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In this fun Season Two finale, John Ross and Eryk Michael Smith battle with the AI phenomenon ChatGPT. Who knows more about Taiwanese history, John or the scarily omnipotent AI chatbot which may soon render humans obsolete? Does Eryk know …
Relations between the R.O.C. (Taiwan) and Spain have never been as close as Taiwan's ties to, for example, the United States. But back in the days when Taiwan was ruled as a one-party state, there were more connections than one …
The southern peninsula of Taiwan was a "ship graveyard" for a very long time as unseen rocks and reefs gashed holes in the sides of vessels and left them stranded, or on the seafloor. The Western powers and Qing authorities …
No, we're not talking about romantic adventures; in this episode, the "dating" we're discussing is the days, months, and years kind. Why is it about to become the year 112 in Taiwan? Why is 2023 not just the year of …
Eryk calls John for a chat about Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦, Yan Jiagan) the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) for three years following the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975. Who was C.K. Yen, and why isn’t he better …
Ever heard of Count Maurice Benyovszky? He's not well known in Taiwan, but after this Polish-Slovakian-Hungarian semi-nobleman had a chance encounter with this island in 1771, he wrote a travel account that remained influential into the twentieth century. And the …
A fighter for women's rights, human rights, freedom of speech, and democracy, you can disagree with Annette Lu's politics (or with some of her very controversial comments) ...but you can't deny the impact this outspoken woman has had on Taiwanese …
We travel back to 1920s Taiwan, first in the company of Terry’s Guide to the Japanese Empire and then follow a Tokyo travel bureau itinerary for Japanese tourists to the island. Ride the rails with us as we visit Shinto …
Between the late 1600s and mid-1800s, there was no Western presence on Taiwan. There were, however, a couple of special Western visitors of whom the wonderfully-named Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla was the most notable. This Jesuit priest was a …
Many new arrivals to Taiwan are perplexed to hear music from an "ice cream" truck playing almost every day, until they discover that those tunes mean it's time to take out your trash. Today, we've got the history of musical …
Picking up on last week's conversation between the University of Southern California East Asian Studies Center's Li-ping Chen and author Andrew D. Morris -- a very special collaborative double episode with Formosa Files -- we learn more about how North/South …
Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, fellow Indian pro-independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose advocated taking up arms against the British. WWII presented a golden opportunity for this, and in an "enemy of my enemy" move Bose escaped from arrest in India and headed …
Sadly, the bloodshed and sorrow that began on February 28, 1947 (228) is the foundational story of post-Japanese Taiwan. Wu Zhuo-liu (吳濁流), an ethnically-Hakka poet, writer, and journalist, was born in 1900 and died in 1976, his life effectively spanning …
Eryk said to John, "All the traditional festivals celebrated in Taiwan have sad -- or even horrific -- backstories!" John said, "Really? Hmm... I doubt that." And so we recorded this episode, in which we tell the tales behind traditional …
John loves aviation stories and in this episode we've got two: the first raises some serious questions about an oft-told "ghost plane" tale, while the second features a heroic young Japanese Zero fighter pilot who perished in Tainan in the …
War is not glorious, and shouldn’t be glorified. But war does provide the chance to be brave, and bravery can be glorious. Such was the case of Commander Richard O’Kane and the crew of the USS Tang. In 1944 the …
Go virtually anywhere in the world and you'll see them: green shipping containers with large white letters reading "EVERGREEN." The company is one of the biggest and best in the shipping world, while also having a hand in air travel …
Why is "Kaohsiung" spelled so strangely? Shouldn't it be closer to "Gao-Shung"? (Or we could just use Hanyu Pinyin, "Gāoxióng"). Well, many names in Taiwan are spelled with the Latin alphabet, using a romanization system popularized by Mr. Herbert Giles, …
Some might think golf came with U.S. troops after WWII, but the origins of this sport in Taiwan actually go much further back. Listen to this episode for stories of Japanese colonial officials discovering golf as the "new cool thing …
Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun 鄧麗君) was arguably Asia's first pop superstar, a singer from Taiwan who won hearts across the continent and the world. Teng got so famous in behind-the-bamboo-curtain China that PLA air force defectors to the Republic of …
Koxinga's eldest son, Zheng Jing, -- the ruler of the short-lived Kingdom of Dongning (1661-1683) -- almost lost his head in his late teens. Daddy Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) twice ordered his execution for fooling around with a wet nurse. But …
Two-time Academy Award winning director Ang Lee (李安) is probably the most globally famous person from Taiwan. But this Pingtung-born movie master actually started out wanting to be an actor. And, if it had not been for his wife’s insistence …
The Korean War would almost certainly have ended much earlier but for the tricky question of what to do with Chinese POWs. The 21,000 Red Chinese soldiers captured were finally given a choice: go home to China...or go to "Free …
It's 1950 and a war-weary world is at it again. Communist China pours fuel on the conflict in Korea by sending in a quarter of a million soldiers. ROC President Chiang Kai-shek has, from the start, offered to send his …