Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 539 - Why Are Overseas Vietnamese Still Trapped In The Past While Vietnam Moves Forward? - Nam C Kim PT.2

Transcript

539 - Why Are Overseas Vietnamese Still Trapped In The Past While Vietnam Moves Forward? - Nam C Kim PT.2 · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:01
[SPEAKER_01]: This is my part two with Namsi Kim.
0:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back.
0:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
0:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Always, as always, to be back.
0:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So we had talked about Black Teeth and we talked about Don't Sun and we had any Hori Tran on.
0:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are a lot of fun.
0:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a cool visit.
0:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to talk in this one, this episode about this idea of like, you just got back from Vietnam.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We're sitting in the middle of Louis, like, on the modern,
0:28
[SPEAKER_01]: closest for this out of Vietnamese diaspora.
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know why we are so obsessed with this culture of trying to make everybody know that we're Vietnamese.
0:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I get really tired of it sometimes, but at the same time, I just figured something out and I wanted to talk to you about it, which is production of the work that we do, whether we're artists or whatever we do in the world,
0:58
[SPEAKER_01]: comes from obsession.
1:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And we talked about this while you were driving.
1:05
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are not obsessed with your work, you can't become a tattoo artist.
1:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't become a musician.
1:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't do the creative work.
1:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Can't write movies.
1:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't direct movies.
1:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't be an actor.
1:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to be wholly obsessed.
1:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And the obsession
1:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Really is about not even the money anymore.
1:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The obsession is you can't not do it.
1:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to do it.
1:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But then where does obsession come from?
1:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Of obsession typically comes from trauma.
1:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
1:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like trauma of session, then producing your art, and then the money.
1:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The money is like the last thing that shows up, but if you can figure out what the heck your trauma is, that led to the obsession, that led to the art that you're doing, you will finally inevitably make a lot of money.
1:52
[SPEAKER_01]: That is really what I've seen in the last six, seven years of my work.
1:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, we're talking about this on the car right over.
2:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you mentioned that
2:03
[SPEAKER_00]: the sequence, right?
2:04
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the, if we're trying to figure out the causal factors and your, your foundation of this was trauma, which I found very interesting is we can talk about obsession as a form of passion, as a form of interest, right?
2:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in the academic world, we call it intellectual interest or passion, right?
2:24
[SPEAKER_00]: What drives us, what compels us to continue asking questions and seeking answers to those questions.
2:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can find that in any sort of profession.
2:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find any sort of endeavor, a personal endeavor.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But what causes, or what propels us, what compels us to go down a certain path in the first place to choose to do something?
2:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just for money, because as you point out, the money might be sort of the by-product.
2:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you end up making money.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe you didn't start off because you thought this was gonna be profitable.
2:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You were trying to do something else.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, what you contribute to the diaspora to the community, there's a passion that underlies all of that.
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And what you've shared with me is that there's a trauma that underlies that.
3:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel very similar.
3:15
[SPEAKER_00]: in sort of the origin story because for me, doing what I do now, there are multiple inflection points to get to this point, but it all started because of family heritage.
3:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you care so much about Glam?
3:30
[SPEAKER_01]: You care so much about it that you brought so many people to Glam, you caused everybody in Glam to come out and take a look at this Operation New Life.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, if you didn't go to that history in your family, the trauma of leaving Vietnam with your mom and dad,
3:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You, I, like, this happened last year.
3:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Why would anybody bring all these people back into Glam?
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Me and all these people from the US, into Glam, and then get the governor of Glam, and all these people like Max and Nate, and all the film crew to come out, and then with people from, like, in the military, to come out and, and, and commemorate.
4:14
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an obsession that came from a trauma that brings around this work and that work is arguably what feeds you.
4:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So...
4:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Just for the record, I didn't cause that.
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I helped to contribute to that, right, to that reunion that we had in one that you got to be part of, that we all got to be, they had the privilege of being part of it.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It was awesome.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It was great to bring everybody into that space, especially people that had some connection to it who were there 50 years ago and hadn't been back.
4:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I was there as a baby, so I have no memories of this, but my parents have vivid memories.
4:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And for better or worse, they were never shy about sharing those experiences with their children.
4:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They felt like we were obligated to know.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We had to know where we came from, how it happened, why we ended up where we were, why we were in the United States and all that.
5:09
[SPEAKER_00]: not just leaving Vietnam, but why my mom's family left the north and ran south.
5:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Why my dad, as a child, was displaced in the Korean Peninsula.
5:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Like all of those cold war sorts of episodic histories, they wanted their kids to know, so that we understood where our heritage was and how we ended up where we were.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Now hearing these stories as a kid, these were like, you know, these were like my myths, my superheroes.
5:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Hearing these stories about far away places across the Pacific Ocean, totally foreign lands to me.
5:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But then being inspired by that because I knew what my parents went through, right, I understood from a young age.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I got older, I appreciated it more.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And not knowing this until later, but it really influenced a lot of my interests.
5:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it that, as an undergrad, I majored in international relations?
6:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I was interested in the causes of war.
6:04
[SPEAKER_00]: The causes of war, because the causes of war pushed us to our lives in the United States.
6:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So my sort of intellectual curiosity kept building on what I now understand to be the traumas that my parents endured.
6:20
[SPEAKER_00]: The experiences that they had.
6:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And that still propels me to this day.
6:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we look at other people like yourself and others, and you talk about how trauma can can foment this sort of passion, right?
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I totally see it.
6:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree with you.
6:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I now want to introduce this into the Vietnamese community, Vietnamese American to that gas for this notion.
6:44
[SPEAKER_01]: We always hear about all these creative and these artists, you know, looking down on like doctors and lawyers and the traditional path, no more of that.
6:52
[SPEAKER_01]: No more knocking those people down and no more lifting the creative community.
6:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What am I beginning to see?
6:58
[SPEAKER_01]: The purpose of our existence.
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: is really to like scratch that obsession, because there was a lot of doctors that are obsessed with their work, Vietnamese doctors.
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: There's Vietnamese lawyers that are obsessed with justice, obsessed with money, and it's okay to be obsessed with money, you know, because your obsession is what, it comes from the trauma.
7:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think like as a tattoo artist, the visuals that your obsessed with,
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's you're channeling the things that you don't even know why your subconscious is like pulling towards that, piano players that I know or these opera singers that are in our community, whatever their art is is the purpose of their life.
7:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we always ask, what is the purpose of life?
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost to like close the loop of the trauma.
7:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that loop is a lifelong obsession, I think it's okay.
8:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm beginning to see, like I don't, I'm not looking to close this loop of being obsessed with Vietnamese culture.
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I feel like I get to like scratch this infinite itch.
8:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm now becoming okay with the path that I've taken.
8:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And for many, many, many years, I didn't make money.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, many, many years, I was like, let me hand them off.
8:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And nobody knows that.
8:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, one day I'll talk about it.
8:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And then finally, it's like starting to pay off with like all the tangential activities that are doing all around, whether it's food, music, culture, film.
8:39
[SPEAKER_01]: all of these things were answering that one question of like, what does it mean to be born and chambers work Pennsylvania around the Amish community, around all these white people?
8:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt like, what are we doing here?
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, always obsessed with that.
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And now as I'm getting to meet you, I'm getting to go to Korla with you, and really identifying this issue.
9:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a full circle moment to sit with you.
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, now that I'm like base level,
9:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not like hurting anymore.
9:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I can do it in a way that is healthy, you know, export with the level of love for the information, rather than coming at it from some revenge of like, oh, I'm Vietnamese and I got to really put my place out on the map and be, you know, superior than the white guy or whatever.
9:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's like a very healthy session, and I don't think it'll ever go away,
9:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I guess, I have a question for you.
9:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, please.
9:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Based on what you just said, like the idea of obsession is one thing, but where we end up in that discovery, that process, that journey, at least for me is, and I don't know if this is everybody, but I think a lot of people end up in this area of pride about one's heritage.
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So, the more you discover, the more you realize the depth,
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: the complexity of that past, of that heritage, of your identity, of your ancestors leading through to the present day and how you're sort of connected across those generations.
10:19
[SPEAKER_00]: There is an element of pride that comes with that.
10:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And in this journey of self-discovery, I think you come to feel that, now you were talking about going through and toiling and then eventually you're income and the money has started
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: materialize.
10:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm wondering about your feelings of heritage and pride because you pointed out to be ining, we're working on our projects in Vietnam.
10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of those has to do with fucked up, right?
10:53
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a film that we hope that will be out in the world someday.
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But in that process of making this documentary, there were these different points of view about the past and about how we take pride or don't take pride in it.
11:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm curious about your views about your connection to that heritage.
11:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I've always had a problem with this labeling of like feeling pride for a culture.
11:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like I didn't do anything to like, like I didn't craft the culture so that I could be proud of that.
11:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Like whatever I'm looking at go law, how can I be proud of like what was in the dirt or like if I see like a beautiful painting from my artist, how can I be
11:45
[SPEAKER_01]: feeling pride that I didn't create that or the oh yeah like when I see like you know that angel stadium and we go to heritage day and people coming their jerseys and there's all these Vietnamese people yeah I didn't I didn't really have anything to do with that
12:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Pride to me is like a such a weird word unless I did something to do yeah Like you know going from my 220 pounds down to 175 and like like Recompging my body and building muscle.
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can do that.
12:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can do that.
12:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I Get a pride in that or when I click something I'm very proud to serve that.
12:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we'll fall out to my friends, right?
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know if I can feel pride for like
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: the stuff that these beautiful artists have done.
12:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I can imagine them feeling proud pride for the artwork that they've done, right?
12:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we talked about Andy, who we trend, having two decades of research.
12:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you put something, if I was in mind for the pride of like drawing that.
12:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know if I could feel pride as like, oh, Andy's part of my tribe of Vietnamese people, and therefore I feel, so pride to me is a very complex thing.
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like use that word.
13:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, maybe not that word.
13:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But I love the work that they do, and I love the culture, and I love the idea of fun, but me, or any of it that's really to Vietnamese.
13:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it now, I love the beauty of what, the distinction of what it stands out in the world.
13:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe I'd rephrase a question, but instead of pride, maybe it's more about feeling a kind of kinship with people around you in the community that also feel this, let's call it this passion, right?
13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: For heritage.
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And
13:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're not in some sort of proud of the past in this circle because you don't feel a direct kinship with people living 2,000 years ago or something like that.
13:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are plenty of people around you in the community that you feel kind of kinship with who share this ancestry, this identity.
13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: from the vestiges of the past through to the modern day.
13:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I suppose that maybe that's one way to look at it is you do feel something.
14:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel love.
14:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I feel love for the the kinship.
14:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't appreciation?
14:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and deeper appreciation.
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But then the weird thing is not only that now and that now when I look at other cultures, yeah, I love it too.
14:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I love sure.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a weird thing.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: If we love
14:22
[SPEAKER_01]: What we were given, we appreciate on a deep level what our culture has given us.
14:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We are now able to truly love, like, for example, that where I work as the company is, you know, working on robots for the last year.
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And, um,
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So all Chinese guys.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And we got a Chinese restaurant to a lot.
14:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had no idea the plethora of Chinese food.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And now that I eat Chinese food, I have such a deep appreciation.
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't feel pride or anything, but I have an appreciation and now a new love for this type of food.
14:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Just now like I have this deep love and wonderment for the Vietnamese cooking techniques that are very different.
15:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so I think the more we invest in our art and our the depth of who we are, the more we can love.
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just so biblical if you think about it, right?
15:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the Quran, Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity, Judaism at the end of the day, the core is really God is love, right?
15:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just go around everywhere now saying,
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: that love is the most important thing.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the hardest thing to do.
15:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
15:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the highest level of the game that we play.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, when you look at other people who are doing better than you, like, do you really love them or do you feel jealousy, right?
15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And so all of these things are like a lifelong journey for me that the more deep I get with my culture and love that for my culture and appreciation, the more deep and love I have for.
15:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's taught me this parallel process of learning about me and learning about the things that have driven me is teaching me about the appreciation for other people and other cultures.
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So that were right there.
16:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The appreciation, yeah.
16:13
[SPEAKER_00]: To me, that's very analogous to researchers.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: anthropologists, you study anthropologists.
16:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was my major at USC, and I can see it.
16:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see that foundation.
16:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And because it's an appreciation for all societies, all cultures and their practices and their values and how they view the world, how they might identify themselves and so on.
16:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a lot of diversity.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: If we think about how many different cultures are on the world today, and then we start thinking about how many different cultures this have existed since the dawn of humanity.
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't get your mind around that, right?
16:47
[SPEAKER_00]: All the practices, all the identities, all the languages, everything that existed in the past that are likely gone now with no subsequent, you know, lineages, no connections, tendrils to the present day.
17:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But as an anthropologist, you want is trained to study and appreciate that diversity through time and space.
17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the questions we started off with this particular episode talking about was when we look at all the the the the motifs and all the stuff that show that kind of pride now with the Vietnamese identity.
17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it stem from?
17:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about trauma, but I think we could also talk about there's a sort of human quality where we do feel like we have to identify.
17:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to
17:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And Anthropologists have been talking about this for many, many generations already.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: How we start to become human.
17:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Our elements of sociality, how we living groups, and how we identify ourselves.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: In order to identify ourselves, we have to identify ourselves against something else.
18:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's another group of people, the animal world, the spiritual, whatever it case might be.
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And our ancestors have been doing this for a very long time.
18:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Naturally, yeah.
18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And we still do it today.
18:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Even on the highest levels, uh, I was just looking at this post.
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's so interesting.
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
18:17
[SPEAKER_01]: The Catholic Pope, Pope Leo, the new Pope.
18:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
18:20
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got this like, uh, I think that they're called MITRE MITRE.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
18:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You see the White Sox MITRE?
18:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So I kicked it in my white socks with the white sock on the miter.
18:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like the most amazing thing and then like you know in the last few years I've gotten into the Dodgers and taking my kids so parades and stuff and I think about the rivalry between the teams and I think about how beautiful
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like hate for another city, but it's at deep like I wanna beat you down, and for the pope to wear a mitre with a white sock on it.
18:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a cutest thing, but it also makes me go, God, hopefully it was such a human being.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Such a human being.
19:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Deep human being and to understand the contrast of like, I'm a white sucks guy.
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You are a Dodger fan.
19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God, how beautiful is that separation?
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you need to have a level of understanding of how much you love yourself and you love God and you love mankind and humanity to know I got, I got an opposition on the other side.
19:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I got Dodgers
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But that kind of beauty for me is absolutely gorgeous now.
19:38
[SPEAKER_01]: When I think about like two forces, Ying and Yang, that's really the whole idea of the universe.
19:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's like, but the problem is this, if you're a Vietnamese person, and you are ashamed of your team, that's when you got one.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I went through, right?
19:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, born in 75, I think by,
20:03
[SPEAKER_01]: 2010, I was like, just wanted to be a white guy.
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's completely wasted.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in the desert of culture, just wandering, going like, I'm a white guy.
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Marine.
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Marine.
20:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm white.
20:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when it becomes destructive.
20:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you can embrace your own history, your own trauma, your own obsession, really dig into it.
20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the path for really opens up doors.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: can be proud of things that you didn't do, but you have to learn to develop a love for the things that come before you and the appreciation.
20:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that caused that trauma.
20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why sitting with you is so important to me, constantly.
20:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I need to track this for the rest of my life.
20:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why these friendships that I make professionally in my work with you.
20:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Like guys like you, it's so important because we wanna see where this leads for the next 20, 30 years.
20:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much wrapped up in what you just said about it.
21:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I can get into all of it.
21:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know what stance I would have on all of it.
21:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think.
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: knowing the trauma that you're talking about, knowing where you're coming from, and why you felt that way, I think it's very important.
21:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, acknowledging it, and then understanding it, it only comes with hindsight, it only comes with life experience.
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we're getting to a point in middle age where we can look back and we can figure out, okay, this is probably why these sorts of decisions were made in our youth, right?
21:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, it says something too about where we live.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It says something about American society.
21:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It says something about our place within American society.
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: What it has been, what it continues to be, and what it will be for our children, right?
21:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And the next generations.
21:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think about all this.
21:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about how what my parents have sort of instilled within me has been a double-edged sword.
22:02
[SPEAKER_00]: On the one hand, they didn't hide anything.
22:07
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, it probably passed on all kinds of trauma that they've been holding on, too, that now I've inherited and likely will keep being transmitted.
22:17
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, it comes with obligation because if I have been propelled and inspired to ask certain kinds of questions and then being obsessed to answer those questions, now
22:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm obligated to share what I can to inspire others to go through that journey because they probably have similar kinds of questions about their families, about their own identities, about their place in this country or in the world, or our place with the old countries across the Pacific.
22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: What roles do we have?
22:52
[SPEAKER_00]: What identities do we have?
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: How much do we belong or not belong in any of these spaces, right?
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I think
23:00
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not alone in wrestling with these sorts of questions, and I don't think it'll end with our generation.
23:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to keep going.
23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the most painful group of people when I think about this question is the Vietnamese or Southeast Asians that are in jail right now.
23:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Who in the 90s?
23:17
[SPEAKER_01]: experience so much pain and loss and trauma and no love from families or had to find that stability within the street life and then had to go off and shoot and kill people and murder and now we're sitting in jail and some are deported
23:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think about how privileged I am to kind of like really like what you said, we have the opportunity to really dig into these obsessions.
23:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
23:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But all the brothers that are in jail, I mean, there's probably tens of thousands of them that are sitting in jail right now for the last 20, 30 years because of the crimes that they committed because of the lack of
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: familial bonding that existed during that time as a result of trauma and then they're all locked up and I think about that a lot I think about you know these men who are you know Vietnamese and and and speak Vietnamese and prison and they they they bond with their own you know with their own and yeah
24:17
[SPEAKER_01]: it's painful because now they're just like they're like stuck in time and I hope that they're doing the work that they need to do spiritually as they're as they're working their traumas out.
24:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there are so many different facets to these histories and these forms of trauma.
24:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, we can talk about different episodes within these within the 20th century that
24:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and then, you know, that hasn't ended, the wars, the so-called Indu China wars, the Vietnam, whatever war you want to call it, right?
24:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Those might have stopped and ended, but the, the scars, they haven't gone away.
25:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
25:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, all the wars that are going on with Ukraine, Russia, Gaza, it never ends.
25:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It keeps.
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's almost like, for me, when I think about all this stuff, I think about like,
25:16
[SPEAKER_01]: really part of the natural evolution of human kind.
25:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like, does it ever stop?
25:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a huge debate within the, I guess within the archeological study of conflict and more.
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you studied war a lot in the time.
25:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's the reason I got into Anthra and archeology in the first place was, I wanted to answer that question.
25:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we fight?
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: What causes it, is it something that goes well back in our history?
25:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it biologically ingrained with this?
25:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it culturally invented?
25:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it because we live in certain kinds of societies?
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we live as sedentary farmers, we live in big states.
25:58
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all kinds of theories that have been out there that people have been talking about for who knows how long.
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is the inspiration.
26:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I've come to see, and this is just my based on what I've studied,
26:15
[SPEAKER_00]: it's old.
26:18
[SPEAKER_00]: There's archeological evidence for people fighting that goes very far back in time.
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And the materials tell us, the paint is a certain kind of picture, and there are all kinds of other sources of data we can use analogs for instance when we look at other primates in the natural world and their behaviors and we can try to imagine what our last common
26:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And for some people, that's a cause for pessimism.
26:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We have evolved to be this way.
26:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We are highly cooperative when it comes to violence and all this stuff.
26:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be cause for pessimism.
26:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But at least for me, I look at it from a different perspective.
27:04
[SPEAKER_00]: There is, I think, cause for optimism.
27:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I say this, my colleague Mark Kisselai, when we were doing this research,
27:15
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the conclusions we came to was, well, we have evolved not to be warlike.
27:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Our ancestors evolved to be highly social, highly cooperative.
27:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Once we started to think symbolically, once we started to have forms of speech, once we started to communicate with each other, and we had these other forms of culture and practice.
27:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Those forms of cooperative behaviors, hyper-sociality, hyper-cooperation, those open the door for all kinds of things, including ways to organize ourselves to fight against other people.
27:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But the very same capacities that allowed us that toolkit, that gave us that toolkit, also gave us other tools.
27:58
[SPEAKER_00]: How to avoid conflict.
28:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of people who study this will sensationalize the antiquity of war and violence and say, we're the product of millions of years of evolution, and we are highly warlike as a result of it.
28:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's survival of the fittest, right?
28:14
[SPEAKER_00]: If people in the past were fighting, only the strong people survived, only those cultural practices, those biological tendencies, they got passed on, and we are the product of that.
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one way to look at it.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But the other way is we just evolve to be highly cooperative.
28:30
[SPEAKER_00]: we can imagine ways to be very vicious to one another, but we can also come up with cultural practices and forms of behavior that avoid all that.
28:40
[SPEAKER_00]: What we might call peace making.
28:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been thinking a lot this last week in the news there's a,
28:48
[SPEAKER_01]: these drone attacks that are happening in Russia and Ukraine.
28:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Russia has been sitting over drones.
28:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the most recent New York Times one was an article that 37 people were killed with, I think, a fleet of drones or one drone, I don't remember.
29:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But that changes the dynamics of anthropological warfare.
29:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm wondering if that has anything to do with the framework that you're talking about, does it shift the sort of like the leverage points or does it shift the conversation now that we have AI potentially taking over mechanized killing systems?
29:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
29:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So that brings up a lot of sub-topics we can get into.
29:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's sort of affects on one psychology, right?
29:40
[SPEAKER_00]: If we imagine in deeper time, forms of combat between people, better fighting, right?
29:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's visceral, it's fighting your face.
29:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You're risking life and limb to inflict harm on somebody else.
29:54
[SPEAKER_00]: There might be forms of psychology at play in causing trauma on other people.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And as technology shift, you're going from approximate kinds of combat to more distance.
30:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The tens of make things less personal.
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And those technologies have continued to evolve to the point where now we're projecting.
30:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You can project force and violence from very, very far away.
30:22
[SPEAKER_00]: how much of that process becomes dehumanized.
30:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you're totally removed from that process.
30:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't necessarily see the end result.
30:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It keeps changing.
30:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's not only that the weapons are changing.
30:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that happened a hundred years ago, right?
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: with a cannon ball or with an arrow, right?
30:44
[SPEAKER_01]: That centuries.
30:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, centuries ago, because we went from like swords that would, it's one on one.
30:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you centuries ago added the projectiles.
30:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But now it's even like at another level with
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: the projectile thinking on its own and then it has its own mother brain that's trying to figure out whatever and then like at one point all of this is right and can you can you can one who makes the decision to engage in vitals is one thing for one person to strike another person is another thing for somebody to command somebody to do that.
31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's another thing to command a machine.
31:24
[SPEAKER_00]: to do that.
31:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And now the machine is commanding its own machines to do it too.
31:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And the machine might be thinking for itself.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You give it its sort of strategy and the objective.
31:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you sort of let go.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't imagine what the future is going to look like.
31:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the interesting things that one of my colleagues, the late Neil Whitehead, he was a anthropologist
31:51
[SPEAKER_00]: He was doing work with ethnographic work in South America with communities that were sorcerers.
32:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that he explored with them were forms of ritual violence and magic, right?
32:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So in some societies in the past or in present time, there are beliefs about why things happen.
32:14
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, why does somebody fall ill?
32:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it because that's just their fate or voodoo or is it because somebody wishes it upon?
32:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
32:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And cast maybe magic or spells, it caused it.
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, and it's this is important because depending on what you believe, it means different things, and it might require different kinds of behavior and response.
32:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I believe that this famine in my village was caused because somebody hexed us, then I can say, well, this is why we're suffering, and I can point to the person that did it.
32:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we have to take action against that person.
32:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So when he was studying the sorcerers, they talked about,
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we have magic.
32:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We send scouts into the night sky before a battle.
33:00
[SPEAKER_00]: We show the leaders what they should be doing.
33:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this has probably been happening for all of humanity.
33:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But they said, what you're doing in the modern world, how is that any different?
33:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You're sending stuff into the night sky, whether it's unmanaged drones or whatever.
33:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You're projecting violence on a different group of people.
33:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the same principle at play as what we're doing.
33:24
[SPEAKER_00]: When we send spirits into the sky to inflict harm on a neighboring society, the same thing, you might call it something else.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you might think you advanced or civilized or whatever it is and it's different than our forms of warfare.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But the sentiment, the intention behind it is the same.
33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just different ways of delivering it.
33:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what is, you know, I think at the end of this whole human cycle.
33:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that when we think about anthropologists a subject and we think about humans making these decisions of systematic decisions and then it becomes machines making it, I really do think that this is probably the start of the end of humanity.
34:14
[SPEAKER_01]: This is such a thing.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Skynet is being born right before I really do believe that.
34:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the,
34:20
[SPEAKER_01]: the really the mixing, the deep mixing of all these cultures that blend together and then ultimately the machines take it all that information and they do something with it.
34:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably the end of humanity as we know it.
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe, maybe not.
34:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if there are very many of us who can predict exactly what's going to happen.
34:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but what I can't say is technology is millions of years old.
34:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
34:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Humans have been tinkering for a very, very long time creating tools for all kinds of purposes.
34:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we see today, these are tools we're creating them.
34:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if that means it's the end of humanity.
35:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think we're didn't keep going.
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still evolving.
35:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'll say.
35:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean,
35:10
[SPEAKER_00]: As a species, we are still involved.
35:12
[SPEAKER_00]: This has been documented by anthropologists, by researchers.
35:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
35:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And we cannot separate our biological evolution from our cultural one.
35:26
[SPEAKER_00]: they're tied together because as we change the tools that we have access to that change is the way that we live and those changes will have an effect on how we continue to change as well.
35:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I think Vietnamese people in Vietnam versus Vietnamese people in the diaspora in the last 50 years almost are completely different.
35:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We're still holding
35:54
[SPEAKER_01]: These ideas of war, we're still holding on to these ideas of them and us, and I think in Vietnam, the young people are not thinking like that at all.
36:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not there.
36:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like entirely absent from their mind.
36:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Anybody who's 30 years and younger are probably thinking money, money, money, money.
36:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's fine to wait to make a great living.
36:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's enjoy concerts and music.
36:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And let's enjoy living and food.
36:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, you know, we're seeing her obsessed with these different modalities.
36:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, you've got your finger on that pulse much more than I do at the In Vietnam.
36:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:35
[SPEAKER_00]: which I'm happy for them, you know, that's a great way to be in the world.
36:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's harder though, so this goes back to what we started with with trauma.
36:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:46
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the people in the diaspora, our families experience so much trauma as a result of that separation, of that flight, of all the changes that happened as a result of that, of literally severing ties with ancestral homelands and starting over.
37:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean,
37:05
[SPEAKER_00]: When I moved as a young person from place to place, going off the college and all this stuff, moving is, it's a form of, it's very stressful, right?
37:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually if, like, you're not prepared for it.
37:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But can we imagine what our relatives went through when they had to make that decision, whether it was forced upon them or they made the decision to just drop everything in the league, not only lead, but the people behind
37:35
[SPEAKER_01]: but maybe all of these traumatic patterns are part of the real growth of humanity, because
37:42
[SPEAKER_01]: like bones.
37:44
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're not running and if you're not walking, you're actually destroying the the mechanics of the bone growth inside the bone structure.
37:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, if you're in space, it really does a number on you.
37:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And it takes months to to rehab that.
38:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're not really pressing weights and doing the heavy lifting, your body is not changing and rebuilding itself.
38:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's actually being traumatized when you're working out.
38:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, your body is tearing itself, ripping itself.
38:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Your bones are like enduring like when you're doing jump squats or, you know, you're doing all these things, it's similar to like moving away to college.
38:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's similar to like tearing these parts of your body.
38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: When you're pulled from your homeland, which I think that a lot of cultures had to go through, right?
38:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the history of mankind is getting ripped out of their homeland and moving.
38:42
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of it.
38:43
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of that.
38:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's everybody.
38:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
38:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And all times a place is, but yes, that I think there's a fair amount of of displacement that has happened to our human history.
38:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of voluntary movement as well.
38:56
[SPEAKER_01]: and heartaches and breakups, you know, between human beings.
39:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's what gives us a depth of viewpoint to create and to create more beauty in the world is coming from the pain of being separated and being demolished, our old self being demolished.
39:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a lot of inspiration that comes from that.
39:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it goes back to the obsession, right?
39:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, what can continue to compel you to do something to order to answer or to explore?
39:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And it has to be something that is deeply, deeply embedded.
39:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And trauma is one way to do that.
39:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Trauma is one way to embed something very deeply with women oneself, unintentionally, right?
39:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's there.
39:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And people seek to address it.
39:48
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't obstruct by the journey that I've had and how it's analogous to journeys and other people have had and how we're kind of reconstructing past family history because we seek to understand it.
40:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We seek to understand how we got to where we currently are.
40:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're doing that from different perspectives, from different professions.
40:14
[SPEAKER_00]: but that led us to our projects together and to some of these conversations.
40:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know you've had similar conversations with lots of people.
40:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, these are the conversations I try to have every day with Vietnamese people, what people were working on Vietnamese subjects.
40:34
[SPEAKER_01]: interested to see where our journey goes, you know, our project fucked up is, you know, we're constantly working on it and thinking about it and things change.
40:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And without it changing, I don't think that
40:48
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a much beauty to be had.
40:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Sun's funny, but without the ever-changing environment, the tearing of the communal muscles, you know?
41:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I like that analogy.
41:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the one thing as an archeologist, we come to the conclusion is that change is just constant, right?
41:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's inevitable.
41:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And we deal with bigger stretches of time.
41:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So we look at materials that date thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years into the past.
41:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Things keep changing.
41:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes they become so unrecognizable to us.
41:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, there are elements of humanity that do not change.
41:39
[SPEAKER_00]: these feelings about belonging and identity, we can see in the material record how people created forms of adornment that likely helped identify themselves within their community or to identify their status.
41:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the case might be.
41:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Those feelings have always been a part of humanity and the archaeological record shows how far back it goes.
42:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really, when I'm sitting here with you and thinking about all this archeological records and I just had this really random thought.
42:12
[SPEAKER_01]: When I'm sitting and I'm eating Vietnamese food and I'm talking about everything like long hair and mequang and all these things that trigger a depth of response that I'm eating
42:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Singularly, singularly Vietnamese food.
42:31
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a certain happiness that happens inside of me, that doesn't happen with other foods.
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
42:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So what do you think that comes from?
42:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Epigenetics, I don't know, right?
42:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, the reason you feel happy about it?
42:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's just deeply,
42:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Deep inside of my veins.
42:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So you think it's a biological reaction?
42:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I think so.
42:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it so much and I think about it and obsess about it.
42:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting.
42:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
42:57
[SPEAKER_01]: What herbs are put into this sausage?
42:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Who the hell thought of turmeric and putting it into noodles?
43:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know?
43:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:06
[SPEAKER_01]: The way these shrimps are perfectly sauteed to absorb the deep fish sauce and sweetness of the chili, right?
43:17
[SPEAKER_01]: and the way the tofu's cut in a mequang bowl and and who put jellyfish and banana flowers into this stuff.
43:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like insane amounts of copious amount of thinking or some randomness that just, you know, somebody put it all together.
43:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Mequang, who do all of these dishes are just mind blowingly complicated.
43:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not simple things to do.
43:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: and the balance and sort of like the sweetness versus the savory aspect of of it.
43:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's the the the moist and then the chewy as the crispy.
43:55
[SPEAKER_01]: All of these things are in the dishes.
43:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's mind blowing.
43:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, you're making me hungry.
44:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of the second thing we might say is, you know, there's a there's an element of pride in this.
44:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's just your biology that's telling you this is delicious, right?
44:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's something, whether it's acknowledged or subcoaches within you, that is proud of these wonderful concoctions that have emerged over time, maybe different traditions coming together, right?
44:31
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we have what's the origins of that or other dishes?
44:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is different kinds of cultural practices and influences over generations that have emerged to this inflection point that allows you to eat this bowl of fun today.
44:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's made in a specific kind of way, right?
44:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's some element of pride in there, whether you know it or not.
44:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I sometimes detach myself on purpose and I said to myself if I'm not a Vietnamese, if I wasn't Vietnamese and I look at this ball, I would be mind blown by the guy who or the woman who came up with this.
45:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It is absolutely like a miracle that this dish exists in the world and helped me thousands of dishes that we lost because of, you know, anthropological sort of decay.
45:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's weird.
45:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I find myself with this robot work that I'm doing so for and how it really ties in and triggers these different flash points of culture for me.
45:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and it doesn't even feel like work.
45:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like, oh my god, I can't believe I'm getting
45:41
[SPEAKER_01]: paid to sort of like understand this machine and then like selling it to the world.
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, we need to retain, we need to find a way to retain all of these wonderful recipes.
45:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said at the beginning, that work is very similar to what we might call ethnographic work.
46:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're documenting for posterity.
46:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it might be for,
46:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, for profit for these kitchens and restaurants, but at the same time, the byproduct of that is you're preserving these recipes, these ways of preparing food.
46:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's being stored.
46:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's being stored.
46:24
[SPEAKER_01]: 200 years from now, somebody who wants to make like a specific ball of black has the way to do it.
46:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they can ask the machine.
46:33
[SPEAKER_00]: The machine.
46:33
[SPEAKER_00]: How was it made in 2006?
46:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
46:36
[SPEAKER_01]: 200 years ago.
46:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
46:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And they can do it.
46:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe there's a robot that's separate of that actual robot, but that can actually do the prep work.
46:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
46:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And then make it happen.
46:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fascinating to think about.
46:53
[SPEAKER_01]: working with me on such a deep level and never giving up on the work that we do together, you know, you're definitely one of my partners in crime, as well as, you know, guys like Chris Tranfulness, like, on who we are here at his studio, yeah, his merchandise shop here in Fugalta in the Asian guard mall.
47:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys along with, you know, my guests earlier today, Andy
47:23
[SPEAKER_01]: without this sort of community, um, all of this will be lost.
47:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:29
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
47:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate that and I have to thank you for bringing me into this world because, you know, for, for many, many years, I was doing this work kind of in a vacuum.
47:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing archeological field work in Vietnam, but not really engaging with a lot of the American communities and I'm aware, obviously, but not having grown up in solidly within that environment.
47:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You've helped to open my eyes to a lot of this and to introduce me to a lot of the folks that we just talked about in others.
48:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that I'm very, very thankful for and I look forward to continuing to meet one of these folks and working with all of you.
48:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
48:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
48:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll keep going with the football documentary.
48:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's common.
48:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully.
48:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see it soon.
48:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, everybody.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynn.
48:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynn, Catherine Wynn, Tina Fam, Sydney, Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
48:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.