There’s a lot of extraneous conversation, lame self-deprecating jokes, and hesitant speaking. Some of that’s to be expected, but it’d be nicer if you consider it less of a conversation for you and more of a product for the audience in the future.

The main criticism: keep the subject matter interesting for an audience. No one who reads this site or has lived in China needs to tune in to hear fight stories for 15 minutes. Or China makes me cranky stories. Or hear people who don’t speak much/any Chinese wonder aloud about or make uninformed generalizations about things like Chinese humor. Yes, Chinese people stand irony (look at internet BBS trolling/comments). Cross-talk is a bit more advanced than “Hu’s on first,” and I think it also contains a good deal of irony. The trouble is cross-cultural irony… Just as you tend not to think Chinese people are capable of sarcasm or irony, they approach you the same way. It takes a lot of personal or cultural familiarity before someone can stop an ironic response (since it requires having establishing a baseline). Anyway…

Take a page from the Sinica podcast and take the opportunity of a podcast to talk about what you and your guest DO know very well… Interesting topics in the first 35 mins (stopped at that point) included: western europe nuclear option, kwester, start-up/tech monetization, beijing silicon valley.

better luck next time.