theCoderBros Go To White Castle (Cuz We Ah, So Asian)

Art Chou works in the world of sports technology, from being a VC for sports tech companies to having his own consultancy in the sports world. As an undergrad engineer from UPenn, he got his start in sports back in the day when he just up and called the CEO of a golf company, and the rest is history. Sports fans, you cannot have a cooler career than Art (unless your name is Jeremy Lin).

Norman Liang's one of those Asians that know all the other Asians. He even knows the Asian keyboard kid from that Jack Black movie School of Rock. He's been everywhere from raising many millions for a tech startup back in the hey day to being on the board at MySpace and everything in between. He's a self-professed banana and super chill with his kids, unlike most Asians. Best part, he's from Jersey - so yeah, he definitely loves his White Castle sliders.

Jamie Chang is a Canadien, eh!, who is an amazing coder and founder of Under the GUI which created pixelpad.io. (a software platform for teaching kids to code). Hear all about how he just fell into it and even about his nomadic family background. Nomads that don't cross breed. You don't get it now, but you will if you listen in.

Aileen Brennan is super chill and funny, and wouldn't you know it, yet another Asian Stanford grad from Hawaii (it sure seems like theCoderBros have cornered that market). From hardcore Taiwanese growing up to marrying a white guy (wait sorry, half-white Wasian), Aileen has trended away from the yellow direction. Ex-lead singer in a punk pop band with kids who are so good at baseball they might get recruited. Aileen is ready to chill with us in our podcast.

theCoderBros wrap up their Season 2 with a recap of some of their favorite episodes including a countdown (for New Years, get it?) of their top 3. No kiss at the end, but they do talk about what they wish for in the new year.

Hear from Haniel the conclusion of racism in Iowa, how he got on national TV, and the advice he gave both of his super Asian tracked kids (a UPenn graduate that works at Accenture, and a Brown graduate that works at Apple. Whoa.)

Haniel Lynn is the CEO of Kastle, a company with hundreds of millions in revenue and almost 1000 employees. As you can guess from the name, he's also the brother of Hansel. In honor of the holiday season, we celebrate with family by talking about how these two grew up in Iowa with a single mom and how Haniel's perfect Asian track record came to be.

Patricia Sun is the sister-in-law of Jeremy Lin and co-founder, co-boss, and CEO of JLin, LLC. Hear the inside perspective on what makes Jeremy so successful beyond the NBA, why he played balled with some pretty crazy hairstyles, and how it was really Patricia who kicked Jeremy out of his brother's apartment during Linsanity (in the most loving way, of course!). Is Patricia the boss or is Jeremy the boss? You decide.

Jan Foo is a graduate of Yale Law where she became close friends with a certain JD Vance, met Vivek Ramaswamy, and even had Amy Chua, the original Tiger Mom (yeah, the one who wrote the book that started the phrase!), as her professor and mentor. Jan grew up with the opposite of Tiger Parents though, and instead credits her success to what she calls a "benign neglect" parenting style that she grew up with. Does the opposite of Tiger Parenting really work? Find out from Jan.

theCoderBros wish you a Happy Thanksgiving with a pre-recorded episode of their patented HARU quiz. How Asian R U, exactly? Find out how Asian theCoderBros are as we run through a few of our questions from our world-famous HARU quiz, available online at www.thecoderbros.com.

David Chien is the backwards baseball cap wearing owner of Sushi Bistro in San Francisco. A Chinese guy running a Japanese style restaurant for 20 years isn't all that common, and neither is Dave. Find out what goes into running a sushi restaurant, why a handicap patron makes you think twice, and why some of that really red looking tuna isn't exactly natural.

Meet Arva Chiu, Stanford educated doctor who decided to move to the tiny village of Barrow, Alaska to be one of six do-it-all-doctors after getting her medical degree. She's since become what we laymen would call a Butt Doctor (other people call them Endoscopists) doing multiple colonoscopies a day until she recently retired. Take a cue from Arva - if you're going to walk up to a sleeping bear, make sure your snowmobile is pointed in the "away" direction.

Karen Foo is a Type-B ER doctor, if there's such a thing. Laid back up-for-anything is her motto. But she also can't sit still. That's what led her to becoming an ER Doctor - everything else was just too boring. If you've ever watched the Pitt on HBO, you'll know what her life is like. Get ready to cringe at some of the gross stories that can only come from an ER doc.

Ervinna Lim was born and raised in Malaysia. She went to college in Australia and then made her way to the bay area where she gained experience at companies such as Ebay and Stubhub, before making it all the way to Senior VP at Jumio. She's the proud Mom of 2 boys. Is she a tiger parent? She says no, but we say otherwise.

Tony Lee has told his shark attack survival story to National Geographic, Newsweek, ABC7, KITV, Island News, and even theCoderBros. Relive our shortened episode replay as we focus on the craziest story we've ever heard. Tony is the epitome of an Asian using math to live, so make sure your kids get their A's in math!

David Chiu is San Francisco's City Attorney, known for a lot of things, chief among them being the leader of the Birthright Citizenship lawsuits against the Trump administration. The kind of guy who has three degrees from Harvard, he somehow still disappointed his Tiger Mom back in the day (sort of). As one of the co-founders of HAPI Hour, an Asian bar meetup group in San Francisco back in the early 2000s, he's as laid back as the rest of us all while being the best of us.

Alice Loo was raised by her grandparents in China while her parents were trying to make it in life. She finally "met" her parents, who were basically strangers to her, when she moved to the US at the age of 13, leaving the grandparents who had raised her since a month after birth. She's since spent her time ratcheting up the Chinese way of working hard to be successful by getting into Duke for undergrad and then working at Deloitte for what seems like a million years.

Dean Ku is a proud house spouse who spent his kids' formative years down undah in Australia. He's been around the block, having opened Asia's first Starbucks and taking clients out to drink fresh snake blood to working at Red Octane, the Netflix of video games back in the day. He was even there long enough to be a part of Guitar Hero when it got bought eventually by Activision. As Dean taught us that boys down undah would say, welcome to our podcast, c*nts! (Seriously, that's a thing in Australia. But not here, so we bleeped out the u.)

Greyson Lum has the most magical job in the world - he designs themed entertainment. After working 27 years at Disney as an architect for many of their theme park villages, he struck out on his own to found Baker-E, a themed entertainment architecture and design company (who knew those were out there?). Tune in to see how smart, creative, and persistent you need to be to have a magical life.

Tony Lee isn't Ironman, but he's not unlike Tony Stark. He's built uber-successful companies (but in biomed, not weapons). He designed his own special prosthetic legs for each of his sports (though they don't have rockets on them). And Tony's sheer perseverance and Ironman-level craziness brought him to China to close a funding round right after a near-fatal shark attack where he swam to shore with his foot in his pocket. No shortage of inspiration from a man that came back from the literal jaws of death to raise millions for his company. Give it up for Tony Shark (get it?).

Shu-Ling Lee is the Executive Pastor at North America's largest Chinese church, the number 2 guy at a church of 4,000 people (Asians!) in Toronto. Shu-Ling was a bit of a rebel in his youth, maybe even failing some "Asian Six Pack" classes, as they call them in Canada, before turning to a life that serves Christ. Tune in to check out Shu's religious yet progressive views on life, and how Christianity doesn't necessarily make you a better person, but it does give you a place to heal.

Warning - Mature Themes, for 18+. Kaila Yu is a former Playboy model, K-Pop band singer, and is currently a freelance journalist - and she's got a memoir coming out. It's called Fetishized, and in it, she talks about yellow fever, fetishizing of the Asian female, and how she herself may have contributed to it in her youth. Tune in to find out what her strict Asian parents thought, how she became one of the race girls in a Fast and the Furious movie, and why not giving a _bleep_ got her to where she is today.

Season 2, lesss goooooooo! Drop in to our short Season 2 intro where theCoderBros talk about why they changed the podcast name, what they did this summer, and most importantly a preview of Season 2 guests. Me so Asian, you so Asian, we all so Asian.

theCoderBros spend their last episode of season 1 playing a game of Guess How Much - Net Worth edition. Play along as they pull out Asian celebs like Simu Liu, Andrew Yang, and Jackie Chan and find out how much their estimated net worth is, according to the internet. Have an awesome summer everyone, chat you up in the Fall!

Ha Nguyen is ready for some football, at least Wayne thinks she is. On top of being a big college football fan, she's won tens of thousands playing poker back in the day too. Alas, she decided not to play poker professionally and is now a fractional COO, helping a multitude of companies run their operations. From a last-minute escape from Vietnam at age 2 during the fall of Saigon, her life trajectory changed through the selflessness of a foster family who supported Ha's low-income upbringing to eventually attend some of the top schools in the world and finally find success in the business world.

Tiffany Chin is a 3rd generation Chinese American raised in the Bay Area. She has built a successful career as an AI and Design leader. Both of her parents were also designers so I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree so they say. Most interestingly, her White Castle is roller skating. Yes, you read that correctly, it's roller skating at skate parks and dropping into bowls!

Marcella Lee, weeknight news anchor for CBS in San Diego and 24-time Emmy winner, is a nice person. Some have even said TOO nice. But listen to all the lives she's impacted from foster families to homes in wildfires and you'll see that being nice doesn't mean you won't succeed. In fact, it's a big reason why she did.

Rebekka Lien has lived a very unique life so far, especially for an asian. She was born in Germany, moved to Taiwan at age 5 and then to America by age 8. She had a tough childhood which she's had to overcome. And eventually she made her way into becoming an Actor, Screenwriter, Comedian, Voiceover artist and more. She's living with her boyfriend in extreme downsized fashion in their Toyota Rav4 SUV.

Marie Yuen is living her White Castle life in Chicago where she's probably the one and only Asian playwright. Starting with an advertising career in Hong Kong, she started to find her calling after winning the South China Morning Post Short Story Competition there and came back to the US to start her life as a playwright. She's currently raising investments for her next play on a New York stage, Roxane of Bergerac, with an all-Asian cast and a new twist on an old classic. No numchucks included in the Cyrano de Bergerac fight scenes (unfortunately?).

Soon Yu, bestselling author and podcaster extraordinaire, joins us to reminisce about our old Asian rock band days in the late 90s Bay Area. A marketing/user experience guy by trade, Soon also has a successful podcast called Aconic which also interviews guests of Asian descent, including big names like Andrew Yang, Elaine Chow, and soon Martin Yan (can cook!), and two successful books called Iconic Advantage and Friction, available on Amazon and elsewhere. Soon hails from the Davis, CA area where he lives with his son and wife, who he met through a 7-day whirlwind first-date experience and got engaged to only a few weeks later. Now that's love at first sight!

Dan Chan, aka the Millionaires' Mentalist, is an Asian magician. It's not often you hear those two words together, but that's who he is. He loves to wow people, and that's what makes him a great magician. From random street magic to balloon animal gigs with his wife, Dan figured out a long time ago that if you can book a couple shows in a day, that money can add up to a real income. Having wowed the likes of Draymond Green, Eric Yuan (CEO of Zoom), Elon Musk, and yes, even Hansel and Wayne, Dan's the real deal Millionaires' Mentalist. Find out all his secrets on our podcast.

Jimmy Hsu runs five businesses in San Francisco, all within a block of each other. Starting with a coffee shop, he soon expanded to a hair salon, a print shop, a laundromat, and most recently a bake shop. He's the proud owner of all of them, and currently thinking of adding a pizza business to the portfolio. Moving from Kansas to California with $1500 in his pocket, Jimmy learned how to network with people and take advantage of opportunities he found. And he had the balls to go for em, too.

Mitch Wong works in the craziest industry in the Bay Area - real estate. With per-square-foot prices well into the thousands and more, it's not a bad place to be. From going to high school in Hong Kong to opening a micro-brewery in Beijing, Mitch has been around the world and then some. His wife started a successful pre-school that almost did Cantonese immersion (Hansel is bummed they didn't), but instead went to Mandarin immersion. Mitch wraps up the podcast with a real estate tip that'll make you rich, immediately. Or something like that.

Kelvin Fu, engineer extraordinaire, tells us about the life of an executive on Honda's racing team. His job is to spend marketing money to make Honda look good by winning as many races like Indy 500 as he can. From wind tunnels to bleeding edge engine designs, Kelvin's team tunes race cars into speed demon machines so you, fair consumer, would think Honda is cool and go buy one. But as the engineer Asian on the team, do you think he ever got to drive one? You'll have to tune in to find out. On the way to racing success, Kelvin also tells us about his White Castle living the good life as a PhD student making barely any money and working 60-70 hours - but loving it. Everyone's White Castle is different, right?

Kiki Chang, father of a one year old (congrats!) in his late 50's, is a talker. Not only on this podcast, but to his pediatric patients in his psychiatry practice. He's also the dad of a 22 yo musical prodigy who currently studies songwriting at Berkelee (no, not Berkeley; BERKELEE, one of the top music colleges in the world). Shout out to Zach, check him out at https://www.zachco.com/. As for Kiki, after graduating from Princeton and while attending Tufts medical school, he decided he hated medicine and dropped out to pursue a career in music production. Turns out, there's no money in that - so a year later, he went back to med school and found his calling - talking to people, as a psychiatrist. But who cares about all that, he's a new father at the ripe old age of 58 - Congrats!!

EunJin Raney is Korean through and through but you'd never know it because she married white. Born in Korea, she immigrated to the US first in the Bronx and then to outside Boston where she picked up English. Her first big disappointment in life was not getting into Harvard, but it sounds like she's lived a pretty awesome life since. Having found her White Castle, EunJin now lives in the suburbs of Boston with plenty of time to spend with her two boys and amazing (white) husband Colin, who is busy running a new fitness company he founded (Ray Fitness). Annyeonghaseyo to EunJin!

Maile Lynn is none other than Hansel's own oldest kid. A sophomore at NYU in Shanghai, they are non-binary (they/them). How did they come out? Why do they think they are non-binary? What does that even mean? And maybe even more interestingly, what's the Chinese word for non-binary? Did Uncle Wayne find out any tips about how to work the college system for his own daughters? If you have kids going to, or about to be going to, college, give this episode a listen and find out what it's like to be a non-binary college student.

In this special book-launch episode (that's right, our book launches today!), theCoderBros share insights about the book, personal nuggets, and of course some valuable life tips. Listen in and find out about Hansel's cool thumb ring trend, Wayne eating pigs feet, or the hilarious punk-pop band they were in together, Timmy Ramen. And don't forget to check out our book, theCoderBros Go To White Castle, available now, nationwide! (because, you know, it's on Amazon)

Judy Chen is master of the dance. As an 18 year old freshman in college, she made the dance team for NBA's Seattle SuperSonics, back when they were crazy good, with Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, and a host of other talent. Her daughter was passed the dancing genes, as she, at only 13, is attending San Francisco Ballet School while performing live shows for the San Francisco Ballet. In the recent past, Judy started a company that infuses CBD into a beverage (can we get a hit of that??), and now works to invent new flavors of food, like salted egg potato chips. Yuck or Yum?

Lynna Tsou runs one of our top theCoderSchool locations, is a founding member of a Mandarin immersion program in Oakland (Yu Ming), a part-time educational psychologist, and a part-time professor teaching other teachers. If that weren't enough, she's also the Chair for the Berkeley Public Schools Fund Board. A long time foodie and master chef, Lynna grew up in Wisconsin in a town of about 5,000 white people. What's her secret to running a top theCoderSchool location? You'll have to tune in to find out.

Steve Leung's got some crazy stories. Coming from grandparents in Hong Kong so wealthy that they didn't need any formal education, his father decided to give all that money up to pursue his own dreams, including coming to the US to eventually get his PhD from MIT. While we're sure Steve often wonders if he should connect back to grandpa for a big inheritance, he says no, and instead learned to follow his passion - money be damned. Today, Steve works at Beyond Meat, the meat alternative company, and tells us why that's the next big thing. Along the way, he became close friends with a bona fide Casino Host in Vegas, which means private jets from San Fran, swapping out soy sauce for Johnny Walker Whisky just because he can, and just living the movie-star Vegas life. From Apolo Ohno to Diplo, from Johnny Football Manziel to Gronk, Steve's had his fair share of after-party meetups. Although this episode is PG, we might need to invite Steve back for a special R-Rated edition of his stories for invite-only listening. You shoulda heard his stories after we stopped recording...

Jim Yang, not to be confused with Jimmy O Yang, is a chill dude. This Philly fan moved from super Asian Bay Area to white and cold Minnesota after he was married, only to eventually head back to LA. These days, he's heading up marketing at a bunch of startups, but it's how he marketed his son that's most interesting. Marketed his son so well that he got admitted into Northwestern recently. Get a glimpse of the "dirty game" we're all playing to get kids into a good school these days. College Counselors - are they worth it? You decide.

Sarah Nguyen (pronounced WEEEN, in Viet!) is your regular good-old San Franciscan. Except she had a hell of a childhood. Sarah was born in Vietnam and was 3 years old when Saigon fell and the commies came to town. Soon after, her family planned to escape. Coming from a poor fishing village, Sarah, with her brother, followed her mom in the dark of night to get on a boat and set off to anywhere but Vietnam. With barely anything to eat and only a sugary drink to keep her and the entire boat full of people alive for a week, she set out in the dark waters of Vietnam at the young age of 5 hoping to find refuge in another country. Did she make it? Spoiler alert, she's the guest on this podcast, so... yep. Tune in to check out Sarah's fascinating story of survival.

Alex Poon was a champion ping-ponger back in Louisiana growing up, only to find out California had a lot better ping pong players. An early eBay employee (around number 25!), he eventually went on to start his own mobile app company before the iPhone days, and now bounces back and forth between running a Venture Capital company and playing pickleball in semi-retirement mode. He's definitely not a tiger dad, allllmost shared a horse with Steph Curry, and seemed like he definitely could have been the inspiration for the Season 1 finale of Silicon Valley when he presented his app onstage to a huge audience. And he might even have an opinion or two on the best way to hold your ping pong paddle, so listen in, sports fans!

Gin Chao - if you know the name, you know the reputation. Partier extraordinaire from back in the day (and maybe even today), Gin's had some of the most enviable jobs for guys like us. From working in the NBA along with greats like Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin, to being the Strategy Officer for one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world (Binance), to being friends with the CEO (CZ, once basically the richest man in the world) before working there, Gin's got quite the interesting background. With no wife and no kids (that he knows of), Gin lives in Shanghai as a Libertarian in probably one of the least Libertarian places in the world. On top of all that, he doesn't believe humans are meant to be monogamous - so he lives a different life. Wanna meet an interesting Asian American? Gin's your guy.

Simon Ru, founder (with successful exit) of UpNest, a marketplace for real estate agents, has had an amazing life. From first gen Chinese with parents working minimum wage at the garment factory, to Army reserve, off to Berkeley, and finally founding two companies, he's done it all. Relive his biggest White Castle as he talks about what it's like to start a business from scratch, and without any real investment money, sell it for big-time bucks for his grand exit. Great rags to riches life story. Now that he's sold his company, he'll have plenty of time to binge watch the latest Asian TV and movies, because he sure the crap doesn't know much about them now.

May Ngeow is a career woman, spanning 19 years at Accenture where she made partner, to now VP at Visa. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania near Gettysburg meant she was the single Asian in the world who actually knew what the Mason Dixon line was at the time. Afraid she maybe isn't "enough" of a Tiger Mom, May balances her corporate life by spending family time balancing that, too, making her kids do all the requisite activities like piano, tennis, etc etc - but having them do the practice at the last minute. And the jury is still out - do they serve those thin green cucumber sticks with Peking duck or not?

Joe Cha, boilerplate Stanford undergrad and Harvard business school? No way. He may have gone to the top schools in the country and become mad successful founding companies and making the big bucks at first, but unlike most of us, he decided that wasn't his White Castle way early on. He's no longer chasing the golden handcuffs, in fact, just the opposite. He's now a professor at a community college in rural Washington (rural as in he's got 5 acres of land, he's the only Asian there, and has a survival bomb shelter) raising his three daughters and teaching them boxing, jiu-jitsu, and knife-fighting, among other things. As for Ivy Leagues and top colleges? To Joe, the top-college acceptance game is just a scam. theCoderBros agree - they just don't have the balls to say it like Joe.

Kenny Chen will tell you he's Taiwanese, not Chinese (dammit). Growing up in super-white Michigan, he didn't even know he was Asian back then. But he soon found his way through college and eventually started his own successful marketing agency (two, in fact!), which he eventually handed over to his wife Kathy to run (she still runs it). That's because he realized he already found his first White Castle, and was in search of his next. So he then founded a community group of like-minded middle-agers, all going through that similar life transition. Did you know that if you make it to 50, you're statistically likely to make it to 90? We've got lots of years left, people - time to find the sequel to your first White Castle. Tune in to hear how from Kenny Chen, or check out his Midlife Group or his Vintage Card Voyage sports cards podcast.

Vicki Pao tells all (or at least some) about the glamorous life of a plastic surgeon. Unlike the plastic surgeons you see on TV, Dr. Pao is not an egomaniac. She's actually pretty down to earth. Helping people is something she's always wanted to do, and even after a ridiculous amount of schooling (something like 14+ years) to become a plastic surgeon, she says she'd do it all over again, because helping people - that's her White Castle. She met her husband by fixing his knee, gave Hansel great advice after he broke his fingers ("dude, don't break your fingers, it hurts"), and even once sewed up Wayne's hand after an injury at her house. "Come over, I gotchu" was what she said (probably). Give it up for the "world-renowned" Dr. Vicki Pao.