Wake up! Saturday School is a podcast where Brian Hu (@husbrian) and Ada Tseng (@adatseng) teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. New episodes released Saturdays at 8am, when all your friends are still in bed watching cartoons. It'll be a blast from the past, as they dig up some of their favorite works they've come across covering Asian American arts & entertainment over the years -- and discover other gems for the first time. Saturday School is a proud founding member of Potluck, a collective of podcasts featuring unique stories and voices from the Asian American community. Sign up for our newsletter below for lecture notes!
It's our final episode of our 9th season of Saturday School, which covers "Stars of Asian American Cinema." Before YouTube, if you wanted to see an abundance of stories with Asian Americans as stars, you'd have to go to an Asian American film festival. And there, we had our own stars who would walk down our own red carpets and get standing ovations at our own screenings (regardless of whether Hollywood took notice). For the last 9 episodes, we've been paying tribute to some of the regulars of that scene -- and if we missed anyone, chances are they are in our season-concluding film, 2007's "Finishing the Game," directed by Justin Lin.
To guide us through this 1970s-set mockumentary which follows a casting call for a new stand-in for Bruce Lee, we have a special guest! We welcome Phil Yu, our fellow Potluck Podcast Collective member who hosts They Call Us Bruce, All The Asians on Star Trek and the official "Squid Game" podcast. You might also know him as the blogger behind Angry Asian Man and the co-author of "Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now." But guess what, he was also an extra in "Finishing the Game" who shows up for 1 second just before the credits.
"Finishing the Game," at its heart, is about all the pre-2010s anxiety about what we would need in order to have an Asian American leading man in Hollywood. Not a loveable sweetheart (like Sung Kang's character in the film), a serious actor (like Dustin Nguyen's character), reliable B-Lister (like Roger Fan's character) or Asian star visiting from a foreign country (like Leonardo Nam's character), but a bankable Asian American Hollywood star who could greenlight a film and get the screaming fans to show up. At the time, it was almost unimaginable. But now, we can see why it was so important that we continued -- and continue -- to imagine.
29 Dec 2024
Season 9, Ep. 9: Lucky Grandma
This week's Saturday School episode is a celebration of Tsai Chin, as we revisit the 2019 film, "Lucky Grandma," directed by Saisie Sealey.
Some might know Chin as a classically-trained theater actress and original star of the London "The World of Suzie Wong" stage show. Some might remember her as a Bond girl. Many likely think of her as Auntie Lindo in "The Joy Luck Club."
But "Lucky Grandma" gave Chin the role of a lifetime. Now 91, she was in her mid-80s when she played the cranky, chain-smoking grandma who gets herself mixed up in a gang-related heist on the bus ride back from a trip to a NY Chinatown casino.
The film's national commercial release coincided with the pandemic, alongside the rise of hate crimes targeting Asian American seniors. "Lucky Grandma" provided a free-wheeling fantasy of an old Asian lady trying to get away with the perfect crime, despite having no skills, smarts nor plan. We root for our star, who is only armed with judgmental stares, lack of empathy and brazen stubbornness. As the tagline says: Respect your elders.
Mentioned in this episode:
Listen to Inheriting from LAist & NPR
"Inheriting" is a show about Asian American and Pacific Islander families, which explores how one event in history can ripple through generations. In doing so, the show seeks to break apart the AAPI monolith and tell a fuller story of these communities. In each episode, NPR’s Emily Kwong sits down with one family and facilitates deeply emotional conversations between their loved ones, exploring how their most personal, private moments are an integral part of history. Through these stories, we show how the past is personal and how to live with the legacies we’re constantly inheriting.
New episodes premiere every Thursday. Subscribe to “Inheriting” on your app of choice
Listen to Inheriting now! (https://saturdayschoolpodcast.captivate.fm/inheriting)
8 Dec 2024
Season 9, Ep. 8: Crush the Skull
Saturday School Podcast host Viet Nguyen and guest Chris Dinh explore how Asian American independent cinema and YouTube stardom collided to launch Chris Dinh's award-winning career, revealing the power of cultural fusion in shaping artistic identity.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.7 / 5
29 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 24 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
27
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
51
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