New York City's Chinatown is arguably one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world—and perhaps one of the most storied, too. Ava Chin, whose memoir, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming, came out this spring, chats with Lale about the apartment building that housed four generations of her family, and the journey a l ... Show More
Sep 2025
Tracee Ellis Ross Loves Seeing the World Solo
Repeat: Tracee Ellis Ross’ earliest memories involved traveling the world with her mother, Diana Ross, but it was at the age of 22 that she discovered what solo travel could give her. This episode, Lale sits down with Tracee to discuss how solo travel can be an act of radical sel ... Show More
27m 59s
Jun 2023
A Family History in Chinatown
In seeking to learn more about her family history, author Ava Chin was able to trace many of her relatives back to one building on Mott Street in Chinatown. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to present day, Chin traces the history of her family, and the Chinese community in America, ... Show More
16m 52s
Dec 2020
Would You Move Back Home? Could You?
For more than a decade now, NYM Editor-at-Large Stella Bugbee has lived with her parents, and raised a family in the home she grew up in. But for a long time, she kept that a secret, perhaps because it's so stigmatized in American culture. But the percentage of people living mult ... Show More
22m 15s
Oct 2021
Elizabeth Lacouture, "Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860-1960" (Columbia UP, 2021)
To call the hundred years that straddle the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries as a radical period of change for China is an understatement, moving from the Imperial period, through the Republican era, and ending in the rise of the PRC.
Dr. Elizabeth LaCouture’s Dwelling in the ... Show More
37m 9s
May 2021
Journey to the West: The Tang Monk Pt. 1
In China during the Tang dynasty, a humble monk named Xuanzang had a great destiny. His life and travels would be mythologized in the hugely popular novel Xiyouji, known in English as Journey to the West. In today’s story, Xuanzang learns where he came from, and risks death to re ... Show More
51m 25s
Sep 2023
Inside NYFW: Vogue’s Virginia Smith Recaps The Runway | PLUS Model and Activist Bethann Hardison
<p>Vogue’s Virginia Smith pops into the podcast studio to fill us in on her New York Fashion Week highlights. Then Chloe and Chioma talk to Bethann Hardison–the 80 year-old trailblazing model, activist, and co-director of the film, “Invisible Beauty,” which tells the story of her ... Show More
36m 13s