THE GREAT WAGER Episode 3. Grip and grin: When Nixon met Mao

While we’re preparing season 3 of Face Off, we’re excited to present an encore presentation of The Great Wager, a five-part series about Richard Nixon’s top-secret plan to go to China, befriend China, and change the balance of power in the Cold War.

This is Episode 3.

The news of Nixon’s trip to China is public, and he’s getting credit for pulling off such a historic event. Now, he and his advisers have to work with the Chinese to forge a relationship between two very different countries.

The Great Wager was produced in 2022 with Here & Now and WBUR Podcasts. This special presentation of The Great Wager is produced in partnership with Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Face Off is a proud member of the Airwave podcast network.

Book Recommendations:

Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan. An insider look at how Nixon and Kissinger operated in Beijing.

Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People's Republic by Mike Chinoy. Chapter 4: How American reporters, who knew little about China, covered the presidential trip

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THE GREAT WAGER Episode 2: Plots and private planes: How Henry Kissinger pulled off a secret trip to China

While we’re preparing season 3 of Face Off, we’re excited to present an encore presentation of The Great Wager, a five-part series about Richard Nixon’s top-secret plan to go to China, befriend China, and change the balance of power in the Cold War.

This is Episode 2.

Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger make contact with China. But in the midst of the Cold War, they don’t want anyone to know. How will Kissinger get to Beijing without alerting anyone — and what’s Frank Sinatra got to do with it?

The Great Wager was produced in 2022 with Here & Now and WBUR Podcasts. This special presentation of The Great Wager is produced in partnership with Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Face Off is a proud member of the Airwave podcast network.

Book Recommendations:

Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan. An insider look at how Nixon and Kissinger operated in Beijing.

Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People's Republic by Mike Chinoy. Chapter 4: How American reporters, who knew little about China, covered the presidential trip

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THE GREAT WAGER EPISODE 1: Richard Nixon's 'crazy' idea: Make befriending the Chinese Communist Party his legacy

With money, power and political standing at stake, America’s relationship with China is tenuous. But it wasn’t always that way.

The Great Wager is a five-part series that tells the story of the extraordinary encounter between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong in 1972 that brought these two countries together, the secret collaborations born from that meeting — and the reverberations we’re still feeling today. We’re thrilled to be re-airing this series, while we’re busily preparing season 3 of Face Off behind the scenes. 

This is episode 1.

President Richard Nixon has a plan: He wants to go to China. The only problem? The U.S. and China have had zero contact since the Communist Party took over China more than two decades before. The Great Wager host Jane Perlez digs into the beginning of Nixon’s improbable diplomatic mission.

The Great Wager was produced in 2022 with Here & Now and WBUR Podcasts. This special presentation of The Great Wager is produced in partnership with  Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Face Off is a proud member of the Airwave podcast network.

Book Recommendations:

Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan. An insider look at how Nixon and Kissinger operated in Beijing. 

Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People's Republic by Mike Chinoy. Chapter 4: How American reporters, who knew little about China, covered the presidential trip

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In this bonus episode of Face-Off Jane speaks with former ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns. They discuss Ambassador Burns’ encounters with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, his meetings with American CEOs, and his travels to remote places in China. 

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:

To Change China, by Jonathan D. Spence

The Private Life of Chairman Mao, by Zhi-Sui Li

Chip Wars, by Chris Miller

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In a special bonus episode recorded live at the Asia Society, host Jane Perlez speaks with journalist and scholar Orville Schell about his 50 years covering Chinese leaders and their American counterparts. They attempt to answer the question: how did we get here?

Recorded live at The Asia Society on April 8, 2025

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China and Russia have rarely been friendly - until now. Xi and Putin have been open about their bromance, exchanging gifts, sharing lavish dinners, even celebrating a birthday together. Are the two dictators, Xi and Putin, aiming to forge a new arrangement in the world that diminishes the traditional role of the United States? Our guest, Lyle Goldstein, former professor at US Naval War College, and now teaching at Brown University, is an expert on China and Russia. He talks about the new order under President Trump, and how Russia and China, aligned with each other, approach the US in different ways.  

Guest: Lyle Goldstein: Former professor at US Naval War College, now at Brown University.

Book Recommendations: 

Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Martin Wolf

China and Russia by Philip Snow. 

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Face Off is a proud member of the Airwave podcast network.

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China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has given China five years to dominate Artificial Intelligence. He believes China must accomplish this goal in order to become the world’s tech giant. But the United States is doing everything it can to stop China from reaching its goal. Can Washington stop US and European advanced chips from reaching China? It seems not, as the arrival of DeepSeek shows. Will AI development be throttled by the Chinese government’s heavy censorship? Can China achieve its goal? 

Guest: Karen Hao, journalist and engineer. Writing appears in The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal. Author of the upcoming Empire of AI. 

Book Recommendations: 

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee 

Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future by Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Face-Off is a proud member of the Airwave podcast network.

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Back in 2015 the Chinese government declared that they would become the world leader in EVs by 2025. Major car companies scoffed. Who wants an EV? Today, China automakers have surpassed Japan, Germany and the US to become the number one exporter of cars. A record number of Chinese EVs were sold globally last year. How did China become the global leader in EVs? We’ll talk with the man who literally wrote the book on the rise of China’s car industry. 

Guest: Michael Dunne, Auto executive in China and the US, author American Wheels, Chinese Roads.  

Books: Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk and the Bet of the Century by Tim Higgins.

Michael Dunne's new book will publish in mid-2025.

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer. Face Off is a proud member of the Airwave podcast network.

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China’s leader, Mao Zedong famously said that “Women hold up half the sky.” But these days it doesn’t feel that way in China. Unfair marriage rules, difficulties getting a divorce, barriers to owning property and many more restrictions are challenging women to speak out, and act. We’ll hear about the Chinese “leftover women” who are veering from the traditional path and about the Chinese feminists of today.

Guest:  Leta Hong Fincher, author, Left Over Women. 

Recommended Books:

Left Over Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China by Leta Hong Fincher

Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer.

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Motion pictures first came to China in 1896.  China was one of the first countries to screen the Lumiere brother’s “western shadowplays” as they were called. By the 1930’s Shanghai was known as the Hollywood of the East. 

That all changed after the founding of the People’s Republic. Western films were eventually allowed back into China but it wasn’t until the release of the American epic, Titanic and its blockbuster success in China that Hollywood woke up to the potential of the Chinese market. Hollywood studios soon swarmed into China, working with Chinese movie makers to concoct big movies for big audiences: The Great Wall; Mulan; Kung Fu Panda 3. Then the dream went in a different direction.  We’ll speak with an American film producer who has been at the center of the push and pull between Hollywood and China.

Guest: Peter Loehr, American movie executive with three decades in China.

Recommended Books:

The Golden Screen by Jeff Yang

An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896 - 1937 by Zhang Zhen  

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer.

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