We talk a lot about mental health and we thought it was about time to bring on a real mental health expert on the show, preferably someone who also has personal familiarity with the Asian American experience. What do you think of psychiatric medication? Do you ever see any Asian-Americans who are our parents generation (and what is THAT like???) What do your parents think about what you do? How do you deal with the stigma of mental health treatment in the Asian community?

We discussed these questions and more with Grace Liu, a Stanford-trained psychiatrist and Chinese-American mom. She brought a very thoughtful and frank take on all of these questions and we loved having her on the show! If you are interested in following up with her after listening to the episode, she can be found here:

www.graceliumd.com

Have you ever wondered why the term "hysterectomy" sounds so similar to the word "hysteria"? Well it turns out it's because the ancient Greeks thought that the root of all of emotional troubles for women were due to a uterus that just wandered around the woman's body if it wasn't kept busy with enough sex and pregnancies. Tune into this hysterical (pun intended) interview with author and OBGYN expert Dr. Karen Tang as we discuss her new book "It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (but were never told)". We ask her about the OBGYN questions we still don't have answers to, the challenges facing women's health research and care, and why all of us know the word for penis in our mother tongue but none of us know the word for vagina.

- Get her book at Amazon

- Follow her on IG @karentangmd

Kulap Vilaysack is a bit of a unicorn. She's a Laotian-American actress, comedian and show creator who has directed and produced hit shows like Bajillion Dollar Propertie$. She even has a real DC Comics superhero inspired by her, Katharsis! She also created a documentary about her family called Origin Story, where she tells the story of her father who she learned wasn't her biological dad when she was 14, her complicated mother who fled Laos as a refugee, and her biological dad whom she does not remember.

She's also a mom who went through a long and arduous fertility journey. If you can't tell yet, she's a bad-ass 2nd generation Asian-American woman who tells it like it is. We are so honored to have her on the show to talk about what it was like to face her family's secrets and how that has connected to her journey of becoming a mother herself.

To learn more about Kulap and follow her work, check out the following:

- Watch Origin Story on Amazon Prime

- Check out the Add to Cart podcast, where Kulap and her co-host give their "subversive take on consumerism."

If you weren't worried about climate change already, don't worry! Becoming parents will surely increase your climate change anxiety. From the very real concern of leaving behind a burning and unlivable planet to your children, to the very real concerns now of protecting your young ones from excessive heat, wildfire smoke, floods and storms, parenthood is **guaranteed** to give you greater climate anxiety.

But in all seriousness, we break down this very real, very concerning issue through the lens of parenthood. We also recorded this episode back in the summer so... there might be some summer references.. sorry/ not sorry?

Most of our listeners (and us) grew up in a pretty traditional education system. There were lessons, there was a lot of practice, there were tests and if you got a A, someone asked why it wasn't an A+. For many of us, it also was layered with a ton of stress and constant anxiety. It was all supposed to lead one day to admission to a top tier college and then a rather hazy happily-ever-after. Now raising our own kids, we are often conflicted on how to approach education - how much should we care about test scores? Should we just let kids do whatever they want because it should be all kid-led? What if they don't learn how to read or do math?

We break it down with Susan Yao, a veteran educator, school leader, mom of two, and founder of the Vermont Village School, an independent experimental school centered around the UnSchooling movement. We get real about the benefits and concerns of traditional and less-traditional schooling approaches, and what questions parents can ask themselves to form an educational approach that best serves their family.

WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Bridgerton (seasons 1, 2 and 3), Queen Charlotte, the Kdrama Crash Landing on you and C-Drama The Double.

In this episode, we're talking about the Golden Hour - the time between roughly 9pm-10pm, when the kids finally have fallen asleep, the house is decently cleaned up, and you finally have a little time to do something that *you* want to do. Sometimes, a great TV show is just the ticket - something that's interesting but also a little fantasy. We bring you what we've been loving watching lately and break down our thoughts for each show.

Tells children "doe" means "small deer" (that's wrong). Bops sideview mirror from minivan for the nth time. Cannot remember garage code that you've had for the last two years. Having more trouble finding phone than usual. Maybe thinking about putting kids' cereal in a timed pet food dispenser. Maybe.

If you can relate at all, this episode is for you mom/ parent of young children. If you're just confused, join the club and listen anyway - it's a funny episode, albeit scattered. (See! We remembered the word 'albeit' - we are definitely not having early dementia).

We humbly present to you, our mini-dad-bootcamp in podcast episode form. If you're thinking about being a dad, listen to it now. If you're already a dad, listen to it before it's too late. If you're a woman in a heterosexual relationship, send this to your partner. What we say isn't easy but it's real, and we hope our 15+ years of experience parenting in the context of a marriage can help you, your marriage and your family survive (dare we say even thrive) in the throes of raising little human beings.

It's your birthday, it's your birthday, we're going to partay like it's your birthday... ok maybe it looks a little different when you're nearing 40 with young kids. In this episode, we hash out our feelings around our birthdays - the expectations, the disappointments, the meltdowns we're not proud of and Susan's dream birthday... a FUN-eral.

In the part two of this interview, we dive deeper with Peipei into the impact that her mental health journey has had on her relationship with her partner and her children, and ways she has tried to rebuild from the toll that her struggles have taken on her relationships.