PODCAST · society
The Mash-Up Americans
by The Mash-Up Americans
The Mash-Up Americans is your guide to the hyphen-America world we all live in. Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer talk culture, identity, what makes us who we are. Get to know yourself, America. At The Mash-Up Americans we are celebrating and challenging the raucous, colorful, complicated country we live in by asking all the important, awkward questions: What does it mean to be an immigrant in America? What cultural baggage do we bring to sex and relationships? Why is Korean skincare so popular? When does something get upgraded from the ethnic aisle? Get more at mashupamericans.com
Episodes
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Day 30: Begin At The Beginning
And end when it’s time. Wisdom from Lewis Carroll, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published by MacMillan in 1865. Thank you for joining us on this 30-day celebration of Lunar New Year. We hope you have an incredible Year of the Fire Horse!...
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Day 29: Our Stupid Hearts
Our hearts are broken and we’re so grateful for it. Meditations in an Emergency, by Cameron Awkward-Rich, from Dispatch, published by Persea Books in 2019. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy...
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Day 28: Kind Hands
What is there but kindness? I Am Not Alone Here, by Jacqueline Suskin from The Verse for Now, published by Flower Press in 2025 This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse...
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Day 27: Life Goes On
Despite reality, reality also demands joy. Life goes on. Thank you to Wislawa Szymborka for Reality Demands, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, published in View With A Grain of Sand by Harcourt Brace in 1995. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of...
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Day 26: Maya Angelou and Dolly Parton Are Rooting For You
Be you, and do it on purpose! Thanks to Maya Angelou and Dolly Parton. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 25: Courage Is A Muscle
Summoning our strength of heart with Rabbi Susan Goldberg of our beloved Nefesh in Los Angeles. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 24: Expanding Our Minds
Let Bong Joon Ho show us the way. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone! https://bookshop.org/lists/mash-up-lunar-new-year-daily-podcast-book-list See Privacy...
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Day 23: Art
What is art? Thank you to Shaun Usher of the Letters of Note Newsletter, one of our very favorite joys of the internet. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 22: Supplicants
How do we ask for what we need? Different Ways to Pray by Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, published by Far Corner Books in 1995. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor....
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Day 21: We Already Have Everything Good
A poem (a prayer?) from Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone! https://bookshop.org/lists/mash-up-lunar-new-year-daily-podcast-book-list...
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Day 20: Our kids
James Baldwin has something to say about it. From Notes on the House of Bondage, published in The Nation in 1980. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 19: Franz Kafka and Eddie Murphy Walk Into A Room …
More advice from some of the greats. Wisdom from across the 20th century from Franz Kafka and Eddie Murphy. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 18: Being a Choi (Proud)
Remembering everything that comes in our name is essential. Be proud! Be Choi. Choi Jeong Min by Franny Choi, published in Poetry Magazine in 2016. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of...
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Day 17: Juggling
We can let it fall, sometimes. A Poem for Someone Who Is Juggling Her Life, by Rose Cook, from Notes From a Bright Field, published by Cultured Llama in 2013. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor....
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Day 16: Mosquitos And Kindness
A few proverbs from across the continents, tied together by the Dalai Lama. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 15: Waiting
Sometimes democracy requires patience. Don’t we know it! Democracy Poem #1 by June Jordan, from The Essential June Jordan, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and...
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Day 14: We Have Enough Time, Actually
If we use our time well, we have plenty of it. A reminder from the philosopher Seneca, from On The Shortness of Life. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 13: Peopling The Space
Can you draw your own face? Some notes by Jorge Luis Borges from Horse, Stars, Men, published in Aleph and Other Stories by Penguin Classics in 2004. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year…
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Day 12: Taking It All
Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón from Poem-a-Day, published by the Academy of American Poets in 2017. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 11: Being Rich
William Shakespeare says our riches on the inside is better than anything we could find on the outside, and we agree. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 10: We Like Your Hat
No kindness is ever too small. Thank you for Small Kindnesses to Danusha Laméris, from Bonfire Opera, published by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2020. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy...
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Day 9: Being Somebody
You are always important, and you are always somebody, from Emily Dickinson. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 8: Creating Dangerously
A reminder that we always need art by Edwidge Danticatt, from Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist At Work, published by Princeton University Press in 2010. Learn more at edwidgedanticat.com. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art,...
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Day 7: Fools
Yiddish proverbs always get it in very few words. For more wisdom and delight - This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone!...
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Day 6: Your job
A poem from Victoria Chang, from The Trees Witness Everything, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2022. Learn more @fattery12. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse...
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Day 5: The Five Remembrances
Today are the five remembrances from the Upajjhatthana Sutta (“Subjects for Contemplation”). They are meant to be recited each day. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse...
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Day 4: Lotus
A meditation from Thich Nhat Hanh, from No Mud, No Lotus, published in Parallax Press in 2014. Learn more at plumvillage.org. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse...
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Day 3: Sun in the Face
Mary Oliver's Why I Wake Early Published by Beacon Press in 2010. Learn more at maryoliver.com. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone! Books by authors featured…
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Day 2: Plums
Today, a poem by Gayle Brandeis. Learn more at gaylebrandeis.com. This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy Year of the Fire Horse everyone! Find books by Gayle Brandeis at...
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Day 1: Looking Up
A few words of wisdom from the great Irish wit Oscar Wilde. More from Oscar Wilde https://bookshop.org/lists/mash-up-lunar-new-year-daily-podcast-book-list This Lunar New Year we’re trying something different - 30 days of short daily episodes with art, poetry, and words of wisdom and humor. Happy...
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Gochujang at the Comfort Inn: The Korean Food Takeover with Matthew Kang
Writer and food expert Matthew Kang (Eater) joins the Big Korean Energy realm to unpack the current Korean food moment, from fine dining in Dallas to gochujang bottles at Ohio motels. We talk about Korea’s soft power, the delicious Mash-Ups shaping Korean American cuisine, and how one dish,...
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Joanne Lee Molinaro on the Power of Korean Food, Culture, and Self-Love
The Korean Vegan’s Joanne Lee Molinaro joins us to talk about the cultural power and the politics of Korean joy. How can scarcity become abundance? Look to Korea! From budae jjigae to K-Beauty, Joanne traces her path from attorney to author, and why she believes Big Korean Energy isn’t just a...
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Why Are Korean Sports Fans Are So Intense?? With Tommy Craggs
What makes something feel Korean? Journalist Tommy Craggs joins us to unpack Big Korean Energy, from the ’88 Seoul Olympics to Son Heung-min, Cubs fandom to K-pop Demon Hunters. We dig into how sports and culture shaped his Korean consciousness, how today’s global K-wave ties back to the trauma…
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Time Travel and The Korean Literati with R.O. Kwon
Bestselling novelist R. O. Kwon joins us to explore Big Korean Energy in literature and how she writes her desire (and freedom) onto the page. She shares what it was like growing up in a mostly Korean town in L.A., why Squid Game still feels astonishing, and the relationship between Koreanness,...
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Everything Is Korean with Phil Yu
From bootleg VHS tapes to a Tony-winning Broadway musical and Netflix megahits, Koreans have gone from “who?” to “whoa!” In this episode of our Big Korean Energy season, we sit down with Phil Yu, creator of Angry Asian Man, and talk about the seismic shift of K-culture going global, what it feels...
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Coming Soon - Big Korean Energy
We’re living in Big Korean Energy. From Kdramas to ramen hacks, skincare routines to fandom rituals, Korean influence is everywhere, shaping how we connect, celebrate, and imagine the world. This season, we unpack what makes something feel Korean (whether or not it actually is), why that feeling...
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Telling Stories with Anna Holmes
If we're lucky, we're constantly growing, learning and telling new stories about ourselves. Writer Anna Holmes is here talking about starting new things in your 40s and 50s and finding community. What do we say no to? What can we demand now that we are grown? How much magnesium should we take to...
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Dreaming Big with Cristina Jiménez
How do we learn from the youth? MacArthur Genius and co-founder of United We Dream Cristina Jiménez join us to talk organizing and creating youth-led movements.And about repair through the eyes of young immigrant kids. She talks about the moment her young son got his first passport and the...
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Taking The Win with George Goehl
Winning gives the push to do more - a light and hope and a sense of power. You have to acknowledge the little and big wins, to give you energy for the bigger and longer fights. We’re joined by longtime activist and community George Goehl. He’s also in a 5 year strong group chat with Amy and...
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Repairing the World with Rabbi Susan Goldberg
Today to launch our season on tikkun olam, we sit down with Rabbi Susan Goldberg, the founder of Nefesh in Los Angeles and Rebecca’s very own rabbi-on-speed-dial. We laugh with our bellies and dive into the difference between healing and repair, how to make peace with our ancestors, and the…
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Coming Soon - Season of Repair
What do you do to repair your corner of the world? This season of The Mash-Up Americans we’re talking to a Rabbi, an Immigrant Justice activist, a Community Organizer and a Writer about how we can help the world and ourselves, especially when the world feels so chaotic. See Privacy Policy at...
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Bonus - The Mash-Up Americans on the Immigrantly Podcast
In January 2023, Saadia Khan sat down with Amy Choi and Rebecca Lehrer for her weekly podcast Immigrantly. The conversation centered on their series on grief. The interview focused on grief, how we can understand it without over-pathologizing the sentiment, and why it’s both universal and…
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It’s Time for Extreme Hospitality with Pierre Thiam
It’s our last episode of the season(!) and we’re talking hospitality — what it looks like, what it means, what it does for our souls — and we can think of no better expert to turn to than Pierre Thiam, the trailblazing chef, author, and activist. He talks about how sharing food is a literal...
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Liza Treyger On Always Speaking Your Mind
As people who care deeply about many things in this world (inequity, climate change, diversity, you get the idea), we could definitely learn to give less of a sh*t about other stuff — like whether or not people get offended by what we say and do. Enter: Liza Treyger. The hilarious comedian,...
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Min Jin Lee Teaches Us How To Be Pleasant And Difficult
Never meet your heroes? Fie, we say. The magnificent author, editor, and queen of Queens Min Jin Lee joined Rebecca and Amy on stage at The Greene Space to kick off The Mash-Up Americans residency, and lucky for us she’s even more generous and staggeringly brilliant than we imagined. From...
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Bonus: The Best Advice Show Featuring Rebecca and Amy
To know us at The Mash-Up Americans is to know we love to be told how to do things well — how to be less racist, how to make a killer apple strudel, and so on. So it’s fitting that this week, our pal Zak Rosen invited both Rebecca and Amy on his show, The Best Advice Show, to share a few words of...
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Replay: Celebrating San Giving With Francis Lam
If San Giving, aka Thanksgiving, isn’t the mashiest American holiday of all, we’d be pressed to think of anything else that even comes close. It’s when American culinary traditions (turkey, stuffing) combine with those of our families (kimchi, tortillas) to be that rare holiday that seems to…
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Jeff Chang Can’t Stop and He Won’t Stop
Millennials will never know a world without hip hop, and frankly, we’re all better for it. Author, journalist, scholar, and all-around visionary Jeff Chang joins Amy and Rebecca to share about his first introduction to hip hop, how it serves as a guide to liberation and how it’s just a part of…
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Love Hard and Set Boundaries with Dr. Pooja Lakshmin
Where there are boundaries, there’s also healing, love, grief, and acceptance, explains Dr. Pooja Lakshmin — but getting there is often a painful, awkward journey. The board-certified psychiatrist and bestselling author joins Amy and Rebecca to talk about boundary-setting as self-liberation, fake...
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Jonathan Menjivar Rewrites His Story On Class
Does having money make you a classhole? And what does that even mean? Producer, reporter, and Classy podcast host Jonathan Menjivar joins Amy and Rebecca as they tackle the awkward topic of class, how it butts into the many facets of our lives and our identities, and how we can come to terms with...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Mash-Up Americans is your guide to the hyphen-America world we all live in. Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer talk culture, identity, what makes us who we are. Get to know yourself, America.
At The Mash-Up Americans we are celebrating and challenging the raucous, colorful, complicated country we live in by asking all the important, awkward questions: What does it mean to be an immigrant in America? What cultural baggage do we bring to sex and relationships? Why is Korean skincare so popular? When does something get upgraded from the ethnic aisle?
Get more at mashupamericans.com
HOSTED BY
The Mash-Up Americans
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Mash-Up Americans have?
The Mash-Up Americans currently has 154 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Mash-Up Americans about?
The Mash-Up Americans is your guide to the hyphen-America world we all live in. Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer talk culture, identity, what makes us who we are. Get to know yourself, America. At The Mash-Up Americans we are celebrating and challenging the raucous, colorful, complicated country we...
How often does The Mash-Up Americans release new episodes?
The Mash-Up Americans publishes regularly with 154 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Mash-Up Americans?
You can listen to The Mash-Up Americans on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Mash-Up Americans?
The Mash-Up Americans is created and hosted by The Mash-Up Americans.
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