The Jordan Harbinger Show - 644: Laowhy86 | How the Chinese Social Credit Score System Works Part Two

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Laowhy86 (@laowhy86) -- aka Matthew Tye, aka C-Milk -- shared the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of life as an American in China on his YouTube channel for 10 years until he caught the attention of the CCP and barely escaped. This is his story. [This is part two of a two-part episode. Make sure to listen to part one here first!] What We Discuss with Laowhy86: What the Chinese social credit system is, the factors that increase or diminish someone's score, and the consequences someone with a low score faces. How the Kremlin is cribbing the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda playbook for its own nefarious purposes. Why, after 10 years of having mostly positive things to say about life in China, Laowhy86 suddenly found himself on the run from the authorities and barely escaping the country. How Laowhy86 went from lifestyle vlogging to covering things mainstream journalists couldn't (or wouldn't) touch. Myths perpetrated by the CCP that need to be dispelled. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/644 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss our two-parter with wrongfully imprisoned Erik Aude? Catch up by starting with episode 147: Erik Aude | Imprisoned in Pakistan for a Crime He Didn’t Commit Part One here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. This foreign girl moved to Beijing. She loves it more than her hometown. It's amazing. She loves the food and the culture. And it's like these like many kind of harmless propaganda videos about how these foreign people move to China and changed their life and they love it more than their own country.

And then bam, a video will come out about how the Uyghur genocide is completely a lie. So the people that have been following these people's travels or they're kind of like organic-looking vlogs abroad in China, all of a sudden get smacked in the face with this propaganda. and they'll be more willing to look into it because they kind of feel a personal connection with these people that have been introduced. And I saw that happen with Russian channels as well.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional Russian spy,

drug trafficker, or neuroscientists. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding. of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, our episode starter packs are where you can do that. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic

to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Topics like Persuasion and Influence, Vladimir Putin, China, North Korea, technology and futurism, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or take a look in your Spotify app to get started. This is part two of my conversation with my friend Matt. a few, aka Lao Y-86, who's lived in China for 10 years, one of the first vloggers anywhere. We're talking about China and the Chinese social credit score system, among other topics. If you haven't heard part one, now's a good time to go back and grab that.

That's where you'll want to start with this conversation. Now here we go with part two, it's Lau, Y, 86. I assume you have to go through like an immigration exit line where they're like, oh, what's your name? Oh, that must have been, what was that weight like in that line? I remember looking at some other people that were just on their phones hanging out chewing gum like waiting to exit China

and to go into Hong Kong and I'm like how do I act like them? How do I look more nonchalant because I'm literally going to die? I was like having a heart attack. You're like looking around you're like I know I look so nervous right now. I know I do.

My immediate thought was like I must look so suspicious right now. Sweating? Yeah, I was pouring sweat. So I go through the borderline and I get up to the immigration guy and then paint a picture for you. In China, if you go through a border

from a separate country, so Kazakhstan or Hong Kong or whatever, they'll have this like, how did I do? And it's like these weird dystopian looking smiley faces that you pick, you know? They mean nothing, by the way, that don't contribute to anything,

but you stand there. We have those two in the United States. It's like, how clean is the bathroom and you're like, no one's looking at this. This machine is broken. Correct. The thing is, in China, you'll have,

the guards are like a little higher than you. And they're like looking down at you and they're just so mean. They're usually so mean. Anyway, I give them my passport. And you don't need a visa to get in Hong Kong as an American citizen. So I'm like waiting there. I'm sweating.

And he asked me for the first time. I've never heard this in my entire life. He asked me, do you have a Chinese name after he scans my passport? And I'm like, why is he asking me this? I've never been asked that in my life. Yeah, why? So, of course I have a Chinese name, but I lied.

My gut instinct was just say, no, no. Just like, I'm just some dude. Pretend like I don't speak Chinese. He goes, okay. And he stamps me through and I get out. So right now I'm past China. I'm in the limbo. so I'm in Hong Kong slash China's jurisdiction

and a police woman stands right in front of me as I'm in limbo and shouts over to the border guy she goes, is that Ma is like the name? Is this Ma? I'm like, what is she on about, right? So then she goes over to talk to him and immediately after she gets out of my peripheral, I go. I go straight to the area where you scan your bag

and then you get in line for the Hong Kong immigration part to get in there, right? She comes back. She taps me on the shoulder and she asks me in broken English and she goes, are you going to Hong Kong? And I go, yes.

And she goes, are you going to any other country? Are you leaving? And I was like, no. And after the conversation, she goes, are you going to come back to so and so where I was living? And I said yes.

And she goes, good. And then she turns around and leaves. Yeah. That is really, really freaking scary. So like, what do you think happened? Were they just not sure if you were you and they're like, you know what, we'll deal with it when he comes back because we assume he's telling the truth.

Like, it's such a weird situation. I think it's a combination of, well, just a fast word here. I got into Hong Kong. Yeah, you're like, whoo. You know, like time to go sort this out and talk to people and try to figure this out because I have people in the government that I can talk to and try to figure out what happened. I initially thought, hey, this is just some bullshit

where like they're being lazy or they don't want to deal with it right now because they're going to have to talk to the other side about what they're doing and detaining a foreigner or all this kind of stuff. But after a long time and speaking to a lot of people that have dealt with this kind of stuff, not just with China, but with countries all around the world, it sounds like they let me leave, right? It was like encouraging me to leave. And the whole building the case and all this kind of stuff was definitely going to happen

if I decided to continue making problems for them. But the fact that I left was kind of what they wanted. Letting me leave was like, okay, we don't have to worry about this shit anymore. Yeah. We're getting heat from Beijing to not. allow foreigners to do anything in the country. If he's going to keep breaking this rule and filming and doing whatever, positive or negative, it's breaking the law from what they told us to prevent, right? So if I'm out, then I'm out. Problem solved, yeah. Yeah, a great example of why that's probably

the case is Winston, my business partner, he stayed in China like nine months after I left, right? And he didn't have the same problems with the local government going after him. We don't know. There's probably definitely some sort of cases being built against him. But because he was one of a Bzillion foreigners in a bigger city where he lived in Shenzhen, it didn't catch up with him yet, right? It would have caught up with him just like it caught up with our friend Michael, the Canadian that was wrongfully detained in retaliation for Meng Wanjo and the whole Huawei scandal thing, which happened right at that time, by the way. Right. That's what was so scary. It's like in 2018, these two guys, I think they're both named Michael actually. They end up in jail. And because the Huawei

CFO, she's under house arrest in China. And then suddenly these two guys that live in China are now being detained in like crap hole conditions for how long? For years. Yeah. So, I mean, Michael is a friend of ours because he helped us with conquering northern China. He speaks fluent Korean. He was like a fixer for North Korean type stuff. And we were in an area where there's predominantly North Korean people.

When I say North Korean people, I mean ethnically North Korean people that were Chinese citizens. And he was our translator. He helped us out in the region and stuff. And he was detained at that same time. And that was, we were all connected to that, right? We were friends. We had communications. We knew each other. And all of these people started kind of disappearing or getting deported at that time. So it kind of was in perfect line of that. I think Winston left at the perfect time as well. Maybe he could have left a little sooner,

but it was definitely coming down to it because he was still filming and getting interrogated all the time to the point where I'm pretty sure that the police there were trying to kick him out as well. But in this whole process, it took me a while to call the right people and confirm that's kind of pretty much what happened. I mean, they were building a huge file. And it was the season of where CCP officials get ranked up or ranked down. So they keep their job or they get brownie points because they sucked up to the right person or they ratted the right person out for tax evasion. And at that time, there was a massive incentive of the city I was living in to look for foreign spies.

So you had Chinese people that were going on live stream that were calling the PSB, the Public Security Bureau, to say that I was an American CIA spy in China. You had them bragging about that, posting my whereabout, saying, we're going to catch this spy and stuff because it was so incentivized to go after foreigners that were kind of had a public face or appearance on the Chinese internet and proved that there were some sort of horrible entity that was trying to bring China down from the inside. So that all piled together that like people saw an opportunity. Hey, I know this dude in the PLA. Hey, I know this dude in the traffic department. Hey, whatever. We can screw this guy over.

he's a big figure. He's got hundreds of thousands of followers, right? He's made these TV shows and stuff. If we go after him and prove that he's some sort of bad entity and he makes our life easier if we catch him. So in a way, I think the central government wanted to be gone. A lot of people were looking voraciously

at doing something to me to propel their careers forward. That's why you didn't get an exit ban. Correct. An exit ban was when you try to leave and they say, sorry, you're not allowed to. And that happens to journalists or people that they don't like, but it's almost like they wanted you to get out,

and so they let you get out, versus keeping you there and throwing you into prison, which is lucky. If I had gone back and they wanted to follow up on the opportunity, let's say the PLA wanted to collaborate with the PLA that had almost detained me up north, and they started building this case. They absolutely would have placed an exit van on me.

They would have made the phone calls to make that happen because it would serve their purpose. Thankfully, I think I got out at the very right time to where the central government's like, Hell yeah, he's gone. But if I had waited a month or two more, that wouldn't have been the case. That is so terrifying. What about your family?

I mean, they, spoiler, right, they got out. But you must have been so worried that you were out and they're going to be like, oh, you're never seeing your wife and kid again. You know, that's what you get. And that was the worst part. It wasn't like, who, wiped the sweat off the brow. I'm in Hong Kong. I was in exile in Hong Kong for a little while.

What I was doing was hopping around to different hotels. I knew that if I was in a situation where they wanted to get me, They can absolutely get me in Hong Kong even at that time. Yeah, they would just nab you, dude, and drive you back in the trunk of a car or something like that, right? And that's how they do it. A lot of times what they'll do is, especially with foreigners, they'll go to their hotel room in Hong Kong and they'll plant drugs on them. Oh, my God. Then they can extradite you or just put you in a duffel bag, right?

Bring you back. So I was like, I'm not out of the woods yet because my family's still there, right? Thankfully, my wife got her green card sent to her at her relatives house. and my kid was not a Chinese citizen, which was great. That actually helped a lot because my kid never had Chinese citizenship or any sort of Chinese documentation. That's interesting. That was a deliberate choice, yeah?

Yes, immediately after she was born, I immediately got her American citizenship because that makes it such a headache for the Chinese government to deal with. When you exit ban a newborn baby or a child and they're a foreign citizen, that's really bad press. A lot of my friends have their kids. It was more convenient for them to just. just let the hospital do their kids' Chinese documentation. They just let it happen and said, five years down the road, I'll go get their passport.

I said, absolutely not. I'll never do that. And I think that's a huge factor into why they got out, right? Not only that, I think it was still in that sweet spot where they're like, you know, if they can get out, they can get out, whatever, right? Yeah. Oh, man. What I can prove that it's not speculation is what happened to my family members in China.

And I can't prove that to you on the show. But what happened to my family members in China afterwards is what kind of made me understand this story fully. Okay. And how dangerous it actually gets. Just for the audience, I want you to understand this precarious situation that I was in actually came to fruition about a year afterwards

after I had already left. This is something that happened to not your wife and kid, but like her parents or something? Yeah, my wife and kid got out like soon after. How was that flight home? Like every sphincter in your life? body must have been like, ah. I tell you what, I was singing like every, you know, I don't even like country music or anything,

but any patriotic country music song, like proud to be an American or at least send, oh, I'm free, you know, that good stuff. That was just pumping through my head. I wanted to kiss the ground when I landed because at least I knew at that point when I landed in the U.S. that this nightmare was over. I mean, I'm talking about 10 years of the best years of my life. I was Chinese, man. Like all of my friends were Chinese.

I spoke, ate, live, drank, slept Chinese. I dreamt in Chinese. My business was in Chinese. Everything I did was China. And it was to the point where it seemed so bizarre to overnight just basically get completely booted out of a country that you planted your roots in. Like enemy of the state. You see that movie with Will Smith where suddenly like they're tracking him and stuff? Yeah, that's pretty prescient.

And I'll tell you what. The craziest thing was that on the way home, I was thinking, how am I going to break this to my audience? I'm a YouTuber after all, right? How am I going to break this to my audience? And I was like, I'm going to wait because I don't know what the hell just happened. And finally, when I kind of understood everything, right after this happened, like the day after this happened, when I was in Hong Kong, I shot everything. I sat down in a park and I said everything verbatim, what just happened.

I saw that video with the crazy guy yelling in the background. You're like, bro, I'm trying to tell a scary story here. Yeah. But I wanted to shoot that because I knew I'd never be able to capture that kind of raw emotion and how scared I was at the time. You were shaking in that video. I watched it again yesterday in preparation for this. And I was like, dude, you can't, if that's fake nervousness,

give this man an Academy Award because you really were shook up, man. Oh, man, I mean, it was devastating. So like I said, it was so jarring. And I was like, how am I going to approach my audience about this? And the way Elma's thinking about this. And I decided, you know, I'm going to wait. So actually, after that, I flew back to Hong Kong. Like, I did other trips, right?

I did all kinds of stuff. Of course, I never, ever went back into mainland China. No. But I had to sell my house. I still a lot of house in mainland China, right? So I had to go back. What I did was I went back to Hong Kong. This is again pre-security law.

I had to go back in ferry documents, basically. I had people go deliver documents to family members in the mainland across the border for me because there's nowhere. I'm just getting anywhere near that. And I had to tell my audience like, hey, I'm moving back slash I sold my house, right? So in those videos, I still didn't tell anyone. You know, people still thought I was in China. And then eventually I was like, you know what?

Like, obviously I'm never going back. obviously this is like come to complete closure. And I finally put the video out and I was like, listen, guys, I don't want to lie to you guys. It's been a year or something. I haven't been in China for this long. And I'm just trying to sort out and tell my story. The audience is really receptive to it. It just felt really good to be completely frank and honest about what had happened.

Sure. And because when the dust settled, I got it. I understood what happened. And when my family members in China were, you know, what happened to them and stuff, it all made sense. And it made me so inspired to. talk about all the stuff I had been hiding before in China. The stuff that I really never had the opportunity or desire to even say because of what

it would have done to me if I had talked about that stuff. So what did, and I know you got to be careful with the details, but what did happen to your extended family after you left? Like, did they start getting heat from the authorities? Oh, yeah. I mean, heat is an understatement. The scariest thing was it confirmed everything on paper with what I suspected had happened. It wasn't up in the air anymore.

It wasn't some speculation anymore. it was what I thought. And when you know that you are on the highest of highest list in the central government, you know that something was going to go down. And when I found out about that, it was so funny because when I put out my video about how I escaped from China, which is a direct, straight, emotional piece to the camera, they sent out all of the propaganda army to talk about how that's absolutely impossible, how I'm not important at all.

The government has no idea who I am. And I'm watching this and I'm like, I must have struck a massive nerve because there was verbatim. Every single YouTuber, every single waybaw posts, every single thing that was coming out about my escape story, it was cut in pace. And their whole thing was,

you think you're important enough for the people's liberation army to contact you? It's this preposterous. Right. Like all this over and over again. Like you think you're important enough. You think you're important enough. And it was like, wow,

they really don't want this story to get out there. They thought, if I left in peace, then I probably wouldn't run my mouth about it. Sure. It would be a career devastating move to be like, oh, you know, screw actually, screw the human rights atrocities that the Chinese government does

because I still want some sort of connection to China. And I said absolutely not. I'm going to be blatantly honest about what the Chinese government does from now on and they got real mad. So when you book flights now, you probably have to make sure that they don't have a layover in like Hong Kong, at least.

This is the stuff that makes me sick is that Hong Kong used to be a refuge. Like I said, I used to be able to go back there. I went back there a couple of times. Even after I left China, and I did it stay too long there. I didn't make my whereabouts known. I didn't walk around saying, here I am today, live streaming in Hong Kong. You know, it would be on transit to Vietnam or on transit to Taiwan. And now, because the national security law after the protests in 2019, 2020, I can't go there. If I go to Hong Kong and my, I'm giving people ideas now, but if I get a flight rerouted through Hong Kong, it's As soon as that plane touches the runway, you're never going to see me again.

I'm gone. I'm done. And that's really shitty because Hong Kong is a huge transport hub for Asia, right? So if I'm going to Japan, I got to make sure that I book a flight directly to Japan and hope that there's no bad weather on the way. Because as soon as they find out that I'm on the manifest, the Chinese government will take me. Oh, that's so scary, dude. Yeah. That is terrifying because you've, of course, heard about the journalist, the dissident who flew over Belarus.

And they scrambled fighters to make the plainland and now he's in prison, right? Correct. Yeah, I mean, that's like nightmare scenario for everyone. And that guy was just flying over Belarus. He wasn't landing in a place that is controlled by Belarus. Right, that is correct. Now, the thing about that is I have to also be careful

with countries that are sympathetic to the CCP, right, the Chinese government. So I can't go to Lao. If I go to Lao, you can guarantee I'm going to be smuggled across the border. I can't go to Burma, right? I can't go to any of these countries that have very weak legal systems already and then are also sympathetic to the Chinese government because to the right uneducated person, they don't really know that the smoke that's going to happen from the American government if they take an American citizen. In that moment, they might say, hey, I'm going to get like $10,000 from some CCP dude, right? Yeah.

So in that moment, that's worth it. And hey, let's just make it look like he crashed his motorcycle or something. Sure. Yeah. And then you're going to get duffel bagged. Yeah, it's so terrifying. man. And look, you were there for 10 years and the crazy ending to this, it seems like it would have soured you on China. And again, not Chinese people, but the Chinese government. It just shows you

like, we're so lucky in Western democracies. But I also, it's kind of heartbreaking. Because like you said, you put down roots, you married a Chinese woman, you had a kid there. You were just like this dude who adopted the country of China. And then they were like, now we're going to spit you out, man, hard. Yeah, Winston and I, the first two YouTubers to do this, we were the China dudes. Why would we leave? That was where our bread was buttered. That's where all of our friends in life was. To say I'm soured on it, though, I mean, really what happened was I became very objective and I said, this is a scourge to the people that I care about. I mean, there are people that were appear in my videos that ended up getting arrested and going to jail just because they were in a video

of mine, not because they talked about the government, not because they did anything, because they wanted to send a message to me. And I was like, if they're going to operate like this, you better be damn sure I'm not going to keep my mouth shut about it. This is outlandish. And I felt even more in love with the Chinese people and the people that I know and really put down roots with in the country that I care about so much. Because if I'm not going to do it,

then who the hell else is going to understand China at this level and talk about it? You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Lau Y-86. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week. It's because of my network, and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free

over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. The course is about improving your networking skills and your connection skills and inspiring other people to develop a personal and professional relationship with you. It'll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker. That's all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on our show subscribe and contribute to that same course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, back to Laowai. This kind of sobered you up a little bit to China, but also you were, it's a little bit like boiling frog, right? Because while you were over there, you were like, wow, that's, well, this is getting weird.

Oh, man, the cops are really bugging. And then this was kind of like the slap across the face twice hard, where you get out and you go, okay, how did I not see this coming? And now it seems really obvious, right? Yeah, I think that actually a really good point to bring up Jordan is that slap in the face that sobering slap in the face was necessary to kind of show me and actually be able to tell people

that foreigners are not welcome in China. You can make up whatever story, fantasy fairy tale that you want and say, I'm going to play favorites with the government. I'm going to be nice. I'm not going to talk about anything. The government,

Chinese government doesn't want you there unless you can be used as a peon. And any time that you see footage or YouTubers or influencers out of China right now, they have some sort of degree of the government approving what they do.

And the government has hoovered up any influencer, and you saw this around 2019, around the Hong Kong protest, go from, okay, I'm going to make travel videos, hey, look at me, I'm eating dumplings to COVID started in America. They all went from, I'm eating these really spicy dumplings to, hey, you know what? Joe Biden, something, something, COVID is an American bio weapon, like overnight. And you're like, what? It was crazy. But it made so much sense because if you're not going to be used for the government's purpose,

then you weren't like me. You're not allowed there. Right. So you've got to be very careful when you're looking at stuff. out of China, you know, save for just normal, like I'm going to a hot spring video or whatever, it is serving the government purpose. And it can be always traced down. It's a bit of a hobby of mine in Winston's is to go into a lot of these influencers videos and see where the party connection comes in. There's a famous example that we brought up all the time is that these

shills, as we call them, YouTuber shills that work for the Chinese government that always pretend like they don't, go to this random village in the middle of Shanxi province, and they go to meet these farmers that have somehow turned this desert landscape into a very nice place to grow vegetables. And they kept claiming, hey, we have this is nothing to do the government. This is not propaganda. This is exactly the reason we're showing you that this is not related to the government. And then they go and meet the freaking party official of the village and have to go dance around the vegetables for the glory of the Communist Party and do shit tons of propaganda afterwards. It's down to the most harmless levels that the party is using these people to spread Chinese

propaganda for the Chinese government. It's maddening. I definitely want to talk more about Chinese propaganda, and I know you have some observations about Russian propaganda because we talk all the time, and I watch your videos about Chinese propaganda infecting YouTube and elsewhere. And you recently said, hey, man, check this out. I'm seeing the same stuff with Russia. And I thought that was really interesting, especially, of course, not coincidental at all with the timing of the Ukraine invasion. Yeah. I love the word that you just use infecting. I think that's very appropriate. Just because of how pervasive it's become, how insane Chinese propaganda has become on Western Internet. Because of that experience in China, because I learned fluent Mandarin Chinese, I was able to kind of take that experience back home to the U.S. and watch how China under Xi Jinping kind of changed the way that they were going to deal with the rest of the world,

the way that they're going to show themselves to the rest of the world. And I saw that through the increasing amount of propaganda. China's always had tons of propaganda. China's always had billboards with hammers and sickles. China's had banners all over the place talking about the socialist, you know, revolution and the socialism of Chinese characteristics and all this kind of stuff. But it was more of a thing that they just had to do because the party, CCP, the comics party, China's in power.

It's just kind of like the language du jour. It's just kind of how they brand themselves. Like lip service going through the motions. Look at socialism, but you know, whatever. We have Apple and iPhone and investment and hedge funds. And barely any social programs for our citizens. sense. Anyway, long story short, to see that kind of change and then to have an outward projection, to show China kind of bragging about their own governments of the rest of the world,

was something shocking to me. And that was only something I saw, like I said, under the Xi Jinping leadership. So when I started making videos that were more honest and more critical of the party's leadership, I noticed that there was counter videos. There were counter YouTubers. There were counter articles, there was so much, just a huge amount of information that was coming out to counter what I was talking about. Yeah, it was like a full court press with like, it's like the same handful of people doing it. Yes. And what I noticed is that at first it was just in case, it's almost like a contingency plan for them, just in case people in China jump the great firewall of China. They use a VPN and they go see an outward opinion. They go see a different opinion on YouTube.

they want to make sure that their populace is in a position where they've already consumed enough brainwashing material in China to be ready for these kind of differing opinions. And anything that they hear across the other side, anything they hear from an American YouTuber like myself is just CIA propaganda, right? It's just the other side. They're so used to propaganda and brainwashing that, of course, America has that as well, right, in their minds. Of course there's going to be another side and it's paid by the government and all that kind of

stuff. So it was a contingency plan for China because what they want is they don't want their citizens to be consuming another opinion and then believing that opinion. So they kind of came up with this idea that if we use foreign YouTubers, when I say foreign, I mean non-Chinese.

So usually white guys, usually older white gentlemen. This is like what they do for some reason in China. I feel attacked, but continue. Yeah, so they get these guys to go, and these guys usually live in China, right? They get them to produce content about how actually any differing opinion about how the Chinese government has human rights atrocities or is committing genocide to Xinjiang or anything like this is all lies.

So then you have these, you know, white dudes talking about how amazing the Chinese government is. So you have maybe 10 of those guys for every one of me. So that just in case these people in China come over and look at this other side, they're going to say, oh, well, actually this white guy is mirroring exactly what the government's been telling me this whole time, so I'm not going to listen to the other guy. But what I think happened was I think they saw this as a dual-pronged approach opportunity. It was a way that they could say, not only are we going to completely validate the brainwashing stuff that we do in China domestically, but we'll also be able to portray China as a different entity than you'd see on mainstream media news in America,

is this place that's richer than the U.S. that has high-speed rails and has all of these amazing infrastructure projects that the government does. Wow, at the same time, America is in decline and there's homeless people everywhere in destruction and gun violence and murder and just hyper focus on the positives in China and the negatives in the U.S. And they get the same guys, these CCP Shill YouTubers, they get these guys to do that. So not only are they convincing the domestic populace in China, they're trying to convince, you know, people that are uninformed about the Chinese government in the West. And I think that I saw that kind of shift happen when a lot of these guys started getting huge

on Chinese domestic media with subtitles, started popping up on their videos and stuff in Chinese. And then they shifted over to YouTube to speak English for their kind of like Western side of the audience. And it was very shocking to see because it wasn't just YouTube, it was thousands of accounts on Twitter,

huge posts and articles on, I'm gonna say, ultra left wing media like gray zone and stuff like this. You saw kind of this familiar faces popping up on this. And then at the same time, Chinese state media had a big rebrand. Chinese state media instead of, of being called CCTV, rebranded to something called CGTN, so that now people are going to go and say,

oh, that cute panda video I saw on CGTN, that's just some new news network I've never heard of, right? It's a whole rebrand. And then you see the same guys, the same shill propagandists popping up on state media. Then you see the same content that they're producing, the same propaganda pro-CCP content, popping up on Chinese state media with a watermark that says CGTN,

and then the label below it that says, this is sponsored, you know, wholly or in part by the Chinese, Chinese government, and it just becomes a snowball. It's a massive, huge propaganda effort. And it turns out it's part of a campaign in China called Jiang Hao, Zhonguo, which means like tell a good China story. It was this initiative put on by Xi Jinping, the leadership, to kind of rebrand China, to show that China's not poor, and the only reason that China's gotten to where it is is because of the Communist Party of China's leadership. And that's kind of how I got familiar with this whole timeline of how Chinese propaganda

shifted to be purely domestic for its own people to outward expansion to convince the rest of the world that they've been lied to about China and the comments party is actually good for the country. And it kind of works because I see a lot or I'm part of the information warfare landscape and I can't see around it either, right? Because I'll see comments online like, well, this is wrong. Look at this video. And I'm like, well, that's just the guy who makes up crap all the time. It's the same guy. I don't want to mention their names, but the same shills that you see everywhere. It's like, well, you believe this, but then I'm like, well, is the account that's making this comment also part of this landscape where this is also just like a, we say, umau, so like a paid chill who posts

online and says, everybody, look at this video. Here's a counterpoint when really it's just the propaganda. Right. You don't even know if that's a real person or not. And it's just part of the same information warfare landscape that we're in. A friend of mine, a journalist, he says, China's involved in, essentially creates an information warfare landscape that is so broad. The battlefield is so broad. You can't see that you're on it. That's, I think, a phrase that he may have borrowed, but I'm not sure. I love that, yeah. It's great, because what he means by that is you might want to fact check something as Schill says, so you go to Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is being constantly hammered and edited by these shills as well, different groups of people. So you'll go, well, Wikipedia says this,

and then eventually editors get around to fixing the Wikipedia page and they have to lock it because it's like, who keeps posting that this is the way that this happened? This is not the way this happened. The history books show otherwise, and then they'll constantly try and, and, change things that make it look like Mao didn't murder 20 million people or whatever. And they'll do that everywhere. They'll make a fake news site that just has totally different news. And they'll try and rank it in Google by linking to it. It's just such an outrageous effort that it makes it harder to find the truth,

especially like you said, if you're inexperienced with this, or you don't necessarily know history and you're just trying to do a quick search and a fact check. And it might look like there's a thousand people saying one thing and 10 people or 100 people saying the other thing, and you're like, well, so many more people say this. Meanwhile, those accounts are run by two people and they work in Beijing. Right. There's a couple of really good things you just pointed out that I have personal connections to very recently. Just yesterday on Reddit, my video is posted on a subreddit called Our Documentaries. And as soon as it was posted,

it was getting upvoted like crazy. People were enjoying it. And it was actually about the Russian and China connection between the two countries for the Ukraine invasion. And what happened immediately was comments were popping up talking about all of the typical talking points that the Chinese government uses to discredit me and just flooding the comments section with it. And then immediately what would happen is those posts would get upvoted immediately.

And then I noticed like this really interesting thing is that my experience of Chinese propaganda will say something like, oh, he's a racist because he talks negatively about China. That's like an immediate, you woomau, it's a shill post. It's exactly like the kind of stuff, the cookie cutter stuff,

that's not really going to be, bother you because you've seen it 10 billion times over and over again. What does bother me was when it wasn't just those comments, it was something I realized there was a big shift in the way that the propaganda was coming out. And I realized a lot of these are actually Russian bots, right? Started to make a connection to the fact that I started seeing the same Chinese propagandists appearing on Russian state media. I saw the same type of rhetoric, the same type of conversations between the two. And then I started stumbling across YouTube channels

that were whitewashing the Ukraine invasion that were set up identically to the Chinese channels. They'll start out like this. This foreigner moved to Chongqing, a city in China, and he loves it, and he loves it so much more than his hometown. Next video. This foreign girl moved to Beijing. She loves it more than her hometown.

It's amazing. She loves the food and the culture. And it's like these, like, many kind of harmless propaganda videos about how these foreign people move to China and changed their life, and they love it more than their own country. Then all of a sudden, they'll build an audience with these travel videos. And then, bam, the video will come out about how the Uyghur genocide is completely a lie.

And so the people that have been following these people's travels or they're kind of like organic-looking vlogs abroad in China, all of a sudden get smacked in the face with this propaganda, and they'd be more willing to look into it because they kind of feel a personal connection with these people that have been introduced. And I saw that happen with Russian channels as well. There was these channels that were popping up with this warrenor move to Moscow. He loves his life now.

This foreigner moved to Vladivostok. Now they loved their life more than back home. And then bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, all of a sudden, random scripted video comes out, basically perfect timing for the Ukraine invasion saying, actually the Ukraine invasion is completely justified because NATO was creeping in on Russia. And it's exactly the same kind of stuff you saw. But the reason I said it would disturb me a little more

is I saw that the bot accounts that would come and attack me were much more coercive when the topic changed to Russia. I shouldn't say change, when it included Russia. Because what these comments would say are, hey, bro, and they'd use my name. You know, I defend you all over the internet. I absolutely love everything you do. You're fantastic vlogger. Your content's good.

Anyone reading this, like, he makes really good stuff. But you're completely off the mark here. And I loved your videos when you covered, you know, the stock market crash and China and all this kind of stuff. But this particular topic, you're completely off base. And then they go as to why the Ukraine invasion is justified. And you'll read it. And you'll say, interesting, that comment was uploaded upvoted a ton.

people think it's organic. It sounds like a well-intentioned criticism. Like that's how I would tell you, well, I would text you, but if I were telling an online influencer that I didn't know that they were wrong about something, that's exactly what I would do. Hey, I love your work.

Your stuff is great. I love this, this, this, and this, but I just take issue with this one thing. So it sounds more credible than you're an a-hole, look at you, your ugly face is making me sick, barf emoji, right? Which is what a lot of comments are. You white monkey pig.

Right. That stuff. That's your typical like China Troll. Right. You white monkey pig, slave monkey. They use all this horrible, horrible language. But it's kind of like something you can just discount. Sure. This pierces the heart. It pierces the soul because you're reading it and you're like,

you know, like I want to take this as legitimate criticism, but then you look into it and you say, wait a minute, I didn't cover the stock market crash. Yeah. I didn't cover all these things that they're actually topics that might have been popular at some time about China, but I didn't cover those things. Right. So they've gone into my channel, figured out my name. They kind of say, oh, he talks about China, lists off a bunch of cookie cutter topics that someone

would talk about and realize, Wow, and then you go to their post history. They're on, you know, Russian subredits. They're on tankie subredits, pro-authoritarian subredits. What's a tankie? A tankie is somebody that supports authoritarianism. So it's not just communism. It's somebody that supports Saddam Hussein,

someone that supports Xi Jinping, someone that supports Putin. They like huge state-controlled entities, right? Typically, they're communist apologists, but it can really include anything because Russia is not currently communist, right? It's an authoritarian state. But they'll be pro-Russia,

pro-Kremlin, pro-Beging. And they'll go out there and they'll actually act on behalf of these countries' governments to go and defend them. So you can have paid ones, you can have Ba' accounts, you can have people that do it

because they're just trying to be edge lords on the internet and they think it's really cool. But to get back to that, when I was reading these, I was like, wow, looking at Chinese propaganda versus Russian propaganda,

there's so many similarities. But when you get to the nitty-gritty of it, the Russian propaganda is so much more coercive and so much more well-thought out. And I noticed it also when family members were sending me articles. I would get articles all the time coming from Chinese state media where people are duped. They're like, hey, well, you said that the concentration camps were here and they had satellite

proof and you've talked to Uyghurs and their families. For example, I know this Uyghur woman, her home was just demolished on camera to punish them, right, for leaving Xinjiang and talking about the CCP. I know I have personal evidence of all this kind of stuff, but then people will reach out and say, hey, but I saw this thing over here on Chinese media. What it will be is it'll be a CGTN or a state media video, but it's been uploaded on a different channel without a watermark. So then they get kind of tricked. They think it's just some vlogger in England or something talking about this.

It's like laundering the provenance of where this thing is from. Like instead of putting up a news video and saying this is news, this is Chinese state media, they might post the vlogger on Chinese state media. But then they'll take that same video and they'll post it somewhere else. And it looks like, I'm just Angela hanging out in Beijing. And look, I'm in Xinjiang. I'm dancing. They have great food here. It's awesome.

And they're not saying, I got paid to go on this trip, and this video is completely manufactured nonsense. And I'm not allowed to go anywhere without this tour guide that's behind me, and we're only going to the same place that everybody else is going in this place in Xinjiang. That's exactly spot on.

We call these amplifier channels, because what they do is they amplify state media without having to get labeled with that tag. And something I'm very upset with Google about is they won't add the state-sponsored tag below any video that you see from a government-run news channel. So CGTN says sponsored by the Chinese government. RT said sponsored by the Russian government.

I want to see these amplifier channels that have the exact same content with that label. I'm not out there to cancel anyone. I don't even care if a government is set up a billion dollar enterprise to pump propaganda out there. But it should be labeled as such, right? And that's something that I just, I noticed Twitter's very good at it. And I just think that YouTube really needs to stop telling everyone when they're approached by the New York Times and other entities that say, like, oh, we didn't notice any, like, kind of coordinated effort from Beijing, because that's absolutely lies.

I mean, it's the exact same content on these amplifier channels. But to cut back to the Russia thing, when people send me China stuff, I'm very well versed in it. I know exactly what this is. But when family members were sending me stuff to counter some of my positions on the Ukraine invasion, in that I'm against invasion period, as to why it was justified, I was like, why are my random family members in Ohio sending me articles that reek of Russian property? But these articles look like some sort of Facebook blog post with like an American flag and like I don't know like maybe You know some gun lover type people would be reading it. You know Patriots are us or something

The Ohio Patriot, but there's no such newspaper. It's just a blog and there's three articles on it and one of them is this the other two are about how great Yeah some other program is or like how the Russian space agency is going to overtake NASA in five years. Yes. That's exactly So you know what I'm talking about you. I see all of it and people send it to me too. Yeah, I just haven't got a show about it Yeah, sure. So this is what blindsided me was that I didn't expect to see some sort of very patriotic-looking website with some random old man talking about why Russia is actually not bad and why Putin deserves to do this and how Ukraine is full of Nazis and all this kind of stuff. I didn't expect that.

I just did not expect to see that because I'm so used to being able to decipher Chinese propaganda. So this, again, if I had to judge them, if I had to base them off each other, I think a Chinese propaganda does definitely coerced lots and lots of people. But I think Russian propaganda is more targeted at a specific audience, like a certain age demographic, the type of people that are perusing around on Facebook and more willing to share random articles that kind of play into their interests or their preconceived notions. And it's something that I see now, the most important thing is linking together with the Chinese narrative because I don't know if, you know, your listeners know this, but in 2015, China and Russia signed an agreement that basically says they're not going to speak badly about each other on the internet. They're not going to allow each other to do that. And that was something that really surprised a lot of people because China and Russia are not, despite what propaganda tells you, are not allies and they're not really connected in a whole lot of ways other than economically. I mean, China had a brief war with the Soviet Union.

China was paranoid that they were going to nuke each other. China supported Cambodia while the USSR supported Vietnam. They were not allies. Just because they're communists, I think a lot of people have this fantasy that communist governments or whatever link up in some ways that's true. but China and Russia have always been paranoid of each other. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, LaWai 86. We'll be right back.

Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers does help keep us going. All those codes and URLs and complicated referral things, we put them all in one place. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. That page should work well on your phone. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Lauai 86.

Maybe if they weren't authoritarian regimes, they would have. Right. Like democracies tend to link up, but also if one is a fake democracy that has fake elections and it's just they're not going to be a great ally of the United States. Not that we're always hooked up with the right people, but that's another show. You won't get too much into that. Anyway, long story short, the whole thing about this is that I saw this agreement come out in 2015 and that's when it became more of a real thing, like fairweather friends, but like not just

economically anymore. Now this is actually writing into doctrine and law that you can't kind of discredit each other because we're going to go into this new world where the rest of the world is going to say enough of this kind of authoritarian garbage. And Russia looked at China's model and said, you guys are so good at censorship and almost creating an intranet where everything goes through the censorship board. Everybody's ideas tied to everything that they post online. Their control is the envy of probably of a lot of countries to be.

be honest, even including the U.S. But when you look at it, Russia and China, when they made this agreement, it became not just, oh, we're going to trade wheat and oil together. It was like, it was a creepy partnership that you didn't want to see. Yeah, we're going to project soft power and not interfere with one another doing that. Yeah, and that's not good. So fast forward to now, I've seen them fully link up. I mean, China, there was leaked documents that said that China was officially going to take a pro-Russian narrative in the media and online. And that pro-Ukrainian or sympathetic post to Ukraine would be deleted and would be censored and would be technically illegal. You now see China that's blocking broadcasts of soccer games because people are sympathetic

to Ukraine in those soccer games. But officially, China's going out there and telling people that we have not taken a stance. We stay out of country's internal affairs when in reality they've put their full support behind Putin completely. And officially, that's where it gets really scary and messy is because the propaganda out there is portraying China as the reasonable one. I've actually seen a shift in what the pro-China shill account. So I'm talking about the YouTubers that are promoting the Chinese government

go from a silence to a, yeah, China is not really involved, but Russia's not wrong in doing this. To, okay, yeah, like Russia and China need to stand up to the big bad US and NATO, and it's their fault. To now, oh, actually China didn't take a stance. They didn't choose Ukraine or Russia. They're both celebrating their relationships apart from each. other. They're both completely diplomatically aligned with Ukraine and Russia equally, because we don't

get involved, right? And they've gone through this huge shift to make China look like a moderator, a mediator, I should say, in this whole affair, when in fact, what they're doing is bolstering and helping Russia in this conflict. And actually, we're privy to it before it happened. I mean, we know the documents have come out that China asked Russia to wait until after the Beijing Olympics to invade Ukraine. That wasn't surprising. I think I might have said on this show, they're going to do it after the Olympic. Everybody said, oh, do you think they're going to going to invade. I said 100% sure they're going to invade and also they're going to do it after the Olympics because there's a ceasefire during the Olympics. And also if your ally orchestrates a massive

propaganda event, which the Olympics always are, right? It's always like, look at how great our country. It's the last thing you want is the international news cycle being like, except look at this other thing that's happening that's way more important and negative. That's always going to take the attention. So it was almost like, hey, don't announce your pregnancy at my wedding. It's going to take attention away from me. And that's unfortunately a great analogy for what happened with the Olympics and this invasion. That's great, actually. Yeah, that's perfect. So, I mean, to sum it up, what I want to get across to people is that I want people to be hyper aware of the amount of propaganda coming at them. It's not lip service. It's not like, oh, be careful. You might see a pro-Russia website or something.

Be very careful because it's constantly evolving and changing. And its goal is to make you either take one side, but more likely completely apathetic to the situation. because what Russia and China's goal for this, a lot of this propaganda, is to confuse you so much to say, oh, all that fake news over in the West, they have fake news too, whatever, just forget about it. I can't trust anything these days. You've seen that happen with a lot of people. They discredit journalists and proper journalism just because, oh, mainstream media always has some sort of bias. I don't listen to that anymore, you know. Exactly. And that's super dangerous in this time period. And I think I don't want to see a genocidal regime like Beijing right now under Xi Jinping get away with completely changing people's perception to be apathetic to very real and serious problems that China's going through. Yeah, I think a lot of people will go, why do you hate Chinese people? One, I married one, so, you know, Trump card. But also, this is one of the most pro-China things you can do is sort of be anti-authoritarian because, and I said this about Russians a few weeks ago on the show, Russia has some of the most talented, hardworking, intelligent, just inventive

people that have ever existed on planet earth, they've just had their potential mercilessly stamped out for literally the entirety of the last several centuries, right? From the Tsar to the Soviet Union to now through Putin, they just, that's why when you see these Russians that have immigrated, for example, to the United States, some of this is biased because I live in Silicon Valley, but they all are brilliant and work at Google. And like, same with Belarus. Like our neighbors are all from this area and they're all just incredible folks. Yeah. Talented stock. And I used to live, I spent a summer in Ukraine and it was the same thing. I was just always blown away by how educated and amazing people were.

And same thing with China. You know, everybody that you meet from there, aside from government authorities and people who have just been sort of sucking on the teed of the CCP and are given those jobs because of corruption, those people are incredible. And of course, what happens? You have to kiss up to the party. You lose opportunities to get a job or an education because somebody else is related to somebody, and so you miss out.

These regimes have got to go because corruption is straight up inefficient. It's not just unfair. It's inefficient. It's like an externality, to use an economics term, like organized crime. People go, oh, it's awesome. It's only awesome if you are the recipient of this. Every single other person is bearing the cost. And that is a problem when you're talking about 1.3 billion people who are on an economic

upswing in spite of Xi Jinping, I might add, you know, in many ways. And we want to see countries like China and Russia, for that matter, join the global economy and do really well. We just want to see them do that without. threatening to freaking nuke Europe so that they can have a larger backyard yeah you've said it perfectly and again i would like to just for people not familiar with me the reason i do what i do is because of the thousands of chinese people that have reached out to me personally that cannot talk about this i hate to make comparisons here because they're both in horrible situations but when

you see the thousands of russian protesters go out there on the street to protest the war and a lot of them what eight thousand something at this point getting arrested you couldn't even see that in china you couldn't even see a hundred right in china if something something like this was to happen. And it's not because people don't care. It's because the people that reach out to me personally have inspired me to speak about the atrocities of the Chinese government because they can't do it. They can't do it online.

They can barely do it in private at this point without something leaking out there. And the punishments in China are much worse than Russia. It's basically at this point, a good analogy I can use is like North Korea with money. It has the tech. It has the buses. It has the high speed rails. It has all the bells and whistles to make it not look like some sort of Stalinist dystopia, but the reality is the way that the government works, it is a Stalinist dystopia,

the way the surveillance of state works, the way the cameras track you everywhere, the way your social status is determined by your party connections. All of that stuff is very reminiscent to North Korea. When I have people reach out to me and send me email saying, please keep doing what you're doing, we don't have a voice. And when I meet people at protests here in America, when I go to anti-Asian hate protests and talk to people about how, you know, they tell me the biggest form of Asian hate in the entire world is the Chinese government

that have made me and my family flee over here. We didn't want to leave. I didn't want to leave. People have to flee to avoid persecution for just even, not even just religious freedoms, just basic personal freedoms, like freedom of speech. So that's what keeps me going. That's why I'm inspired to do what I can.

And that's why I'm a little bit, I'm usually an optimist, but I'm a little bit concerned about this fair weather friend kind of partnership that Russia and China have formed with their governments right now. Well, I really thank you for coming on. I want to talk a little bit about some of the things you do, because you mentioned you had to leave.

Well, one of the stories that people should definitely check out is there's a lot of kind of crazy, interesting videos about how China changes Hollywood movies to have different endings or take one of the examples that everyone's probably heard is taking the Taiwan patch off of Tom Cruise's jacket and top gun. Silly things like that? Or, hey, what happened to Pung Shwa, the tennis player who accused a CCP official of sexual assault and then vanished? You know, why Jack Ma, the billionaire? entrepreneur vanished and then came back and now his stuff's being dismantled. There's just a lot

of really interesting inside looks, detailed looks at China, and your channels will be linked in the show notes. One is called Lau-Y-86, L-A-O-W-H-Y-8-6, but also your podcast where you guys really go in depth. Tell us a little bit about that as well, because I do catch that pretty much every week because I'm a huge nerd. Oh, thanks. And I listen to your show every week as well. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, no worries. ADV podcast is where we cover Chinese current events. So basically on my personal channel, I'll go into something in extreme depth, but it's one topic. But with ADV podcasts, we'll take the news cycle not only from Western news about China, but from Chinese news.

We translate stuff. We talk to Chinese people who feed us information and stuff about what's happening on the ground in China. And we really go into developing stories as well. So I highly recommend you guys check out ADV podcasts, especially these last two episodes we did, were primarily about Russian and China propaganda and how they've linked up. with this whole situation. And how it's personally affecting us, I think it's a good litmus for people to see

how things are going to progress. We're kind of the canary in the coal line, so speak. Yeah, no kidding. So, yeah, I appreciate you guys checking that out. I've got some thoughts on this episode. But before I get into that, here's what you should check out next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Pakistan was just one of the many bad things that happened to me in my life. I've had so many things happen and I just learned to get over it. You know, you get knocked down six times. You get up seven. And that's the only way I've ever known how to live. When I got out of the cab with the suitcases to leave Pakistan, the guy who was there,

was like, next time you come back, we'll show you around, we'll hook you up with some girls, you'll have a great time, and I'm humoring this guy. I'm like, yeah, sure, next time I come back. I know for a fact, I'm never coming back to Pakistan. Country sucks. That fucking country sucks. And I'm good at finding, like, good things that are everywhere. So it's early in the morning, and I go into international departures,

and this long line curving around the corner. I'm waiting in line, and the line goes all the way up this wall to where there's customs tables. And when the customs officer sees me and flags me because I'm about six inches taller than everyone And I get brought to another room Finally, the guy who asked me if there was narcotics In my suitcase comes in And he's holding these two sandwich sealed things

And his exact words to me is What is this? And I said, I don't fucking know what it is. Yeah, sure. He says, this is all for him. I said, why are you showing me this? Because it came out of your suitcase felt like such a fucking idiot

Yeah, because I thought that the DEA was going to hook me up, you know, because they were going to see that I'm innocent. I truly thought those guys are going to be there to help me now. Because I wasn't guilty, so this shit doesn't happen to innocent people. Three years of my life for a crime I didn't know I was being used to commit. To hear the rest of one of the most harrowing stories I've ever heard in my time doing this podcast, check out episode 147 with Eric A'Day here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Wow, so this was supposed to be like a Sunday phone call that turned into a podcast that

then turned into a two-part podcast. So I guess the moral of the story is, when you get an interesting dude like Lao Yi in a room with me virtually or otherwise, you end up with a long-ass conversation. I highly recommend if you're interested in China to check out Lao Yi-86 on YouTube. He's got a bunch of channels, really interesting videos from somebody who spent a lot of time in the country, speaks the language fluently, much better than the surface-level journalism we see in a lot of mainstream media. Even the New York Times and Al Jazeera ended up covering what essentially were smoking gun documents that Lao Wei had that we were talking about a long time ago

that show that the Chinese Communist Party pays influencers to spread blatantly false propaganda on YouTube and elsewhere about COVID, about China, about the Uyghur genocide. There's a lot of kind of really disgusting stuff that goes on behind the scenes. And you might say, well, every country does that, but I think this is a little bit different.

And Tom Wright, episode 602 of this show, he wrote Billion Dollar Whale. We talked about Joe Lowe and the embezzlement and everything. He did a piece on this with Lai after I introduced them, which is pretty cool. So it's kind of nice to see these worlds meld together. We're going to link to some of those articles and videos in the show notes as well. Big thank you to Lai.

Links to all things, Lai 86. We'll be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. If you buy books from our guests, please use our links that helps support the show. Transcripts in the show notes. Videos are on YouTube. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, all those weird, confusing URLs and promo codes you hear during the show during the ads.

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basically getting a front row seat to the chaos. One episode is about Scott getting locked up in a foreign jail for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, Scott. Another is Sue's parachute failing. Wow, I'm surprised she was around to tell that story. And then there's Michael who was stabbed on a bus, which makes your commute instantly feel a little bit more relaxing. Do you think? So if you want to hear some wild and inspiring firsthand stories, I invite you to check out what was that like. Every story is verified. Their site even has photos so you know even the most bizarre stuff you're hearing is somebody's real life. Listen to what was that like on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever app you're using right now. This episode is sponsored in part by

Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something

you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.