I was fascinated by the methods of Taiwan's former regime - how it used people against each other, using fear and surveillance for control - and how the lack of complete reckoning with that past still affects Taiwan's society today.

Ang Kaim, a historian at Academia Sinica, is listed as one of Yang's informants in the files. He told us how he was recruited - by an agent threatening him just after a prominent dissident had been interrogated and then died on a university campus - and why he complied.

Another target was Fan Yun, a current legislator who was involved in student democracy movements in the late 1980s. She found more than 1,000 pages of notes on her stretching over 9 years. Several of her fellow activists had been informants. She still doesn't know who they are.

One target who looked at their files was Yang Bi-chuan, a dissident who used to teach underground classes on Taiwan's history. He spent 7 years imprisoned on Green Island. He found that a favourite student, one who'd risen to become a prominent DPP politician, was an informant.

The files are kept in an earthquake-proof, temperature-controlled vault on the outskirts of Taipei. They're part of Taiwan's "political files", all the records relating to rights abuses from its one-party era. Stacked together, they would create a tower nearly 6x higher than 101

Two years ago, I heard that Taiwan's govt had unearthed surveillance files from the secret police of its authoritarian era. They were finally becoming open to the public, nearly four decades after Taiwan's democratisation. I wanted to see what was inside:

www.economist.com/1843/2025/05...

In episode 3 we reached the US-Mexico border in the small town of Jacumba Hot Springs, California. We saw how locals were overwhelmed by the influx of migrants and how different Chinese migrants turned themselves in - or ran away from - the border patrol open.spotify.com/episode/0ncA...

In episode 1 we went to Necocli, a seaside town on the edge of the Darien Gap that's become a hub for migrants. We met Chinese migrants who'd come from all over China, some with very young children, buying equipment and getting ready to board boats and walk across the jungle