Warm Intro

George McCalman keeps a sketchbook the way other people keep a diary, except his pages end up in the San Francisco Chronicle. For years he ran art departments at magazines that told other people's stories; now he tells his own, one watercolor image at a time.

Born in Grenada, raised in Brooklyn, and remade in San Francisco, George is the illustrator and author behind Illustrated Black History, a 500-plus-page tribute to figures both iconic and nearly forgotten. His Chronicle column Observed turns the city into a running visual essay — the coffee shop regulars, the drag queens, the protest marches, the funerals — rendered with the patience of someone who knows that seeing is a form of respect.

Join us for a searching conversation about who gets to be considered beautiful, how taste used to be manufactured by curators and is now generated by the algorithm, how you draw a face you've never seen, and what an immigrant kid from Grenada learned about holding up a mirror to America.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Cate Hall was once the highest-ranked female poker player in the world. But that’s not the most incredible part of her story.

Cate was a Supreme Court lawyer before walking away to play poker full-time. Within a year, she had become the highest-ranked female player in the world. Since then, she’s led a multibillion-dollar science foundation, co-founded a pandemic medicine company, and built a Substack that has become a cult favorite for its unflinching writing on agency, addiction, and what it takes to reinvent yourself.

Join us for a searching conversation about agency and the invisible rules most people mistake for laws, what poker taught her about risk and pressure, how to tell when you’re being lied to, the acid trips that reordered her sense of self, finding God in unexpected places, and what she thinks happens when we die.

Cate’s new book, You Can Just Do Things, out July 21st. It’s a prison-break manual for anyone who has been quietly waiting for permission to live the life they actually want.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Broke-Ass Stuart showed up in San Francisco with a notebook, a hangover, and no money--then turned all three into a twenty-year career. The writer, publisher, and man-about-town, Stuart Schuffman, built brokeassstuart.com from a photocopied zine into one of the city's last independent local news outlets, ran for mayor, hosted his own IFC travel show, and, on October 17, 2025, even had an official San Francisco holiday declared in his honor by the Board of Supervisors.

His new book, The Worst of Broke-Ass Stuart: 20 Years of Love, Death & Dive Bars, brings together two decades of writing about San Francisco and the people who make it interesting. It's part memoir, part collection of stories, and a look at the artists, activists, weirdos, and regulars that have shaped the city over the years.

Join us for a conversation about staying broke on purpose, building an independent media business, running for mayor with no money and no shame, why dive bars still matter, and what it feels like to have the city you love give you your own holiday.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Adena Ishii is one of America's youngest mayors—that too, of its most livable city, Berkeley.

While her peers are still figuring out their careers, she's managing a $900 million city budget, trying to solve a housing crisis and fielding calls from politicians asking for endorsements. But the most interesting thing about her? She does not sound like any politician you've ever heard.

Join us for an earnest and optimistic conversation about the lost idea of "public service," Bad Bunny and the Democrats' "fun deficit" problem, whether California is truly a hellhole, and a newly forming millennial vision for what government can still do for people.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Chef Sri Gopinathan is the first Indian chef in the world to earn two Michelin stars and one of San Francisco’s most successful restauranteurs.

This distinction arrives with an asterisk—because Indian cuisine, despite being one of the world's oldest and most technically sophisticated food traditions, has never been treated as gourmet. Chef Sri is changing that in the most beautiful way possible.

Chef Sri speaks with the sensory precision of someone who has spent his life understanding flavor not just as taste but as memory, emotion, and culture. He describes the smell of his childhood kitchen with the specificity of someone for whom that smell is a moral architecture. He talks about tadka—the Indian cooking technique of tempering spices in hot oil—not as method but as feeling. And he carries with him a deep, almost spiritual understanding of what Indian food means to Indian people: it's not cuisine, it's inheritance.

Join us for a fun, honest, and deeply sentimental conversation about what everyone gets wrong about Indian food, why the world's most prestigious culinary institutions have been blind to it, and how one chef is changing that., the first meal he ever made and what it taught him, how he overcame that bias to earn recognition at the highest level, what he hopes his last meal will be, and what it means to fight for the dignity of your culture's food.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Correction: We stated in the video that Dean faced up to 12 years in prison. Since filming, he has been hit with 2 additional felony charges, increasing his potential sentence to 31 years.

Dean Guzman Wyrzykowski is an animal rescuer who is facing 31 years in prison for saving nearly 2,000 beagle puppies from torturous conditions in an animal testing facility.

This is not a simple story about a good guy versus bad guys. It's a conversation about what it means to have a moral code that supersedes legal and social norms. Dean has received support coming from unexpected corners from MAGA leaders to militant vegans. Dean speaks with the clarity of someone who has thought deeply about ethics, who understands the weight of his choices, and who has accepted the consequences.

Join us for a heavy and searching conversation about how Dean came to see direct animal rescue as a form of resistance, the day his team saved nearly 2,000 puppies and what they found, why his case has unified people across the political spectrum, what prison means to him now, and what it costs to live according to your convictions when the law says you're wrong.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Abe Woodliff is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and the memelord behind @RealBayAreMemes—a project that has become the sharpest cultural mirror San Francisco has of itself. 

Abe grew up in Section 8 housing in the Bay, watched the city transform around him. Through this experience, Abe developed an almost anthropological eye for the the Bay’s absurdities: the cold machinery at the center of its progressive mythology, the hypocrisies that nobody wants to name, the way good intentions curdle into cruelty. 

What makes Abe dangerous as a critic is that he’s devastatingly funny. He wields humor like a scalpel, cutting through the phoniness and self-delusion that defines contemporary San Francisco culture with a precision that makes you laugh before you realize what he’s just said about you.

Join us for a biting conversation made for everyone who loves the Bay deeply enough to be furious with it. 

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Thomas Percy Kim is a 25-year-old filmmaker who's already won critical acclaim at Sundance, been selected for the Oscars, and raised $1.6 million from retail investors to fund his feature film. But here's what makes him different: he didn't wait for permission. When he wanted to make a stop-motion film in high school, he taught himself. When he wanted a name actor, he cold-emailed agents. When studios wouldn't fund his vision, he went straight to his community.

What emerges is a conversation about the immigrant experience, the difference between chasing badges and doing the work, and what it actually means to be obsessed with something. Thomas grew up as the only Korean-American kid in a predominantly white Massachusetts town, arrived at USC film school with a clear mission to become a director (and then skipped most of his required classes to do exactly that), and has spent the last decade proving a simple thesis: you don't have to wait for the gatekeepers to let you in.

Join us for a wide-ranging conversation about being named after Thomas the Tank Engine, what changed when he first saw a room full of successful Korean-Americans his age, why film school actively discourages you from becoming a director, how to raise money by proving competence in small steps, the difference between wanting badges and doing the work, what makes a film actually move people, and what he hopes someone will feel when they watch a film made about his life.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Isabella Sun gave up a job on Wall street to solve fashion’s fit problem — one hiding in plain sight — nearly half of American women are 5'4" or under, yet almost nothing is made to fit them.

With no fashion background whatsoever, Isabella founded Short Story — a personal styling service for petite women — out of her apartment in 2019. She packed boxes until 3 AM, ran to the post office so often her doorman thought she was losing it, and got into Y Combinator that first summer. Today, Short Story has dressed hundreds of thousands of women.

In this cathartic conversation, we talk about growing up in a family of founders, the many horrors of running an ecommerce company, why the fashion industry ignored petite women for so long, and what it actually means when a piece of clothing fits you for the first time.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.

Windy Chien is one of San Francisco's greatest living artists. But that's just her most recent life.

In a previous life, Windy owned San Francisco's coolest record store, Aquarius Records. In yet another, she was on the original iTunes team, building the way we all now experience music. 

Today, as the undisputed queen of knots, her work proudly hangs everywhere from the MoMa to Google's HQ. Her path here took her through every possible complication in the line.

Join us for a rich conversation about what it feels like to call yourself an artist, Steve Jobs' motorcycle, the zen of art and the best Cambodian Beatles cover bands.

Warm Intro
A conversation, not an interview. Warm, sometimes weird, conversations with interesting people doing big things. 

Warm Intro is a video podcast. We're available on every major podcast app and YouTube.

YouTube: @warmintro
Instagram: @warm.intro

Hosted by Chai Mishra
Chai is the Founder of The Essential, an ethical commerce company funded by the leading lights of Silicon Valley.

Chai served on the board of UNICEF, and has advised cities, universities, national sports teams and Fortune 500 corporations. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chai’s work has also been covered in publications ranging from the SF Chronicle to Business Insider.

Presented by Wefunder
Wefunder created The Community Round.
— allowing founders to raise funds directly from their communities 
— allowing anyone to support their favorite founders and join their success.

Raise on Wefunder

Views here are those of the host and the guest. Wefunder makes the show possible but doesn't control who we have on or what we say.