# On Women of the Island: Minimalism and Making Things in the Age of AI

> I was a guest on Women of the Island (小岛的女人们), a Chinese-language podcast about women living in New Zealand. We talked about minimalism, and about whether we still need to make things ourselves when AI can write code, animate and edit video.

Source: https://chanmeng.org/blog/women-of-the-island-podcast
Author: Chan Meng — https://chanmeng.org
Published: 2026-11-10
Tags: Minimalism, Career

---

I was a guest on *Women of the Island* (小岛的女人们), a Chinese-language podcast about women living in New Zealand. The episode is 22 minutes long and in Chinese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxd1W4E0SUk

## What we talked about

The host, Gong Xiaoyu (龚小鱼), and I recorded on a spring lawn at One Tree Hill in Auckland, after a long online conversation a few days earlier.

We started with minimalism: order in daily life, and choosing what to keep. Everything I own still fits in one backpack and one suitcase. I wrote about how that started in [my minimalist lifestyle journey](https://chanmeng.org/blog/minimalist-lifestyle-journey).

Then we got to the question that is hard to avoid now. When AI can write code, animate and edit video, do we still need to make things ourselves?

We don't fully agree, and the episode keeps that in. There is no tidy answer at the end.

## Watch it

The episode is on the show's YouTube channel: [从豆瓣网红到 AI Native](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxd1W4E0SUk).