The Taiwan Take

On July 26th, a third of Taiwan will vote on recall referendums (大罷免) for 24 legislators throughout Taiwan.

Our guest is Nathan F. Batto, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica. Taiwan watchers also know him as the writer of Frozen Garlic wordpress on Taiwanese elections.

We discuss how we got here: the KMT/TPP coalition in the legislature, the passionate activists wh...

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...

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 t...

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 duri...

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 ...

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. This conversation was recorded on March 17, 2025.

Rasmussen is worried about...

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...

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 democra...

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 auth...

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 s...

“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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ou...

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 Ja...

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." 
...

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 Oktob...

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...

“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 ...