Michael Caster (Head of Global China Programme) and I-Chen Liu (Asia Programme Officer) are researchers from the international non-profit organization ARTICLE 19, whose report “ Cybersecurity with Chinese Characteristics ” (2025) outlines PRC’s influence over cybersecurity norms in 3 Indo-Pacific countries: Indonesia, Pakistan, and Vietnam; and with a Taiwan alternative. The Digital Silk Road is an umbrella concept that includes policies, priorities, tools, technologies, and tactics of a digital...
Jun 19, 2025•39 min•Season 1Ep. 55
Mimi Yu (尤虹文) is the author of three memoirs, including the 2019 title “The Unforgetting Body” in which she details her recovery from depression. Yu is a cellist who has worked with musicians like Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Katz, and Robert Levin. She played cello while at The Juilliard School and has a B.A. in economics from Harvard University. Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Mimi Yu went to the U.S. at age 15 to study at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In her mid-twenties, Yu was impacted by ...
May 29, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Jimmy Lai, the 77-year-old media tycoon of British citizenship, has been detained for over five years, mostly in isolation. He is one of over 1,500 political prisoners in Hong Kong. Today's interview contains a clip of a conversation between Jimmy Lai and Natan Sharansky from November 20, 2020, one month before Lai’s arrest. Sharansky is a former Soviet dissident who spent nine years imprisoned as a refusenik during the 1970s and 1980s. “... What you said about physical survival is not important...
May 08, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 53
British-Canadian-Taiwanese writer Jessica J. Lee (李潔珂) is the author of three books of nature writing, Dispersals (2024), Two Trees Make a Forest (2019), and Turning (2017), the children’s book A Garden Called Home (2024), and co-editor of the essay collection Dog Hearted (2023). She has a PhD in Environmental History and Aesthetics and is the founding editor of The Willowherb Review . She teaches creative writing at the University of King’s College in Canada. She lives in Berlin. This episode w...
May 03, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Anders Fogh Rasmussen is former Prime Minister of Denmark (2001-2009) and Secretary General of NATO (2009-2014). He’s Chairman of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation. We sat down with Rasmussen this week at Yushan Forum, the annual summit organized by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation. Rasmussen is worried about a new world order “where might makes right… a world order with three power centers: one in Washington, one in Beijing, and one in Moscow. Th...
Mar 21, 2025•24 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Mariia Makarovych is Head of the East Asian Office of the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine. Today, we discuss the on-going peace negotiations, the role of civil society organizations the past three years, society preparedness prior to 2022, Russian propaganda since 2014, and today, the role of China. Makarovych is an economic and policy analyst with a background in CSO throughout Ukraine and in European think tanks. She had worked to strengthen democratic tools among communities in Donetsk a...
Mar 12, 2025•59 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Jonas Parello-Plesner is Executive Director of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation. He’s the author of the book, “The Battle for Taiwan”. “The Battle for Taiwan” (“Kampen om Taiwan”) was first published in Denmark in 2023 as the first book on Taiwan for the Danish audience. The English edition was published in April, 2024. Alliance of Democracies works to strengthen democracies around the world and to encourage cooperation between the world’s democracies. It also organizes the annual Copenhag...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Alejandro Mayoral Baños is the Executive Director of Access Now, an international NGO focusing on digital human rights. Access Now is the organizer of RightsCon - world’s largest digital human rights summit. The 2025 edition is set to take place in Taipei from February 24 to 27, 2025, where more than 550 sessions are expected to be staged. Baños talks to Ghost Island Media about digital authoritarianism, data governance, and artificial intelligence. Prior to his role at Access Now, Baños has bee...
Feb 07, 2025•55 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Ben Graham Jones is an election observer. In his new report “ Taiwan POWER ” on the 2024 presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan, Jones sets up Taiwan as a model for resilience against foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). Jones identifies a set of strengths that's the core of Taiwan’s resilience against FIMI: Purpose-driven, Organic, Whole-society, Evolving, Remit-bound. Jones stresses it’s the bottom-up approach of Taiwan’s civic society that’s made it particularly...
Oct 18, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 47
“Decathlon: The CK Yang & Rafer Johnson Story” 《奧運傳奇：楊傳廣與強生》is a tribute to one of the greatest Taiwanese Olympians - C.K. Yang - and his American rival and long-time friend, Rafer Johnson. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome , C.K. Yang (Yang Chuan-kwang 楊傳廣 ) won silver and became the first person with a Chinese surname to win an Olympic medal. Rafer Johnson carried the flag for the U.S.A national team and was the first black American to do so. The 45-minute film - 18 years in making - was...
Oct 15, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Taiwanese writer Chi Ta-wei (紀大偉)'s 1996 novel “The Membranes” has seen global success in recent years, with translations in French, English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Danish, and forthcoming editions in Portuguese, Greek, and Vietnamese. “The Membranes” is a dystopian fiction set in the 22nd century. Climate change has devastated Earth, and humans now live at the bottom of the sea. The protagonist is a dermatologist named Momo who can read her clients’ memories throu...
Sep 27, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 45
This was the first Academy Awards nomination for a documentary from Taiwan. “Island in Between” 《金門》was a nominee for Best Documentary Short at the 2024 Academy Awards. In this 19-minute documentary, we see Kinmen (Quemoy) through the lens of filmmaker S. Leo Chiang (江松長) and the diverse cast of characters he meets there. Kinmen - made of a set of islands - is governed by Taiwan but sits just 2 miles across from China. Here Chiang portrays an “uneasy peace on the frontline between Taiwan and Chi...
Mar 15, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Alex Khomenko is the organizer of Taiwan Stands with Ukraine 台灣烏克蘭陣線. We talk about conducting citizen diplomacy at a time of war, Taiwan’s humanitarian aid to Ukraine and public donations that amounted to the sending of power generators and ambulances, Taiwan and Ukraine relations, and the internal politics the Ukrainian government may be facing at home. Ukraine has no representatives based in Taiwan. When the war broke out on February 24, 2022, there were around 250 Ukrainians living in Taiwan...
Mar 04, 2024•31 min•Season 1Ep. 43
Reinhard Bütikofer is a familiar name in Europe and Taiwan relations. He has been a Member of European Parliament since 2009, where he is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, chairperson of the Delegation for Relations with China, and an alternate member of the Committee on International Trade. Reinhard also co-chairs IPAC, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. (This conversation was recorded prior to the 2024 January 13 election in Taiwan.) We discuss the history of Europe-Taiwan rel...
Jan 22, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 42
This 5-episode limited series delves into policy debates within Taiwan that could have implications for the region and beyond. Each episode features Taiwanese local experts and voices weighing in on social, economic and defense issues as they discusses how Taiwanese society is responding to these challenges. From Ghost Island Media in Taipei and U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C, this is "Dispatch from Taiwan." Subscribe - Apple Podcasts: https://gimpod.me/usip-taiwan-apple Spotify: htt...
Jan 11, 2024•25 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Prior to moving to Taiwan, Louis Heng had spent time in Singapore, Germany, Malta, and Scotland. Louis’ first time in Taiwan was with the Singaporian military. He then worked briefly as an airline pilot before entering a career in life insurance. In this episode, Louis and Emily talk about relocation with your family, managing and navigating multi-cultural teams, and Germany’s famous Oktoberfest. This episode is a sponsored collaboration with the Taiwan Gold C...
Dec 24, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 40
As global attention on Taiwan intensifies, so does the significance of the work undertaken by domestic journalists. Today we speak with Taipei-based journalists as Taiwan gears up for its presidential and legislative election on January 13th, 2024. This is a collaboration with the NüVoices Podcast. Many thanks to the team at NüVoices partnering with us for this collaborative episode. Today's guests are: Silva Shih - Head of data journalism at CommonWealth Magazine (天下雜誌) in Taiwan, where she’s a...
Nov 27, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 39
“Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation” includes over 130 recipes and stories of the food in Taiwan, its history, and its people. It’s been named a Best Cookbook of Fall 2023 by Bon Appetitit, Forbes, Food & Wine, New York Magazine, Eater, and Tasting Table. It was published by Simon & Schuster in September, 2023. Clarissa Wei has been a food journalist for a decade - writing about Asian cuisine in the L.A Times, about Nicaragua for VICE, on China for Goldthread of t...
Nov 07, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Winner of 2023 Golden Melody Award in Best Arrangement, Jen-Ting Chien 簡任廷 and Jen-Yu Chien 簡任佑 are the two pieces of Twincussion 雙子二重奏. Jen-Ting and Jen-Yu trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. In 2018 they played in Carnegie Hall. In 2023 they were selected for Center Stage, a cultural-exchange program from the U.S. Department of State. The brothers are versatile in Western classical music, Taiwanese folk, and new works by contemporary composers. This episode is fun to listen to, but i...
Nov 07, 2023•25 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Weining Hung 洪維寧 founded LUCfest, a music showcase festival, in 2017 with KK Yeh 葉宛青 (White Wabbit Records). Taiwanese bands first played there before they went international, bands like Outlet Drift, The Fur, Go Go Machine Orchestra, Lücy, and Trout Fresh. When Weining’s not managing the festival, she’s managing Asian talents like Phum Viphurit from Thailand. We talk about her love for music, the “it” factor for a superstar-to-be, and how the live music industry is changing post-COVID. Weining’...
Nov 01, 2023•25 min•Season 1Ep. 36
She's a “21 Women Who Defined 2021” (VOGUE magazine Australia), a “Change Maker” (Australian Women in Music Award), and a “25 Trailblazers Reshaping Australia” (Sydney Morning Herald, 2022), Jaguar Jonze is a rockstar. The Taiwanese-Australian is also an advocate for mental health, trauma awareness, and MeToo against sexual harassment. “If I can change one person's life and make it all worthwhile, that's what I'm holding on to,” she said about her decision to speak up against sexual assault. Tic...
Oct 30, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Harry Wu’s 吳易叡 is a historian of medicine. His book “Mad by the Millions: Mental Disorders and the Early Years of the World Health Organization” was published in 2021 by MIT Press. “Scientific method is actually a cultural process. Studying science is actually studying a society.” From 2013 to 2021 Wu led the humanities programs at the medical schools of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. He’s now Associate Professor at National Cheng K...
Oct 19, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Vivian Chen 陳依靖 was a delegate to APEC and a youth representative to UN forums. Now, she heads Girls in Tech in Taiwan, a non-profit that mentors girls and women in technology. She’s since founded Hepta Protocol and Da0, a collective for civic engagement in digital innovation using Web3. If we are not a part of international organizations, “it's really possible that our rights will be left behind,” she says. This is the podcast edition of "Game Changers with Emily Y. Wu". Watch the video of this...
Oct 16, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Tuhi Martukaw 洪簡廷卉 was co-chair of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) from 2010 to 2015. She’s now a policy advocate, journalist, community organiser, and founder of the Taiwan Indigenous Youth Working Group (LIMA). She’s from the Pinuyumayan Nation, one of the 16 recognized indigenous nations in Taiwan. “We should be in the decision-making process, not just to have someone sitting at the table.” Tuhi Martukaw is also known as Jocelyn Ting-...
Oct 06, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Rachid Hami’s autobiographical film “For My Country” (2023, "Pour la France") tells story of his younger brother Jallal who passed away in 2012 at the age of 24 from a hazing incident at Saint-Cyr Military Academy. In real life, Rachid and Jallal grew up in Algeria and France, and they spent their final days together in Taiwan. “For My Country” - shot in Taiwan, Monaco, and France - premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2022. It opens in the theatre in Taiwan on September 28. Support the show...
Oct 01, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Vivi Lin 林薇 is a global period equity activist. She’s the 2021 recipient of the Diana Legacy Award from the UK - an award for youths aged 9-25 years in recognition of their social action or humanitarian work. Lin founded WithRed, an NGO to solve period poverty, boost education for women’s health, and eliminate stigma surrounding menstrual cycles. “Whenever we talk to people or negotiate with people or lobby with a government, we always try to remove all these obstacles that we already can see ri...
Sep 22, 2023•24 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Yani Tseng 曾雅妮 is a former world No. 1 in women's golf when she was 24 years old. She was Number 1 in women's World Golf Rankings for 109 consecutive weeks; Time Magazine’s "100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2012; and the youngest golfer ever to win five major championships. Today, Yani is 34 years old. She’s fighting off injuries and making a comeback. “I look at who I was when I was 12 years-old. I want to bring out that kid who loved playing golf, no matter the result.” This is the...
Sep 20, 2023•25 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Gena Pan 潘郡瑤 is a co-founder of Double Pump, a media site and community for girls and women’s basketball. She posts game schedules, highlights, and player profiles, covering high school, college, semi-professional, and our national teams. She’s raising the visibility of women through sports. "We want to spread the idea that girls can be a better version of herself through playing sports." This is the podcast edition of "Game Changers with Emily Y. Wu". Watch the video of this conversation on Tai...
Sep 18, 2023•25 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Annie Ivanova grew up in Bulgaria before moving to Australia. She’s an art curator, an advocate of cultural diplomacy, and the founder of the design firms Anibaba Co. and Studio Ivanova. This episode is a sponsored collaboration with the Taiwan Gold Card Office. Ivanova’s worked with art institutions like ZKM, Centre Pompidou, Ars Electronica, The Barbican, Centre Pompidou, Aaros Museum, Australian Centre for the Moving Image and Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, and the National Palace Museum a...
May 15, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Happy lunar new year from all of us at Ghost Island Media! At time of this new years greetings recording, we didn't know yet of the mass shooting in Monterey Park in California that took the lives of 10 people on new years eve, Saturday, January 21, 2023. Our deepest condolences to families affected by the horrific tragedy. Our hearts are with our Asian American community. We have new shows waiting to announce this spring. Meanwhile, our newest partner is AmCham, the American Chamber of Commerce...
Jan 23, 2023•3 min•Season 1Ep. 26
