Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age.
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Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and it's just us, but it's Short Stuff. And Chuck, this is the last episode of 2025. That's right. And that's it. That's all I had to say about that.
All right. Well, let's talk porcelain because porcelain isn't something I really knew much about until I did this research. And porcelain, as it turns out, you might know this, you might not, is a type of ceramic. It's a subset of ceramics. What? They are both made of clay and they're both kiln-fired. But porcelain clay has a much higher density and it's fired longer and at higher temperatures.
Okay. And thusly is much more durable, has very high performance characteristics, and it's, you know, porcelain is that super hard mixing bowl that you got from your grandmother that, like, you can't break. Well, you can't break them, but just super hardy, super dense, non-porous, clay-like material.
Yeah, I guess I haven't had much experience with porcelain because I always thought of it as very delicate and highly breakable. But apparently that's not true. And once I thought about it a little bit, I was like, actually, I have lifetime experience with porcelain in the form of a toilet. But I hadn't really thought about that.
Yeah, toilets.
Yeah, they don't break. Try it. You can't do it. So there's three things that show up in any kind of porcelain. And it's all natural. That's one of the big attractions of porcelain, too. It's clay, quartz, and feldspar, which is a kind of rock that can form from all sorts of different stuff. And there's all sorts of other stuff you can throw in.
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Chapter 2: What is porcelain and how is it different from other ceramics?
And one other thing about porcelain, too, that I hadn't realized is that some kinds of it are translucent. And I was like, wait, that means kind of see through. And I looked up pictures of it. And yes, you can hold porcelain up to a light like in your hand and you can see the silhouette of your hand on the other side of it. Did you know that?
Yeah, because I've worked with porcelain tile where you can do that. A lot of times floor tile can be porcelain. But this all originated in China about 2,000 years ago during the Tang Dynasty. But it wasn't like the porcelain we know. It was basically like, hey, we put out our fire and they discovered this really hard, unbroken, solid pieces of stuff. And that was just rudimentary porcelain.
Later in the Yuan Dynasty, it was about 700, 800 years later – is when they really developed the porcelain as we know it, the porcelain that Marco Polo found and brought back to Europe, and they just went wild for this stuff.
They did. And the market for porcelain opened up pretty quickly because trade routes were open thanks to Marco Polo. But the Europeans could not figure out how their Chinese friends were making this stuff. So all of the porcelain coming into Europe was foreign made, made in China.
And that's why a lot of porcelain tableware is called China, because it was kind of like the like champagne is the sparkling wine. China was the porcelain. Right. And it took them quite a couple hundred years, I think, before they finally cracked the code. And it was an alchemist who figured out how to make porcelain by basically reverse engineering a piece that he had from China.
Yeah, a German alchemist, Johann Friedrich Brücher. And he figured it out. This was in, I guess, the 18th century. And by the latter half of the 18th century, in the 1770s, they found that kaolin clay in Cornwall, England. And so the Brits were like, we can start making this stuff finally. We've got the good stuff right here in Cornwall.
Is it kaolin, like Shaolin? I don't know. I like how you said it. How did you say it? Kaolin. Kaolin. Or reject. Kaolin. No, no, no. So, yeah. So the Brits are like, great. We can put all this together thanks to Butger and Cornwall and start making our own porcelain. And I'm not quite sure. I get the impression that China made its porcelain one of two ways.
And the way that they mostly made their porcelain was through hard paste. And the other one is soft paste, and it has to do with the density of the raw materials you're using and then how high a temperature you fire it at and for how long, like I was talking about before. These are basically the two main categories of porcelain.
Yeah, and I think you're right. I think the Europeans use that soft paste a little more, so it's a little more prone to chipping. It's a little grainier, just not as hearty overall. And then you've got to glaze the stuff after you fire it.
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Chapter 3: What materials are used to make porcelain?
My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman.
There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now it will happen.
I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.
Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses.
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Chuck, I'd like to share something that I learned in our dolls episode that I didn't have a chance to fit in, but now I do because it seems like all of our episodes are now interlocking for some reason. But unglazed porcelain is called bisque. Bisque.
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Chapter 4: How is porcelain fired and what are the temperature ranges?
Yes. So there's a few reasons that people prize porcelain. For one, it can be really, really valuable, as we'll see. But also, like I said, it's an all-natural material. Like a lot of the glaze colors that they use in glazing are like cobalt, iron oxide, copper.
Mm-hmm.
The raw materials are things like clay and feldspar. It's really easy to clean, as you know, with a toilet. Very resistant to mold and bacterial growth, as you know, with a toilet. It's water resistant, you know, like a toilet is. It's good for foot traffic, like a toilet. And it doesn't emit harmful substances. Like a toilet. It can also be recycled.
But that is a real niche, I guess, method or technique. Like you can't just throw porcelain into your single stream recycling can. Yeah. You have to go seek out somebody who recycles it. But the very fact that it's recyclable gives it kind of promise for the future as we get better and better at creating a circular economy.
Yeah.
That's right. You mentioned how valuable it can be. The world auction record for Chinese porcelain was set about, I don't know, in 2014, when the Mayan Tang chicken cup was sold for $36 million. And, you know, why is anything valuable? It's because there's not many of them. It was crafted between 1465 and 87, when
Porcelain was just peaking at its quality, but they were producing the lowest amount. So it was just super rare. So that's why it fetched $36 million.
Yes. And that also points something out about porcelain too, is if you take good care of it, it's so durable, it can last thousands of years. So, or at least a thousand years, as far as we know. And there's like, people are into porcelain, like collecting tableware or vases or things like that.
And so there's like a whole world out there available to you to get into bone porcelain, hard paste, soft paste. Well, basically those kind. And if this thing floated your boat at all, I think, Good luck with your new hobby.
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Chapter 5: What historical significance does porcelain have?
Not from humans, apparently from farm animals. Yeah. And it would really strengthen that stuff. And bone china, you don't have to fire as high. You can fire at lower temps. It's just not as strong.
There is no way that in the history of bone china, no psycho has made it with human bones.
Yeah, that's a good point. Are you enjoying your coffee?
Exactly.
Oh, man, Chuck made me giggle. That means short stuff is out. Hey, wait a minute. Can we say goodbye for the year? Oh, wait. Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Chuck. I say we do that, too. Goodbye.
No, we in all seriousness, we want to thank everyone for another great year. Somehow here in year 17, we're enjoying things as much or more than we ever have, which is hard to believe and pretty wonderful for us. And, you know, big thanks to Dave and Ben and Jerry, of course, and everyone who contributes as writers, you know, Julia and Anna and – Livia, Dave, Kyle. Livia and Dave and Kyle.
I think that's everybody right now, right? Mm-hmm. It is. Yeah, we can thank the Grabster for the old days even.
There you go. He comes up and selects sometimes too, doesn't he?
Yeah, for sure. So I just want to say thanks for everyone for keeping us employed in what's, for me, the greatest job in the world. It means a lot.
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