Hello from Capitalist Playground of Death! This week, we talk 100% “Squid Game.” Warning: Don’t listen until you’ve watched it all. Does the show constitute anti-capitalist critique? Why does the ending suck? Did Park Chan-wook make the West permanently love K-horror? Will Asian art soon displace Asian American art? What’s with the weird ‘noble savage’ thing going on in the show? Plus: the dialogue genius in “The Wire”’s writers’ room, fantasy basketball, Gary Shteyngart ( i.e., three Asian Amer...
Oct 05, 2021•1 hr 19 min
Hello from Stuart’s Coffee in Bellingham! This week, we welcome a special guest to talk about the immigrant rights movement and immigration policy. Plus, Andy and Tammy channel Jay Energy and answer listener questions. (0:00): Andy and Tammy discuss Japanese food and our favorite chaebols. (6:50): Listener Questions! What’s up with the “PI” in “AAPI?” listener SansMouton asks. We discuss the awkward origins of AAPI and why Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians shouldn’t be lumped into Asian Ame...
Sep 28, 2021•1 hr 23 min
Hello from Zuccotti Park! Lots of leftist nostalgia and reminiscence about Occupy Wall Street this week — and the podsquad joins in! Then we talk Vietnamese American Republicans in Orange County and rising COVID numbers in Vietnam. (0:00): Marshmallow test (10:50): Does Occupy Wall Street have an anarchist or socialist legacy ? Why, even though it was “annoying” at times, does it still matter ? Lots of personal anecdotes and reflection, plus a tangent about the suburbs. (1:02:20): Why did Vietna...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 22 min
Pod squad assemble ! 0:00 – Tammy catches us up on the latest in Asian Americana aka “Shang-Chi.” Jay and Andy remain skeptical of all things MCU. 12:30 – We talk about the new vaccine mandate and the current discourse around “the unvaccinated.” Are we too un/sympathetic to the material constraints of poor and working-class people who haven’t been vaccinated ? Is vaccine skepticism a reflection of the US’s unique political polarization ? And what to make of demographic trends by race , education...
Sep 14, 2021•1 hr 29 min
(Audio fixed and updated Sept. 7 afternoon. Thanks for your patience!) Hola from the Inland Empire! This week, we bring you Tammy’s IRL interview with Andrea Vidaurre, a policy analyst with the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice , in San Bernardino, California. Andrea talks about the meaning of “environmental justice,” local manifestations of global warming, working-class immigrant life in the desert, labor violations at Amazon, organizing outside the nonprofit industrial complex, and...
Sep 07, 2021•56 min
Hello from the West Coast! It’s just Jay and Tammy this week, on everything from backyard farming to Barbara Ehrenreich. * Jay advises Tammy on late-season tomato growing. 🍅 * What to make of SCOTUS’s awful (but anticipated) decision to end the COVID eviction moratorium ? Where will it hit worst? * Why are so many more people (nearly triple!) identifying as mixed-race in the US Census? Does it have anything to do with 23andMe? * Tammy asks Jay about the latest installment of his NYT newsletter:...
Aug 31, 2021•1 hr 15 min
Hello from a reunited pod squad! This week, we gab about a welcome court ruling on California’s Proposition 22 gig-work law, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Sandra Oh’s new Netflix show. (0:00): Tammy on why Prop 22 was ruled unconstitutional and what it means for workers’ rights across the US (7:10): How to understand what’s happening in Afghanistan in the context of our long wars in the region (44:45): What “The Chair” says about Asian American TV, austerity politics in higher ed, race...
Aug 24, 2021•1 hr 39 min
Hello from a Chinese ghost city ! It’s just Andy this week, speaking with my friend academic-activist Jake Werner ( @jwdwerner ) on how to make sense of the current ideological shift in US and global politics and especially the hostile rhetoric between US and Chinese elites. (0:00) We talk about the recent spate of “big spending” bills pushed by Biden and the Democrats, supporting infrastructure (“hard” and “soft”) and industrial policy . Is this a break from “neoliberal” ideology ? And also, wh...
Aug 17, 2021•1 hr 36 min
Hello from back in July, when Tammy recorded this special live episode in Portland, Oregon! The occasion was the new album, “1975,” by No-No Boy . No-No Boy is Julian Saporiti, a folk and rock musician from Nashville whose PhD dissertation has taken the form of an extended song cycle about Asian America. Julian and his partner, Emilia Halvorsen , an aspiring lawyer who co-produced and sings on “1975,” talked with Tammy about the folk tradition, US empire, travels in the Mountain West, ethnomusic...
Aug 10, 2021•48 min
Hello from Tammy’s DIY SUV camper! This week, we bring you talk of Korean archery, feminism, and misogyny . Plus, the terrifying end of the US eviction moratorium and what politicians and activists are doing about it. * An San, South Korea’s triple gold medalist in archery, has been attacked by men’s rights activists for… having short hair . Why are so many young men so misogynistic ? So mixed up in right-wing politics ? What is the character of new Korean feminism and its homegrown #MeToo movem...
Aug 03, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Hello from Philly, Berkeley, and Pasadena! This week, we talk about the Tokyo Olympics, food appropriation in Oregon, and Raoul Peck’s film The Young Karl Marx (2017). * What are people protesting in Tokyo ? In this pandemic moment , who are the Olympics for? Plus: props to young women weightlifters and skateboarders. * Why are Asian Americans so mad about congee ? (And why are white restaurateurs in Oregon so prone to getting in race trouble?) * What did “The Communist Manifesto” mean in the ti...
Jul 27, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Hello! This week: two pressing topics from the news and listener questions. First, we talk about the political crises in Haiti and Cuba and questions of U.S. empire and intervention. Though military invasions have become less savory, on Monday, U.S. officials still informally dictated Haiti’s choice for interim president . We place the news in geographic and historical context and draw connections to East Asia. Also: the hallowed place of the Haitian and Cuban revolutions for leftists ( and acad...
Jul 20, 2021•1 hr 21 min
Hello! A guest episode today: Andy talks with U Chicago historian Gabriel Winant (@gabrielwinant) about his new book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America . We discuss capitalism and neoliberalism, what’s going on with the U.S. socialist movement, and class fissures within the professional ranks. Check out Gabe’s other writing in many places, including Dissent , n+1 , The Nation , and Jacobin ! 0:00 – Pittsburgh, discussions of class, Gabe’s journ...
Jul 13, 2021•1 hr 34 min
Hello, and welcome to Asian American Sports Talk radio—from the site of the 2032 Olympics! Three topics today: First, the Chinese Communist Party held a massive centennial celebration last week (here’s Andy talking about it ), and China-watchers pounced on one phrase from Xi Jinping’s speech: that haters would suffer “broken heads and spilled blood” (頭破血流). Hey, imperialist pigs, nothing to see here! (8:20) Second, we discuss the racist origins , wasteful history , and cruel policies of the Olym...
Jul 06, 2021•1 hr 42 min
Hello! Today’s episode is about housing, the fight to end single-family zoning, YIMBYs, NIMBYs and PHIMBYs. Our guest today was Darrell Owens, a housing activist and policy analyst. We went through a lot — Berkeley’s recent unanimous initiative to end single-family zoning, asked the inevitable questions about whether this would actually help make Berkeley more affordable, talked a bit about the PHIMBY movement (Public Housing in My Backyard), the pragmatic limitations of all housing work, and mu...
Jul 02, 2021•1 hr 23 min
Hello from Tammy’s 104-degree podcast studio! This week, we talk about the nightmare of piled-up container ships on the West coast , why Covid has triggered these crises along the global supply chain, a bit of logistics history , and the dire ecological future that awaits us. Also, for the first time in a while, some listener questions: * Are there racial aspects to Yang’s mayoral downfall? Or do Yang’s two campaigns tell us something about the difference between appealing to Asians versus a wid...
Jun 29, 2021•1 hr 13 min
Hello from I-5! Today: another round in our long-simmering, passive-aggressive professional feud (journalists vs. historians), occasioned by two new pieces on how we talk about and apply the lessons of U.S. history. First, UCLA historian Robin D.G. Kelley in conversation with George Yancy in Truthout . They talk about the recent surge of interest in the 1921 Tulsa Massacre and what’s lost in our narrow focus on “Black Wall Street.” What does the Hollywoodification of race politics mean for worki...
Jun 22, 2021•1 hr 21 min
Note: The following is an unlocked episode originally released on May 7 for our Patreon and Substack subscribers. Enjoy! Hi everyone, Today, a more scholarly episode: Andy speaks with Prof. Iyko Day of Mount Holyoke College’s English program, discussing her book Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism (Duke, 2016). In the book, she analyzes different moments in the history of Asian migration to North America and their attendant racialization. In particular...
Jun 18, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Hello from Tammy’s fantasy vacation house! It’s just the three of us today, with two important topics. First, the renewed media and political interest in the Wuhan “lab leak theory,” which had previously been treated as a conspiracy. This essay, published last month by science journalist Nicholas Wade , made a stink by arguing that a lab leak was a reasonable possibility. China’s renowned virologist Shi Zhengli (aka, “bat woman”) responded just this week, in an interview with the NYT , and Biden...
Jun 15, 2021•1 hr 28 min
Hi all: Today’s episode is a conversation with Andy’s friend and classmate Chelsea Szendi Schieder , historian of Japan at Aoyama Gakuin University (Tokyo). Chelsea was involved in compiling the empirical case against Comfort Women denialism, which we covered in an episode back in February . She’s now also written a reflection piece on the experience for The Nation . We talk more about Comfort Women denialism, the Japanese online right ( netto uyoku ネット右翼), and the history and present state of J...
Jun 11, 2021•1 hr 28 min
Hello! It’s just us three this week, talking recent news (and some hot goss). First, we discuss the suppressed vigil for the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre (6.4.1989) in Hong Kong. When thousands of police officers cordoned off the usual gathering place, Victoria Park, Hong Kong residents came up with creative ways to demonstrate , using cell phone flashlights and much else. (Remember: “ Be water .”) We talk about contemporary meanings of Tiananmen in Asia and the rest of the ...
Jun 08, 2021•1 hr 29 min
Hello! Special guest this week. Ocean Vuong, a poet, novelist, essayist, and the author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Ocean has won the Whiting Award, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and was recently a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. Jay and Ocean talked about Mixed Martial Arts, Ocean’s novel, and whether one can be a writer and a Buddhist at the same time. The conversation went to completely unexpected places — lots of discussion about Wang Wei, Ezra Pound, Gary Snyder, and Anderson Silva. Ocean...
Jun 01, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Andy talks with Vinson Cunningham ( New Yorker ) and Jane Hu (UC-Berkeley English and Film) about the HBO show Mare of Easttown -- a.k.a. “Murder Durdur” -- which concludes its run this Sunday. We’re hooked, and we can’t figure out why! *Warning: this episode includes spoilers!* * Why are we all obsessed with this show about “specific whites” in the downwardly-mobile Pennsylvania suburbs? * Why the appeal of regional accents? * (Philly accent Youtube recs: Tina Fey , James McAvoy , Kate Winslett...
May 28, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Hey, sports fans! A break from the news cycle with our friend, Vinson Cunningham, a theatre critic at The New Yorker , playwright, novelist, and all-around lovely guy. We talk about the NYC mayoral race (race/authenticity politics), basketball (the architecture of MSG; the LeBron effect; Jokic, Luka, and European style), and how the theatre world has survived the pandemic (read Vinson on virtual theatre and his recent review of a piece in Tammy’s neighborhood ). Speaking of incredible performanc...
May 25, 2021•1 hr 38 min
Hello! We’re back in a new arrangement (Andy and Tammy this time) for our second of two episodes on what’s happening in Palestine. Our special guest is Esmat Elhalaby , a post-doc at UC Davis who will soon join the faculty of the University of Toronto. Esmat tells us about his family ties to Palestine, especially Gaza, the scope of recent bombings by Israel, and what is excluded and silenced by the US media’s framing. He also places US actions—and Americans’ evolving views —in the context of bro...
May 21, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Hello! This week we talked with Joshua Leifer , an editor at Jewish Currents , about the ongoing military violence against Palestinian communities in Gaza this past month (for those keeping track, Josh helped organize that Jewish Current-TTSG webinar from two weeks ago!) (Tammy unfortunately had to sit out today’s episode with a last-second conflict 😔 ) We talk to Josh about his recently co-authored explainer on the clashes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, resistance from Pa...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 38 min
credit: @penpencildraw Hello! Andy here with a Friday episode in discussion with historian Meghna Chaudhuri ( NYU , Boston College) on the COVID disaster currently unfolding in India: the officially reported death count is 240,000 but may actually be more than one million . Meghna and I talk about what everyday life has been like for her, quarantining with family in Kolkata during this second wave, which broke out last month -- from the free-for-all search for treatments and hospital supplies to...
May 14, 2021•1 hr 9 min
Hello! A long but focused discussion this week—on two new essays that attempt to write recent history. First, Tobi Haslett’s “Magic Actions” ( n+1 ), recovering the explosive potential of last year’s George Floyd uprising, institutional attempts to domesticate it, and ongoing struggles for abolition and Black liberation. Second, Brendan O’Connor’s “When the Party’s Over” ( The Baffler ), a look at social-democratic politics after the thrill and demise of the Bernie campaign, the drudgery of part...
May 11, 2021•1 hr 47 min
Hello! This is Jay. This week, we have my conversation with sociologist, writer, and data artist Tamara K. Nopper. She’s been an invaluable resource for me for years now — if I ever actually sound like I know what I’m talking about, it’s likely because of something Tamara sent me to read over the years. Today, we talk about this moment that I’ve been fascinated with for years — what happened after ‘92, not just in terms of what happened on the ground in Black and Korean communities, but also wit...
May 04, 2021•1 hr 34 min
Hello from the AAPI Oscars! This week, we begin with a guessing game from George Mason University’s “Speech Accent Archive” (thanks, listener Jai Kang!). Join us and guess along as we make horribly essentialist assumptions about Asian accents (h/t danyo and sansmouton!). In our main segment, we dig into the murderous policy of global vaccine apartheid. We first discussed this topic back in November , and things have only gotten worse, with India being the most visible site of a world-historical ...
Apr 27, 2021•1 hr 20 min
