Insider RFA to back welcome! Oops – Eugene and Amy get a little disoriented as they flip the podcast format and give listeners the main story first, followed by the regularly scheduled rundown and banter.
How It’s Made
Joining Eugene and Amy in the studio is Mem Satitpanyapan of RFA’s sister organization BenarNews, a news outlet reporting on security, politics and human rights in Southeast and South Asia.
Mem, who serves as the senior Thai content manager, chats with the crew about a Bangkok murder case making international headlines. The bodies of six tourists – two Vietnamese-Americans and four Vietnamese nationals – were discovered in a ritzy hotel room. The cause of death? Tea laced with cyanide.
Podcast Free Asia
Eugene explains that in an effort to reach and retain new listeners, the podcast will lead with the “How It’s Made” segment to present listeners with the main meat of the episode first. All segments will remain the same, simply in a different order!
Listeners of RFA Insider should also check out the new RFA Stories podcast, which is launching the five-part series "Master of Deceit" on Chinese-American democracy activist and accused spy Wang Shujun.
The Rundown
Amy kicks off the segment with a bizarre update related to Thich Minh Tue, the Vietnamese man who went viral online for his ascetic lifestyle following the teachings of Buddha. Tue, along with some of his followers, were detained by police in early June, but the "unofficial monk" resurfaced later in July. Prior to his resurfacing, however, two Vietnamese YouTubers found themselves in hot water with police… for filming a rock formation and suggesting that it resembled Thich Minh Tue.
Eugene opens a conspiracy theory can of worms with the Asia Fact Check Lab's report addressing rumors on Chinese social media, following the successful launch of China's Chang'e 6 space probe, that the U.S. Apollo lunar landings had been faked. Some "evidence" of the conspiracy relied on presenting interview snippets from Chang'e 6 lead architect Pei Zhouyu and Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin entirely out of context. Other "evidence" took advantage of the language barrier to slap fake captions in Chinese over a photo, making it seem as though White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre had announced that the U.S. and China had landed on two different moons. The last two pieces of "evidence" – a case of petrified wood being misidentified as lunar rock and the false claim that the official records of the Apollo 11 mission had been lost – also failed to serve as legitimate evidence of a staged lunar landing.