A few weeks after Ben Yeo travelled to Cambodia for what he thought was a job in a casino, he found himself locked up in a padded room. “It’s a combination between a prison and a madhouse,” he remembers. He was being punished for refusing to conduct online scams.

Scam Factories is a podcast and multimedia series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. The Conversation collaborated for this series with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne, Ling Li, a PhD candidate at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and Mark Bo, an independent researcher.

In the second episode, Inside the Operation, we explore the history of how scam compounds emerged in Southeast Asia and who is behind them. We hear about the violent treatment people receive inside through the testimonies of two survivors, Ben, and another man we're calling George to protect his real identity.

The podcast series was written and produced by Gemma Ware with production assistance from Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Sound design by Michelle Macklem. Leila Goldstein was our producer in Cambodia and Halima Athumani recorded for us in Uganda. Hui Lin helped us with Chinese translation. Editing help from Justin Bergman and Ling Li.

• Rise of an industry: part 2 of Scam Factories
• Locked in: the inside story of Southeast Asia's fraud compounds

Scam factories is a special three-part series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to work in these scam factories. Many were trafficked there and forced into criminality by defrauding people around the world.

The Conversation collaborated for this series with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne, Ling Li, a PhD candidate at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and Mark Bo, an independent researcher.

In part 1, our researchers travel to a village in Cambodia called Chrey Thom to see what these compounds look like. And we hear from two survivors about how they were recruited into compounds in Laos and Myanmar.

The podcast series was written and produced by Gemma Ware with production assistance from Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Sound design by Michelle Macklem. Leila Goldstein was our producer in Cambodia and Halima Athumani recorded for us in Uganda. Hui Lin helped us with Chinese translation. Editing help from Justin Bergman and Ling Li.

• Locked in: the inside story of Southeast Asia's fraud compounds

As the Trump administration ratchets up its threat to slap tariffs on allies and economic rivals alike, the world is bracing for another wave of costly economic disruption. This protectionist shift is all the more remarkable given how the US championed trade liberalisation for decades.

So what does it actually take for a country to use protectionism to grow its economy? Some developing countries have successfully used tariffs to do so, while others have struggled. In this episode, we talk to Jostein Hauge, a development economist at the University of Cambridge in the UK, about who wins and who loses from tariffs and protectionism.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany with assistance from Katie Flood and Gemma Ware. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Full credits for this episode are available. Sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

Further reading:

• How protectionism can help developing countries unlock their economic potential
• Tariffs are back in the spotlight, but skepticism of free trade has deep roots in American history
• Trump’s tariff gambit: As allies prepare to strike back, a costly trade war looms
• Will Trump’s tariffs boost the US economy? Don’t count on it

Mentioned in this episode:

Scam compounds coming soon