ASIAN AMERICA: THE KEN FONG PODCAST

Updated: 03 Aug 2025 • 209 episodes
AsianAmericapodcast.com

Ken Fong gets to the heart of Asian American culture, history, and spirituality. Through interviews with culture-makers and -shapers in the Asian American community -- some you know, others you've never heard of before -- prepare to laugh, cry, and be amazed.

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Kenny and Chizuko Endo met in 1976 a year after he'd embarked on what would become his lifelong passion for Japanese taiko drumming, ultimately using it to honor its role in the past, but also using it as a springboard to innovate compositions and collaborations that have established these ancient Japanese drums as cle

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Mari Fong is a music journalist who not long ago launched the "Check Your Head" podcast because of being deeply troubled by the number of professional musicians who struggle with their mental health and addictions, with some even choosing to take their lives. Her show provides these artists a safe and empathetic space

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Michael Luo is an executive editor at The New Yorker and writes regularly on politics, religion, and Asian American issues. His first book, “Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America,” is a well-researched history of Chinese Americans from the Gold Rush until the 1960s. U

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Shin Yu Pai was already a published poet and museologist when she entered a contest by the Pacific Northwest's National Public Radio to pitch an idea for a new podcast that focused on Asian Americans. Around seventy people submitted concepts, but NPR picked Shin Yu's. That propelled her into the very formulaic world of

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In this latest installment of the recurring collaboraton between Ken Fong and Ken Kemp, they attempt to ascertain why Trump and MAGA folks enjoy being cruel to others. Especially those that they believe robbed them of previous stature and status in America. Fong and Kemp also bring in David Brook's recent piece in The

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Guest Bryan Yamami is the co-founder and executive director of the acclaimed and award-winning drumming group TAIKOPROJECT (www.taikoproject.org). You'll learn why he was a less than enthusiastic young taiko student, but why he returned to this ancient form of Japanese drumming with fervor while a college student. Nota

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