This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:16] Tonya Pinkins: Hi. It is December 11th. By the time you hear this, it'll probably be February. And my name is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:29] Tonya Pinkins: I spent two months of the pandemic. Wow, my lips, my mouth, it's a mess today. But I spent two months of my pandemic in Seoul, Korea. And I went there to edit my film, Red Pill. And one of the people that I met there is my guest today. He is a fascinating man, even though I only spent one day with him. He gave me so much material, and he's just fascinating from just the six, seven hours I spent with him, and I wanted to share this brilliant mind with you guys. So join me in welcoming Paul Matthews, or I was introduced to him as Paul Ajoshi.

[1:07] Paul Matthews: Yes, that's right. That's my nickname.

[1:10] Tonya Pinkins: That's his nickname. And he lives in Korea, and you can hear that accent is not Korean. Where are you from, Paul?

[1:16] Paul Matthews: I'm originally from the UK, from a town called Abingdon near Oxford, but I've been in Korea for the past 20 years. So my home is here in Seoul.

[1:27] Tonya Pinkins: And you make theater in Korea, among other things.

[1:31] Paul Matthews: I do. That's my main job. I have other side jobs of translating and broadcasting and other bits and pieces, but yeah, my main passion is making theater, especially theater for young people, for children.

[1:43] Tonya Pinkins: Talk to us about that. This is the Broadway Podcast Network. How do you go from the UK to England and start making theater in a country where you don't even speak the language?

[1:52] Paul Matthews: Well, it happens by accident, is the easy answer. Just over 20 years ago, I was at university, Middlesex University in London, and I met a directing student. Her name was Gina Lee, and she was studying at the same university, and she invited me to be part of her finishing project, which was a Korean play being performed for just two days in London. So I did that and had fun. And then a year later, she got back in touch and said, I want to do the show again. We're gonna do a month in London and I'll pay you, or do a month in London and then do a month in Seoul, and I won't pay you, but I'll pay your flights and your expenses, your food accommodation. And as a 22-year-old guy wanting to see the world, I was like, okay, I'll go to Seoul.

[2:43] Paul Matthews: So yes, I ended up performing in Seoul for a month. I was there for about a month and a half, and I met a girl who was working on the show, and I fell in love, and then I got trapped here.

[2:59] Tonya Pinkins: Your wife must not be home.

[3:01] Paul Matthews: She's sleeping in the other room right now. It's fine. She knows. Yeah, so it was I had no plans to come to Korea. I didn't really know much about Korea at all. I'd lived in Japan before; I went to high school there. And so I thought, oh, Korea's gonna be like Japan, but it's not. It's a completely different kettle of fish.

[3:20] Paul Matthews: And I was lucky enough that once I was here, I got to be in the first ever Korean cast of the Rocky Horror Show. I was the first ever Riffraff. And then one of the best things that's ever happened to me is that I met a man named Roger Rind, and he was artistic director of Lat Children's Theatre, and I ended up auditioning for him in 2002. I joined the company at the start of 2003. And I stayed with them first as an actor and then as a writer and director until the company unfortunately closed in 2015. So I spent a long time making theatre for children with that company.

[4:03] Paul Matthews: And then set up my own company with my colleagues called Jambox Theatre. And we're a small company; we don't have a lot of money, but we're making the shows that we want to make and hopefully bringing art to young people.

[4:18] Tonya Pinkins: Now, are you making shows for Americans in Korea, for Koreans in Korea, for everybody?

[4:24] Paul Matthews: It's for everybody, but of course, our target market is Korean children in Korea. We have children from all over the world if they happen to be here coming to see us. And the shows that we do, some shows are completely Korean, some shows are bilingual. Some shows have an English educational little bit of content. But yeah, the market is for the kids who live here. And also, I think it's not just about the language; it's sometimes it's a chance for them to see a foreign face up close and to realize that, you know, you and I and everyone, we're all people, and we're all the same. So if they see a big hairy white man, they're not scared anymore. They might laugh and have fun with him.

[5:06] Paul Matthews: I definitely feel like the theater is this place where people can have experiences with people that they don't see in their daily life and get that sort of familiarity.

[5:16] Tonya Pinkins: How'd you end up in school in Japan, high school?

[5:19] Paul Matthews: That was to do with my father's work. My father, he's semi-retired now, but he's a material physicist, and he worked for the UK Atomic Energy Authority for a long time, and that took him all over the world, and he ended up doing a lot of work in Japan, and he was going there, you know, pretty much every month for a couple of weeks. And we had the family discussion. Would we rather have our father back and forth and seeing him not at all, or how about we all move to Japan?

[5:49] Paul Matthews: So at the age of 16, I headed off with my whole family, apart from my older brother who went off to university, and ended up going to an international high school in Yokohama for two years, and my parents were there for five years and had the most amazing time living in another country for the first time in my life.

[6:10] Tonya Pinkins: Did you pick up the language?

[6:11] Paul Matthews: Not at all. I learnt a few words, but I was studying for university, and so I was learning French. So at school, I was focusing on very high-level French. So the Japanese I learned were things like, you know, turn left, turn right for the taxi, or how to order a beer.

[6:30] Tonya Pinkins: And now, after 20 years in Korea, though you can speak Korean?

[6:35] Paul Matthews: Yes, I'm not perfect. I wouldn't say I'm perfectly fluent, but I work in Korean, I live in Korean, you know, I get around in Korean, and I've got more to learn, but I'm very happy to be able to speak Korean in Korea because I think if you, that's one thing I regret about my time in Japan, being 16 and not really thinking about it, that when you're in a country and you speak the language, the country opens up to you.

[7:03] Tonya Pinkins: In what way? Tell us about that.

[7:08] Paul Matthews: Well, because then you can start to understand and start to communicate and start to appreciate all the different aspects of the culture to be able to talk to someone and not to have to rely on English to be able to talk to them in their own language and start to understand that the way that people use language is so different.

[7:36] Paul Matthews: And some of them, you know, they're just two characters, like Kan Nam or Sokchou or so on, but they often come from Chinese characters and they often have a deeper meaning. So if you don't speak Korean on the surface, oh, it's just the name of a subway station. But when you actually understand what that name means, suddenly you start to dive into the history of the area or the culture of the area, and you discover that, you know, like every country, there is so much depth. You can dig right down and discover, well, it's a whole new world.

[8:12] Tonya Pinkins: Now, when we got on with me, you know, America just had its largest COVID death day, over 3,000, like almost 3,200 people died yesterday. And my daughter's a COVID tracker, and she tells me that right now, every 30 seconds someone is dying. You said, oh my god, COVID is up in Korea now. What does that mean in Korea?

[8:34] Paul Matthews: Well, we've had generally a good time during the pandemic compared to a lot of other countries. When it first started, apart from China, Korea, I think was the next country to really have a big wave. We had a wave in Daegu and the city got shut down, and everyone was saying, oh, look at Korea, you know, they're gonna be in terrible states. And then the government sorted it out, and up until a few weeks ago, we'd had good days and bad days, but on average we were getting something like 30, 40, 50 cases a day. Very low numbers.

[9:08] Paul Matthews: Oh, that's a wave, 30, 40, 50. We're getting like a million cases a day.

[9:14] Tonya Pinkins: I know, I know.

[9:14] Paul Matthews: So it's ridiculous for me to be worried about anything here in Korea when I look at the UK or the US. But at the same time, I'm in my own little bubble, so I do. But recently, the past few weeks, cases have gone up to 600, and the figures will come out at 9:30 this morning, but I've already seen one news reporter on Facebook saying that the numbers are probably going to be over 800, 900 today, which is the first time for Korea.

[9:42] Tonya Pinkins: And what do they attribute it to?

[9:46] Paul Matthews: We don't know. That's the really worrying thing. We're not quite sure what's happened, but the tracking is so extensive, like it's like this person went into Starbucks and they didn't have a mask on, and this one, you know, we don't have to do that. Now we're getting into numbers where the tracking is not as effective. Because Korea's been used to tracking such low numbers and it's been able to do it so well, but with this sudden spike, it's much harder, I think, to test and trace everyone.

[10:16] Paul Matthews: Um so yeah, there have been clusters, but yeah, it's just we've had this sudden rise, and we're having to deal with it.

[10:22] Tonya Pinkins: So, how are you doing something differently when you're going from a hundred cases a day to eight hundred cases a day? How's that changing your lifestyle?

[10:30] Paul Matthews: Uh well, we have these different tier levels. I think it was a few months ago they but we had uh first of all we had three tiers, and now we've got five tiers.

[10:39] Tonya Pinkins: Oh.

[10:39] Paul Matthews: And at the moment we're at uh tier 2.5, so we could well be going to tier three pretty soon so at tier 2.5 um of course everyone's wearing masks and washing hands that's a standard in Korea uh but now you can only get takeout from cafes okay uh all restaurants and cafes anywhere serving food has to close at nine I think you may be allowed take out after nine but certainly no eating dining um numbers are severely restricted for restaurants uh uh for example I think on the train now uh there are empty seats in between people and um also things like karaoke establishments nightclubs bars they're all closed and that is at 572 deaths in a country of 50 million people yeah that is the behavior in your country yep and um and w I have to say uh we're not the best you look at Australia and New Zealand and Taiwan and they're doing even better but by goodness I'm proud to live in Korea this year.

[11:44] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah you should be there's uh a a wonderful documentary on Amazon about the difference between the way Korea handled it and America called Totally Under Control.

[11:55] Paul Matthews: Yeah well it's I I have to say that it's it's been horrific to wake up to the news every morning um to look at what happens in America to look at what happens in the UK as well because of course that's where my parents are where my my older brother and his wife are at the moment and uh it's really scary to see how incompetently um this has been handled, that it could have gone so differently.

[12:19] Tonya Pinkins: That the steps that Korea and other countries were taking in February and March, if they had been taken all over Europe and all over the states, we'd have people living, people who didn't have to die.

[12:33] Paul Matthews: And that for me is is a total failure of government.

[12:36] Tonya Pinkins: That we're at three.

[12:37] Paul Matthews: I mean, the that the the shocking moment last week, as we're recording this, was when the number of deaths went over the number of deaths of 9-11.

[12:46] Tonya Pinkins: We're having more than a 9-11 every single day in the United States.

[12:50] Paul Matthews: What kind of uh am I allowed to swear on the podcast?

[12:53] Tonya Pinkins: You may swear, it's called You Can't Say That The Show Where You Can.

[12:56] Paul Matthews: Okay, what kind of arsehole do you have to be to allow that to happen?

[13:01] Tonya Pinkins: It didn't have to be this way.

[13:03] Paul Matthews: But you've got when you've got uh someone like Trump in the White House, and dear god please, can we get him out now?

[13:09] Tonya Pinkins: Um I don't know if he's leaving.

[13:11] Paul Matthews: Well, well, I really I'm really looking forward to the day when when we don't have to talk about him anymore.

[13:20] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I think we're gonna be talking about him for a long time because he's the most famous person in the history of fame.

[13:25] Paul Matthews: And I think today another hundred and sixteen legislators signed on to this uh this Supreme Court petition to overturn the voting procedures of other states.

[13:37] Tonya Pinkins: It's so funny.

[13:38] Paul Matthews: I just I find it kind of delicious.

[13:41] Tonya Pinkins: It is, it is.

[13:42] Paul Matthews: There is so much winning going on, and and and I I just I really I really feel sad for the for American democracy right now.

[13:52] Tonya Pinkins: It feels like like half the country really doesn't believe in it anymore.

[13:58] Paul Matthews: It was interesting you say that because I feel like coming to Korea for me was really this um lesson that made me appreciate America in a new way.

[14:07] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[14:08] Paul Matthews: When I was there in Korea, I was really moved by this sense of community that is there in the culture that allows um the Koreans to get control of this virus, that their announcements in public, wear a mask for your neighbors, wear a mask for your communities.

[14:26] Tonya Pinkins: At the same time, I met many Koreans who were very tortured from the oppression of their individuality and you know the expectations of them that they either didn't want to meet or were unable to meet.

[14:42] Paul Matthews: And it made me come back here and feel like, well, maybe the thing that's holding America together is the polarity, that the polls are so strong that it's just holding us together.

[14:53] Tonya Pinkins: Uh yeah, I certainly there is that point, and certainly in America, you can be who you want to be.

[14:59] Paul Matthews: Um, and in Korea, that is not necessarily the case.

[15:02] Tonya Pinkins: And that that is a really a really troubling side of Korea that that is getting talked about more and more.

[15:10] Paul Matthews: But there are young people who are unable to show their true face and to do what they want to do or say what they want to say or wear what they want to wear.

[15:20] Tonya Pinkins: Um, and it's it's an aspect that Korea is gonna have to deal with.

[15:24] Paul Matthews: Um, and in that respect, yeah, that's that there was a wonderful thing about the American freedom, being able to be who you are, to be able to say what you want to say.

[15:34] Tonya Pinkins: Uh, sometimes, in terms of politics, it goes too far.

[15:37] Paul Matthews: Um but I think you're right that that is one as one very positive aspect of America.

[15:44] Tonya Pinkins: Now, when I when I was with you, you were telling me how many books you read, and I first of all, people marvel at how much I can do in a day.

[15:53] Paul Matthews: But I know you have, you know, a theater company, you have a radio show, you have two radio shows, and and as part of that, you review books, and you've read already 350 books this year.

[16:06] Tonya Pinkins: I read one of the books on the list that you gave me, and that was I have a right to destroy myself, which I really loved.

[16:14] Paul Matthews: Uh when do you sleep? When do you eat? When do you meet strangers from another country?

[16:22] Paul Matthews: Look, I'm I'm very lucky in that I don't I don't have an office job. I don't work nine to five.

[16:27] Um and this year especially, uh the theater work has been reduced a lot because of the pandemic.

[16:34] Paul Matthews: I mean, I've I'm lucky that I've been able to create three online theater shows and two offline theater shows.

[16:41] Tonya Pinkins: So in that respect, I've had a good year compared to many other people.

[16:44] Paul Matthews: Um, but in the other work I do, I I end up commuting a lot.

[16:49] Paul Matthews: So if I have voice gigs, uh I may travel to one side of the country, uh one side of the city rather, and that takes two hours, and I have to travel all the way back to the other side another two hours.

[16:59] Tonya Pinkins: So excuse me, I'm stuck on a train.

[17:03] Paul Matthews: Uh give me one second, please.

[17:05] Tonya Pinkins: Absolutely.

[17:05] Paul Matthews: Have a drink, get yourself yourself watered.

[17:09] Paul Matthews: I'm getting emotional about the subway.

[17:11] Paul Matthews: Um yeah, so so I end up having a lot a a lot of commu commuting.

[17:17] Paul Matthews: And uh a couple of years ago, I decided to make a change in my life because when I was commuting, I was looking at my phone, and basically I was looking at social media.

[17:27] Paul Matthews: I was doom scrolling on Twitter, or you know, or I was uh, you know, playing silly little games.

[17:33] Paul Matthews: And I used to be a big reader, and I thought, okay, why don't I just start reading on my phone?

[17:40] Paul Matthews: So I deleted some of the apps and I started downloading books.

[17:44] Paul Matthews: And now most of my reading I do when I'm out of the house.

[17:49] Paul Matthews: Uh when I'm when I'm on a train or I'm on a bus, or when I'm, you know, in a cafe, when I'm allowed in a cafe, um, I'm reading and often reading on my phone.

[17:58] Paul Matthews: I love I love real books. I love paper books, but they're heavy and they're difficult to take with you.

[18:04] Paul Matthews: Uh so yeah, so that's how I'm able to do it.

[18:07] Paul Matthews: Is that it's it's trying to trying to cure my addiction to social media.

[18:13] Tonya Pinkins: But Paul, that's like almost a book a day.

[18:16] Tonya Pinkins: Like how, Paul?

[18:19] Tonya Pinkins: How are you a speed reader?

[18:21] Paul Matthews: No, no, does some books are shorter than others?

[18:23] Tonya Pinkins: And some Oh come on.

[18:25] Paul Matthews: There's some 10-page books.

[18:26] Paul Matthews: You read nothing like, you know, I I have a right to destroy myself is a short book, but I didn't read it in a day.

[18:32] Paul Matthews: Yeah, well, for me, I can read I I have the right to destroy yourself would take me maybe uh two hours.

[18:39] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my god.

[18:41] Paul Matthews: That's just how how I read.

[18:42] Paul Matthews: And I I'm not skipping.

[18:44] Paul Matthews: I just I I read fast and I like to read.

[18:47] Paul Matthews: And it's like wait, okay.

[18:50] Paul Matthews: Think of an athlete.

[18:51] Paul Matthews: Think of um, you know, a I don't know, a sprinter.

[18:55] Paul Matthews: When they start, they're you know, they're doing a hundred meters in twenty seconds.

[18:59] Paul Matthews: And as they get stronger and faster, they can do the 100 meters in 19, 18, 17, 16, you know, down to 10.5 seconds or whatever.

[19:08] Paul Matthews: Um, your brain's like a muscle.

[19:10] Paul Matthews: And reading is like a sport.

[19:12] Paul Matthews: The more you do it, the better you get.

[19:15] Tonya Pinkins: Wow.

[19:16] Tonya Pinkins: So that means you're reading sometimes more than one book in a day.

[19:19] Paul Matthews: Sometimes, but also I read I read anything and everything.

[19:24] Paul Matthews: So I'm reading, I'm reading, you know, classic novels, I'm reading Korean literature, I'm reading graphic novels, I'm reading, I'm reading K-pop romances.

[19:33] Paul Matthews: I'm reading all sorts of stuff.

[19:36] Tonya Pinkins: And why such a wide variety?

[19:38] Paul Matthews: Because I can.

[19:41] Tonya Pinkins: Well, some people who can would be at the pub.

[19:44] Paul Matthews: Yeah, well, um I know, but I think I think also, you know, You are a Brit after all.

[19:52] Paul Matthews: As consumers of culture, we we end up watching a lot of trash.

[19:56] Paul Matthews: So why can't I read trash as well?

[19:59] Paul Matthews: Um because I I think I think there's something valuable to get from every book.

[20:04] Paul Matthews: Um no matter no matter how highly regarded it may be.

[20:08] Paul Matthews: And life would be very boring if all we read was Pulitzer Prize winners.

[20:13] Paul Matthews: It's nice to have a variety of things, especially as a creator myself.

[20:17] Paul Matthews: You know, when I'm tapping into an audience, my audience is not me.

[20:21] Paul Matthews: So if I'm only reading Shakespeare, my audience is gonna be fucking bored.

[20:26] Tonya Pinkins: Now when you talk about your audience, what are you referring to?

[20:29] Paul Matthews: I'm talking about the people who listen to me on the radio. So tell us about your radio show.

[20:35] Paul Matthews: Uh sure, I've um I do three, I've got three different shows I'm on. One is a review show for the radio, where I review radio programs for one channel. Then I have a segment on a show where I talk about Korean literature translated into English. So every week I introduce a book, I do dramatic readings, talk about the translator and the writer, and then I've got a show on EBS, which is sort of the major educational radio channel, where two hours on a Sunday I give good news headlines, and then I introduce a book or two and again do dramatic readings.

[21:11] Tonya Pinkins: Now, this sounds like a job, a career that you invented for yourself. I mean, I can't imagine there was a, you know, we're looking for someone to do dramatic readings and book reviews. Tell us about that.

[21:24] Paul Matthews: Yeah, um, I don't know. I've been very lucky in my broadcasting career where I've fallen into good jobs. So I don't believe it.

[21:34] Tonya Pinkins: No, it's not that simple.

[21:37] Paul Matthews: Okay, yeah, sure. It's not that simple, but that's how it feels like.

[21:40] Tonya Pinkins: All right, but give us the details.

[21:43] Paul Matthews: When I started off with a blog back in the 2007, 2008, back when a lot of people were blogging about Korea. And so I had a blog called Paul Aja Shi, where I would just talk about places I was visiting. I was on tour a lot with theater, so I ended up all over the country and discovering delicious food and interesting places, and I take photos and my blog got a little bit of notice, and that got me my first radio gig to be a guest on one of the shows. And from there, the writer on that show moved to a different station, and she got me to be a guest on the new show that she was working on. And then I did that for a few years, and then again the same thing happened. Another writer I'd met had called me up and said, Do you want to be a guest on this show?

And then from there, the producer said, Well, do you want to audition to be the host? So then I got, I got, well, it's a great gig. I did a show called The Wake Up Crew. I was the co-host of that, but it was 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. live. So I did that for three years.

[22:49] Tonya Pinkins: It was preparing you for this.

[22:53] Paul Matthews: Exactly. And then again, I got contacted by an old writer to say, well, do you want to come back on this show and then do this and then host this show? And then so it's gone, it's gone from there to there. I don't know about other careers, but certainly in theater and in media, people remember the people they like working with. People remember the people who are good, but just being good is not enough. You have to enjoy working with them. Because especially with theater, because normally the pay is shit and the hours are long and it's stressful. And so if you don't get on, why bother? And it's the same in radio that you've got a team, you need to trust the person that you're hiring to come on the show.

You need to know that they'll deliver for you, but also that they're not going to be an arsehole to everyone else. And I think I'm very lucky in that generally I get on with people and I have a good time and I make people laugh and we have fun, and then they say, Well, do you want to do this as well?

[24:02] Tonya Pinkins: Lovely, lovely. So you said you've got a radio show reviewing radio shows. Now, are these things you're reviewing, uh, English or Korean?

[24:15] Paul Matthews: Yes, so that's, but when I went to try to find that book in Korea, I couldn't find an English translation. So you must have some special bookstore you're going to get English translations because you gave me a huge list of movies and books, and I could not find the translation there.

[24:29] Paul Matthews: Um, I often, and I know Amazon is a terrible company, and we shouldn't necessarily buy from them, but I often get ebooks from Amazon. That's one of the easiest ways to do it. I also order online. Um, like I've got three books of poetry, Korean poetry translated into English, will be with me sometime. They're being shipped from the UK. And well, depending on the pandemic, I'll hopefully get them as early Christmas presents, but we'll see.

[24:56] Tonya Pinkins: How do you choose what's next? I mean, is it just, uh, I just finished reading that kind, I wanna, I want to do something else. I want to go to into a different world. I mean, is it a taste thing? Is it an appetite? W is it recommendations? How are you picking what were you going to?

[25:10] Paul Matthews: All of the above. Um, with the radio shows, I plan the books in advance. So those are my workbooks.

[25:17] Tonya Pinkins: How far in advance?

[25:19] Paul Matthews: Uh, we normally have a month in advance set up. So that gives me time to read and to prepare and then search for new books. Um, but when I'm reading for myself, it's as the mood takes me. So I'll be, uh, you know, I'll be scrolling online and I'll see a review for something and I'll impulse buy. Or I'll look at my bookshelf. I've got, you can, you won't be able to see on the podcast, but yeah, you have a room full of books, wall to wall. Yeah, and so I will just see a cover that catches my eye and I'll pick that up and read it. Um, I'm a very simple man. I don't have any big plan, I just go with the flow.

[26:03] Tonya Pinkins: And has that, you know, in terms of what we were talking about culturally, where Koreans aren't allowed so much to be what they are, and you're, I know you're married to a Korean designer, yes?

[26:14] Paul Matthews: Yes.

[26:16] Tonya Pinkins: Um, what's that like in relationship? You know, you've got the freedom of being a white British man, and she's got the constraints of being a Korean woman, and that is definitely a second class thing in that culture. What's that like in relationship?

[26:29] Paul Matthews: Yeah, well, it's, I mean, we're equals in our relationship, but certainly, certainly it's clear that's not the case necessarily outside. Also she's older than me. So in Korean terms, she actually has the highest status.

[26:44] Tonya Pinkins: Ah, the power.

[26:45] Paul Matthews: Um, and actually in relationships in Korea, the wife often has the power.

[26:50] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[26:51] Paul Matthews: Um, but certainly in terms of how, you know, in terms of the patriarchy, in terms of how women are, you know, treated very much second class compared to men, yeah, that's really tough. And she's had some hard experiences, and I've seen her having hard experiences. There, I've, there was one time when we were at a theater company party, and there we were at the Norebang at the singing room, and one of the senior male members was getting handsy. Um, and I was ready to say something, or maybe act in a certain way, and she said no, no, just leave it. Um, but I've seen, yeah, this is gonna be.

[27:22] Tonya Pinkins: No, no, just leave it.

[27:39] Paul Matthews: Yeah.

[27:41] Paul Matthews: Yeah, this is Korea, where sometimes just leaving it is better. I another friend, um, you know, who's part of the Me Too movement here in Korea, uh, she's been ostracized because she spoke out at the sexual harassment she faced by her director. So some actors support her, other actors in the company have ostracized her.

[28:00] Tonya Pinkins: Now, didn't, wasn't there a possible presidential candidate who's in jail for sexual harassment?

[28:07] Paul Matthews: Oh, there's been a fair few. Uh yeah, there's, there's been a couple, and that's the good thing about Korea is that the tide is turning in terms of how people are, well. Um how people, how people view sexual assault and sexual harassment, and how the, uh, the perpetrators are actually now being targeted and now being arrested. Um or committing suicide before they can be arrested.

[28:34] Tonya Pinkins: So let's talk about that because, uh, you know, I felt like I felt there's shame in Korea. We don't have any shame in America.

[28:42] Paul Matthews: There's no shame in America.

[28:44] Tonya Pinkins: When you mean no.

[28:48] Paul Matthews: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and that was part one of my conversation with Paul Matthews, a Joshi, uh, an expat living in Korea. Come back for part two on You Can't SAY THAT!

[29:03] Tonya Pinkins: You was kind. You were smart, you is important, you is dead.

[29:09] Tonya Pinkins: Tonya Pinkins' horror film Red Pill brings African American perspective to progressive movement.

[29:18] Tonya Pinkins: We are a majority in this country.

[29:21] Tonya Pinkins: And we're gonna win the election.

[29:26] Tonya Pinkins: Do you know what the red pill is?

[29:29] Tonya Pinkins: A red pill is someone who infiltrates a group and then destroys them from the inside.

[29:37] Tonya Pinkins: This place is spooky.

[29:39] Tonya Pinkins: Some people like to live dangerously.

[29:41] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, why are you so jumpy tonight?

[29:44] Tonya Pinkins: You know what, guys? I'm gonna go back tomorrow.

[29:48] Tonya Pinkins: Did you hear about the creature woman that attacked a father and son hunting down here?

[29:52] Tonya Pinkins: I don't see the case.

[29:54] Tonya Pinkins: This place creeps me out.

[29:59] Tonya Pinkins: I think we should call the sheriff's office.

[30:16] Tonya Pinkins: The only people missing or dead are brown people.

[30:22] Tonya Pinkins: They're after all of us.

[30:26] Tonya Pinkins: What do we do, Amelia?

[30:28] Tonya Pinkins: We die.

[30:30] Tonya Pinkins: But we take some of them with us.