Loud Murmurs

In this episode, we continue our conversation on ‘Sound of Metal’, a movie about a drummer whose sudden loss of hearing puts him on an unlikely journey of growth and self-discovery. We also discuss how little we know about the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community.  The conversation is so good and so long that we split it into two parts.  See full transcript in Chinese for part 2 here. 【Timecodes】3:37 Xinke share her thoughts on the errors in ‘Sound of Metal’ 8:33 the overly complicated U.S. healthcare and insurance system 11:02 we discuss the audism and ableism in the movie15:56 the candid portrayal of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community in the movie 17:13 Yiru shares her experience with Deaf education through music20:25 cochlear implants: Ruben and Xinke’s experiences26:00 the controversy around cochlear implants35:19 the significance of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community38:05 What can we do to challenge ableism and audism in our day to day lives【Guest introduction】Xinke Liu (she/her) is the co-founder

This week, we talk about the movie ‘Sound of Metal,’ a story about a drummer (played by Riz Ahmed) whose sudden loss of hearing puts him on an unlikely journey of growth and self-discovery. We also discuss how little we know about the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, about sign language and Deaf culture. The conversation is so good and so long that we split it into two parts. See full transcript in Chinese for part 1 here. 【Timecodes】3:15 Brief introduction to Sound of Metal8:56 Our first impressions of the film18:15 On-screen moments that moved us: seeing a hearing guide dog, ASL, and deaf music education 20:55 The exquisite sound design of the movie 25:48 What’s currently missing from mainstream awareness of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community, what are the 4 deaf identities, ASL (American Sign Language) as a language, what is Deaf culture 36:48 Why we need to cast more deaf actors in deaf roles44:14 ASL as a language and its role in forming a community 【Guest introduction】Xinke Liu (she/her) is the c

“WandaVision” takes place after Thanos snapped his fingers and eliminated half of the people in the universe in Avengers: Infinity War. The show departs from the usual superhero Marvel movies in a number of significant ways: it’s a TV show, the main character is a woman, the heart of the story is about grieving, trauma and intimacy. Like people in the Marvel universe, we all collectively lived through a traumatic event on a global scale and are still far from being completely free from the influence of the pandemic. It’s been said that WandaVision is a pandemic parable. Barring from the typical third act CGI light beam fight in the sky, this story has a lot of elements we can all relate to: living in our TV, being stuck at home and isolated, processing waves of direct and indirect grief. So today, we invited an actual therapist to talk to us about WandaVision. Guest: Lola, she/her, licensed therapist based in Chicago. She founded a social-justice informed Fig Tree Counseling (figtreechi.com) in 2019. Warning:

This episode, we unpacked our reactions to the 93rd Academy Awards that honored films created in 2020 with our dear friend Eileen Chow. Despite being a particularly underwhelming viewing experience, the Oscars created cultural moments that sparked heated discussion across China, the US, and all diaspora in between. We talked about:1:20 The “Diet Oscars” of 20217:50 Chole Zhao’s Nomadland acceptance speech is a phenomenal cross-cultural pop-culture moment15:00 The controversy of quoting “Three Character Classic”30:10 Best Male Lead -  “The Father” and many issues in Oscar planning34:31 Best Supporting Male Actor - “Judas and the Black Messiah”37:10 Best Editing - “Sound of Metal”39:39 Best Animated Feature Nominee - “Wolfwalker”41:20 Best Documentary Nominee -“Crip Camp”48:50 Youn Yuh-jung couldn’t care less about Brad Pitt and we are very here for itFind Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, a

In this episode, host Afra talks to Viola Zhou and A-Liang about the hit Chinese fantasy period series Word of Honor. It’s your classic wuxia story but with a delicious twist — it centers around two incredibly handsome men who find soul mates in each other, but never quite fall in love. “Word of Honor” became an internet sensation and cultural phenomenon in China and Southeast Asia. The show’s international fans write long critical essays and guides explaining terms and references specific to Chinese culture.  What makes the show such a hit? How does it challenge and enforce gender norms? Is this queerbaiting in the Chinese context? Guests: Viola Zhou is a writer covering tech, Chinese society, and internet culture at Vice. A-Liang is a PhD student at Kings College, researching Chinese danmei culture. 2:14 Our own experience with the genre of danmei. 6:15 Why the show “Word of Honor” appeals to so many international audiences.12:44 What makes the character Zhou Xu so easy to fall for? How did the actor portra

Today, our hosts Afra and Ina are joined by friends and guests of the show, Professor Eileen Chow and journalist Muyi Xiao in our discussion of K-Drama. While some of us jumped into the K-Drama obsession early on, for others, it was a new hobby from the pandemic days. We dive into fan culture and its influence on TV shows, South Korea’s TV and Film industry, how we each got into K-Drama and why we continued watching, how TV shows have been historically in the U.S. and other countries, and stay tuned till the end for our top recommendations. Timecode:6:33 Eileen talks about fan culture9:30 Why we like K-Drama: pure happiness 11:20 Why we like K-drama, another reason: it’s variety in genre and plot20:47 US television was historically designed to cater to male audience25:32 how a new generation of showrunners familiar with fan culture are shaping our TV shows 30:10 K-Drama’s exoticization of foreign landscapes 41:50 Intimacy in K-Drama Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wher

The pandemic quarantine has fueled new hobbies, and one of ours is the British Monarchy related content: THE Oprah interview, all four seasons of The Crown, and way too many biographies, documentaries and diaries (from the people who experienced it first hand). This episode, we are joined by a fellow unofficial “scholar” of the British Monarchy and related tea, stage director Mo Zhou. We start by unpacking the interview, then shining a light on the outmoded rules and values of the family and the damaging effects to the people within, and collectively ponder where tradition ends and modernity begins for the British Monarchy: the Firm, a political power, and a culture phenomenon that happens to take the shape of a family.03:05 Recapping the Oprah Interview11:25 Why do we know so much about the monarchy?15:30 Revisiting what we know about three generations of the monarchy45:00 Why is the Crown family called “the Firm”?51:59 Can we imagine a new and more modernized monarchy in the age of Brexit?Find Loud Murmurs

Korean American director Lee Issac Chung’s semi-autobiographical film “Minari” is one of those films that make you think back to it days after watching. The film tells the story about a Korean-American family seeking the American dream in rural Arkansas in the 1980s. "Minari" is a tender and nuanced film that leaves you feeling nostalgic and reflective. And although it’s a highly specific story about a Korean American family, hosts Izzy, Ina and Afra talk about finding lots of parallels in our own migration stories. Our special guest for this episode is Eileen Chow, Duke University Visiting Associate Professor of Chinese and Japanese Cultural Studies and Co-director of the Duke Story Lab.   【Hosts】Izzy （@izzy_niu)Afra （@afrazhaowang）Ina  （@capfainina0328）Eileen（@chowleen）【Highlights】Mother tongue, accents and the language of people caught in-between cultures Moving the cultural discussion beyond “authenticity” and representation The justified anger of female characters in “Minari”How Korean is this

This is our Part Two of our two-part International Women’s Day Special Programming, in collaboration with our friends over at The Weirdo Podcast. Listen to Part One here. Our two-part special centers around the six categories of female characters that we’d like to see on screen. We combed through our Clubhouse discussion notes, our own experiences as pop culture consumers, and compiled this “wishlist” from the viewpoint of an average audience (rather than that of a TV/film industry insider). Some wishes are already being fulfilled while others seem farfetched. But we hope that we can see our collective wishlist being realized: whether on the small screen or big screen, in fanfics or novel. We are manifesting this into the world, now world, let’s make it happen. 【Hosts】Juan Afra （@afrazhaowang）Ina  （@capfainina0328）Diaodiao 若含（@echoruohan）王磬（@qingww）【Highlights】2:45 We want to see representation from Chinese Minority Races without their characters being exoticized 7:40 Women of Minority Races in China should n

This is our Part One of our two-part International Women’s Day Special Programming, in collaboration with our friends over at The Weirdo Podcast. In February, we teamed up with our friends at the Weirdo Podcast and hosted a discussion on Clubhouse, inviting our listeners to share what their ideal female character on screen would be like. The two-hour long initial conversation ballooned into over three hours, with 50+ listeners from across the world sharing their thoughts. We jotted them all down and categorized it loosely into six broad categories. Think of it as “suggestions” to the entertainment industry or all the players who are involved in making TV shows and movies, here’s the female character(s) that the audience REALLY wants to see on screen! We’re answering the million-dollar question here. Our two-part special centers around the six categories of female characters that we’d like to see on screen. We combed through our Clubhouse discussion notes, our own experiences as pop culture consumers, and comp

In celebration of Chole Zhao becoming the first Asian woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Director, we are revisiting this episode we recorded last year. Our three hosts Juan, Diaodiao and Ina discuss ‘Nomadland,’ a recent favorite of ours and of the film festival award circuit (winner of the top prize at the Venice Film Festival). We try to put into words the ennui and other hard-to-grasp feelings the film evokes. We examine our own relationships with nature and the land on which we live, and we dive into the thorny social issue of caring for elderly laborers in both the U.S. and China.In this episode, you’ll hear: 00:00-07:30 First impressions of “Nomadland”07:30 - Frances McDormand’s sublime performance and how the movie can’t be contained by one genre 08:20 - How the film portrays space through storytelling and cinematography, the juxtaposition of the endless road and the cramped van 11:37 - The relationship between human and nature and land in the modern society 14:47 - The real social issues behind thi

“Soul” is a movie about death, about jazz, about longing and limitation. Since its premiere, many people in the U.S. and in China praise the movie for warming their hearts and nourishing their souls. As we immerse ourselves in the positivity the movie brings, we realize that this heartwarming feeling is temporary and its existence is closely tied to the vacuum of the movie’s unrealistic world. Life isn’t as black and white or as easy as the movie depicts it to be. So how do we navigate the messy journey that is life? How do we live our lives while accepting that death is inevitable? Our hosts Ina and Afra sit down with our old friend and esteemed guest Yangyang Cheng to discuss Pixar’s new movie, “Soul.”3:33 Afra shares how the movie prompted her to think about death6:28 Yangyang talks about her personal experience with the movie and its faults in having a Black main character, but ultimately the movie isn’t a Black movie at all13:49 The movie depicts life and death as choices that we can actively make, which

With a sigh of relief, we’re proud to say that this year has finally come to an end. And what a year it has been! There are not enough words to accurately capture all that has happened this year, and as much we want to forget what this year has brought to us as both individuals and as societies, we shouldn’t. The most important thing to happen this year is the fact that it happened, and we owe it to the past, the present, and the future to remember it for what it was. In this episode, we invite our two editors, Joshua and Val, to join our four hosts and review what this year has been like for us and for Loud Murmurs, and we share some of our favorite episodes with all of you. Since its creation, Loud Murmurs gave us an opportunity to chase after the seemingly disconnected and random thoughts we’ve had after binging a TV show or watching a movie. It’s pushed us to dig deeper, challenge our biases and thinking, and do the work and research necessary to understand things we are not familiar with -- and to ultima

In this episode, hosts Juan, Afra and Diaodiao talk to our old friend Lin Santu and new friend, standup comedian Huey (TikTok @drhueyli), about two recent political films starring Sacha Baron Cohen.The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a dramatized reenactment of the 1969 trial of seven activists charged by the federal government with conspiracy, for their roles in organizing the counterculture protests in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. We talk about the film’s various limitations and how it comments on and relates to the BLM protests this past summer. In the second half of the show, we dive into acerbic comedy Borat 2. The highly anticipated sequel to Borat may be best known for the infamous scene with Giuliani in the hotel room, but the breakout star is actually Borat’s 15-year old daughter Tutar. Is this the kind of commentary we need in today’s divisive political climate? We talk about these and more in this episode. 4:30 What are we talking about when we are talking about Sorkin?11:32 The hi

The “Queen’s Gambit,” the new Netflix show about chess genius Beth Harmon, has managed to give us some joy amid this long period of listless pandemic-induced depression. Hosts Ina, Izzy and Diaodiao bring you this free-form, overly enthusiastic discussion filled with feminist (and other types of) rage where we try to get to the bottom of why this show is so damn satisfying to watch even with all its limitations. If you are expecting an intellectual, philosophical conversation about the most pressing social issue of our time — this is not it. But we had a ton of fun. We hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it. P.S. Do you ship Benny/Beth or Beth/Benny? ; ) Timecodes:03:00 - 08:00 Why is the “Queen's Gambit” such a perfect show for women of our time? Why is it important that the show is set in the 50s? 08:30 - 11:00 How does Beth’s relationship with Beltik flip the traditional gender dynamics on its head; why does Beltik remind us of women in Chinese Wuxia novels/films? 

In this episode, our two hosts and two guests continued our discussion on Netflix’s “Social Dilemma”. We talked about how the industry shaped us as practitioners (0:47)  -- how it encouraged our uninhibited curiosity and restricted our imagination of what the Internet could have been(5:40). We also debated whether users should also be considered “laborers” in this new form of capitalism, and if they should get a share of the profit (15:20). We talked about what we did not like about the documentary, which is widely accused of sensationalism and oversimplifying complex issues (31:00). Lastly, we broke down the steps that are currently being taken -- and steps we would like to see (41:38) -- in the long march ahead of defending humanity against surveillance capitalism.Links:《计算机世界的教条和谎言——从设计批判的角度看科技》https://nyshalong.com/event/11“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff“The Curse of Xanadu” https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/Promo：Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spoti

This is the first section of our two-part discussion of Netflix’s “Social Dilemma.” Brace yourself as our two hosts and two guests dive into a collective mental breakdown while breaking down the complex set of problems the documentary shed light on -- surveillance capitalism, attention economy, and social media addiction. We discussed our reaction to the documentary, how it forced us to reconsider our day-to-day jobs as practitioners, our personal relationship with the attention and addiction industry, and why we need to start paying attention because, this time, things are truly different.Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. RSS feed: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/258327.rss Itunes: https://apple.co/2VAVf0Z Google play: goo.gl/KjRYPN Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2IWNuRB Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=544416&refid=stpr Pock

In this episode, our three hosts Juan, Diaodiao and Ina discuss ‘Nomadland,’ a recent favorite of ours and of the film festival award circuit (winner of the top prize at the Venice Film Festival). We try to put into words the ennui and other hard-to-grasp feelings the film evokes. We examine our own relationships with nature and the land on which we live, and we dive into the thorny social issue of caring for elderly laborers in both the U.S. and China. In this episode, you’ll hear: 00:00-07:30 First impressions of “Nomadland”07:30 - Frances McDormand’s sublime performance and how the movie can’t be contained by one genre 08:20 - How the film portrays space through storytelling and cinematography, the juxtaposition of the endless road and the cramped van 11:37 - The relationship between human and nature and land in the modern society 14:47 - The real social issues behind this poetic film 19:06 - How China and and the U.S. face similar yet different social issues with aging workers 23:32 - The decline of the w

In this episode, Diaodiao and Afra talk about their latest obsessions — dance competitions! We are talking about Youku’s electrifying reality dance show "The Street Dance of China", and HBO Max's vogue ballroom dance competition "Legendary" with a special guest: Bazi, who is the father of House of Kawakubo, the first vogue ballroom family in China. Bazi talks us through the dance genre known as voguing and why it's as much of a community as an art form. We compare the representations of female and LGBT dancers on the two shows, unpack our own experiences in the dance community, and explain why both of the shows celebrate a subversive culture but fail to be subversive themselves.If you haven't watched either of the shows, don't worry, you can still enjoy this episode!  "Street Dance of China" Season 3 aired on July 18, 2020 and very soon became one of the most popular reality shows in post-pandemic China. The show features four celebrities who are known as &quo

This is a very special episode we put together in 3 days. On September 18, 2020, Friday evening, we learned that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at the age of 87. It was one of those news stories where you remember exactly what you were doing when you heard it. For this episode, hosts Izzy and Afra are joined by our guests Danmiao and Santu. Santu is in law school right now juggling between schoolwork and being a dad of two. Danmiao is a lawyer in New York City.  Together we celebrate Notorious R.B.G’s life, legacy and her journey to pop culture icon. It’s actually a surprisingly uplifting episode, somehow. *In this episode, you’ll hear:*-How we learned of RBG’s death and how we processed the news-What RBG means to each of us personally -Ginsburg’s greatest contributions to women’s rights -Why the soft-spoken justice became an unlikely pop culture icon in her last years-How did the 2018 documentary R.B.G and the 2019 film “On the Basis of Sex” tell her story?-Why is her death politically