
I believe that what gives transformative power to storytelling is that when we tell our histories, we find the lost threads that lead us back to ourselves. By retracing our memories, we draw the through lines of meaning that lead from the past to the present and draw us forward to the future.
This podcast is my way to begin re-approaching my past, aided by the bravery and wisdom of my diverse guests, who carry their Third Culture Asian stories with ownership and pride.

"The Third Culture is what emerges at the intersection between your culture of origin, and the other cultures by which you’ve been shaped."
- Sen Zhan
Beyond Asian is a storytelling interview show that frames shared cultural history and collective intersections with the West, and how these are only the starting points for the way diverse Asian people have taken their lives in vastly different directions. The podcast is trauma-informed, and use narrative as a sensemaking tool. We strive to see things in a historically-aware and compassionate way, while being clear to name the problematic aspects of Asian culture and how they may be exacerbated in the West. We offer nuance to alleviate hyperpolarization, to deepen contextual understanding, and to increase our collective capacity for holding cultural paradoxes. *
Each episode begins by exploring the guests’ family history and how they came to be in the West. We talk about formative experiences at the intersection points between Asian and Western culture that produced an understanding that this kind of uniqueness was undesirable. We aim to go far beyond identity politics, and toward enrichment, deepening, and nuance. Our journeys may have started by being Asian, but they are so much more than that. We delve into the fullness of the guest’s entire life, spanning topics like sex-positive education, polyamory, mental health challenges, trauma integration, coming out, life after divorce, repairing family relationships, and more.
Our vision is that people who have struggled to know who they are and where they belong can be a part of the conversation to self-determine the meaning of their lives in a world of complexity.
Our mission is to be a resource for other Third Culture people, especially but not exclusively Asian, to hear themselves represented in an empowering and diverse way, and to offer narratives and tools to help them along their journey to self-acceptance and understanding. The host of the show is me - the person who found my grandmother after she’d taken the pills and who waited and wondered by her side for 10 days in the ICU while she was comatose and intubated, while my parents scrambled to find a way to cover up what had happened to our extended family, and to the Chinese community. This show is not only a creative endeavour - it is the meaning-making project of my life. I will continue making this show with or without a grant, because this is my service to my community - to people like me who need this resource. Beyond Asian offers an invitation to both the opportunity and the responsibility to access our built-in capacity for healing through collective meaning-making. We stand for the repair of things that have been ruptured. We believe that telling our stories together is the beginning of this repair.
My listener is someone who sees that the links that connect us all together, regardless of which culture we grew up in, have to do with what happened when we were children, how we related to our parents and families, how we were treated by the world from an early age, and how we learned to cope with the challenges of being different. My intended audience is therefore anyone who's ever felt out of place because their internal experience of life was different from what they were told it would be, and the confusion that arises from that difference.



On International Women’s Day, a narrated story about Mongolia’s most renowned queen, Mandukhai Khutun, who lived from 1448-1510, and who united the warring Mongolian tribes 200 years after Genghis Khan.
Then, a sobering look at the state of women’s rights around the world today, and an invitation to keep pushing for the change we all need.
Notes
Interested in producing for Beyond Asian? We are looking to expand our production team!
Details here:
https://www.notion.so/senzhan/Beyond-Asian-Podcast-Seeks-Producer-9b7e3f628c5e4c9eabc4c9986da8e7b7
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News sources
It’s International Women’s Day. How did women’s rights fare this year?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/08/international-womens-day-iran-afghanistan-abortion/
UN secretary-general says women’s right are under threat
https://apnews.com/article/un-gender-equality-womens-rights-c66860dda2e845b3ce27b536611d7814
Women March To Defend Rights Across Globe Mark Women’s Day
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/women-march-to-defend-rights-across-globe-mark-womens-day-3844366
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Credits
Tough Mothers, Amazing Stories of History’s Mightiest Matriarchs, by Jason Porath:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35887203-tough-mothers
Episode Art produced by Mid-journey














Vinnie Potestivo, Editor-in-Chief of
I Have A Podcast®