12 episodes · Investigative narrative series · Story FM
In 2012, American journalist Michael Scott Moore traveled to Somalia to report on piracy with support from the Pulitzer Center. He was kidnapped and spent the next 977 days in captivity, including several months aboard a hijacked Taiwanese vessel. Simmering conflicts among the crew and competing accusations surrounding a death made life on board far more complicated than he initially understood.
After his release, he recounted his experience in The Desert and the Sea. But language barriers aboard the ship had left questions unanswered: what had his fellow hostages lived through, and how did they remember the same events?
For The Life-and-Death Trade with Somali Pirates, I tracked down survivors across the United States, China, and Southeast Asia, bringing Moore’s account together with the recollections of Chinese and Southeast Asian crew members. Their stories did not always align. Through in-depth interviews and background research, I reconstructed timelines and compared accounts, working to piece together what happened from fragmented—and sometimes conflicting—memories.
I independently produced six episodes of this 12-part investigative narrative podcast, following Moore’s experience from interviews in English and translation through scriptwriting, Mandarin narration, audio editing, and post-production. I wanted listeners to enter the story through the people who lived it—to hear where their accounts supported one another, where they clashed, and what remained unresolved.
The resulting 12-episode investigative narrative podcast series was acquired for television adaptation, with Shen Ao—a Chinese filmmaker whose crime thriller grossed more than $500 million—as director.
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