You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.

Hi, Sebastian.

Hi, Bob. How you doing?

I can't complain. How are you?

Doing all right. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Oh, my pleasure. Let me introduce us. I'm Robert Wright, published for a non-zero newsletter.

This is a non-zero podcast. You are Sebastian Strangio.

Correct. Author of a book we're going to discuss in the Dragon's Shadow is the title. A subtitle is Southeast Asia in the Chinese century.

Very interesting book. Published by Yale University Press, but it does not,

and I say this as a compliment with all due respect for academics, it does not read like an

academic book. Now, maybe one reason is that you're basically a journalist, right?

That's correct, yeah.

And that's how you got interested in Southeast Asia, I guess, in your role as journalism.

Did it start off with you moving to Southeast Asia for other reasons?

Or did business bring you there?

I mean, you're from Australia, right?

Which is in the neighborhood.

Yeah, I'm from Australia, despite my accent, which is, listeners might detect a bit of an American

twang. I mean, my parents grew up in the States, but they lived here for many years.

I got interested in Southeast Asia. I went to take a job at a newspaper called the Phnom Pen Post in Cambodia.

And I ended up spending eight years living and working in Cambodia as a journalist.

So I covered local politics and events, but I also began traveling around the region

...