The Mash-Up Americans

We’re back!!! Welcome to a new series about grieving and life from The Mash-Up Americans. Grief, Collected is where we explore how grief moves through our bodies, our families, and our communities — and why we need to feel it all in order to transform our future.  Launching November 15 — with new episodes every Tuesday and new meditations every Friday.  Grief, like jo...

Poet and screenwriter Fatimah Asghar is talking to us about why "orphan" is the identifier she relates to the most, and why her idea of home isn't a physical place. Fatimah is having a moment right now….within the past year, the web series that she co-created Brown Girls got picked up by HBO, she released a collection of poetry, and she was chosen as one of Forbes 30 under 30 on their Hollywo...

“I really believe that care and caregiving can save the soul of the country. Everybody has people that they care about. It totally connects us in this very deep, emotional way.” We agree with Ai-Jen! We had SO MUCH FUN in this conversation. The paid work of caregiving - which is mostly done by mashy women - makes our economy and world move. Ai-Jen Poo is the head of the National Domestic Work...

“Talking about sex won’t make you pregnant, talking about death won’t make you dead.” We are talking about death on this episode and it is a party! We are going to explore life, love, and family through the lens of death with our incredible guest Alua Arthur. Alua is a Ghanifornian Mash-Up and a death doula, which means that she works with individuals and families to help them through the process...

Aline Brosh McKenna is a Hollywood triple threat; she’s a showrunner, director, and writer and she does them all really really well. She has worked in this business for more than two decades but her mission has remained the same: to center women’s stories around something other than a man. We talk about Cher, body hair, bacterial vaginosis, and so much more. Get ready! She’s the writer of your fav...

This episode is all about money. How we make it, spend it, save it, and value it. Wendy De La Rosa is our guest and she has a lot to say about all of this. Not how we are supposed to manage our money, but how we actually do it. Wendy is a Dominican-born and Bronx-raised Mash-Up who studies consumer behavior and is a founder of the Common Cents Lab, which aims to teach fintech companies how re...

New Season! We’re kicking off Mash Ups to Know with the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen ! A long time leader and advocate in public health, Dr. Wen’s mission to depoliticize healthcare at the forefront of everything she does.  We talk with her about what it was like to immigrate here from Shanghai at such a young age, how becoming a mother changed the way that she...

New season! We're making the culture, ya heard? On each episode, we’ll bring you a conversation with one incredible Mash-Up who is making waves at the cutting edge of their field. We're talking health, money, death, work, pop culture, and so much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

It's the final week of Mash-Ups to Know—for now!—and we are thrilled to bring you our beloved boss bitch, Lily Percy. Also known as Liliana Maria Percy Ruiz, and that's a whole thing that we get into. First though, she is the Executive Producer of On Being Studios—home of the wisest woman we know, Krista Tippett—and the host of the new and totally amazing podcast, This Movie Changed Me. We talk gr...

For our fourth installment of Mash-Ups to Know, we bring you comedy writer and producer Rachna Fruchbom. She knows that her mashiness is her superpower—and she is not afraid to use it. From her badass career change after the birth of her first kid and writing for Parks & Rec and Fresh Off the Boat, to her dream of creating America's new favorite sitcom—starring an Indian American woman!—she br...

Bethany Yellowtail—fashion designer, business owner, and general badass—is a Mash-Up to Know. She is the owner and designer of B.YELLOWTAIL, a fashion line, and the leader of B.YELLOWTAIL COLLECTIVE, a platform for the work of Native artisans of different nations. Rebecca and Amy try not to fan girl too hard about her beautiful clothes and amazing work, and they get to the heart of why dating as a...

The Mash-Up Americans are back with another Mash-Up to Know—journalist Frank Shyong of the LA Times. He covers the San Gabriel Valley and the self-described Asian Beat, knows his way around the delis and tempura houses of LA, and has his finger on the pulse. He sat down with Amy and Rebecca just after Crazy Rich Asians came out in theaters, and we talked representation, growing up Asian in the Sou...

We're coming your way with Mash-Ups to Know! Up first is comedian and all-around badass Marcella Arguello. She is a Salvadoran Lebanese Nicaraguan American who is also the host of Women Crush Wednesdays, one of the funniest nights of comedy in LA—or anywhere, for our money. Marcella talks to Amy and Rebecca about her family's American tale, the shades of Latinx identity, the importance of finding...

It's a fact: Mash-Ups are the sexiest people in all the land. Though like everything else, sex and dating can be a little more complicated for Mash-Ups. Just ask international sex expert Esther Perel, Nancy Podcast host Tobin Low, and rapper and breakout star of Crazy Rich Asians and Oceans 8 Awkwafina (oh, and her grandma, Mrs. Lum). We did! And we're sharing their wisdom with you today. See Priv...

Mash-Up Wisdom is a short series of episodes featuring wisdom from our Mash-Up heroes. Have you read the news lately? Amy and Rebecca have been taking it pretty hard and needed a therapy session with you guys to find some HOPE. Today we’re reflecting on Mash-Up Wisdom—the gems of knowledge dropped by our guests here on The Mash-Up Americans—and how we are using them to keep us strong and HOPEFUL....

It's been awhile, but we're baaack! We're diving into all the feelings and lots of wisdom about traveling the globe—and why you might catch us without a driver's license or a library card, but you'd never catch us without a valid passport. Amy and Rebecca get into it with the incomparable Aminatou Sow, of Call Your Girlfriend and On She Goes, and get a fierce dose of wisdom to share with the fam....

This week on The Mash-Up Americans: Whether you are a parent, think you might want to be, or just want the best for the next generation, here are the questions that tear at us as we do our best to raise our many-hyphened kids. After our conversation last month on Raising Generation Mash-Up, you all sent us so many thoughtful, piercing questions on mash-up parenting. Today we're diving in. Joining...

We're re-sharing our episode with the fantastic author, chef, historian, and mensch Michael Twitty about bubbemeises. Call them old wives tales, call them folk wisdom, call them what you will, we're not ignoring them anytime soon. We'll hear from: a bevy of past guests on their bubbemeise; The Angry Asian Man, Phil Yu, and his lovely wife, Joanna Lee, about how honoring the traditions of their anc...

It's that time of year. Time for New Year's resolutions (or not), forgiveness, and moving ahead. 2017 has been a reckoning for all of us — an examination of who and what we fight for, and why. We've looked deeply at ourselves and sat in the uncomfortable acknowledgement that maybe we could have done more. And as we push the world to change, to do better and be better, we're also pushing ourselves....

Welcome to the third and final installation of our Mash-Up journey: raising our kids. In some ways, we've been working on this episode for the entire lifespan of The Mash-Up Americans. Where do we come from? Where are we going? How do we do raise our children with love, and care, and with a deep love of their mashiness? Amy and Rebecca are joined today by Rumaan Alam, first-generation Bengali Amer...

Part 2 of our Mash-Up journey: Finding Our People. Is it possible to say enough about how important it is to find your tribe? To be with people who you feel truly understand you? On this episode, Amy and Rebecca open up a little window into their lives and introduce you, dear listener, to their people. Rebecca talks with her sister-from-another-mister, Daniela Gesundheit, a Latin Jew, musician, on...

What happens when the country you live in sees the country your family is from as the enemy? With actor/comedian Maz Jobrani and chef/author Bonnie Frumkin Morales. Visit mashupamericans.com for more! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Holidays are here, bringing soooo many questions. This week, Amy and Rebecca play advice columnists with a special guest to answer your holiday etiquette questions. Visit mashupamericans.com for more! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Our Thanksgiving table? Banchan and mashed potatoes—from the box. Thanksgiving is a day for Mash-Ups to test out what being American tastes like to them. With brilliant foodie Francis Lam of The Splendid table and writer Nishta Mehra. We are grateful for you, fam! Visit mashupamericans.com for more! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/...