Kaiser's despair on learning that last week's Sinica episode had been lost in a freak weather accident turned quickly to plotting. "We'll simply have to make up for it somehow," he mused. Which is how today's special show came about: a better, stronger and perhaps even genetically-modified weekend version of everyone's favorite Chinese podcast. But no worries - our same off-the-cuff and no-holds-barred rules apply.

And we have a full house in the studio too. Joining Kaiser are Sinica stalwarts Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei fame, Gady Epstein of Forbes and renowned China public relations expert Will Moss. Mary Kay Magistad of Public Radio International also joins the crew as they kick around more juicy tidbits from the Wikileaks data-dump, take delight in the US Embassy's new and unofficial moniker for Beijing air quality, and talk about some of the topics we meant to bring you last week.

And as always we would be remiss not to mention that subscribing to Sinica via RSS feed is the easiest way to catch unexpected shows like this one. To get things working, just sign-up for an account on Popup Chinese and follow the instructions to add Sinica to your list of shows. Once you've done this your computer will automatically download new episodes as they become available. For the more commitment-phobic, we're also pleased to bring you the show as a standalone mp3 file for once-off enjoyment. We hope you like it!