Kirk Honda: How the Psychologist, Professor, and Podcaster Takes on 90 Day Fiancé

Hapa Mag - SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

By Alex Chester

My husband and I have spent way too much time watching TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé and ALL of the spinoff’s. This has become a weekly ritual for us during the pandemic. It’s easy to digest and has given us something else to watch besides the United States crashing and burning.

Usually, I am not into reality TV, yet these past months I have found myself sucked into the lives of Darcey, Rose, Big Ed, and Nicole, to name a few. Perhaps this is because the sci-fi type of shows I usually gravitate toward are hitting too close to home these days. Anyone else feel like we’re living in a Black Mirror episode?

While googling (stalking) the 90 Day cast I happened to stumble upon Kirk Honda and his Psychology in Seattle YouTube channel. I realize I’m probably late to the game on this discovery, but I was super excited to see a psychologist analyzing the couples from 90 Day. Not only does this incredibly insightful channel humanize these folks, but it’s also an educational tool to help us look into our own personal lives and how we handle our traumas and relationships.

Oh, did I mention Dr. Honda is Hapa? I probably let out a squeal of joy when he brought up his own mixed-Asian heritage during one of his episodes. I was thrilled when he agreed to chat with us.

What makes you Hapa? Do you identify with this word?

100% I identify with the word. I’ve been identifying with the word since I learned of it in the ’80s, I believe. I am half-Japanese American and half-European American.

What was it like growing up mixed?

I grew up in an all-white community in Issaquah, Washington. I was definitely the “other” because I didn’t fit in with white people. I was the target of racism and stereotyping, but I didn’t fit in with Japanese people either. I would find more acceptance with any person of color really and definitely with Japanese people more than I would with white people.

A lot of us can really relate to that. When did you decide you wanted to pursue psychology?

I was 24 years old, I had a business degree, and I was working as a marketing research person. I liked my job, but at the age of 24 I saw a whole life of being stressed out ahead of me. I thought, how do I want to spend ⅓ of my life? Work makes up ⅓ of your life, and although I thought I might have some fun being a market researcher, I ultimately didn’t see it as being very meaningful or fulfilling. So, I was sitting in traffic and thought, what could I do that would be meaningful? I thought about being a therapist for the very first time in my life and within a couple years I had a master’s degree and was a therapist.

I chose to work with relationships because it is beautiful to see people connect with each other and express love to one another in my office.

Do you think your mixed perspective plays into how you approach your work, whether as a professor or with clients?

Absolutely. From an early age I was very skeptical of cultural norms because I didn’t have any. There were white cultural norms and there were Japanese cultural norms, but I didn’t fit into either. Both of them were different, and all of them were questionable. As a therapist and as a professor, it’s useful to question cultural norms like racism, heterosexism, homophobia, and sizeism. It’s very easy for me to see the folly of cultural conformity.

You seem very comfortable in front of the camera. Did you have any radio or TV experience prior to your YouTube channel?

No, I’m not comfortable in front of the camera to be completely honest.

Well, you fooled me. Why did you decide to start analyzing couples from 90 Day?

The pandemic hit, and my wife and I said, “Well, what do we watch on TV since we can’t go out and see our friends, or movies or restaurants or do anything?” TV seemed to be the thing to turn to. Everyone was talking about Love is Blind on Netflix and on a lark, I said one night, “Let’s watch this show.” She and I never watch reality TV. I mean, I watched the first season of The Real World in the early ’90s and didn’t watch much reality TV after that. So, we watched this show, and as I was watching it I thought I would make an episode about it on my podcast, but then I thought about all the reaction videos I see on YouTube, and I thought, maybe I’d do that. I thought I’d get a little bit of attention for it, but not nearly as much as I did. The people that were watching kept mentioning this other TV show. “Oh, you gotta do 90 Day Fiancé!” That’s when it all started.

Do you have a favorite couple or season?

Well, I’ve only really seen about one and a half seasons, so I can’t really say which season is my favorite, but my favorite couple… that’s an interesting question. The magic of that show is that they seem to pick these extremely compelling couples, compared to other reality TV shows. I will say that I spent a lot of time with Darcey and Jesse because people immediately asked me to make reaction videos to them. So I went all the way back to the beginning, and although they are a very troubled couple, they provided a lot of opportunity for my commentary, and I got to know them. That’s part of doing this whole thing. I feel like I know these people.

Have you actually heard from any of the people from 90 Day?

Yeah, they’ll reach out to me sometimes, and we’ll chat, which is always mortifying, because I’m like, “What did I say?”

My husband wants me to ask you about your feelings on Frasier from a clinical point of view? Does the industry embrace that character?

It’s funny because being born and raised in Seattle, things that are associated with Seattle, I don’t necessarily associate with Seattle. I don’t associate Frasier with Seattle because Frasier wasn’t shot in Seattle. There was just a big matte painting behind the studio in Burbank or something that showed the Space Needle. It’s always interesting to me that people associate me with Frasier. Frasier’s awesome, ya know? I grew up with Cheers and probably saw the first episode live when he was introduced on the show, and I followed him on to Frasier. I really love the show. I plan on doing reaction videos to him one day.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: AFTER OUR INTERVIEW, DR. HONDA DID A FRASIER VIDEO.)

Do you plan on covering the Darcey and Stacey spin-off?

I don’t know. There’s so much material, and I have only so much time. A show has to provide scenes that give me the ability to comment on the conflict and intimacy. If it’s just them going shopping... It has to lend itself to my style of commentary.

You’d probably be surprised that people would be happy to view that as well.

Do you think being a couples therapist has helped your marriage?

Absolutely, it makes me the best husband in the world. Just ask me! In all seriousness, yeah. Helping people all day long with their conflict and intimacy, and the nature of my work definitely gives me the opportunity to be healthier than I would be otherwise. Whether or not I have the maturity to act out those higher-minded ways of thinking is debatable, but I think it definitely helps.

You’ve said that we can’t possibly trust someone when we first meet them because we don’t know enough about them… but what about intuition? Do you believe that upon first sight or superficial conversation you can intuit that someone is trustworthy or not, just by looking at their face, sensing their energy?

Good question. There’s a lot of things I’ll say. One is that we absolutely have what one would call intuition, which is the ability to pick up on nonverbal cues that we might not register consciously, and those cues can show indicators of trustworthiness. The other thing I’ll say is that we can’t always rely on that because we have implicit bias. Studies show that people will have negative implicit bias against Black people. So if you just went on your “intuition” then Black people will get the short end of the stick when it comes to first impression, trustworthiness measurements. We also carry with us a history of experiences with other people and our own set of associations. If, for example, we’ve had a lot of bad experiences with short people, and we come across a short person, then our “intuition” will fire off some red flags when it’s not fair to do that. Intuition can be a guide, but we have to be very careful with it.

For all of the crazy cat people out there, what’s your cat’s name?

Well, we got a new cat, but my old cat is Michelle, and my new cat is Azula.

What’s next for you? Anything you are excited to cover coming up on your YouTube channel and or podcast?

I have such a long list of things I want to get to. My current obsession is loneliness for obvious reasons (the pandemic), but throughout my 12 years of being a podcaster, I’ve also gotten a lot of desperate emails from people about loneliness, various different manifestations of loneliness: social anxiety, not finding the right soul mate, feeling like no one will ever like you, working too much. You could be in a happy marriage, have three kids, and still feel lonely. I’ve tried to answer the questions. I would try to help in my non-clinical way over email, but I never felt like I could really get a grasp on what was happening with these people. So I decided to look into 25 different aspects of loneliness and I’m on the third aspect on my list. That’s my current big topic that I’m trying to tackle.

I definitely look forward to listening and watching about that. I know many other people will as well. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I love what you guys are doing. I get a lot of emails from Hapa or mixed people and they feel similarly to the way I’ve always felt, which is, where is our voice? Where are our people? In fact, just last month I started keeping a doc of all the prominent mixed-race people, because whenever I find out someone is mixed, like Keanu Reeves or Bruno Mars, our Asian mixedness gets completely ignored. Most people, from my understanding, consider Bruno Mars to be a Black guy. Same with Tiger Woods, even though he is more Asian than he is Black. So whenever I find someone, I go, “Ah, more of us!” I wanted to make a list that I can cart out every once in a while and say, “Did you know all these people are part Asian?”

I love that. We’re also focused on similarly highlighting and sharing the mixed-Asian experience. Thank you so much for your time today and for sharing with our readers.

Kirk Honda is a professor at Antioch University in Seattle. He holds a doctorate in psychology and specializes in couples/family therapy. He’s rated a 4.8 out of 5 on Rate My Professor, his YouTube channel has more than 160K subscribers, and his podcast Psychology in Seattle can be found on such platforms as Apple Podcasts and Stitcher. For those of you who want even more, he has a Patreon with exclusive bonus content.