Past Forward

Kirn Kim was a former honor student and son of a prominent physician in the Fullerton Korean community. However, at age 16, he was sentenced as an adult to life in prison as part of a high-profile case that became known as the “Honor Roll Murder.” He earned parole after serving 20 years. Kirn became active in justice reform advocacy, leading to his hiring as the first formerly-incarcerated employee of The California Endowment. Currently working as a software developer, Kirn continues speaking on issues of criminal and juvenile justice reform, and the culture of shame and the model minority myth in the Asian/Pacific Islander community. Kirn is also currently on the board of directors at the National Juvenile Justice Network.

Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.

Guest: Kirn Kim
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward
Date recorded: November 20, 2024

Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.

Tarell Alvin McCraney is Artistic Director of Geffen Playhouse. In this role, he is responsible for identifying, developing, and programming new works and re-envisioned classics. He sets the strategic artistic course for the Geffen's Gil Cates and Audrey Skirball Kenis Theaters. McCraney is an award-winning writer, producer, and educator, best known for his acclaimed trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays. His script In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue is the basis for the Oscar–winning film Moonlight directed by Barry Jenkins, for which McCraney and Jenkins also won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. 

He is an ensemble member at Steppenwolf Theatre and a member of Teo Castellanos D-Projects in Miami, a graduate of New World School of the Arts, The Theatre School at DePaul University, and the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Warwick. He was recently Co-Chair of Playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama, where he remains on faculty. He is an associate at the Royal Shakespeare Company, London, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Writers Branch).

Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.

Guest: Tarell Alvin McCraney
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward
Date recorded: October 9, 2025

Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.

Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.

Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.

Guest: Teresa Watanabe
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward
Date recorded: October 16, 2024

Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor of Asian American Studies, the director of the Humanities Center, and the director of Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism, and Belonging (C-LAB) at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stanford University and previously taught at Ohio State University. She authored Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: the Life of a Wartime Celebrity (University of California Press, 2005) and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (Cornell University Press, 2013).

Julia Huỳnh is a second generation Vietnamese Canadian interdisciplinary artist, community archivist, and independent researcher/writer. As an award-winning filmmaker, her work has been screened at festivals including: ReFrame Film Festival (Peterborough, ON), Reel Asian International Film Festival (Toronto, ON), Aurora Picture Show (Houston, TX) and SEA x SEA: Southeast Asia x Seattle Film Festival (Seattle, WA). She has facilitated multiple workshops on ethics and care in archives, photovoice training, and zine-making to a wide-ranging audience of community members, student leaders, and post-secondary educators. She holds an MA in photography preservation, HBA in art & art history, and a diploma in fine arts.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how photographs and film, specifically candid or vernacular documentation, captures history, the emotion of a moment before devastation, in the midst of tragedy and triumph, and in the common day-to-day of days long forgotten. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the project, Through Internees Eyes: Japanese American Incarceration Before and After.

Guests: Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Julia Huynh
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor of Asian American Studies, the director of the Humanities Center, and the director of Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism, and Belonging (C-LAB) at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stanford University and previously taught at Ohio State University. She authored Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: the Life of a Wartime Celebrity (University of California Press, 2005) and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (Cornell University Press, 2013).

Julia Huỳnh is a second generation Vietnamese Canadian interdisciplinary artist, community archivist, and independent researcher/writer. As an award-winning filmmaker, her work has been screened at festivals including: ReFrame Film Festival (Peterborough, ON), Reel Asian International Film Festival (Toronto, ON), Aurora Picture Show (Houston, TX) and SEA x SEA: Southeast Asia x Seattle Film Festival (Seattle, WA). She has facilitated multiple workshops on ethics and care in archives, photovoice training, and zine-making to a wide-ranging audience of community members, student leaders, and post-secondary educators. She holds an MA in photography preservation, HBA in art & art history, and a diploma in fine arts.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how photographs and film, specifically candid or vernacular documentation, captures history, the emotion of a moment before devastation, in the midst of tragedy and triumph, and in the common day-to-day of days long forgotten. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the project, Through Internees Eyes: Japanese American Incarceration Before and After.

Guests: Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Julia Huynh
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Li Wei Yang is curator of Pacific Rim Collections at the Huntington Library. His first Huntington exhibition, “Y.C. Hong: Advocate for Chinese American Inclusion,” was on view in 2015. In 2020, Yang was part of The Huntington, Los Angeles Public Library, and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles team that curated “Stories and Voices from L.A. Chinatown,” an exhibition located in L.A. Chinatown’s Central Plaza and online. In 2023, he curated the exhibition “Printed in 1085,” which focused on the Scripture of the Great Flower Ornament of the Buddha, The Huntington’s oldest printed book. From 2008 to 2014, he was the institutional archivist and project archivist at The Huntington. He received his M.Sc. in history from the University of Edinburgh and MLIS from San Jose State University.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how photographs and film, specifically candid or vernacular documentation, captures history, the emotion of a moment before devastation, in the midst of tragedy and triumph, and in the common day-to-day of days long forgotten. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the project, Through Internees Eyes: Japanese American Incarceration Before and After.

Guest: Li Wei Yang
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Glenn Kurtz is the author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2014), which was named a "Best Book of 2014" by The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio. The Los Angeles Times called the book " breathtaking, " and it has received high critical praise in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, and many other publications. A Dutch translation appeared in 2015. A documentary film based on Three Minutes in Poland is in production.

A 2016 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, he is a graduate of Tufts University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and holds a PhD from Stanford University in German studies and comparative literature. He has taught at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, and is currently on the faculty at The Gallatin School at New York University. He lives in New York City and is at work on a novel and a nonfiction project, both about the Empire State Building.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how photographs and film, specifically candid or vernacular documentation, captures history, the emotion of a moment before devastation, in the midst of tragedy and triumph, and in the common day-to-day of days long forgotten. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the project, Through Internees Eyes: Japanese American Incarceration Before and After.

Guest: Glenn Kurtz
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Dr. Regan F. Patterson is the Co-Founder of Black in Environment. She is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Principal Investigator of the Engineering Environmental Justice Lab. Previously, Dr. Patterson was the Transportation Equity Research Fellow at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. She earned her PhD in Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include air quality, sustainable transportation, community engagement, and environmental justice.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Health Equity is a series of interviews with activists, artists, educators, historians, and journalists about accessibility, cost, prejudice, and the human experience of healthcare in America.

Guest: Dr. Regan F. Patterson
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Addison Rose Vincent (they/them) is a 30-year-old transgender and nonbinary advocate, educator, and influencer based in Los Angeles, CA. They garnered national attention in 2013 as the first openly transgender participant in the Chapman University sorority rush process, and again in 2014 as the first openly transgender candidate in the Delta Queen pageant, leaving with the title of Miss Congeniality. 

Since graduating from Chapman in 2015 with a BA in Peace Studies, Addison has worked with various nonprofit organizations across the state and country advocating for the LGBTQ+ community, including the Victory Fund, Los Angeles LGBT Center, Strength United, TransLatin@ Coalition, Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team, and Nonbinary & Intersex Recognition Project. 

Addison currently serves as the Founder & CEO of Break The Binary, their consulting firm which provides DEI and LGBTQ+ training and supportive services to organizations, schools, and businesses around the world. Addison also serves as a Board Member for LA Pride and as the Project Director for History Reimagined, an organization focused on breaking cycles of domestic violence and the school-to-prison pipeline by empowering youth with their own family and community history.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Health Equity is a series of interviews with activists, artists, educators, historians, and journalists about accessibility, cost, prejudice, and the human experience of healthcare in America.

Guest: Addison Rose Vincent
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Christine Fugate is an award-winning producer and director whose work has been screened in theaters and broadcast on channels around the world. She has produced pilots and programming for networks including Discovery, VH1, Disney, A&E, Sundance, Travel Channel, PBS, and HBO. She has also spent time interviewing celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, Julie Andrews, and Anne Hathaway. For her unscripted work, she was named one of Showbiz's Top 100 Directors. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Documentary and Narrative Film at Chapman University.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Health Equity is a series of interviews with activists, artists, educators, historians, and journalists about accessibility, cost, prejudice, and the human experience of healthcare in America.

Guest: Christine Fugate
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.