In today’s episode, the podcast is honored to have Ian Johnson, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author and commentator who has spent decades living in and writing about China. His most recent book is called Sparks. In it, he follows a handful of China’s underground historians who resist the increasingly heavy-handed state by writing and researching events that […]
Last episode, we talked about Jin Yong’s background. This episode, we dive into a relatively short text by Jin Yong, one of the last he wrote, “The Sword of the Yue Maiden.” This is the story of a King made a slave by a neighboring king, and his quest for vengeance. In it, he comes […]
This podcast, we take a look at the life and times of Jin Yong, along with the genre he came to define, modern kung fu literature. We explore Jin Yong’s path to becoming China’s best selling writer, putting out more books than JK Rowling. We also look at the January 17th, 1954 kung fu match […]
This week is the last in our Sima Qian series, but it is also definitely the best. We look at how Sima Qian lost his testicles while sticking to his principles. We consider the conflict between him and Emperor Wu that percipitated his castration. I also make a big announcement. Here is the Transcript: My […]
Today, we take a look at Sima Qian’s Biography of the Capitalists, chapter 129 in the Records of the Historian. This chapter is Sima Qian’s two-millennia old defense of free market capitalism. The chapter is one of the most interesting his oeuvre because Sima Qian was condemned for it by later historians.
Today, in the second podcast in the Sima Qian series, we take a look at some of the first literary evidence we have for the Nan Yue, the People of the Southern Yue, the ancestors to modern-day the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi in China and the people of Vietnam. Sima Qian describes the Han […]
