miseducAsian Podcast
miseducAsian is a podcast created by 3 Asian Americans hoping to add to the growing chorus of story-telling about the richness, complexity and boldness of the Asian American experience. The hosts, Albert, Brian and Tommy, are mid-life, mid-career educators who came of age in the 80’s and 90’s, who share their experiences of the joys and struggles of being Asian in America. They bring friends and colleagues into the conversation to share their stories in a space that is meant to be positive, fun and affirming. We hope to dismantle the prevailing stereotypes of Asian Americans as the docile “model minority” and to tear down the biases of the “perpetual foreigner” by painting the richness of our American experiences. And through all this, we hope to inspire other Asian Americans to share their stories within their own networks as well.
miseducAsian Podcast
Part 1: From Ungradable to Bad Idea with Dinesh Shamdasani
In this two-part series, we speak with Dinesh Shamdasani, CEO and Chief Creative Officer at Bad Idea, an experimental new comic book publisher. Dinesh co-founded Hivemind, an LA-based production company that produced the acclaimed sci-fi series The Expanse for Amazon Studios and The Witcher for Netflix. He also spent 10 years leading the rebirth of Valiant Entertainment, the best-selling comic book publishing house behind the largest, independently owned superhero universe – as the company's CEO and Chief Creative Officer. Under his watch, Valiant released its first-ever feature film: Bloodshot, starring international superstar Vin Diesel.
In Part 1, we chat with Dinesh about:
- his background and family, being Asian in Hong Kong, London, and America, and we compare his experience at USC with Brian's (2:40)
- his love of movies, how he broke into the movie business, and his journey with Valiant Entertainment (21:48)
- Toyo Harada, a villain from The Harbinger series, whose look is based on our very own Brian Lin (40:25)
- why he founded Bad Idea, what he hopes to achieve, and how to preserve and grow the comic book art form (48:20)
