Sugar Nutmeg

Damar talks to us about his research on supernatural phenomena. We discuss different elements and even marketing methods used by dukun in Indonesia. Plus, paranormal sensitivities, indigo people, and Ruth's untapped powers. Everything is magic is Southeast Asia.

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Andamar Pradipta obtained his bachelor’s degree in Social Anthropology from Universitas Indonesia. He then continued his studies at Central European Univer...

Elliott talks to us about the Rohingya political situation amidst dislocation and mass violence, especially after the coup in Myanmar, and how R-Coin is a new initiative helping stateless Rohingya diaspora in Malaysia.

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Elliott Prasse-Freeman is a political anthropologist studying social movements, violence, and symbolic culture in Burma. As part of a related ongoing project on the Rohingya genocide, he is exploring no...

Emy talks to us about disinformation challenges in Southeast Asia and its evolving relationship with democracy, civil society participation, and digital maturity. To be enjoyed with a hearty bowl of Sinigang!

Emy Ruth Gianan is a full-time professor teaching classes on public policy, governance, and development economics at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila. Alongside teaching, she work as Chief of Int...

Ernst and Veronika talk to us about their process of composing Expedition Content, the augmented sound piece composed from 37 hours of recordings which document the encounter between members of the Harvard Peabody Expedition, particularly Michael Rockefeller of the Rockefeller family, and the Hubula people of West Papua, at the time Nederlands New Guinea. The piece reflects on visual anthropology, the lives of the Hubula and of Mic...

Ruth and Alexandra often find themselves furious about foreigners coming to the "exotic" islands of Indonesia and using the archipelago as a pretty background for their Instagram photos or YouTube vlogs. With Fred Clapp, they share stories of treading responsibly on foreign lands, deromanticizing distant locales, and finding a home halfway across the world. Plus, feline hierarchies, protesting babi guling, practical forms of censor...

Alexandra is in CDMX shooting a film and Ruth is off to Bali to reunite with her boyfriend. We recorded this episode last month to reflect on borders, passports, visas, Indonesian cartels, “forbidden areas” and the Forbidden Fruit. Is this the episode in which we get cancelled? As always, let’s feast and find out.

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Pailin Wedel talks to us about her Emmy-winning, Netflix-acquired film, Hope Frozen, and her work with Al Jazeera across Southeast Asia. We discuss death, the afterlife, the ecosystem of documentary filmmaking and journalistic work in Southeast Asia, and the power of radical hope.

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Pailin Wedel is a journalist and filmmaker best known for directing and producing the documentary Hope Frozen, which started strea...

Thi My Lien Nguyen talks to us about Viet-Lao identity, the Vietnamese diaspora in Switzerland versus France, Germany, and the U.S., the types of dishes she cooks to honor the dead, working with folklore and foodways, and starting Mili's Supper Club. Plus, Swiss cheese, chocolate cake, the different funeral processions in Indonesia, and more!

Thi My Lien Nguyen is a Swiss-Vietnamese lens-based artist, supper club host, an...

Sim Chi Yin walks us through her ongoing project "One Day We'll Remember": uncovering family secrets, visiting ancestral villages, collecting artefacts and archival materials, and making counter archives with family members and locals from her grandfather's neighborhood in Gaoshang after he was deported from British Malaya for his anti-colonial resistance against the British occupying forces.

She raises major topics such a...

We talk about protest-dressing, dopamine-dressing, performance-dressing, all the subtle and unsubtle ways of sales associates, and more!

Xingyun is a freelance researcher and writer who advocates for a more humane fashion system through her work. She studied Fashion Sustainability and Digital Fashion Management at the London College of Fashion and is now the country coordinator for Fashion Revolution Singapore. Seeking to addr...

We talk to Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray about her adventures with the Cariocas of Brazil, making films with tsunami survivors in Aceh, working with repatriated migrants in Buenos Aires, syncretism between Afro-Cuban religions and Taoism & Buddhism in Cuba, and interviewing the Southeast Asian restauranteurs of New York City. Plus, surprising similarities that Juliette found between Rio de Janeiro and Singapore, Ruth’s take on “food...

Special Holiday Episode! Coinciding with the release of "Happy Stories, Mostly", we talk to Norman Erikson Pasaribu and Tiffany Tsao about their work as translators of each others work and as individual writers themselves. Between Sydney, Bekasi, Bogor and New York, we discuss cultural untranslatability, creating new languages, building new memories through language, and why it’s difficult for readers to appreciate Indonesian liter...

Nay Saysourinho talks to us about heterotopia, folktales and fairy tales, passive resistance and "passive" choices, motherhood, domesticity, and how she learned to find her voice as a writer from listening to her aunties gossip at home. Plus, the impact of the French language, the bond of la Francophonie, the nonchalance of Laotians, and all the things that get lost in translation....

Nay Saysourinho is a writer, literary crit...

Nurdiyansah tells us about his trips across Indonesia to explore how spices from the region hold a multitude of stories that transcend the epochal eras: Dutch colonization, Japanese occupation, the national revolution era, New Order era, Reformasi, and the new digital age. The aroma and flavor of traditional dishes and culinary delights offered him personal and political reflections on the hybridity of identity and the convoluted m...

Brazilian-Indonesian artist Daniel Lie talks to us about the commonalities and distinctiveness between Brazil and Indonesia, two countries that share latitude lines, equatorial climate, lush rainforests enduring rampant deforestation, emerging market economies, class systems, and a long history of US-backed authoritarian regimes.

We discuss the ideas explored in Daniel's trilingual project Toko Buku Liong, titled after their g...

Ragil Huda talks to us about his unconventional journey: growing up in a small village in South Sumatra, working with the transgender community in Yogyakarta, attending Islamic boarding schools in both Java and Sumatra, finding the right support system in Penang, his current work as an academic-activist, methods of knowledge production, community building, grassroots organizing, and how he stays motivated amid everything he does. P...

*Note: At 24:00, what Sarnt meant here is a contemporary ethnic segregation amongst Southeast Asians in middle-class milieus, which happens less in the Berlin environment, in comparison to Bangkok. Historically, however, in West/East Germany there had been huge racial segregation imposed by both states, for example, between migrant "contract" workers who weren't allowed to live or interact with regular citizens through out the 1970...

Born in Denpasar, Cynthia Dewi Oka grew up as an ethnic minority and religious minority in Bali and Java. These experiences pushed her family to migrate to Vancouver, Canada, where Cynthia faced a whole other beast of diasporic experiences. Now a poet with three Pushcart Prize nominations, she lives in Philadelphia, where she partnered with Asian Arts Initiative to offer Sanctuary: A Migrant Poetry Workshop for Philly-based immigra...

In the most dangerous part of the world for activists, Mitzi Jonelle Tan continues to mobilize and organize movements for climate justice. She chairs the Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP) and works with indigenous leaders in most affected areas.

Mitzi talks to us about Duterte's infamous anti-terror bill and war of drugs, the right to freedom of speech and the human rights crisis in the Philippines, the de...