How Your Podcast Can Help Dismantle the “Minority” Narrative with Jerry Won – Episode 117

[DRIVING GUITAR THEME MUSIC IN // GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS]

MARY: What would you do if you were asked to interview someone on your dream guest list? Perhaps you made an ask earlier, never thinking it would ever happen, but then you get the email, a response of, yes, but you have to be in person and in the next few days, fly out across the country. I mean, it happens because it happened to Jerry Won through his podcast, Dear Asian American Americans, a show that elevates Asian American voices. At the height of his podcasting journey in 2022, he was able to interview, at the time, Vice President Kamala Harris. And there are some hoops you have to go through to go and visit the White House. 

Jerry shares his story about how he got invited to that very house for the first time and the second time because he had a podcast. I was really in awe about because I was a guest early on. And so I was following his podcasting journey all along and being a listener as well of his show and really connecting with these Asian American stories on his podcast. But he hasn’t had a new episode since 2023, and I wanted to reflect on that podcasting journey of his. And his goal, breaking down barriers against the diverse storytelling of the Asian American experience, not just for himself and being an ancestor for his kids, but also hundreds of other Asian Americans as well, and the future Asian Americans. 

It’s a big goal. It’s a big, lofty one, I have to say. But it was such a great conversation to reflect on this journey with him, and I so appreciate his honesty in this conversation. You’re going to hear our voice quivers. Both him and I, we both really connected to how podcasting has changed lives, not just for him, but for the people who listened as well. So stay tuned for it all. 

This is episode 117 with Jerry Won on the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice.

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let’s go >> 

Jerry, thank you so much for coming on the show and reconnecting, because I was a guest on your podcast way back in October 2020.

[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

That’s been a while, so, hi. [LAUGHS]

JERRY: It’s been a while, hi. [LAUGHS]

MARY: So I want to take us, actually all the way back to. You started the podcast, what, in February of that year of 2020?

JERRY: March 2, 2020. And that date is my daughter’s birthday, and so.

MARY: Oh, that’s right.

JERRY: I’m a sucker for catchy or cute marketing thingies.

MARY: Cute marketing, yes.

JERRY: And also it was a nice date to commemorate her birthday with. Obviously, there’s a lot of meaning behind starting an Asian American storytelling podcast for your Korean daughter. It was her first birthday, you know, little did I know that, at least here in the States, things would shut down significantly, two weeks later because of COVID. But I actually did start a different show on January 1st of that year. Most people don’t know about that show because it didn’t go very long. It was called One Day in One Year. 

And I had this idea that we could rethink how we thought about a day, because when we think about a day, traditionally it is obviously one of 365. It’s a singular period of time. And once it goes, it goes. And even though that we know that a day has 24 hours has a significant ability to impact great change. And so I probably over engineered it a little bit, Mary, but I thought, what if I reframe how we thought about a day? And so the ambition was ambitious. I was going to produce, or I did start to produce, a daily podcast where every episode was about 3 minutes and 14 seconds long. And if you do the funny math of 24 hours divided by 365, that’s the number you get.

MARY: Oh.

JERRY: Yep. So I would invite a new person every day. It’s actually, I think, like three minutes, and it’s closer to four minutes. So just under four. The idea was that at the end of the year, on December 31st, if you started with episode one at midnight the night before, that you could listen to an entire day’s worth of life advice from people throughout the year to change your day, change your life in a year.

MARY: That’s such a cool concept.

JERRY: It was exhausting. It was. But you know what? This was before all the tools that we have now to make life a little easier.

MARY: True.

JERRY: And, you know, I wasn’t, you know, disciplined or smart enough to plan around sort of, you know, free stuff. And so there was a lot of time I was just scrambling like, oh, shoot, I need somebody for tomorrow. You know, and you probably know this as a producer of podcasts, guests don’t listen to instructions sometimes. 

And so, you know, I would say, hey, listen, this entire thing is going to be less than four minutes. Therefore, if I ask you a question, you got to stop talking in like 60 seconds because we have to go. We have three questions to ask you in four minutes, which is a very different concept now, right? Because we see, you know, TikToks and Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts in that sort of sub, 60 second clip, and we can engineer it that way.

MARY: You were ahead of your time.

JERRY: Yeah, but this was six years ago when it was purely audio but anyway, so, so that ran for I think like 68 or 69 days. Around that time, it was also when I, you know, found the conviction to say, hey, I want to start an Asian American storytelling show. And so instead of splitting my attention I’m gonna go deep into the Eurasian Americans. And so, yeah, started recording in February and March 2nd. We did five consecutive days of release. So, you know, episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 came out that week.

MARY: Wow. I mean, also you’re one day in one year, 60 some odd episodes is still. That’s quite the feat.

JERRY: What’s the stat? Right? Like 90% quit by episode 10 or whatever, right?

MARY: Yeah, right, exactly. So pat yourself on the back for that one.

JERRY: Thank you.

MARY: So then, okay, why podcasting then? Like why audio stories? Whether it was that podcast or Dear Asian Americans, why choose this medium?

JERRY: It’s the lowest barrier to entry, permission free medium that still exists today to get stories out.

MARY: Ooh, expand more on that. Permission free. What do you mean by that?

JERRY: So I’m 42, I grew up in the 90s. What we consumed, it doesn’t matter what country you are in, this was just the how, where the media was back then. But I’ll, uh, frame it in the American context. We watched, heard and read what other people told us to watch, read and hear. It was a permission and approval driven system, meaning that if you wanted somebody to hear your voice, a radio station had to grant you or give you the permission to have a show because the distribution system was structured and gatekept. 

If you want it to be seen, you had to be on TV. There was a finite number of stations and production companies that would allow for that. If you wanted to be read, whether it was in newspaper or magazine form, somebody had to publish you. And surprise to nobody listening, there weren’t a lot of people that look like me and you that made those decisions 30, 40 years ago and beyond, right? 

And so I think about whose stories got to be told and even when our stories did get told, what sort of filter they had to go through to appease this made up metric called applicable to middle America. And the stories that I lived growing up and the stories that I knew that many of my peers and friends and people that I looked up to weren’t being told because they told us that our stories weren’t good marketing or marketable rather to the majority of America. And we believe that, right?

MARY: Yeah. And that was here too. In Canada, it was the same thing. I mean, we even have fewer radio stations and TV shows than you do.

JERRY: Yep. And so, you know, and they played the math game, right?

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: And, and we were told, you know, look at even the TV shows that made it to mainstream, right? Like All American Girl or even, you know, later, you know, shows like, Fresh Off the Boat or even, you know, shows like the Cosby show and Family Matters that like centered black families. Fresh Prince. Like somebody had to take a risk and say, hey, the audience for this show isn’t just black people in America, which is 13% of the population. It’s far more than that.

And so when it came to us, though, and I think the complexity that is Asian in America, through the various cultures and ethnicities and languages and all the complex things that make us awesome, but also very difficult to put in a bucket, also prevented our stories from being told. And so that was what I grew up with, right? And so when I talk about permission based distribution, somebody that doesn’t look like us, that doesn’t understand their story had to give us permission. 

And so if you look at the early pioneers of YouTube, same similar thing, right? A lot of the big heavy hitters of early YouTube years, right? You’re talking like AJ Raphael, the Wong Fu Productions guys, the, you know, even a little bit later that, you know, like the Kev Jumbas of the world, the Ryan Higas of the world, they were all Asian people, why? That was the only place we could get our stuff out.

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: And we went direct to consumer and said, hey, you know what, NBC, ABC, Fox, whatever, MTV. Like you don’t think there’s people wanting to watch us? There are. We’re just going to go direct to the consumer. You know, I hope listening to this reframes how we think about audiences. And I’m going to get a little nerdy here, Mary, but I need the listeners to visualize mathematic fractions, right?

MARY: Okay.

JERRY: You can manipulate what a proportion is on a fraction by either changing the numerator, which is a number on top, or denominator, which is number on the bottom. Again, I’m just going to use broad numbers. Obviously these numbers aren’t exact. So in America, Asians are about 6% of America, or the numerator is 20 something million. Denominator is, you know, 360 or whatever the current count is.

MARY: Okay.

JERRY: If you look at the global population, the denominator becomes 8 billion.

MARY: Right.

JERRY: The numerator is north of 4 billion. So we were conditioned to think that we were just a tiny piece of a market that we needed to survive.

MARY: Yeah, I was growing up, I was always told, I’m a minority.

JERRY: Yep.

MARY: I’m like, okay, okay. I’m the little, tiny, tiny sliver in the pie.

JERRY: Yep. Quick pivot. I, you know that word minority is a interesting word, right? Because who’s a minority? Right? Like, it just depends on what room you’re in. Right.

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: Or how you frame the denominator. And so, I started to use the word minoritized.

MARY: Oh, that’s a good one.

JERRY: Because somebody made us a minority by tweaking the system. And so when I introduced this idea of the fact that if you look at the global pie, that Asians are more than 50%, that is then not to say we are there for the majority and we’re going to make everybody else’s lives miserable. I hope it comes off as two things. One, you can reframe just about anything to change the paradigm of the things that we were taught. And two, really as a moment of empowerment to understand that if you, the person that happening to listen to us today right now, think that there’s not enough people that know my story and that the market, quote, unquote, isn’t big enough to get your story out there, it’s not true. 

I’m going to do one more math problem, and then we can. We can move away from math, right? So we’ve all heard this phrase, like, one in a million. It’s. It’s often this. This phrase that means rare. It’s so rare. It’s one in a million. Well, if there are 8 billion people on earth and you’re still one in a million, there’s 8,000 people just like you.

MARY: Oh, that’s a good, like, visual. I can picture that.

JERRY: It’s a basketball arena.

MARY: Wow.

JERRY: And so globally, if you think you’re so rare and the problems that you’re facing and the things that you’ve experienced and that nobody understands me, nobody loves me, and you’re like, god, I mean, I’m one in a million. Nobody. There’s 8,000 people just like you. And you don’t think you can start a podcast or a business or a newsletter or anything with 8,000 people who know what you’re going through. I hope that empowers some people to reframe their mind of who understands my story and where I can find my people, right? 

Because people are lonely. You know, the digital divide, the algorithms of social media, AI the political tensions. It’s just making people lonely, lonelier than ever before. And so there’s some Math to get to a point, to drive home a point. That when, you’re, there’s far more people that know what you’re going through than you’ve ever, ever given yourself credit for.

MARY: Do you feel that you had a good grasp on that whole idea before you started the podcast, or were these learnings that were cemented in you as you talk to more Asian Americans?

JERRY: Yeah. it’s the latter. Because what do I know about Asian America? I am a privileged Korean man in this, a heterosexual Korean man in America. I am the visual poster child of privilege when it comes to the spectrum of Asian Americans in this country. So what do I know about what our sisters go through? Not a whole lot. What do I know about how refugees got here, what the adoptee experience is like? And the answer is, I don’t know. 

And so I hope what I did was to humbly provide a platform for others to tell their story, because that’s what I wanted to do with my privilege. And I was humbled. Never actually heard the story of somebody who themselves was a Vietnamese refugee. Got to know personally the stories of Korean adoptees that looked like me, but whose lives could not be any more different, and the one that I was privileged to live. And you realize that it is impossible to exhaustively tell the Asian American story. And so the question then became, where do I feel sufficiently okay in telling the stories, right? Because what I also refused to do was to have a show called Dear Asian Americans and only have Chinese and Korean people. Because that was my own network bias, too, right?

MARY: Yeah. Yeah.

JERRY: A lot of East Asian dudes that want to tell their stories, right? Because, you know, life was so hard for us, then you get humbled, right? And part of that is that culture or that, you know, conditioning that we were raised with, which was that telling your story feels like bragging. It’s not humble.

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: And so I did this intentionally. And, you know, again, I am even trying to frame this in some sort of a humble sense, but I wanted to provide a platform so that I can brag on other people and celebrate the things that they’ve never been celebrated for and ask them questions about their story that nobody had done before, because I think it was important. And keep in mind, too, you know, from. From a context, perspective we shared earlier at the top of the show that I started the Asian Americans on March 2nd of 2020. 

And so about 10 episodes in, COVID happened. Everybody was home, right We didn’t know what COVID would bring, but COVID brought a wave of anti Asian sentiment in this country and globally, right? They wanted to blame us for the virus. People were killing our seniors. People were, you know, doing hate crimes against our community at a far greater rate than we had ever seen before. And it was in those times that I had the opportunity to, you know, turn on a microphone and a camera to people and saying, let’s talk about your story. Let’s make people feel seen. Let’s make people feel heard. And it led to some good things on the business side of things. 

But objectively speaking, and I mean this as objectively as I can, the show and me as the person who started the show, I know that I changed lives, that I got the emails from people who said, that person’s story from last week’s episode was the first time I’ve ever seen her, or that I didn’t know that there were other people like me out there. So I did the ridiculously ambitious thing, because if you are able to transport your brain to what it was like in April of 2020, we had nothing but time.

MARY: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] 

JERRY: Nobody was traveling, nobody could say, no, I knew you were home. All we had was time, right? What a nostalgic thing to look back on, right? There was no traffic, nobody was going out, and the world was a little bit more peaceful, right? So I did 50 episodes in a hundred days, full hour long episodes, and I did a hundred episodes in a year. And again, I have some thoughts on, like, was that the smart strategy now, looking back at it? But in the moment, it was volume, because I felt like I just needed to get more stories out there. 

And I felt that if I could just get enough stories out there, that we could increase this coverage of what I would consider sufficient storytelling or sufficient representation of the Asian American story and get to as close to as we could, this goal or this mythical goal of having exhaustive representation, which I knew was not a possibility, but I wanted to do my best to try to get there as much as I could. That was the goal.

MARY: I think you accomplished that, though at least from my perspective, looking at the show. Like, I was a listener before being a guest and I was still a listener after the fact. And you’re right, it is those stories where you’re like, oh, I had almost that same reaction. Or something similar like, that happened to me too. Or I felt exactly that. And it was so nice to feel connected to somebody in the world, even though we were so far apart physically.

JERRY: Yeah. And again, it was sort of the perfect storm. Right. To start an Asian American storytelling show.

MARY: Yeah. And it was very rare too.

JERRY: I mean, you know, I hate the, I don’t ever want to say that I am the first, but, you know, there weren’t that many of us back then.

MARY: No, there wasn’t. Yeah.

JERRY: And still isn’t sadly. So at a time when people felt lonely just in general. But I know that Asian people particularly, you know, in parts of America that, where we weren’t the majority, needed it. And so what. What a blessing to be able to provide that and, and also to have it impact my life in a positive way. But the talking about that part of podcasting is really important and necessary. 

But, you know, what I also need to say is like, for the first year, I didn’t make any money. I did a hundred episodes, maybe I made a couple bucks, but it didn’t, you know, it was hard, but I was driven by this stubborn ambition that I wanted to help the community and I don’t need to make myself a hero, but I knew the work was important, so I couldn’t give up. Because then you learn about a new person and like, I need that other person on the show or, you know, right? 

And so, you know, but you do it. It’s just the way that I thought about it. Eventually, right around the year mark, actually, things turned. And again, it’s hard to celebrate the good that happened in my professional life, but one of the things that happened as a result of all the negativity around the Asian American experience was that for maybe the first time, corporate America was ready, or they were demanded to by their employees in the community to center Asian American voices inside the walls of organizations. And so it really sparked or gave life to my existing speaking endeavours. 

I talk about this a lot, but we’re recording this on April 30th. Tomorrow is Heritage Month. That Heritage Month season in 2021, I did 35 or 40 speaking gigs, all virtually because it was still COVID. And I grossed over a hundred thousand dollars in speaking fees in that season,…

MARY: In that month.

JERRY: I… mean, month, like give or take a week or so, right?

MARY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JERRY: Some are early, somewhere late.

MARY: Yes.

JERRY: Like in that eight week bucket that we’ll call like AAPI season of 2021.

MARY: Yeah, yeah.

JERRY: And then so I turned to my wife and said, see, I told you it would work. Um, I had no idea it would work or not.

MARY: Right. Yes.

JERRY: I  had inbound, right. From people who listened to the show, who read my stuff on LinkedIn and said, oh, my god, like, we need that perspective inside our company, and you know, obviously it was at a time when, you know, things that fall under the bucket of DEI was a lot more friendly, let’s call it, or, um, welcoming or allowed even in the first place, without the fear of silly lawsuits and, you know, complaints from people. But yeah, I mean, it was just,

MARY: It was a thing you were saying earlier. You said sufficient storytelling.

JERRY: Mhm.

MARY: Do you think now, having completed like so many episodes, like almost 200 for Dear Asian Americans, do you think it was sufficient by the end of it?

JERRY: No.

MARY:  No.

JERRY: Well, I’ll answer that in two ways. Like numerically, I don’t know. Like again, sufficient is subjective by design, right? 

MARY: Hmm.

JERRY: And so I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody’s done the math, but it’s like how many countries, you know, how many, Whatever, right? Like, yeah, maybe this may sound a little holistic, but like, I can’t say it’s efficient because somebody’s story wasn’t told to say it was sufficient. I am proud of the work and the party of work that I put out into the universe, but I don’t think even sufficient is achievable. Because for me to say that we had sufficient representation of the Asian American experience on the show means that I am also letting somebody know that their untold story didn’t meet the criteria to be sufficient. If that makes sense.

MARY: Yeah, because the stories evolve too, you know, as time goes on. There could be generational as well, right? Like our kids are now growing up in a different era. My daughter is so, yeah, I was the first to be born in Canada and she’s the second, right? And she barely speaks any Cantonese. And I have enough of Cantonese to, to have a conversation with someone. But you know, like, her experience is going to be so different from mine, so there’s always going to be more stories to tell.

JERRY: Well, and you’re not the same person you were yesterday too.

MARY: Yeah, that’s right.

JERRY: And so to say it’s sufficient perpetuates the myth of the monolith. To say that we have been sufficient means that we feel good enough about having told enough. It will never be enough. Because every day new people come, every day new people are born or you have children that change the way that you look at life. You lose somebody, people die. I don’t mean to sound super philosophical about this, but like, sufficient is also impossible because by design then you’re saying that somebody’s story isn’t enough or isn’t worthy enough, rather.

MARY: So what would you say is the biggest impact then, that the podcast has brought for your life.

JERRY: My life personally?

MARY: Mhmm, yeah.

JERRY: I made a few hundred thousand dollars speaking. I got to go to places like the White House multiple times.

MARY: Multiple times, Yes. I saw that on social media. I was like, whoa! Go, Jerry!

JERRY: You know, it’s like. And again, different times, right?

MARY: Like, yeah.

JERRY: And I hustled. I went to every conference. I went to everything. Like, I spent money out of my own pocket to go do free work at schools and conferences. One, because I believed in this. You know, I don’t know if it’s true, but there’s some ROI of free, right? Like exposure pay, if you will. But then it was also driven by this, like, hey, like, I am doing something mission driven, which is to tell stories, and sometimes that means that I have to go. It’s worth doing the work for, you know? Yes. This is the way that I took care of my family financially for a number of years. 

But, you know, I didn’t want to be that guy that only said yes if they had money or enough money. So, you know, it’s. It’s led to a lot of good in my life. It’s led to a lot of good people in my life. I was seen as a leader in the community. I again, got to be in rooms with people ultimately, and they’re not old enough to realize any of this yet. And I’ll take a quick size 7, and I’ll get to my point. You know, in our. And again, I don’t want to generalize, but in many Asian cultures, we live to make our ancestors proud.

MARY: Yes.

JERRY: Right.

MARY: Yes.

JERRY: It’s like this.

MARY: Yes.

JERRY: Again, this is a insufficient goal.

MARY: That’s not possible. Yes.

JERRY: Right. It’s an impossible goal, right? But, you know, what we don’t think about is the type of ancestors we want to be ourselves.

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: Because we’re so obsessed with the past, and that is a very East Asian thing. Honour your ancestors. And, you know, there’s all this stuff that we do. Right. And I hope that one day that my kids realize what I actually did. I’ve said this on the show many times, and to be frank, Mary, it’s been a long time since I talked about the show or thought about the show at this, this much in depth. I obsessed over this desire to turn more verbs into the past tense. 

And what I mean by that is all the crap that we dealt with and that are. That we are still dealing with as Asian people in our countries. I just want my kids to use the past tense. More when it comes to talk about that stuff, I want them to say we used to face discrimination or that people were mean to us or that I was treated differently. Sadly, six years later, I don’t know if we’re there. We might be a little bit on the other side of the pendulum swing at this point, but that’s what drives me. And I’ll talk about. Kind of silly to say my first White House visit, but my first White House visit.

MARY: You need to celebrate that again, where we’re not worried about talking about ourselves.

JERRY: I know I minimize my stuff too, but I’ll be very, very honest, right? Like, it’s not the way that I got to the White House in May of 2022. It wasn’t some, like, universe where the Asian people in the White House do some sort of, you know, global Internet search for the people doing good work, and then they just send out emails anonymously, right? 

MARY: Yeah. 

JERRY: It’s all people that make it behind the scenes. I know the exact person who got me on that list, the invitation, right? Because a year and a half ago, I had that person on my show on the podcast at the time when he was doing something different. And eventually he got to the job within the White House that was to connect with the Asian community, broadly speaking, as an official part of his White House job. And in March of that year, I took one of my crazy unpaid swings on a trip. I was in North Carolina to speak at Duke. I had an extra day in my schedule before I was expected at home from my family. Why? I decided to go to D.C. to attend the dinner instead of going home to see my kids. My wife said, you can go, right?

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: And I was like, okay. So I went to D.C. to see some friends, but also to meet some friends for just out of my own pocket, right? The flight change cost me money. The hotel cost me money. It was at a fundraiser, so that cost me money. But at the time, I was like, you know what? Like, I need to go see these people. He was at that dinner, and in a moment of either, you know, the audacity of a mediocre person in this country that gets a lot of privilege or whatever, the moment was certainly some, you know, liquid courage, too. I said, hey, I don’t know how these things work, but I imagine that now that COVID is over, that there might be some sort of an event at the White House for Heritage Month. If there’s an opportunity for me to come, I would come here with a 24 hour notice, just get me on that list because it would be meaningful for me and I didn’t want to put pressure on my friend.

MARY: Mhmm.

JERRY: And he said okay. So they didn’t give me quite 24 hours. They gave me like 96 hours.

[LAUGHTER]

MARY: Thanks for that extra little leeway.

JERRY: Yeah, I think I got the invite on a Wednesday or Thursday and the party was on Monday. Something silly like that.

MARY: You made it happen.

JERRY: I made it happen. And you know, two things it was. And you know, and again, I will minimize it and self-deprecating joke and saying like, hey, you know, it was my friend that got me in. But you know what, like there’s, there’s checks and balances there too, right? Is this person deserving of an invitation? Do you have to pass the sniff test? Right? 

And, and the thing that makes me most proud is the fact that it was specifically for the work that I was doing that I was invited to an event hosted by the President of the United States at the White House in Heritage Month. The first one coming out of COVID specifically because I created a show talking about the Asian American experience. And then I was touring the country talking about the Asian American experience, not because I was doing some policy work, while that’s important, unrelated to the community and my people. That was the most important part. Not the fact that it was the White House, which was cool, but the nuance and the context of why it was.

MARY: Yeah, it was the work that you did.

JERRY: Yeah. And when I shared the invitation to my family in our family chat room via text, my dad said, I am proud of you and I am glad that you are doing work that makes you happy.

MARY: Oh my gosh.

JERRY: And I’m not one of these, like, oh, my dad never told me he loved me type of Asians.

MARY: Okay. My dad was one of those.

JERRY: Maybe I have, you know, rewritten history, but in my own head. But most people don’t know this, but I started, quote unquote, being on my own in 2019 and started all this podcast media speaking stuff in 2020. Like I graduated from a top 10 business school in 2017 and walked away from all of it, much to the confusion. And what the hell are you doing? From my entire business school friend community to this day, some people don’t know what the hell I’m doing or why I do it or think I’m stupid for walking away from it. For the first two years of me doing this, my parents were in the same camp. They didn’t really know what I did and they certainly didn’t know why I was doing it.

MARY: They were probably afraid for, like, if it’s like most Asian parents, your, uh, financial stability, right. They just want to make sure that you’ve got the finances.

JERRY: Sure, I get it. And it comes from a good place. And luckily, I didn’t have to ask them for money for two years, right? Until this worked out. And thank god for COVID, because we didn’t have to see them as much. [LAUGHTER] but it was the first time I felt like my dad got it.

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: [TEARFUL MOMENT] And so, you know, the first one’s the coolest, right? And so, you know, it was cool. I have a really wonderful history with a Hanbok store in Koreatown here in LA. You know, a traditional Korean wear. So there’s a whole funny story about that, because I showed up and I gained some weight, and she’s like, shit, I can’t. The thing that I wanted you to wear to the White House, I can’t give to you anymore because you gained some weight. And so it just felt meaningful because you know what? I said, hey, if I’m going to go to the White House to celebrate Heritage Month, I’m going to go wear my stuff. That LinkedIn post went viral. Tens of thousands of people, people walked up to me at the White House saying, I saw your LinkedIn post. They cried. I cried. It was also DC humid, 85 degrees, and it was not fun to be wearing all silk, you know, 

But talking about it now, Mary, four years later, it brings me such fond memories and actually makes me very hopeful to be reminded of what. Not even what is possible, but what happened, that we can get back to that. That it feels so hopeless and so insane now, seeing what we see on TV and on our phones. But that is what America is and should be. And so, yeah, I just want to make my kids proud, you know, luckily for me, and, you know, luck with putting in my work and building relationships and doing the work, you know, have been blessed to go back to the White House multiple times. 

And I’ll share one more fun White House story. And I do realize how ridiculous is that? I can call it multiple White House stories. I gotta actually backtrack a little. So I did that. And unbeknownst to me, the same person that invited me that day, who had been a guest on my podcast before all this came out later, and they swore it wasn’t true because they wanted me to feel special. And having found me objectively, as they often do, a really good friend of this person was on the Vice President’s comms team. Vice President Kamala Harris at the time.

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: Later that year. So this was May, around August or September of that year, I get this anonymous email from the Vice President’s team. We’d love to chat. And, you know,… 

MARY: It’s not spam. 

JERRY: …you know, you do that thing where, like, you. You click the from button just to make sure that the domain name is legit. That isn’t some. Some funky, wacky, you know, spam email. So, I accept the invitation. I’m on another plane 72 hours later to go to D.C. to go to an event at the Vice President’s house. And the goal is very, very, you know, direct. We’d love for the Vice President to come on your podcast before the midterm elections in November 2022. 

Long story short, that happened. We do it in Seattle. It’s another crazy story. But because the relationship had been built, they knew who I was at the Vice President’s office. And so In May of 2023, they call me. Literally, oh this was the worst, they call me on a Monday. Somebody from her office, they. They start out with this phrase, hey, I know you’re in LA, and I know it’s only Monday. And I was like, okay, when and where do you need me to be? Because this is the only way this conversation is going. And they said, the Vice President is speaking at an event in D.C. for Heritage Month, and she would like you to interview her on stage. And I said, when? He said, Wednesday. And I said, uh yes. And then let me figure out how I’m actually going to make it happen.

MARY: They don’t give you much notice, do they?

JERRY: They don’t. And they don’t pay for anything, Mary. And so, you know, luckily I was financially able to YOLO it. You know, I think I had to be in New York that Thursday or Friday, and this was the day before. And so, as crazy as it was, I just had to get there a day earlier, if that makes sense. But in any case, so it is at the Forum for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, a formal White House event at George Washington University. Crazy, right?

MARY: Yeah.

JERRY: And not only. And I see her and it’s like, hey, Jerry. And I’m like, this is crazy. First name basis with, you know, the Vice President. In any case, the point that I want to share is. And this is what kids. Kids are kids, right? This event was broadcasted live on the White House feed, which happens to be broadcasted through YouTube, their YouTube page. My wife had gathered our two kids, and they were 6 and 4 at the time, and they didn’t care what I was doing. They said, Appa’s on YouTube. [LAUGHTER] And to that, they didn’t realize the gravity of what I was doing and who I was speaking with. They just cared that Appa was on YouTube. And to them, that was cooler than me going to the White House. 

And so, [LAUGHTER] I hope that one day they get it, you know, and their kids. And again, I want to shield them from so much of the ugliness that’s happening in our world even as we sit here today. And, you know, there’s a lot of limitations on what we can do in the work of amplifying Asian American stories. The market is changing, AI is changing the way we work. Obviously the socioeconomic and the political sociopolitical climate is very different right now, and dare I say, not as friendly for a lot of the people in my world that do the work that I do. But I still have the same conviction, Mary, is that the only way to make my mission of making more things past tense possible is massive volume. 

When everybody shares their story, then we decrease the reliance on the single narrative. When we don’t act like a monolith, then people don’t treat us like a monolith. And that requires everybody finding a little bit of bravery or reminding yourself that there are 8,000 people just like you somewhere in the world, picking up their phone or picking up a pencil, turning on their cameras, whatever it is might be. And to get your story out there,

MARY: Jerry, I think, you know, I was going to, as my last question, do what you did on your podcast, which was to say, you know, Dear Asian American podcaster [LAUGHTER]. But I feel like you just answered that, you know, but let’s do it anyway. As we wrap up, add more to that. Start with Dear Asian American podcaster. Because you’re speaking to podcasters… 

JERRY: Yeah. 

MARY: …finish that sentence.

JERRY: Get loud and don’t stop, or audio only. But I am feeling emotions I haven’t felt in a very long time, Mary. And I want to thank you for, for giving me a chance to share my story and, and, and more than anything, reflect on, on this journey that still goes on, you know, off camera, off the recording. We were, you know, you were talking about sort of pivoting and where do we go from here, right? It’s been really, really nice to reflect, and it’s scarier than it was six years ago to tell that Asian American story. People are vicious on the Internet, there seems a never ending barrage of, you know, competing interest and noise. But what are you going to tell your grandkids you did in 2026 when they were trying to silence us? 

What is your legacy? You know, we look fondly upon our grandparents as the ones that fought off their own colonizers and fought for their own independence. And at some point, your parents or your. I think both of our parents, like you said, we immigrated here to start a new life in this unknown world. We put them on a pedestal about these great things that they did so that we could have this. What are your grandkids going to say to their friends about you? Other than, hey, they made a couple bucks and left me some money because that’s not the end story of us. That can’t be. 

I think about all that while being purely honest, Mary, and realizing that we live in a capitalist society and that we have to make money to make these things work. But, yeah, again, I’m only 42, and I don’t know what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. And not to say that I am completely stepping away from all of this, but people ask me from time to time, are you ever going to bring the show back? I can’t say if I will or not, but it is probably, you know, outside of my kids and the things in my personal family life, professionally, the proudest thing that I’ve ever done is to start the show that allowed 180. We had some repeats, 180 ridiculously diverse Asian Americans to tell their story. Many for the first time. At a time when it was scary, but also at a time where it was so timely and necessary to do that. And so my charge is get loud not only for yourselves, but those you care about. Get loud for the people who don’t have a voice. We have that duty. And please don’t stop, especially on days when the world is trying to silence you.

MARY: Jerry, thank you so much for reflecting with me. You have created such a huge impact on my life, too. You being that representation that I can visually see and hear and know that, hey, I can achieve those lofty goals of mine, too. So thank you for doing what you do. And, yeah, if the podcast comes back, you’ve got another listener right here. 

JERRY: And a guest, you know, maybe I think, you know, holistically I should do it, but I need to balance it with, you know, money and things. Yeah, because that was the other, you know, we didn’t get to talk about it all, but ridiculously hard to monetize, right? 

MARY: Yeah, yeah, 

JERRY: Really, really hard to monetize that piece. In any case, thank you for creating your platform and thank you for the invitation, to share and to reflect really, on this, kind of fond part of my life that I look back on that I probably should reflect a little bit more often on. Thank you, Mary.

[CHIMES AND ENERGETIC RHYTHMIC MUSIC FADES IN AND BUILDS]

MARY: Gosh, I don’t know if you heard it in both our voices. Like I said at the very beginning, we both quivered. We both got a little softer. Our voices reflected our emotions. And I know with me, especially when those emotions bubble up in something like this, like a podcasting, you know, it’s like a quote, unquote, “professional space”. In the back of my mind, I still wanted to be professional, presentable. What is that word? But also to hold that space for Jerry so he can share, so he can reflect, and he can hold those emotions himself, too. 

So my voice quivered a bit, but yet it also calmed Jerry’s as well. You can hear it in that hesitancy of the words he was choosing to use. He had pauses, but I think that’s what makes audio storytelling so powerful. We recorded this without video, so we were able to really hold space for each other and just be okay. There’s silence, and that’s okay. That is totally all right. This is an episode that I will always hold dear to me in my heart. The impact that he had with his voice, the impact that he had on me as well. 

You know, recording the episode and while listening back and editing it, it’s such a big smile on my face that you can’t see, but you can hear in my voice. Like, I was. I was so proud being also Asian growing up in North America. Just so proud of what he did, what he’s doing, and the impact that he’s making for people. And it’s not just the story that he shared, not the details, right? Like, yes, while that he got to go to the White House twice, interviewed Kamala Harris twice, but it wasn’t the details that didn’t matter. When you’re able to share your story, whatever the details are, people are gonna connect. 

I connected more. More with his goals, his passion, his triumphs, than actually going to the White House. The White House was just a cool thing, right? Like, even he said, yeah, that was cool, but that wasn’t the point of the story, and that isn’t the point of his podcasting journey as well. So, as Jerry says, be loud, share your story. Even when your voice goes soft or when it wants to shake, be loud in your own way. As we were saying, we minimize ourselves so easily because we’ve been brought up through generational teachings that it’s not about us. It’s not about you and me. It is about our family, our elders, our community. It isn’t about us. Yet I can’t abandon the fact that it is. It is about our emotions, how we hold our stories that they can’t and really shouldn’t be bottled up inside us to be stoic. They need to be shared so that we can collectively see each other heal in our own ways and really understand each other on a human level in a way that we need so much right now. 

With everything that’s happening in the world and AI adoption and people being so separated from everyone else it’s, podcasting is magical that way. I don’t really like using that word sometimes, but it is. You put yourself out there and you never know who’s going to listen. So through his podcast, he was able to make some big asks. And we hear this when I ask him about his personal accomplishments. Again, the many reasons why so many of us are podcasters, like Jerry said, it’s hard to monetize. So at the core of podcasting, it’s about sharing our voices and our stories. That’s what makes this medium so powerful. 

And with that podcasting work, what are some of your reasons for you to keep going? What makes recording that next episode so special? Or maybe you’re thinking, hey, actually I haven’t had my podcast published in a while. Like Jerry, what makes you want to come back to the one that you’ve let go of for some time now? So let me know, share your story with me. What do you want to do with your podcast? What can you ask for? Because you have this platform to share your story and others as well, you can provide that platform for other people. What is that passion behind the podcast? Let me know. Send me a voice note at VisibleVoicePodcast.com that’s the website where you can send a voicemail to me or email is great as well at VisibleVoicePodcast@gmail.com. 

And on that reflection of being a passion project and being passionate about podcasting, the next episode is the last episode before, before I take my summer break, which means I’m gonna reflect on a lot of this that we’ve been talking about today, what it means to be a passionate podcaster and what you need to reflect on to keep podcasting, because we’re not only doing this because of money, monetization, download numbers. Huge, huge celebrity status. Woo. Yeah, most of us are never ever going to get to that status nor do we want it. And that’s the differentiating factor here. 

A passionate podcaster is not podcasting because it’s part of a media company that you’re building. You want to be a celebrity. That’s not the main goal. We are podcasters creating passion projects. So what does that look like to you to sustainably create your show each and every episode. We’re going to discuss that and more on the next episode, so I’ll talk to you then.

[MUSIC ENDS]

<< OUTRO – SHOW CLOSE // UPBEAT DRUMS THEME MUSIC IN- GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS >>

MARY: Thank you so much for listening to the podcaster’s guide to a Visible Voice. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you share it with a podcasting friend. And to reveal more voicing and podcasting tips, click on over to VisibleVoicePodcast.com. Until next time.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

<< MUSIC ENDS >>