Ep-231 Nature, Comedy, and Authenticity with Ivy Le

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Saadia Khan

Welcome to Immigrantly, your favorite podcast. At least I hope it is. I am Saadia Khan, the producer and host, and I'm incredibly excited to have you here with me today.

Our podcast, as many of you know, takes you on a captivating journey as we delve into the stories and experiences of immigrants shining a light on the vibrant tapestry of cultures that shape our world. Immigrantly is all about sparking intellectual engagement like never before. And I'm so thankful for all of you tuning in right now. But before we dive into our conversation today, I want to share something personal that might surprise you.

Now, behind this microphone, there's a side of me that you may not expect. You see, I come from a family of passionate hunters.

Yeah, hunters.  For them, as my cousin puts it, it's all about the thrill of the chase, the pursuit of birds or animals they hunt. In fact, it's also about being out in nature and spending time with fellow hunters, including my uncle, cousins, close friends, and their dogs. Yeah, how can we forget dogs now they have explored countless places in the early hours, witnessing prey, taking scenes, and creating lasting memories all in the name of hunting?

Look, the way I see it, if they were not that committed, it would be pretty challenging to wake up at 4 am gear up for hunting and patiently wait for ducks to arrive in the freezing waters of the River Indus. When I dig deep into my childhood memories, I remember when I was young, my dad and uncle would venture into the wilderness to hunt cartridges, geese and wild boars on our land in Pakistan. And while my fearless sister would eagerly join them, I, on the other hand, would come up with excuses, afraid to participate in their hunting expeditions. However, a couple of years ago, my younger cousin organized a gathering on his farm during our visit to Pakistan. Among the planned activities, something instilled deep fear within me, skeet-shooting.

Yeah, now for those of you who are not familiar, skeet-shooting is a recreational and competitive activity where participants use shotguns to break clay targets at two fixed stations. It's not hunting per se, but it definitely involves guns, a practice I really dislike. So despite my hesitation, I decided to participate driven by the contagious excitement of those around me, including my kids. And let me tell you this, although my aim was off, I summoned the courage to take that shot and pushed past my fear and my connection with the outdoors extends beyond the borders of Pakistan.

When I lived in Denver, Colorado with my husband, we embarked on numerous, and I mean numerous hiking trips, we explored breathtaking national parks like Yellowstone, Price Canyon, the Grand Canyon, and the mesmerizing arches of Moab. These experiences really opened my eyes to something profound. I felt a sense of safety and freedom as I wandered through these natural wonders. However, it wasn't until recently that I understood that not everyone shares the same feeling of security and liberty in the great outdoors.

For many minorities, the outdoors can be filled with mistrust and fear where they are unfairly targeted and excluded. Why I don't feel that way as a minority, I don't have an answer for that. But this realization has definitely urged me to dig deeper, explore the intricate layers of our relationship with nature, and amplify the voices that often go unheard.

And I have the perfect guest to dive into the intersection of identity migration and our connection with the natural world.

Today I'm speaking with Ivy Le, the creator of the podcast FOGO, Fear of Going Outside, a nature show hosted by the most reluctant host ever, and we'll dive into what that really means. Outside of podcasting, Ivy is also a stand-up comedian, reporter, actress, poet, and a passionate advocate for immigration and civil rights issues. I'm super excited to be talking with her today. So without further ado, let's get started.

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Saadia Khan
Are you ready?

Ivy Le
Yes. And I just press record on my end.

Saadia Khan
So first, happy birthday.

Ivy Le
Thank you.

Saadia Khan
Oh, my gosh, I am so excited for your birthday, which is really exciting. So what are your plans for today?

Ivy Le
I am also very excited about my birthday. So I have been celebrating for weeks. Today is the official day. Just getting all my free things in today. I gotta pick out my you know, little Sephora birthday gift. You know, today, I'm just doing all the free things. And then tonight my family is taking me out to dinner. But I have been a Gemini menace the entire time. Because when it's my birthday, it's everybody's birthday. I don't think it's about me, but it's not about me, right? It's just really about the miracle of the accident of every single person I've ever known that made an influence that turned me into who I am in this moment.

Saadia Khan
What is about birthdays that you love the most?

Ivy Le
I think it's just a celebration of life. I just like to be alive.

Saadia Khan
I like that

Ivy Le
I don't need to be in heaven because like grapes don't die. So there's like probably no wine in heaven.

Saadia Khan
So Ivy, I have been listening to your podcast, your podcast interviews, and it's been a fascinating journey for me, and I've talked a little bit about it in my intro growing up in Pakistan. I remember my uncle and my dad used to go out into the wilderness and hunt wild boars, and geese, partridges, all sorts of animals, right? I was shit-scared. And while my sister would go out with them on these expeditions, I would make up excuses of stomach ache, headaches and all those crazy excuses. And you are somebody who defines themselves as an indoor person.

Ivy Le
Yeah, I hate the outdoors.

Saadia Khan
I will start there. How do you define an indoor person? What do you mean by being an indoor person?

Ivy Le
I mean, I hate being outside. I hate being in the sun. I don't like weather. I don't like sweating. I don't like mosquitoes. Everything beautiful is indoors. Art is indoors. Food is indoors. People are indoors. Theaters are indoors, right? Like everything beautiful is inside. It's just not my idea of fun. And in fact, I think a lot of outdoor activities are just nuts, are just totally reckless that you my parents had to work so hard for me to have an easier life for me to be safe to have clean water. I mean, I cannot get over clean running water. I talk about running water all the time. I do not take any of these things for granted. I luxuriate in air conditioning and like soft sheets. And I even hate when clothes are dried outside because then they smell like outside.

Saadia Khan
That's an interesting take. Because as somebody who grew up in Pakistan, and my dad has a village and we used to go there often during our holidays, I grew up in a metropolitan city in Pakistan, Lahore. It's extremely crowded. It's pretty much like any other city in the world, right? But my dad's village was just the place where we would unwind. I don't really dislike the outdoors to the point where I am unable to go out or I don't enjoy it. And I've been going on these hikes with my husband recently. And those hikes are like simple hikes. Not too complicated, but I enjoy them. I enjoy being in nature. But at the same time, I don't like mosquitoes and I do want running water. I want clean water. I want nice rooms, bathrooms, so I'm somewhere in the middle while you're on one extreme and there may be some other person who may be on the other extreme.

But then, Ivy, you come up with this podcast called FOMO, fear of going outside. It's a play on FOMO. Right?

Ivy Le
Yeah, basically.

Saadia Khan
Why did you decide to create something that is it's in contradiction to who you are and what you like, or what you believe in really?

Ivy Le
I mean, I don't know if my like personal preferences or like belief systems, you know, I mean, here's the thing. I wanted to make a show where my point of view mattered, but it's not about how terrible it is to be a queer minority woman in America or like whatever, you know, I care about those issues. I work on those issues. I've worked in non-profit. I volunteer a lot of my time, I'm very politically active, but like, I would never listen to those podcasts, or watch those TV shows.

But what I actually love to watch is nature shows because I, while I am an indoor person, I'm a deeply curious person. So I like to be inside reading books, you know, and reading internet articles and following the discourse and trying to understand what people think when I travel, I want to go to cities because that's where the people are. And I want to understand what the people think.

I want to understand what people who I can't have access to if I stayed home, I want to know what they think I want to be in their home, you know, and I realized that nature is a cultural construct.

So I'm fascinated by your story, kind of the what is a village and what is the outdoors? And what is the boonies and what is appropriate to do outside and even the boundaries between what's inside and outside cause my family's from Vietnam, our architecture is much more porous. They're much more porous boundaries between the elements and the indoors, we have different relationships with them. And I realized I love all these major shows, I'm watching them like I'm watching a train wreck. I'm like, is this reckless white man gonna stick his hand in that hole? And why?

They never question it. They're just like being in nature is amazing, and restorative. And I'm like, I don't think so. That is not the case for everybody. And I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who thinks that that's why most people live in cities. And I had never seen a nature show from my point of view. And I am a curious person, I've worked as a reporter before, you know, and sometimes I'm watching these shows from the comfort of my couch and my air conditioned living room. And I just want to ask a follow up question. And they never asked it. And I'm like, Oh, I gotta make the show. I could find out for myself, like, do those animals really look like that? And the only way to get an unbiased point of view or to get the questions I want to know ask is to go out there and do it myself. And so it was kind of that perfect intersection of things that I'm legitimately interested in. Because I just not at a point in my artistic career anymore, where I feel like I need to be making art to convince other people that I'm a human being.

I'm making art because that's what human beings do. Ants make anthills. Humans make art, we draw on walls, we draw on everything that we can get our hands on, right? We're just artists, and I don't need to make another show to convince white people to fix the problems of white supremacist patriarchy, right?

Saadia Khan
I like that idea. But talking about nature being a social construct, I want to go back to that. And you're absolutely right. Our relationship with nature is pretty much determined by the culture that we grew up in or grew up in. So you talk about outdoors in the US where interaction of humans without tourists is different, especially when the US is a hierarchical nation racially. So a white man's relationship with nature is very different from a minority person's relationship with nature. But do you think that applies to outside the US? So do you think outdoors in Vietnam may seem different to you than they seem here in the US?

Ivy Le
I think so. There is a moment I think where I talked about in the podcast where when I was a teenager, I went outside in Vietnam. It was so not scary. I remember my family was just walking around. Yeah, we've been have everybody's just in flip flops going around in America, people even my Kickstarter video where I'm wearing like Birkenstocks outside in a nature setting. People were like commenting on my shoes, you're like, you got the wrong shoes. Nobody in Vietnam tells you like you have the wrong shoes. Okay. My people famously kicked out multiple nations in tire sandals. And it was this kind of ravine, there were these like big old boulders, you know.

So the parents, the older people were just kind of walking on the flat path around the boulders and the children were kind of jumping on top of the boulders because that's what kids do is kids like to climb, right? And I remember I was kind of going there and kind of like bounding barefoot across the boulders. It was hot. I was just like a young teenager, I was trying to sneak away to be with the bigger teenagers who were all diving into a little pool from the top of a big boulder. And I thought I was gonna go do that. That's what I thought when I was young. And my mom yells just down the ravine. She doesn't even know where I am. But she just knows that that's what I'm trying to do. Because she sees those kids. She sees them doing it and she just screams "Ivy, don't you dare jump in that pool."

And I was like, Oh, she just caught me and didn't even know her voice rang down the entire ravine and I'm just like, "w man." So they're all like, oh, yeah, now she can't do it. But in Vietnam, it just did not feel that way. They're not people telling you that you were wearing the wrong things. They're not people, you know, telling you like where you can and cannot go and what you can and cannot eat here. But in America, you could literally be homeless living in a forest and just like pick up an oyster and then get fined for poaching by the game warden. Because you don't have a license to hunt.

Saadia Khan
You're right, and talking about flip-flops and the gear. The gear is expensive. So no matter what you do, whatever kind of outdoor activities you engage in, there's always a gear and that's something that I never understood, again, coming from Pakistan. It's very consumerist, right? Yeah. On top of that, it's not just the gear but then your support wants to know certain things and follow certain rules, which is almost in contradiction to how your relationship with nature should be. It should be more organic.

Ivy Le
Yes, and they do that our culture and by our culture, I mean, you know, I'm like carrying the mantle as an American here. But the default culture here is presumed to be white. It's not true. But that is kind of what people say when they're talking about American culture. They're talking specifically about white culture because it's white executives that get to control our media and try to decide like what is supposed to be normal and human here, but they do that with other so-called natural processes to like breastfeeding and childbirth. And they're all these processes that you're like, man, like y'all need to chill.

Saadia Khan
Now, tell me, Ivy, the second season is all about you going on a quest to learn how to hunt. How was that experience? And you did go hunting and you did hunt something that we are not going to disclose here? Can we disclose it here? Or is that a spoiler?

Ivy Le
It is a spoiler, but I don't know what your audience's tolerance for spoilers is.

Saadia Khan
So talk to me about the process. It started off with you just learning about it. Right? It took you a while until you really embark on that actual journey of hunting

Ivy Le
Girl, it was a shit show the entire way. Okay, no matter how chaotic, you think it sounds, listening to the show, know that we had to cut a lot of things out, no matter how bad it sounds, it was worse in real life.

Saadia Khan
In what ways?

Ivy Le
There was a bunch of people who early on give me really bad advice, there was even more bad advice that we ran down. It's a comedy in that we joke a lot. And there are funny moments. But everything that happens is earnest. And it's just funny because the culture clash of me hating the outdoors, like trying to understand these outdoor people and these outdoor people who have never really engaged with an indoor person trying to understand the question. So like, that's where the humor comes in.

So I take people's advice and run it down. So there were even kind of more rabbit holes I had to go down, that never turned out to be true. And the biggest problem here the US with with hunting, the most aggravating and not at all entertaining problem is that all of our land is owned by somebody. None of it is just land like it used to be before colonization, where people just used to understand land as just like a thing that exists and is just like a collective thing that we need to like take care of.

Saadia Khan
It should have collective ownership, right? It used to have collective ownership versus now.

Ivy Le
I don't even know that it was collective ownership, I think it was just like the earth owns itself, right? And like foragers are like this, that they're like, be careful what you forage, take the older ones that have already respawned or take the ones that have fallen off. If you need to take like the seeds, like don't take all of them, don't take it just because you can. Take just what you need. Otherwise, the resource will not be here later.

Or there's even like a nut that indigenous women like used to harvest from these plants. And they, but they did, they didn't harvest them. They're these just field mice or whatever, who would harvest them and then kind of build little caches for them to eat in the winter. And these women would go and like take some of these caches of these rats, but also they would leave something else like cheese or something that they were able to make to offer to the rat in exchange so that the rats that they depended on to collect the seeds like would not die out. And now you can't even be on a sidewalk for very long without somebody calling the police on you.

Saadia Khan
Ivy, talk to me about gatekeeping. You've talked about it extensively, in fact that a lot of white people are okay with sharing a lot of things. But when it comes to hunting, they become gatekeepers. They don't want other people to be part of this hunting group club, whatever you may call it, why do you think that is the case?

Ivy Le
There used to be in North America a much bigger diversity of perspectives on hunting. But basically, everybody who hunts differently than wealthy white landed men from the 1800s and or like British Royals, or whatever was killed or arrested. We have made all these laws that need every other kind of hunting impossible. I don't know if you're watching Naked and Afraid. So people in Naked and Afraid, they really are out in the wild. No clothes, no tools like they they're allowed to bring one thing and it's like really interesting what one item everybody decides, like to bring. Yeah, and they are largely Americans who compete on this American show, you know, and then they drop them in the wilderness. Plus, sometimes in North America, sometimes in other continents. The location is always like a big surprise. One of the reveals in the episode and then what's uniquely challenging about the location is a part of the episode. And a lot of these people they have to learn how to build traps, and in America that's illegal. So a lot of them they just read books about how to do it and they practice building the traps or weaving the traps from grass and branches and things like that, but they've never had a chance to deploy them until they're literally in the middle of the show trying to survive for 28 days in the wild, right?

Indigenous people were getting into armed conflicts over fishing rights on their land here in North America, like in like the 90s, even or like the Dakota pipeline, they're getting into conflicts over like access to water, passing rights to their land, to things like that these kinds of conflicts are still happening, but like one side has a military force. And one side doesn't.

So there used to be a large diversity, immigrants would bring their hunting traditions from their cultures, because to your point, it theoretically being outdoors, the hunting, hiking, cooking, whatever, all of these things should be human and universal. But I'm born in United States, and I always had the assumption like the outdoors is not for me, and I don't like it. I still don't like it. All these outdoor people were like, well, now that you've been outdoors like aren't, don't you think it's amazing? And I'm like, no, I think it's wildly overrated. I am not changing from that perspective. But I am learning more of the historical context of why I get the impression that it is not a space for me.

Saadia Khan
You bring up such an important point. And that's something that I've been thinking about a lot having listened to your podcast and conversations, because as an immigrant, it was not part of my consciousness to see nature as a place in the United States that was not for me, or is not for me. And you could call it being naive or naivety. But I have been really exploring, why not? Why haven't I felt uncomfortable going out in the nature, I also used to live in Denver, Colorado, where I went to all these different national parks, Yellowstone being one of those parks, and I never felt uncomfortable, maybe because I don't have the historical context of how the United States has treated its minorities who ventured into the wilderness, or I don't really understand America's history that well, and a lot of minorities are aware of that. And they have experienced something that I haven't.

Ivy Le
I think what you're saying is your hypothesis is that immigrants don't know the history and American minorities do know. No, American minorities and American majorities do not know the history. It is actively rewritten is actually hidden from us. And it was very hard for me to find it was only because I'm a very curious experienced journalist who is very funny and determined. And I make this promise, this premise of the show that I'm going to go outside or I'm going to die trying that I run into these roadblocks.

And I'm like, this is crazy. Like, I'm from Texas, it should not be this hard for me to go hunting. And just tugging at the strings of why is this such a problem is how I started to find these things out. But it was not easy to find these things out.

Saadia Khan
So how did you start looking for these things? What was the process?

Ivy Le
I just kind of start with my intuition be like, okay, what do I think hunting is. I think hunting is like going out and shooting animals. So I guess I'll go to a gun shop.

Saadia Khan
How easy or difficult was it to get a gun?

Ivy Le
It was much more difficult than I thought the problem was that guns are not really for hunting. That's what I kind of learned is guns really are for the purpose of killing people. Most people who have guns do not have guns are optimized for hunting. Most shops who sell guns do not cater to hunters. And so it would have been easy to just get a pistol I guess, you know, that would have been simple. It would have been in my budget range or whatever, but it wouldn't have been the right tool for hunting and it was not a good resource for your listeners who haven't listened to FOGO if you're going outside on season two, through a series of events, I ended up on a conservative radio station, Second Amendment rights talk show trying to borrow somebody's gun and that's just episode one. Like it escalates from there.

Saadia Khan
But you did end up getting a gun right?

Ivy Le
Ultimately, I found someone who did lend me a gun.

Saadia Khan
And what was it using it for the first time?

Ivy Le
I like shooting. Yeah, I think I think that's something that people go into the range is unpleasant because a lot of tourists come and use these semi automatic weapons and I mean locals too. It's painfully loud even when you're wearing ear protection. But once everything else is gone, it's just you and your gun. Shooting things is fun. Like that's why guns are such a problem is because they're fun. Things that are not problems like drugs. If drugs were not fun to do, like nobody would be doing it. We wouldn't need to have a special campaign or anything you know, to keep people from doing drugs like there's no law against like doing your homework and eating your vegetables like people don't want to do it. It's not a problem.

Saadia Khan
I went to a shooting range once and it was such an unpleasant experience and I have this aversion to guns. I cannot stand guns. I cannot look at guns and I grew up with guns again because my dad, uncles, cousins, everybody has guns back home so maybe that's why I'm so averse to it.

Talk to me about the experience, Ivy, now you have said but despite all of this, you still hate the outdoors. You're not an outdoors person you like the indoors?

Ivy Le
Yeah.

Saadia Khan
But do you think having gone through that experience? Do you see minorities can be part of white outdoors? And feel a sense of belonging? Do you think that's possible? Did you feel that way? At some point?

Ivy Le
No. I think every other outdoor influencer, right who's a person of color, there's always this sense of, but I should belong, like white influences never. Unless they're like queer, like Patagonia, doing drag outdoors, right? They never have to have a series of content being like, this is why I should be out here and why this is why other people like me should be out here too. They never have to do content like that.

But people of color always end up having to do content like that, you know, we can never have an interview where we're not talking about like being a person of color outdoors or seeing a minority outdoors. But my personal opinion, is it no, not really, if I go outdoors and I'm gonna have a good time is because I'm with a bunch of minorities just chilling and relaxing outside, you know?

Saadia Khan
I am going to switch gears a bit and talk about your stand-up comedy and improv you do that as well. How does that feel your creativity in other aspects of your life? One being this exploration of hunting right so you do stand-up comedy you do improv? How does that feed into what you do outside that realm?

Ivy Le
Well FOGO is a comedy.

Saadia Khan
Right?

Ivy Le
I don't really make anything anymore. That's not comedy. When I first started making the pilot episode for season one of FOGO I found out that I was funny because I told a story about sexuality after childbirth at a sex positive storytelling show. And I was at the time having a really hard time getting back into the workforce after having my second child, I was getting interviews, I just wasn't getting a job offer. So I was starting to get really worried I had all these mouths to feed, I was stressed and I was stressing out. And I did the storytelling show. And after the show people came up to me, they didn't say, oh, you should try comedy. They assumed I was already a working comedian and wanted to know where they could get tickets to my next shows. And I was not in a position in my life where I could turn down career ideas. And so I started exploring comedy. And it was in the middle of the process of me trying to develop FOGO, the show. I had already wrapped up the Kickstarter and had been able to fund the Kickstarter to get some camping equipment and sound equipment. But I hadn't started writing the show yet. For about two months, I wrote these scripts to be funny on purpose. And they were absolute trash. I wasted months in production in so many drafts trying to write it like that. And I said no, when I wrote that story, I did not intend it to be funny, necessarily. I just use humor, like a lot of people to just give some room back into the air so that we can continue talking about the things that need to be talked about: sexuality after childbirth, kind of that that journey of coming back into your body is not always pleasant to hear, right? But it helps to tell jokes along the way and kind of have a sense of humor about it and helps to bear it.

Saadia Khan
Right.

Ivy Le
So I scrapped all these drafts, I said, stop trying so hard to be a comedian. I've actually more funny when I just try to tell the truth as precisely and faithfully as I can.

Saadia Khan
So Ivy, would it be fair to say that you like to tackle difficult issues through comedy, because comedy makes things more palatable for the audience?

Ivy Le
I don't know that I like to tackle difficult issues, I just try to tell the truth as precisely and faithfully as I can. And some of those truths are about, quote-unquote, difficult and important issues. And some of them are you know about my tits.

Saadia Khan
I get that. But what I'm trying to say is that the conversations that you have having those lived experiences, some of them are difficult, as you said, because of the environment that we are living in the environment.

Ivy Le
But that's a story about my oppressor. My oppression doesn't say anything about who I am intrinsically, my oppression is a story that my oppressor needs to unravel. So it is their difficult topics and it is their difficult problems. I am just living. And I think sometimes things that I say they sound more difficult than they are. And they sound more important than they should be. Because we have just not allowed Asian women to just be human before. Look, I'm mischievous. I sometimes am trying to provoke a reaction, because it's funny, right? Sometimes I am because because I'm a mischievous person. But a lot of times the most controversial the most like, oh my gosh, she really said that stuff that people react to is not me trying to be that at all. Not even remotely. It's just me saying some offhand thing that I'm like, oh, I mean, that just happened, you know? Because it's the truth. And I'm just being me, and I'm just chilling, but we just have never seen an Asian woman being fully human before and not without having to package herself for the consumption of people who are white.

I don't go out of my way in FOGO to make myself understandable to people outside of my subcultures. And that's really fun for queer people to listen to. It's really fun for women and minorities, you know, and Asian people to listen to. And I don't bother to explain because they have their own shows like if they don't understand they can Google it, if they don't understand and they don't care, then go watch something else. The show is not for them.

But because I have been so faithful to my voice and not codeswitching to try to cater to this other audience that has plenty. that has enough, they actually find it more interesting. And so am I tackling difficult issues through comedy. No, no, it's difficult for other people, because they've never heard a Asian woman be human before. And that's not really my problem.

Saadia Khan
So you're basically having conversations about your lived experiences, and whatever people take away from it, how they see it, it's not your problem, right?

Ivy Le
Like I'm just chilling, right? I am like taking up space, because I'm human, and I live on this planet. And you're right, the context I live in, it makes being an Asian woman taking up space. It just makes that like inherently political, like people will politicize it no matter what I do or say.

Saadia Khan
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what I was going to say. Because a lot of times, we become political because of who we are and how we exist within the American social discourse.

It has nothing to do with our conversations or our lived experiences. If I were living in Pakistan, I wouldn't be as political right? Because my circumstances would be very, very different. But having lived in the US or living in the US, when everything is politicized around Muslim identity and being a Muslim woman of color, or coming from Pakistan, having an accent being an immigrant, and every time I say something, it is politicized. And that's how people see it. Sometimes they are enamored by it. Sometimes they are offended because they've not had that perspective before. It's interesting once, somebody even asked me as an immigrant, why are you so vocal? A lot of immigrants don't do that.

And that, to me speaks volumes about how people perceive immigrants, especially immigrants of color. I'm not talking about white immigrants from Germany, but immigrants of color, right? So that's where things are, and you're right. Our lived experiences become political tools for people to use or weaponized sometimes although, we are just living our lives.

Ivy, talk to me about the future of FOGO. Do you have any interesting plans? Are we going to see Season Three? And what are you hoping to explore in that?

Ivy Le
I am hoping that guys get us a season three. It will not be with Spotify. Spotify has not renewed for Season Three. And then actually they have laid off a lot of their podcast teams. I'm sure you saw the news is you're a podcaster too. So my heart goes out to all those folks who got laid off.

But we are gonna keep shopping around when it but really, you know, FOGO is supposed to be a television show. So hopefully Hollywood gets together as producers come to these tables and make deals and make fair deals with everybody that all the creatives that make these great shows possible. And hopefully we can be you know, back in the game trying to make FOGO a television show soon.

Saadia Khan
That is a wonderful idea. That's the kind of show that I would love to watch.

Ivy Le
I hope so. And I think a lot of you will would love to watch it. You know, I just had to it's just so much more expensive to make a television show. And that I had to make it a podcast first. So I could actually like, explain what it is right? If you have friends in Denver, I'm thinking about going to Denver this fall and doing a live show version of FOGO.

Saadia Khan
Oh my gosh, I could connect you with a lot of Pakistani friends in Denver, if you would like?

Ivy Le
Yeah, that will be awesome.

Saadia Khan
And I'm pretty sure they are not outdoorsy either. So it would be an interesting conversation to have from a culture which is a bit different, but similar in many ways.

Ivy Le
Perfect.

Saadia Khan
Ivy, tell me how you would define America in a word or a sentence.

Ivy Le
America is like an idea. It's an idea that when people say I'm an American, it doesn't matter that you were born here or not. Right?

It's that we all decide to agree on this idea that all people are created equal in whatever you want to make or be, you can try. And it's like not a big deal if you fail. Americans don't care if you fail. We don't have the shame of bankruptcy. We don't have the shame of like trying really hard and falling back and falling down what what Americans care about is that you get back up. If our athletes stay down to get the flag, maybe we could get the extra point or something eventually, but we would have no fans because that's just what it means to be an American. You take the shot and we don't judge each other for taking the shot. We don't think you're arrogant for taking the shot. And we don't think you're bad for missing it. Everybody is just always taking shots. But we always get back up.

Saadia Khan
I like that. Where can people find your podcast?

Ivy Le
You can find it anywhere, anywhere you listen to podcasts. Yes, it's www.fogopodcast.com. And you can also find me at @IvyLeWithOneE that whole phrase spelled out actually, on any social media platform pretty much everywhere.

Saadia Khan
Thank you, Ivy. This was wonderful.

Ivy Le

I hope I didn't offend you. I was like, girl, don't politicize me. You're one of me [laughing]

Saadia Khan
No, this was wonderful. I enjoyed it. The interesting thing about this interview was the pushback that I was getting for talking about the politics of it all. And I really started enjoyed it.

Ivy Le
Okay, good, good, good. Yeah, it's a comedy. Go listen to it and share with all your friends.

Saadia Khan

So how was this conversation?

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting a pushback from Ivy. But you know what, it was interesting. And it was fun. And I got to learn something.

Here's what I learned. Sometimes, people just don't want to be teachers and educators for the dominant population. It is taxing. It is tiring. It does impact our mental health. It's important for the dominant population to bear the burdenm to have the onus of learning from us through our experiences through our living. Yeah. So hopefully, our next podcast will try to do that a little bit more.

This episode was produced by me, Saadia Khan, written by Shei Yu and me. Our editorial review was done by Shei Yu, our editor is Haziq Ahmad Farid and this incredible theme music for Immigrantly is done by Simon Hutchinson. Don't forget to follow us on our socials, our instagram @Immigrantlypod, on Twitter @Immigrantly_pod, our TikTok @Immigrantlypodcast, and we have a website where you can find all of this information consolidated in one place www.immigrantly pod.com to come back next time for another incredible conversation. Take care.