Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Ryan Estrada | The Christian Reeve Podcast #218

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Ryan Estrada | The Christian Reeve Podcast #218 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian read
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  podcast. Today's guest is returning guest
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  from last episode. It's been literally a day.
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  His name is Ryan Estrada, he is an artist author and adventurer,
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  welcome back, thanks for having me.
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  I'm going to talk about something other than how dumb I
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  am. And be nice change of pace,
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  although most of my stories are still going to be on that thing.
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  I didn't really take it like that.
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  I mean, I know where you're coming from on that, but I feel
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  like a lot of the time with near-death experiences, it's
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  like, it's either really bad luck or I suppose one could
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  argue like, you know, you make the wrong decision, sometimes
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  you end up in these scenarios, but it's like, I don't know.
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  I always think you're beholden to the choices in front of you.
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  You know I'm saying. Like not every situation is
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  always like something you can control or maybe you just that's
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  the best available choice. You have like a The example, the
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  story you gave of when you're in Africa and you nearly got Ian
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  it's like well, okay, fair enough, maybe you didn't have to
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  wonder out as far but then again if you get lost get lost I mean
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  it's what you do. Don't mean.
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  Well I mean I also like those experiences like made me better
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  at getting those situation because later on I went to
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  Mexico and another one is things right in Nora's going out to
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  change buses and Juarez things called and then like I didn't
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  research what Juarez was and then let later I Much like
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  sicario about like out terrifying.
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  It is for like armed soldiers to go in like and then someone
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  tried to mug me because I'm just walking around like 5 a.m.
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  I'd like an hour kill to let my boss and then someone came up
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  and tried to mug me and I'm like I've been through enough
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  situations, I can survive this one.
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  So I just pretend like I didn't understand Spanish and he's
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  like, getting really frustrated with me and then he he didn't
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  have a weapon, but he threatened to karate chop me.
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  And then he's like, You money. No.
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  Me to talk with them and I'm just like pretending to
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  understand, like, oh you study karate.
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  That's cool. I went, I was in Korea.
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  I studied take one. Don't I didn't.
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  And I just kept talking and talking pretending.
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  He's my best friend and we talked for like 20 minutes until
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  we got like the market started opening I'm like, hey, they're
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  opening, I'm going to go edit, or do you want to quit or do
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  with me just walked away? Wow, I just pretended like we
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  were best friends and I was too. dumb to figure out, he's trying
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  to mug me and he's like, It's because an idiot didn't bug me
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  to judge as tedious and you went scared the whole time.
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  I mean you said that you wanted so you understood Spanish.
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  So you knew exactly what this guy was saying to.
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  You exactly is thing. You know, he didn't have a
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  weapon and he's also like a foot shorter than me.
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  You have to get home to beat those two karate-chop me in the
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  neck, but like, I'm just like, whatever.
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  Let's do it happens. I can, I can just wait a mo.
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  He's, I just love how blase you about it.
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  Like I was talking to my house with about about yourself
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  yesterday and just kind of how calm you remain in these
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  situations and it just it just blew my mind because it's just
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  like I know in those situations I'd be freaking out.
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  I try my best but I'd freak the fuck out, man.
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  I don't know how you do it. My brain is broken.
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  For it's just, it's got something that we haven't got
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  like Jeremy, the average person's.
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  I mean, I don't know, a lot of people talk about that as a
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  strength being able to remain calm in the face of adversity.
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  You know, I'd like to talk a bit about how you came to South
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  Korea. I know you touched on that a
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  little bit yesterday, but I wanted to kind of delve into
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  this and also sort of delve into South Korean life in general,
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  because I find it somewhat interesting country, so talk us
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  through the story behind you, moving to South Ariya.
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  No, I never planned on traveling at all, like my whole thing when
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  I was young, as I'm going to move to California and work for
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  Disney because that's what literally everyone said you're
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  supposed to do. If you're an artist even though
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  I grew up making Comics. I'm like, you know, that
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  everyone only knows one one job that Crystal, but you got to
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  move to work for Disney, got to move to work for Disney.
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  So I tried do that. Well, with the animation School
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  in the year, I graduated was the year the entire animation
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  industry got laid off and they were literally no jobs
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  whatsoever. And so I'm on it's a messenger
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  complaining about it to a The G and she's like, well did you
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  hear about this thing in Korea where they're so desperate for
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  teachers at the buy you a plane ticket and apartment while you
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  out there and I'm like no but I'm going to do it and then had
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  a job an hour later moved there and I just really liked, I
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  really like that. I realize I love traveling and
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  and I can see them working the internet so I can go wherever I
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  want. And yeah I just I just kept
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  going from there are a couple of things that When the whole egg
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  Industries laid off, like what your first kind of thoughts when
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  this happens though, because I mean you've spent a long time,
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  studying this, you know you got a big commitment in your life
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  and you find out. Maybe this is pointless at this
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  point. Yeah.
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  Yeah. I mean also like halfway through
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  studying in Houston, I realize I don't, I should like animating.
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  It's a grueling process. If you have a creative thought,
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  maybe, you know, it'll take like five years and team 100 people
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  to make a reality but also in the It'll take you like 40 years
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  of grunt work before you're allowed to have a creative
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  thought and I'm like you know I guess it was kind of a relief
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  that like I realized I didn't want anybody to do that.
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  I love making comics and so like when I was able to just travel
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  overseas and make comics, I realized that I really kind of
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  like that experience. Like actually the that was the
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  first time I went to Korea. To teach.
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  And then I decided I want to keep traveling the world.
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  I wanted to go anywhere but Korea because I'd already been
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  there. I wanted to go all these places
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  but then I got offered a job that I couldn't refuse someone
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  wanted me to develop English books for them and people like
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  the head of their Department developed the books, higher, the
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  illustrators. I wanted I could hire myself and
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  get double paid and they're going to pay me like 4,000 bucks
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  a month. Give me an apartment and I'm
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  like, I guess I got to do it and they're like, yeah, but you have
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  To be here on Monday. And I'm like, it's Saturday and
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  it's like a 40 hour flight and they're like, you could get on a
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  flight right now. So I'd like borrow money to get
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  there and I flew to like paju book city, which is like where
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  the whole publishing industry is.
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  And I go into the top of this giant glass high-rise sit down
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  and I'm like, hi. I'm Ryan, I'm here for the job
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  and they say 6:00 a.m. Monday morning and they're like,
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  okay, please. Sit in this chair until 6 p.m.
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  and I'm like what? And they made me sit in a chair
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  in the office for 12 hours. What point at which point
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  nothing happened. And they made me wait for
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  another two hours when I didn't offer you like some coffee or
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  some shit like just won't just kind of closed the door and then
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  at 8 p.m. the guy I talked to walks in the room like to turn
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  the light off of the jacket over shoulders.
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  Oh yeah, you're here. Um I asked around no one knows
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  who hired you and we're not really hiring so you got to
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  leave. Oh my God.
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  And so I'm like what do you mean no matter how your music?
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  Yeah. I said I'd be here.
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  Monday is like who and I told him he's like he doesn't work
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  here anymore. You gotta get out of here.
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  We can see fire do something and then you just yeah well I went
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  out and I called the agent that it set up the job I'm freaking
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  out and he's like, don't worry, I found the guy and I'm like,
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  what do you mean you found them? He's like misunderstanding, he's
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  at a different company. Now, I'll take you there
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  tomorrow. And so then we went from like
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  the glass high rise to, we went to a darkened alley, full of
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  garbage that with, at the end of which there was a rusted metal
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  door behind which, there was like a spiral metal staircase
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  with missing steps at the bottom of which there was a tiny
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  sweatshops printing printing Chinese takeout menus at the
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  back of, which was another Closet in which was the offices
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  of day bombs in the guy who hired means name is Jae beom.
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  And he looked exactly like Kim Jong-il.
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  You had like the dark glasses in his dark closet and this
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  comically long cigarette. He's just sitting in his chair,
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  his like to leather chairs in his closet and it's a closet.
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  So like they're this far apart. So I have to sit on a leather
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  chairs in like our legs are touching like his legs are slit
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  in between mind like a little sandwich and we're just staring
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  at each other and he and the agent.
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  I'm talking in Korean for like hours and I'm like, what's he
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  saying? He's like, I don't worry about
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  it. And I'm like, what if I got
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  myself into and he's like, yeah, this guy doesn't speak English.
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  We got to wait for his translator.
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  I'm like, why don't you translate?
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  He's like he won't let me but you mean, really?
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  Yeah, and that's all for our agents like well, I don't know
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  what's going on. I gotta go.
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  You can handle this, right? And then he walks out, close the
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  door Jay bomb goes. Now we can talk.
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  It's secret English and he goes, I did not really move to a new
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  publishing company. I was fired but I do not accept
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  that. I'm going to do a Publishing
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  Company coup and I'm going to take over the company that fired
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  me and you're going to help me. And as soon as I'm the head of
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  the company that fired me then I can pay you.
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  And so he's a crazy person. Yeah, but tricked me into moving
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  to Korea so I ended up stuck back there.
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  But but, you know, I now did not have enough because I had to
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  borrow money just to get the ticket to get there.
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  They're supposed to reimburse me and I'm not being reimbursed and
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  so I'm like, I guess I'm stuck in Korea another year.
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  So that's why I stuck around longer.
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  But when I was there, I might, my friendships are became
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  closer. And I kind of, I went to a lot
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  of other places, but I always came back to Korea because I
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  loved I loved it there. Okay.
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  And when this happened, when this sinking realization is
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  settling in. What's going through your mind?
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  What are your next steps? You know, moving forward?
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  Because I mean, the got the guys tricked you he's clearly, you
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  know, this this is not a genuine thing as you say you're now
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  stuck there. What do you do?
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  Well, again, my mind thinks about narrative not about my
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  danger. So I'm like, his name is Jay
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  bomb. That's perfect.
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  That's a good little will note. Story.
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  Huh? I'm thinking about like
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  remembering the blender chairs. I'm like, gotta remember this
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  leg sandwich thing? That's going to make the story
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  interesting, but then I walk out when I leave and they're like,
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  where are you going? I'm like, I gotta, I gotta go.
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  He's like, it's not time for you to go yet and I'm like, I think
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  I think it is. Yeah, Ron, you'll actually have
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  a second. It's not time for you to leave
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  yet. Like yeah.
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  That's kind of a scary thing to say to someone.
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  Yeah. I leave when I want pal.
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  Would you be like he's like he's like you got a 9:00 to 5:00 job.
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  That's not actually did wait until 5:00.
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  I was there until 5:00 he'd be a great.
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  Anything with others? I mean other stuff is going on.
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  Like I'm getting little bits pieces story but eventually a
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  5:00 to, like we're not done talking yet.
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  I'm against its 5:00. You said 5:00 like, yeah, but we
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  have more to talk about nothing Gods.
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  It's 5:00. I gotta go, man.
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  Isn't it time for you to go? You know, I gotta go and I ring
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  it ran. And after that, I'm just like,
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  what do Do not want it, but I knew I had such close friends,
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  friends. They're like, I, why don't I
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  just go back to teaching a little bit, make some money.
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  So, you know, I'll make small with you because you'd been, I
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  understand you've been there before.
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  So you could like build upon that and then, yeah, right.
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  I got ya. Yeah, the first trip I went
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  there as a teacher. No sign of the second trip that
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  that this all went down. If it happened in a new country
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  from turbine find that almost happened once I had Had later.
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  I was offered a job in China and they want to give it the head of
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  their animation program at University.
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  And again, it was going to be huge, pay, housing, airfare all
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  of that. And then like the day before,
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  like I have to go, and I'm about to go to bed to get up in the
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  morning, get on the flight. And they called me up there,
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  like, hey, just wanted to check in.
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  We're really excited to see you tomorrow.
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  I'm gonna be the one picking you up look for me at the airport,
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  but Allah, A couple changes. And I'm like, yeah, they're like
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  well you're not going to be the head of the department anymore.
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  You're going to be a teacher. I'm like, oh really.
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  Okay. And like in, you're not teaching
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  animation where you're teaching English.
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  I'm like, oh really, and they're like, and it's not at the
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  University more, that a private Academy.
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  I'm like, okay is not really the job I signed up for and they're
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  like, it's not really one Academy.
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  It's like six academies. You have there's a one class at
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  one, one class together. They're on different sides of
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  the city and we don't Provide transportation but it's only
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  like an hour on the bus for each one.
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  And I'm like, what? And they're like, also, it's not
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  4,000 bucks a month anymore. It's 1,000.
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  Oh, and also we don't provide housing anymore.
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  You can sleep on my couch the first night, but after that you
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  figure something out. Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow at
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  the airport and I'm like no and they're like what do you mean?
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  I'm like I'm not getting on the plane like we already paid for
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  the flight you promise to come like this is a whole different
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  deal. Housing is more than a thousand
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  dollars, I'm good. In there.
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  And she was really angry at me and I but I'm so glad she told
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  me that before I got on the airplane.
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  Yeah, you can imagine, I mean, showed up it's the classic thing
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  as well as like I know you said he spread out that.
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  It's not what I signed up for. But like, I mean how do you sign
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  the contract prior to that? Just out of curiosity?
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  Um, I don't recall. This is like we even if you had
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  it's like so much has changed that like, that's just the funk
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  to this point. Like it's crazy.
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  Breach of contract. At this stage, it's like, like,
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  but like also, if I showed up for the first day in China and
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  find out that contract has changed like, do I know how to
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  legally take action like no? See the thing is, I've been in
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  night somewhat similar situations before and one thing
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  that always confuses me, is that irritation from the other
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  person? Like the angler?
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  Well, what do you mean? And it's that, but you've
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  changed the goalposts. It's like it's totally, this is
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  not the same thing. It's like, how can you get
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  annoyed at me when I'm like, no? Like I mean I almost feel like
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  turn around to the person and being like, would you sign up
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  for that? No, of course not.
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  No one would. So like, why are you getting rid
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  of it? I don't get that, man.
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  I don't care of that. Let's talk a bit more about your
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  time in, in South Korea, walk us through some of the best things
• 15:22
  about South Korea in comparison to life in America.
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  Well, I mean Korea, love living in Korea, has just
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  infrastructure is set up so well, everything you need is
• 15:32
  everywhere. I love transportation and career
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  just being able to get around. Like, I can walk out of my door
• 15:39
  anywhere. I want to go in the country.
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  There's a cheap Transportation leaving immediately.
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  I get anywhere in the city and lichen on our for like, two
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  bucks less than two bucks. I think anywhere in the country
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  and like less than four hours like 30 bucks, it's amazing.
• 15:54
  I can I can ride my bike to the opposite side of the country.
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  Once rode my bike, the soul, their entire Trail, you never
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  see a car. Like they, it's all along
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  rivers, through forests and stuff.
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  And, at the end, they give you a medal like, at anything.
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  Like, I remember bringing my wife here to Michigan where I am
• 16:14
  now and telling her, we need to find the car.
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  She's like, oh, we can just take a bath.
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  I'm like, well, there's no bus. She's a queen, there's no bus.
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  I'm like, there's no boss and she's like, well what do you do?
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  If you don't have a car, I'm like, you just, don't leave your
• 16:25
  house. That's how Michigan Works.
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  Yes. Yeah.
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  That's right. Yeah.
• 16:29
  Some places. I just lied in the state.
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  So yeah. You have to have a car.
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  You can't get nowhere and so yeah.
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  Lovely know like the supermarket is literally like every
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  apartment complex has like two supermarkets.
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  If I need something, I walk out the door and get it and just
• 16:45
  like you have the city infrastructure.
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  But then like I can walk across street climb a mountain.
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  Be away from civilization but we got beaches.
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  We got Everything I love looking at it.
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  Like the support of the Arts is amazing, from my apartment
• 17:01
  kuryakin, look out the window, and just just from my apartment,
• 17:04
  I can see there's the global web team Center, where they offer
• 17:08
  like free Studio space to cartoonists.
• 17:12
  There's a place where they around like free equipment
• 17:17
  checkout, free equipment to filmmakers and get cameras and
• 17:20
  get move. Mike's, you can green screens,
• 17:22
  you can check out like a warehouse size.
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  Green screen room for free. You can Got a theater to
• 17:27
  Premiere your film, their spaces for YouTubers, there's spaces
• 17:31
  for, like, editing days for audio.
• 17:33
  There's sound Studios you can use for free from musicians and
• 17:37
  just like anything you need Korea, supplies it.
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  So, like, I just love living there, we need to move to Korea,
• 17:44
  man. What that insides, amazing.
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  All right, but there's always something bad.
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  Well, the worst things about South Korea, come on.
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  It's the dirt. I don't know.
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  I've been so spoiled in Korea. Like, I can't do anything at
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  all. Like about it.
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  I mean, you know, the way you do have like an angry guy with
• 18:06
  nuclear weapons right across the border, but it's weird and
• 18:09
  creepy. Like, nobody talks about it.
• 18:11
  Like a, they people will call me in America, like, oh my God, are
• 18:14
  you okay? I'm like what they're like, the
• 18:16
  North Korea said this. And I'm like, I don't know.
• 18:18
  We don't really talk about, we don't worry about them, we know,
• 18:20
  because in Korea, they like, they, they know that like, he's
• 18:25
  just trying to get On the news like in everything, it was like
• 18:29
  he just said stuff or does stuff to like, get on the news.
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  And so people on created, don't even worry about it.
• 18:38
  I didn't take him. Seriously.
• 18:39
  It's oh, no, not at all. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:41
  But I mean, like, there is like, we do we do have the DMZ the
• 18:44
  border between North and South Korea like there, that little
• 18:49
  like line wearing a North Korean soldier in a South Korean
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  culture, like stare each other down all day and like I visited
• 18:55
  there, And you know, I mean most atmosphere that like it's very
• 19:01
  just very tense. Like you're not allowed to talk
• 19:03
  like you just stayed. They just stare each other down
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  and like any, you know, they're afraid of like anything could
• 19:09
  like. Break like, you know, Decades of
• 19:14
  Peace but technically the war never ended.
• 19:17
  It's still going on. They just stare at each other.
• 19:19
  Instead of fighting, it's a never-ending staring contest.
• 19:26
  Now, basically there was a period where they opened as a
• 19:31
  piece thing they opened up a mountain in North Korea, where
• 19:36
  South Korean tourists, could go climb the mountain and say
• 19:39
  they've been North Korea. In the woods.
• 19:41
  But then one day, a woman stepped off.
• 19:44
  The trail. Take a photo and they shot her,
• 19:48
  because she stepped off the trail.
• 19:49
  Oh my God. They closed that.
• 19:52
  We don't do that anymore. And Weaver back to like, you
• 19:56
  know what? Let's not do this little piece
• 19:58
  thing. Let's just keep our distance.
• 20:01
  Just because something that's interesting about the entrance
• 20:06
  into North Korea thing. From what I'd heard is that
• 20:08
  generally speaking, you can't really get there from South
• 20:11
  Korea. Yeah.
• 20:12
  So you have to go through China way and then there's like a, you
• 20:17
  could get a flight or less like a boat or something, you get
• 20:20
  there and then you sort of, it's actually like smuggle yourself
• 20:23
  on there and then yeah. Yeah.
• 20:26
  South Koreans and Americans are not allowed to go.
• 20:28
  So me and my wife are like out. Other countries can go but you
• 20:32
  have to you fly in from China. And you are with a guy who shows
• 20:37
  you what you're allowed to see, right?
• 20:40
  But I can't do any of that, he's not sure.
• 20:43
  I would want to because I'd be funding things that I didn't
• 20:45
  want to fund to buy doing it just to run it back though.
• 20:48
  You said South Koreans and Americans are not allowed to go.
• 20:51
  Is that like a legal thick like as in.
• 20:53
  So even if you would go through that passage and yeah, just turn
• 20:56
  it like everyone else. They would just refuse anything.
• 20:58
  Yeah. I mean I'm sure there's
• 21:00
  exceptions of Specific reasons that people are allowed in but
• 21:04
  just as a tourist visa. No way.
• 21:06
  It's that. That's why that mountain was
• 21:08
  such a big deal. It was like this peace offering
• 21:10
  that like guess you can come into our country but you can
• 21:13
  only see this mountain and then the guards are just so it's
• 21:17
  drilled into them from birth. Like you follow the rules,
• 21:19
  exactly. No matter what that he's like,
• 21:21
  that lady stuck off the trail. I told her not to do that.
• 21:24
  And yeah, not a great ending. it's just crazy to think that,
• 21:29
  like, Disc this nation. I Korea.
• 21:34
  Is divided in that in that way. And you've got one nation that
• 21:38
  like, from what I've seen in her, I mean, obviously, you can
• 21:40
  correct me if I'm wrong here, but South Korea very much.
• 21:43
  As always kind of being quite futuristic as far as its
• 21:46
  technological capabilities and where it's at and and then
• 21:50
  you've got North Korea, which is by all intents and purposes kind
• 21:53
  of like culturally stuck in the 50s, like they do have access
• 21:59
  to, I believe some sort of intranet, not internet, but like
• 22:04
  some sort of Countrywide, internet thing.
• 22:09
  And then I saw that I saw a really, really good documentary
• 22:14
  on this. I'll just briefly outline this
• 22:17
  because I don't want to deviate too much.
• 22:18
  This is about you, it's not about North Korea, but since
• 22:21
  we're on the topic, there was a really good video on YouTube.
• 22:26
  That's basically explains how North Korea works like as a
• 22:29
  nation. And a lot of it is what you
• 22:32
  mentioned before, Kim Young and We now and again makes a fret
• 22:36
  but it's like cyclical. So every like five years or so,
• 22:40
  he'll make some Frets. He's basically just trying to
• 22:43
  get the UN or whoever to give him money.
• 22:45
  They'll then use that money that they get, because I'll get given
• 22:49
  like a hundred million or something couple of hundred
• 22:51
  million from either the states or China more likely, and then
• 22:56
  they'll use that money and budget that over the next five
• 22:58
  or ten years that in theory is mostly how they survived but
• 23:04
  then the other part of it, Do I find even more interesting is
• 23:07
  that there is a lot of, let's say, illegal trade done in
• 23:13
  Pyongyang. And I think that's how you
• 23:16
  pronounce that correctly camera and people from, you know,
• 23:21
  around the world will go there and trade in Pyongyang and the
• 23:27
  government knows about it and they tolerate it to an extent.
• 23:33
  It's weird because it's like you Hear all these things about how
• 23:37
  supposedly everyone's supposed to have, like, a set amount of
• 23:39
  money, and because it's essentially like a version of
• 23:43
  Communism, I think. But then obviously, everyone is
• 23:48
  is in poverty for the most part. So then people have to find
• 23:52
  whatever way they can to survive and people do have jobs and such
• 23:56
  but obviously the amount of money they have is limited.
• 23:58
  So you get people selling illegal goods and stuff in the
• 24:02
  streets, which are not actually allowed in North Korea.
• 24:04
  But again, The government tolerates.
• 24:06
  It, but every once in a while, they'll just suddenly start
• 24:11
  wearing like, oh we don't tolerate this, we don't tolerate
• 24:13
  this and they'll go on like a kind of like a binge Purge since
• 24:17
  scenario. And then it's back to you to
• 24:19
  know to normal and I was kind of find that interesting like
• 24:24
  animation who says all this stuff that you can't do but then
• 24:27
  they're aware of it. And they know that without that
• 24:33
  trade they can't Continue to function.
• 24:36
  So as what it as much as the government says this stuff to
• 24:39
  its people, like the people and the government, both understand
• 24:44
  that the country can't function without that stuff.
• 24:46
  Yeah well I mean you mentioned like the difference in North and
• 24:49
  South Korea but like when the Border was put in place they
• 24:52
  both basically start at the exact same point example type
• 24:54
  dictators, take over but that's what when we're open book club
• 24:58
  that's like what we were covering is like Korea, South
• 25:01
  Korea, like they stood up and they were able to stop it and
• 25:05
  now Curry has changed so much that it's like this amazing
• 25:08
  democracy would very futuristic every Like, and then North
• 25:12
  Korea. Like they could, they didn't,
• 25:15
  they didn't beat the dictators and the dictator of someone's
• 25:17
  power. They control everything.
• 25:19
  And like, they call again in Korea.
• 25:22
  They South Korea, they called the Democracy, but it wasn't.
• 25:25
  But they would, you know, that's why books about democracy were
• 25:27
  banned because he didn't want people to be, like, wait a
• 25:29
  minute, we don't have that and they call North Korea communist.
• 25:34
  But, you know, there are the Elite and the non-elite and
• 25:37
  there's like different waves of people and they say we're Here I
• 25:41
  figure out what they call. There's some term they use for
• 25:43
  like a certain step of Communism.
• 25:45
  We're leading up to real communism but because of America
• 25:49
  and they're messing with it. Like we have to have this
• 25:51
  different communism or we have the elite in the poor people but
• 25:55
  don't worry, we're working on it.
• 25:56
  And so like that's that's why I like the, you know, I mean the
• 26:01
  the elite get away with whatever they want basically until until
• 26:06
  someone wants a reason to get rid of them, then they look at
• 26:08
  everything they've ever done and sentence them to death, but the
• 26:11
  poor Or like if they're caught with a book, they're not
• 26:13
  supposed to have or they're caught like you know watching a
• 26:16
  foreign movie. They're not allowed to watch
• 26:18
  anything from outside the country.
• 26:20
  I heard that sometimes North Korea will like turn off the
• 26:22
  power. Yep, and then run from door to
• 26:24
  door to see what what Peeps are stuck in the VCR so nobody can
• 26:29
  take them out and, you know, make sure they're not watching
• 26:33
  like Rush Hour 2 or something else to watch.
• 26:36
  As I painted VHS tape, I think they still use VHS Tapes, as
• 26:41
  well in 2023, like, what? It's mad.
• 26:48
  Another question I want to ask you, I know you saw briefly
• 26:50
  touched on it before about how for the most part.
• 26:53
  South Koreans don't really Italy particularly phased about North
• 26:58
  Korea's latest threats and what they're doing and such but I was
• 27:01
  kind of curious because news footage And coverage is always
• 27:07
  different wherever you go, like, naturally American coverage,
• 27:10
  British coverage of those Nations is going to be, it's
• 27:13
  going to be biased. It's going to reflect a certain
• 27:17
  truth that the that particular company wants to put, you know,
• 27:21
  promote some of it might be actual fact but you know, you
• 27:24
  can never really trust it. So, this is a constant.
• 27:26
  This is a problem. We have in the world, in general
• 27:28
  right now is just sources and such, but given that you're
• 27:31
  like, right on the doorstep, I wondered what the kind of news.
• 27:35
  Coverage is like itself career of North Korea.
• 27:37
  Like, do they often discuss it or they did that?
• 27:43
  They have like a unique Insight maybe that other nations don't
• 27:46
  have. But what was that?
• 27:47
  Like mostly ignored. Like I don't hear much about how
• 27:51
  to fight it. Like it's just like, who cares
• 27:54
  about them. They're going to do their thing
• 27:55
  and I got, you know, when something big happens, we'll
• 27:57
  talk about it. But I mean, mostly the, when
• 28:00
  they talk about North Korea news is mostly like making fun of
• 28:04
  their news announcers. And there we Weird, very
• 28:06
  specific Shinobi this on the news.
• 28:08
  Yeah. I mean I I mean, I just from
• 28:11
  what I hear when people talk about it, they all everyone.
• 28:14
  I know is ready to the impression of the, the
• 28:17
  newscasters, where they like, do this very specific, where their
• 28:19
  voice goes up and then it goes down and then their voice goes
• 28:22
  up and then it goes down. And they just, they find North
• 28:24
  Korean news funnier than do scary thing just because of that
• 28:28
  specific thing. But yeah, I mean like the news
• 28:30
  coverage of anything is different where we go.
• 28:32
  One of my favorite things when like her.
• 28:35
  I'm going to lived in Korea. One day.
• 28:38
  My mom called me freaking out, dude.
• 28:39
  Are you okay, re hurting the in the anti-American riots?
• 28:42
  I'm like, what anti-American riots is?
• 28:44
  It was all over the news. The and I'm like, getting the
• 28:47
  candlelight vigil. I was there.
• 28:50
  I had a candle intestine, you know, because some American
• 28:54
  soldiers had like not been paying attention and like drove,
• 28:57
  they were driving a tank, near a military base, in ran over some
• 29:00
  kids and I and I went to the candlelight vigil, but the u.s.
• 29:05
  news Reported it as anti-American Ryan.
• 29:08
  It's like we're all holding candles kids died.
• 29:14
  Pretty bad. That's interesting.
• 29:16
  How these is manipulated like in that way?
• 29:19
  Because that's a completely different story right there.
• 29:22
  Yeah, that's not the same thing Madness.
• 29:27
  What have been your most memorable experiences during
• 29:30
  your time in South Korea? The are one of my favorite
• 29:34
  things have done is there's this farm that my friends, and I
• 29:38
  would go visit a lot, my one of our friends, her mother had this
• 29:41
  farm that the family had for, you know, many, many
• 29:45
  generations. And it's this little persimmon
• 29:48
  Orchard village with like four houses.
• 29:50
  Literally four people live there and We would go there on solo,
• 29:57
  which is the first full moon of the year and they had their
• 30:00
  their own traditions. And basically, every year we
• 30:04
  would go there to ghost bust. We be Ghostbusters.
• 30:08
  I wanted to ask you about this? Yeah, go on basically.
• 30:14
  They have a thing every year. On the first full moon, you have
• 30:16
  to like the ghosts, like, build up over the winter, and their
• 30:20
  lies and come in from the cold and they like to hide places,
• 30:23
  you got to spook them. I'm out.
• 30:24
  So they give us all like the traditional drums and gongs and
• 30:27
  things that we March and we play we got to stand and every
• 30:30
  doorway like go to the Outhouse and playing music.
• 30:33
  Go to the shed, go to the barn, go to the house, go to all the
• 30:36
  bedrooms and just play this really loud music until you
• 30:41
  scare them away. And like I don't know how to
• 30:42
  play this instrument sound of the song.
• 30:43
  So I always like trying to play the Ghostbusters theme song to
• 30:47
  with with these instruments and sing it like you know, a little
• 30:50
  mix of the two countries, Ghostbuster things and then And
• 30:54
  then after that, you go trick-or-treating for like your
• 30:57
  food. Like, every house makes one of
• 30:59
  the dishes, you bring a bowl and let's let it gives you rice.
• 31:02
  This lady gives me soup and then you all come together and and
• 31:07
  celebrate, your ghost free house.
• 31:09
  And that I did that for several years always bring like a new
• 31:12
  batch of foreigners very confused.
• 31:14
  People that like, we're doing what we're ghostbusting.
• 31:16
  I'm like, yeah, let's go. Let's go bust some clothes and
• 31:20
  like being able to introduce people to that was always great.
• 31:23
  There any unique, Traditions surrounding the like a Give an
• 31:26
  example that when I lived in Estonia.
• 31:28
  I remember that to cleanse, the house you would pour salt around
• 31:33
  the perimeter of the house and along the doorways and such.
• 31:37
  And then that in theory was to purify it and push away.
• 31:41
  The dark Spirits. Was there any, like, similar
• 31:46
  traditions, in addition to what you just outlined there?
• 31:50
  Yeah, I mean, for the ghost, it was just the the music because
• 31:52
  it's really, really loud music. Idea is just the sound, they'll
• 31:55
  be like, I got time for this. I will go back to the mountains,
• 31:58
  quieter, but like having there's lots of, there's lots of
• 32:01
  traditions of like that. I would just different foods
• 32:04
  that you make and there's all these like the except one of the
• 32:07
  books that comes the kamiya writing takes place at a village
• 32:09
  like this and we go through all the different like, you know,
• 32:14
  the rice wine, you drank and under the first full moon to
• 32:17
  make your your hearing better and the like the nuts that you
• 32:22
  chewed making good luck in there.
• 32:24
  It's all it's all Traditions but with ghosts, that's all you need
• 32:28
  is to shout them out with some loud.
• 32:31
  Clanging, kind of like you're getting cats out of barn, you
• 32:34
  just hit a pot, they all scattered.
• 32:38
  It is it kind of blows my mind to think, like, ghosts is being
• 32:41
  almost like, like, cats or something.
• 32:44
  Like, you just have to, like, be like, come on, shoot, shoot,
• 32:46
  shoot it like on a bunch of that, but I guess that suppose
• 32:51
  it could work that way. All right, now we get to the the
• 32:54
  portion where I'm just going to ask you like bunch of random
• 32:56
  stuff because your life is just full of just interesting stuff
• 33:02
  and just I'm still Blown Away by all of this.
• 33:05
  So I'm just going to fire these questions at you.
• 33:07
  I hope you don't All right. How did you accidentally invent
• 33:10
  the word Normcore? And what does it mean?
• 33:14
  Well, there is this period where I decided to do a thing.
• 33:19
  Like, there's a thing called a guest comic, where, like, with
• 33:22
  other web cartoonists like one day, they'll say, hey, do you
• 33:25
  sometimes they'll be a week they'll be like, I'm gonna have
• 33:27
  a different artist. Draw my comic every day this
• 33:30
  week and is a kind of a way for like you to reach someone else's
• 33:35
  audience and they say, oh, I like this guest.
• 33:37
  Uncle why don't I check out his comic?
• 33:39
  And so I decided I wanted to secretly make a guest comic for
• 33:45
  as many different Comics as I could and Premier them all in
• 33:49
  the same day unannounced. So, like any time, anyone went
• 33:53
  to read any comic that day is by me and they're like how this
• 33:55
  happened. And I forget how many of the
• 33:59
  first year, the second year, I believe I did 50 but the process
• 34:05
  of doing that in order to have 50 Comics ready to go. one day
• 34:09
  it's like two months of non-stop making comics and like I was
• 34:12
  basically in a Fugue state of just like make comic making got
• 34:16
  to make another comic and I was actually working working so much
• 34:20
  that like I was actually working 24 hours a day because working
• 34:23
  in my sleep because like one of the days I was working all day
• 34:28
  time to go to bed and I dreamed that I got up and went to my
• 34:31
  desk and kept drawing, then I woke up and I'm like, oh crap,
• 34:34
  all the comics disappeared and then the The next night, the
• 34:38
  same thing happened. I dreamed, I got up with the
• 34:40
  decimal. Wait a minute I think this is a
• 34:43
  dream. My house doesn't look like this.
• 34:46
  So I realize that the only time I've been that clear my dream of
• 34:49
  I'm like Okay, I'm in a dream. I know if I draw something it's
• 34:55
  going to disappear, but if I write and then think really hard
• 35:00
  about remembering it, I can draw the comic when I wake up and so
• 35:03
  I did that, I wrote a bunch of scripts and I'm like, remember
• 35:06
  this, remember this forever doesn't draw it and I don't know
• 35:09
  if this Comet came out of one of them, but basically I a lot of
• 35:12
  the comics even I don't get because I'm just working nonstop
• 35:16
  and one of them was for a comic called Templar.
• 35:20
  Arizona. And that comic is all about like
• 35:23
  weird subcultures and the punchline of the comic was just
• 35:27
  like, we went through all these different dangerous, subculture
• 35:29
  someone's morning, and someone against and she said, like, the
• 35:32
  scariest one is Normcore and they're the people that like,
• 35:36
  they only, we're like, the only use slang, this been on a
• 35:40
  sitcom, they only wear like clothes that you can get off the
• 35:43
  racket like Kmart or whatever. Like just the most basic.
• 35:47
  Perfectly normal, and the joke of the comic was like, that's
• 35:50
  the stupidest possible fashion trend.
• 35:52
  And it's like, all these people that do weird, unique things are
• 35:55
  scared of them. And so I made that comic for
• 35:59
  God, I made it because I made it that we're doing State and then
• 36:02
  years later, I got tagged in a tweet that like made no sense
• 36:06
  about like the words of the year list.
• 36:10
  Oxford, English Dictionary about how Normcore was a runner-up and
• 36:14
  I'm like, why are you tagging me in that?
• 36:16
  And that's not like you invented.
• 36:17
  Did the word. I'm like they had to show me my
• 36:21
  own comic and be like this is the word from your comic and I'm
• 36:24
  like I forgot that word existed and it's runner-up for words
• 36:30
  here and then they showed me, like I Googled it and I saw this
• 36:35
  entire history of articles about Normcore in like Time Magazine,
• 36:39
  People magazine, like will not like a and then it started
• 36:45
  showing up in like sickness, dad started showing up in sitcoms
• 36:48
  like Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Had a Normcore and Joe Parks and
• 36:52
  Rec had a Normcore joke. Like I don't understand any of
• 36:56
  this and then I eventually investigated I found out that a
• 37:01
  year after that there's something called a trend
• 37:03
  forecasting firm that like figures out what the new trends
• 37:06
  are going to be and it seems like it's kind of a joke
• 37:10
  magazine that people take seriously and I emailed them.
• 37:13
  They said, yeah, they see my comic and they made Normcore one
• 37:16
  of their Trends and then everybody wrote about it.
• 37:19
  But everybody, everybody wrote about how stupid it was, but
• 37:21
  because there were so many articles about how stupid it was
• 37:24
  that caused the harm. And it became a thing and now
• 37:27
  people still send me pictures every day of like Normcore
• 37:30
  displays at their, their local like clothing store interviews.
• 37:35
  Where like, they're promoting the new Avengers movie and st.
• 37:38
  Paul guy is Normcore. Like it just this word that I
• 37:42
  forgot I made up. Has become a thing.
• 37:45
  I mean quoted in fashion magazine.
• 37:47
  Like just the other day, my agents, like, you know, you're
• 37:50
  quoting a fashion magazine today.
• 37:52
  I'm like, oh happened. But how Bambi even let you did
• 37:59
  you did so by accident and it becomes a worldwide sensation,
• 38:02
  that's insane. Speaking of worldwide Sensations
• 38:07
  you hold the world record for consecutive comic book making
• 38:11
  which based on what you outline before makes a lot more sense.
• 38:15
  Talk us through how you achieve this accomplishment, well
• 38:19
  there's a thing called the 24-hour comic that artists.
• 38:22
  Do you take 24 hours making 24 page comic draw page per hour
• 38:26
  and it's kind of like Like a little like Talons, you give
• 38:28
  yourself the leg, you know, we spend so much time on these
• 38:32
  books like let's see what I can do in one day and I tried to do
• 38:35
  that. Once on there's a holiday called
• 38:38
  24 comic day and I failed I only got 12 Pages done so I'm like I
• 38:42
  need I need to go into training as I get better at this.
• 38:46
  So I did a 48-hour comic, right? Did it for two days and I need a
• 38:49
  72-hour comic. And then one day, I decided to
• 38:53
  just, let's go while and do 168 our common.
• 38:56
  Let's do an entire week during a page per hour and so I just lock
• 39:01
  myself in a camper with a big old stack of paper and some
• 39:04
  pens. People on the internet were
• 39:05
  throwing suggestions to me. And I was making a story based
• 39:08
  on the suggestions live and drawing it.
• 39:11
  And so, for a week I was just like, making this comic book.
• 39:16
  I would I would just like draw as fast as I could until I like
• 39:19
  literally passed out on the page and I wake up and like wipe off
• 39:22
  the drool and figure out how long I was asleep and how many
• 39:25
  pages I need to make makeup? And I went for a week and I'm
• 39:31
  like, I'm almost done. I'm almost done and then Someone
• 39:35
  emailed me and said, guess what? Just to prove how dumb this is.
• 39:39
  I'm like, I know it's dumb. That's the point but he's like
• 39:42
  just broke down. It is I made my own, 168, our
• 39:45
  Convent, but I finished. First, this is just doing really
• 39:48
  sketchy one like you wake up in the morning and just do a bunch
• 39:50
  of really sketchy Pages or as I don't like and then go to work
• 39:53
  and do his job and I'm like at this desk all day and I'm like I
• 39:58
  haven't slept in a week so I'm like if I add like 10 extra hour
• 40:02
  after how many hours it was if I had 10 extra hours, And do like
• 40:05
  a prologue to my comic. Are you going to beat me again?
• 40:08
  He's like no, you can have your things.
• 40:09
  So I then didn't go to bed but stayed up an extra day and made
• 40:15
  a prologue explaining what the comic was and then had the
• 40:20
  record. How did you survive during that
• 40:22
  time? Did you still eat and drink it?
• 40:24
  All these things differently example because it's like you
• 40:27
  know you gotta like I had I just had in my head like I just
• 40:30
  thought I'd like golf terms. I like how under power over par.
• 40:33
  Am I Like okay, I'm like 200 power but I need, I need some
• 40:38
  time to eat. So then I'm going to eat and
• 40:39
  then figure out a fast page to make and like one of my favorite
• 40:42
  moments in those is early on. I was already starting to to be
• 40:47
  behind and then I wrote myself into a corner because I wrote a
• 40:50
  scene where there's a car crash and I'm like, what did I do now?
• 40:54
  I got I'm already behind now. I'm going to draw entire car
• 40:56
  crash and I lift up the page and I had like, you know, music
• 41:00
  marker. And I'm on like my parents
• 41:02
  tables. I didn't want to get marker all
• 41:03
  over side. Has had a piece of paper.
• 41:04
  Under it to catch all the Stray like marker lines and I picked
• 41:07
  it up and it's like this page is just covered in like splotches
• 41:11
  of ink and I'm like, oh I took out my white out and I wrote
• 41:14
  crash in the white on top of it and I'm like boom dumb page
• 41:17
  finished and so like you find little ways to get Pages done
• 41:22
  faster. And that's what's nice about
• 41:23
  these challenges. You learn things that you know,
• 41:25
  you realize like, wow, I did this in a week.
• 41:28
  If I had time extra time I do this, this and this but also
• 41:31
  this save me time and like there's things I That I still
• 41:35
  use today. We're like there's this, there's
• 41:37
  a scene where it's supposed to show this kid feels really
• 41:39
  lonely. Nobody pays attention to them in
• 41:41
  his class and I sketched out like his entire research
• 41:47
  kindergarten classroom and all the Cubbies and all the desks
• 41:51
  and then I'm like and I'm like the kids are in the background
• 41:53
  laughing Adam areas. I don't have time to think all
• 41:55
  this. So I just filled it all in black
• 41:56
  and I realized like oh this actually works so much better
• 42:00
  because it shows that he's alone like you focus on him and
• 42:03
  emptiness around him. And so now, when I do a book,
• 42:05
  like I think about that like, you know, even if I have the
• 42:08
  time to draw, this is all this detail.
• 42:10
  Going to make the page better or is it going to you know, just
• 42:15
  distract the eye and get me more work to do.
• 42:17
  So you learn a lot from it. And by the end, you know, like
• 42:21
  at the beginning of something like that, even if you're doing
• 42:23
  24-hour comic like you end up way behind in your like I don't
• 42:26
  have time to sleep. What am I going to do?
• 42:27
  But then you learn all the tricks and you get into a
• 42:30
  rhythm. And then you're like, oh, I just
• 42:31
  finished like 10 pages in the last hour.
• 42:33
  I can take a nap. Have you had major companies
• 42:38
  approach you about, you know, doing artwork for them or
• 42:43
  animation for them? Because, you know, I've said,
• 42:46
  I've looked into your Comics or the drawings you do.
• 42:49
  I mean, it's for those who haven't seen it, go check out
• 42:53
  Ryan's work. It's amazing.
• 42:55
  And that's really an understatement, so I presume
• 42:59
  that like the bigger companies. Animation companies would have
• 43:03
  like contacted you. Like I have View received, for
• 43:05
  instance, offers from say like Disney.
• 43:09
  For example, like talk us through that.
• 43:11
  Well, I am not legally permitted to answer the specific question
• 43:16
  that the last word you said implies.
• 43:19
  But let's say there's a company. Interesting that came to me.
• 43:25
  The wanted to make the base of that 116, our comic that I made,
• 43:31
  I introduce a character named Nakayama and she got her own.
• 43:35
  I made her own spin-off comic. And that comic was, like,
• 43:39
  rejected by every single publisher, every single agent.
• 43:42
  So I just put it on my website, forgot about it.
• 43:44
  And then like 15 years later, I got an email from a company that
• 43:49
  may or may not have been mentioned in the course of this
• 43:51
  discussion. And and they said, they asked,
• 43:57
  hey, are the rights to this comic available and I'm like I
• 44:01
  thought it was a joke I'm like I forgot I made that comment.
• 44:04
  I guess they're available and they optioned it to make a TV
• 44:08
  show for their streaming service.
• 44:10
  Wow, it was in production for a while, but then one day like it
• 44:17
  moved to New producer. In the new producer, got me in
• 44:19
  the phone, talk to me and he's like, look, I'm really excited
• 44:22
  about this project, I love, I don't, I want to be your vision.
• 44:25
  I don't want to change anything. I love everything about it.
• 44:26
  I love the the cast. I love the story.
• 44:31
  One thing, this is who I want to play akiyama and it was the
• 44:36
  whitest child that has ever existed in the history of her.
• 44:42
  And I'm like, that's who you want to play Aki akiyama whose
• 44:45
  name is in the title of the book.
• 44:49
  And I gently suggested that maybe they cast A Japanese or
• 44:54
  Asian actor to play it. And he was so upset that he
• 44:57
  canceled the show, And so that's why I don't have a show.
• 45:03
  Do you think I was more because it kind of destroyed his
• 45:07
  particular vision for it or well.
• 45:11
  I think what? I figured out later, I believe
• 45:13
  that he was just tasked with finding a vehicle for that
• 45:17
  child. And he thought this could be it
• 45:19
  and I'm like, you know what, why don't we have her play?
• 45:24
  The second lead, who looks exactly like her Aki's friend
• 45:28
  who literally has the exact same hairstyle as her and looks like
• 45:31
  her and he's like I'll think about that but then the next day
• 45:36
  they said that our company is no longer developing new projects
• 45:39
  and I'm like you know that everybody knows every project
• 45:44
  you develop, right? That's not a very good lie.
• 45:48
  Like, I just write about 14, you Greenland today, so.
• 45:52
  Oh mad. Awesome tested.
• 45:54
  Why? Wow, why would you lie about
• 45:56
  something like this? People, people are strange, I've
• 46:01
  had similar dealings with people over the years, and I'm just,
• 46:04
  like, just say, as it is, you know, you don't want to work
• 46:07
  together. It's okay.
• 46:10
  Let's just say that it don't live live.
• 46:13
  Makes you look worse? Yes.
• 46:15
  Like, if you turn around you say I'm not interested.
• 46:18
  Like, for instance, I've had people that haven't wanted to
• 46:20
  appear on the show, but they didn't tell me that.
• 46:23
  Yeah, you know, they just didn't show up on the canceled but they
• 46:27
  didn't, you know, give me an indication if it's going to
• 46:30
  happen and I might, listen is okay if you change your mind.
• 46:34
  So, I just say that now, for anyone that does appear on the
• 46:36
  show again, in the future, if you change your mind, it's okay.
• 46:40
  Just please have, you know what I mean?
• 46:43
  One thing that all those stories, I told the last episode
• 46:46
  help me with is like, When things like that, go horribly
• 46:49
  wrong, like it doesn't stress me out and I'm able to like learn
• 46:54
  from that because like other people would think that is like
• 46:57
  a career setback failure, but that failure actually made my
• 47:01
  career because it was, it was because that went, you know,
• 47:06
  that went so badly and other things didn't work out that the
• 47:11
  lawyer I've been working with was like, you know what, you
• 47:13
  need an agent. Let me set you up with somebody
• 47:15
  and then he set me up with William Morris enter.
• 47:18
  WME who like wow, represent like basically any celebrity who can
• 47:23
  imagine, they represent them and then and I met with their film
• 47:28
  and TV people and I'm like his cover books to and I call will
• 47:31
  introduce you to someone at WME books and then they set me up
• 47:34
  with 0 being books who represent like Oprah.
• 47:37
  And so complete like this is because I had that terrible
• 47:42
  failure, like it led to better things.
• 47:45
  So there's, there's nothing wrong with failing and I think
• 47:48
  it's great. I always think about that.
• 47:51
  Unfortunately, my life is littered with a lot of failures
• 47:54
  and like I'm trying to become an actor.
• 47:57
  I've been trying to pursue it since 2019.
• 48:00
  And even this year, like I set myself a goal of like this is
• 48:05
  the year I turned 30 this year, this is the year it's gonna
• 48:07
  happen, right? And then you know, if anything
• 48:11
  it's mostly just been like one step forward.
• 48:14
  Five steps back and I do My Approach is just keep, just keep
• 48:19
  going, keep trying. I don't really know what else to
• 48:21
  try, but it's like when it comes to things like, you know,
• 48:25
  getting an agent or, you know, trying to find work or whatever.
• 48:29
  I find I'm very much in like a catch-22 scenario, where it's
• 48:33
  like something promising, happens, back to square one or
• 48:38
  seems like something's going somewhere and then it goes
• 48:41
  nowhere and it's, I don't know. I do I do think about like what
• 48:46
  you just said about. Considering how the negatives
• 48:50
  can lead to positives. But I'm also sort of trying to
• 48:54
  set my expectations low as well and sort of understand that it
• 48:59
  might not work out. Doesn't work out for everyone.
• 49:04
  And that's that's that's a hard one to swallow.
• 49:09
  But you know, at the same time doing shows like this is always
• 49:14
  kind of a source of inspiration and motivation for people up
• 49:16
  myself. And I'm sure for those listening
• 49:19
  because it's like, when you feel like giving up or you feel kind
• 49:23
  of threatened by failure and you listen to other people's stories
• 49:29
  that can help you keep pushing forward and moving forward.
• 49:34
  So, on that note, like how how have you dealt with failure in
• 49:39
  your life and how have you kept yourself?
• 49:41
  Motivated through may be more difficult times and then sort of
• 49:45
  got to the level of success that you got now.
• 49:48
  I mean, I like I said, I think of failure as a good thing.
• 49:53
  Like, I seek, I seek out like new experiences that I may or
• 49:56
  may not succeed at because like, I'm not afraid of the failure
• 50:00
  because it's always interesting and then that places me in
• 50:04
  situations where like, I wouldn't have been otherwise.
• 50:08
  And like, you know, I love one of my favorite things is trying
• 50:11
  out. New art forms that I've never
• 50:13
  done before. Even if I'm not into, like, I
• 50:15
  have this challenge personal Called the not my jam challenge,
• 50:19
  where, if I catch myself turning down, any opportunity for no
• 50:22
  reason. Other than that, it's not my
• 50:24
  Jam's, not my thing. I have to do it and not it's not
• 50:28
  like Jim Carrey. Yes, man.
• 50:29
  Like I can say, it's too expensive.
• 50:31
  I can say, I don't have time. I can say that.
• 50:34
  I don't like that person. That I want to hang out with
• 50:35
  them. I can say like any reason, but
• 50:38
  if it's only like, now that my thing, then I have to do it.
• 50:41
  So, that's how I got into like, doing radio doing, like, doing
• 50:46
  stand-up comedy doing like, Acting doing poetry slams and I
• 50:51
  realized like, you know, I've gone up on stage and I bombed
• 50:54
  horribly and then realized like, oh, nobody cares.
• 50:56
  Nobody is like moving me there. Just like that one didn't work
• 51:00
  out as well, but it's still interesting to an audience to
• 51:03
  see someone try and I'll keep trying and I'll enjoy it.
• 51:06
  And those all of these things have led to other opportunities
• 51:10
  and introduced me to other people.
• 51:12
  And You know, I know a lot of people who are like I just gave
• 51:17
  up trying because I submitted like 10 times and and nothing
• 51:21
  ever got picked up and I'm like I submit 10 times in a day.
• 51:25
  He like I just I'll just like think of 10 things I'd like to
• 51:28
  do and submit them in like after a thousand of them.
• 51:31
  One really cool one gets picked up like there's nothing.
• 51:34
  Like if you're afraid of every rejection then like you're never
• 51:39
  gonna make anything happen and I just like and even His rejection
• 51:45
  does not like all these 99 didn't work in this.
• 51:47
  One did like every one of those pitches you send to a publisher,
• 51:51
  they're seeing it. They're noticing your name.
• 51:53
  And even if just because they turn down your work, your book,
• 51:57
  or something, doesn't mean that that they hate it, they hate
• 52:01
  you, and they never want to publish you just like as an
• 52:04
  actor. If you're turned down for a role
• 52:06
  that doesn't mean that they hate.
• 52:07
  You would like they're looking for a very specific thing.
• 52:10
  But you know in a role they're looking for someone to they're
• 52:13
  thinking about Like people get rejected for acting roles
• 52:18
  because like, oh, this person is like one inch shorter than we,
• 52:21
  when we wanted or like, you know, million reasons with a
• 52:24
  book. It's like, we're thinking about
• 52:26
  our entire slate. We already have a book in this
• 52:28
  realm. We need something like that.
• 52:30
  They have all these things are thinking about their, like,
• 52:32
  maybe they're like, oh, I love this book, but we, it doesn't
• 52:35
  really sit with us right now, but they're like, I'm gonna
• 52:37
  remember that name because it sounds like, you know, something
• 52:40
  interesting and then like, Maybe the next time they'll be like,
• 52:44
  oh great perfect I can publish this one.
• 52:46
  So nothing is a failure. You know, I mean unless you
• 52:51
  know, I'm sure there's a way you can make a book to complete
• 52:53
  failure and like, ruins your life, but I'm sure you can come
• 52:57
  up with some creative way to do it, but if you just didn't get
• 53:00
  published or it didn't get the sales you wanted or anything
• 53:04
  like that, it's all leading forward and you just gotta have
• 53:08
  patience. Like I wasn't able to make a
• 53:10
  living full-time. Doing my own stuff until like
• 53:15
  two years ago, like, when I was like 40, oh wow.
• 53:18
  I could, I'd previously been a full-time artist but doing like,
• 53:23
  custom comics for people and to drawing like draw our company.
• 53:28
  CEOs, a rockstar drop. My boyfriend is a superhero.
• 53:34
  I did a lot of comics for pharmaceutical companies like
• 53:37
  that. I, and I did that for like a
• 53:40
  decade before I realized. Oh, wait, I hate.
• 53:42
  Everything I've made in the last decade.
• 53:44
  Maybe I should stop. And then I'm going to, I decided
• 53:47
  to devote myself only two things that I love making and then it
• 53:51
  took me another decade until I was able to make any money off
• 53:53
  of that. So like it can take a long time.
• 53:58
  But if you know, that's why, if you want to go into creative
• 54:02
  field, make sure it's something you really really love because I
• 54:04
  never noticed that. I wasn't making any money off of
• 54:07
  it till like suddenly I was and I'm like, you can make money off
• 54:11
  the stuff like Like I remember I always thought swore like I
• 54:15
  don't need an agent, I'm getting work all the time and then as
• 54:17
  soon as I got that agent and she sent me my first book offer, I'm
• 54:21
  like, I think there's a typo she's like no, I'm like what do
• 54:24
  you mean they're going to? Give me that much money and
• 54:26
  she's like, well I'm I'm still negotiating.
• 54:29
  I'm going to try and double it and I'm like you can do that.
• 54:33
  These are the stuff like there's too many zeros here.
• 54:36
  Ma'am. And apparently you can't get
• 54:40
  paid for this stuff. If you just You know, love it
• 54:44
  enough that you don't notice that you didn't make money for
• 54:46
  40 years. Thank you so much for sharing
• 54:49
  them. I really appreciate it.
• 54:52
  Yeah, I got some some more crazy experiences of yours to talk
• 54:56
  about filters about the time that you pulled a prank on
• 55:00
  Vladimir Putin. Okay?
• 55:03
  So many years ago if listeners, remember the old ancient website
• 55:11
  of livejournal? Oh yeah, it was just a social
• 55:16
  media network is basically And all you posted stuff and going
• 55:20
  your feed. But instead of like Twitter, you
• 55:21
  could write as much as you want. Pretty similar to Tumblr.
• 55:25
  And they had a mascot called Frank, the goat.
• 55:29
  And it was a very active place for artists to share their work
• 55:32
  and talk about their work and I One Day volunteered to make the
• 55:37
  official comic of their mascot. Because I want to try to like
• 55:40
  get attention and get known and like I just volunteered it, I
• 55:45
  was getting paid anything. But like I got a contract.
• 55:48
  Fact that like I have the license to make a comic about
• 55:51
  him and I and I did that for a while and then it was very
• 55:57
  successful comic got me a lot of tension and got me a lot of
• 56:01
  readers and then eventually, livejournal got sold to a
• 56:05
  Russian company and I didn't even know who I would talk to
• 56:09
  any more about the comic who I should email.
• 56:11
  So I'm just like I guess this is good enough.
• 56:13
  Time to stop, stop the comic, forgot about it.
• 56:17
  And then like a decade later, I was listening to a podcast.
• 56:22
  It's also now the phone called reply all and they were talking
• 56:27
  about the true story of what happened at livejournal and it
• 56:31
  turned out what had happened. Was that livejournal had become
• 56:35
  very popular in Russia among activists because they needed a
• 56:39
  place where they could safely share their concerns.
• 56:44
  You know, people that are against when we're Putin against
• 56:46
  it. Shaped like lttp lgbtq people
• 56:51
  that are being like discriminated against in Russia
• 56:54
  they're using that as a way to discuss their issues and Putin
• 56:59
  didn't like that. And he asked livejournal to like
• 57:02
  give him their names and addresses and they're like, no
• 57:06
  we're not going to do that. So he just had a Russian Company
• 57:10
  by livejournal that they could move the servers into Russia and
• 57:14
  then they could look up. Their names and then crack down
• 57:19
  on the activists. And so this website that I had,
• 57:24
  loved had been turned into like a tool for hunting down
• 57:27
  activists and destroying the lives of putting in jail,
• 57:30
  whatever they were doing. And I didn't know about this
• 57:32
  until then, and then I realized I still had a number one.
• 57:37
  I still had a contract that I could make comics using their
• 57:39
  mascot. And number two, I still had the
• 57:42
  log in to upload them to their official site.
• 57:45
  So I made a comic where where Frank, the goat was talking
• 57:50
  about, you know, how important it is to speak your mind and
• 57:56
  speak up against Fascism and support support all types of
• 58:01
  people. I had his, his sister come out
• 58:06
  as gay in the comic and I posted it and I got interviewed by the
• 58:15
  BBC about it. It has caused much sir and no,
• 58:19
  no reaction ever from Russia. They it's still up, they never,
• 58:24
  they still haven't taken away my login for it.
• 58:28
  But yeah, I got to punk Putin. I haven't heard from but I also
• 58:32
  wonder if I ever go to Russia as my name on the list somewhere of
• 58:36
  like let's uh let's have a chat with this guy.
• 58:40
  You said it might not. Roll out the red carpet for you.
• 58:42
  He's maybe not this took us for your experience of walking
• 58:47
  through. Kim jung-il secret tunnels to
• 58:49
  North Korea. I thought this was fascinating.
• 58:52
  Yeah, that's I mentioned that tour of the DMZ and one of the
• 58:58
  tour's you can do, is there was one point where Kim Jong-il
• 59:01
  decided to dig tunnels, so he could attack soul, but Soul
• 59:07
  discovered them and just kept them off.
• 59:09
  And now they have like, Tour groups calm little kids with
• 59:12
  their balloons like that that was what was interesting about
• 59:16
  that trip for me is like seeing how it like it made him look
• 59:18
  like Wiley Coyote because everything he did ended up being
• 59:21
  a tourist attraction on the other side there was that and
• 59:25
  they also drove us past his fake City.
• 59:28
  Heard about this like you can see that video over there.
• 59:31
  It's like bright on. Yeah.
• 59:34
  So for those who don't know in North Korea yeah.
• 59:37
  Right near the border but I not right next to us like a A bit of
• 59:40
  water, isn't there, little body of water.
• 59:42
  And then, there's, if you're looking from South Korea into
• 59:46
  North Korea, you'll see a city but no one's living there.
• 59:50
  Yeah, all they're all empty buildings.
• 59:53
  It's a just a pretend City, it's the oldest well like, people on
• 59:57
  the North Korean side. We're looking across the border
• 59:58
  and seeing soul, and getting jealous.
• 1:00:00
  And he's like, well, I'm going to make them jealous and he went
• 1:00:03
  build, literally just a hollow shells, Windows painted on them
• 1:00:06
  like other women, real buildings.
• 1:00:09
  Yeah, just a film That, and he's like, he's like, you see that
• 1:00:13
  laundry hanging on top of the roof.
• 1:00:15
  That laundry has been there since 1964 or whatever.
• 1:00:18
  And like, in this whole time he's building up there like, you
• 1:00:21
  know, we can see you, right? Like, we're watching you build
• 1:00:23
  this, like we know, it's not real, but he's like in his mind,
• 1:00:27
  he's like, well, my people believe everything I say, so
• 1:00:30
  they're going to believe it too, right?
• 1:00:31
  And he just spent all of this money and Manpower building this
• 1:00:34
  fake City, that he could have just, like done something for
• 1:00:37
  his people, but instead, it just became a joke that they bring to
• 1:00:40
  her. Stu.
• 1:00:43
  Strange very, very strange. So, cos for your experiences as
• 1:00:50
  an ambassador to Australia. Now, that was when I was in high
• 1:00:56
  school, there's people-to-people student, ambassador ship program
• 1:01:00
  things, high school students still do today and I went to
• 1:01:03
  Australia and I was amazing trip.
• 1:01:06
  But then like in my mind I thought it was going to be like
• 1:01:09
  Oh I'm gonna, you know, I always think like am I gonna be
• 1:01:12
  brokering? Peace deals for myself but then
• 1:01:13
  like I get there. I'm like wait this is like a
• 1:01:15
  package to her. Which is great.
• 1:01:18
  But like, I'd set it up so much that like that's where my book
• 1:01:22
  series student. Ambassador came from it, like, I
• 1:01:24
  turn. I made a book series about what
• 1:01:26
  I had imagined. It would have been like as a kid
• 1:01:28
  Lincoln's. This boosted book series where
• 1:01:30
  like he's traveling World solving Mysteries and Kraken
• 1:01:33
  cases and making world peace and so say, I mean it was, it was
• 1:01:37
  just a very nice package to her where we got to go.
• 1:01:40
  He met the mayor one day, we stayed in someone's house.
• 1:01:43
  And one day, we stayed on a cattle, farm in a barn and just
• 1:01:46
  not see as much of the Country as we could interact with other
• 1:01:48
  kids. It's nice little trip cement to
• 1:01:53
  to us about your work with, for exposure, what you achieved and
• 1:01:58
  why you chose to ultimately end up.
• 1:02:01
  Well, for exposure, was a Twitter account that I ran the
• 1:02:04
  decide quotes from people who don't want to pay artists.
• 1:02:08
  That's the most ridiculous quotes.
• 1:02:10
  I could, I could find and justifications and people
• 1:02:13
  getting angry at someone won't work, won't work for free.
• 1:02:16
  And like It went incredibly viral, incredibly fast.
• 1:02:20
  I think at the height it had, like, I think it's still about a
• 1:02:23
  quarter of a million followers on their this because people
• 1:02:27
  kind of like relate to it. And, and yeah, it was, it did a
• 1:02:32
  lot of good because like, especially a lot of the places
• 1:02:34
  where I would get quotes from early on like suddenly the
• 1:02:38
  quotes of disappear because people would realize, they're
• 1:02:40
  just going to call it on for exposure text, and then people
• 1:02:44
  started using a shorthand and someone post a job.
• 1:02:47
  Job or ask someone to do something about this, sounds
• 1:02:48
  like more exposure, text and so, it did a lot of good, but it was
• 1:02:52
  not fun to run because it's especially, if you do something
• 1:02:55
  that big that's goal is to like get people angry, they get real
• 1:02:59
  Angry can let you know about it. And so like, even the
• 1:03:03
  well-meaning people like people used it as a way to like vent
• 1:03:08
  their frustration and they would just reply and like yell at the
• 1:03:12
  person who posted initially but those alerts go to my phone.
• 1:03:16
  So all down low. You piece of trash, like, what?
• 1:03:18
  Okay, force was reports quote important.
• 1:03:20
  Okay? But then like sometimes the
• 1:03:23
  people that get quoted, get angry at me that I quoted them.
• 1:03:27
  And like one of them one time decided to like, shut down my
• 1:03:30
  email by setting up a Spam bomb and sending me like hundreds of
• 1:03:33
  thousands of emails per minute. So that Gmail shuts my account
• 1:03:37
  down and that happened while I was working on the TV deal and
• 1:03:41
  every moment my emails down, I'm like, I'm I could be losing one.
• 1:03:47
  In a lifetime opportunity here, those losing work, it took weeks
• 1:03:50
  of nonsense to get it taken care of death threats, and then just
• 1:03:56
  people following, like, literally every everything about
• 1:03:59
  it. Everything I did.
• 1:04:00
  One person would be angry that I didn't post name.
• 1:04:03
  One person will be angry that I did one time, like, what?
• 1:04:06
  Because I'm talking about a politician, it's public figure.
• 1:04:09
  Everything I did someone yelled at me, so I'm like, I-i'm glad
• 1:04:13
  that this exists but I hate running it.
• 1:04:15
  And then when Elon Musk about Twitter and I'm like, I've
• 1:04:19
  quoted that guy like 10 times on this account and I thought like,
• 1:04:23
  this is a good time to end it to be like I don't want to do this
• 1:04:26
  for his benefit when he like work for exposure for him.
• 1:04:31
  So I'm just going to end it here.
• 1:04:32
  Make a point and I feel like once I did, I felt so much
• 1:04:36
  relief. I feel like a for exposure did
• 1:04:40
  its job and it made a lot of Change, of course, can never fix
• 1:04:46
  the problem, but I think it's there as a last about 10 years.
• 1:04:50
  It's there as a 10-year project and I hope it's still can can do
• 1:04:54
  good as that. What are your thoughts on?
• 1:04:57
  You know, musk acquiring Twitter and what that means for artists
• 1:05:01
  and such. Yeah that's basically just like
• 1:05:05
  if you gave an eight-year-old something and he just does
• 1:05:08
  whatever he wants any point in doesn't worry about how it
• 1:05:12
  Affects other people. And I mean, I'm still on Twitter
• 1:05:15
  as my personal account because it's that's where I built my
• 1:05:18
  community. That's where I know how to reach
• 1:05:20
  people. And it's just kind of like, who
• 1:05:25
  knows what this guy is going to do next?
• 1:05:27
  But let's see if we can survive it.
• 1:05:28
  I don't know. Well, I'll say this, much his
• 1:05:33
  blue verification tick thing is being modeled by meta.
• 1:05:41
  I call them. Facebook murder in the name is
• 1:05:46
  Dan sorry. Just in terms of like internet
• 1:05:49
  culture that word but of all the words they chose the chose that
• 1:05:52
  word as their company name but anyway.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah they're they're modeling their system after Twitter.
• 1:05:58
  So and I was saying about half a year ago and some streams that I
• 1:06:03
  think that most companies social media companies will base their
• 1:06:08
  future verification system on that probably because So it's
• 1:06:13
  another way to make money and that's what it's all about.
• 1:06:16
  If the verification are actually verified anything, maybe said
• 1:06:19
  it's nice but it's just, yeah, it's, I don't know.
• 1:06:23
  You just paying for a tick, that's it, you know, getting
• 1:06:25
  ready for any site. Like so, I mean, it'd be fine if
• 1:06:30
  you were truly paying for like security.
• 1:06:32
  I understand that. But, yeah, it's just paying for
• 1:06:36
  a ticket. This boy, talk is for your most
• 1:06:39
  memorable experiences as a voiceover actor in Bollywood.
• 1:06:42
  Hollywood. Yeah.
• 1:06:43
  Well, like, as I was living in India, one of my trips, I
• 1:06:47
  decided to defund to get into it first.
• 1:06:50
  I did a couple of commercials, my first one was for a bank and
• 1:06:56
  they asked me to come in and be a cricket announcer.
• 1:06:59
  No cool. And they just started playing
• 1:07:01
  the footage and I said, go and I'm like, where's the script?
• 1:07:04
  And they're like, we need a script just like announce,
• 1:07:06
  what's happening? I'm like I don't know what's
• 1:07:07
  happening inaudible cricket and they're like just make it up and
• 1:07:10
  I'm like I don't think you'll need to do that.
• 1:07:12
  They're like go I'm like, There's a guy and he's got a
• 1:07:17
  he's got a bat but it's flat and he's hitting the ball and
• 1:07:21
  there's wait, I know, there's there's wickets, I know there's
• 1:07:24
  wickets that's the thing and they're like, what are you
• 1:07:26
  doing? I'm like, I don't know how it
• 1:07:28
  works. I've only heard the word Wicked
• 1:07:31
  and they're like, fine. Let me write a script and then
• 1:07:33
  they had me do it. And that was kind of my
• 1:07:36
  experience that most of it is that like they didn't give me a
• 1:07:39
  script that's why me to wing it because the big one that I did
• 1:07:41
  was a movie called up customer or the Will be the real love
• 1:07:45
  story with test three misspellings and its own title
• 1:07:48
  Love is spelled l UV. Movie is spelled mov IEEE and it
• 1:07:53
  was the feature debut of a musician that everybody hated.
• 1:07:59
  He was kind of like the Simon Cowell on the knockoff of the
• 1:08:01
  knockoffs of American Idol and nobody liked him like even all
• 1:08:07
  my friends after it came out all my friends that love Bollywood
• 1:08:09
  movies like I'm not going to go see that with you.
• 1:08:11
  I'm like I'm in it, they're like, I don't care.
• 1:08:13
  So So basically they filmed this movie in Germany but they didn't
• 1:08:19
  bring microphones with them and they redub the entire movie.
• 1:08:23
  And so my job was, I was with a group of foreigners and they
• 1:08:27
  just fast forwarded through the movie.
• 1:08:29
  And any time they saw a white person speaking.
• 1:08:31
  They pause and be like cosplay, this guy And and then they'd
• 1:08:36
  grab someone bring them up and then you read up the lines.
• 1:08:40
  There was actually a German guy there but they wouldn't let him
• 1:08:43
  talk because they didn't like his accent.
• 1:08:45
  So it's just any of us just playing all these German
• 1:08:47
  characters and it was so slapdash that like there's one
• 1:08:52
  character that supposed to be a German news reporter.
• 1:08:55
  But it was played by an Indian actor because they forgot to
• 1:08:57
  fill it when they were in Russia.
• 1:08:58
  So they had someone in to do it and then they had an American
• 1:09:03
  woman. And dubbed the voice.
• 1:09:05
  But then the American woman, dubbed left.
• 1:09:08
  So the next time that characters on screen, she was done by an
• 1:09:10
  Irish woman and then the third time she's done by an Australian
• 1:09:13
  and I'm like, you realize the second woman still there,
• 1:09:15
  they're like, I don't care, I want to go home.
• 1:09:18
  And they just like, so literally, every time this
• 1:09:20
  characters on screen, she has a different accent accent and
• 1:09:23
  voice, and my part was playing a police officer and they, they
• 1:09:30
  simply softer. They pause, they showed me the
• 1:09:31
  scene like, okay, going to play this.
• 1:09:33
  I'm like, where's this grip there?
• 1:09:34
  Like, there's no script. The line is just what the hell.
• 1:09:37
  And I'm like, that's great. He talks for three minutes and
• 1:09:41
  they're like, yeah, say what the hell I'm like you want me to
• 1:09:43
  improvise like no, you're not allowed to improvise.
• 1:09:44
  I'm like you want me to just say what the hell for three minutes
• 1:09:47
  and Like yeah, sure go. And so just to show them how
• 1:09:51
  stupid and stupid that was the hit play.
• 1:09:53
  And I said, what the hell? What the hell?
• 1:09:56
  What the hell is going on here? What the hell are you doing?
• 1:09:59
  What that for three minutes? And at the end I'm like see that
• 1:10:02
  didn't work and then like moving on and it's in the film.
• 1:10:06
  What? you know, I've worked on some
• 1:10:11
  Bollywood films as well and I can I can Confirm that it is
• 1:10:17
  exactly like this. I remember one particular one I
• 1:10:19
  did at the beginning of this year, they're quite notorious
• 1:10:23
  for like only doing one take. So like that.
• 1:10:28
  I've been bored of the lead. Actors was just like we did one
• 1:10:32
  take and then he sort of sarcastically just turned around
• 1:10:34
  and went on. That was good.
• 1:10:35
  Was it? Don't fancy doing another one.
• 1:10:39
  Just gonna go with that one. Yeah, alright.
• 1:10:41
  Alright guys, so I know I said it is, it was like that.
• 1:10:44
  I was just like, I'm done, although one of the funniest
• 1:10:48
  things about this movie himesh, reshammiya, who was a star after
• 1:10:53
  right before it came out, he decided he wanted to go to the
• 1:10:56
  pray for its success to Big Temple, but he was convinced
• 1:11:02
  that if he went as himself, he would be so mobbed by adoring
• 1:11:05
  fans that it would disrupt the service.
• 1:11:09
  So he decided to dress head to toe in a woman's burka to hide
• 1:11:13
  his identity. And then went in the women's
• 1:11:17
  section and was praying and then as he borrowed his entire hairy
• 1:11:22
  leg was visible. And someone realized that
• 1:11:26
  there's a man in Disguise and it caused the terrorism scare oh my
• 1:11:32
  God. And the police came and shut
• 1:11:34
  down the temple and grabbed him and he's like it's me it's a
• 1:11:37
  metres. Any other like nobody knew who
• 1:11:42
  he was. And I just being humbled in that
• 1:11:50
  way, in the worst possible way. Yeah.
• 1:11:54
  What was it like running with Bulls in Mexico?
• 1:11:58
  Yeah, I that when I was living in Mexico, I decided to
• 1:12:02
  something I want to do. I heard it was happening and I
• 1:12:04
  showed up and then I realized like, oh, you're supposed to
• 1:12:07
  sign up for this like once enhance.
• 1:12:09
  But I'm like, I'm just going to jump the barrier.
• 1:12:11
  What are they going to do? And I jumped, the various are
• 1:12:13
  running and all of a sudden, I Running, I look back and I
• 1:12:15
  realize like these are babies and I stopped and when I'm just
• 1:12:19
  comes up and I pet it like a baby cat, like it's adorable.
• 1:12:22
  And I found out that the year previous, someone had been
• 1:12:24
  killed by a bowl. So that year, they brought
• 1:12:26
  babies and the couldn't hurt anybody.
• 1:12:29
  But just as I mean, that's fine. I still got some wrong with
• 1:12:32
  balls and I didn't get bored and I got the Peta cute baby.
• 1:12:34
  So that was nice and then I just kind of like ran with him.
• 1:12:37
  We're having fun. You know, I'm sweet.
• 1:12:40
  That's a nice story. Another, you lived in a volcano.
• 1:12:44
  No. What was that?
• 1:12:45
  - it's not clear on a vine. Yeah, but yeah, that was just
• 1:12:54
  the Volcan baru was the volcano and it's just this there, it's
• 1:12:59
  all coffee Fields up and down. It just had a lovely little
• 1:13:03
  house there and yeah. I've been living in Costa Rica
• 1:13:07
  first, you know, I think I mentioned the place so remote
• 1:13:11
  that I needed to go shopping in Panama and then one of those
• 1:13:14
  Something like wait I could just live here and so my wife and I
• 1:13:17
  moved to to Panama and found this lovely house in this on the
• 1:13:22
  side of this volcano and lovely little Community.
• 1:13:26
  You know never erupted or nothing.
• 1:13:27
  So is all good. Yeah we we didn't we didn't
• 1:13:31
  fully explore. The Costa Rica time.
• 1:13:33
  You said that you lived in a rainforest.
• 1:13:36
  Is that right? Yeah.
• 1:13:38
  Yeah. Basically was a little Peninsula
• 1:13:39
  and the ocean and is just yard was full of monkeys and And
• 1:13:46
  sloths and alligators and Jesus like Bill Jesus, Lizard, lizards
• 1:13:49
  around the water. And yeah, very very cozy time.
• 1:13:53
  But very remote like I said 12 our trips to buy bread
• 1:13:58
  Supermarket but yeah, I mean very adorable monkey's head on
• 1:14:05
  little troupe the monkeys. I'm term over.
• 1:14:09
  What stories? I told tell me if I'm repeating
• 1:14:10
  a story, I told last time but the monkeys were so smart.
• 1:14:14
  Since it was a long trip to get groceries.
• 1:14:17
  There was a guy that would come once a week and delivered head
• 1:14:20
  like fruits and vegetables and back.
• 1:14:21
  He was drunk when I first moved there.
• 1:14:24
  I thought you was a political figure because everyone had
• 1:14:26
  these signs instead of menial. See and I mean, I don't know and
• 1:14:28
  I thought they're like yes Emilio, no Emilio.
• 1:14:31
  But that was just yes or no. Do you want me to stop and sell
• 1:14:34
  you bananas? And so, we had a little sign.
• 1:14:37
  He go along the peninsula, stop at every house, and every time
• 1:14:41
  he came, the monkeys would send two ambassadors that would walk.
• 1:14:44
  Along the electrical lines and watch what everyone bought and
• 1:14:48
  they go all the way to the end and slit took hours.
• 1:14:51
  And then when he reached the last house, they run all the way
• 1:14:54
  back to the tree full of everyone and they bring all the
• 1:14:57
  monkeys and they the people who bought the stuff they wanted.
• 1:15:01
  They'd stop at those houses like this house bought bananas.
• 1:15:04
  Today, we're coming here and they just go on your tree out,
• 1:15:06
  your window, and look, really cute, trying to get you to come
• 1:15:08
  to Nana's. And if you didn't, they break
• 1:15:10
  into your house. We had monkeys like, you know,
• 1:15:14
  our windows and come in and steal our fruit before and I'm
• 1:15:17
  like, hey, that's fine. I get to see a monkey in my
• 1:15:19
  kitchen. Device hisses wake up in the
• 1:15:22
  morning every day like five monkeys or but the fucking
• 1:15:25
  morning fruit. But speaking of you two having
• 1:15:31
  to tackle animals, you were also a gator Wrangler.
• 1:15:36
  How did this happen? Walk us through this.
• 1:15:40
  Pause, brought out to Florida, wants to work on a film.
• 1:15:44
  I was originally hired as a grip, you know, the guy that
• 1:15:47
  carries all the equipment and then while I was there, I had a
• 1:15:52
  horrific injury that made it so I couldn't lift things.
• 1:15:57
  And then instead became a designer and where I was drawing
• 1:16:01
  stuff for the film and and then one day there was a scene with
• 1:16:07
  an alligator and their life. Like in the, the company that
• 1:16:12
  brings the alligator, they're like, we need someone to help
• 1:16:14
  carry the alligator and I'm like, I'll do it.
• 1:16:17
  They're like, hey, didn't you have a horse against you and
• 1:16:19
  you're not allowed to carry stuff on, like, how often you
• 1:16:22
  get to Wrangle a gator? Come on, let me do it.
• 1:16:25
  So, I got to help carry around the gator for the day and stand
• 1:16:29
  by and like, make sure it doesn't run away and, you know,
• 1:16:32
  they as you carry it, they have its mouth bound and they put it
• 1:16:35
  down, they unwrapped it, then you should, you do the shots and
• 1:16:38
  and then you know I'm staying. Are to make sure like, you know,
• 1:16:41
  passers-by don't walk down the sidewalk and trip over a gator
• 1:16:45
  and and then once it starts done, you help carry the gator
• 1:16:48
  back into the truck, then. Nice little nice little day of
• 1:16:53
  Neither wrangling is only a day but it was memories to last a
• 1:16:57
  lifetime. What was the temperament of the
• 1:16:59
  of the Gaya like was, it was okay with you.
• 1:17:02
  There's pretty till doing a job, he's an actor.
• 1:17:05
  You know what's up? You ain't scared little nervous.
• 1:17:10
  Nah yeah, I mean you got one else.
• 1:17:13
  Professional movie animal Wrangler guys, he knows what
• 1:17:15
  he's doing. Some having a load of stuff, I'd
• 1:17:20
  already been through on the trip.
• 1:17:21
  Like I said, I had, I had a testicular torsion which is the
• 1:17:27
  least song to do in the world it just Randall it.
• 1:17:32
  Like of all the places I've been of all the dangerous situations
• 1:17:35
  I've been in. That was the the time I
• 1:17:38
  literally almost died and I was sitting on a sofa drawing a
• 1:17:41
  comic and all of a sudden I'm like Oh, that doesn't feel good
• 1:17:45
  at all. I need to go the hospital.
• 1:17:48
  Everybody's like, what are you talking about?
• 1:17:49
  I'm like, I need to go to hospital right now and they're
• 1:17:51
  like, you're sitting on the sofa.
• 1:17:52
  I'm like, yep, I need to go to hospital and it was horrifying a
• 1:17:58
  whole day of like I get the hospital and they're like,
• 1:18:02
  there's only one guy in the state who can treat this.
• 1:18:04
  And he's on vacation were flying him in from the golf course.
• 1:18:07
  And so I just laid there all day, like paint puking into a
• 1:18:10
  bucket as like doctors come. And look at me and be like,
• 1:18:13
  Like, you better get that treated or it's going to explode
• 1:18:16
  and I'm like, oh my gosh. And then and then yeah, that was
• 1:18:21
  not a fun time. So after that Rainbow on the
• 1:18:23
  gator, that's not gonna scare me.
• 1:18:28
  Couple of quick fire questions for you to end things today.
• 1:18:33
  What's the best advice you've ever received?
• 1:18:36
  The best advice I've ever seen? I think about that.
• 1:18:42
  I have to imagine like I said, just I forget who originally
• 1:18:47
  said it to me because I've said it myself so much now.
• 1:18:49
  But like I said, just don't be afraid of your failures, embrace
• 1:18:53
  them appreciate them and learn from them and they often lead to
• 1:18:57
  better things. And what's the biggest life
• 1:19:00
  lesson you've learned so far? Biggest life lesson I've learned
• 1:19:04
  so far is that you can survive more than you.
• 1:19:11
  Think you can if you are able to approach a situation and figure
• 1:19:19
  out how you can try and get yourself out of it without
• 1:19:23
  panicking and without like thinking what was me?
• 1:19:27
  You can, you know, there are horrible situations that you
• 1:19:30
  very very much within your Right to think what was me but you
• 1:19:36
  know, you can survive more than you, think you can.
• 1:19:40
  And as we draw things to a close one, final question for you, do
• 1:19:44
  you have any upcoming projects or some final thoughts that
• 1:19:46
  you'd like to share with our listeners?
• 1:19:49
  Yeah, hope people check out my new book that's out in a few
• 1:19:52
  days called coltd. That is the true story of my
• 1:19:56
  friend. Amy Rose, who grew up in a cult,
• 1:19:58
  just down the road from Heaven's Gate, where she was taught that
• 1:20:02
  Star Trek was. Real Gandhi was a sexy space
• 1:20:05
  alien. The world was ending and that
• 1:20:07
  the middle-aged woman who made her life hell Was The
• 1:20:11
  Reincarnation of a Sci-Fi God and it's all about how she
• 1:20:15
  learned. She was in a cult and use the
• 1:20:17
  banned books to learn everything she needed to escape.
• 1:20:21
  And I'm very honored to be able to work with on that story with
• 1:20:24
  her, it's out this month, but people check that out.
• 1:20:29
  My next student ambassador book comes out in the winter and then
• 1:20:31
  I have like hundreds of other books coming.
• 1:20:34
  So just just watch, Ryan Estrada.com and go there and
• 1:20:37
  read all the free comics and eventually you'll see.
• 1:20:40
  Announcements about new stuff. It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:20:43
  Having you on the show twice. Thank you so much for your time
• 1:20:48
  and for all the wonderful stories and insights into your
• 1:20:50
  life. And yeah, just been a real
• 1:20:53
  pleasure around. Thank you so much.
• 1:20:55
  Thank you. Have a good night to you too,
• 1:20:57
  man until the listeners of Christian read podcast.
• 1:20:59
  I hope you enjoyed these episodes as much as I did be
• 1:21:02
  safe. Be well, and I'll see you in the
• 1:21:05
  next one.