Ronny Chieng (performing a bit)
speaker
1,179 appearances
40 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Ronny Chieng (performing a bit)’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
wrestling, proving that Asians can roll around without balls in someone's face just like everyone else. But let's move on to my personal favorite sport, basketball. The first non-white player of any race in NBA history was Japanese-American Wataru Misaka. In 1947, he was the first draft pick of the New York Knicks, and they even promoted his skills to sell tickets.
But shocker, he faced a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment and only ended up playing three games. It was so bad, he decided to go back to school to get his engineering degree, which I respect. He was basically like, oh, you don't like me being Asian? Well, I'm gonna be extra Asian now, bitches. But sports isn't just about the athletes.
There's so many other people who've made history without destroying their joints. People like Kim Ng, who became the general manager of the Miami Marlins, making her the first female GM in any major American men's league. She worked her way up the ladder, facing racism and sexism. It's the surf and turf of discrimination. So now you know. There's been so many unsung Asian sports heroes in history.
Don't bother thanking me. My meager teacher salary is thanks enough. And yes, this is all gonna be on the final. All right, all right, settle down, everyone, because today we're learning about something that's blowing up all over the world. No, not climate change, okay? I don't teach boring stuff in this classroom. I'm talking about K-pop.
It's why your cousin suddenly speaks Korean more fluently than English. And believe it or not, K-pop used to be something that only Koreans knew about. The rest of the world wasn't always into it. Like how there was a time when white people didn't know about yoga. The first group to really break through internationally was the Kim sisters.
Sukja, Eja, and Minja started singing as children during the Korean War for American GIs. They sang, they danced, and they played 20 instruments. I can't even name 20 instruments. Saxophone, In 1959, they got a contract to perform in Vegas. Ed Sullivan was taping a show there and they managed to book a performance on the show. There was such a hit, they got asked back 20 more times.
Do you know how great you have to be to get asked back to anything 20 times? I don't even get invited to join LinkedIn that much. Unfortunately, the growth of K-pop hit a bump in the road soon after, when South Korea fell under the dictatorship of President Park Chung-hee, who started banning music. They even created blacklists of songs that radio stations couldn't play.
Everyone's end-of-year Spotify summary just said, your most played song was the national anthem. But Korean artists kept making music that challenged the status quo, like folk singer Han Dae-su, whose albums were banned for anti-government messaging. Or rock guitarist Shin Jong-hyun, who, the story goes, defied the dictator's request to write a song in his honor.
And let's face it, wanting a song to be written about you is classic dictator behavior. Right after military parades and having a weird haircut, everyone tells you looks great. By the 80s, the dictatorship had loosened. And by loosened, I mean the dictator was assassinated. But whatever, it made listening to the radio fun again.
Outside music was allowed back in the country, and two of the most influential genres became hip-hop and R&B. Black artists from Michael Jackson to run DNC reshaped the musical landscape of South Korea. It inspired performers like Deuce, DJ DOC, and Sir Taegi and Boyz, who are the earliest examples of K-pop as we know it today.
They even made it into the movie soundtrack for Three Ninjas Kick Back. You didn't think we'd be watching a movie in class today, did you? Yeah, well, I didn't think I'd still have a hangover. But sometimes life surprises you. This was a big moment for Korean pop music, even if the song was being played over a scene set in Japan. But give them a break, okay?
They're the three ninjas, not the three cultural sensitivity experts. The next big step towards today's K-pop was in the 1990s, when major music studios started putting performers together in boy and girl bands. That's right, Korea was doing that long before Simon Cowell's nips ever started poking through his T-shirts. That's a no from me, dawg.
It's no surprise this new wave of K-pop blew up around the world. It featured complex melodies unlike any other pop music and always had next level dance choreography. To this day, those remain the signature elements of K-pop. That and being Asian. Very important requirement.
This new generation of K-pop stars became so successful, the government started to take notice and soon launched a program to promote Korean music around the globe. They saw K-pop as a way to boost Korea's cultural strength and economy without having to do a squid game. But one of the biggest K-pop sensations was a surprise no government could predict.
I'm sorry, I know it took you 10 years to get this out of your head, but we gotta talk about it. Gangnam Style was the first video to break a billion views on YouTube. It was so popular, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised the song, saying the arts was the path to cultural understanding. He said that about Gangnam Style.
That's like if they played Baby Shark during a war and all the soldiers started laying down their weapons and hugging each other. Since then, the rest of the world is more into K-pop than ever before. From girl groups like Girls' Generation and Blackpink, to artists like CL. But let's get to the group you've been waiting for. The reason you all enrolled in this class in the first place.
BT mother ass. Three letters so important, the rest of the alphabet doesn't even exist anymore. They've dominated the charts. They've generated billions in revenue. They made it okay to eat butter again. They even increased tourism to South Korea. I mean, I'm glad my fans aren't that devoted, because then they'd have to travel to Australia, which, trust me, you don't wanna do that.
BTS is without a doubt the biggest group in the world. You can tell by their fans. The BTS Army is the second largest military after the US, and they've drawn zero weddings. BTS might be on hiatus, but there's so much new K-pop we can enjoy while they're gone. And now you know how I got to where it is today. Oppa Gangnam Style. Oh, now it's in my head. Get it out. Hello class, thanks for coming.
Although you really had no choice, since if you don't come to school in America, your parents get arrested. Today, we're gonna learn about some of the great Asian veterans in US history, because Asians have served in the US military for almost as long as America has fought in wars, which is basically the whole time.
America loves war so much it wants to have its babies and then send those babies to go fight in the next war. Anyway, first up is Augustine Feliciano, who fought in the War of 1812, which happened in... Let's see here. Let's see here. The teacher's guide doesn't actually say, so nice going, morons. Feliciano was the first Filipino to serve in the US Navy.
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