10. Hearts in Taiwan with Angela Yu and Annie Wang

But then I said, listen, what are the different stages of growth for the podcast? And first, it's getting a bunch of love and people saying, oh, it's so awesome. Your podcast is so great. And then the next stage... is haters. People are like, you suck, you're terrible, I don't like you. And then the stage after that is stalkers. But not to say that we want stalkers, it's of course a joke, but it's different levels of progression, right?

Hi, welcome to Metacast, the podcast about podcasting. It's a podcast where we talk to podcasters about their process, their gear, and everything in between. And we really try to talk about people's stories, how they come to this. etc etc so this is our episode number 10 and we've had some really cool guests in the past so please give us a five star review and then go check the other episodes so today we are also doing something different

I am playing the role of check police today. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, check our last episode. So basically... In the previous episodes, we forgot to do a bunch of things, like forgot to ask people's names, forgot to ask where to find them and stuff like that. And we've had our checklist since episode two, Arnab, right? Yeah. And we've...

or failed to follow it every time consistently. So, yeah, in our last metasode, we discussed, like, somebody has to be accountable for following the checklist. So today is my turn, and I'm going to be the check police. And the other thing we are doing different today is we are also recording video. I don't know if you are going to use it, but we will. Try! So, Arnab, don't pick your nose. Very hard not to forget.

Okay. So by the way, my name is Ilya and with me is my co-host Arnab. Hello. All right. Take it away. And today we have two great guests. We have Angela Yu and Annie Wang. Hi, I'm Angela. And I'm Annie. Angela and Annie run the Hearts in Taiwan podcast. And you would be like, why Taiwan?

And we are curious as well, because when I discovered this podcast and the thing is, Angela and I work together and I just accidentally learned about their podcast through a colleague of ours and I started listening and I just got so hooked on it. i'm like why like i have no connection with taiwan or anything but their podcast is just so so good and that's why we invited them to talk about how they do it and i really hope to get into some

cultural topics, because that's what their podcast is about. And maybe that's why it resonates with me so well. And even if you have no connections with Taiwan, I'd say go check out the podcast. Some of the episodes are so good. I'm sure you'll start loving it. We can talk about our highlights episodes later on, but we'll get to it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so funny. So even though I'm the Czech police, I'm seeing that RwC is ticking.

things off on the checklist in the Google Doc right now. I'm the Czech police assistant. I just don't have a Czech beer with me right now. yeah it's actually hard to be the police when uh you're talking so yeah thank you all right uh angela and any welcome to metacast and um yeah tell our listeners what your podcast is about Thanks. We're excited to be here. Yeah. Thanks for having us. So our podcast, Hearts in Taiwan, it's the short version is it's a podcast about heritage and identity.

and our connections to Taiwan, and specifically because we are Americans from the perspective of us as second generation Asian-Americans. So it's us exploring our identities and our connections to Taiwan. And then. expanding into understanding other people's connections to Taiwan and how is it same and how is it different. We love it. It's been an amazing journey thus far and we're really looking forward to.

What's to come for season three? And you both know each other from like elementary school or something, right? We're cousins. Okay. Yeah, we've basically grown up with each other. And that's why I invited Annie to do this with me, because it first started out with understanding our family history. And who better to explore this with than with a family member? But we quickly realized that our journey was not unique.

A lot of families immigrated from Taiwan around the same time, in the same decade. And so there are a lot of us, the second generation, who have confusion because of the circumstances of our families' immigration and also, I think, a lot of second-generation Americans who... whose parents were the ones that immigrated, have similar struggles of bridging multiple cultures. And I think you mentioned in your podcast that you call yourselves like ABCs, American-born Chinese.

Similarly, I am a first-generation immigrant from India. I lived in the U.S. for about 12 years or so, and now I'm in Canada for the last four or five years. And Indian kids of Indian parents' heritage, similar to like you folks, they are sometimes referred to as ABCDs, American Born Confused Desis. I've heard that, yes. And your podcast, I think, goes into the heart of that, right? Like exploring your identity and who you are. I'm really loving the journey so far.

Well, thank you. We love hearing that kind of feedback. And we've heard similar things from people who don't have a heritage or connection to Taiwan that there are a lot of the stories that we talk about and the things that we think about. that are really relevant to people, regardless of what their ethnic background is. Because, like I said, there are similar threads that run throughout people's journeys. So, it's great to hear.

I think what maybe makes it resonate with me so well is that I'm a first generation immigrant to the US as well. So I'm from Russia. I've been in the US for about 10 years, but also lived in other countries. But my kids, they're... second generation immigrants so my older one was born in germany but he moved to the us when he was just one and my younger one was born here and so some things that you describe about yourselves maybe that's where i project on my kids

and even though it's a different heritage i mean you're like chinese taiwanese and uh they are they're russians because my wife is also russian but i think conceptually there are many in the meta level There are lots of similar things there. Actually, I would like to ask you a question that you asked your guests. What does it mean to be Taiwanese? And also, how is it different from being Chinese?

I don't know. I hope I don't get cancelled for asking this on record. Help us better understand that heritage idea. It is really complicated, actually, and especially with Taiwan because Taiwan's status of recognition as its own entity has been contested. for decades so that has had ramifications on everyone that has a relationship with taiwan because they for many decades were told

you are Chinese, that anyone in Taiwan is Chinese. And so that was kind of enforced as the identity. And then only very recently, only in the past couple of decades, have people been able to actually publicly identify as Taiwanese. And it was very effective, actually, the authoritarian regime that

forced everyone to identify as Chinese, it was very effective at kind of wiping out that Taiwanese identity. And so everyone now who is trying to understand their identity because they have a relationship with Taiwan has had to kind of unlearn all of that historical pressure and re-decide for themselves.

What is their identity? And is their identity purely Taiwanese or a blend of Taiwanese and Chinese or purely Chinese? And the other thing with how to define the connection to Taiwan, this is why we're very... purposeful and saying connection to Taiwan because there is a broad swath of how that's defined. So you could be indigenous Taiwanese from an ethnic standpoint. Or you could have lived there. You could have been born there and raised there. You could have none of those above.

But you've spent a lot of time there. Your families have brought a lot of the food or some sort of culture into your life from there. Or you've worked there. It's anything. And so one of the things that we...

have been exploring is there are so many definitions of what being Taiwanese means. And there's not necessarily, in my opinion, a right or a wrong. Some people will say there's a right or wrong, but... for us there is not necessarily a right or wrong it's an open definition so if you feel like you have a strong enough connection to taiwan and you want to claim that i have a taiwanese identity that is

within your right to do so. Do you know if any cases where people listen to your podcast maybe they were confused or or didn't even i don't know maybe they didn't think about it but then listen to your show and it actually prompted them to explore their identity to go deeper And we find that connection that they didn't know they had. We get messages all the time of people.

messaging us to say thank you for putting this out there because I think they had struggled with the question but had nobody to talk to or no resources to listen to about it. making the questions public and having these discussions publicly have helped them think through it. I don't think anyone is ready to say, I was this and now I identify as this because of your podcast. But we really leave it open to everyone for their own decision.

In one of your episodes, you talk about nationality, race, and ethnicity. And that was such a clarifying episode for me. because i had never thought of like those three things and especially race and ethnicity how are those different things i love that talking about that It's typical for people of Chinese heritage, I'm assuming Taiwanese also, to have anglicized names as well as Chinese names. Do you both have that? Do you have Chinese names too?

Yes, I have a Chinese name and legally I have my first name is my American name or English name. And then my middle name is my Chinese name. Yeah, similarly, my middle name used to be my Chinese. Given name, I guess you'd say. But when I got married, I changed my last name to be my middle name and have taken a married last name. Going back to the what does it mean to be Taiwanese? I'm actually.

curious because this is something that we're struggling with as second generation because like annie said neither of us was born or raised in taiwan and so we're really leaning on The fact that our parents and grandparents lived there. And so Taiwan has shaped who we are. It has contributed to who we are. And so that is part of our identity.

First generation immigrants, like you have both started in another country and moved to a new country or two or three. And I'm curious, at what point do you consider yourselves American or Canadian? Great question. Ilya, you want to go first? Oh, thank you. Yeah, I can. I have very strong ties to the U.S. because I live here. I'm a resident. I'm about to apply for citizenship or naturalization.

Because, yeah, I've served my time. Now I can do it. And the interesting thing here is the longer I live here, the more I feel like part of the culture, the more I feel connected to America, the more I can take in. i guess maybe the right question i mean the right answer maybe is not that i don't feel american it's more like i don't feel entirely american so i think my identity i would say maybe 70 is russian

And then 30% is whatever else I absorbed, which in big part is coming from the US. And my children, that's interesting because my younger one is too young, but my older one, he's 10. He spent pretty much all of his conscious life in the US, most of it in Seattle, and he uses English language. It's easier for him to actually talk and think in English than it is for him to use the Russian language.

And I'm seeing that now. And also some of the jokes that he and his friend who is also, he's from Belarus, but it's kind of very similar culture, who's also been here since age three, I think. The jokes they make, I'm like, what is this? The interesting part that I'm observing is that if you take a child who grew up in Russia, like who is...

10 right now like my my friend's children who live in russia i would get their jokes because they are based in big part of maybe the same things that i watched as a kid or like books that i read as a kid but these kids they have a vastly different exposure to things because even though he speaks Russian pretty fluently, he doesn't read anything in Russian. So he reads only books written in English and therefore he absorbs that culture also from books.

disconnect, I'm starting to feel it more and more. And yeah, I don't know. I guess I don't have a good answer. But what we are trying to do from our end is to at least... have him be 10 percent russian when he grows up uh so we always speak russian at home we you know we try to travel to russia every now and then now it's obviously a lot more difficult and um yeah

Yeah. Yeah, mine is, I think a bit similar to, I don't really strongly associate my identity with any one place. And that's partly because even as I was growing up. I moved around quite a lot within India. I went to like school in a different place. I went to work in multiple places in India. And you may know that India is like so much diversity in there.

that almost every state or province, there's a different, completely different language, right? So I was exposed to and I kind of lived in a lot of different places, picked up languages and culture from different places.

And I think that may be why I don't really associate myself with one specific area. I do come from the... northeast part of india and actually that's a connection that we all had is we're all from very small on the fringe kind of communities or areas of very large geopolitical like players in the world. And it just doesn't end with the geography, but culturally and politically, I feel like it's very similar with Ilya, Siberia, and you folks being from Taiwan. But anyway, coming back to that.

I lived about 12 years in the U.S. and now in Canada and we've been like traveling to Mexico like we've only been once but then I loved it so much that I started like learning Spanish and getting like infused. in the culture. And so I want to say that my identity is Mexican. Yeah, but one day, maybe, I don't know, right? But I would say a big part of it is definitely India and the subcontinent.

But a major part of my basically adult life, actually all my adult life has been in North America. So there's definitely a significant influence of US and Canada in there. And now a little bit from Mexico too. yeah so i'm always curious when you were growing up did your parents tell you what your identity is like what was that influence and

conditioning from the childhood if it didn't happen. Yeah. When I asked my mom, she said, we're Chinese. It was just plain and simple. And it was different from, I mean, I asked because I saw that other families identified as Taiwanese. And I said, you're from Taiwan. Are we Taiwanese? And she said, no, we're not. We're Chinese. And the surprising thing I heard, this is, I think, your episode three. You talked about how your mom is. So there are two.

I don't want to label, but there were two types of people right after the world war in Taiwan. The people who were already in Taiwan from the Chinese mainland who have come over the last 300, 400 years. and the people who moved right after the Second World War when China essentially took back Taiwan.

And so your mom is actually from the heritage of people who have lived in Taiwan for generations, right? But I found it surprising when you said that to like you, that she considered herself as Chinese. Yeah. So that was my mom. So my mom has been I know that's the thing I've heard is that people can have a hard time telling our two voices apart, partly because they're both pretty standard female voices, I guess.

And your cousins too. Yeah, exactly. So my dad and Angela's mom are the siblings. And so those two came over when the communists took over to China. My mom, her family has been in Taiwan for many, many generations, but they are not Aboriginal, Indigenous Taiwanese. And so her rationale to me was she considers... herself Chinese through and through. And her reasoning is because her family originated from China and she is not indigenous Taiwanese. So that's where her line is.

Are you indigenous or not? And that determines Taiwanese or not. And the fact of the matter is that all four of our parents, their entire time that they lived in Taiwan was under the authoritarian regime where everyone was forced to identify as Chinese. If we ask our parents, we have to recognize that they lived in a time where they were educated as Chinese. The emergence of Taiwanese identity really only came after they had already immigrated to the U.S.

So they didn't live in those years when things opened up more. And so now, just in the last few decades, right, it's only been a few decades, is the definition of what Taiwanese means. is constantly evolving and being more and more open over time. Are there other podcasts like yours who explore this topic or you really occupy that niche?

We haven't come across one that explores heritage and identity like we do. Other podcasts tend to just feature different Taiwanese people, guests, and just like finding people who are doing interesting things that are either from Taiwan or identify as Taiwanese diaspora. But we're the only ones that are very focused on these identity questions. You're the only meta podcast. In your explorations of your family heritage.

For both of you, what was the most surprising thing that you found out? Ooh, I think you caught us on a hard one. I think for me, I... didn't know at all about the Japanese influence in Taiwan, that Japan also had a period where they occupied Taiwan. And so before the Chinese authoritarian regime ruled Taiwan,

or governed Taiwan, they just had taken over from a few decades of Japan being the authoritarian regime controlling Taiwan. Our grandparents' generation, actually, if they lived in Taiwan at that time, Like Annie's maternal grandparents, they had a lot of influence of Japanese language and culture in their upbringing. That's something that I realized Taiwan is very much a melting pot. of multiple cultures and generations and i liken it to sometimes there's a confusion about american identity

because America is also a melting pot. So everyone has kind of a blended identity in either place. One thing that I'm always curious about is like, how do you talk about heritage in race in the U.S.? and still stay not cancelled, you know, being kind of politically correct and all that. So there's this video, which I'm sure you've seen. I think it's called Where Are You Really From?

where there is this Asian girl and then the white guy comes to her and he's like, where are you from? And she's like, I'm from LA. And then he's like, but where are you really from? And then she kind of flips it back and he's like, I'm from Chicago. And she's like, where are you really from? And he just is confused. And it's a funny video. It has, I think, tens of millions of views. And that video sends a signal that in the US, everybody has to be like sort of the same. It's like a single...

I don't know. Either you don't even talk about the topic with people or it's like everybody is sort of the same, just human race, right? I think you really go kind of deep into exploring that. And I'm just curious, I guess, to just poke into the topic a little bit.

and see what would you say? Because one thing that really resonated with me, I think, Angela, I think you said that, that I think you said that Americans don't care about my heritage. And so to them, I'm Asian American. I forgot how exactly you phrased this. On one hand...

like nobody asks about it on the other hand there are these videos like where are you really from that tell you you're not supposed to ask about this or you will get you know shamed so i'm just curious what's your view on that i think when it comes to identity You want to allow the person that you're talking to to control their own identity and tell you how they identify. If they identify as something that's wholly American, I think you are...

trying to put something on them. If you're trying to probe and say, oh, but where are you really from? If all they've ever lived in is America. What if you are trying to understand what is their cultural? um a racial background you can ask more sensitively like about their family background and that instead of saying what they are or their lived experience you're

understanding more about their family. And so that is where you might get the answers that you're looking for around other aspects of culture that may have influenced them. Is it possible that people will perceive you asking those questions about the family as basically like a workaround around the inconvenient question? Well, it's okay to be curious. I think it's fine to be curious.

I was just going to say the way that I interpret the where are you really from question that is really rooted in people's assumption that if you don't. look white that you are not from or you don't identify with American. And so that's where the rub is, is, oh, well, I look like. some kind of Asian, and therefore you automatically assume that my lived experience is not wholly from here. Because would you ever ask that same question to somebody that looks white?

Right. For example, all of us here, three out of four of us, I would say, would get that question. Where are you really from? And one of us would not. And the funny thing is the one of us who would not get that question does not identify as American, right? But I do get that question actually every time.

Well, not every time. Once you open your mouth, yes. Especially here in Florida, because people are like, oh, where are you from? Because I live in pretty much like a white community, and it's mostly like... elderly white Americans. And they're always curious, like, where this accent comes from? But on my appearance, I blend with the quote-unquote, the American crowd. Yeah. Yeah.

With what Annie's saying, I think there's nothing we can change about our appearance. And there's this thing that we recognize in Asian American circles that we're viewed as perpetual foreigners, no matter how many generations we live in this country. will get that question because we don't look white. Even if immigrants become the majority in America, the mental model is still white equals American. And so...

It doesn't matter how American you are. Asking that question implies that somebody is not fully American because they look like a foreigner. Yeah. It's actually interesting. When do people start getting... conditioning a story that i can tell so my son was going to school in seattle and seattle i would say it's probably like predominantly white and asian there is a very small black community in seattle

You don't see very many black people. And in his class there was I think just one black boy. My son was telling about... Something like how he met a friend and he was talking about him. And we were trying to figure out who that person is because I think he didn't know his name or something. And he was describing how he was dressed. He was describing a lot of different things. He never mentioned the skin color.

And when he showed us the boy on the picture, like a class picture, I'm like, the easiest way to describe that boy would have been by his race. And that's not how my son, he was maybe six or seven at the time, referred to him. It didn't occur to him that he's different looking. And that really challenged my assumptions about, I guess, my understanding of like, at what age...

do we get that conditioning? And what needs to happen to get that conditioning? And what needs to happen to not get that conditioning? For me, it was always like, I grew up in East Siberia, very close to Mongolia. So we have a very large... community of people who are Russians, but ethnically they come from Mongol race, ethnicity. I don't know how to say this.

And as a kid, I never called them different labels. I never put any labels on them. They were like, this is just the same kids as me or anybody else. And I think only when I grew up and I started maybe hearing my parents refer to them as something else, then it started to get into my psyche. So that's kind of sad, I guess.

One more thing I want to bring in here is this is only my experience and my experience in both US and Canada has been way more limited than the three of you. But I felt like this question.

in Canada does not have the same negative connotation to it. And it's much more, at least in the places that I've been to in the last four years, it's much more... okay and people feel comfortable saying like yes i'm from afghanistan or i'm from like libya right and it's kind of celebrated you talk about their food or festivals they do

And that has been a pretty big difference in terms of, I think, my cultural experience in the U.S. and in Canada. I think there definitely seems to be a regional, right? It's very dependent on... For example, of course, my whole experience has been in the US and specifically in the Bay Area, California, which is a very specific mindset with a very specific.

blend of type of people so i'm sure if i grew up in a different part of the us the conversations would sound very different than they do here so that's where growing up here that is celebrate here meaning the bay area northern california there is a lot of celebration of the differences of identity of course it's not all rainbows and unicorns but right for the most part people recognize that

everybody has their unique facets of their identity. It's not just ethnic or racial, it's everything. And people are curious about that, specifically in this time in history, right? We grew up... Angela and I write in the 80s and 90s, which was a little bit different. So I like to I talk about this and we talked about this in the podcast a little bit. I like to label the 80s and 90s as more of a culture of assimilation.

where you want to try to be like whatever quote unquote American was supposed to be like, oh, Thanksgiving, you eat a turkey that everybody hates, you know, or whatever. And now. So you kind of mute and kind of neuter your anything that's not what's defined as fundamentally American. And I'm doing air quotes for that. Right. And now this generation, Gen Z and whatever is after Gen Z is more of a celebration of differentiation. So that's why now the conversations are a lot more open and people.

are a lot more open about defining the different elements of their identity. Whereas Borva is like, oh yeah, well, I'm just American, so it's fine, right? Now I have these five things that I am. Yeah. And when we were growing up... those things that told us what is American. I think, Ilya, your question about when do we become conditioned to associate one picture as the definition of American, it's really about media. I think when your children start being exposed to mainstream media.

Whose faces are on the screen or the main character in the TV shows they watch or the movies they see, even just like in books and the stories that are told? Are they told from one race's perspective? Or are there more, like... Now, I think kids growing up now do have a lot more choices of what they expose themselves to because they can watch on YouTube, like micro communities. Any creator can be on YouTube or TikTok or whatever.

But when we were growing up, things were mainstream, like there were the major TV channels, there were the major movie studios. And so everybody had a much more homogenous view of what. the american culture was i'm curious what would be your take on this are you familiar with the sandman comics so yeah okay only because it's been turned into a netflix show oh that was a comic book

It was like... So our bonus episode is like half of that episode we talk about Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comic books. It's one of the best comic book series ever produced by... I know. From my perspective, it is the best. I immersed in it for a year, a couple of years ago. It's just mind-blowing. And yeah, it is great. So if I'm not mistaken, most characters in the comic book are essentially white.

like when you actually read the comics when you watch the netflix series they really changed quite a few people's races and also genders. I mean, I understand why this is happening, but it was so jarring. Like when you have a certain association from the comic book, because comic book is a graphic novel, like you actually see with your eyes what the color is, right? And then see, see different on the screen.

I'm just curious what you think about that trend. I guess I'm not asking whether it's right or not. I just want to explore this a little bit. I don't watch a lot of... fantasy or sci-fi or whatever that categorizes as so I I can understand a theoretical level what that might be and I would say it's probably I'm not in media or entertainment but I can

venture to guess that why media is moving towards a direction of most generically, you can call it representation, right? Their whole goal is to try to take whatever they're creating and ensure that there are different voices and different when i say voices i mean generically not the literal voice but

experiences that are brought onto the screen to make it as relatable as possible. Because honestly, at the end of the day, you think about it, we live in a capitalist society. What's the whole point of that? Make money. How do you make money? Get as many people to be into whatever you're creating as possible. How do you do that? Make it resonate with as many people as possible. And knowing that the US is your key audience and you have this.

society where we're at a point where everyone is calling more attention to differentiation, you want to play to that. At the end of the day, it sounds very jaded, but that's what it is when it comes to media creation. And of course, some people have a much more different perspective, like children's book authors, you see a lot more representation of different types of experiences in.

children's books and young adult books and a lot of those authors of course are coming from a more genuine place of wanting to represent very different voices and experiences which is great and I think that's perfect for this generation who is trying to identify with the different aspects of who they are. So I personally think it's great. I can't speak for the Sandman specifically because I've never watched it. So I don't know. I wanna...

Take that question, too. I think in Ilya, the other thing we are both fans of is Isaac Asimo's Foundation series. And that's been like a long arc of books for like. 30, 40 years. Since 1950s. Yeah, it started there. I think it continued to like 1980s or even maybe 90s. I don't know. But they made a TV show on Apple TV based on that like last year. And in there, they changed the gender of one of the main characters in the original book series. So my take on that was, I actually really liked that.

However, there are things in a TV series. Ultimately, I didn't continue watching the TV series because TV series is very fast-paced. Of course, it has to be. And it doesn't have any of the details that... that were there in the books and i'm sure you feel the same way about the comics too and that's why i was like okay this is like it's jumping way too fast it's not making a connection with me and that's why i stopped watching it

But I really like the character development and how they completely flipped one of the main characters in there. Yeah. I love this rethinking or reimagining of who the characters can be or what they can look like that's taking place. And when you describe...

What you experienced of changing your expectations of the Sandman characters, Ilya, and Arnab the... gender in foundations, that exactly matches for me the experience of watching Hamilton, the musical, where This musical about old white men is entirely played by a cast of people of color. And I thought it works really well. It's gotten such a great reception because the retelling of it in this musical format uses a lot of hip hop culture and that.

really only works if it's delivered by people of color and especially a lot of the main characters have been cast as black and that really well matches with like who's spitting rhymes this is like actually rapping on stage i think as a person of color watching hamilton and and seeing this casting choice where

for decades anybody thinking about getting into acting or performing as a career if we're people of color we're like there's just not enough roles for us and that's because there's not enough stories about people of color getting the funding, this really flipped things on their heads and was like, well, even if historically they actually are white men, do they have to be played?

by white men right so i've really loved this and i'm hoping that in the creation of the sandman that neil gaiman was open to this recasting of the race and gender of his characters because he probably recognizes that when he wrote it he only thought of things that were in his own experience or what he was exposed to but i think if he were to redo it today

he might think more broadly about, does this person have to be white? Does this person have to be a man or male? Yeah, and some of those characters, they aren't really people, they're entities. So they can be... anything, right? Like the Sandman himself, he turns into different characters. He always remains male, but he turns into different appearances depending on whether he interacts with somebody.

in 10,000 years BC somewhere in Africa versus wearing those slick jeans in the 90s. I guess listen to our bonus episode. to hear more about this segment because we could go into another rabbit hole because I just love that comic series so much. So I really appreciate you actually taking those questions. I guess for me as a white guy, because I always lived in the environment where...

I was part of the majority. In Russia, Russia is mostly white. I never experienced any discrimination based on how I look. And if I'm, like, standard-sized Russian white male, okay? And so when I moved to the U.S., like Annie was saying, I look just like, you know, an average white American, so I...

try to understand more. But for me, it's an intellectual exercise. I never could live it through my own skin, if it makes sense. So yeah, I really appreciate that perspective and an open discussion about this. So one quick thing. Did you folks get a chance to take your kids back to Taiwan? What do they think? Yeah. So my daughter's been back twice and.

It was one of the times was to do a summer camp. It was a day camp for a few weeks. It was Monday through Friday, which was great. And I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to. bring my kid back there and experience the food and the language and at the time so my mandarin is Terrible is probably an overstatement of what my Mandarin skills are. And so my daughter was taking Chinese or Mandarin classes over here and was clearly more proficient.

at the language and reading and writing than i was and would show me up constantly which was i said you know what you want to show me up in this stuff great So it was really, really neat to be able to share that with my kid. And that was, I think, which episode? One of the earlier episodes in the first season. I loved that episode. Yeah. where you talk about this story. I think I listened to that too, where you also mentioned that I think your daughter is biracial.

There were some challenges because of that, if I'm remembering the episode correctly. Yeah, so my daughter is half me, obviously, Chinese and Taiwanese, and the other half Pakistani. So, yeah, so there is definitely some stuff there that I don't understand because I am not like that. I have a very clear racial, cultural, ethnic, whatever background.

So I know my kid does struggle with what are all the different components of the cultural, ethnic, racial background. And so, yeah, it's definitely something that. Takes time to sort through, especially at 14 when there's a lot of other stuff happening in your life. And it's a pretty tough age at middle school is arguably. the worst time of life ever. And I can see it as an outsider now. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that episode was called Raising the Next Generation. I think this feeling of like when you're in adolescence, becoming aware that you. don't look the same as everybody else or in your mind, you think you don't look like the people you're trying to blend in with. It can be really, really difficult. And I think for especially for biracial.

kids or multiracial kids if they're claiming an identity and they feel like they don't look like the majority of that identity it can present an obstacle for them like an extra friction for them to adopt the identity But what we're learning, I think, in this decade and through this podcast and just all this exercise, I'm feeling like it's more important for people who don't look like the majority to.

Be visible and be vocal about claiming that identity because you're also teaching other people in the identity in the majority that. Their assumptions about what that identity is should not just follow the majority. Like Ilya, what you said about being in Russia and thinking of Russian as only looking like one thing, but then in your experience.

a large part of the population is racially mongolian that in that specific region yeah yeah that they're also would would they call themselves mongolian russian Oh, there's actually a name for that group of people. It's Buryats. So, yeah, that region is called the Buryatia. So, actually, the region where I lived... So, I lived in two regions. They're neighboring regions.

i was born in one that's predominantly russian with the pretty sizable minority of buriat but then with my family we moved to buriatia where russians were the minority so yeah that's that was my experience but again you know i guess never experienced any discrimination there or anything yeah but um it's it's similar in um

In tech, too. I think there was a campaign where there was a lot of advertising of, I look like an engineer, or I'm, yeah, I look like an engineer. And it was a bunch of women having to proclaim, I look like an engineer. Because what they've been told is they don't look like an engineer because people's concepts of an engineer is male. And so having to pay extra attention to being visible and fully claiming.

their identity as an engineer is important in a world where that's not the majority. Yeah. Switching back to your podcast a little bit and following on that topic, what... really struck a chord with me when I was listening to your episodes is just how you allow yourself to be very vulnerable on the podcast where you were talking about some of your family matters and

and things with kids. I was listening to that specific episode, Raising the Next Generation, when Annie, you were talking about your daughter and those struggles related to maybe looking different, not looking actually... like either Pakistani or Chinese and she thought she was Indian. And then you were unpacking this for like 10 minutes or so. I'm getting goosebumps right now because I even remember where I was driving. So I had this driveway moment as NPR describes this.

like i was driving back from a store and i came back to my house i stopped in my driveway and then i didn't open the garage door so my wife doesn't notice that i've already arrived so i could finish listening to the end of that segment right and it was so powerful, it was so raw. But for me, it was like, I would probably not go at that depth about some of the personal things on the podcast. I mean, for me specifically, right?

I mean, I really appreciate you doing this. And I think people actually need to hear this, but not everybody can do that. That's what makes their podcast special, I think. I mean, I'm completely hooked into it because of these kind of things. Yes, I'm curious if this is intentional or you just let it ride. It is partially intentional. So I know at the beginning of this, you're talking about your over preparation and things of that nature.

Angela, I would say, is also, you two could battle it out for the over-preparer title. So, between the two of us, we do really think deeply about... the topics that we want to talk about in a particular episode, more kind of overarching what's the goal of this particular topic, and then what are the points that we want to bring up.

I mean, higher level. And then a lot of it is, of course, it's very as we're talking, we'll talk through things that are coming up for us that relate to that particular topic. So but this whole exercise is really it's too. show who we are and be open with each other, with ourselves and with our audience, because that's really, in our opinion, or I mean, I would speak for myself, I'm going to speak for Angela, but for me, at least.

That's really the way that I'm going to derive from a selfish standpoint full benefit from me spending all this time on this podcast and on this journey. If I'm not fully open about stuff, then what am I doing this for? What is the purpose of this particular podcast, the way that we defined it, if I'm not going to be clear and open with myself? Yeah, exactly. If you're going to do something where you're exploring identity, you have to be honest about your own journey and your own exploration.

And I was worried when we started off that exploring these that we might catch hate because people are very passionate about which side they identify on. And I was worried that like if we said one thing that we would. one side we said another thing we would anger another side so I did I did like privacy things like privacy reviews in order to like make sure we didn't get doxxed and stuff like that

Because I was like, I don't know what I'm going to be angering. I don't know what I'm going to be raising, you know, the in these communities because we are. treading into touchy topics and things that people have been very passionate about. So I'm constantly thinking about how can we treat this with sensitivity but also not let the fear silence the conversations.

did you get any hate did we get any hate well angela actually so you know how you can review podcasts and we got some review from well it's just like a star thing right so something that made us not all five star and yeah we're an a plus culture at first angela five so at first angela's like man to the haters who like You don't have to be here. Go away. But then I said, listen, we've talked about jokingly about this in terms of getting traction for the podcast of what are the different stages.

of growth for the podcast. And first it's getting a bunch of love and people saying, Oh, it's so awesome. Your podcast is so great. And then the next stage is haters getting haters. People are like, you suck. You're terrible. I don't like you. And then the stage after that is stalkers. But not to say that we want stalkers. It's, of course, a joke. But it's different levels of progression, right? So I told her, hey, hey, hey.

We've made it to the next level. We have gotten some sort of not great praise. So talking about ratings and reviews, your mom rated it three stars. Tell us more about that. My mom has always been the classic tiger mom. She's very much been that like, why didn't you get an A plus? Why didn't you get 100% on everything?

And she's also someone who's just very confident in her own thinking. So I think she has made up her mind about her identity being Chinese. And so I think she questions, why do we have this question at all? Why are we wondering about it? Why are we making like a podcast about this whole topic? She's like, what a waste of time. So yeah, she's really like, I'm just not interested in this topic at all. But why didn't she give you one star? I think because she's...

I don't know. Probably just because she's not against us doing it. But she's just like, I'm just not interested. So I think three is neutral for her. Talking about parents, I really like the clips where you play interviews with your mom and dad. What's that experience like? Do you prep them? um or anything yeah well so this is annie so for my parents i did do some prep i so our relationship my relationship with my parents is what i would characterize as very formal

We never talk about anything but school and work. And that's how it's always been. And so to bring this topic up, it was actually a little bit awkward for me because honestly, I've never talked to them about... any of their experiences in the past, any of their perspectives on anything other than work in school. So it was really challenging to bring it up for me, but they were thankfully very open to it.

And I position it as I just want to hear about your experiences about these particular topics so that they could take some time to think about it. And then I went to their house and then just recorded them us having a conversation. asking these questions and it's amazing to hear about their experiences because often I think

we forget that our parents are people too, and that they were once in their 20s, they were once teenagers, they were once young adults making their way through the world. And it's so cool to hear their stories. how different their experiences and their lives were at the same ages throughout their stages of life as we were, obviously.

It was really fun. And I think that they were really excited to talk about it because my recordings went on for there's so much content that I recorded, which is great that we didn't. get a chance to use, but that we have it there so we could call on it later. So I really enjoyed it and actually looking forward to more opportunities to talk to them about stuff.

Did your kids get to like participate in that too? Or do they know their grandparents stories like inside out? Well, mine, not really. Actually, this is definitely an area that is. An opportunity, to use corporate speak, an opportunity for me to enter into... Educate them. Yeah, it's a bit challenging at this age. Where do you find that line of... It's about two and a half minutes, best case scenario, before you lose the kid completely. And that's optimistic.

So I think Angela has a much better chance because her kids are much younger and much more open to having these conversations and hearing that kind of stuff. But trying to find ways to.

infiltrate myself into a 14 year old brain i had a similar experience where by asking my mom about these questions it really helped me see her more as a whole person with a background of experiences because my relationship with her historically has been pretty adversarial and so it's all about like what have I've been allowed to do and her like me kind of like managing how much influence she has on my life I don't know if I mentioned this in the podcast but she had a stroke during

the pandemic and this was before we started the podcast after that i changed my relationship with her into a little bit more of a caregiver relationship where i'm the caregiver and preparing for my interviews of her was not actually very difficult because I didn't have to really justify or explain what I was trying to do here.

After the stroke, she started talking a lot more about her childhood and her past. And so that was naturally already coming up. I'm actually really glad that I've been doing these interviews because. i realized like how much i didn't know about her her life before me and also just how Fleeting it is because my dad passed away over 10 years ago. So that's already an entire branch of my history that I've lost or is frozen. And so with her having a health scare, I am like.

I have limited time to capture this. And one of the things about my mom post-stroke is that she repeats stories over and over again. So like every time we have hot pot. She tells the same story about how her family was one of the first families in Taiwan to have hot pot because her dad was like ahead of the times. So that's like one of those guaranteed lines that that we'll hear from her from any kind of.

trigger you hear the same thing and so it's kind of like these are the things that my kids are getting used to hearing from her as well and even if they're kind of like not consciously aware or curious about it they will take these stories forward Yeah. That sounds like the podcast, at least two benefits that I hear for you personally that you got out of this. Obviously, it sounds like it was, it is kind of therapeutic in many ways.

but also it helps you with your relationship with parents, like getting deeper into that. I'm curious, what are some other benefits you got out of the podcast, out of doing this for... Actually, how long have you been doing this?

uh two years two years yeah those two years like what what else did you get out of it yeah cheers I think we've been embraced by the Taiwanese-American community, where I think we weren't as connected before with any particular community because I think Asian-American is so large. But Taiwanese American is a very niche in the grand scheme of things, but very passionate community.

By doing this podcast, by putting in the work, by exploring these topics that typically have not been openly discussed, the community has been very appreciative and has really been welcoming us and opening their arms to us. Our relationship, looking inwards, yes, our relationship with our parents are more open, but the two of us, Angela is my closest, literally and figuratively, cousin growing up. We grew up together.

But we realize that we talked about this a little bit in our podcast. The extent and depth of our relationship, just the two of us, has been kind of the same for the vast majority of our adult life. And so this podcast, let's say, has really taken our personal relationship one-to-one to a much deeper level, which I wholly appreciate.

At the end of the day, it's just that. That in and of itself is worth it. I think one day your kids and maybe even your grandkids someday will listen to these podcasts and kind of discover their own. uh family journeys and all that it'll be amazing yeah yeah hopefully after teen years maybe yes we're like 25. So another thing that I got out of the podcast was that I don't know much about Taiwan and all the complex relationships it has had with Japan and China over the years.

And you have a two-part episode talking about the history, right? It's called Massacres and Cover-Ups or I think something like that. Really enjoyed that. I also enjoy the Hardcore History style of podcast. Anybody heard those? No. I've seen some other history related podcasts. I think they're really cool. This one is not exactly like factual based history. It's more like a narrative storytelling.

from that time period connecting to people. And I wonder if there are any podcasts or books that you recommend people to read to connect with Taiwan. Like explore the history of Taiwan. Not as a dry, factual, like on this day, this happened and that happened and all that, but more like personal stories and all that, if there's something. If not, maybe here's your next season. An opportunity. Yeah.

I have one. There's, I guess it's a TV channel or a YouTube channel called Taiwan Plus, and they make really fun, digestible and accessible videos in English language. There's like current news, but then they have series where they explain history or like why things are the way they are in Taiwan culturally. I think that they're really well done.

Yeah, I was going to say that that was the first thing that came to my head. I totally agree. And you also hang out in the clubhouse like Taiwan talks. How's that going? is that connected to your podcast or no you just hang out does it still exist clubhouse i was like is clubhouse still a thing that was

That was way back in the beginning when Clubhouse had a lot of traction. Because of the pandemic, everyone's stuck at home but still wants to interact with the internet. And so what I was really... actively involved in the Taiwan Talks clubhouse, just hearing people's stories and just talking about random things. That was sort of our way to dip our toes in and pressure test.

what people's perspectives were around things about Taiwanese identity when we were first kicking off this journey of this podcast and our journeys around identity. It's not specifically tied to it. I haven't been on it for a long time. It's kind of unfortunate that our first episode was like, we talked a lot about Clubhouse and then we never went on again.

But the first episode is our most listened to episode because I think, I don't know about you guys, but I often listen to the first episode of a podcast to kind of figure out what they're about. My favorite so far, I've listened to it twice, is the... uh wong or wang episode i think it's the third one yeah we love that one too yeah that comes up a lot yeah we'll link to that in the show notes yeah

All right, Ilya, you wanted to ask about podcasting things, yes. Yeah, now let's just go straight into the rational stuff. So now you've been doing this for two years.

what are your metrics like how many downloads listens do you get how many listeners can you share any of those stats yeah we have about a thousand downloads per episode i think when we started this and all throughout we've kind of known that we would have a limited amount of listenership because there's just it's very niche and it's just a limited amount of people that it applies to so Yeah, I think we've just been happy with any amount of reach. And similarly, we've reached...

a bit over a thousand followers on Instagram. So we kind of see that it tracks like the number of followers we have on Instagram is about the same number of downloads that we have per episode. You got one more Instagram follower today, by the way. I subscribed to you a while back. Thank you. I'm curious, how engaged is your audience? Because obviously this is so niche and...

I think the more niche you are, actually, and also the smaller you are, the more likely it is for people to start engaging with you. And also, since you are so... open, right? So I'm curious, has that been? Do people write to you on Instagram? Do you have chats with random people? Yeah, we get a fair amount of emails and direct messages on Instagram. One of the challenging things is, I think, especially in this community, part of Taiwanese culture is being, I'd say, humble.

There's a bit of privacy. So actually most of our followers are private accounts on Instagram. So I think we probably see less engagement of comments. And we're less able to see when people share us because we were not able to see like when they've posted us on their stories, if they're a private account. So we really just appreciate when people DM us or direct message us about how much our podcast has had an impact on them. But it's not as visible as with other accounts.

Got it. Another thing that really caught my attention when I was listening to one of your episodes is at the end you were saying, we discovered a new piece of software. Thank you for your donations because now those donations... pay for that software or it was something like that right and also you read out loud new reviews and you did something like a lucky draw of like a book or something among those people

so i'm curious about the logistics of all of that because like when i listen to you on let's say apple podcast spotify there's no way to send a message so i have to go somewhere else then also give you my address then people might have privacy concerns i'm just curious what's your process there

So we have on our contact us page, we have many different ways that you can contact us, whether it's through a form or if you want to email us directly. And we promise always like sending you one of our hearts in one. Hearts of Taiwan logo stickers. I'll hold one up. Sounds like these. Yeah, and we have them all over our stuff. And this is the national flower of Taiwan.

Or something like that? Yeah, the plum blossom is the national flower. And so we actually were very proud of this design. It actually, my graphic designer friend, he made the plum. blossom design but with a heart incorporated into the design which i thought was so clever i know what we'll do so because most people will listen to us without the video

We will take that picture and put it on the episode cover so that people can actually see that. And also, if you listen to us in an app that doesn't support episode covers... go to our newsletter at metacastpodcast.com, find that link to that episode, and hit the subscribe button after you look at the sticker. There you go, there you go. But yes, what you've heard or seen about our giveaways is throughout our podcast, we feature and recommend a lot of books.

by Taiwanese authors. And one of the growthy things we do is very common in the community is to do Instagram giveaways. And so the rules, it's really for both encouraging your followers to engage, but also to tag and share your podcast or your account with a friend. So I think those, whenever we mentioned giveaways, it's because we're doing an Instagram giveaway and that Instagram is very linked with people discovering our podcast.

We've definitely seen a lot more engagement on Instagram than other social media channels. Cool. Yeah, when I was doing my first podcast, I already have Instagram followership by then. And then I remember when I first started. I also did a giveaway of... I think it was one of the t-shirts with my own graphics on it. I drew my own graphics for the podcast cover and I also gave away, I think, three or five t-shirts.

uh in exchange for like people send me like screenshot of the review that you left so i was able i was able to get like yeah 50 or 60 reviews in like a week for like a new show I mean, obviously it was like manipulative, but it worked pretty nicely. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, but we were scared to do a giveaway for... Yeah, like our second episode was with Brian McCollum. He is actually a book author, like a TED speaker. He has two popular podcasts.

We wanted to do a giveaway of his book, but we got a little bit scared of the scale of listenership we might get for that particular episode. So we never did it. But we ended up only getting like 400, I think. So we actually could have totally done it, but now the moment is gone. Yeah. Not bad. I mean, I think it's still like...

What we find is that people come to our podcast at all different times, and so they're still listening to our old episodes because it's new for them. I don't think that you have to be limited to just when you've...

published as being the moment to have the conversation with your listeners. I think you could find it any number of times when it's appropriate for you. Yeah. I think one thing that also maybe works a little bit against us is that we are recording episodes way in advance so we start recording we launched in the first week of january but we start recording in november i think october one was the first time we recorded an episode so now this episode we are recording this on january 28th

and it will come out in the second half of March, I think. It'll March 15th, yeah. March 15th or something. Yeah, we have this schedule. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, what's your process? Do you record and publish or do you batch record? How has that been? In the beginning, we batch record when it was just us. But with interviews, I think that's a lot less possible. So we typically just record, edit, and then publish one episode at a time.

And is there a set schedule or is it like random? Well, so with the guests, one of the things that we had talked about between season one and season two, because season one was just us. And then, you know, some of our parents stuff, but really controlled by us so we can completely control the schedule and release and all of that. And then season two, we specifically made it very guest focused. And so we discussed before we went to season two.

that season one was very aggressive in terms of our publishing schedule. And so we wanted to give ourselves a little more grace because it's not like anybody else is telling us we have to do this on a certain schedule. So that's where we had to step back a bit. and reset our own expectations for ourselves and what we thought was going to continue to make this enjoyable and not put too much undue pressure on ourselves and knowing that because this was guest focus.

We don't know what their schedules are and availability is going to be like. So we'll just keep it easy, breezy. And based on their availability, great. We'll schedule that and then we'll record it and then we'll publish it. And that'll be that. Whatever that schedule looks like. So what's your plan for the third season? We haven't talked about it. I know we have to talk about we're just talking about last week or whatever about.

the fact that we have to talk about what season three is going to look like so stay tuned so you prepare you prepared for preparing for season three Right, Angela? Yes, I think we need a break. Basically, season one, we had that weekly.

published schedule so i think we had to record in batches and edit in batches in order to meet that weekly schedule then when we wanted to incorporate guests and we knew that scheduling would be hard we went to roughly monthly schedule for season two but even with that it was inconsistent because there were some moments where we published more than one episode a month and then

At the end, we published an episode in August and then we just like we came up with quite a bit of friction with getting out of another episode. So our next episode was actually just this month in January.

So we had a big gap. But it was just very strange. Does the metrics of like number of listeners and all that stay pretty stable, even with the irregular schedule? I think it's... it definitely doesn't grow as fast when we're not on a regular schedule but we had to kind of let go of that goal in order to remain sustainable because i know that with all content creation

The best practices are to have a regular publishing schedule and especially have a weekly, at least, publishing schedule. But that was just unsustainable for us because we both have full-time jobs and we're working parents. We just have a lot of other commitments. And our goal with this is not to become a full-time or revenue generating enterprise. So it just doesn't make sense for us to kind of kill ourselves to meet a weekly publishing schedule. Yeah. So I also want to get a bit...

more technical, to talk about your workflow, post-production, tools that you use. So can you tell us, yeah, I guess let's start with the recording. So what microphones do you use and what software do you use for recording? Well, Angela so kindly got me this Yeti, this blue Yeti, which is awesome. It's the same. Which is a wonderful blue color, unlike Arnab's. Yeah. It's actually a blue Yeti. Yeah. A blue, blue Yeti. A blue. Yes.

I have that too, but I, so I have two mics and some episodes I record with a Blue Yeti, some I record with this Audio Technica. I think it's like an AT2020 or something like that. But they're both USB mics. I'm not happy with either of them. Overall, a lot of it has been this struggle between like investing money in something that I know is not going to be money making versus just.

using what I have. Right, yeah, yeah. And what do you use? Where do you record? We record on Riverside. I think our first couple of episodes were on Zencaster, but we've been really happy with Riverside. You know, you use Squadcast and I think Squadcast probably checks a lot of the same boxes that Riverside does. Yes, and I was telling Annie before we started recording.

before you joined, Angela, that, yeah, actually, our previous episode is the interview with Squadcast founders, and we've been using Squadcast for, I've personally been using it for over a year, and Riverside I used it a few times. I've always had issues with Riverside. That's not an anti-advertisement for Riverside, but yeah, I'm curious.

Was it all smooth right with you, with Riverside? No problems? No, no. Riverside was real rough. The first episode we recorded was Riverside. I think the recording was lost, corrupted, whatever. We were able to get backup. I think it was actually that the massacres and cover-ups episode. And so I had a really hard time with working with the audio with that.

I apologize on Instagram, actually, when I posted that episode. I was like, I worked so much on trying to fix the audio quality on that episode. And I was like so disappointed because it was such important content. the history and the lost history of Taiwan. And so I felt really sad that that important episode, the audio quality is not great. Okay, try squadcast.fm. I think they've ironed it out.

We haven't lost another episode since. We had some audio drifts and stuff like that, Riverside, one time we used it. Since then, we've been pretty happy with Squadcast, yeah. Yeah, I think at some point, like... You know, I try different tools and then I just settle on something that is sort of perfect for what I need. Yeah, we've settled on Squadcast so far. So then you mentioned you do the audio processing. So what's your post-production workflow? What tools do you use?

For most of our podcasts, we've used Audacity. And only the last two episodes did we use Descript, which I know you use as well. So I've really liked Descript. I've really liked being able to see all of the words on a transcript. I think in some episodes, we've missed things because it was just too many times of having to listen to the audio to figure out what to cut. But in Descript, it's very easy to see when we have a transcript that we're editing off of. Yeah, that's very cool.

Now, we talk about Descript in pretty much every single episode. The feedback was mixed from people, even from ourselves too. But yeah, we actually started to use it more. too so when you do the descript you know you edit obviously you cut you know the things that shouldn't be there um do you apply any filters you know compressors eq all that to improve the audio quality descript is really um

It's really evolving quickly. And so it's been a little bit of frustrating to have like a learning curve twice with Descript. But I have that faith that they're going to get good and they're going to get better.

this last episode we used we applied studio sound just to see like if it improved things at all and i i didn't go any deeper into like individual eq settings or anything like that but i was pretty satisfied with with the studio sound but i think it cut off words uh in some sometimes abruptly so um i still had to do some manual adjustment of like boundary cut boundaries

But overall, it definitely, you know, where Studio Sound really helped was we interviewed a bunch of guests at a dinner that was, you know, outside a restaurant. And so there's a lot of external noise and I just use my iPhone to record them and voice. memo. So it was not like a good mic or anything. And so that was part of the ethos. I just wanted it to sound like an on the street recording anyway. But Studio Sound really helped make them.

sound better like more like like less distracting of the audio sound and then we also got a voicemail sent to us through our website and the audio quality on that was really bad like the microphone she used must have been just like her built-in laptop mic and the s sounds on her recording were like really really like noticeable and studio sound helped with that too oh that's very cool okay maybe we overdo

our sound engineering app because we are very sophisticated in that regard. But your audio is just so good. I don't know if it's actually... As good as ours, but we invest a lot more money and time in it. The other thing we've talked about in the past is for podcasts, it's the content that's like 95% of the thing, right? The audio quality. This is not music.

You're not like listening to specific notes or beats or things like that. So I think that's where it makes sense. I am curious. I have a meta question. Is it both of you who do all this processing or? Typically, is it Angela? Because in our podcast... Angela does. Okay. It's very similar. Angela does like 95% of stuff. Because she's like our...

our tech person, right? She's discovered all of these tools. I will never pretend like I was ever involved with any of this because Angela is the ultimate researcher. And she'll research anything to death and you know that whatever she comes up with will be spot on and amazing. She wants to learn how all of it works. And so it's sort of, Angela, so tell me, how do I do this again? But you've learned how to use all the tools. And you're with me when I'm like, want to switch tools. But yeah.

So like most episodes, Annie will jump in and do the rough cut and then I'll go in and do the fine cut and the audio quality. Can you do the rough cut in Descript?

sorry and you do the rough cut in descript yeah okay cool yeah um i mean both of like when we did audacity and when we do descript we would just use one tool for the whole thing and we would be like transferring files like audacity files to each other through our drive and then with descript because it's all cloud linked it's yeah we just each have to locally log in and edit

We try to edit just one at a time. Your website is very nice too. Do you use something to host it or have you built it yourself? The website is by podcast page. So podcast page is just an easy site builder that's customized for the needs of podcasts. I don't super love it. It's not it's like. a bit restrictive in your options of like how you present your episodes. But in an area where I think very few people...

We'll visit our webpage because most of engagement is through the podcast itself or through our Instagram. I didn't want to put too much time into perfecting our website. One more question about the whole process. So you don't do ads, right? And you're not like generally generating any revenue for the podcast. On average, how much do you end up spending per episode in terms of time and money? Time? Oh, God.

infinite amounts of time no like five six hours i guess easily oh yeah oh yeah for sure five six hours easily just for i would say rough cut Because I think the way that we are, we're very particular about individual words, lengths of pauses, all of that stuff in the editing.

i mean we're going through everything say take out this um take out this uh close this gap a little bit this so it does take a bit of time yeah And with individual costs, we like, as you can tell, like because we chose Audacity to be free, we have tried to minimize our costs. We have our monthly recurring costs for things like we use Buzzsprout for hosting. We're paying for Calendly for scheduling Riverside for recording and even like making our cover art.

I don't like paying for Adobe prices, especially not as their subscription model now. So I actually was really happy with this software. by affinity affinity designer which is like an illustrator clone and they also have like a photoshop clone i think we paid like 25 or something for it and it's not subscription it's just like a one-time download so i really appreciate that and so i've been really happy with that ever since we've been using that to create cover art

I think one of our biggest struggles is like we've always aspired to because we've always recorded video, we've aspired to put our content up on YouTube as well, because honestly, like. We just want to reach people, right? And so there's some subset of the population that listens to podcasts, but then also a lot of the population that watches YouTube videos. So we're doing the recordings. We might as well put it on YouTube as well.

We tried a lot of different video editors, like low-cost video editors, but ultimately I felt like it wasn't possible unless we got Adobe Premiere. I think it's called Premiere, right? Yeah. And I didn't want to shell out the hundreds of dollars and also learn to be like a video editor. And spend the extra hours and hours that'll take. Extra 10 hours for the same thing. And we've tried. We've tried to outsource it. We tried to hire people to be video editors for us. That went really horribly.

Yeah, we tried using a remote video editor. And I think the problem was the issue is really understanding or the outside editor really understanding the spirit of. what we're trying to communicate because i mean at the end of the day they're not the actual creator and this isn't some topic that is very I would say objective or neutral it's very emotionally based and feelings based and a lot of nuance to it it's not like oh

what are the components of a Mustang, you know, or a car or this, where you could just piece it together. It's one plus one equals two. And so the nuance is really hard to capture in that. And so that didn't end up working out. And then the first time we tried to edit was iMovie. And I got so much crap from my teenager about how cringy. It was because we clearly used iMovie and apparently iMovie is a cringy platform to use to edit your videos.

per the teenager so that will never happen again and I said how do you know it's through iMovie well the font you use is clearly iMovie font an iMovie effects. I said, really? I thought I was using a really neutral thing that you couldn't tell. Apparently, you can tell. So I know what we'll do. So we want to cut this video into a bunch of small shorts.

just for promotion purposes, you can take that part and add some iMovie transitions where it's like from the 90s, you know, like the sliders or like when it does this kind of kaleidoscope kind of thing. Maybe Marky. Marky text. Yeah. I was just using a little subtle. This little thing came up or that little thing came up. Oh, no. I thought it was subtle, but apparently it's not. So...

Yeah, but also one hour is way too long for the teenager because like TikTok videos are what, like 15 seconds? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's another reason that I'm very sold on Descript because they have great video export. And so I edit once and I can export to audio for the podcast video for the YouTube channel. And I'm much more optimistic about actually getting.

of some of our video up on YouTube. And I actually already posted on Instagram a reels that was created from Descript because they also make it easy for me to generate different formats like portrait. layout versus the landscape layout that would be on youtube oh cool we need to check it out yeah yeah yeah because we yeah i also want to use descript for this video editing just to try it out

Cool. So back to checklist. Check, please. What are the podcasts that you listen to that you can recommend to our listeners? Okay. I love Hidden Brain. I'm an NPR freak, so I love Hidden Brain. And This American Life and Stuff You Should Know. Those are hands down my top three podcasts I listen to on a daily basis.

Those are actually from the beginning. We had aspired to model our podcast offer where it was the narrative would be driven by us. But kind of like journalists, we would pull in quotes from other people. So that might. be what we try to pull off in season three is instead of like the long form interview format that we would actually pull in many different voices on a topic that we drive. But that requires a lot more planning and coordination.

So it's a trade-off that we'll have to think about. We got somewhat close to that in that episode. I think it was Coming to America, where we inserted our parents' stuff throughout this overarching narrative that we drove. So that was, I would say, pretty close to what we were trying to do, but that took a lot of planning. Yeah. Yeah. Where can people find you? Well, we're Hearts in Taiwan on any podcast platform. We publish all of them. And our website is heartsintaiwan.com.

And you can find us on Instagram, Hearts in Taiwan everywhere, like Hearts in Taiwan on Instagram, Hearts in Taiwan on Facebook. And if you really must use Twitter, we're there too, but we never post. actually i'm curious how did you choose to have like a podcast account versus using your personal accounts for promotion we didn't really have much of personal account following before the podcast so

I think everyone would prefer to engage with our podcast account because that's where the related content is. We do have individual personal public profiles. I think that's just for people who are really curious about us as individuals. Most people are just looking for the on topic. And we don't post a lot to them. So point of vulnerability. We talked about being vulnerable.

Some people know, some people don't, that the social medias are really hard for me. And I had an Instagram personal account prior to the podcast, but I did not realize that the username that you use to sign up for. is your name that everybody sees i thought it was just the thing you use to log in to your instagram account and so i had

my entire name, my first, middle, and last name as my original username. I said, why are people writing my whole name on Instagram posts? And so Angela went through this whole thing. She said, okay.

you need to fix your Instagram account. So I changed my username after I realized all this. So as she was saying, at least I had... basically no following because i never even used it i didn't even understand how to do the username thing so that's that's where i'm starting it's good to have a tech cousin right Exactly. I say, Angela, how do I do this? All right, great. It was really awesome to have you for this, gosh, two hours of recording. Yeah.

Yeah, I really appreciate you coming in. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. We've really enjoyed having this. I mean, nobody else asks about these questions. Yeah. It's really nice to be a guest for a change. We are loving your podcast. So keep doing great. Yeah. Looking forward to season three. Thank you. Thank you all for listening. If you listened up to this point, we assume you enjoyed it. Please give us a five star rating.

If you have already, ask somebody else to give us a five-star rating. We now need this to grow our podcast. You can always reach out to us. We have an email. Hello at metacastpodcast.com. Both Arnab and I received that email. We have our Twitter and Instagram accounts. They're all in show notes. And we also have a newsletter on Substack where every week when I announce new episodes, I actually ramble about like...

why I enjoyed this, what were the key takeaways. Those are pretty dense letters that I send out every week. And if you're a podcaster, you will really enjoy those, I hope at least. See you next week, where we will rumble about how that particular episode recording went in our next meta-sode. See you later. Thank you. No worries. I think the meta-sode is... Really great that you guys do that because it's kind of like from.

our work worlds a retrospective or post-mortem where you're going to get better every time because you take the time to actually analyze it. Yeah, we will ask that part in our next minute. It's also like we wanted to keep to a weekly... right but we can't have guest episodes every week that's going to be like crazy so we said okay yeah and and we are like basically learning how to podcast so why don't we just do it in the open and make that the episode every other week

Yeah, and so far, I think from every guest that we had, we took some advice. And that particular thing was from our episode four from Jake and Jonathan.

where they said well guys you have to do weekly because then you help your listeners build a habit yeah and they were like but it's too much work to do guest episodes every week and they are just like just rumble every week every other week and that's exactly what we did and actually we really liked it yeah i mean in fairness i'm almost looking forward to our meta self recordings more than i'm looking forward to the guest recordings

Yeah, that'll be a good tip for us. Maybe we don't have to have a single format for our next season. Yeah. I think what works for us is that because we are podcasting about podcasting, we can just talk about all these things. Yeah, making it really meta. Oh, so I'll stop recording now.