ASIAN AMERICA: THE KEN FONG PODCAST

Lei Wang was perfectly happy with her burgeoning career in marketing and finance. But one fateful frigid Boston evening, she went to watch a documentary on mountain climbing, and something unusual began to stir in her. Even though she was a short, out-of-shape, unathletic 30-year-old person, she became seized by the vision of climbing to the top of Mount Everest! You'll be utterly amazed at what she went through to achieve this compelling vision. And you'll be inspired by the life-lessons she's learned along the way to climbing to the top of the world's highest peaks on all seven continents, and skiing to both Poles!

Henry Lam, a professional ADHD coach specializing in supporting tech professionals, shares his journey from struggling in school to thriving after his ADHD diagnosis in 2018. He discusses the complexities of ADHD, particularly within the Asian-American community, and offers insights into coping strategies. Henry highlights the unique strengths that come with ADHD and the importance of aligning career paths with personal passions. He also emphasizes the transformative power of ADHD coaching and the need for early intervention to unlock potential.

NPR's Emily Kwong launched the Inheriting podcast this past May, where she facilitated an in-depth conversation among members from different generations of AANHPI families. Could they identify a few critical decisions or changes in history that continue to impact and shape their families? We also discuss whether it's possible for any reporter to be 100% objective and unbiased, in the wake of the accusations by an NPR editor back in April that the station has a decidedly liberal bias. You can still listen to Season 1 of Inheriting by searching for it on your favorite podcast platform. Or you can go to npr.org/podcasts/510380/inheriting.

The 2024 DNC ended Thursday night, so the next morning podcasters Fong and Kemp were excited to compare notes about what they heard, saw and felt during throughout this 4-night gathering of Democratic delegates to make VP Harris and Gov. Walz their 1-2 punch to keep the White House and also to prevent Trump, MAGA, and Project 2025 from gaining power. As Kemp put it, the GOP's RNC portrayed American as a bleak and doomed dystopia if Harris and Walz were to win. But the Dem's DNC painted a compelling, utopian vision of America where every person was free to make his, hers, or their own choices, while simultaneously promoting the common good. We also discuss Frank Schaeffer's position that evangelical Christians as a whole won't dump Trump before November due to their particular prophetic framing of what's happening.

Asian American author Eve J. Chung spent the first years of her life in Taiwan with her grandmother. In their shared space, Eve remembers a woman who loved her fiercely; hoarded food and fed her family fat-rich chicken skins; and used a heat lamp on her knees every night while watching Chinese period dramas. As Eve got older, she recognized these habits as remnants of her grandmother's harrowing escape from China during the country's Communist Revolution in the 1940s, and of the starvation and physical punishment that she endured at just thirteen years old as she walked to freedom. Daughters of Shandong is Eve's family story: it's a fictionalized account very much inspired by her grandmother's past and how she carried that past with her for the rest of her life. This is a family saga that will grab the heart of any reader seeking new perspectives on history told with gorgeous prose, propulsive storytelling, and relatable characters. www.evejchung.com @eve.j.chung.writes

In Director/Writer Tom Huang's 2022 film Dealing with Dad, Margaret Chang reluctantly returns to her hometown along with her hapless brothers to deal with the sudden depression of their complete-jerk father, whom everyone happens to hate. In fact, he's actually more pleasant being depressed, so the siblings wonder if it's worth struggling to get him better. In the meantime, their forced time together allows them to reconnect as a family, reminisce about the bad times with Dad and maybe even help each other out in the process in this multi-award-winning comedic dramafeature film that's now streaming on Amazon Prime, Google Play, and other online platforms. Actor Dana Lee, who plays the dad, joined us in talking about why and how this film was made, as well as the many challenges that AANHPI people still face in Hollywood.

Lisa M. Gomez is the Assistant Secretary of the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) in the U.S. Department of Labor (www.dol.gov/agencies/ebsa). She brought with her a particular concern about the mental health of American men, especially minority men. Although I wasn't taken aback to hear that AANHPI men are the least likely to seek professional help, I nevertheless shared her desire to move the needle in the other direction. She outlines how EBSA's staff are eager to help all manner of employees access their health insurance to cover or significantly defray the cost of getting help from mental health professionals. As I mentioned at the end of our conversationm, I will be posting an episode next week that centers around the 2022 film "Dealing With Dad," to bring attention to the occurence of depression in Asian American families.

Even before the majority of delegates to the upcoming DNC had lined up behind Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Trump and the MAGA crowd began to use ad hominem attacks against her. Long-time friends and fellow podcasters Fong and Kemp kick things off by talking about their renewed optimism that Trump will be defeated again, then downshift into discussing how the GOP and also White Christian Nationalists are blatantly using racist and misogynist slurs to discredit Harris.

In this compelling collection of fifteen personal essays, Dr. Mako Yoshikawa takes us along on her journey to gain a clearer understanding of who her late father was. Secrets of the Sun "...is particularly brilliant at capturing the grief, guilt and fear that adults who experienced childhood abuse face when deciding how or whether to maintain a relationship with their abusive parent.” (Catherine Hollis, BookPage)

In her no-holds-barred essay “Conditional, But Essential, Contingency,” Dr. Kelly N. Fong confronts the racism she’s faced as an Asian American woman with a PhD in historical archaeology and examines the ways she’s rejected what she terms “muted invisibility” in favor of demanding change from the predominantly white academy. https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477328866/#:~:text=Description,academics%20in%20the%20United%20States.