Alpha Asian

 

In this episode, the Journey to the West crew talk about how the working class or blue collar workers experience racism differently. They briefly touch on class as well and how it's a neglected dynamic in the Asian activism sphere:

Lewis Tan (who played in Zhou Chao in Iron Fist and Gaius Chau in Into the Badlands ) talks about  his role as advocate for Asians and martial arts in film:

Matthew and Melissa discuss how Mark Wahlberg can make up for his past hate crimes against Asians. Then, Melissa pitches you a film about Supreme Court case Fred Korematsu v. United States:

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I used to read a lot of books, but in this day and age of the distraction economy, I find it easier to listen to podcasts. When authors promote their books, they usually run the podcast circuit.  So an author who's promoting his "lessons from the Navy SEALs" book will appear on the Tim Ferriss podcast, then the Art of Manliness podcast and then the Art of Charm podcast.  During their interviews they give a synopsis of their book and its main points.  You don't even have to read the book at that point, because the author told you the stories and lessons from the book. I always try to find Asian American podcasts.  At first they were few and far between.  The early pioneers of Asian American podcasting were Fallout Central , the Fighting 44s and BigWoWo.  The Fighting 44s forum had some interesting podcasts with debates between Will from  Better Asian Man , Jenn Fang from Reappropriate, the Asian Playboy JT Tran...

Stephanie Foo tells a story about dating online that is unlike any we've ever heard before.  

This is the intriguing story of Alex Pham, a 24 year old Vietnamese American UCLA grad, who decided one day, to go on a study abroad trip, which ultimately lead him down a path he never expected.

I was so impressed with Gene Yu's book Yellow Green Beret that I wanted to do a podcast interview with him. As far as Asian American books from the male perspective, I would consider this one of my top three. Definitely give this book a read if you get a chance. In this interview, Gene and I talk about Asians at West Point, military life (and party life) in Korea, overthrowing enemy governments, the history of the Green Berets and Robin Sage (the ultimate military role playing game).

I received an email from The Asian Playboy asking that I review a podcast of his titled, “Exposing the Myth Behind Why Asian Men Can’t Get White Women.” Well, leave it to this controversial myth to pull me back into the Asian American (AA) blogosphere!  Instead of a podcast review, however, I see this as an opportunity to comment on young Asian male confidence (or lack thereof) in the dating game.  The podcast features JT the Asian Playboy and Will the Better Asian Man , two dating coaches who run boot camps and workshops to help men with their game. They specialize in helping Asian men, but have clientele of various ethnicities.  JT told me that while the title of the podcast says "White Women," in practice, he and his associates encourage their students to date women of various ethnic backgrounds. JT stated that he chose the title to get your attention. Say what you will about Asian pick-up artists (PUA).  I think there are a ...

So a couple of nights ago, I was the guest host and moderator for the Big WoWo podcast. Byron, the blogger of Big WoWo, normally moderates these podcasts, but he wanted to debate with the guest, a controversial blogger who goes by the moniker the "Asian of Reason." The guy is... oh... I don't know... NUTS! He says he's a Chinese American student at Johns Hopkins University who believes in the concept of "human biodiversity." Sounds like a benign term, but HBD is essentially a neo- eugenics philosophy. Picture forced sterilizations, Gattaca and Brave New World. I looked through his blog to prep for the podcast, and I found some of his posts pretty funny. When I was talking to him during the podcast, I thought this guy was playing a character, like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. But I don't think what he is writing is satire. This guy believes in this stuff that he writes. This guy is one of those bizarre WTF Asians, like Mong...

I once had an email correspondence with Will of Better Asian Man . I told him how I enjoyed the Fallout Central podcasts and that I was sad to see Fallout Central go. For those of you who don't know, Fallout Central was a site that featured podcasts on Asian American issues, current events and interviews with AA celebs and activists. They were a crew of four that came out with a professional and informative series of podcasts during their site's 2-3 year period. Here's what Will had to say about the demise of Fallout: I hear what you're saying regarding the void on the internet, and I believe that this has to do with the CNN-style of news reporting that we did with regards to Asian American news. We have an assortment of blogs that report on what each respective blog author thinks is important, but none of them have quite the same edge. For example, Angry Asian Man doesn't really report on news, his take is basically "here's something that happ...

So I recently did an interview with Will from Better Asian Man . We discussed The Alpha Asian Mindset , and Will had this to say: "James, I just finished your book , and I gotta say that I really enjoyed it. At a couple of points in the book I had to stop to take action, because you drilled it in so many times. Here are the things I put the book down to do while I was reading it: 1. Logged on to my library on-line account to place a hold on Refuse to Choose 2. Create a new Google doc entitled "Alpha Asian 3-5 Method," where I outlined my 5 long term goals, and my 5 tactical goals 3. Open my weight lifting journal and plan out a new new strategy based on your recommendations and principles in Chapter 8 I just got so juiced up by reading your book , that at those points in time I literally said to myself, "I gotta do this right now," and I put your book down, took care of that item and then picked it back up to read some more." Will, has an interes...

Here's an interview I did with Randall Park, the actor and comedian you've seen in a lot of places, such as the KY Intense commercial, AZN TV's XBytes and the movie American Fusion , which was a great movie BTW. It was a very relaxed interview, and we discussed how he got into acting and comedy and the status of Asian Americans in Hollywood. What I like about Randall is that he doesn't just wait for Hollywood to give him work. He uses the Internet to make stuff happen and put out creative and hilarious pieces which showcase his talent as an actor. The interview is about 30 minutes long.