Speaker 1: Hey, they're listeners. This is producer DJ Daniel. The following
Speaker 1: episode was recorded before the horrible events in Monterey Park.
Speaker 1: The team will release an episode addressing the situation once
Speaker 1: more details have emerged. Thank you and enjoy. It's's aluter
Speaker 1: New Years. Yeah, happy New Years. It's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the New Year's Special. It's me Mia, I've got I've
Speaker 1: got cherine with me. Yeah, how how are you doing?
Speaker 1: I guess I guess it's I guess it's not the
Speaker 1: New Year yet when we're recording it, but it will
Speaker 1: be by the time you hear this. That counts. That counts.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm I got a cat recently and I
Speaker 1: called it funny. And then I learned later that this
Speaker 1: year is the year of the Rabbit. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel really happy about that. It's for this year. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I'm good. I'm good. That's the that's that's Having
Speaker 1: new cat is an amazing way to start any year. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I agree, it was very exciting that. Do you know
Speaker 1: what else is very exciting? Transitions? They paid me to
Speaker 1: do this for some reason. All right, this this this year,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Chinese restaurant syndrome and the
Speaker 1: whole sort of anti MSG craze. So that was I've
Speaker 1: always been so big. I don't know. I grew up
Speaker 1: in like, uh, I don't know, a diverse area in
Speaker 1: San Diego, but we would always go to fun like regularly,
Speaker 1: and the no MSG was like all over the menu
Speaker 1: and everything. It's like this thing that I mean, every
Speaker 1: restaurant I went to basically was just like come to us,
Speaker 1: there's no MSG. So I'm really curious how it started
Speaker 1: because growing up I was like, Okay, MSG is bad.
Speaker 1: I guess you know what I mean to So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like it wasn't It wasn't really, it wasn't
Speaker 1: as intense where I was growing up, but that was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it was it was a very white
Speaker 1: suburb but and people people were still freaked out about MSG.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't but like the the the Asian restaurants
Speaker 1: didn't like talk about it ever, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it was still it was still very sort of like
Speaker 1: like I remember I would go like eat dinner with
Speaker 1: like white families and they're talking about MSG, and I
Speaker 1: was like what for a good amount of time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: having now talked about MSG for a bit. We should
Speaker 1: we should ask like what what is MSG? And the
Speaker 1: answer okay. So MSG stands from mono sodium glutamate, which
Speaker 1: is it's just a salt, basically salt with like glutamate,
Speaker 1: and it has a bunch of a mommy in it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read this thing from Kenji from Serious Eats
Speaker 1: because every every every single article started that starts about
Speaker 1: this has like this exact paragraph in it. So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna read it instead of trying to rewrite this
Speaker 1: paragraph that I want to. MSG is a sodium salt
Speaker 1: of glutamic acid and a amino acid. It was first
Speaker 1: isolated in ninety eight by Japanese biochemist Takua Ikeda, who
Speaker 1: was trying to discover what exactly gave dashi, the Japanese
Speaker 1: flavor broth with Comba, Japanese giant sea kelp. It's strong
Speaker 1: savory character. Turns out that comba is packed with clutamic acid.
Speaker 1: It was a Kita who coined the term mummmi, which
Speaker 1: roughly translates a savory to describe to glutamic acid and
Speaker 1: other seminar similar amino acids. Until that point, scientists had
Speaker 1: only discovered the other four flavors sensed by the tongue
Speaker 1: and the soft palate, salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. By
Speaker 1: nine pure crystallite MSG, extracted from the abundant kelp in
Speaker 1: the c around Japan, was being sold under the brand
Speaker 1: name a Gi No Moto roughly Element of Flavor. The
Speaker 1: company exists to this day. Now keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: That's going to be important to the last part of
Speaker 1: the story. But you know, in the meantime, you know,
Speaker 1: around around around nineteen noweight, once this is discovered, that
Speaker 1: it turns into this sort of enormous industry. Um here's
Speaker 1: from a pretty good Men's Health article about it. By
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, number of American companies were producing MSG
Speaker 1: domestically for the consumer, the most famous being accents. Okay, there,
Speaker 1: there's like it's spelled acts. It's it's accent, but it's
Speaker 1: spelled a c apostrophe C E N T. That's not Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's I lost me, Yeah said, which was it's it's
Speaker 1: advertising is a bleak place. Yeah, that's that's a different episode,
Speaker 1: I think partially, yes, also partially this episode. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the thost famous one being Accent, which was advertised as
Speaker 1: pure mono sodium glutimate that quote makes food flavors sing.
Speaker 1: Various food magazines and community cookbooks featured the additive as
Speaker 1: an ingredient and the likes of fried chicken wings and
Speaker 1: barbecue sauce recipes. By nineteen sixty nine, fifty eight million
Speaker 1: pounds of MSG were being produced in the US per year,
Speaker 1: says food a story in Ian Moseby PhD. For an
Speaker 1: entire generation, the ingredient was presented in a dizzying array
Speaker 1: of food products breakfast cereals, TV dinners, frozen vegetables, baby food,
Speaker 1: and soup produced by beloved brands such as Campbell's and Swanson,
Speaker 1: which today offer foods products free of MSG additives. And Okay,
Speaker 1: if you think about this for a second, it's actually
Speaker 1: really weird that MSG s thought it as a Chinese thing,
Speaker 1: because like, okay, MSG all told has only been around
Speaker 1: for like a hundred years, right, It's heavily used in
Speaker 1: the US for like thirty or forty years, Like it's
Speaker 1: not in it's not really in China for that much
Speaker 1: longer for this in the US, and it's used in
Speaker 1: just like a bunch of American food. How did that start.
Speaker 1: Do we know how that association started and continued? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get it. Most it mostly has to do
Speaker 1: with like it has to do with restaurants, and it
Speaker 1: specifically has to do with the part that we're getting
Speaker 1: to about this letter, which is weird. And I will
Speaker 1: say like that there are a lot of Chinese families
Speaker 1: that like just use MSG for like they're cooking. My
Speaker 1: my house never did it because we're lazy and most
Speaker 1: of our cooking involves like as few ingredients and prep
Speaker 1: as possible, so we just like it's also really in
Speaker 1: uh Beingnameese food. I feel like uses it a lot too.
Speaker 1: That that was my first association with it. So I
Speaker 1: just know, say because I'm I was don't all fourteen,
Speaker 1: I just said, okay, this is Vietnamese, but that's really
Speaker 1: interesting to just know, like, well it's Japanese too, like yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's Asian, It's yeah, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but like it is just it is just it's just interesting,
Speaker 1: like the like people in the U s were just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's like it's it was in everything.
Speaker 1: People in the US were also just using it to
Speaker 1: cook food. This is also a thing that like people
Speaker 1: in China use a lot too, So it's not that
Speaker 1: like Chinese people don't do. It's just like everybody. Like
Speaker 1: the moment everyone got it, they were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this makes our food tastes better. She's more of it,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean, I'm assuming. Once it got demonized,
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, this is a Chinese thing, but
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure. Yeah, I will be patient. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is this is in fact the next thing.
Speaker 1: So nobody really cared about it until nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: rolled around. Well, so for those sixty years, MSG was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just use it. Yeah, yeah, Um, I'm forgetting where I'm
Speaker 1: going to read apart from this journal article, and I've
Speaker 1: forgotten to put in what journal is from because I'm
Speaker 1: a hack and a fraud. I think it's a general
Speaker 1: Natural health sure about that, right, Yeah, sure, it's it's
Speaker 1: from It's from some journal sub doctors wrote it quote.
Speaker 1: In the spring of nineteen, Dr Robert Homemana wrote to
Speaker 1: the New England Journal of Medicine asking the assistance of
Speaker 1: the journal's readership and invite identifying the source of phenomenon
Speaker 1: that Dr Goa labeled the Chinese restaurant syndrome CRS, numbness
Speaker 1: of his back and neck, palpitations, and general weakness after
Speaker 1: he consumed meals in Chinese restaurants. Dr Gua hypothesize that
Speaker 1: the source of his syndrome might be a reaction to
Speaker 1: the soy sauce, the cooking wine, the high sodium content
Speaker 1: of the food, or to the flavor enhancing mono sodium
Speaker 1: glutamate m s G. Within two months, the journal received
Speaker 1: a flurry of letters from readers who had noticed a
Speaker 1: similar phenomenon after eating restaurant prepared Chinese food. So this
Speaker 1: is the start of this whole thing. And there's one
Speaker 1: thing I need to point out right away that is
Speaker 1: in almost every single article about this that is wrong,
Speaker 1: which is that this this this, this article says that
Speaker 1: he's talking about Chinese food, which is true, but very
Speaker 1: specifically and this and this is this is going to
Speaker 1: be very important in about ten minutes. Well, I don't know, Tennis,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be important soon, which is he specifically has
Speaker 1: a thing about how this is about northern Chinese food mhm.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is something that is something that
Speaker 1: everyone everyone sort of misses. The other thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: about this is that you know, he says it could
Speaker 1: be MSG, but you know, she he's treating MSG exactly
Speaker 1: like all of the rest of the other stuff that's
Speaker 1: in this that's in the food, right, he lists soy sauce,
Speaker 1: he lists cooking wine. Maybe he's like, okay, maybe there's
Speaker 1: too much salt, right, Like he's not really doing an
Speaker 1: MSG thing. But everyone who reads this immediately focuses on
Speaker 1: the M s G. Okay. So before I started researching this,
Speaker 1: I had heard that this whole letter was actually fake.
Speaker 1: It was actually a prank. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is a thing that's like, it's kind of like okay.
Speaker 1: So the story behind this was that it was supposed
Speaker 1: to have been a prank by a white guy named
Speaker 1: Dr Steele who made it up as a joke. And
Speaker 1: this is a sort of like a folk like okay,
Speaker 1: So this story is not true. The story I am
Speaker 1: about to say is not true. It turns out this
Speaker 1: letter is actually real. But there was there was basically
Speaker 1: a story that went around that it was this guy
Speaker 1: named Dr Steele who had made it up as a
Speaker 1: way to get published in a journal for like a bet,
Speaker 1: because like Dr Steele like claimed responsibility for it, and
Speaker 1: that got out to researchers. But it turns yeah, and
Speaker 1: so for a bit everyone was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this whole thing was started by a prank. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that's also not true. So this American Life
Speaker 1: figured out that Dr Robert is a real guy. Uh
Speaker 1: dcr Steele had pretended that he said that he made
Speaker 1: it up the name. It's not true. This a real guy.
Speaker 1: They talked to his family and his colleagues and all
Speaker 1: of them were like, oh no, guad like wrote this thing.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, there's a lot of racism here too, because
Speaker 1: Dr Steele had claimed that home Man, which is okay.
Speaker 1: So this is where things get weird. Um I'm saying
Speaker 1: good because that's how you actually pronounce it. Um. It's
Speaker 1: spelled h O m A n k w okay whoa yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so this this is this is some Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: is a wad Giles bullshit, the previous attempt to sort
Speaker 1: of romanize Chinese. But just think of way Giles and
Speaker 1: it is the band of my existence. It's dogshit. Hi,
Speaker 1: this is mea and post I made a mistake here.
Speaker 1: K w okay is actually the standard Cantonese spelling of good.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that. I am a dipshit who does not
Speaker 1: speak Cantonese. Yeah, and enjoy the rest of the show.
Speaker 1: They heard someone say ga and we're like this is
Speaker 1: k w It's like no, no, it's not. Please, So
Speaker 1: that's bad. It's literally the worst. Like if you if
Speaker 1: you ever you know, so sometimes if you if you're
Speaker 1: if you're looking at anything something that's just spelled really weirdly,
Speaker 1: like or for example, like the way that schenkai check
Speaker 1: is spelled is actually like like it's actually a way
Speaker 1: Giles thing like that. There's there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: like like that. Yeah, yeah you can find um, I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's I mean, that explains a lot,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's what and part part of everything that's
Speaker 1: happening to you here is that like so and then
Speaker 1: this is also gonna be important later. KOs is a
Speaker 1: is a Cantonese last name. Um, but it's it's it
Speaker 1: gets really really confusing really quickly if you don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on, because if if if you're reading, if
Speaker 1: you're reading a word that's in Chinese in the US,
Speaker 1: it could either be in Mandarin or in Cantonese, and
Speaker 1: it also could be either written with the terrible way
Speaker 1: Giles one, or it could be in opinion, which is
Speaker 1: like the one that's actually sort of usable. Um but
Speaker 1: Dr Steele because again the way it's written is h
Speaker 1: O m A and k w o kay and Dr
Speaker 1: Steele claims that he wrote it to be like human
Speaker 1: croc of shit like how man kruk. Yeah, excuse me,
Speaker 1: people like people believe, yeah, well he's dead, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's so disgusting. Yeah, like this is this is
Speaker 1: so racist, and it's like, you know, but this like
Speaker 1: people people believe this for a while because yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but okay, so eventually people figure out that
Speaker 1: it's not true. And I'm going to read something from
Speaker 1: from this American Life piece where they talk about how
Speaker 1: they figured out that it was actually like that Homenko
Speaker 1: was like actually a real guy. And when you read
Speaker 1: the original letter, there are details that seem more likely
Speaker 1: to come from her father was just a close father
Speaker 1: than from Howard. How Howard steels the doctor, like when
Speaker 1: he said he booved to the US, which the real
Speaker 1: doctor Good did, and how he's very specific the syndrome
Speaker 1: happens with Northern Chinese food in the sixties. How many
Speaker 1: white guys in Philadelphia could have made that distinction? Also,
Speaker 1: oh man cool is an actual Cantonese name. What are
Speaker 1: the odds that dr steel through together random sounding Chinese
Speaker 1: syllables to arrive at that? So, okay, I read that,
Speaker 1: and I had a revelation. I I cracked this case.
Speaker 1: Why the funk open? I figured it out. I figured
Speaker 1: out what was going on with this letter. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: so excited for this. I'm cold hypen this up for
Speaker 1: like hours, I'm so excited. So I'm bts of this.
Speaker 1: We have like a group chat essentially, and I didn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if I can make this recording. But
Speaker 1: then Mia dropped that that bomb, being like I have
Speaker 1: this big break breakthrough, and I was like, I gotta
Speaker 1: be there. I just gotta be there. And so I
Speaker 1: kicked James out because James couldn't make me time I
Speaker 1: could make. And so here I have I have. I
Speaker 1: have not told Sharine what the breakthrough this is? Same time. Okay,
Speaker 1: So is Cantonese right? And she specifies in this letter
Speaker 1: that this is about Northern Chinese food. My thesis right
Speaker 1: here right now is that this whole letter it's actually about.
Speaker 1: It's actually about Cantonese anti Northerlan sentiments. This is a
Speaker 1: whole last thing in China. Canton or like the region
Speaker 1: that was called Canton on the west is like where
Speaker 1: Cantonese people aren't. This is like this is the very
Speaker 1: south of China, right there is a whole last thing
Speaker 1: in China. Let like, people from the North people from
Speaker 1: the South hate each other. Um, it's actually very weird.
Speaker 1: So my my family is like half from the north,
Speaker 1: half from the South, and like when my mom was
Speaker 1: growing up, she like she would like get made fun
Speaker 1: of for how she like rolled dumplings because people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: you rolled dumplings like a Southerner And She's like, what
Speaker 1: it is a whole fucking thing. It's like people hate
Speaker 1: each other, yea, how else how would you know those intricracies,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, unless you were from there,
Speaker 1: like had history there. Yeah, well I mean I was
Speaker 1: just this is the thing that that that's persisted in
Speaker 1: the U s too. You you still you still run
Speaker 1: into this stuff like they're they're they're like there are
Speaker 1: definitely like candidese restaurants were like you probably shouldn't speak Mandarin.
Speaker 1: They're like, there's there's like this is this is still
Speaker 1: a thing. It's not really talked about very much because
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's kind of an internal Chinese thing.
Speaker 1: But you know, the one place you actually really gotta
Speaker 1: see this, you gotta see this from the Hong during
Speaker 1: the Hong Kong protests in both sides, because like, okay,
Speaker 1: so there there there's a strain of the sort of
Speaker 1: like like there there's a strain of Chinese nationalism that's
Speaker 1: very sort of like it was doing this like really
Speaker 1: very sort of like anti southern racism from you know,
Speaker 1: you get this from a lot of the Chinese nationalist
Speaker 1: on the CCP side, there's another faction of like the
Speaker 1: Hong Kong protesters who's like, thing was like, we're not
Speaker 1: actually Chinese because we're not like the Northerners. You're a
Speaker 1: communist and like evil, which which is really funny because
Speaker 1: like you know, like okay, the if if you if
Speaker 1: you run through the actual history of communism in China,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, like like one of one of the
Speaker 1: one of the largest communists like strikes that ever happened
Speaker 1: was in Hong Kong. Like sure, fine, but you know,
Speaker 1: but obviously, like I'm simplifying all of this enormously because
Speaker 1: it's very complicated. There's a lot of regional ship that's
Speaker 1: going on here. Yeah, but so your your thesis is
Speaker 1: that the person that started all of this was like
Speaker 1: maybe like from the South or like just like yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that is that is definite, Like that is
Speaker 1: that is like the like that is the most Cantonese
Speaker 1: asked name I've ever heard, like that that that guy,
Speaker 1: that guy, that guy is definitely from southern China. And yeah,
Speaker 1: my my thesis is specifically it's this Cantonese guy going
Speaker 1: a funk. Those nerds that there's I hate their I
Speaker 1: hate their asses, I hate their food, their food at
Speaker 1: ship eating it makes me sick. But because because it's
Speaker 1: the US that the subtlety of this gets lost and
Speaker 1: everyone just runs with it is like Chinese restaurant syndrome.
Speaker 1: Even though this is the this is this is my theories,
Speaker 1: this is this is like this is like kind of
Speaker 1: semi obscured, like Chenny's like internal grudge v point, Like
Speaker 1: like knowing the origin point makes a lot more sense
Speaker 1: now to be honest, like, why would this be some
Speaker 1: random like why would he specify a region, like a
Speaker 1: very specific region that that's just I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know that that that that that's my theory. I could
Speaker 1: be wrong about this, but all it fits with all
Speaker 1: of the details, so it checks out. It checks out,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, So okay, alright, so so this this
Speaker 1: letter happens and there's like a flurry of letters rather
Speaker 1: people talking about this, and okay, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about why this got picked up the way it does. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna still yeah, this is this is I'm going
Speaker 1: to read from every single article in this also goes
Speaker 1: exactly the same way. So I'm gonna read from Mens
Speaker 1: Health version. So you get this section of it before
Speaker 1: I talked about why it's I think like not sufficient
Speaker 1: to capture what was happening. Mostly describes the late fift
Speaker 1: is a time of heightened anti Chinese sentiment. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, domestic and international politics had shifted towards a
Speaker 1: fairly clear anti communist agenda. In fact, he says during
Speaker 1: this time, anti Chinese sentiments were so widespread and accepted
Speaker 1: that most Americans didn't consider their apprehension to be racial bias. Now,
Speaker 1: this is true as far as it goes. But we
Speaker 1: need to go to ADS and we'll come back from ADS.
Speaker 1: I will tell em what else was going on in
Speaker 1: that week? Hell yeah, all right, and we're back. We're back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about how this like letter to like a
Speaker 1: journal in New England suddenly became an entire like national
Speaker 1: American thing. Okay, So the way this happened is that
Speaker 1: this got picked up by the news. Now there's a
Speaker 1: huge New York Times article about this, and that article
Speaker 1: is published on May nineteenth, nineteen. Now, Sharine, do you
Speaker 1: know what else was going on in May? I've heard
Speaker 1: a lot of ship went down in the sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is this is right, This is like smack
Speaker 1: dab in the middle of May sixty eight in France.
Speaker 1: This is this is like one week after the Night
Speaker 1: of the Barricades UM. Three days before this was published.
Speaker 1: The situationists who are like these, this like ultra left
Speaker 1: student organization who who who at this point are occupying
Speaker 1: the Sorbonne like they have fully taken control of their campus.
Speaker 1: They have run the cops out, they have run the
Speaker 1: administration out. UM. Three days before this is published. The
Speaker 1: students at the Sorbond, reacting to a factory occupation that
Speaker 1: they heard about, send out this famous communicate calling for
Speaker 1: the occupation of all factories in France, and like it
Speaker 1: fucking happens, Like the workers in France take control of
Speaker 1: like a huge portion of Francis factories, like the brain
Speaker 1: factories are under control of the workers um like by
Speaker 1: by by this time, like this is happening, right, the
Speaker 1: police have like the police are fighting them, but they're
Speaker 1: losing um. Two days before this article is published, uh,
Speaker 1: the sorband sends this to the Chinese consulate quote, shaken
Speaker 1: your boots, bureaucrats, The international power of the workers councils
Speaker 1: will soon wipe you out. Humanity won't be happy until
Speaker 1: the last bureaucrat is hung with the guts of the
Speaker 1: last capitalists. Long live the factory occupations, Long live the
Speaker 1: great Charitese proletarian revolution elected twenties seven, betrayed by the
Speaker 1: Stalinist bureaucrats. It goes on and on, like this is
Speaker 1: just what they're sending to the maoists right like that,
Speaker 1: that is that is how far left these people are,
Speaker 1: Like they're they're telling the Maoist shaking your boots, Bereaucrats,
Speaker 1: the international power of work, those councils will soon wipe
Speaker 1: you out. Like it is wild in sense. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the fact that this is happening all during all
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, that's no, yeah, no, one,
Speaker 1: it's it's really important. I have never read an article
Speaker 1: that actually puts this together, and it was like, it's
Speaker 1: not just that going on right, Like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you like the situation in France, they are a week
Speaker 1: and a half out from de Gaul, who was the
Speaker 1: president literally fleeing the country because he's so convinced that
Speaker 1: they're about to lose the country to communism. Like well,
Speaker 1: and I should say when I say communism, by the way,
Speaker 1: part of that message to the to the Maoist is
Speaker 1: down with the state revolutionary Marxisms like that that that
Speaker 1: these are these people are like these people have are
Speaker 1: Marxists who have gone like so far left they've essentially
Speaker 1: become anarchists. It's it's wild and mean, you know. And
Speaker 1: also what's happening, like the prog Spring is happening during
Speaker 1: the middle of this um. This is also like this
Speaker 1: is a month after the Holy Week uprising in the US,
Speaker 1: which is so after MLK was killed, there were these
Speaker 1: like probably the most intense riots to US has ever seen,
Speaker 1: like even like even more so than like the ones
Speaker 1: we saw the Holy Week riot, Like they were like
Speaker 1: like there there were there were like like thousands of
Speaker 1: paratroopers We're being deployed to like kill rioters. Yeah, like nuts, yeah,
Speaker 1: like that was that was probably the closest like some
Speaker 1: of the closes the US has ever had to just
Speaker 1: like actually having revolution in the government, losing control of
Speaker 1: the entire country and like and what while this article
Speaker 1: is coming out, like there are still even in May,
Speaker 1: the Holy Week up risings in April, but like even
Speaker 1: if like even in May, there are still people on
Speaker 1: the streets fighting the cops, like while while this article
Speaker 1: is being written, and you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: the there's something about first on that entire year. I
Speaker 1: mean it's wild like the six May sixty like that
Speaker 1: that that year is just the year like the entire
Speaker 1: world went. I mean there's like like like they they
Speaker 1: I can't remember if they act successfully over through the government.
Speaker 1: They like almost over through the government of Pakistan, like
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of students shot in Mexico because they're
Speaker 1: trying to bring down the government. Like it's everywhere. There
Speaker 1: was all this stuff going on um And you know,
Speaker 1: also the everything that is happening is we're two years
Speaker 1: into the Culture Revolution and it's kind of interesting because
Speaker 1: but by sixty eight we're kind of into the backlash
Speaker 1: phase of the culture Revolution, where most of what's happening
Speaker 1: is that the sort of various rebel factions that formed
Speaker 1: the nine seven and nine sixty six are just getting
Speaker 1: like slaughtered by the sort of like state factions. And
Speaker 1: it's more it's it's it's a culture revolution. It's really complicated,
Speaker 1: but like bye bye. By this point, the sort of
Speaker 1: like revolution part of it has like kind of calmed
Speaker 1: down and it's more the state in its sort of
Speaker 1: new form taking control. But you know, if you're living
Speaker 1: through this, right, it looks like the culture revolutions happens
Speaker 1: in in in sixty six and then sixty seven, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly there was a culture revolution happening literally everywhere.
Speaker 1: And this is the context of the MSG scared like
Speaker 1: kicks off in right. It It starts in like right
Speaker 1: in the middle of arguably the two most radical months
Speaker 1: of the entire twentieth century. Wow. Yeah, And and this
Speaker 1: is this is the kind of ship that starts like
Speaker 1: just an absolute mania in the American mind that is
Speaker 1: powerful enough that like sixty years later, it's still around.
Speaker 1: I mean it feels like the it happening as such
Speaker 1: like a a manic time, like people were probably already
Speaker 1: like kind of feeling that energy. Right. It was like
Speaker 1: everything that was directed everywhere, even at this article. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I genuinely think if if this had happened two
Speaker 1: months later, two months earlier, I don't think I don't
Speaker 1: think there would have been like a big scare about it,
Speaker 1: Like it might have been a thing I suck around
Speaker 1: for a bit. But I think the fact that the
Speaker 1: end of the New York Times article happen came out
Speaker 1: exactly like in the middle of May sixty eight, and
Speaker 1: that like the original one comes out like right before
Speaker 1: the like the original article that gets set to the
Speaker 1: thing comes out like a couple of weeks before the
Speaker 1: Holy Week up Rising. I think it was the fact
Speaker 1: that it was exactly in this moment where everyone on
Speaker 1: Earth is if you we're living through this, like this
Speaker 1: is the capital or revolution like has come and you know,
Speaker 1: and that that chattered everyone's brains. Like I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wonder like do people remember what it was like
Speaker 1: like when like when like the height of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: was happening, Like just how sort of wild like there
Speaker 1: was just psychologically I'm telling you there was like an energy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's collective strange. I mean, like obviously it's different than
Speaker 1: it was sixty eight, But I really do agree with you,
Speaker 1: like if it happened in January, you know, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know I So the the other thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: about about this whole sort of like Chinese restaurant syndrome
Speaker 1: is that you could actually track it spread like across
Speaker 1: other countries by sort of like moments of like peak
Speaker 1: anti Chinese like sentiment and also anti Japanese sentiment to
Speaker 1: a lesser extent, because that that that sort of replaces
Speaker 1: the anti Chinese stuff by the time you to the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, but will not replaces. But it's like
Speaker 1: it's like the dominant mode of like we have a
Speaker 1: person who needs to be afraid of any stage. Um,
Speaker 1: but there was interesting. Okay, so if if if if
Speaker 1: you if you look up, um, like if you're looking
Speaker 1: for you like medical stuff about Chinese restaurant syndime. One
Speaker 1: of the things you will find is a case report
Speaker 1: of the Indian Journal of Critical Medical Care from two
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen claiming that they were treating a patient
Speaker 1: who got Chinese restaurant syndrome and like couldn't speak because
Speaker 1: the thing in the back of his throat had like inflamed,
Speaker 1: and you know, and then they had this whole thing
Speaker 1: about like this this is like this is like a
Speaker 1: serious disorder, and they specifically cited that letter to the
Speaker 1: editor from sixty eight the power of that thing. And
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, so if you look what what was
Speaker 1: going on in India in two thousand seventeen, and it
Speaker 1: turns out the thing that's going on is like a
Speaker 1: giant rise and anti Chinese sentiment culminating in the toy
Speaker 1: seventeen Indian Chinese border incidents. Where did you remember when
Speaker 1: all those guys you're like beating each other to death
Speaker 1: in the mountains with sticks? I do baking. Remember that
Speaker 1: I as so sad and many times in my life,
Speaker 1: and especially post pandemic, my brain is broken, but I
Speaker 1: do vaguely remember that I had kind of forgotten about it,
Speaker 1: and then and then I slok at this article and
Speaker 1: sol in seventeen, I was like, wait, hold on, hold on,
Speaker 1: wasn't that wasn't didn't didn't that happen in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because like, yeah, right, attentual rise again,
Speaker 1: suddenly Chinese restaurants and it reappears. It's it's really, it's
Speaker 1: really incredible. It's it's yeah, it's an incredible set of
Speaker 1: brain worms. Um. I just I mean, this is definitely
Speaker 1: not on topic, I guess, but even just seeing like
Speaker 1: COVID being blamed on China, like there's always like a
Speaker 1: like a way for ignorant people just to point the
Speaker 1: finger at China, which is really fucking shitty. It's so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, I mean, I think it's it's just sort
Speaker 1: of like like one of the things you sort of
Speaker 1: need to have a national project is that in order
Speaker 1: for you to be in order for you to be
Speaker 1: like a nation, you have to have you have to
Speaker 1: have another You have have people who aren't part of
Speaker 1: the nation, and the US is pretty effectively they have
Speaker 1: they you know, they can have the sort of rotating
Speaker 1: cast of people who like aren't like from the nation, right,
Speaker 1: if you want to stay in, there are people that
Speaker 1: need to stay out. Yeah. Sometimes with Mexico sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: you get it with sort of like like internal subversion
Speaker 1: from like black people, like additions people. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: they have this rotating cast. China is always one of
Speaker 1: the ones that come back to because it's just big
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of them, and you know, people
Speaker 1: are easily feared by it. Like I think it's like
Speaker 1: it's unknown, and maybe people don't understand it very well
Speaker 1: that don't look into it themselves and want to be educated.
Speaker 1: But forever reason, people fear it so easily, and it's
Speaker 1: so bizarre. It's so bizarre. Yeah it sucks. Oh yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to do an ad break and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about more of this stuff because it
Speaker 1: keeps going and we're back, all right. So obviously we're
Speaker 1: dealing with sort of anti Chinese sentiment and anti Japanese
Speaker 1: sentiments as you know, Japanese sentiment escalating as the safety
Speaker 1: surting into like the eighties and nineties. But there's more
Speaker 1: going on here. Um. Part of the reason you know,
Speaker 1: back like this in theory could have been about like
Speaker 1: soy sauce. Right, Like, there's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: they could have picked out of that to be the
Speaker 1: thing about, but they picked M. S. G. And part
Speaker 1: of the reason they picked MSG is that this is
Speaker 1: the period when people start like figuring out that food
Speaker 1: additives exist. Mm hmmm, and people don't get really sort
Speaker 1: of touchy about it. And actually Ralph Nader uh famous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's around in the sixties, um because he's old
Speaker 1: as ship. Yeah yeah, and he's you know, okay, so
Speaker 1: I give I give him credit for for he has
Speaker 1: probably saved as many lives as like any other American,
Speaker 1: single American you can name, by being the guy who
Speaker 1: like lobbied to have seatbelts in cars being mandatory. I
Speaker 1: think that was not before because the US is a
Speaker 1: like truly deranged country. Yeah, he wasn't half bad most
Speaker 1: of the time. Yeah, but but come on, he's also
Speaker 1: one of the guys who's like the big pusher for
Speaker 1: getting the US government to study MSG and a lot
Speaker 1: of other food editives and like nine so you know,
Speaker 1: and like there's a bunch of other food items that
Speaker 1: they're studying the health effects of. And and on the
Speaker 1: one hand, like, yeah, it probably is good to study
Speaker 1: the effects of like food editives because like I don't know,
Speaker 1: companies do stuff that sucks all the time, and so
Speaker 1: it is good to study with a your food. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, Okay, it's gonna sound really ignorant, so
Speaker 1: I apologize, What where again if you already said this,
Speaker 1: where was that foul? Where was mustry found? As it
Speaker 1: created in the lab? Like what's the Yeah, but by
Speaker 1: this point it's basically creating a lab. The first time
Speaker 1: someone was able to distill it was they did this
Speaker 1: whole distillation process of seaweed seed. Yeah. But but but
Speaker 1: by this point, it's no worries. Yeah, no, like by
Speaker 1: bye bye bye, I mean even by like they're early
Speaker 1: actually twenties. I think it's it's mostly being produced artificially,
Speaker 1: which is probably but yeah, yeah, and it makes it
Speaker 1: taste better. But like, like you know, it is something
Speaker 1: that like you like you can't find it like in
Speaker 1: in dashi, like you can find it in like soup
Speaker 1: broths and stuff like from the way from seaweed. So
Speaker 1: it's it's not like I didn't know that. I've known
Speaker 1: about MSG for most of my life and I never
Speaker 1: like for whatever reason. Growing up, we always associated with
Speaker 1: sodia like salt, salty. Yeah, well, I mean it is right,
Speaker 1: like it is a kind of salt, but like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like people people have this whole thing like oh,
Speaker 1: it's artificial. It's like like yeah, we make it artificially,
Speaker 1: but like it's not it's not like it's not a
Speaker 1: thing that you can get out of plants. It's just
Speaker 1: that we don't do it that way because it's easier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the source of it is the artificial. But also like
Speaker 1: you're gonna be a stickler on this one thing when
Speaker 1: you eat like I don't know, so many other and
Speaker 1: drink so many other things. Like there was cocaine and coke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's every every every every every American like in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine is like by by their body volume, drinking
Speaker 1: two pounds of lead a year. So like it's like
Speaker 1: like this is the thing you're gonna stick up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well and and you know, and this this is this
Speaker 1: is this is sort of the problem with with what
Speaker 1: Ralph Nader is doing with this sort of like pushing
Speaker 1: the government investigation of it, is that like you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't know how racist nine nine, Ralph Nader
Speaker 1: was My My guess is that I don't think that
Speaker 1: his big thing was we need to study this because
Speaker 1: it's the dirty Chinese like salt or whatever. I I
Speaker 1: think I think mostly just wanted to you wanted the
Speaker 1: thing to study food editives. I could be wrong about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't I've looked into this exact
Speaker 1: zero percent. But like, you know, the problem is that
Speaker 1: like once the sort of racial panic is going, like
Speaker 1: you can't put you can't put the sort of cork
Speaker 1: back in the bottle, right and you know, okay, so
Speaker 1: there have been a bunch of studies about this, um
Speaker 1: and like but but you know, okay, the problem with
Speaker 1: what's happening is that because of the way MS has
Speaker 1: been sort of racialized, like the studies don't matter. Like
Speaker 1: it's it just does not matter what anyone actually sort
Speaker 1: of writes about it until you get an actual cultural
Speaker 1: change because the study science is irrelevant. Um, they have
Speaker 1: the study to justify a bunch of things and that's
Speaker 1: the only study they care about. Yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like the like vector that's like the like the
Speaker 1: fake factory of vaccines cause autism. Ship, Like, no, it's
Speaker 1: they just believe this. They have one paper that's literally
Speaker 1: a joke exactly. Yeah, that's like, but disprove it. But
Speaker 1: like noah's a million others like that. By the way,
Speaker 1: that study, I want to point this out. The methodology
Speaker 1: of that study was they asked parents who thought their
Speaker 1: kids had developed autism because of the vaccine if they
Speaker 1: thought their kids had developed autism because of the vaccine,
Speaker 1: and then the parents said yes, and that's the study.
Speaker 1: That's the study. Yeah, that's a lot of study. It's
Speaker 1: a joke, like it's it's literally a Twitter pool. They
Speaker 1: like got published, and they're attracted because al right, like
Speaker 1: this this is the scientific basis of all this bullshit,
Speaker 1: and what qualifies is a fucking study. Then you could
Speaker 1: you could, I don't know you can. You can publish
Speaker 1: fucking anything if you put your mind to it. This
Speaker 1: is this. This, this is what I'm telling all of you, like,
Speaker 1: follow your dreams, try to get something published. They published
Speaker 1: this bullshit, so like you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do a study. Yeah. Well the other thing. The other thing, specifically,
Speaker 1: like there's a real problem here with like this is
Speaker 1: everything with medical studies because like you can have a
Speaker 1: medical study that you get published with a sample size
Speaker 1: of one because it's you found a thing and a
Speaker 1: guy and you're like, oh, I'm gonna publish this, but
Speaker 1: you like medical studies, like you could just like you
Speaker 1: could publish any bullshit and like it sucks. But okay,
Speaker 1: so all right, like lots of so after this, there
Speaker 1: are lots of studies by lots of people, and like
Speaker 1: mostly what they find is they can't find any Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's some like initial studies that like find some
Speaker 1: alarming stuff in mice. But the problem with these studies
Speaker 1: that what they're doing is Okay, yeah, it turns out
Speaker 1: you can take a mouse and you just like fill
Speaker 1: a syringe with MSG and inject them with it. It's
Speaker 1: bad for them, but like yeah, yeah, you would you
Speaker 1: injected a mouse with pure salt, and bad things happen.
Speaker 1: Like yes, if you took a human being and you
Speaker 1: injected fucking a third of a cup of MSG directly
Speaker 1: into their veins, it would probably be bad for them,
Speaker 1: like okay, you know, right, um, And they found out
Speaker 1: the conclusion from that was basically like okay, if someone
Speaker 1: ate like a third of a cup of MSG raw
Speaker 1: having not eaten for like forty eight hours, it would
Speaker 1: probably do things that are not great for you. Can't
Speaker 1: you say that. I've had a bunch of other fings
Speaker 1: like like I don't know if if if you didn't
Speaker 1: eat for twenty four hours and eight a third or
Speaker 1: a couple of salts, like that's probably that's not good
Speaker 1: for you. Like I don't do that, So, like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: very very specific circumstances have to light it up for
Speaker 1: you to have reactions. So there's a study from two
Speaker 1: thousands where they also this is also another empty stomach
Speaker 1: study by the way, because they've okay, no one has
Speaker 1: ever been able to replicate like any of these results
Speaker 1: with a person eating food that has MSG in it.
Speaker 1: They're everybody able to do it. They've been able to
Speaker 1: get some results. If you have people eat like basically
Speaker 1: pure MSG and have not eaten any food like around it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you're that's useless because the the molecule at
Speaker 1: that point it probably interacts with other things and that's
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like if it's just I'm
Speaker 1: not the actual I don't know, Yeah, I'm of a chemistry.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna let the chemistry nerds arguing I did
Speaker 1: fail a p chem so great. Yeah, I I look
Speaker 1: how I only had to take chemistry in so I
Speaker 1: just didn't take a p KEM because, like, I suck.
Speaker 1: I took a CHM like my first my freshman year.
Speaker 1: Now it's like, let's not do this again. I can't
Speaker 1: do this. Just don't take the thing. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a psychiatrist for a really long time, but failing
Speaker 1: AP chemistry and just experiencing chemistry, I was like, I can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sucks. It's the worst. But okay. So the reason
Speaker 1: I was talking about the vaccines cause as like autism
Speaker 1: ship is that there was another thing with MSG where
Speaker 1: people were claiming it was causing asthma and it no,
Speaker 1: they had there. They had another looking incredibly elaborate pseudoscience
Speaker 1: bullshit about like the MSG like getting absorbed, like getting
Speaker 1: absorbed improperly through like like fetal membranes. That's like completely nonsense,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't. Yeah, people people like what what white
Speaker 1: people love to say that the diseases they've gotten from
Speaker 1: fucking the fact that like they're they're the air in
Speaker 1: their house is n c O two by volume and
Speaker 1: like and and could because because they've decided to run
Speaker 1: an entire country by just putting fucking trucking yards everywhere,
Speaker 1: like okay, a finger to point at right, like it
Speaker 1: can't be yeah, you know you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I should. I should make this clear. By the way,
Speaker 1: when when I when I when I when when when
Speaker 1: I say when I say that like autisms, I'm not sorry.
Speaker 1: When when I say that asthma specifically is when I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the bad air specifically talking about asthma, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about autism with that that that that is
Speaker 1: not what causes autism or whatever, like just it's cool
Speaker 1: and also funk autism speaks, yes, yeah, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to put that on the record. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not saying that trucks cause autism. They don't.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, so okay, but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like incredibly weird, racial, very dumb, anti scientific panic about it.
Speaker 1: It's possible that there existed so Ofvisually it was about
Speaker 1: like like anyone who eats this will have these sentiments, right,
Speaker 1: and then over time the argument got sort of fizz
Speaker 1: down to there might be a group of people who
Speaker 1: in the population, like a small group people who are
Speaker 1: like specifically sensitive to it, and that's probably plausible. Like
Speaker 1: there's some experimental evidence that shows that there could be
Speaker 1: a group of people for whom they're more sensitive to
Speaker 1: it than a regular person And I don't know, people
Speaker 1: of allergies like whatever, like yeah, yeah, yeah, Like it's
Speaker 1: not like like yeah, it's it's not a thing to
Speaker 1: sort of like like yeah, I don't know, like if
Speaker 1: you're a person who gets allergy reactions to ship, like yeah,
Speaker 1: that's allergies, right, but like it's it's not the sort
Speaker 1: of like I don't know if the panic about it
Speaker 1: is utterly unjustified. There may be if there may be
Speaker 1: a group of people who it has some effect on
Speaker 1: because there are larger to it or whatever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine imagine demonizing peanuts because there's a group of people
Speaker 1: that can't eat peanuts, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's why, like why would you ever do that?
Speaker 1: To be fair, I I am okay with demonizing peanuts specifically,
Speaker 1: specifically if it gets people to stop fucking were shipping
Speaker 1: that bastard Jimmy Carter, who was a neoliberal ghoul, and
Speaker 1: his reputation has been fucking just like like, his reputation
Speaker 1: has been saved entirely by the fact that every single
Speaker 1: person who came after him was an utterly deranged war
Speaker 1: criminal and his war crime was like suppressing well he
Speaker 1: was a peanut farmer. Oh sorry, sorry, this is this
Speaker 1: is this is this is the this is this is
Speaker 1: the the deep Jimmy Carter lore for okay it yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but you know, all right, So going going back, I
Speaker 1: think so this was the kind of thing that like,
Speaker 1: you know, people avoiding msg is just kind of had
Speaker 1: just kind of been like like a part of daily life,
Speaker 1: Like it was just like a thing that existed in
Speaker 1: the world. But it wasn't like at a certain point
Speaker 1: it became the kind of thing that people would talk
Speaker 1: about like in conversation and like they'll did you know,
Speaker 1: you could just get people to do ant msg rans,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't really a sort of like mainstream political
Speaker 1: issue in the way that it had been like in
Speaker 1: that st nine where there's well, the only thing that
Speaker 1: happened is in the nineties the FDA did to study
Speaker 1: about it. The f d A was like, it's fine,
Speaker 1: don't don't don't eat three grams of it at one time. Likes,
Speaker 1: as long as you're not sitting there like eating MSG
Speaker 1: raw out of the fucking like you think about like
Speaker 1: hyd syrup, why yeah, and like like by by volume,
Speaker 1: hypric dose cord and syrup was killed way more people
Speaker 1: than also. Now now there's like a whole thing about
Speaker 1: like MSG causing obesity, which I I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's true or not. I think their studies are fucking whack,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's it might cause obesity like
Speaker 1: every other food that the US has made in the
Speaker 1: last twenty years. Yeah, yeah, and what what what one
Speaker 1: one day we will do a episode about like the
Speaker 1: politics of anti fatnists because it's fucked but today we're
Speaker 1: we're doing this episode and okay, so you know, every
Speaker 1: once in a while, the way the way of this
Speaker 1: stuff work, every once in a while, there would be
Speaker 1: a sort of like like a mainstream like Asian American
Speaker 1: figure who would talk about it. For example, there's there's
Speaker 1: there's a Korean chef named David Chang who talks about
Speaker 1: it um and he he did some like he gave
Speaker 1: speeches about it and the start demonization of it, but
Speaker 1: it didn't really get back to Mainsham discourse until when
Speaker 1: are Good Friends a Gino Moto. The people who made
Speaker 1: the stuff in the first place hired a bunch of
Speaker 1: Asian American like celebrities to do a pro MSG campaign.
Speaker 1: So they hired Eddie Huong, who's like a writer and
Speaker 1: chef who's like probably most famous for being the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote Fresh off the Boat, and so that they
Speaker 1: have this whole sort of campaign and this like takes
Speaker 1: off right like he he. This is this is one
Speaker 1: of those things that was like completely forgotten that happened
Speaker 1: in that no one now remembers because this happens like
Speaker 1: before COVID, like before we had the lockdowns and before
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, it escapes my memory. I I have
Speaker 1: no member this happening either, but apparently it did. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I was I think this was still well
Speaker 1: the I think this is well the election was still
Speaker 1: going on, so yeah, the best time to do that
Speaker 1: year everything happens. But okay, so you know this campaign
Speaker 1: like takes off like like any Huang's on on NBC
Speaker 1: and did you like the talk show circuit with Jenny
Speaker 1: Am advocating for like so that their whole thing is
Speaker 1: that they wanted to remove Chinese restaurants sent from the dictionary,
Speaker 1: and they had this whole like hashtag redefinance CRS is
Speaker 1: like the redefining Chinese Restaurant syndrome, and this is like
Speaker 1: a whole thing, and you know, and there's there's there's
Speaker 1: something okay, but this was one of the things that's
Speaker 1: gonna drew me to the story because if you look
Speaker 1: at the press for this, right, it's like activists pressure
Speaker 1: maryon Webster and like that's kind of true, Like it's
Speaker 1: superficially it is kind of what happened, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad the dictionary change the entry to say like
Speaker 1: this is like outdated and kind of bullshit, but like, okay,
Speaker 1: think about what actually happened here, right. A company that
Speaker 1: makes a product hired a bunch of a bunch of
Speaker 1: sort of Asian American like big celebrity people to do
Speaker 1: a marketing campaign for them in the name of anti racism,
Speaker 1: which like, yes, I I am glad we are addressing
Speaker 1: the racism in our own MSG. However, common I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a really sort of like it's a It's
Speaker 1: a really literal example of the kind of like vopidity
Speaker 1: and listlessness of like Asian American identity and culture and
Speaker 1: politics like pre COVID, like this is this is this
Speaker 1: is this hands something like early January, right, so COVID
Speaker 1: is still sort of like some disease in China, like
Speaker 1: we haven't hit full of racis and yet. And again
Speaker 1: like this is not like an activist campaign, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like activists get on board with it, I guess,
Speaker 1: but like activism is doing an ad campaign for a
Speaker 1: company that makes salt right. Yeah, it's not exactly grassroots
Speaker 1: or yea, and and you know, okay, and it works
Speaker 1: right like this this is a thing that like the
Speaker 1: Asian American community like picks up right, I mean sort of.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I don't remember it, but I
Speaker 1: when I look looking looking back on the articles and
Speaker 1: hashtags and stuff, it's like, wow, they got lots of tweets.
Speaker 1: But you know, I I think I think the reason
Speaker 1: that this worked is is because of the sort of
Speaker 1: self conception of like Asian American nous. Is this like
Speaker 1: backstory of like like immigrants stepping off the boat and
Speaker 1: they start a restaurant, and then your kids get an
Speaker 1: education to the answer the professional class, and like there
Speaker 1: isn't like I don't know, like this is in fact,
Speaker 1: this is literally like part of the reason I'm doing Also,
Speaker 1: it was like this is literally what happened to my family.
Speaker 1: Like they like they showed up from Taiwan, they worked
Speaker 1: in a restaurant, then they opened a restaurant, and then
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like every successive generation, well okay,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say every every successive generation got more
Speaker 1: like professionally, but like I have a bunch of doctors onthing.
Speaker 1: But but then they also produced me, who's a podcaster.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm defying Asian American stereotypes bite being more
Speaker 1: dipship than my parents. But you know, like this has
Speaker 1: become like this single sort of cultural narrative of like
Speaker 1: what it is to be in Asian American, Right, Like
Speaker 1: you see this in every single story that Asian American
Speaker 1: media like has produced in the last like ten years.
Speaker 1: It has one plot. Right, There's a family in the US.
Speaker 1: They're trying to fit in. They almost always have some
Speaker 1: kind of small business, and then something appears that challenges
Speaker 1: their ability to like assimilate into American society. This is
Speaker 1: and then you know, they deal with it and that's
Speaker 1: the end. Right, This is a plot of crazy rich Asians,
Speaker 1: is a plot of everything ever all at once. The
Speaker 1: plot of Fresh of the Boat is the prout of
Speaker 1: the fucking c W. Kung Fu show. It is the plot.
Speaker 1: Like literally everything that like we produce has one plot,
Speaker 1: and it's this. And the reason why is it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's the reason why. This is the only sort of
Speaker 1: like piece of media that that the sort of Asian
Speaker 1: American culture class have been able to produce. Is the
Speaker 1: reason why all the fucking activism and ad campaigns are
Speaker 1: just like, fucking we got hired by a company and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about where racism racism is bad, so
Speaker 1: about this company can sell more product. Like, the reason
Speaker 1: is this is because this is an incredibly marketable self
Speaker 1: conception of Asian American nous like that the conception of
Speaker 1: it as being restaurant owners is there because it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a form of culture that can be sold to
Speaker 1: white people. Right, It's, hey, look we're different. We eat
Speaker 1: wacky food, but you can eat it too, And ultimately
Speaker 1: we're all in this for capitalism in the patriarchal family,
Speaker 1: like just like you are, don't worry, It's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: And you know that that really depresses me because this
Speaker 1: this is a moment that demands something else. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why kind of like I think that's why
Speaker 1: the sort of mainstream like Asian American reaction to like
Speaker 1: you know, like that there was there was another there
Speaker 1: was another Asian woman like who got stabbed to death
Speaker 1: like two weeks ago, and there was like fucking no
Speaker 1: coverage of it, Like nobody gave a ship. It's just
Speaker 1: gotten to the point where like this happens, like six
Speaker 1: people report on it and then everyone just sort of
Speaker 1: moves onto their life. Yeah, And I think the reason
Speaker 1: why this sort of like stop Asian hate ship has
Speaker 1: gotten to a you know, like it's gotten it gets
Speaker 1: gone through the sign cycle where everyone like had the
Speaker 1: signs up and then they took them down and so
Speaker 1: you know, like and I think the reason why it
Speaker 1: was it turned into this sort of like like did
Speaker 1: the organizing turning this like incredibly vapid like put a
Speaker 1: sign in your store like two the hashtag stuff like
Speaker 1: is because of this is is because what like what
Speaker 1: what it means to be sort of Asian American has
Speaker 1: been hollowed out and hauled out and hold out and
Speaker 1: sold and sold and sold for just decades and decades
Speaker 1: and decades and now, you know, like in a time
Speaker 1: and it's actually sort of like you know, when it
Speaker 1: when it's really in danger and it's called to action,
Speaker 1: it hasn't been able to do much right. And well, yeah,
Speaker 1: pointing out the film and TV thing is really important
Speaker 1: because I mean, so many marginalized communities have this experience.
Speaker 1: But I think China, like Asian culture in particular, I
Speaker 1: think it really people if they're ignorant and they just
Speaker 1: see what's depicted on media, they don't see them as
Speaker 1: three dimensional beings, you know what I mean, what they
Speaker 1: have is like a very hollow version of a human
Speaker 1: And so I don't know, it's it kind of upsets
Speaker 1: me because I feel like media is the first thing
Speaker 1: people learn things from, whether it's film or TV or whatever.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, and also I think it's I think
Speaker 1: it's part of the reason why, like the way that
Speaker 1: those those depictions sort of obscure class where you know,
Speaker 1: because these things, right, like a lot of these families
Speaker 1: are poor, but they're still business owners, right, And that
Speaker 1: that's like like if you're who are American as well,
Speaker 1: it's because you're a business and you're like a sort
Speaker 1: of struggling like American entrepreneur. And this obscure is the
Speaker 1: fact that there there is a massive Asian American just
Speaker 1: underclass people who are like delivery drivers or work in
Speaker 1: warehouses or you know, I mean like they're they're there.
Speaker 1: Who could there are groups of people who like come
Speaker 1: to the US from China who you know, like live
Speaker 1: in like basically completely isolated communities in pertect Chinatown where
Speaker 1: they're only speaking Chinese and they just sucking. Like there
Speaker 1: are people who have to do a bunch of like
Speaker 1: warehouse ship and then they leave and that's it, right,
Speaker 1: Like and these these people this ship never you like,
Speaker 1: you never actually get any kind of sort of class analysis,
Speaker 1: because the way that media thinks about Asian Americans is
Speaker 1: like there's there's one of they're either one or three things.
Speaker 1: They're a business owner, they're like a rich professionals like
Speaker 1: a doctor or something, or they're like the fucking people
Speaker 1: on Blink where they're just like super rich assholes. And
Speaker 1: that that allows I think like a specific kind of
Speaker 1: anti Asian politics to work that like Asian people are
Speaker 1: seen to sort of like Setubal like four an elite,
Speaker 1: and it's like no, I don't know, like it's it's
Speaker 1: just not you know, it's it's not true and and
Speaker 1: it and it means that when you get like Asian
Speaker 1: American political movements, like the sort of stuff antiation hating, right,
Speaker 1: like you have like the guy who founded door Dash, right,
Speaker 1: is like is a nation is like a Chinese American guy, right,
Speaker 1: and he's like he used to he's a tech billionaire.
Speaker 1: He used to be like an emany Like you know,
Speaker 1: you would have the stop Asian hate advance, Like this
Speaker 1: fucking guy is on their light, is up on the
Speaker 1: stage talking about anti agent hate. And it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: this guy has like brutally and horribly exploited like literally
Speaker 1: millions of Asian Americans. But you know, there's there's there's
Speaker 1: there's no there's never gonna be reckoning with that because
Speaker 1: you know, and he's he's capitalist, like he's achieved the
Speaker 1: capitalist dream or whatever the ship and and I I
Speaker 1: mean because because because Asian American contentia has been flattened
Speaker 1: in this way, like those people are just completely invisible
Speaker 1: and it it sucks and I hate it and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I it's just I don't know. There's nothing good. I
Speaker 1: can like anything I can say to make anything better,
Speaker 1: but I think it's just I don't know. Maybe we
Speaker 1: can do an episode one day about like film and
Speaker 1: TV and stuff, because I think it really starts there unfortunately,
Speaker 1: like like it's it's silly, but people that don't know
Speaker 1: a Chinese person will see a Chinese person on their
Speaker 1: TV and be like, that's the only Chinese person I've
Speaker 1: ever seen in my life. And I'm gonna make assumptions
Speaker 1: about the whole race now. But one day I'm going
Speaker 1: to do an epid. We're gonna do an episode that's
Speaker 1: entirely me shifting on Jackie Chan. People are gonna get
Speaker 1: really mad at me. But funk that guy. That's a
Speaker 1: hot take. He started his career as a fucking scamp.
Speaker 1: That was literally his first thing was he was a scap.
Speaker 1: And he's yeah, he's the fucking homophote piece of shit.
Speaker 1: Fuck him. Uh yeah, done your parable damage for this episode.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Yeah, all right, that will that will
Speaker 1: be something we're We're now to the part of the
Speaker 1: episod we are teasing you with subsequent episode. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't know. And it's a little bit
Speaker 1: upsetting how these are really important movements are just like
Speaker 1: they the plateau and they become like this vapid thing
Speaker 1: like you're saying, Like, I think that gives people such
Speaker 1: an easy out of like quote unquote being an ally
Speaker 1: or supporting because they think they're doing something by like
Speaker 1: holding up a sign or something without really internalizing or
Speaker 1: spreading the awareness that is necessary. And uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I I guess the thing I want to end on
Speaker 1: also is me being piste off at a bunch of
Speaker 1: Asian American kids in the sets. So one of the
Speaker 1: stories you will hear a lot if you're studying Asian
Speaker 1: American politics, like is the story that like the term
Speaker 1: Asian American was invented by these like activists who actually
Speaker 1: were like doing a bunch of stuff eight um, these
Speaker 1: like student act like this radical student activists, and like
Speaker 1: that's true. But the thing you have to understand about
Speaker 1: those people is that all of those people were like
Speaker 1: like all those people were basically like we're third world ists.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason this whole politics collapses. Well,
Speaker 1: a part of the reason, part of what happened was
Speaker 1: like part of the demands of these students in these
Speaker 1: sort of like radical student groups, like but you know,
Speaker 1: their form to sort of like support the sort of
Speaker 1: like black radical student groups into like advocate for themselves.
Speaker 1: But like one of their big demands was they wanted
Speaker 1: cultural studies departments in in American universities, and they got them.
Speaker 1: But you know, okay, so what what what what are
Speaker 1: those cultural studies like departments? They basically just became these
Speaker 1: giant traps through radicals where instead of like overthrowing the government,
Speaker 1: you like come do this cushy job in academia, and
Speaker 1: like all of all of the sort of like old
Speaker 1: radicals like from that area either like got regular jobs
Speaker 1: or became like Agrican academics. Right. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that happened with this politics that was the reason why
Speaker 1: it was completely unsustainable was that and this is this
Speaker 1: is this has been a sort of a problem with
Speaker 1: the Asian American identity. Right. Is that Okay, like what
Speaker 1: the fund is a nation American? Right, It's like anyone
Speaker 1: from like I don't know likes anyone from like the
Speaker 1: like the edge of the Pacific to like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like how how how far? How far? Like I what's
Speaker 1: it called? Like how far? How far west? Does that go?
Speaker 1: The other direction? Like who knows? It's like yeah, like
Speaker 1: I mean this is like billions and billions and billions
Speaker 1: of people with completely your related cultures and languages and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And the reason they were able to
Speaker 1: do this, right was because they were mirroring their movement
Speaker 1: off of like the Third World right. But the problem
Speaker 1: that they ran into, and this is the problem with
Speaker 1: all the Third World movements, was that, Okay, so the
Speaker 1: Third World movement like as a thing was it was
Speaker 1: based on a bunch of different nationalist movements, right, Like
Speaker 1: it was based on that there was going to be
Speaker 1: this like alliance between like the sort of like the
Speaker 1: rising socialis powers in Africa and the rising socialist powers
Speaker 1: and uh in East Asia, and they were gonna sort
Speaker 1: of like ally with like the rising sort of like
Speaker 1: you know, like the rising sort of like minorities getting
Speaker 1: power in the US. But okay, if you look at
Speaker 1: those nationalisms, right, you have Chinese nationalism, Cambodian nationalism, and
Speaker 1: Vietnamese nationalism all colliding with each other, and you know,
Speaker 1: if it turns out like what okay? So what what
Speaker 1: what happens if your movement is based on sort of
Speaker 1: like the unity of a bunch of nationals movements and
Speaker 1: they go to war with each other? And you know
Speaker 1: what happened was when when when China when Vietnam and
Speaker 1: Vadas Cambodia in and and Vietnam and Vedas Cambodia and
Speaker 1: then China invades Vietnam in nine seventy nine. Right, the
Speaker 1: entire politics is fucked because what what what are you
Speaker 1: supposed to do? Like what's who's who side you're supposed
Speaker 1: to take here? Right? Like you can you can do
Speaker 1: the you know, like if if you're gonna be like
Speaker 1: a Marxist, like a Marxis Leninist, like the probably the
Speaker 1: correct line to support Vietnam, Right, but that's a mess
Speaker 1: because you know how many simple in Maoists, right and
Speaker 1: if you but but you know, if you're a Maoist
Speaker 1: and you're fucking people just invaded Vietnam, like you know,
Speaker 1: what are you supposed to do? Right? And there was
Speaker 1: there were earlier attentions with this too, where like like
Speaker 1: China with China was backing like a really shitty fashion
Speaker 1: in Angola who ended up ended up being backed by
Speaker 1: the US and like South Africa, and that caused a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of tensions between the sort of Chinese maoists
Speaker 1: and a bunch of the sort of black radical groups
Speaker 1: because they were like, why the funk are you guys
Speaker 1: backing these people in Angola. But you know, and and
Speaker 1: and this, this whole thing became a problem because all
Speaker 1: of these nationalisms are competing nationalisms right there. There was
Speaker 1: never going to be one unified third world. It was
Speaker 1: always it was always going to end with a bunch
Speaker 1: of nationalists fighting each other. And when that happens, the
Speaker 1: Asian like the Asian American movement such as it was
Speaker 1: just fucking died, and you know, like as a radical movement,
Speaker 1: it was just over. And so you know, I think
Speaker 1: I think the lesson that I would take out of
Speaker 1: this is just that like, do not build, do not
Speaker 1: build your movement based off of someone else's nationalism, because
Speaker 1: those people are going to do things because they're nationalists
Speaker 1: that are just fucked right. They're gonna win. They're gonna
Speaker 1: invade Vietnam like Kemp, like the Cambodians are gonna invade Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and then Vietnam is gonna like you know, like are
Speaker 1: arguably justifiably because they've been getting attacked because they're fighting
Speaker 1: the Khmer Rouge. But like you know, they're they're these
Speaker 1: people are all going to go to war with each other,
Speaker 1: right like you're or you know, you're, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: stuck in the situation where like you're, you're, you're you're
Speaker 1: being forced to two sides between like the DIRG and
Speaker 1: the and like the Marxist government Somalia because they've they've
Speaker 1: randomly gone to war with each other. So don't do this.
Speaker 1: This has been my rants that I wanted all I
Speaker 1: wanted to do about this because yeah, no, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you did. I'm glad that I was here for it too,
Speaker 1: because I don't know. It's good to know this stuff
Speaker 1: and I get to learn by listening to you still
Speaker 1: me um, Yeah, I I appreciate all the research that
Speaker 1: you did. Thanks. Yeah, and yeah, so I guess this
Speaker 1: has been It can happen here, yeah, yeah, that's the episode.
Speaker 1: You can find us happen here pod um on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram. I'm at amc h R three. Um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a sure hero six six six on Twitter and
Speaker 1: then on Instagram. Just take out the six six sixes,
Speaker 1: but maybe I should add them because who cares anyway?
Speaker 1: Thanks bye. It Could Happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
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