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About Nicholas Gordon
Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.
NBN Episodes hosted by Nicholas:
July 25, 2024
The Poisoner of Bengal
It’s the 1930s. Amarendra Chandra Pandey, the youngest son of an Indian prince, is about to board a train when a man bumps into him. Amarendra feels a…
July 18, 2024
A Danger Shared
Melville Jacoby was a U.S. war correspondent during the Sino-Japanese War and, later, the Second World War, writing about the Japanese advances from C…
July 11, 2024
The Story of Southeast Asia
Does Southeast Asia “exist”? It’s a real question: Southeast Asia is a geographic region encompassing many different cultures, religions, political st…
July 3, 2024
Chop Fry Watch Learn
In 1971, the New York Times called the Taiwanese-Chinese chef, Fu Pei-Mei, the “the Julia Child of Chinese cooking.” But, as Michelle T. King notes …
June 27, 2024
The Transpacific Flow
In 2009, Fudan University launched China’s first MFA program in creative writing, spurring a wave of such programs in Chinese universities. Many of th…
June 20, 2024
On the Shadow Tracks
In 2016, journalist Clare Hammond embarked on a project to study the railways of Myanmar–a transportation network that sprawls the country, rarely use…
June 13, 2024
Bankrolling Empire
Running and securing an empire can get expensive–especially one known for its opulence, like the Mughal Empire, which conquered much of northern India…
June 6, 2024
The Han-Xiongnu War, 133 Bc-89 Ad
For two centuries, the Xiongnu people–a vast nomadic empire that covered modern-day Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang—were one of the Han Dy…
May 30, 2024
Judgement at Tokyo
In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were senten…
May 23, 2024
Bernhard Sindberg
In December 1937, Bernhard Sindberg arrives at a cement factory outside of Nanjing. He’s one of just two foreigners, and he gets there just weeks befo…
May 16, 2024
Slip, Stitch and Stumble
India’s stock markets are booming. One calculation from Bloomberg puts India as the world’s fourth-largest equity market, overtaking Hong Kong, as dom…
May 9, 2024
Advantage China
China’s rise to global prominence is a pretty good contender for the most important world development in the past 30 years. But now the question is ho…
May 2, 2024
Not Your China Doll
In 2022, the U.S. Mint released the first batch of its American Women Quarters series, celebrating the achievements of U.S. women throughout its histo…
April 25, 2024
The Great Flap of 1942
In April 1942, at least half a million people fled the city of Madras, now known as Chennai. The reason? The British, after weeks of growing unease ab…
April 18, 2024
The Southern Tour
Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour has become a milestone in Chinese economic history. Historians and commentators credit Deng’s visit to Guangzhou Pr…
April 11, 2024
The Loom of Time
The Middle East remains one of the world’s most complicated, thorny—and, uncharitably, unstable—parts of the world, as countless headlines make clear.…
April 4, 2024
Eight Dogs, Or Hakkenden
Glynne Walley, translator of classic Japanese novel Hakkenden, joins us on the podcast again to talk about his second translated volume: Hakkenden, Pa…
March 28, 2024
The Great Defiance
It’s very easy to study the history of the British Empire from the perspective of, well, the British–and to extend the early 20th century version of t…
March 21, 2024
Black Ghosts
Just a decade ago, before COVID upended everything, tens of thousands of migrants from African countries traveled to China in search of economic oppor…
March 14, 2024
The Kings of Algiers
On July 27th, 1827, the dey of Algiers struck the French consul over his country’s refusal to pay back its debts–specifically, to two Jewish merchant …
March 7, 2024
Naomi Osaka
In July 2021, Naomi Osaka—world number 1 women’s tennis player—lit the Olympic Cauldron at the Tokyo Olympic Games. The half-Japanese, half-American, …
March 1, 2024
Shadow Empires
Empires are one of the most common forms of political structure in history—yet no empire is alike. We have our “standard” view of empire: perhaps the …
February 22, 2024
Koume's World
In 1864, on a midsummer’s day, Kawai Koume, a 60-year old matriarch of a samurai family in Wakayama, makes a note in her diary, which she had dutifull…
February 15, 2024
The First Asians in the Americas
There’s a popular folk hero in Puebla, Mexico—Catarina de San Juan, who Mexicans hailed as a devoted religious figure after her death in 1688. She’s c…