The Vietnam Weekly Podcast

Today’s guest is Celine Ventalon, CEO and founder of Émer, the menstrual underwear company based in Ho Chi Minh City.

We discussed what menstrual underwear is and how it can benefit both women and sustainability efforts, the reasons why she created Émer, social and workplace stigmas that her team is working to address, how they approach the owners of factories with majority female workforces, women’s health awareness-raising efforts at schools, and more.

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Today’s guest is Rich McClellan, Founder & Principal of RMAC Advisory and former country director of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in Vietnam. He’s an expert in public policy, investment, and economic reform across emerging markets.

We covered The Economist’s much-discussed recent cover story on Vietnam, the country’s international finance center ambitions, Resolution 68 and its focus on the domestic private sector, the ongoing government restructuring and provincial merger, semiconductor ambitions, and the genuinely exciting place that Vietnam finds itself in at the moment.

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Today’s guest is Michael Rosen, the principal founder of Vietnam’s first independent whisky distillery, Về Để Đi.

We discussed Về Để Đi’s background and why he pursued making whisky, what single malt means, the response to building a Vietnamese whisky brand and the growing prominence of brands from other non-traditional markets like Taiwan, the biggest surprises - good and bad - so far, the process of using local ingredients such as Vietnam’s first barley, their win at the recent World Whiskies Awards, and more.

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Today’s guests are Thomas Jakobsen, Managing Director at Indochina Energy Partners; and Angus McEwin, Managing Director at Monsoon Carbon.

We discussed the key points of revised PDP; progress on transmission and the national grid; LNG development; current issues and opportunities around solar and onshore wind; Renewable Energy Certificates and voluntary carbon credits and their place in Vietnam’s energy market; Vietnam’s efforts to launch a domestic carbon trading system; the revival and formalization of nuclear energy plans; and what to look out for in the coming years.

Related link:

Vietnam’s Energy Plans & Reality

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Today’s guests are Dr. Nguyễn Thùy An, Historian and Labor Education Professional at the University of Maine, specializing in the history of U.S. foreign relations and Vietnamese history; and Dr. Sean Fear, Lecturer in International History at the University of Leeds, whose research focuses on the Republic of Vietnam.

We discussed progress on reconciliation between Vietnam and the U.S., which took something of a hit following reporting that American diplomats have been told to avoid events related to reunification; how the teaching of the war in Vietnam has evolved; perspectives on the Republic of Vietnam over time; the role of reunification in modern Vietnam; the state of reconciliation within Vietnam and between Vietnam and the overseas diaspora; and what is missing from international perspectives on reunification and the war more broadly.

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Today’s guest is Minh Nguyễn, curator at Dogma Collection in Ho Chi Minh City.

We discussed what Dogma Collection is, the socioeconomic context of socialist realism propaganda created from 1945 to the mid-1980s, the use of digitally rendered versions of this art for the upcoming reunification anniversary, the state of the contemporary art scene in HCMC and Vietnam more broadly, the exhibition ‘A Radial System’ and its presentation of war imagery from different viewpoints, and more.

Follow Dogma Collection on Instagram

Reframing War Memories via the Western-Vietnamese Photographic Perspectives (Saigoneer)

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Today’s guest is Robyn McGuckin, Executive Director of P4G, who joined from Hanoi, where the 2025 P4G Vietnam Summit begins this morning.

We discussed P4G’s goals and approach, the hurdles faced by many climate tech startups and the so-called ‘valley of death,’ the interface between climate tech startups and government, P4G’s national platforms, their nine partner countries, P4G’s success stories in Vietnam such as Stride and Alterno, how P4G connects with and assesses startups, climate tech funding challenges unique to Vietnam, the significant of the 2025 P4G Vietnam Summit, and more.

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Related link:

Vietnam's Climate Tech Ecosystem (Vietnam Weekly Podcast)

Following the announcement of President Donald Trump’s shocking 46% reciprocal tariff rate on Vietnam, I wanted to get a quick initial reaction from return guest Kyle Freeman, a Partner at Dezan Shira & Associates who leads the International Business Advisory team and the firm's North American client services desk in Asia.

Kyle was on the show in January when the trade situation between Vietnam and the U.S. appeared to be much warmer. With the caveat that this is a very fluid situation, we discussed the tariff announcement, why Vietnam got hit so hard, and what we might expect moving forward.

Editor’s note: In the episode, there’s a mention that the tariff rate imposed on Vietnam is the second-highest of any country. It is the fourth-highest.

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Today’s guest is Khang Vu, a visiting scholar at Boston College with a Ph.D. in International Relations with a focus on East Asian Security from Boston College. Vietnamese foreign policy is one of his key areas of expertise.

We discussed Vietnam’s success in avoiding Trump tariffs thus far, the planned China-backed Lao Cai-Hai Phong railway, Vietnam’s history of dealing with territorial disputes with China and potential lessons for other Southeast Asian countries, the government’s ongoing spree of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership upgrades, the importance of Cambodia and Laos to Vietnam’s strategic security, the ‘era of national rise’ and its foreign policy impact, and more.

Recent articles by Khang:

What Southeast Asian Countries Can Learn from Vietnam’s History of Negotiating Territorial Disputes with China (The Diplomat)

Vietnam’s ‘Era of National Rise’ and the Risk of Imperial Overreach: Lessons from 1975 (The Diplomat)

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Neal Bermas is founder and chairperson of STREETS International, a social enterprise based in Hoi An that offers a fully-supported 14-month culinary and hospitality training program to disadvantaged and vulnerable youth living in poverty

We discussed STREET’s focus on the hospitality sector, its functioning as a social enterprise, the demographics of the young people who receive support and the challenges they face, how the pandemic somewhat diminished the appeal of working in the hospitality sector, STREET’s success in placing program graduates in a job, and a digression into Vietnam’s tourism sector more broadly.

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