PJ Vogt

What's the temperature in Taiwan right now towards China?

Right, because it's not about a narrow who's in charge.

It's about this much broader question of how do you decide where you belong?

What is the citizen's relationship to the state?

Like, it's not different politics.

It's different political worldviews.

So that's the story in miniature of how we got to where we are today, to Taiwan in 2026, an island just a little bigger than Maryland that's evolved from a frontier, through multiple colonizers, through violence, to a democracy.

A tiny powerhouse country, vulnerable, but also by dint of its own genius, very powerful.

Thank you for talking to us about this.

Thank you for sharing your vast expertise here.

Dr. Shelley Rigger.

She's the Brown Professor of Asian Studies at Davidson College.

We'll have a link to her most recent book about Taiwan in our show notes.

Obviously, there is more here to learn than we were able to cover in an hour.

I actually found myself still curious when we were done talking.

I wanted to know what conflict would actually look like between America and China over Taiwan if it broke out.

I wanted to know if anyone is doing anything to make that conflict not happen.

If you're curious about that too, we have a bonus episode for you that is all about it.

It'll be in our incognito mode feed with historian Ike Freiman.

He told us about what options the US might have in the near term.