Asian Rebel Club Podcast

David from Fung Bros joins Crystal for another episode, and it turns out to be one of the most taboo conversations in Asian culture, on record. We go deep into sex - hold your horse - not the act, but the culture around it. Are Asians actually sexually repressed, or did Asian culture just split desire into shame, fantasy, secrecy, performance, and status? We get into why so many East Asian culture...

David Fung (Fung Bros, 2.2M YouTube) joins Crystal for the Asian diaspora conversation usually reserved for private group chats. But this time, it’s on record. We go deep into dating in Asia vs North America, why the East is openly transactional while the West often hides the same calculations behind “chemistry,” and why Asian men’s dating market value can spike the moment they leave America while...

Send us Fan Mail Eleanor Mooney grew up between two worlds - a white father and a Filipina mother who worked in hospitality, where kindness and service weren’t just values, they were survival. As a kid in Massachusetts, she watched her mother remember everyone’s name, favorite drink, and story - even as people sometimes dismissed her accent or heritage. That early contrast shaped Eleanor’s life mi...

Send us Fan Mail Jason Lim has lived life in the fast lane, quite literally. From leading social media at Netflix Southeast Asia and helping ONE Championship grow from zero to millions of followers, to co-founding Stratgeist, one of the region’s top digital agencies, he’s been at the center of Asia’s attention economy for over a decade. But behind his adrenaline-filled life, from skydiving and scu...

Send us Fan Mail When you meet Hafiz Kasman, you don’t feel hustle. You feel a presence. Hafiz grew up in a lower-middle-class Malay family in Singapore, where stability was prized and risk-taking came second. He started his career as a management consultant — a path few from his background dared to walk. But at 25, he did something bold: he left it all to build Kinobi, an ed-tech platform helping...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Asian Rebel Club podcast, I sit down with Bradley Sutton - VP of Education and Strategy at Helium 10 , host of the Serious Sellers Podcast with over 4 million downloads, and one of the most recognizable voices in global e-commerce. But before he became a household name for Amazon sellers, Bradley lived many lives.  Half Filipino and half American, he grew up...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Asian Rebel Club podcast, I chat with Anshu Singh - technologist turned spiritual teacher, founder of Solana Wellness Retreats , and author of Pressure to Pleasure: A Seven Pillar Approach to Living Your Best Life . Anshu spent over 25 years building software and startups in Silicon Valley, chasing success, status, and the perfect life. She graduated from co...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Asian Rebel Club podcast, I sit down with Swan Chen (SwanVR): an artist, technologist, and cultural disruptor who walked away from Wall Street to design a radically freer life. Born in New York City but raised by her grandmother in rural China before being air-dropped into suburban Ohio, Swan’s story is full of twists and turns in the theme of courage. From...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Asian Rebel Club podcast, I sit down with Joachim (Jay) Brackx - musician-turned-entrepreneur, teacher, and host of Relating to Self - to explore the radical power of boundaries. Growing up in families where survival meant prioritizing everyone else’s feelings, neither of us learned the language of boundaries until much later. In Asian households, especially...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you stop following the script that was written by generations of legacy? In this episode of the Asian Rebel Club podcast, I sit down with Kaushik , a former ship captain turned 3x tech founder who walked away from a conventional South Asian medical legacy to confront some of the most outdated systems in global trade. But Kaushik’s story isn’t just about entrepren...

Send us Fan Mail What if you’ve been told that you’re too queer and too much, but you choose to become even more ? In this episode of Asian Rebel Club podcast, I sit down with Darice Chang - a queer Taiwanese-American writer, performer, meditation teacher, and cultural disruptor who has never fit neatly into the boxes assigned to them. From competing in the Miss Taiwan Pageant to strutting through...

Send us Fan Mail Di’s career sounds like a startup fairytale—she’s worked at four billion-dollar companies (Zhihu, KEEP, Airbnb, and Zoomcar) before they hit it big. But her real superpower? Defying expectations. In this episode, we explore: How she escaped the "study-or-fail" pressure of her upbringing in China Why she turned down a traditional career path (and her parents’ approval) for startups...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff Jimenez was grinding in corporate finance when a stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis flipped his life upside down. Instead of slowing down, he launched Love Jane,  a fashion brand worn by Miss Universe and featured on Netflix,  while undergoing chemo. In this raw conversation, he shares: Why he built a business instead of "just traveling" after his diagnosis How cancer erased his e...

Send us Fan Mail In Part 2 of our conversation, Alex Liang, fashion influencer turned real estate creative, gets real about: The downside of social media fame ("I’m more private than people think") Navigating identity as an Asian man in fashion ("I had no role models—so I made my own rules") Why he walked away from the influencer world ("It got boring… and gross") His surprising definition of free...

Send us Fan Mail Named one of Canada’s Top Style Influencers, Alex Liang isn’t just an influencer, luxury brand collaborator, and a Partner of the luxury real estate agency Engel & Völkers. He’s a quiet rebel who traded the glitz of social media fame for a life of deeper purpose. In this candid first installment of our two-part conversation, Alex opens up about: The paradox of being "Asian but...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Asian Rebel Club Podcast , I sit down with Jacob Tan, a two-time Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and pioneer of sustainability consulting in China. From surviving premature birth to nearly dying twice while backpacking, Jacob shares how confronting mortality shaped his unconventional path, leaving corporate stability to launch a sustainability firm when no one in...

Send us Fan Mail What does it mean to create beauty in the midst of exile?  Photographer and activist Fatimah Hossaini was forced to flee Kabul when the Taliban returned, but not before capturing the untold grace, power, and resilience of Afghan women through her lens. In this episode, Fatimah shares the story behind her escape, her fight to reclaim the image of Afghan womanhood, and how photograp...

Send us Fan Mail Why do so many high-achieving Asians struggle with perfectionism, fear of disappointment, and late self-discovery?  In this episode of the Asian Rebel Club podcast, I talk with licensed therapist Jessica Lan about the deep-rooted cultural patterns that trap Asian Americans in cycles of people-pleasing, emotional repression, and rigid identities.  We explore how these behaviors sho...

Send us Fan Mail Why do so many high-achieving Asians feel stuck in careers they don’t love, even when they know it’s not right for them?  In this episode of the Asian Rebel Club podcast, I sit down with licensed therapist Jessica Lan to explore the psychological fears, like uncertainty, guilt, and societal pressure, that keep people frozen in unfulfilling paths.  We dive into the two critical mom...

Send us Fan Mail 🎙️ Community Voice : Good girl. Good student. Good daughter. The kind of “good” that quietly eats you alive. In this raw, deeply personal episode of Asian Rebel Club , Crystal sits down with Kayla - a mixed-race woman from small-town Missouri navigating disability, betrayal, and survival - and Iris , a Filipina who rejected her family, university, and culture’s expectations by und...

Send us Fan Mail 🎙️Community Voice:  Wendy was the definition of a “model Asian daughter.” A violin prodigy. Straight-A student. Accepted into every top university. But underneath the achievements was a girl quietly falling apart. Her childhood was spent under intense emotional and physical pressure from a mother who beat her for missed notes and told her she was worthless. School was her safe hav...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when chasing success almost costs you everything? In this episode, I sit down with my friend Ivan Ong, who built and listed a company on the Australian Stock Exchange in his 20s, only to find it hollow. It took a near-fatal bicycle crash and months of paralysis to force a full reset. From that rock bottom, Ivan co-founded KeaBabies—a parenting brand grounded in love,...

Send us Fan Mail 🎙️ Community Voices: Breaking Expectations, Finding Freedom (ft. Ben & Nini) In this episode, we hear from two rebels from opposite sides of the world — Ben , a Chinese-American creative from Boston, and Nini , an Indian woman who turned a life-altering accident into a full reset. Both share what it’s like to grow up under heavy cultural pressure, and what it takes to finally...

Send us Fan Mail 🎙️ Ep 1 — Why I Started Asian Rebel Club: Identity, Rebellion & Choosing Yourself Hosted by Crystal Ren | Guest: Jay (Joachim) In this powerful launch episode, Asian Rebel Club creator Crystal Ren gets interviewed by her friend Jay, a musician, podcaster, and honorary rebel, who turns the mic around to ask the questions most people avoid. Crystal opens up about what it means t...

Send us Fan Mail They told her to stay safe. She chose to stay real. In this episode, Crystal sits down with Eva Woon, ex-management consultant from Oliver Wyman turned jewelry founder, whose brand Inari made it all the way from her living room to New York Fashion Week . But this isn’t a story about shiny success. It’s about the war inside high-achieving Asians  - the pressure to prove yourself, t...