Bringing Back the Talking Taiwan Podcast
One of the things I'm working on is bringing back the Talking Taiwan podcast. It's been five years since I started doing the podcast in 2012. In the beginning we didn't even have a dedicated website. All of the podcast episodes were simply available on SoundCloud. When I was at my busiest with the podcast (in 2013 and 2014), I'd be doing an interview a week. I've really missed doing the podcast! It was a great excuse for me to interview and chat with some really interesting individuals over the years. I've spoken with entrepreneurs, innovators, community leaders, authors, activists, actors, musicians and journalists, just to name a few.
But before all this, Talking Taiwan was the brainchild of award-winning radio DJ Rick Monday (2009 Golden Bell for his Morning Show on ICRT once upon a time). The show's producer, Gus Adapon had been working with Rick on the podcast for some time before I had ever heard about it.
I first met Gus when I was living in Taiwan from 2001-2006. At the time he was working on ORIENTED.org which was the forerunner to Forumosa.com. Gus is a serial entrepreneur with a list of impressive accomplishments (amongst them is producing a film called Pinoy Sunday). He is also the founder of Forumosa.com, which is the sponsor of Talking Taiwan.
Years later, after I had left Taiwan and returned to live in New York City, I received a message on LinkedIn from Gus telling me about a podcast he was working on called Talking Taiwan. He was looking for a female host for the podcast. It seemed like a golden opportunity so I pitched myself for the job. That was July of 2012. I didn't hear back from Gus for several months. At one point I reached out to Christine, Gus's ORIENTED.org co-founder for advice on the situation. ORIENTED.org had spun off into ORIENTED.com with Christine spearheading the global ORIENTED Happy Hours. For several years I organized the ORIENTED Happy Hours in both Kaohsiung and New York. Christine told me to be patient and something to the effect of "Gus would get back to me, when he'd get back to me." When I had practically given up on the whole thing, Gus reached out to me. It was October and Hurricane Sandy had hit New York. But finally, we were on. It was a go!
There are many people responsible for making this podcast happen including our sound engineer Luis, who edits and "cleans up" all my interviews, literally making me and my guests sound better; he also edits my interviews into shorter episodes and adds on a fancy intro to the beginning of every episode. We've also recently added a web person to the Talking Taiwan team- Louie. She will be putting all of the materials related to each podcast episode up on the website. Louie is also a tuberculosis and disability advocate and speaker. You can learn more about her and her work by reading her Huffington Post article here. You can also follow her on twitter @LouieZepeda1 With such an amazing team of talented individuals, I'm looking forward to seeing where we are able to take Talking Taiwan next.
Stay tuned as we get ready to relaunch the Talking Taiwan podcast and website!
