Talking Indonesia

What does it mean to believe in ghosts? It turns out that's exactly the wrong question. In this special episode of Talking Indonesia, co-hosts Tito Ambyo and Jamie Edmonds sit down together not as interviewer and guest, but as co-editors who have spent months immersed in a collection of essays on ghosts and haunting in Indonesia. The result is something that is a bit different than the usual podcast interview: two scholars thinking aloud about what the ghostly has done to them. They move between the personal and the theoretical. Jamie's childhood on a road called Whispering Woods, his years navigating psychosis and hallucination, and the way ghost stories kept refusing to let him stay on the outside. And Tito's discovery, buried in a Dutch East Indies newspaper, that his grandfather hosted a radio programme about spirituality, which was a revelation that arrived mid-thesis, mid-life, with the force of a haunting. The episode also serves as a guide to the Inside Indonesia special edition on ghosts that Tito and Jamie co-edited: essays on pulung gantung in Gunung Kidul, haunted manuscripts that resist digitisation, headless soldiers whose presence keeps colonial violence from being forgotten, female dancers whose spectral power is reshaping Indonesian cinema, and journalists learning to take seriously the tree that refused to be felled. What emerges from all of it is not an argument for or against the existence of ghosts, but something more interesting: a case for sitting with what we cannot explain, and for the kind of knowing that begins with admitting we do not know. In this episode of Talking Indonesia, Tito Ambyo and Jamie Edmonds explore what ghosts teach us about Indonesia — and about ourselves. Jamie Edmonds is Director of the Critical Languages Institute, Associate Director of the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. His research focuses on Islam, popular culture, and the supernatural in Indonesia. In 2026, the Talking Indonesia podcast is co-hosted by Dr Jemma Purdey from the Australia-Indonesia Centre, Dr Elisabeth Kramer from the University of New South Wales, Dr Tito Ambyo from RMIT, Dr Jacqui Baker from Murdoch University, and Dr Clara Siagian from University College London.

Irma Hidayana - Free Nutritious Meals Program by Talking Indonesia

Dian Tri Irawaty - Kampung and Urban Advocacy by Talking Indonesia

On August 25 2025, protestors took to the streets in Jakarta outside the parliament to vocalise their loss of confidence in the current parliament. While the protests were triggered by a newly announced increase in parliamentarian housing allowances, the protests were about so much more. Underpinning it all was a general lack of confidence that Indonesian politicians care about, or were effectively responding to, the very real struggles of everyday Indonesians that they are supposed to be representing. These protests spread to other parts of the country and in some cases, turned deadly. In today’s special episode, we turn to the thoughts and responses of Indonesians currently living overseas. Being away from home when such serious and concerning events are underway poses its own challenges, and today I want to find out more about how they are getting information, what they see as the key issues, and what can be done from abroad. Elisabeth Kramer talks to Indonesian students currently studying at the University of Sydney, Australia--Mahesti Hasanah (PhD Candidate Political Economy), Benni Hasbiyalloh (PhD Candidate Government and International Relations) and Ifana Tungga (Masters Candidate Cultural Studies). They are some of the organisers behind Aliansi Gusar, a grassroots based organisation concerned with justice and equality in Indonesia. They share their thoughts and experiences regarding the current protests and organising around ongoing issues in Indonesia. This podcast was recorded on 7 September 2025.

While Jakarta's eviction politics have often dominated headlines and grassroots campaigns, the experiences of those who have been relocated to rusunawa (social housing) complexes have remained largely invisible. Yet these families reveal how Indonesia's vision of urban modernity is being literally built into the architecture of everyday life, changing the ways people connect with each other and build their lives. In this episode of Talking Indonesia, host Tito Ambyo explores these tensions with guest Dr Clara Siagian, whose ethnographic research uncovers how social housing design enforces specific values of respectability on the urban poor - from banning certain cooking methods to restructuring family life itself. Clara Siagian did her PhD at the Australian National University and is senior researcher at the Center on Child Protection and Wellbeing at Universitas Indonesia as well as a postgraduate researcher at the University College London. Her research examines urban governance, childhood policy, and development through the perspectives of marginalised populations. In 2025, the Talking Indonesia podcast is co-hosted by Tito Ambyo from RMIT, Dr Elisabeth Kramer from the University of New South Wales, Dr. Jacqui Baker from Murdoch University and Dr Jemma Purdey from the Australia-Indonesia Centre.

Palm oil contributes to up 4.5% to Indonesia’s GDP and unlike other commodities, the Indonesian government promotes palm oil as motor of rural development. This is because up to half of Indonesia’s palm oil production is generated by smallholders, farmers with 2-3 hectares of land, cultivating oil palm crops and selling the product for reliable market prices to corporate and state refineries. But this model of national development is in crisis. Small holder palm oil plants are aging, yields are decreasing and company profits are becoming leaner. At the same time, major markets are putting pressure on Indonesia’s palm oil industry for its environmental impact, including rampant deforestation and biodiversity loss. To address this crisis, the former Jokowi government embarked on an ambitious plan to help small holders replant their declining palm oil, this time in accordance with new standards of sustainability. But as my guest, Ara Simanjuntak, today reveals, the new government grants given to smallholders to help is creating new sources of precarity, anxiety and indebtedness that is fundamentally transforming the nature of rural development in Indonesia. To bet the farm, the title of this episode, is an expression in English. It means to risk everything on an uncertain outcome. And this, argues Ara is akin to what Indonesia’s palm oil smallholders are being asked to do. To talk about these issues, I’m here with Atmaezer Hariara Simanjuntak, or Ara, PhD candidate in Anthropology from Northwestern University.

Justinus Lhaksana - Indonesian Football and the Road to the 2026 World Cup In October 2022, the image of Indonesian football filling news bulletins around the world was one of tragedy and horror at the huge loss of life sparked by clashes between fans and security agents at a football match in Kanjuruhan, East Java. Less than three years later, this image is being replaced some by something quite different. In June this year, Indonesia did what no other Southeast Asian football team has done since the 1930s and proceeded to the fourth round of qualifying for the FIFA World Cup to be held in Canada, Mexico and the USA in 2026. To get this far Indonesia beat both China and Bahrain at home after going down to Australia and Japan away in the third round of qualifying. Now, only two matches stand between this team becoming the first to represent the Republic of Indonesia at a FIFA World Cup. In 1938, it was the first Asian nation to go to a FIFA World Cup but was of course competing under the Dutch East Indies flag. The success of the Indonesian national team or Timnas Garuda, so far is due to a well-orchestrated plan to bolster the team from without and make significant investment within. Reeling from the Kanjuruhan tragedy and the international and domestic response to it, in February 2023, Joko Widodo appointed Erick Thohir, the Minister for State-Owned Enterprises in his government, as the new chairman of the Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI) with a mandate for the total reform of football, to tackle its myriad problems. For Thohir, a millionaire former owner of football teams in Europe, North America and Indonesia and with deep links in FIFA itself, this was also an opportunity to reshape Indonesian football from the top down. The project to reform the national team had in fact started some years earlier under the then South Korean coach, Shin Tae-yong. At its core was the recruitment of players of Dutch descent who after naturalisation would qualify to play for Indonesia. Since 2020, at least 15 players in the men's team have been naturalised and very recently four Dutch women footballers of Indonesian descent were also naturalised and will play in the Indonesian squad. The next major milestone in this larger plan came in January this year, with the appointment of former Dutch superstar Patrick Kluivert as coach of Timnas. It is now his task to finish the job and get the Garudas to the World Cup. Why undertake such a project of naturalization for the national teams? How have the fans responded to this influx of imported players? What is the state of Indonesia's domestic football league and down to the grassroots that has made it necessary in the first place? And what will it take for Indonesian football to overcome its challenges and finally take its place on the world stage? In this week's episode Jemma chats with Justinus Lhaksana, a football commentator (https://www.youtube.com/@CoachJustinl28/videos) and former coach of the Indonesian national futsal team. In 2025, the Talking Indonesia podcast is co-hosted by Dr Jemma Purdey from the Australia-Indonesia Centre, Dr Jacqui Baker from Murdoch University, Dr Elisabeth Kramer from the University of New South Wales and Tito Ambyo from RMIT. Image: Image: Eliano Reijnders and Mees Hilgers receive their naturalisation certificates at the Indonesian Embassy in Brussels, 1 October 2024.