In this episode, Arve Hansen talks to Jonathan London to get an update on politics and development in Vietnam. How do we make sense of the ‘socialist market economy’ today, what came out of the recent party congress, how does Vietnam balance its relations to China and the US, and how does Vietnam’s Covid success impact the legitimacy of the party?

In this episode, Adela Briansó talks to Rosalie Stolz about her latest NIAS Press book 'Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits: Sociality among the Khmu of Northern Laos.' She offers a fresh perspective on the actual lived experience of kinship based on fascinating insights from her extensive fieldwork among this upland minority group. 

In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Øystein Tunsjø, Henrik Chetan Aspengren, and Paul Midford to discuss what the new Biden administration will mean for the balance of power in Asia.

In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen talks to Guro Samuelsen, Arild Engelsen Ruud, and Niladri Chatterjee about the striking changes in the style, dress, and appearance of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Has the erstwhile "CEO of India" transformed into a Sage King? 

Jimmyn Parc of Sciences Po speaks with Satoko Naito about the global popularity of K-pop and the history of the Korean Wave (Hallyu), highlighting significant factors like Korea-Japan political relations, copyright laws, and digitisation. Dr. Parc also explains how consumer trends and collaborations with producers from Nordic countries have contributed to make K-pop the international phenomenon it is today.

Jyrki Kallio of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs returns to the podcast to discuss Confucianism in China, including its beginnings in The Analects, key developments by Mencius, and the Ming-Qing reinterpretation of select teachings. Dr. Kallio explains to Satoko Naito the various complexities of Confucianism's internal contradictions as well as its enduring legacy, seen in Beijing's current 'Confucian Revival.'

Join Jason Keith Fernandes and Kenneth Bo Nielsen in conversation about Fernandes’s new book 'Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa.' Fernandes uses his study of the way Catholics in Goa negotiate a space for themselves within the Indian nation-state to critique popular and academic discourses on secular citizenship in India. Most importantly, he documents how caste is co-opted into legal frameworks of citizenship through official language of the state to show how India is not a secular republic but in fact a caste polity.

In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by sociologist Alf Nilsen who analyses the economic and political impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in India, where a prolonged lockdown has resulted in an unprecedented disruption of everyday life.

In this fascinating episode, Jacob Ricks joins Petra Desatova to talk about the politics of rice and rice prices in Thailand. Why is rice such a politically significant subject in Thailand? How have the different incarnations of the state rice policy shaped Thailand's political direction since the Second World War? And what role did rice play in the country's latest 2014 military coup? 

In this episode, Stig Toft Madsen from NIAS - the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies joins Kenneth Bo Nielsen from the University of Oslo to talk about the liberalization of Indian agriculture and the ongoing farmers’ protests that have seen tens of thousands of Indian farmers laying siege to the national capital New Delhi for more than a month.