Podcast

This is the transcript of episode 11 of my podcast Reasoned Talk (议正言辞). Listen on Xiaoyuzhou or Apple Podcasts . The episode is in Chinese; this transcript has been translated into English. One day in November 1873, the twelfth year of the Tongzhi reign, Ge Pinlian, a worker in a tofu shop in Cangqian, Yuhang County, Zhejiang, died at home. His face had turned blue and foam gathered at his mouth. His wife, Bi Xiugu, gave him a bowl of American ginseng broth, but could not save him. ...

This is the transcript of episode 10 of my podcast Reasoned Talk (议正言辞). Listen on Xiaoyuzhou or Apple Podcasts . The episode is in Chinese; this transcript has been translated into English. On the evening of January 31, 1976, smoke hung thick in a corner bar in Phoenix, Arizona. Several Mexican American laborers were playing poker around a greasy wooden table. An argument broke out over a three-dollar wager. Beer bottles shattered, a knife flashed in the dim light, and one of the men fell. He clutched his chest as the ambulance raced away, but died before reaching the hospital. He was thirty-four years old. ...

This is the transcript of episode 09 of my podcast Reasoned Talk (议正言辞). Listen on Xiaoyuzhou or Apple Podcasts . The episode is in Chinese; this transcript has been translated into English. In the episode on Shi Jianqiao, I mentioned the “late-Qing legal reforms” as the foundation on which the Republic of China later built its Complete Book of the Six Codes. Today I want to look closely at this radical legal transformation in the Qing dynasty’s final years. ...

This is the transcript of episode 08 of my podcast Reasoned Talk (议正言辞). Listen on Xiaoyuzhou or Apple Podcast . The episode is in Chinese; this transcript has been translated into English. In episodes 3 and 6, we talked about Trump and birthright citizenship. Both times we saw the U.S. Supreme Court playing the role of arbiter in contemporary constitutional disputes—it can interpret the Constitution, find the president in violation of it, and overturn acts of Congress. But by what right does the Supreme Court hold such power? Nothing in the text of the Constitution states that “the Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution.” Where did this power come from? ...

This is the transcript of episode 07 of my podcast Reasoned Talk (议正言辞). Listen on Xiaoyuzhou or Apple Podcast . The episode is in Chinese; this transcript has been translated into English. In episode 2, we told the story of Xu Yuanqing’s revenge case in the Tang dynasty. At the time, that case set off a great debate over rites versus law that occupied the entire legal world for decades. In the end, the debate reached no definitive conclusion; the court chose a compromise resolution, leaving the underlying rites-versus-law question unsettled. ...