Episodes

When Chinese "volunteers" intervened in the Korean War in 1950, American relations with the People's Republic of China fell into an icy abyss from which they did not emerge until President Richard Nixon made his momentous dec...

Marshall, Blake, and Mike engage in a wide-ranging discussion of American policy disputes over what to do about China after World War II. President Truman, Secretaries of State George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, Madame Chia...

Mike walks us through the complex situation in China in the aftermath of World War II, with armed Japanese operating in the country, Soviet forces occupying Manchuria, and the Nationalist and Communist Chinese resuming their ...

Mike again leads us in our narrative of how America continued to fall short of its goals for China in World War II during the second half of the war. We meet General Claire Chennault of 'Flying Tigers' fame, whose ideas for h...

Mike leads our discussion of the American experience in China during World War II. Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin Roosevelt, and General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell are the central figures in this episode, which explores many aspects o...

Marshall, Blake, and Mike discuss America’s view of China from the 1920s through the early 1940s and the strong influence Americans raised by missionaries in China, notably Henry Luce and Pearl Buck, had on that view. Chiang ...

Mike walks us through the events of the Boxer Rebellion, a conflict in which Chinese rebels attempted to slaughter all foreigners and Chinese Christians in China. Marshall then explains how this drove missionaries into isolat...

As the Manchu dynasty weakens during the 19th century, U.S. missionaries arrive. Christian evangelization leads to the outbreak of the long, bloody, brutal, and genocidal Taiping Rebellion, whose leader claims to be the young...

Where trade goes, conflict follows! While Britain and the East India Company focus on the opium trade with China, Americans of the first half of the 19th century try to break into the Chinese market with...well...opium, but a...

Ben Franklin got China wrong, and America still does today! Marshall again will lead our discussion in a new series, “Tea, Drugs, and Jesus,” looking at how the United States keeps misunderstanding China, in no small part bec...

Marshall, Blake, and Mike wrap up the America First series by dissecting the America First principles of non-involvement in World War II, then discussing the effect on America of the shockingly rapid 1940 fall of France, American support to Britain through Lend-Lease, Charles Lindbergh’s ascent to …

Marshall leads our discussion of the disorganized and dispersed nature of mid-1930s America First opposition to FDR, the 1936 presidential election, Republican opposition to New Deal reforms and help to Americans during the Great Depression, Nazi Germany's penetration of German-American cultural gr…