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Historian and professor, Dr. Ellen Wu, the author of one of Dolly & Joey's favorite books, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, joins us for this last episode of season 2, first Monday post-election. We discuss how Asian America moves forward from a year of tumultuous xenophobia,  rising transpacific tensions, and to build greater solidarity with the movement for Black Lives.
Dolly & Joey also discuss their thoughts on the upcoming Biden/Harris presidency and what makes us hopeful/not so hopeful.
Thanks for joining us for a whole season 2 of Plum Radio! As always, DM us on IG or write to us on anytime at hi@plumradio.com
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We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and believe in independent media.

Dolly and Joey spend the last day before the November 2020 election discussing our anxieties and reading a selection of responses from our beloved listeners. On your minds this week: Poll intimidation, civil war, and...Vin Diesel's new music career. Salud, mi familia. 

Comedian, actor, and writer Jenny Yang joins us this week to talk Comedy Crossing, her new standup show inside the game Animal Crossing. Jenny started Comedy Crossing after the pandemic as a way to build community in our quarantined world, but in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Comedy Crossing became a fundraising platform that has raised over $30,000 for Black Lives Matter related causes. But as journalists, we’re obligated to ask the hard questions: is playing Animal Crossing an act of colonization?? Do we accept tiny, cute capitalism? And do Animal Crossing players (like the Biden / Harris campaign) owe reparations?

We also get into Jenny’s past life as a labor organizer, how labor organizing and comedy can both deliver a political education, and why it’s so important for Asian Americans to embrace our messy, traumatic histories so we can take care of our mental health and reject the model minority myth at the same time.

Dolly and Joey also lament the “meritocracy” of mediocre rich white people, reacting in real-time to Amy Coney Barrett’s Monday night confirmation to the Supreme Court and unpacking the Atlantic’s recent article “The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League–Obsessed Parents.”

Read “The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League–Obsessed Parents”: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/squash-lacrosse-niche-sports-ivy-league-admissions/616474/

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We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and believe in independent media.

Whitney Hu is an activist, abolitionist, mutual aid organizer, and candidate for NYC city council District 38. Whitney is one of the organizers of South Brooklyn Mutual Aid and an activist who has fought rezonings that would have continued to gentrify her neighborhood. Now, she’s merging her desire to burn the system down with her demand for stronger representation from her elected officials. What does abolition mean in practice, especially in electoral politics? How can we “dreamscape” to create alternatives to police and jails? Can the revolutionary desires of abolition really work within the system? And are abolitionists’ demands actually unreasonable?

Plum Radio listener LG also writes in about Peter Hessler’s New Yorker article “9 Days In Wuhan” to ask what about China allowed them to get on with their lives so quickly. Dolly and Joey have a nuanced discussion on socialism in other nations, how working people are disposable under capitalism, the real truth exposed by Ai Weiwei’s COVID documentary, Coronation, and how censorship may actually make Chinese citizens…*less* susceptible to disinformation (...and more likely...TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES??).

As always, write in to us at hi@plumradio.com with what’s on your mind or leave us a voicemail on IG through our DMs @listentoplumradio.

Read Peter Hessler’s “Nine Days in Wuhan, the Ground Zero of the Coronavirus Pandemic”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/12/nine-days-in-wuhan-the-ground-zero-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic

Watch Ai Weiwei’s Coronation: https://www.aiweiwei.com/coronation

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We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and believe in independent media.

Video journalist Isabelle Niu joins us to talk about the pending WeChat ban and her Quartz video “Is WeChat a Problem for Democracies?” With so much talk around banning Chinese apps like WeChat and TikTok and China’s recent expulsion of American journalists, our tiny window into China is quickly closing. Isabelle tells us how WeChat provides insight into what the Chinese government is signaling and into the lives of WeChat’s 1 billion users. What are the consequences of not understanding Chinese society and politics? How will alienating China affect diaspora communities? We also talk to Isabelle about Loud Murmurs, our favorite left-leaning Mandarin language podcast that unpacks foreign culture and media to better understand what it means to be Chinese.

Dolly and Joey also atone for Indigenous People’s day sins by proposing to rename Columbus, OH to Flavortown, OH, give a 🚨 MILES GUO ALERT 🚨 about the fight he’s picking with Texas pastor Bob Fu and Big Jesus, and bless the show with an NBA title for Flavortown’s very own LeBron James.

Watch “Is WeChat a Problem for Democracies?”: youtube.com/watch?v=Lrn5in0iBd8

Listen to Loud Murmurs: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loud-murmurs-%E5%B0%8F%E5%A3%B0%E5%96%A7%E5%93%97/id1355583279

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We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and believe in independent media.

The new cold war is here, and the U.S. and China are fighting it online. Writer and former tech worker JS Tan joins us to discuss the growingly more divided “splinternet,” Silicon Valley’s facade of freedom for the sake of global dominance, and how the U.S. is recreating China’s protectionist internet policies. We also talk about how this new cold war will endanger Asian diaspora, and how movements like China’s anti-996 movement and rideshare driver revolts show that maybe the two sides of the splinternet aren’t so different after all.

Dolly and Joey also read this week’s listener mailbag about the new trailer for the film Minari and discuss what it means to have good and bad Asian American representation.

Read JS’s argument, “Big Tech Embraces New Cold War Nationalism” in Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/27/china-tech-facebook-google/

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We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and believe in independent media.