Jeff Yang and Phil Yu present an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America.
What's up, podcast listeners? We've got another episode of our podcast They Call Us Bruce. (Almost) each week, my good friend, writer/columnist Jeff Yang and I host an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America, with a strong focus on media, entertainment and popular culture.
In this episode, we welcome rapper/actor/writer Jonnie Park, aka Dumbfoundead, author of the new memoir SPIT: A Life in Battles. He talks about why the time felt right to share his story through this book; coming up in Koreatown and finding his voice as an artist through the Los Angeles battle rap scene; making the leap from music to movies and TV in projects like K-Pops! and Beef; and why I'm the only person who calls him by his government name. Also: The Good, The Bad, and The WTF of writing SPIT.
South Asians are a powerful, visible minority with top roles in the overwhelmingly white Trump administration. They’re also facing a racist backlash, fueled in part by the white nationalist Groyper movement.
Behold, the insane trailer for Street Fighter, the upcoming latest movie adaptation of the hit video game. "Set in 1993, estranged Street Fighters Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) are thrown back into combat when the mysterious Chun-Li (Callina Liang) recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament: a brutal clash of fists, fate, and fury. But behind this battle royale lies a deadly conspiracy that forces them to face off against each other and the demons of their past. And if they don’t, it’s GAME OVER!" It looks chaos, and I'm digging it. In theaters everywhere on October 16.
The highly anticipated animated feature Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender leaked online months ahead of its premiere on Paramount+. An anonymous X account claimed that a Nickelodeon employee emailed him the entire film, though that appears not to be the case. The fallout has sparked a discussion over Paramount's decision to forgo a traditional theatrical release for a valuable franchise.
After going from Riverdale heartthrob to art-house breakout with May December, actor Charles Melton put his own life story into his latest role on the second season of Netflix anthology series Beef.
Supirya Ganesh, who plays Dr. Samira Mohan on The Pitt, opens up about conforming to notions of Western, white beauty standards before finding her queer community. In this essay for Vulture, she writes about the gender dysphoria she experienced when she moved from India to the US as an 18-year-old to attend Columbia University. She details a specific moment at a New York bar when someone directly asked her if she was a man or a woman.
Over the weekend, a full version of the highly anticipated animated feature Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender leaked online -- about six months before the film was scheduled to officially premiere on Paramount+.
Acclaimed filmmaker Bao Nguyen sits down with Ronny Chieng on The Daily Show to discuss his latest documentary, BTS: The Return. They talk about following BTS' creative process as a fly on the wall, the big reunion after the band completed their national military service, the documentary narrative around honesty rather than facts, and the band's vulnerable moments when living out their normal lives.
"Revolutionary Love is not passive. It is disciplined and asks us to see no stranger, be brave with grief, harness rage as information and not as destruction, listen across difference, and reimagine institutions that were never designed to hold all of us. Through tools designed for classrooms, homes, and communities, the movement translates these ideas into practice and invites individuals not just to believe in love, but to operationalize it."
As executive chef at Perry's, an award-winning Japanese fusion restaurant in Washington, DC, Masako Morishita has made it her mission to introduce diners to a broader range of Japanese cuisine. But her path into the culinary world was far from traditional -- including corporate jobs and a five-year stint as a cheerleader for the Washington Commanders.
In this video essay, Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou, the filmmakers behind Every Frame a Painting, reveal how Tsui Hark radically reimagines the wuxia genre in the 1995 tour-de-force martial arts movie The Blade.
The first trailer for the upcoming sequel Godzilla Minus Zero has dropped, with a good glimpse of more kaiju goodness. A follow-up to the surprise international hit Godzilla Minus One, the sequel picks up two years after the events of the first movie, continuing the story of the survivors' from the kaiju's last attack. In the closing moments, Godzilla stomps his way to the Statue of Liberty, setting his sights on New York City. Hell yeah.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith star Maya Erskine is set to make her feature film directorial debut on an untitled teen comedy for A24. Details about the movie are under wraps, but the project was reportedly the subject of a heated bidding war. Erskine, who previously has written and directed episodes of the hit Hulu comedy Pen15, apparently blew away the producers and studio with her pitch.
In Queens, a woman is accused of setting fires at three separate establishments on Monday night. One blaze was set at a Chinese restaurant with people living above it, while other fires were set outside a funeral home and a Jewish center. 36-year-old Shaniqua Fort is facing multiple charges, including attempted manslaughter, assault, arson, criminal mischief and petit larceny. While a motive is unclear, police do not believe this was a hate crime targeting either the Asian or Jewish establishments.
"In recent months, the Trump administration has revived the use of terms like 'illegal alien' and 'alien' in official communications, reversing a shift under the Biden administration toward more humanizing language like 'undocumented noncitizen' or 'migrant.' To some, this may seem like a technical correction — a return to legal terminology. But to the people described by these words, it feels dehumanizing. So why resurrect these terms now?"
A coalition of the descendants of a Japanese American internment camp and Trump-aligned wind power opponents helped kill an Idaho wind farm, but A.I.-driven energy demand keeps rising.
In Minnesota, local authorities are investigating the arrest of a Hmong American man by federal officers as a potential case of kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment. In January, ICE officers bashed open the front door of ChongLy "Scott" Thao's home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him outside in just his underwear and a blanket in freezing conditions. He was returned to his home a few hours later when these ICE geniuses realized they had made a mistake -- a mistake that might mean criminal charges.
The White House announced that former California congresswoman Michelle Steel has been nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to South Korea. Steel, who is Korean American and a conservative Republican, lost her bid for re-election to her Orange County congressional seat in 2024. The nomination will require congressional approval. This administration continues to elevate the worst damn people.
Laufey has assembled an all-star cast for a sixties pool party in the new video for "Madwoman," off the deluxe edition of the Icelandic-Chinese singer's Grammy-winning album A Matter of Time. Directed by Warren Fu, the video features some of the most celebrated stars of the moment: Heated Rivalry breakout Hudson Williams, Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu, KATSEYE's Megan Skiendiel and The Summer I Turned Pretty's Lola Tung -- or, as one commenter put it, "the wasian avengers."
According to Isa Briones, "some people need to brush up on theater etiquette" -- specifically, the audience member who shouted out her The Pitt character's name mid-performance at Just in Time. While starring on Broadway as 'Connie Francis' in the hit musical, Briones shared that an audience member inapropriately yelled out "Dr. Santos!" during the show. "I'm not Dr. Santos. I'm not even Connie Francis. I am Isa Briones, one of the actors in the show you have paid to enjoy," Briones wrote in an Instagram story. "You are not a kid at Disneyland. You are an adult man at a Broadway show. Act like it."
Hey, wanna be in a movie? Ang Lee is casting extras to be in his latest movie Gold Mountain, a historical drama set during the 1850s California Gold Rush, shooting in and around the Sacramento this July. According to the casting call, they're looking for faces of a variety of ethnicities to play townspeople, kids, railroad workers, male horseback riders, blacksmiths, butchers, wagon drivers and coal miners. If you're interested, refer to the flyer above. Good luck!
Coachella attendees got a "Golden" treat when the singers behind Huntr/x -- Ejae (Rumi), Audrey Nuna (Mira), and Rei Ami (Zoey) -- made a surprise appearance, joining the ladies of Katseye (Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Megan Skiendiel, Sophia Laforteza and Yoonchae Jeung) on stage to perform their Oscar-winning hit from Kpop Demon Hunters.
Awkward. On Friday, the Seattle Mariners unveiled a statue outside T-Mobile Park to honor Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki. Unfortunately, the bronze sculpture, which features Suzuki in a signature pose, was damaged upon being revealed to the public. When the tarp was pulled from the statue -- with some difficulty -- the figure's bat was bent backward at the handle. Womp womp.
For comedian Sheng Wang purple is more than a color, it’s a way of being. From his style... to the way he floats through the world writing jokes based on the small, fleeting moments of life, Weng's aura is maintaining a sense of tranquility and creating impact with his art by not trying so damn hard. It's no shock that his second Netflix special Purple is the most revealing of who he is at a time when folks are finally paying attention.
In Kelly Yang’s latest novel, The Take, two women swap blood as part of an experimental antiaging therapy that's suddenly fashionable in California's high-income districts. A vibrant skewering of our youth-obsessed culture, it's quite the detour for a children's book author known for boldly blazing new trails.
Acclaimed cartoonist Derek Kirk Kim talks about this latest comic book Royals, a mind-bending crime caper about telepathic twin brothers set in the shadowy back alleys of Seoul, South Korea.
BTS has made a triumphant return as the biggest music act in the world. But how are the members of BTS -- j-hope, Jin, SUGA, RM, V, Jimin, and Jung Kook -- going to be with spicy food? BTS takes on the wings of death and discusses the process of making new music, what it’s like the morning after performances, the secret to the perfect tteokbokki, how to play “369,” and the best anime songs of all time.
IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson welcomes comedian Hasan Minhaj, who talks about growing up Indian American Muslim in northern California and the immigrant experience as it stands today. He also opens up about fatherhood and asks Mrs. Obama and Craig for parenting advice. Plus, he explains why magicians are more impressive than comedians, and why clowns are the least respected of the bunch.
Koreatown-raised entertainer Dumbfoundead, aka Jonathan Park, tells it straight: “I don’t think I’m just Korean or Korean American. I’m more Koreatown than both of those labels... This is the culture I grew up in, in the neighborhood, and that’s what made me who I am. If I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood that proudly had Korean letters on menus and signs and I could be unapologetically Korean, I would not be able to battle rap in confidence and be able to have thick skin to fight opponents verbally."
Historians believe that the first Chinese woman to appear publicly in the United States was a young woman called Afong Moy, who was imported as an exotic attraction in 1834. From spectacle to exclusion, her story reveals how Asian women have long been exoticized, surveilled and denied full belonging in the American imagination and the law.
The APPEAL Leadership Program is a 2.5 day program focused on building a vibrant movement in commercial tobacco control, cancer prevention, and health advocacy in Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities. This unique leadership program will convene people from across the U.S. and USAPI jurisdictions to discuss and learn about critical health-related tobacco and cancer issues facing AAs & NH/PIs. Fellows will develop the knowledge, skills, and capacity needed to advocate and implement policy change. Apply here.
