In just over half an hour, we get into what it was like to grow up Indian in Saudi Arabia, the languages she carries (including Arabic), her own personal relationship with Islam and the Quran, and her love of Indo-Chinese food , a cuisine that, for many South Asians, is its own kind of home. We also talk about the small, strange sensory shocks of the UK: seeing autumn for the first time, discovering seasons, the new tastes that come with a new country.

In just over half an hour, we get into Adam's experience growing up Malay in Singapore including the racism he faced at school, his time as a police officer during military service, and the myth of meritocracy in a country that often claims not to see race. We also talk about what it's like to live in the UK as someone whose background is regularly forgotten or assumed, and the quiet division he's noticed since moving here.

In just over half an hour, we get into what it was like to grow up Tamil in Wembley, surrounded by community, then arriving at university and finding the Sri Lankan crowd didn't quite fit. We talk about swerving away from your culture and finding your way back to it, the strange experience of figuring out queerness alongside identity, and what coexisting with yourself actually looks like in practice.

In just over half an hour, we get into her years at a top London girls' school, what it meant to be one of the few brown girls in a sea of Chelsea privilege, the Indian classical dance she practiced at home but never showed at school, and the small, telling examples she keeps coming back to: like the people who know every Beatles song but couldn't name a Beyoncé track.

In just over half an hour, we get into the strange shift she's noticed in moving to Britain: how identity here gets sorted into much firmer boxes, how being a queer person of colour gets read differently in the UK than in the places she grew up, and how building Asian friendships at university became its own kind of cultural homecoming.

In just over half an hour, we get into his experience growing up around the top 10% of Beijing, what the real China looks like from someone whose family is only on the periphery of it, and whether being Wasian is the kind of identity that needs to be affirming in the UK.

In just over half an hour, we get into the strange culture shocks of British life (regional accents, the clubbing scene), the McDonald's shake-shake bags that don't exist outside Hong Kong, and the slower, harder work of building community when you arrive somewhere new.

In just over half an hour, we get into the small ways your Asianness gets shaped by where you grow up, his unexpected love for Mahjong and East Asian culture, and a proper deep-dive into Indian classical music, which Anmol now teaches.

In just over half an hour, we get into the small customs that quietly mark us as Asian. Like taking off your shoes, always sharing food the unspoken rule about giving seconds and the way her mother turned hospitality into an art form allowing it to shape her own instincts when she left home for university.

In just over half an hour, we get into the strange contradiction at the heart of South Asian culture. The cinema full of love stories. The lived reality of arranged marriages and quiet grief. The joke culture we inherit: funny, sharp, often loving and sometimes cuts deeper than we admit. And we end on Mithun’s thoughts: on Kendrick, art, and whether any of it can actually move us.

We get into what it's like to travel the world on one of its weakest passports: the visa applications, the airport security stories, and the quiet anxiety of borders that don't open as easily for some of us as for others. In just over half an hour, we also touch on Linh's life in the UK, what assimilation has felt like from her side, and somehow… frogs.

In just over half an hour, we get into the things you can only really say in Cantonese, why so many British Asians can't speak the language their parents grew up with, and the bigger question hanging over Kelli's generation: what happens to Cantonese and to Hong Kong culture itself... in the years to come.

In just over half an hour, we get into mall culture, converting pounds back into Bahraini dinars in her head, the slow shift from cash to card, and the very specific shock of British nature. We also flip the conversation: she asks me if I've ever had culture shock going back to Asia.

I'm your host Ryan (he/him), a British born Chinese kid from Newcastle upon Tyne, graduating from the University of Warwick. Being both a takeaway kid and being fortunate enough to go to a private school, this podcast was inspired by the current discourse regarding British Asian representation. Discussions on the British Asian experience are often from a millennial viewpoint, so my project is to provide a more concentrated conversation from a Gen Z perspective.

Over the coming episodes, hear me talk to over 20 'Asian' students across Warwick campus about topics such as culture, heritage, identity and most importantly… food.

Episodes will be released every weekend 🤞

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