optimistic

Manipulated images, cyberattacks and viral fake news: digital disinformation is commonplace in Taiwan. Ho Hui-An of the Taiwan FactCheck Center on fighting against the tide

Mexican perpetrators of acid attacks, in particular against women, are often punished with light sentences or released on bail. A new draft law wants to change all that 

Taiwan’s diplomatic representative Shieh Jhy-Wey promotes his country’s interests in Berlin. A conversation about democratic alliances, the country’s authoritarian legacy and Xi Jinping

Taiwan is often portrayed as a model Asian democracy by the West. But how free and open-minded is the country really? Author Li Ang on a question she’s been asking for decades

Heavy metal star - and politician - Freddy Lim knows Taiwan's music scene inside out. A conversation about Taiwanese music and the ten songs you need to decipher it

Kuwait City locals flood the desert landscape to fly kites of all shapes and sizes on their national day

How can our homes deal with climate change? This house in the Munshiganj region can simply be moved when the floods come.

Oral story-telling has a long history in Africa, and has taught generations of children vital lessons

Our author drifts through the city, meets people in nightclubs and drinks sweetened soy milk with a date at dawn. A story about being young in Taiwan

Chinese freighters are hunting for one of the world's most coveted raw materials off the Taiwanese coast. But the search for sand poses a problem not just for Taipei, but for Beijing

Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi and Chinese writer Yan Lianke exchanged letters for us. The result is a very personal exchange about censorship, loss, and the pain that is expressed between the lines

Opera: outmoded and out of touch or timeless and eternal? We ask the soprano singer Fatma Said

Hopes ran high that President Gustavo Petro would finally end violence in Colombia. But a year after his election, the fight for peace continues

Students, a fish farmer, a beautician and an activist: we asked eight Taiwanese people what’s on their mind

Almost thirty years after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, victims and perpetrators have found a refuge in Belgium. For many, a new beginning is hard to imagine

Comics are booming in Taiwan but until recently, LGBTQ storylines were hard to find. Publisher Aho Huang wants to change all that

The Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party are the only two political parties in Taiwan. What do they stand for? Two delegates give us the low-down on their political hopes, dreams and aspirations

Contemporary society has all but eradicated the caste system, right? Far from it, argues U.S. journalist Isabel Wilkerson

Circus and theatre for refugee children in the middle of a conflict-torn area? The Flying Carpet Festival on the Turkish-Syrian border makes the impossible possible

From the South African slum to the top of the United Nations: Judge Navi Pillay reflects on an eventful life

Xi Xi’s novel “My City” takes readers back to Hong Kong in the 1970s.

The restaurant Owamni in Minneapolis is one of the best in the USA. Its owner Sean Sherman is both a chef and an activist. On serving food with explosive political power

Sweden has long stood for cosmopolitanism and tolerance. But now a shift to the right is sweeping through the country - and its colourful image is crumbling. How could this happen?

The atmosphere for journalists in Cuba is increasingly tense. As a last resort, they are turning to the internet - or exile

For half a century, activist and author Vandana Shiva has been criticising the excesses of the global economy and arguing for a simple life. A conversation about false abundance and the necessity of downsizing

What do you need in life? From Canada to South Africa to Pakistan, people around the globe explain what they can’t live without. Here Fatma Aydemir and T. C. Boyle say what is indispensable

On the social media platform TikTok, #celibacy has become a global trend. Why are more and more young people voluntarily abstaining from sex?

Only those who already have something can settle for less. But for many people around the globe, going without things is no more than a pipe dream. A life spent living in and fleeing from the Central African Republic

What makes a building a beautiful structure? Ornamentation on the front? Or is a building beautiful if it houses as many people as possible? Can we separate the aesthetic evaluation of a building from its construction circumstances and the ecological and human price it cost?

The notion of recycling and saving resources was already an everyday reality in Japan 300 years ago. Makiko Yamaguchi reflects on the Edo era

In Taiwan, the digital world is displacing the physical one. Even tradition is migrating to the cloud. Our author sets out in search of a lost era

What once seemed significant for author Serhij Zhadan - irony, coolness, status symbols -  became irrelevant overnight when war broke out in his homeland. Now, collective solidarity and the fight against “evil” is what counts. How are the people in Ukraine affected by this sudden shift?

In the middle of the Saloum river delta in Senegal lies the island of Diamniadio. Here people live off the sea – but every year the nets get a little emptier

What does it take to get to the top - and what do you have to give up? A conversation with ballerina Aurora Dickie

In music, forgoing excess often stands for minimalist innovation. Rarely has less been so much more than in the nine piano pieces that the musician Malakoff Kowalski handpicked for this playlist