2021: A Year of Gratitude and Growth for Talking Taiwan
2021 was definitely THE year that catapulted Talking Taiwan to a new level of success, first with it being recognized as the longest running Taiwan-related podcast by Courtney Donovan Smith of the Taiwan Report and then with the 2021 Golden Crane Podcast Award win in December.
Talking Taiwan has gone on hiatus twice in the past and I have to thank several people along the way who have encouraged me to get back out there and to keep it going because they believed in me and the importance of a podcast like Talking Taiwan.
I am so grateful to have this platform now and love every aspect of what I do as the host of Talking Taiwan from- booking and interviewing my guests, to planning episodes, and doing all the research. Well, there is one exception- working on editing notes for episodes can be a chore at times. But this is probably the closest thing to a dream job that I could have ever come up with.
At the core of Talking Taiwan are the interviews with my guests.
The two most challenging episodes of 2021 for me as an interviewer were with Dr. Jeng Yen, NASA scientist and Mars Rover driver (episode 126) and DJ Kaku, the first major influencer from Asia to get into the NFT market (episode 157). I had my work cut out for me with these two episodes. In preparing for these interviews, I had to do a tremendous amount of research to get up so speed on these topics. Admittedly, I’m not much into space exploration. So I “crowdsourced” questions to ask from my friends who are into space exploration and Dr. Yen ended up being a pleasure to interview and very personable.
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and cryptocurrency are pretty much beyond my knowledge base, but that is what I love about Talking Taiwan- that it challenges me to get out of my comfort zone and to learn new things. Kaku talked about it in layman’s terms, so hopefully this episode made what could be a quite perplexing topic more understandable.
The episodes with Hsinyi Lin about the movement to abolish the death penalty in Taiwan (episode 152 & 153) and with Yibee Huang about the case of Lee Ming-che, the political activist currently imprisoned in China (episode 161), were quite moving and memorable for me. In speaking with Hsinyi, I came away reflecting more deeply about the issues to consider in the capital punishment debate.
During my interview with Yibee, she tearfully broke down in frustration over Lee Ming-che’s situation. And she mentioned a troubling trend revealed by the Safeguard Defenders’ report that 600 Taiwanese have been extradited to China. There’s definitely some fodder for a future interview with Yibee about the work she does with Covenants Watch.
We seem to have found a formula for Talking Taiwan that’s working as our listenership and audience has been steadily growing.
I am looking forward to continuing to deliver stories, news and topics connected to Taiwan and Taiwan’s global community.
Wishing everyone a Happy Healthy 2022 and beyond!
