By Laney Figueroa, staff writer
After the rise in hate crimes against Asains during the pandemic, Biology teacher Mr. Chinn started a podcast called “InfatuAsain” in order to shed more light on Asain creators and Asain culture. After a year and a half Mr. Chinn is proud of himself for putting in effort and spending a lot of time learning and working to make the show the best he can, yet he still has many issues that he struggles with when making an episode for his podcast.
Through “InfatuAsian”, Mr. Chinn has gotten to meet many new and amazing people with interesting stories. He said, “I’ve had musicians, fashion designers, photographers, authors, actors. I had a guy who has a fishing youtube channel. A guy who has a Youtube about Hawaii. I’ve talked about houseplants, K-dramas, K-pop. Asian food! Asian movies. Former students who have started their own businesses. I interviewed Ms. California, one of the actors in Turning Red. I interviewed scientists. I talked to a fellow teacher who opened his own crossfit gym in China. So really random.”
Topics on the podcast for Mr. Chinn and his guests usually include talking about themselves, along with various Asain topics, like K-dramas, K-pop, Asain foods, Asain films, etc.
Mr. Chinn is most proud of the fact that his podcast has been downloaded in over 40 countries, some obvious ones like Canada and Australia, but also a lot of unexpected ones like Luxembourg, Bahrain, and Slovenia. He has also interviewed many people from different countries like France, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Turkey, Spain, and Singapore. He is also proud that he has been able to upload around 80 times, including smaller episodes, but has 59 main episodes.
Although he is very proud of his podcast and enjoys posting each episode, it can be very time consuming. Mr. Chinn says that it takes a lot of work and time for each episode, with just one episode taking somewhere between 5-10 hours to finish.
It was a little difficult to start his podcast but being on Zoom during distance learning helped Mr. Chinn learn how to record, and he learned how to edit sounds by watching videos on Youtube. He sometimes still experiences technical issues, like a bad connection or his guest is in an echoey room, which makes it difficult to get a good sounding episode, but overall he’s gotten the hang of doing it.
Another struggle Mr.Chinn has is finding enough guests for each episode. He thinks that overall it is not hard to find the guests but Mr.Chinn likes to have 2 to 3 guests an episode. He believes that having more guests is better so that it could feel more like a conversation and it won’t be awkward. He also doesn’t want his guests to feel pressured to do most of the talking.
RIght now Mr. Chinn really loves being a podcaster and has no plans on stopping. He says “I plan to keep posting on my podcast because each episode is different and interesting and I get to meet a lot of new people even though every episode is a lot of work I enjoy doing them.”
