As a long-time foreign correspondent, I've worked in lots of places, but nowhere is important to the world as China.

I'm Jane Perlase, former Beijing Bureau Chief for The New York Times.

On face-off, the U.S. versus China will explore what's critical to this important global relationship.

Trump and Xi Jinping, AI, TikTok, and even Hollywood.

New episodes of Face Off are available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Spycast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.

I'm your host, Sasha Inber, and each week I take you into the shadows of espionage, intelligence,

and covert operations across the globe.

He was an American spy before an American spy agency existed.

We're talking about former NFL player Ernest Cunio, a little-known first-generation

Italian-American.

He worked with British intelligence to convince the United States to join World War II and helped lay the

groundwork for modern-day espionage. Thomas Meyer traces Coonio's extraordinary life in his new book,

The Invisible Spy, Out March 25th. Hi, Thomas. Thanks for joining us. How did Ernest Cunio go from being an NFL player to a spy? And why?

Ernest Cunio was a player for two years for the Brooklyn Dodgers, not the baseball team, but the NFL football team, the old team.

He wound up going to law school. He worked for what would become Mayor LaGuardia

here in New York. And then he became part of the inside crowd with FDR, with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's

White House staff. He became a White House lawyer. He got involved with political campaigns,

but at a certain point, when Winston Churchill

became the prime minister, he decided that, and bear in mind at that time, that they were in the

midst of a war, Winston felt that it was absolutely essential that America joined in this war

to save literally Western civilization.

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