Asian America: The Ken Fong Podcast

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.

Ever since starting puberty, females must deal with hormonal challenges that males never face, e.g. menstruation (and everything that goes with that montly occurrence), then menopause, and finally life after menopause. In 2016 Dr. Sophia Yen launched PandiaHealth.com, the only women-founded and women-led online hormone health clinic and doctor-led birth control delivery company. www.pandiahealth.com #periodoptional #stopsuckingitup

A covert military task force tracks a mysterious energy disturbance at a secret base in New Mexico that is suspected of experimenting on alien technology. Once there, the team encounters an unknown being of extraordinary strength and speed, and the ability to control an army of mindless warriors. The trio must fight through the unstoppable hordes to prevent humanity’s demise. This is the original story Agent Recon that Derek Ting wrote, produced, directed and acted in, co-starring legendary action icons Chuck Norris and Marc Singer! His film released on June 21, 2024, on multiple streaming and on-demand platforms. 

Playwright Philip W. Chung's Unbroken Blossoms is a historical reimagining of the making of a boundary-breaking 1919 Hollywood classic that shines a light on the collateral damage in the search for "authentic" representation, and asks what price we pay for our art. Making its world premiere in East West Players David Henry Hwang Theater, Chung's imaginative play runs from June 27-July 21. Head over to www.eastwestplayers.org to find a performance that fits your schedule and purchase tickets.

In this episode podcasters Fong and Kemp gamely try to stay out of panic mode in light of President Biden's abysmal performance at the first presidential debate against former President Donald Trump. Did Biden just show 50 million viewers that he was past his prime? Or does a person's performance on a debate stage really tell us how he or she will lead or deal with challenges? Hypothetically, if Biden chooses to drop out, who might the Dems nominate that would not just energize and unite the Dems, but a majority of voters?

Whistleblower Aid CEO Libby Liu has long been a tireless champion for giving as many people as possible access to what's really going on, pushing back against Goliaths like totalitarian governments or powerful corporations. We talk about how the non-profit she leads equips whistleblowers to step forward with courage and to survive the harrowing legal and personal gauntlets that lie ahead of them. She also explains why many NDAs are not nearly as enforceable as we think.

With the conviction of former POTUS Trump on all 34 counts last week, you might think that that would catalyze many of even his most ardent supporters to call for him to drop out of the current race for the White House. Think again. Fong and Kemp try to discern why the majority of GOP "the party of law and order" politicians are crying foul, validating Trump's own bogus claim that he's a political martyr. But these two veteran podcasters also weigh in on how the Biden camp needs to capitalize on this first known instance when something has finally stuck to "Teflon Don."

Clinical psychologist Dr. Kenneth Wang has spent the last 20 years researching the area of perfectionism, especially how it manifests itself in Asian Americans. This should come as no surprise, but most corporate executives are perfectionists. This trait is often one of the main reasons that they've risen to the top of their organizations, but it can also create a problematic work environment for those around them, and even lead to problems at home. Wang and I also spend time talking about how many Asian American parents bring a perfectionistic 'tiger' approach when it comes to raising children.

In her debut novel Illusive, writer, blogger, and author Virginia Duan takes readers behind the scenes in the world of K-pop to explore the paralyzing aftereffects of relational trauma and what can be done to overcome them.

In this latest episode of the collaborative series between longtime friends, former pastors, and fellow podcasters Ken Fong and Ken Kemp, they talk about whether the recent decision by the United Methodist denomination to remove all barriers that had prevented LGBTQ+ persons from experiencing full inclusion is a lens through which to view and understand what's happening in America.

In writing My Father, The Panda Killer Vietnamese American Jamie Jo Hoang humanizes the costs and consequences of the Vietnam War through the experiences of three generations of a traumatized fictional family from South Vietnam. 

Author and business journalist Thomas Lee has given us a refreshingly new and relevant way to appreciate the life and legacy of the late pop icon Bruce Lee. In writing The Bruce Lee Code: How the Dragon Mastered Business, Confidence, and Success, and in serving as the lead curator and editorial director of the We Are Bruce Lee exhibit in the Chinese Historical Society's museum in San Francisco, Lee has been able to humanize Bruce Lee by looking at him through four new lenses that prove that he is incredibly relevant today. 

Alexandra Chan had excelled in life as a left-brain, logical and educated person. But the recent loss of her amazing father Robert Earl Chan showed her the inherent limitations of just using reason to deal with life's greatest challenges. In her new book, In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic she takes us all on this journey inward, while telling us about this actual 'most interesting man in the world.'

Newton Cheng is the Director of Health + Performance at Google. He's a husband, a dad, and a champion powerlifter. From all appearances, he was doing great. Even better than great! But he was privately struggling with depression and burnout. It took his decision one day to take off his mask and openly talk about his struggles to set him on a course of getting better, but also pave the way for many other Googlers to step out of the shadows in search of solace and help.