May 19, 2023
Gabrielle Palluch, author of The Opium Queen: The Untold Story
of the Rebel Who Ruled the Golden Triangle, published by
Rowman & Littlefield, joins the show to discuss the remarkable life
of Olive Yang. Born in the Kokang region in the 1920s, Uncle Olive
was an enigmatic and influential figure in the history of her
ancestral region: brother and sister to royalty, potential CIA
collaborator, maybe drug smuggler, almost-definitely arms trader,
cattle dealer and sponsor of celebrity film stars... She lived
quite a life, and Gabrielle has dedicated over 200 pages to trying
to sort out the fact from the fiction.