Fast banter, Asian American nerves, real warmth.
Asian Not Asian is a loose, sharp comedy hang built around Asian American identity, daily indignities, and the business of being funny. Mike Nguyen, Jenny Arimoto, and guests move from car-pod chaos to live-show crowd work without sanding off the awkward parts.
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Asian Not Asian is a fast, affectionate comedy show about Asian American life as it actually gets talked about among friends: half confession, half roast, and usually interrupted by a practical announcement. It has a hangout shape, but not a lazy one. Mike Nguyen and Jenny Arimoto keep the rhythm moving through quick corrections, side comments, and little pivots that make ordinary stories feel staged without sounding rehearsed. A wedding becomes a taxonomy of Asian social types. A dad’s visit becomes filial piety material. A night out becomes a referendum on age, parenting, clubs, comedy, and the strange confidence required to leave the house. The show is especially good at finding the comic pressure inside responsibility. Kids, parents, partners, work, sketches, live shows, and venue calendars all crowd the frame. That crowdedness is part of the point. The podcast often sounds like people trying to finish a thought before life needs the room back. Its farewell episodes add another layer, because the looseness starts carrying history: Hack City dates, Littlefield memories, UCB reflections, Patreon experiments, and the awkward mechanics of ending something that still has fans and friends attached to it. The mood can get sentimental, then immediately undercut itself with a joke about pants, email, or someone standing too close to the car window. Guests slide into that pattern rather than turning the show into a formal interview. A guest, for example, is brought into a rolling conversation where status matters less than timing and mutual teasing. Live episodes widen the room, using crowd categories, comedy-scene shout-outs, and reunion energy as raw material. The show’s identity lens is specific, but its comic engine is broader: family obligation, professional uncertainty, aging into responsibility, and the weird ways people perform competence in public. It is blunt without becoming mean. It is messy without losing its warmth. Asian Not Asian works best for listeners who want comedy that feels social, quick, and lived-in, with Asian American references treated as home base rather than homework.
Made for: For listeners who like conversational comedy about Asian American family codes, New York comedy life, parenting, friendship, and aging into responsibility. It especially suits people who enjoy loose banter with real emotional history underneath.
What sets it apart: Asian Not Asian stands apart by making identity comedy feel like a roomful of friends catching up, not a prepared essay. Its live-show ecosystem, Hack City references, farewell arc, and rapid chemistry give the show a scrappy scene-built texture.
Welcome to Asian Not Asian, a podcast where two Asian peeps not from Asia talk about American issues no American cares about. New episode every other Tuesday!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Mike Nguyen and Jenny Arimoto make Asian American adulthood funny through sharp rapport, candid guest conversations and close attention to family life.
Asian Not Asian turns marriage, parenting, family obligation and comedy work into conversational setups that can pivot from a joke to genuine uncertainty.
The kid-planning spreadsheet gives way to Minesweeper; suddenly your uncertainty has a desktop icon.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Mike Nguyen turns lunch, Andrew Yang's uncle energy and a hypothetical retribution fart into a loose solo comedy experiment.
Mike Nguyen treats a surprise feed announcement as a lunchtime dare: no guests, preparation or editing, just a host finding out how long he can talk. Between updates on the Patreon-only series, Real Asian Chips and Hack City, he remembers meeting Andrew Yang.
A car-bound farewell finds real feeling beneath the jokes about friendship, UCB, and moving on.
The final episode makes a car pod feel like a last lap, with Mike Nguyen and Jenny Arimoto riffing on a millennial dad outside the window before letting the conversation settle into what is ending.
A loose, warm episode about filial piety, biracial belonging, and the week’s most complicated kind of Asian.
Asian Not Asian frames the episode around a simple running bit: what kind of Asian were the hosts this week? The answers bounce from deleting TikTok but keeping the account, to a practical Sunday wedding in San Juan Capistrano, to a father’s sudden change of plans that turns an…
A candid comedy conversation where motherhood, career nerves, and the relief of a night away all share the punchline.
Mike's conversation with Alice settles into a candid, funny look at comedy, parenthood, and the strange relief of leaving the kids behind for a show.
A loose, uneasy comedy conversation where marriage, Minesweeper, and public grief end up in the same room.
Marriage comes in as the family template the guest says he never really had. With divorce all around him, he can believe good marriages are possible while still doubting one is meant for him.
A chocolate-cake detour leads into a funny, candid talk about creative power, Excel, and life behind the camera.
Sola Alweli arrives late, having forgotten the recording, and turns up with half of an enormous chocolate cake, which gives the episode an easy comic spark before it settles into a more revealing career conversation.
Creative work, personal stories and affectionate interruptions.
Peter Sagal leads NPR's live news quiz, pairing celebrity guests with listener call-in games.
A stranger calls. Chris Gethard listens. Anything can surface.
Sohla El-Waylly describes cooking as the product of reading, testing techniques, and "practice hours and hours," not a flash of instinct.
Host Mike Nguyen is joined by guest Mike Cabellon for a wide-ranging conversation.
Mike Nguyen introduces a special episode with guest Delia Cai from Vanity Fair, discussing Asian American experiences and promoting a live event.
The hosts of Asian Not Asian podcast introduce a new year episode with a preview of upcoming content and a reminder about their live comedy show, before transitioning to a discussion about modern career paths.
The hosts of the Asian Glow Up podcast chat with Jojo Kim about tattoos for Asians, dab, and the line between comedy and lies.
Mike Nguyen opens “Asian Month is Canceled” by asking whether Asian American visibility has produced enough new public figures.
Host Mike Nguyen opens this solo Patreon-sourced episode of Asian Not Asian by describing a caffeine-and-sugar-crash recording on a Thursday lunch break during Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Mike Nguyen opens with a “jump scare to your podcast feeds,” then says Asian Not Asian is not back and points listeners to a Patreon-only limited series called Lunchtime with Mike Nguyen.
Mike Nguyen and Jenny Arimoto open the final Asian Non-Asian episode by saying they are recording a “car pod” and that the show is ending after roughly 320 episodes and seven years.
The hosts of the Asian Not Asian podcast introduce a special guest and discuss the chaotic energy of their final shows, including a live comedy event.
The hosts of the Asian Not Asian podcast discuss their recent live show and the New York Comedy Festival.
A live podcast recording where the hosts interact with the audience and give shout-outs to different Asian professional groups.
Alex Sujong Laughlin says her father called because he was sick and needed to stay at her house for five days.
Alice Chan says a Scholastic book told her, at age 10, that funny kids make friends.
Ronny Chieng joins the Asian Not Asian podcast to discuss his stand-up career and promote Hack City comedy show.
Jenny Arimoto introduces a girls episode of the Asian Non-Asian Podcast with guest Maya Deshmukh, discussing parenting during late stage capitalism.