It's time to reveal the Top 5 episodes of Talking Taiwan in 2025. What's notable about these 5 episodes is that they are among the most popular Talking Taiwan episodes of all time.

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https://talkingtaiwan.com/talking-taiwan-top-5-of-2025-award-winner-end-of-year-review-ep-338/

But before revealing the Top 5 episodes of 2025, let's take look back on 2025, which was a busy year for Talking Taiwan! We hosted the inaugural Talking Taiwan Fundraising Gala at the elegant Eichholtz showroom in New York City in April. It was truly a magical memorable night. In April we were also invited to speak at the North American Taiwanese American Women Association's (NATWA) Annual Conference.

For sometime we've been watching what was happening with the Great Recall in Taiwan which ultimately led to 24 legislators being put up for a recall vote on July 26th and another seven on August 23. The world had not seen anything like this happen on a national level in a democracy! And after Felicia interviewed a group of highly dedicated recall campaigners, she learned firsthand about the grassroots mobilization efforts that resulted in over one million signatures being collected in support of the recall vote, and she felt this was a historic moment that Talking Taiwan should be in Taiwan to cover.

Thanks to an anonymous donor who offered to pay for our flights back to Taiwan and others who made generous donations we were able to travel back to Taiwan for a week to cover the first recall in vote on July 26th. We left shortly after returning from the Taiwanese American Conference- West Coast (TAC-WC) which was held in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was the first time we were invited to speak at TAC-WC about our work. While we were at the conference, we also set up an on-location podcasting studio where we interviewed several of the conference's speakers. We look forward to releasing those episodes very soon in the New Year.

It's been an extremely eventful year for Talking Taiwan with many ups and downs. Spending only a week in Taiwan to cover the Recall Vote in July, and trying to conduct interviews, and edit and produce them in that time period proved to be a bit unrealistic and we'll need to pace ourselves better in the future.

It was also crushing to witness the results of the Recall Vote on July 26th with none of the 24 legislators successfully recalled from office. While still recovering from that ordeal in July, we traveled to T.O. Webfest awards in September where Talking Taiwan was nominated in the Best Ensemble Cast category. While we didn't win, it was our second nomination after being shortlisted at the International Women's Podcast Awards in 2024 and winning a Golden Crane Award in 2021.

As we go into the 13th year of Talking Taiwan, I'd like take a moment to especially thank everyone who has supported Talking Taiwan over the years and made a contribution to help fund our trip to return to Taiwan to cover the Great Recall in July.

We also want to thank each and every one of all of our amazing guests for being a part of the Talking Taiwan podcast.

Special thanks to our listeners. We remain committed more than ever to producing content that matters to people who care about Taiwan.

For links to the top 5 episodes of 2025 visit our website TalkingTaiwan.com. Wishing everyone a Happy Healthy New Year 2026! I'm your host Felicia Lin.

Related Links:

https://talkingtaiwan.com/talking-taiwan-top-5-of-2025-award-winner-end-of-year-review-ep-338/

In July of 2024, we brought talking Taiwan to the 53rd annual Taiwanese American Conference (TAC), East Coast at Westchester University.

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https://talkingtaiwan.com/the-charm-of-tainan-taiwans-oldest-city-a-talk-with-author-and-historian-jinyu-hsieh-%e8%ac%9d%e9%87%91%e9%ad%9a-ep-337/

Jinyu Hsieh (謝金魚), one of the speakers at TAC is a writer and a historian. I sat down to talk to her about the charm of Tainan, located in southern Taiwan. It is the oldest city in Taiwan and was founded in 1624. In 2024, Tainan was celebrating its 400th anniversary.

This episode is sponsored in part by the Taiwanese American Council of Greater New York.

Related Links:

https://talkingtaiwan.com/the-charm-of-tainan-taiwans-oldest-city-a-talk-with-author-and-historian-jinyu-hsieh-%e8%ac%9d%e9%87%91%e9%ad%9a-ep-337/

To commemorate its anniversary on December 10th, we thought this would be a great time to reshare one of our most popular CLASSIC episodes, an interview we did with Taiwan Democracy fighter Dr. Linda Gail Arrigo, Ai Linda (艾琳達) in 2024 about events leading up to the HISTORIC Kaohsiung Incident.

Related Links:

https://talkingtaiwan.com/dr-linda-gail-arrigo-taiwan-democracy-fighter-talks-about-events-leading-up-to-the-kaohsiung-incident-classic-ep-336/

Last year when we were in Taiwan in January for the presidential election, we were privileged to meet Dr. Linda Gail Arrigo, Ai Linda (艾琳達) in Taipei and sat down for a one-on-one interview. Few have experienced such historic events first-hand in the way Linda has, as she speaks from the doorstep of history.

Linda talked about the era and events that precipitated the Kaohsiung incident, also known as the Formosa Incident, which is widely considered the watershed moment in history that led to Taiwan's democratization. The Kaohsiung Incident happened in December of 1979

During this interview Linda talked about how, in 1975 she had been sent to observe a trial that had been stated to be an open trial but when she arrived there, she saw that it wasn't. In the face of intimidation by the Taiwan Garrison Command officers, she chose to speak up about the injustice she saw, and reported it to Amnesty International. To me, Linda's self-directed action was a moment of historic defiant courage.

Thank you Linda Gail Arrigo, Ai Linda (艾琳達) for sharing your story and for advocating for the people of Taiwan.

Related Links:

https://talkingtaiwan.com/dr-linda-gail-arrigo-taiwan-democracy-fighter-talks-about-events-leading-up-to-the-kaohsiung-incident-classic-ep-336/