Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day in 1972 President Richard Nixon has just flown back to Washington DC

from Anchorage, Alaska, which was a stopover on a trip back from China.

This was Nixon's famous visit to the People's Republic of China where among

other things he walked on the Great Wall, met with an ailing Mao Zedung, a

hugely symbolic trip and a very impactful one. It was part of a larger diplomatic dance that he was doing, not just with China, but with USR, Vietnam, and lots more.

So here to discuss that trip to China, I trust will find some of the lesser remembered

moments since it really is a huge part of Nixon's legacy here to discuss all that are as

always Nicole Hemmer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there. So I promise that we'll do some small interesting details from this trip,

but I actually I'm going to start very big with a sort of confession I guess which is like I don't know that much about this moment and I feel like it's always trotted out as this monumental moment and it's often kind of like counterweight against Watergate, you know,

mixing did this, but he also, you know, went and like that part of my brain that's just

skeptical of everything was like with time with history we'll

sort of come to understand that it wasn't that big a deal or like we evaluator

and then like I actually read about it and I've gone completely in the other direction I'm like this

was a huge deal not just even in the in the moment but really in many ways like I will get

to this but all the big sort of geopolitical chess piece things that Nixon was

trying to pull off in this trip kind of pulled them off or kind of like had a real impact in that in that regard

And I know that's probably very contested territory all the things I just said but

I don't know if that resonates with either of you.

That is what people say all the time.

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