ChinaTalk
371 episodes - English - Latest episode: 8 days ago - ★★★★★ - 56 ratingsConversations exploring China, technology, and US-China relations. Guests include a wide range of analysts, policymakers, and academics. Hosted by Jordan Schneider.
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Episodes
Is a Chinese Financial Crisis Looming?
November 12, 2020 23:06 - 56 minutesThe Chinese economy is perhaps the world's only economic bright spot. So that means we can stop worrying about a financial crisis, right? Think again, according to Lauren Gloudeman and Logan Wright of the Rhodium Group, who join to discuss their new paper mapping out the weak points in China's financial system. That this report is a follow-up to Logan's 2018 paper entitled Credit and Credibility. Our past show on the topic you can find here on Apple Podcasts and here on Spotify. Cohosti...
Trains!
November 08, 2020 19:03 - 41 minutesDavid Feng talks Chinese trains and subways. We get into the history and evolution of China's trains, the impact of industrial policy, and the role of foreign technology. Please consider supporting ChinaTalk. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Swing State Appreciation Hip Hop Minimix
November 08, 2020 18:50 - 16 minutesA thank you to everyone out there who helped make yesterday possible. "With full hearts and steady hands, with faith in America and in each other, with a love of country — and a thirst for justice — let us be the nation that we know we can be. A nation united. A nation strengthened. A nation healed." From Atlanta: Ray Charles, Ludacris, Killer Mike, Andre 3000, Quavo, Childish Gambino From Philly: Beanie Sigel, Lil Uzi Vert (Tried to fit in Dreams and Nightmares but the lyrics are just...
What To Do About Xinjiang
October 28, 2020 17:58 - 43 minutesHow should the US respond to the human rights crisis in Xinjiang? I was a guest on the Lawfare podcast this week, discussing my recent essay outlining how the U.S. can respond and push back on the Chinese government's abuses in the region. For the first fifteen minutes, I interviewed Sheena Greitens, an associate professor at UT Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs, on the origins of the camps and Xi's motivation for the current policy. In the second half, Lawfare editor Jacob Schulz and I d...
Why Xi Is All In On Climate Change
October 27, 2020 04:06 - 27 minutesXi wants China to reach peak emissions by 2030 and go carbon neutral by 2060. Why now? Can he do it? Lauri Myllyvirta comes on to discuss. RSVP for live Xinjiang discussion at 2:30pm est here. See here for my Xinjiang policy proposal. Google calendar invite to Saturday 5 pm EST zoom phonebanking. Google calendar invite to Sunday 5 pm EST zoom phonebanking. My email is [email protected] or I'm on twitter here if those links don't work for you. Thanks. Get bonus content on Patreo...
CCP Influence Ops in Japan: Everywhere Yet Nowhere in Particular
October 24, 2020 04:16 - 51 minutes'Everywhere Yet Nowhere in Particular' is the title of Devin Stewart's latest report. We discuss China's tactics in trying to influence Japanese politics and society as well as what makes Japan uniquely resistant to the CCP's charms. Refer 10 friends to get yourself a ChinaTalk mug! I made a 20-minute megamix of Japanese city pop and trap for you all at the end! If you want the tracklist in the form of a top-secret ChinaTalk YouTube playlist, just start supporting ChinaTalk! Get bonus cont...
What Does US-China Corruption Really Look Like? Also, iFlyTek
October 22, 2020 11:56 - 19 minutes - 17.7 MBRefer your friends ChinaTalk! If you get 10 people to sign up using your referral link, you'll get a free ChinaTalk mug! Mara Hvistendahl is a staff writer at The Intercept. In this bitesize edition of ChinaTalk, we discuss pieces of hers on the US Ambassador to China's son and ZTE (The Intercept) and AI voice recognition giant iFlyTek (Wired). Intro and outtro music liner notes available exclusively to ChinaTalk supporters. Become one here. And more importantly, vote.
What Does US-China Corruption Really Look Like? Also, iFlyTek
October 22, 2020 11:56 - 20 minutesRefer your friends ChinaTalk! If you get 10 people to sign up using your referral link, you'll get a free ChinaTalk mug! Mara Hvistendahl is a staff writer at The Intercept. In this bitesize edition of ChinaTalk, we discuss pieces of hers on the US Ambassador to China's son and ZTE (The Intercept) and AI voice recognition giant iFlyTek (Wired). Intro and outtro music liner notes available exclusively to ChinaTalk supporters. Become one here. And more importantly, vote. Get bonus conten...
China and the NBA
October 16, 2020 02:11 - 47 minutesWhy, aside from Yao, have Chinese players had no success in the NBA? Post-NBA, what has Yao done to reform and professionalize the Chinese Basketball Association? One year on, how does the NBA's response to Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey's tweet look in retrospect, and why has the Chinese government responded so differently to NBA and Premier League stars making noise about Xinjiang? Hunter Shi of the podcast 翻转体育 and Nate Duncan of the Dunk'd On Podcast join to discuss. Please refer your f...
China's True Tech Ambitions
October 08, 2020 04:44 - 56 minutesHow does the Chinese government's S&T spending differ fundamentally from America's and what does that tell us about the nature of their industrial policy? What is China Standards 2035 and what implications could it have? Will China pull the rare earth card? And is there any chance that America doesn't overcorrect? Emily de La Bruyere of Horizon Advisory joins ChinaTalk to discuss. Do reach out to me on twitter or at [email protected]. I have a newsletter! Please consider supportin...
Liberalism: The Light That Failed
October 02, 2020 20:24 - 1 hourIn his memoir The World as It Is, Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s closest national security aide, confides that, on the day Obama left the White House, the worry that haunted him most was: ‘What if we were wrong?’ That is, what if liberals had misinterpreted the nature of the post-Cold War period? ‘What if we were wrong?’ is the question Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes set out to explain in their recent The Light That Failed: A Reckoning, which takes Eastern Europe as exhibit A. The book medita...
TikTok, WeChat and Trump
September 29, 2020 15:37 - 44 minutesIt's been a wild few weeks with President Trump threatening to shut WeChat and TikTok out of the U.S. market and rip them out of the app stores. There have been lawsuits, a preliminary injunction—and a sudden deal to purchase TikTok and moot the issue out. To chew it all over, Benjamin Wittes hosted a discussion with Lawfare co-founder Bobby Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, and me, Jordan, the voice behind ChinaTalk. We talked about how we got here, whethe...
War in Taiwan
September 25, 2020 13:00 - 37 minutesWhy would Xi invade and is the Taiwanese military up to the challenge? Paul Huang, freelance journalist, Fletcher School grad and fellow at the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation joins to discuss. Please consider supporting ChinaTalk and/or offering me gainful employment! If you want to get in touch, just email at [email protected] or message me on twitter. Intro Music: 【青春不留白】莒光園地 (Taiwanese military broadcast music) Outtro Music: 陳嫺靜 - 輕輕 (Taiwanese R&B artist) Check out some mor...
Adam Tooze on World Order, Then and Now
September 18, 2020 13:54 - 1 hourAdam Tooze is my favorite economic historian. After writing a handful of books on the 1920s and Nazi economics, he's now turned his eye to the present day, taking on the financial crisis and US-China relations. In this conversation, we get into What we can learn from the diplomatic and economic modes of 1920s and 30s Why Nazi legal theory resonates so well in China today How modes of understanding Nazi Germany can help illustrate China How Xinjiang camps echo the logic of Soviet gulag...
The Mulan Debacle
September 11, 2020 03:40 - 33 minutesTurning a beloved movie of female empowerment into a dull endorsement of the patriarchy, autocracy and mass forced labor is no easy feat, but Disney Magic is one hell of a drug. Think tanker Rui Zhong and novelist/meme goddess Xiran Jay Zhao join to discuss. Please consider supporting ChinaTalk Intro music: Reflections by Christina Aguilera (Tojou Remix) Outtro music: I'd be impressed if you made it to the end of this podcast and didn't know this song, but here's the link If you're looki...
Rise and Fall of a Suzhou Soft Serve Baron
September 02, 2020 14:37 - 1 hourMister Softee, the famed northeastern American ice cream brand, in Suzhou, China? Yes, that was a thing. Turner Sparks, rising from humble beginnings as just another English teacher making his way in the world, achieved fame and fortune thanks to a catchy jingle and some tasty mango-flavored soft serve. Yet his vision of China-wide ice cream domination dissolved amid a deluge of backstabbing regulators, slashed tires, and stolen cones. Listen here to learn about the circumstances that finall...
Land Wars: China's Agrarian Revolution
August 26, 2020 13:36 - 1 hourIn 1927, Mao wrote that "In a very short time...several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back." During the 40s and 50s, he was able to realize this vision to disastrous effect. On this show, Tulane Professor Brian DeMare joins the show to discuss the history and legacy of the land reform movement, including forays into the role of Xi's father and William Hinton's Fanshen...
Scholarstage on Xi, War in Taiwan, the CCP Toolkit, and the Chinese Tradition
August 18, 2020 16:22 - 1 hourTanner Greer of the blog Scholarstage joins the show in a wide-ranging discussion touching on Xi's ideology, incentives in western China-watching, Mormons in China, why it's worth studying classical Chinese history, and AI-assisted writing. ChinaTalk has hit its 100th episode! That's two and a half full workweeks of informed, respectful, and hopefully entertaining conversation on everything China. As the media industry has cratered, spaces for intelligent and open discussion on China that l...
What China Wants
August 10, 2020 01:38 - 42 minutesHow do you even go about answering that question? Is there a consensus in Washington on how to confront China and does that consensus make any sense? Ali Wyne and Jessica Chen Weiss come on to discuss. Currently, I make $4/hr from donations adding up all the time it takes to prep, record, and edit the show. This is the 99th episode of ChinaTalk. If you'd like to see the show continue production at the same frequency of one episode per week, please consider donating to support ChinaTalk at h...
Superpower Showdown: Tale of a Trade War
July 31, 2020 04:45 - 1 hourLingling Wei and Bob Davis of the WSJ discuss their new book Superpower Showdown. We dive deep into the personal dynamics within the Xi and Trump administrations as well as what the twists and turns over the past few years reveal about the US-China relationship. Please consider supporting ChinaTalk. This show took me 10 hours of reading, 2 hours of script-writing, an hour of recording, and four hours of editing. Right now, I receive $50 in donations per episode, meaning my work on this podca...
TikTok, Tesla, Kanye and Open Source
July 24, 2020 16:05 - 11 minutesShould the US ban TikTok? What role does open source play in the tech ecosystem and the Chinese government's plans for self-reliance? Why does tech occupy such a unique role in the US-China tech cold war? And what can Kanye teach us about foreign policy? Today's guest is Kevin Xu, author of the interconnected newsletter. Click this link to support ChinaTalk. Intro Music: Kanye's Runaway. Exit Music: 2019 New Blood DBC Cypher. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for priv...
How Sanctions Fail US Policymakers
July 17, 2020 23:23 - 35 minutesEddie Fishman, who worked in Obama's State Department's Policy Planning Staff, joins to discuss his recent articles on sanctions and the world order. If you know of any job opportunities (or just wanna say hi!) do reach out. I'm at [email protected] or @jordanschnyc on twitter. And as always, the newsletter and Patreon! Intro music: 一丢丢 by AR Outtro music: selection from the 说唱听我的 cypher Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Lear...
How Corruption Works in China
July 10, 2020 20:58 - 1 hourHow can China be so corrupt and yet grow so fast? What's the relationship between corruption and competent governance? How does 'access money' at the higher levels differ from the 'profit-sharing' you see lower down in the bureaucracy? How does China in the 21st century compare with America's gilded age? And why won't anyone give me dinosaur eggs? To discuss, Prof. Yuen Yuen Ang joins the show to talk about her fantastic new book, China's Gilded Age. Please subscribe to my Patreon! Or bett...
The H1B Ban and National Security
June 27, 2020 03:55 - 44 minutesThis week Trump banned valid H1B holders from entering the country. What are the broader implications for America's technological ecosystem and national security? To discuss, Tina Huang and Remco Zwetsloot from CSET talk about their recent research on tech and immigration. We discuss the potential lasting impacts of the, for now, temporary ban, how the US immigration process compares to other nations' policies, what China is doing to bolster their homegrown talent as well as the threat of cor...
China-India Clashes: What Happens Next?
June 24, 2020 22:59 - 42 minutesOn June 15th, dozens of soldiers died in clashes on the China-India border. What exactly happened up in the Himalayas? What's the historical background? What does this mean for the trajectory of China-India and US-India relations? We also get into development policy, water rights, and some improv featuring terrible Trump and Modi accents (I didn't even try when doing Xi). Thanks to Akhil Bery and Sasha Riser Kositsky for coming on the show. Please consider donating to the ChinaTalk Patreo...
Hong Kong's Protests One Year On
June 17, 2020 14:54 - 1 hourThis week’s ChinaTalk featured Antony Dapiran going deep with me on the origin, meaning, and legacy of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. We drew parallels and contrasts throughout between HK and Black Lives Matter. If you'd like to help keep the show going, please consider subscribing to my Patreon. An excerpt: What continues to be most tragic for Hong Kong is that the government really has demonized and made enemies of the people who support the protesters and the protesters themselves. I...
Evan Osnos on Tiananmen, Protests in America and Political Leadership
June 08, 2020 22:02 - 43 minutesEvan Osnos is a correspondent for the New Yorker. We discussed his pieces on the protests in DC and coverage of US-China. See here for video of the MLK speech. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
GM Corn Smuggled in Popcorn Bags: An Industrial Espionage Parable
May 28, 2020 12:41 - 47 minutesWhat do you get when you take a Chinese national, a rental car, rural Iowa, and a $52 billion seed business hanging in the balance? Said one review, "not since Alfred Hitchcock's in North by Northwest has a cornfield produced so much excitement." Mara Hvistendahl's recent book, "The Scientist and the Spy," delivers a compelling narrative diving deep into the nature of Chinese industrial espionage and America's response. Do consider donating to the ChinaTalk Patreon. I also write a weekly ...
AI Basic Research in China and the US
May 22, 2020 00:27 - 29 minutesWho's spending big? Does it matter? Zach Arnold and Ashwin Acharya join the show to discuss their reports on Chinese public sector AI R&D spending and strengthening America's AI workforce. Do note this episode was recorded in late February. Exit music Tricky Tricky by NINEONE / CREAM D / Yoken_Official / YYKBZ / WR/OC Patreon here. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Health QR Codes and the rise of a 'Digital Leviathan'
May 15, 2020 21:10 - 41 minutesDan Grover joins the show to discuss his recent piece on how Chinese tech firms have handled coronavirus, I read from a recent ChinaTalk newsletter on how some mainland commentators fear that QR Health Codes will create a 'digital leviathan,' and Ravish Bhatia of the Use Case podcast shares his coronastory from India. Please consider donating to ChinaTalk's patreon. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...
Coronastories 3: Nanjing, Nepal, and Singapore
May 06, 2020 17:38 - 48 minutesThe legendary Yangyang Cheng discusses how Coronavirus played out in cross-continent conversations with her mother. We'll also hear from Asmod in Nepal and Lambert in Singapore. In case you haven't heard, I write a newsletter. Recent posts are on US-China and AI chips. Please consider donating to my Patreon. The closing song was from James Brown's legendary Live at the Apollo Theater, 1962. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn mor...
Forging an Innovation Base Alliance
April 30, 2020 02:40 - 39 minutesAmerica has allies with solid tech. But can the US leverage these relationships to help preserve its technological edge over China? In this conversation, building off a recent CNAS report, Dan Kliman, Kristine Lee and Joshua Hitt dive deep into international defense innovation, Japan-China relations, and China's international tech ambitions. Please consider donating to my Patreon and absolutely subscribe to my newsletter. I just published a two-part series on China's health QR codes and ha...
Coronastories 2: Philippines, Russia, Taiwan
April 23, 2020 04:41 - 46 minutesWe're continuing our Coronastories series this week with personal reflections and analysis from friends of ChinaTalk on the current situations in the Philippines, Russia, and Taiwan. Oh and by the way I have a patreon and newsletter. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Coronastories: Dispatches from Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong
April 16, 2020 20:45 - 36 minutesThis week I'm trying something different. I've been interviewing my friends across China about their Coronavirus experiences, 故事FM style. We start off with Dev from Shanghai who lived through the entire lockdown and has interesting reflections on the lasting effects of social distancing on interpersonal relationships. Next, I talked with Jen about how Hong Kong has navigated the crisis. Finally, Tianyu, who flew back mid-March to Beijing, discusses mandatory self-quarantine and the process ...
Domestic Coronavirus Propaganda and China-Australia Relations
April 09, 2020 17:58 - 41 minutesAdam Ni and Yun Jiang are two former Australian government officials who together write Neican(内参), a fantastic new newsletter on Chinese policy and China-Australia relations. We talk about how the CCP is trying to convince its population that post-coronavirus all is still well on the mainland. We also go into the main flashpoints from an Aussie perspective, focusing in particular on influence campaigns. I've got a newsletter too! Please consider contributing to ChinaTalk's Patreon, or ...
How the Party Takes its Propaganda Global
April 03, 2020 15:38 - 53 minutesWhat are the CCP's international propaganda goals? How is it faring in the battle to define COVID-19's winners and losers? Matt Schrader of the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy brings the mirth in these dark times. We also go into tech and discrimination, stories from time working at China Daily and SmartAir, as well as Matt's favorite Overwatch characters. The audio gets better in the second half I promise. ChinaTalk fans now have a Discord! Please consider donating ...
Sinocism's Bill Bishop on the Politics of Coronavirus
March 25, 2020 14:08 - 42 minutesBill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter, comes on the show to discuss the new low in US-China relations. We start off talking about what China's response to coronavirus has taught us about the CCP and then go into the deeper forces behind why the Chinese government has started to blame America for creating the virus. We also touch on China-Taiwan relations, the role Sinocim plays in agenda-setting, as well as binge-able Chinese tv. Please consider donating to my show's Patreon. ...
How Chinese Governance Fundamentals Impact Health Care and National Security
March 13, 2020 13:41 - 1 hourHow has the distinct nature of local-central relations in the Chinese system impacted its response to coronavirus? To discuss, we have on Ryan Manuel, managing director of Official China, a consultancy that goes deep into CCP regulations and policy. Ryan previously taught at KHU and ANU as well as worked for the Australian government. Our wide-ranging conversation filled with dashes of dark Aussie humor starts with COVID-19 and SARS and then broadens out into how the history of rural healthc...
Outraged by the outbreak: Citizen journalism and coronavirus censorship
February 05, 2020 20:52 - 30 minutes - 28.3 MBTony Lin is a producer at Quartz for the web series Because China and an avid observer of Chinese online communities, such as Weibo. After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, Tony noticed commentary being widely shared that, in other times, would have been censored immediately. In this episode, Jordan and Tony create a timeline of the coronavirus, analyze the strikingly candid nature of online discussion in the early days of the outbreak, and explore broader themes of censorsh...
Outraged by the outbreak: Citizen journalism and coronavirus censorship
February 05, 2020 20:52 - 31 minutesTony Lin is a producer at Quartz for the web series Because China and an avid observer of Chinese online communities, such as Weibo. After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, Tony noticed commentary being widely shared that, in other times, would have been censored immediately. In this episode, Jordan and Tony create a timeline of the coronavirus, analyze the strikingly candid nature of online discussion in the early days of the outbreak, and explore broader themes of censorship...
Tesla’s future in China, technology tensions, and the trade war on ‘pause’
January 31, 2020 20:49 - 56 minutesGordon Orr is a senior adviser at McKinsey & Company and a non-executive board member at both Lenovo and Meituan-Dianping. In this week’s episode of China EconTalk, he and Jordan examine collateral economic damages as a result of the trade war, take a look at the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and how it could change in an era of increasing U.S.-China tensions, and forecast Tesla’s future in China, which could be tied to Huawei telecommunications infrastructu...
Izzy Niu on the Chinese diaspora and popular culture
January 23, 2020 21:12 - 54 minutes - 50 MBIzzy Niu is a video journalist for the Quartz web series Because China, and the host of the Chinese-language podcast Loud Murmurs, which discusses Western movies and TV. In this episode, Jordan, Izzy, and guest co-host Athena Cao discuss the promise and peril of publishing sensitive podcasts in the Chinese language in the P.R.C., the documentaries One Child Nation and American Factory, how Chinese internet users responded to The Farewell, and the changing experiences of Chinese nationals stu...
Out of the Gobi: Weijian Shan on the Cultural Revolution, economic reform, and U.S.-China ties
January 15, 2020 21:01 - 52 minutesHow does a bookish Beijing teenager, who found himself stuck for six years planting potatoes in the Gobi Desert, grow up to study with former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, teach at Wharton, and now lead one of Asia's most successful investment firms? In this episode, Shàn Wěijiàn 单伟建, the chairman and CEO of investment firm PAG Group, and the author of Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America, tells his personal story of exile during the Cultural Revolution and provides his...
The changing nature of U.S.-China tech competition
January 09, 2020 20:00 - 39 minutesAdam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), joins Jordan to talk about technology competition between the United States and China. In this episode, they discuss a recent report by CFR titled Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge, which examines the increasingly vexed technology ties between the two countries and the implications of tech nationalism worldwide. 11:44: Undue pressure on Chinese scientists 16:39: Do...
Online discourse and censorship in China
December 11, 2019 21:58 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBJane Li, a Chongqing native and a technology reporter for Quartz, talks through some of the differences between Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo. She also discusses the website Douban, the lively and open discussion among its young users, and the threat that looming censorship poses to it. In addition, she provides details on why some Chinese internet users have turned their backs on Huawei in the wake of an extended jail term served by one of its employees. 4:10: Twitter vs. Wei...
Online discourse and censorship in China
December 11, 2019 21:58 - 37 minutesJane Li, a Chongqing native and a technology reporter for Quartz, talks through some of the differences between Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo. She also discusses the website Douban, the lively and open discussion among its young users, and the threat that looming censorship poses to it. In addition, she provides details on why some Chinese internet users have turned their backs on Huawei in the wake of an extended jail term served by one of its employees. 4:10: Twitter vs. Weibo...
A walk down Chang’an Avenue, with Jonathan Chatwin
November 27, 2019 21:47 - 1 hourCan one street tell China’s story? Jonathan Chatwin, author of Long Peace Street: A Walk in Modern China, takes listeners on a tour of Chang’an Avenue, a major artery for traffic in central Beijing, which was also the scene of several critical moments in China’s modern history. Jordan and Jonathan discuss the symbolism of national buildings and monuments along it, and the role of the street as a place of protest and a part of China’s revolutionary history. 11:05: Baobaoshan Revolutionary Ce...
China tech policy and competition, with Paul Triolo
November 20, 2019 21:00 - 57 minutesPaul Triolo, practice head of geotechnology at the Eurasia Group, sat down with Jordan to address some of the questions at the center of the U.S.-China tech relationship: the future of 5G research and innovation, persecutions of researchers and scientists from China based in the U.S., security concerns surrounding Huawei and Chinese-funded communications infrastructure, and more. 6:38: Current blind spots in Chinese tech policy 18:30: What does a “good” tech policy look like? 32:09: Is ch...
Reinterpreting Beijing and its history
November 13, 2019 21:29 - 48 minutesJeremiah Jenne, history teacher, writer, and the man behind Beijing by Foot, is in the guest seat this week. He speaks with Jordan about the changes — both tangible and intangible — that Beijing has undergone in the last few decades. They chat about how Chinese history is reinterpreted through the lenses of different regimes, the ways in which this new history is presented to the world, and Beijing’s modernizing cityscape and the varied reactions it is met with. 10:57: Out with the old, in w...
Chasing the dragon: Fentanyl, China, and the opioid crisis
October 23, 2019 21:49 - 50 minutes - 46.1 MBPuzzled by rising drug deaths at raves in the United States, author and investigative journalist Ben Westhoff set out to find answers. A Google search for “Buy fentanyl in China” took him down a rabbit hole that led to a face-to-face meeting with the CEO of a company selling fentanyl on Skype “all day long” and a drug lab in Shanghai. Ben tells Jordan the remarkable story. 5:06: The digital rabbit hole 9:20: Want to make fentanyl? Just Google it. 13:57: Between Heisenberg and Pfizer 2...