Louisa Lim

China

Author of Indelible City,The People's Republic of Amnesia, co-host @littleredpods, teaching @unimelb, podcast critic @satpaper

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Articles

Janak Rogers’ unveils the rage in Australia Fair

1 month ago | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Louisa Lim

In the 1920s, Australian children could play a board game called the White Australia Game. Players moved counters that represented white men and people of colour around a map of Australia.
China on the Couch: Xi Jinping's Psy-boom

2 months ago | player.fm | Louisa Lim

In our third episode on beliefs and ideologies, we explore China’s newfound enthusiasm for psychiatry. Counselling was only registered as a profession in 2001 yet has seen a massive boom under Xi Jinping. The psy-boom is such that even party branch meetings are doing mindfulness exercises, and practitioners are trying to indigenise counselling practices.
Attention to detail takes Umwelt to the next level

Feb 14, 2025 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Louisa Lim

I realised how much of my headspace the Umwelt podcast was occupying when I found myself at work sneakily watching a YouTube video of an octopus dreaming. The octopus’s name was Heidi, and her dream was transformational. As it unfolded, her body changed colour, the pulsating milky white oval of her head flashing fluorescent yellow, as if she had just spotted a particularly tasty crab.
Sisters doing it for themselves? Marriage Refusal and Little Milk Puppies

Jan 13, 2025 | player.fm | Louisa Lim

China is in the grip of a gender war. While government officials are texting and even cold calling women to urge them have children, the fertility rate continues to drop. Better educated and often better paid their male peers, many urban Chinese women are simply choosing not to marry.
The Masterclass Podcast

Oct 1, 2024 | podfollow.com | Louisa Lim

Complete login with either Facebook or Twitter. We use social profiles to log in to make it easy to use, these links aren't public, and you can add any colleagues to access your podcasts too.
Shell Game: a jaw-droppingly good podcast on the perils of AI

Sep 27, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Louisa Lim

The arrival of Evan Ratliff’s Shell Game podcast perfectly coincided with my existential panic about artificial intelligence taking over my job. For this ingenious six-parter, the veteran journalist created a voice clone that he linked to the latest ChatGPT chatbot, and then let loose on the world. Ratliff’s “voice agent” is a polite, earnest, slightly robotic AI-doppelganger.
Cognitive hazing: The Disinformation War on Taiwan?

Aug 31, 2024 | player.fm | Louisa Lim

Taiwan is ground zero for cognitive warfare, with the island subject to more disinformation than any other democracy. The targets are political candidates, media outlets, even boy bands. The threat is so serious that Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice recently set up a Cognitive Warfare Research Center. To explore this war for Taiwanese minds, Louisa and Graeme are joined by independent writer Min Chao and journalist Brian Hioe from New Bloom Magazine.
The Pig Butcher’s Payroll: Inside a Romance Scam

Jul 24, 2024 | player.fm | Louisa Lim

After our last episode on an online romance scam operating out of Palau we were contacted by Neo Lu, who was trafficked to work in an online scam camp on the Myanmar-Thailand border, the victim of a $US3 trillion global criminal industry. He joins Louisa and Graeme to offer jaw-dropping detail on life inside a scam centre, the mechanics of pig butchering, who benefits from this new form of slavery and how they launder their profits.
All the gear and no idea: why aren't institutional podcasts great?

Jul 12, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Louisa Lim

The earliest surviving live radio broadcast in Australia is not a political speech or a news story. It is the ABC live call of the 1932 Melbourne Cup, won in a surprise flourish by a three-year-old stallion named Peter Pan. The second-oldest live recording is coincidentally from the same November day: commentary of a boxing match held in front of a rowdy crowd.
Fraud Factories and Pig Butchery: Chinese Triads go Pacific

Jun 11, 2024 | player.fm | Graeme Smith |Louisa Lim

Chinese triads have been making a Pacific play, notably in the tiny nation of Palau. There a notorious triad boss - nicknamed Broken Tooth - reinvented himself as a CCP-linked businessman trying to set up a 'gangster-themed' casino, while police busted a Chinese 'fraud factory'. In Palau, this scam scheme was linked to businessmen touting United Front credentials, who are also involved in local politics and media outlets.