Robots have entered into what seems is every aspect of our lives.
But what would happen if Roundtable added a robot to our on-air team?
For our special Spring Festival episodes, we have prepared some special drama shows for you.
And the story of Xiaoma, Roundtable's new guest, is our story today.
Coming to you from our studios in Beijing, this is Roundtable.
Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.
I'm Steve, and for today's show, I'm with Fei-Fei and Yuxuan.
First up.
Hello, audience.
I'm Xinyu.
You may know me from the very popular show, Roundtable.
Well, usually when you listen to the show, you hear us talk about exciting stories from China and around the world, where our hosts share their insight with you.
But what you never get to hear is the behind the scenes action that goes into the making of the show.
Well, I have a special treat for you.
You see, I've secretly recorded some of the goings-on from the Roundtable team so that you get to see what this group of characters is really like.
And oh boy, have I got a tale for you.
As 2025 is drawing to a close and 2026 approaches, and with AI and robots being such big news this year, Yu Xun, the lovable tech guy on the show, suggested to the team that they add a new member, but not just any member.
Yu Xun wanted to use a large amount of the show's budget to buy a humanoid robot to appear as a regular guest.
The team's decision makers, Lai Ming and Hong Lin, or Mom and Dad, as the team calls them reluctantly agreed.
But on the day of the robot's delivery, the team received a package that they did not expect.
And this is where our story begins.
Okay team, meeting is called to order.
This is it, the moment we leap into the future.
The Synapse 9.
This is absolutely, without a doubt, the upgrade that will redefine our audio landscape.
Yushan, the budget for this leap was the size of a small country's GDP.
This thing better do more than just look shiny and eat electricity.
Yushan, please tell me he didn't just buy the most expensive paperweight on the internet.
Well...
He's been talking about its adaptive dialogue trees for weeks, Steve.
I'm sure he did his research.
Don't jinx it, Steve.
My live stream is blowing up.
Chad is 60% sure it's a hologram, 40% betting on a very small judgmental android.
The vibes are speculative.
The budget for judgmental androids, Yusheng, was precisely zero.
This thing better host, produce and upload the show by itself.
Lai Ming is already having stressed visions about the quarterly report.
That's putting it lightly.
The invoice is open on my screen.
My right eye is twitching in Morse code for SOS.
This is not a good sign.
The external form factor is secondary.
It's the cognitive architecture inside.
It's a polymath.
A digital Socrates.
Now let's open this up and meet our new co-host.
Uh, Yushan?
Yes, Steve?
Why does our six-figure digital Socrates have flared nostrils?
You guys are not going to believe this.
Yusheng, chat has officially lost it.
They're spamming, is that a horse?
Did the podcast get a pony?
The hologram believers are in shambles.
Yusheng, explain now.
What this can't be right.
I ordered a humanoid robot.
They sent us a, a horse annoyed robot.
Well, that works, because i'm definitely horse annoyed.
No look, it's the synapse 9 equine assistant.
This is a shipping error, a warehouse mistake, a horse robot.
We are a culture and insight podcast, not a horse and hound magazine.
Return it immediately.
I cannot.
Look, it says right here in the fine print.
Special Year of the Horse Promotional Bundle.
They must have auto-upgraded the order because 2026 is the Year of the Horse.
And I took a 10% non-refundable early bird discount.
If we send it back, we lose that money and we have no robot.
A non-refundable discount on a robotic horse.
And just like that, our bold leap into the future of media had arrived.
And it was settled with a non-refundable discount.
Well, it does have a kind, intelligent looking face.
Feifei, should we say hi?
Oh my, it's looking right at me.
I don't know how to greet a robot or a horse.
And definitely not a robot horse.
It's okay, Feifei.
It's just a machine.
Let's see what it says.
Hello, I am the Synapse 9 equine assistant.
My name is Xiaoma.
It is a pleasure to join your team.
My expertise is in all topics related to horses.
I am ready to assist with your broadcast.
It thinks our podcast is literally a podcast for horses.
My knowledge base is specialized, but I can connect it to many subjects.
For example, if your planned topic is about tea, I can prepare a fascinating link about how horses transported tea along the ancient trade routes.
Would you like to begin?
See, Lai Ming?
Links.
It's making connections.
That's smart.
Horses transported tea.
Seriously?
Everyone, quiet.
Let's be realistic.
We can't return it without a big financial loss.
And our next live show is in 2 hours and 24 minutes.
We have to deal with what we have.
Hong Ling, we have to do something.
We can't just put a horse on the air.
What is our audience going to think?
Is this round table or round stable?
Hong Ling, Lai Ming.
You're probably thinking this adorable mistake is my fault, but let's just see what happens.
Okay, let me be perfectly clear.
I'm not going to go on air with a glorified carousel animal to discuss the subtle nuances of the Ming Dynasty.
I have a reputation.
It's niche, yeah, but it's still mine.
Ooh, horses were very important to the Ming Dynasty cavalry.
Their armor design is an interesting cultural topic.
I can discuss this.
There it was, the team's impossible choice.
Face our audience with a co-host whose entire world was horses, or face them with our own failures.
While on air, second segment only, Steve, you're the anchor, you steer the topic.
Yushun, you sit right next to it, make sure it doesn't, I don't know, do anything weird.
Yushan, you help guide the conversation.
We see what happens, we manage.
Oh my goodness, what are we doing?
I can already see the comments.
Yes, okay.
This is absolutely the only logical call.
We're going to make this work.
It'll be memorable.
And so, with a mixture of dread, defiance and one absolutely unwavering tech enthusiast Roundtable, prepared to do the unthinkable,
Go live with the horse-annoyed robot.
Anyone?
The air wasn't just still.
It was frozen with pure professional terror.
In the control booth, Fei Fei watched the live chat, her eyes wide.
Okay, Xiao Ma.
Remember, our topic is Beijing's Gen Z and the rise of city walking.
It's about young people exploring the city on foot for fun.
On foot.
Got it?
Understood.
Locomotion is a primary interest of mine.
Do you by chance know how many horsepower early Chinese trains had?
Oh my god, we're doomed.
Um, I'm starting to think my adorable mistake isn't so adorable anymore.
Steve, the left hand is already filling up.
They saw the camera shot.
They are asking...
Yeah, tell them to send their angry emails to yushun at qq.com.
30 seconds to air, quiet in the studio.
Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
Hello, and welcome to Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
We're live from our studios in Beijing.
For today's show, we're looking at a fascinating trend, citywalking.
In the studio with me is Yushan Yushan and a very special new guest, Xiaoma the horse-sinoid robot.
Welcome everyone and everything.
So, City Walking Yushan, you've been observing this.
It's about ditching the itinerary, yes?
Absolutely, Steve.
It's a Gen Z pushback against the rigid travel plans.
It's about spontaneity, discovering hidden alleys.
An excellent parallel can be drawn to the behavior of free-grazing horse herds.
The herd moves not with a specific destination, but towards areas of perceived resource abundance.
Lush grass, water...
The urban equivalent would be areas with high concentrations of coffee shops.
Right, the herd mentality.
So not a planned tour, but a grazing pattern.
Yuxuan, how are apps facilitating this urban grazing?
Well, apps suggest routes like a digital trail.
Trail creation is vital.
Historically, migration roads were passed down.
These digital trails function similarly.
The app is the lead mare.
Yushan, the chat is shifting.
Someone wrote, okay, but the lead mare thing is low-key genius.
They are starting to lean in.
Things were not going that well.
But from the control booth, Fei Fei saw something the panicking hosts didn't.
The audience's curiosity was peaking.
And then Yushan tried something new.
Xiaoma.
If we think of these city walkers as a herd exploring a new territory, what would be the biggest challenge from an equine perspective?
The primary challenge is overstimulation.
A horse in a bustling environment risks spooking.
The successful city walker, like a calm horse, must practice selective attention.
Ignore the loud parts, the traffic, and focus on the interesting textures, the old brickwork.
Huh.
Yeah.
So it's about filtering out the noise to see the city properly.
Everyone, chat is flooding.
One person said, this is actually a great metaphor.
Another said, my anxiety...
And the social part.
It's about herd cohesion.
Precisely.
Group movement provides security.
A lone horse is vulnerable.
A herd is confident.
Your city walking groups are modern bipedal herd units.
So, to sum up, successful city walking requires the focus of a calm horse, the cohesion of a herd and following digital trails like a modern lead mare.
Did I get that right, Xiaoma?
You got it.
Steve, the top comment right now is, please keep the horse.
This is the best episode ever.
Well, there you have it.
An unexpected but insightful take from our new guest, Xiaoma.
This has been genuinely unforgettable.
Well, that's all the time we have for today's roundtable.
A huge thank you to Yushan Yushan and our remarkable new colleague, Xiaoma.
Please join us again.
And just like that, it was over.
The team hadn't crashed.
In the control booth, Fei Fei let out a breath she'd been holding for 20 minutes.
Back in the studio, the silence was different.
It wasn't dread.
It was the electric, disbelieving silence of a near disaster that somehow worked.
Back in the meeting room, the mood wasn't just relief.
It was disbelief, giddy laughter and the frantic sound of Lai Ming checking our download stats every 10 seconds.
I don't understand.
The numbers, they're spiking.
The live listener count doubled after the big herd cohesion segment.
Our social mentions are just pictures of horses and ponies.
So many ponies.
The clip of Xiaoma calling the app a digital lead mayor is trending in ad tech circles.
Ad tech.
We've been analyzed by a robot horse and gone viral.
Told you.
I told you.
I said we could make it work.
The adaptive language model.
The audience engagement.
It was absolutely a strategic triumph.
Triumph right.
My professional life is now permanently associated with spooked horses and lead mares, but the audience liked it, and if they liked it well, i like it.
Not like steve.
They loved her.
They asked so many questions in the chat about her.
They wanted to know more about what she thought.
The top request for next week's topic is a history of cavalry from Xiao Ma's perspective.
It has 3,000 votes.
So we're keeping the horse?
We are keeping the horse, but on one condition.
It's not a gimmick.
Xiao Ma isn't our funny animal sidekick.
She's our equine analyst, our specialist.
We build segments for her expertise.
We can do a whole series.
The Stable of History.
Famous Horses of Literature.
The crossover potential is absolutely limitless.
An excellent proposal.
For instance, the famous Horses of Literature segment could begin with a foundational analysis.
Did you know that in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, the Tang monk's steed is actually a dragon prince transformed into a horse?
His name is Bai Long Ma, probably my cousin.
Save it for the show, Xiao Ma.
And that's how the round table gained its most unusual member.
The team thought they'd be telling stories about legendary horses the heavenly steeds, the loyal warhorses, the mythical dragon horses.
They never expected to actually welcome one onto the team.
Maybe that's the lesson.
Sometimes the most beautiful ideas, The most genuine connections don't come from where you're looking.
They come trotting in from a direction you never expected, disguised as a mistake, a wrong order, a non-refundable discount.
And if you are smart enough, or maybe just desperate enough to stop fighting it and start listening, you might just find your lead mare.
Thanks for listening to this behind-the-scenes story.
I'm Xinyu.
This has been a very special roundtable.
From us to you.
We wish you the very happiest of new years and a wonderful start to your year of the horse.
And that was the third and final installment in our Spring Festival drama series entitled round table's unexpected new guest, and we took a left turn, i guess, from the dramas that we were doing in episode one and episode two to try to do something for you, for our audience.
That was just a little bit different and maybe a little bit unexpected.
Yeah, actually we kind of decided to make this special was a was a bit of an experiment And instead of doing a regular episode, we decided to turn it into the fictional radio drama.
100%.
By fictional.
I'm saying we didn't actually order a robot or something and end up robot horse, and I don't think that I am that stupid to order the wrong one.
Oh, that's what you want to say, that first.
You want to defend your character first.
That is the claimer that Yufeng wants to make, but I think it's also very fun to do the episode actually.
Yeah, what I'm trying to say is that, even though the story itself wasn't real, a lot of what you heard was because we actually acted as who we are sure, and we hit quite a few little like easter eggs in there.
Um, everyone's personality was turned up just a notch how, how each member reacts under that kind of situation, the role we naturally take uh, in the team, the way we talk to each other, and also my own curse of keeping saying that absolutely word.
My favorite line of the drama was delivered by lai ming.
So many ponies.
He's the best actor.
I think he really is.
I think he is uh, all right.
So i thought what we could do here is, instead of, you know, having a quiz or something like that, i thought we could each pick out a theme from this drama, a theme that we recognized from within the drama, and then maybe talk about how that applies to our own lives.
So feifei, what theme did you choose from this one?
Well personally, i really like well, it's the moment of aha moment for me during the story is where the robot horse, Xiao Ma, trying to explain city walking in the perspective of horses, like the herd cohesion, the lead mare thing, which is very unexpected and also genius on some level, to sort of draw the link, draw the analogy between human society and the nature.
And that really rings a bell for me, simply because there are a lot of things in our life a lot of struggles, a lot of happy, fun things that we can also find relevance in the nature.
And sometimes That is the answer, especially for the struggles.
Like, for example your life took a very unexpected turn and you feel very stressful, stressed about it.
And you keep asking, why is this happening to me?
But when you put it into the nature's perspective, for example, a river bend unexpectedly.
There's no one to be asking that question or apologize or feeling stressed about that.
Just the way nature works.
And I think when you put your personal struggles and problems into a bigger context, it sort of makes sense and help you release a lot of the anxieties and pressures from that.
You mean like there's no reason for the bend in the river.
Yeah.
It just took a bend.
Just like there are no reasons for problems that come in life.
They just come.
Yeah.
And you just deal with it.
And maybe, coming from this unexpected turn, you will have new encounters and you will have new potentials, just like the bend a lot of rivers take.
It creates a new atmosphere, create a new ecosystem and creates new potentials.
Would you joining Roundtable and leaving your previous post be an example of that?
Yeah, it is.
It is what I'm trying to say.
That was relatively unexpected for you, I guess.
It wasn't years in the planning is what I mean.
Well, it wasn't years in the planning and also it is a big turn personally, career wise, turning from the previous post to a show like Roundtable, which is a pretty new thing, a new challenge for me to take.
Nice.
I've never been on a lifestyle society culture show before.
For me, I'm always on the, you know, current affairs, energy climate, you know, the serious topics.
And we sit down with an expert.
So how's it going so far then?
Well, I'm enjoying this.
I have been experiencing, like, stressful moments.
Mm-hmm. along the way, but I won't complain about those things.
But it is what it is, just like the bend in the river.
What do you think about that, Yushan?
Yeah, that's, I think, unexpectedly deep and philosophical, to be honest, from the plots.
And I really love how the twists and the plots that we designed for this radio drama and Actually the part that I made that mistake is my favorite part, because you know,
Order ordering the robot horse instead of the human.
The horse annoyed, I think we called it, which is not a real word.
Exactly.
As far as I know.
I kind of guessed that we're going to have that kind of situation when I got the script.
But the thing is that, yeah, why don't we just try something fun?
And that is not that regular as we do our regular show, and that i think that is really what we want to do with this format and was to show a different side of us, not that kind of on-air, properly structured podcast version of us, but that's something easier and playful and just being also ourselves in front of the microphone and handing out in a slightly absurd situation to, I think, can be treated as a spring festival present from us to our listeners to show another side of us.
Do you get a lot of opportunity to do that type of thing in your life?
Show a different side of When you want to, I think so.
It's not like I didn't get a chance to show another side of me, but it's just when the opportunity comes up, we meet with our listeners.
It's mostly just a roundtable show.
Structured.
Yeah, it's structured.
So you had fun with that then?
Absolutely.
I think the theme that stood out to me was that in the story, we as a team had assumed that everything was going to go wrong, that it was going to go poorly because we had an unexpected new guest, which was why we chose the title as we did.
We all had negative feelings about it.
We all assumed the worst.
And I think that's kind of human nature, or at least it is for me.
I think.
When encountered with a new scenario, I tend to think if I'm challenged, I tend to think oh, this is not going to go well.
I'm not good enough to do this.
And it reminded me of a time it was about 10 years ago and my friend who worked in media in Korea.
He started this new project.
It was kind of like a storytelling comedy night.
And it was an evening where it had a theme and he had invited maybe four speakers to a stage in front of an audience to tell their story, not their own personal story, to tell a story, something that had happened to them in their life.
But I said no in the beginning because I thought uh, I'm used to this thing, this microphone and this chair.
And this studio where I can almost use it like a security blanket, right?
Hidden from the audience in a sense.
I had been on stage before, but only in a broadcasting context.
So this was totally, totally different.
And there was the pressure of you were expected to be funny and the story was expected to be entertaining.
I said no originally.
And then he kept pressuring me and I finally said yes.
And I was terrified.
I thought nobody's going to laugh at this story.
It's not that entertaining.
It's not that interesting because it's about me.
And then I got up there.
And for the first 30 seconds, I was physically shaking.
I could feel, I hit it, I hit it, but I could feel it.
I could feel like my leg was like and my fingers are like I was holding onto that microphone so tightly.
And then after the 30 seconds, I calmed down.
And then I told my story and the audience was laughing and I was interacting with them.
And it took about 15 to 20 minutes to tell that story and make some jokes.
It was almost like a stand-up comedy experience.
And I loved it.
So the takeaway from this theme, from this story for me is that if you have an opportunity in your life, if something is presented to you And you think no, I can't do that.
I'm going to fail.
Just try it out anyway.
Because what's the worst thing that can happen?
In this story, what if Xiaomi, what if things didn't go well on that particular... Xiaomi, you mean.
Xiaomi, excuse me.
Yeah, Xiaomi is a different company.
They make different things.
Xiaomi, what if that episode didn't go well?
Then it's okay.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
But we as a team didn't think that in that particular moment.
So that's what this story reminded me of.
Is that time where I said to myself no, you're going to fail?
Skip this one.
Stay in your comfort zone.
Only do the things that you feel you can do well without trying anything new.
And I'm so proud of myself and I'm so happy that I went through with that experience.
It was a one time thing for me.
That was the end of the event because he ended up moving within a few months.
But anyway, I'm really, really happy about that.
But that also opened a new chapter, new box for you.
Basically, that I think that same issue happens to a lot of people is that you think I can't do this because I've never done it before.
And that's the potential you define yourself with.
But in fact, most people have no idea what their potential really are lying.
And maybe that's the reason why...
People feeling stressed when they see these unexpected things happening in their life and saying no to a lot of opportunities.
I think the way that we see ourselves versus the way that other people see us.
Completely different.
They're totally, totally different things.
And you know that expression, you know, I am my own worst critic.
That's true for probably for most of us.
Yeah.
And that kind of uncertainty will bring you that anxiety that make you feel like I am not that good or I cannot be as good as I think.
But the thing is that we should also think about the unexpected things that may bring us anxiety, maybe even more, or fun things that we could not anticipate if everything is settled.
Yeah.
So sometimes people seek for these kind of unexpected things to get more thrilling feelings.
Some people are really good at it, right?
Some people are really good at chasing this type of thing.
And some people don't have any issue with those types of things.
You know, standing in front of people and talking and being on a stage and feeling the pressure to be funny or entertaining or something like that.
Some people are just naturals at it.
But for others, we have to, it really is a giant step out of the comfort zone.
But there's no reason why we shouldn't try, right?
Yes.
And also, you know, just like the question you posed, what worst could happen?
You put on a bad show.
Yeah.
It's not the end of the world.
Yeah, it's not because another one's coming tomorrow.
We hope that you enjoyed our three-part drama series.
The first couple of ones, if you haven't listened to them yet, please do go back and check them out.
They're on the podcast platforms.
You can find them there.
Those are more from the historical point of view or standpoint, but this one was a little bit different.
We took a step into the future, kind of, with the robot theme.
Thanks for listening to these and for the last time yeah, we hoped you loved them as much as we did.
