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...

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 h...

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 shini...

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 famil...

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 avera...

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 ...

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 Izzy, 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 ...

“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 ea...

What you are about to hear is the trailer of our special episode - "Xianzi and her friends". You can find the full episode by searching "唠得默默” in your favorite podcast app, or add through the rss feed provided below -
https://loudermurmurs.typlog.io/episodes/feed.xml

On December 2, 2020, the trial for one of China’s most high-profile #MeToo case began. The trial came 6 years after Zhu Jun, the famous TV anchor and househ...

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 f...

In this episode, hosts Izzy, 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 Democrati...

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 expectin...

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...

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 practitione...

In this episode, our three hosts Izzy, 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 bo...

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 i...

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 bein...

This is the episode you’ve all been waiting for. Let us save you the time of reading 10,000 think pieces on why the movie is bad, by telling you exactly why the movie is bad. 

Together with our beloved guests Tony Lin and Rui Zhong, hosts Ina, Izzy and Afra spend an hour talking about why we are thoroughly unimpressed by Disney’s 2020 live action remake of “Mulan.”  

In this episode you’ll hear our thoughts on:

When the musical “Hamilton” first came out, all four of us were in our early 20s, trying to find our own place in a new country. We found hope and inspiration in the story of Alexander Hamilton as told by the musical—the story of a young, ambitious immigrant who became a hero of the American revolution.?

This past July 4th weekend, a original Broadway production of “Hamilton'' streamed on Disney+ for the first time ever....