And they say that the best history teacher isn't at school, in this podcast, is actually Dan Carlin. So it's just like a shame that comparatively speaking in China, we don't have such a speaker who would like to speak up and then try to

try to do public history education even though we have like some influencers who has tried to do such things before but still there is an increasing need from the educated public that they need to have such hardcore history lessons yeah you know I think again I was um

blessed in my upbringing because I went to some special schools, you know, growing up and I had great teachers. And so even for my history classes, I had hardcore history teachers. I mean, we're not talking about teachers that, that taught up textbooks. These guys lived and breathed history. So I was really lucky when I was young. I, I saw people that were really passionate about history from their own lives. I mean, these guys were like one of my history teachers when I was in high school and

He has a huge collection of antique guns. What? He brought an ancient crossbow in. He has an ancient crossbow that's basically from the steppe, right? And he was showing us and he was telling us that this crossbow can go through a brick wall. It is actually more powerful than a gun. So I grew up with people that made history come alive for me. So I'm so glad that Dan's doing it.

And I'm sad for people that have gone to history classes that, you know, were taught by people that don't like history, you know. But yeah, you're right. There needs to be more people that are passionate and bringing that passion, you know, to podcasting or to content and allow people to realize that every content can be passionate if you approach it in the right way.

That is the first episode of our interview with Kevin and I hope you have enjoyed the two hours spent with us. The second episode will be released late night tomorrow and please remember to read the show notes either on our website, casticle.fm or on your podcast app, for example, Apple Podcasts, Castro or Overcast. Thank you so much for your time and looking forward to receiving any feedback from you guys. I'll see you tomorrow.