People keep asking if I am getting any projects done while on leave and I keep saying no, but I realized I actually have been making decent progress on my project to be a little less ignorant about China. Here are my favourite recent episodes from my top two podcasts about China:
- How does China’s advertisement market work? (Middle Earth Podcast). When I am trying to learn about something I am profoundly ignorant about, I find the easiest way is to piggyback on something I do know about. So I have been listening to tech analysis about China. This one covers the large differences between American and Chinese digital privacy laws and consumer tracking data, plus how social media and influencers work in China, where being too influential can get you arrested. Fascinating (to me)! Middle Earth panelists always seem eager to talk to each other– the two advertising industry guys in this episode have intriguing questions for the Weibo influencer.
- Huawei and the Tech Cold War (Sinica Podcast). This has a great discussion of 5G and the international politics surrounding it. There is a non-techy panelist so things get explained for civilians.
A couple of other favourite podcast episodes that have made me less ignorant about some other things:
- Ep #28: Resistance is Not a Hashtag, with Fatima Bhutto on The East Is A Podcast. Bhutto is a novelist I have never read, but I loved hearing this discussion of her work, and especially about global secular identities in the muslim world. This tangentially reminded me of an older episode of Religious Studies Project with Donovan Schaefer (a friend) where he talks about how different secularisms are entangled with different religions.
- Ep #266: A Guide to the Podcast Industry on Canadaland. It would not have occured to me, but of course we are starting to see venture startup style podcasts with no business model, whose goal is get acquired or some other financial maneuver. This reminded me of Lindsay Ellis’s video discussion of a similar phenomenon happening with YouTube channels.