The Slant Podcast

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Growing up in the internet generation, media strategist Erica Barry watched digital media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok transform the entertainment industry and become a way for talented yet historically underrepresented creators to find their audience and tell their story. Thus, she decided to write her debut book Don’t Wait, Create: How to Be A Content Creator in the New Digital Revolution. Join us for an insightful conversation  about how internet culture and content creation has changed  the entertainment space for storytelling, social change, and representation in mainstream media.

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In the early 90s, Kevin Stea was hired as associate choreographer to the famous choreographer Vincent Paterson for Madonna’s legendary Blond Ambition Tour, where he also quickly became dance captain and dancer. Soon after, his career continued to take off: dancing for Gloria Estefan, Prince, and Michael Jackson, among others. Decades ago, Kevin was actually Dana’s high school classmate. Join this conversation between old friends as they unpack their thoughts on growing up and growing older, being an introvert, protecting artistic passions from the rat race, using art as a tool for processing grief, and more.

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Adi Shankar is an Indian-American film producer, writer, YouTube personality, and actor—best known for producing Castlevania (2017), Dredd (2012), and his "Bootleg Universe" One-Shot series of unauthorized pop culture satire films.  Having spent a nomadic childhood in cities all around the globe, he was constantly the outsider looking in. Adi reflects on how his work reflected those experiences, subverting stereotypes in media, and the newfound popularity of "niche" genres in mainstream television.

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Tim Ma is a critically acclaimed chef and restaurateur, known for several iconic spots in the Washington D.C. area. After an eight year career in engineering, Tim—to the dismay of his restaurateur parents—decided to carry on the family legacy of serving food in a new way. Tim discusses his personal mission to reinvent Chinese Take-Out, a French-Chinese fusion dish called "Tofu Gnocchi in the style of Mapo," and the importance of reducing food waste.

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Ken Narasaki is an actor and playwright who has performed in over 70 plays internationally and was the star of a German cop show called ZWEI PROFIS. Narasaki discusses his adaptation of John Okada's novel "NO-NO BOY" into a radio drama, the Japanese American community's conflicting experiences in World War II, and his family's deep commitment to advocacy for the Asian American community.

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David S. Leong is a certified conflict resolution trainer and fight master whose fight choreography has appeared in over twenty Broadway, London West End, and New York Metropolitan Opera plays. David shares how growing up in a home with domestic violence, a childhood obsession with Zorro, and the stubborn belief in his own growth lead him to where he is today.

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Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, an organization that is decolonizing ballet repertoire through advising performing arts groups on how to maintain the integrity of works from the classical Western canon while updating outdated representations of race and culture.  Chan discusses navigating orientalism in classical ballet performances and outlines an essential path American ballet must take in order to survive a growingly diverse 21st century audience.

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Gary Jackson is the author of two poetry collections entitled Origin Story (University of New Mexico Press, 2020) and Missing You, Metropolis (Graywolf Press, 2010), for which he received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Gary discusses the unique experience of growing up in the midwest with Black, Korean, and Indigenous roots; moving to Korea—his grandmother's homeland—as an adult; and the way racial discrimination takes on different forms overseas.

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A conversation with Susan Choi, the author of five novels, Trust Exercise, My Education, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and The Foreign Student. Her work has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and has won the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award, the Asian-American Literary Award, and the National Book Award for fiction. Susan discusses navigating her mixed racial identity growing up in the midwest, her father's experience as an Asian immigrant in America during racial segregation, and the importance of exploring and writing about adolescence.

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A conversation with Diep Tran, an arts journalist and editor based in New York City. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, NBC News, Backstage, CNN, and other publications. Diep discusses the limited theatre market for complex, Asian American narratives, the systemic inequalities in journalism, and her growing project, Viet Fact Check—a bilingual fact-checking website that aims to curb misinformation in Vietnamese communities.

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