Pulitzer Prize-winning Host Viet Thanh Nguyen converses with Food Tik Toker Newt Nguyen and Filmmaker Bao Nguyen about the American Dream, finding community, and the way social media has impacted the evolution of art. This episode was made in collaboration with "A Magazine Curated By" featuring fashion designer Peter Do.

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Newton Nguyen is a Social Media star whose content speaks directly to newly minted quarantine bakers and cooks. The son of Vietnamese immigrants; as a young boy, he used to make Spam musubi with his mom and sell up to 100 per day at school. Newt decided to teach himself to cook as a way to take his mind off of daily life. He learned the basics watching cooking tutorials on YouTube, where a video might last half an hour — and that’s where he got the idea that he wanted to make his own cooking videos, with unvarnished demos edited to appeal to a short-attention-span generation of watchers like himself. His videos are easy to follow — and short. Since his start on social media, Newt has amassed a following of over 10 million on Tik Tok, 1.2 Million on both Instagram and Twitter, and 375 thousand on YouTube. Newt is also an entrepreneur with his own line of merch, and is slated to release a cookbook by the end of 2023. He has worked with brand such as Instacart, Coca-Cola, Chipotle and Ninja.
Bao Nguyen is an award-winning Vietnamese American filmmaker whose past work has been seen in the New York Times, HBO, NBC, Vice, ARTE, and PBS. He has directed, produced, and shot a number of short films, which have played internationally in numerous festivals and museums including MoMA and the Smithsonian.