Podcast 360 Episode 11: Eric Nuzum and Amy Choi

Magnificent Noise co-founder Eric Nuzum returns to Podcast 360 to sit in the host’s chair to interview Amy Choi, co-founder and Editorial Director of The Mash-Up Americans. Amy explains what it means to be a Mash-Up American and the unexpected journey that started with a newsletter and resulted in the creation of her company. She also shares how their business stays focused on a mission of integrity and inclusion and how they keep themselves in check.

Podcast 360 Episode 11: Eric Nuzum (Magnificent Noise) and Amy Choi (Mash-Up Americans)

Host: Eric Nuzum

Eric Nuzum: Hi, I'm Eric Nuzum. I'm co-founder of Magnificent Noise. And on last week's episode, I was interviewed by Internet media founder and CEO Martina Castro. So head back and give that a listen if you haven't already. 

Amy Choi: Hi, I'm Amy Choi. I am the co-founder and editorial director of the Mash-Up Americans. We are an independent media company that specializes in looking at the intersection of race, culture and identity and what it means to be American today. 

Eric Nuzum: Every episode of Podcast 360 starts with a round of two truths and a lie where you provide us with three facts about yourself and I guess which one is the lie. At the end of the conversation we reveal what the correct answer is. Are you ready for your round? 

Amy Choi: I'm ready. I have spent years of my life washing my socks and underwear in a Ziploc bag in dirty sinks across the world. I hate spam. It's gross. 

Eric Nuzum: By hating spam, do you mean the meat product?

Amy Choi: I mean the meat product, which is a very popular thing among Korean people. And when we were first offered an opportunity to launch our podcast, the Mash-Up Americans Podcast with KPCC in L.A., I had never before listened to a podcast. This was in 2015. And my business partner, the wonderful and brilliant Rebecca, literally had to show me where the podcast app was on my phone and downloaded Serial onto it. 

Eric Nuzum: I am going to guess that you never listened to a podcast is actually your lie. And don't tell, don't tell. We're going to wait and see if it becomes more obvious to others as well. And hopefully it does because there's a little bit of information about you that I know that might have influenced that choice. So we'll talk about that later. 

Amy Choi: Ooh, Eric, this is fun. Okay. 

Eric Nuzum: It’s more fun than you think it's going to be. When they first tell you you’re going to play two truths and a lie,  I’m like (snore), really? And then I watch some of the YouTube videos, and I'm like, oh- this could be fun. And you were a little nicer to me than I was to Martina.

Eric Nuzum: So now that we have that covered, we're going to find out a little bit more about you and your career and thoughts on the industry. I'm going to ask you a series of questions and you'll have 60s to answer each. After that, we'll pick the subject, which will probably be our last question and explore that with a little bit more depth if you're ready for that. 

Amy Choi: Sure. Hit me. 

I want you to define for me, what is a Mash-Up American? 

Amy Choi: So a Mash-Up American is there's a formal definition that we have created. We really believe that we are defining a new demographic here. One loose way of thinking about it is looking at census numbers of who identifies a good proxy. For example, people who identify as more than one race or more than one faith. We really see mash-ups as people who are living in America that are rooted in a different culture and tradition than their parents were, who are in family or in relationship with people who are in a different culture, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. all of the above. Then they are. And also the most broad is the culturally curious- people who live in culturally fluid, diverse, big, vibrant places and cities or not those but that are very culturally curious and want to understand and kind of explore the world beyond what is presented in mainstream media as America. 

Eric Nuzum: That's fantastic. And thank you for that explanation. I'm married to a Mash-Up American, which is one of the reasons I'm interested in this. I don't think that maybe I'm a mash of America by proxy because. 

Amy Choi: Yeah, you're in the relationship. 

Eric Nuzum: Yeah, that's right. Something you said there leads to my next question. I was surprised to learn that as a podcaster and being recognized as a podcaster, that isn't where Mash-Up Americans started…

Amy Choi: No, it is not.

How did you transition from your initial starting point to creating a podcast, eventually leading to the establishment of a company centered around those platforms? Whether this progression was a deliberate choice or an unintended outcome, I'm interested in learning about the journey and the factors that influenced your path.

Amy Choi: That is a great question. Okay. My background is as a print journalist. I came up in magazines in New York City. My co-founder, Rebecca, who was also one of my sisters, one of my very best friends, my wife, really, she came up as a producer, somebody who created experiences and events. And she was the business development director, the very first one at WNYC, way back in the day when podcasts were really hitting their stride, we came together to create the idea of the Mash-Up Americans in 2013, and we started with the newsletter. We went on to create a website where we are publishing original content, and as we kind of established our voice, friends started reaching out and saying, have you ever thought about a podcast? And that is how we started experimenting ourselves. And then we grew as the podcasting world grew. And now premium audio is one of our centerpieces. 

Eric Nuzum: That's great. And congratulations on answering that complicated question in 60 seconds. 

Amy Choi: Thank you. 

Many businesses, not implying yours is doing it incorrectly, initially embody a sense of idealism or mission. It often starts strong, but as reality and business concerns set in, the original mission can get diluted or compromised. Have you and Rebecca considered this potential challenge? How do you both, either jointly or individually, ensure that your commitment to your mission stays unwavering amidst the pressures of business, without succumbing to pivots or changes in focus?

Amy Choi: Oh, that is such a good and meaningful question, and I really appreciate you asking, because it's something that we do think about with extreme regularity. I think tactically, one of the things that we do now and we just had a big session this week, is we work very intensely with a coach who is somebody who, you know, comes in and works with us on organizational stuff, but also always understands the goals and the mission and the kind of integrity that we always want to hold ourselves to. And she helps hold us accountable to that. We have also always been a business that has been intent on making money. And part of the money that we make is to show that other businesses and the media world that this is an audience that you should pay attention to, and also that the creators that come up with us, these young, hungry, mash up, diverse, queer immigrant people and creators should be honored. And so we make money for them too. And there's so much more I want to say. That one was a hard one! 

Eric Nuzum: I told you to be hard. I'm going to quote you back to you. And it's the reason I wanted to talk to you… When you when you get involved in this, you probably have already experienced this. They give you a spreadsheet full of names and you look through it. And I looked up several and I saw an interview that you and Rebecca did. And I saw this quote and I'm like, this is the person I want to talk to. And you were talking about mashiness. And you said:

it's the quality of being able to hold two truths at one time, to be able to understand how to translate, how to navigate the world with the ability to see more than one path. Understanding the richness and textual backgrounds that everyone is coming from gives us an innate understanding of perspectives that I think comes from a singular, white dominant culture. You have to learn how to see the way that way rather than understanding it intrinsically.

I was so taken by that quote because I think in that quote, you end up kind of understanding the American experience of right now in America. You either believe in that mindset or you don't. You either believe in the value of multiple truths, of multiple perspectives, of the ability to hold different things and there are different pathways or you don't.

I'm kind of curious what you think of that, or if I'm being too reductionist by saying that that's your answer to that question — if you believe in that or not. And does it define America today?

Amy Choi: Yeah, I do not think it is the root of the fissure. I do believe that there are people who believe that that this is this is the great joy of the American experience and the great power of the American experience and maybe the greatest power of the American experience. And that there are people who are terrified of it. And our work, I think, sits squarely in opening up the beautiful secrets of being able to see multiple paths, of being able to hold multiple truths, of being able to understand that there is not just one way in. If there is a way to look and be able to see our culture like a changing kaleidoscope and not a fixed portrait of what is and what should be, that we can move forward together. And not everybody wants to see that. And the Mash-Up. Americans, we have always said there are a couple of rules for for what it means to be part of our organization, how Rebecca and I want to lead and the kind of work that we want to do is that we have to be able to do it with integrity. We have to be able to sleep at night and that we are not in the position of arguing for our own humanity. That's not that's not what we're here to do. And there are many, many, many beautiful advocates and activists and organizers who do that work for many, many marginalized communities. For us, the work that we do, like, our march, is about celebrating what is. And inviting people into that. And if you are not interested in being invited in to that, we're kind of like, sorry to that man, you know, And it's almost always men. But if you cannot see that we share stories so that hopefully you can, but if you refuse to, that's not our work to bring you in.

You know, I think our our point of view in terms of our storytelling, the kind of work that we want to do, and it spans a lot of different, I think, ways of working how how we kind of share those paths, for example, kind of the way that we work. We qualify our work in a couple of different buckets, like does it check these boxes for us to make it a Mash-Up American project? One is, is it about like kind of our core issues about identity, about race, culture, identity, You know, is it about re-centering marginalized voices and stories? Yes. That's a Mash-Up project. Does it allow us to bring in Mash-Up creators, help them develop, help them develop that point of view. Help them to understand how we frame stories, how we never deficit frame, how identity is always integrated into the conversation in the storytelling. But it doesn't have to lead with that because these are universal stories and we really believe that that checks the box. Can we get people paid? Can we make sure that people are getting fair payment and compensation for their labors and in the way in which many of the communities that we work in and that we represent are often getting severely underpaid for their work because they should just be lucky to have the opportunity. No, we call bullshit that doesn't work. And can we work in a way that we feel proud of? You know, so many of our team and we have, I don't know at any different point because we scale on project to project, but we have a real core kind of group of creatives that we work with and that, you know, they become ours. They're in our little stable. You know, many of them are incredibly accomplished new mothers — there's nowhere for them to put this like deep earned expertise and storytelling, brilliance and producing brilliance. After they have children because the workplace is not created for that. And so we have a lot of parents on our teams that we can work with and trust. And as equal kind of we have this like cohort of like really seasoned moms, I would say, that are trying to figure out how to live creative lives and have families and be a mother. And then we also have really young people that are coming up and that they want to see a different way to work that is about communication, is about collaboration and is about being a human first and not just a product that you're putting out. If we can do that, that's a Mash-Up project.

And then there's also the meta level. Like we have made podcasts for Fortune 500 companies, for tech companies, for consulting companies, for a recent example for us was in the pandemic. We made what is currently now still a top 100 fitness podcast for Peloton, which you wouldn't think, you know, what does Peloton have to do with the March of Americans? Well, the host was an immigrant black woman who told a lot of her stories, the entire team working on the Peloton podcast. This major project was women. The music was created by women, the editors, producers, production staff, all women, mostly Mash-Up women. And the way that we were able to structure the fitness and wellness experts that we brought in almost entirely all women and primarily women of color. And that is the kind of media work that we are intent on doing when every year, whoever it is, I can't remember now, is it Pew, is it like one of the other big American journalism associations that puts out a survey of who are the experts quoted in The New York Times in The Washington Post, 90% of the time, the experts in all of those stories remain white men. So what is the way that we can also change the narrative and say, no, look, look at this professor of sociology that can tell us about the history of the body, who's at Harvard University and she's a black woman. And so we believe that's our way of embodying what it means to see different paths in what those perspectives can offer to a larger audience. And we wholeheartedly believe that if you can open yourself up to that, you will have a richer, broader, more solutions-oriented, creative way forward than if you think that what we have been doing all along this whole time is the only way. Then like, Oh man, we're fucked. So no, I don't see it as a great fissure, but I do see it as a fundamental difference. And I think that that difference is driven primarily by fear. 

Eric Nuzum: I agree with you. I don't know if I'm ready to completely let go of that being the root of which I you know, I just I don't want to be reductionist, but I know that there are people who just don't want to you know, you acknowledge that yourself and saying there are people who who don't want to see that, that maybe because of fear, in fact.I think it's entirely in fear. I think there are people who think that that's somehow a correctable reality. Right? So thank you very much for this. I find listening to you and your work to be inspiring, it's inspiring because I get to live in a world where that exists and that makes me happy. And it also is inspiring to me to to think about how I can include more elements of that in my life. So thank you for this time. It's been great. 

Amy Choi: Thank you, Eric, for saying that. And thank you for such great questions.

Eric Nuzum: Well, thank you. It’s driven from genuine curiosity. I love talking to people I don't know. So and I'm glad that I got to know you. So all the more serious things aside, we we do have some unfinished business here to attend to, which is earlier in the episode, we asked you to give three statements, two of them being true, one of them being a lie. I'm going to ask you to recap them now and then I'm going to give my final answer and you will reveal whether I am correct or not. Here we go. 

Two truths and a lie

Amy Choi: So the recap is I spent a lot of time washing undies and socks and personal belongings and giant Ziploc bags and in sinks across the world. I hate spam, which a lot of Korean people love, and I had never listen to a podcast in 2015, which is when KPCC first approached us about making a podcast of our own. 

Eric Nuzum: Okay, So my guess is still going to remain that you did not know anything about a podcast when you started podcasting. And if it's any consolation to you, we do a podcast with a relationship therapist named Esther Perel, who makes this amazing podcast. Where should we begin? That's heard by a million people every episode. And she had also had no idea what a podcast was when she started hers. So you're in good company. If that's true — Is it true or is it false? 

Amy Choi: Eric … I love spam. I love spam. I love fried spam. I like spam and soup and stew. I like spam with kimchi. I like spam with rice. I like spam with eggs. I like spam all the time. 

Eric Nuzum: Well, you know, I have to confess, I screwed this up. 

Amy Choi: But yeah, I respect what you're saying. And no, I had not listen to a podcast. We were we our newsletter was going real strong. Our website which at which now is kind of, I would say, our secondary platform. The audio really comes first. And at the time we were we had just built the studio, we built the studio really around audio in 2017. But for two years we worked on hosting in our hosting skills in the podcast. Our own podcast really grew from that. And we were in L.A. we had some friends at KPCC who loved our newsletter and had really just kind of loved the concept of the Mash-Up Americans. They were like you guys … and we had been doing a lot of live events like panels and kind of gatherings where we would talk about what the magic of Americans was. And our friend Colin Campbell, very brilliant. Colin Campbell was at KPCC at the time. And he was like, Have you guys ever tried doing a podcast? Thought about it. And I was like, Rebecca, what's up? And on the flight home from L.A., she'd loaded up that first season of Serial on my phone, and I listened to it for a day and a half straight, and I was like, We're going to do this. And we were off to the races. And then we we were with KPCC for a couple of years. Then we were distributed by APM, and then we took our show Independent maybe five years ago. And we are launching into a new season tomorrow. 

Eric Nuzum: Fantastic. Good for you. Actually, I have a confession to make. I knew that was probably a truth because of your history as a writer, but it would be a better story.

Amy Choi: And Esther actually was a fabulous early guest of us. Oh, really? And yes, we are we we love we love her show. So congratulations on that as well.

Eric Nuzum: All right, Amy, thank you for your candor and being a part of Podcast 360 today. You've enjoyed listening to Amy's insights. You can find her sitting in the host chair next week's episode where she gets a chance to interview another founder. Amy, can you let our listeners know where they can find you in the meantime? And if there's a social handles or websites or shout outs that you'd like to give. 

Amy Choi: Yes. Thank you so much, Eric. This has been a real delight and so fun. You can find the Mash-Up Americans at mashupamericans.com. You can sign up for our newsletter at mashupamericans.com/newsletter. You can find us on any social, although social is very confusing time right now at Mash-Up American or you can find me @AwesomeChoi and big news is our new season of the Mash-Up Americans podcast is releasing October 3rd, which is tomorrow. And we're so, so excited. We have an incredible lineup of old friends and guests talking about what it means to live a good Mashy life. What is the ultimate guide to a Mash-Up life? And we're leading off with Randall Park, who is one of our the great joys of America. I'll say. So please tune in and you can follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. 

Eric Nuzum: Thank you so much, Amy. It's a it's been an absolutely delight to get to know you. And thanks for the Podcast 360 team for having me and bringing us together. It's just been a delight. Thank you. 

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Podcast 360.

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