Chatter: Recent Episodes
Lawfare
Weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security. Unscripted. Informal. Always fresh.
Chatterguests roll with the punches to describe artistic endeavors related to national security and jump into cutting-edge thinking at the frontiers where defense and foreign policy overlap with technology, intelligence, climate change, history, sports, culture, and beyond. Each week, listeners get a no-holds-barred dialogue at an intersection between Lawfare's core issue areas and something from Hollywood to history, science to spy fiction.
Renée DiResta is the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality. Until the other day, she was one of the brains behind the Stanford Internet Observatory, where she did pioneering work studying Internet information streams how they generate. The day before this podcast was recorded, news broke that Stanford was shutting down—or revamping—the SIO, and DiResta is no longer associated with it. In this conversation with Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes, DiResta talks about how she came to study online information flows, how they work, and how she and her work came to be the subject of one herself.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Paul Sparrow, who served as Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum from 2015 to 2022, has written the book Awakening the Spirit of America about the war of words between FDR and Charles Lindbergh in 1940-41.
He joined host David Priess to discuss his path to the FDR Library, the history of presidential libraries, how the Roosevelt-Lindbergh war of words reveals much about the American experience before and during the Second World War, why Lindbergh never ran for president, the America First movement, Roosevelt's chaotic approach to intelligence, FDR's popular legacy, and more.
Works mentioned in this episode:
The book Awakening the Spirit of America by Paul Sparrow
The book The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
The book K is for Killing by Daniel Easterman
The book Those Angry Days by Lynne Olson
The podcast Ultra
The book Prequel by Rachel Maddow
The book The Wave of the Future by Anne Lindbergh
The book An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The book The Killing Shore by K. A. Nelson
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the wake of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union set off on the great space race, competing to see which super power could put the first human in space and eventually land them on the Moon. As historian John Strausbaugh writes, that race should have been over before it even started.
Strausbaugh’s new book, The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned, is a harrowing and frequently hilarious account of how political leaders and engineers slapped together a space program with little apparent concern for the lives of the cosmonauts they hurled into Earth’s orbit. Moscow blustered about the size of its rockets and the triumph of its space pioneers. But that patriotic rhetoric hid the true nature of a program that was harried and haphazard, and whose leaders weren’t quite sure how to return their pilots to Earth after launching them into space.
The Soviet space program stands in stark contrast, Strausbaugh told Shane Harris, to the methodical and comparatively risk-averse NASA program, which eventually overtook its rival.
Books, historical figures, and near-death space walks discussed in this episode include:
The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/john-strausbaugh/the-wrong-stuff/9781541703346/?lens=publicaffairs
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312427566/therightstuff
Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir by Jerry Linenger https://www.amazon.com/Off-Planet-Surviving-Perilous-Station/dp/007136112X
Sergei Korolev https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-missions/sergei-korolev-life-history-timeline
Yuri Gagarin https://www.pbs.org/redfiles/rao/gallery/gagarin/index.html
Alexi Leonov https://time.com/5802128/alexei-leonov-spacewalk-obstacles/
More about John Strausbaugh:
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/contributor/john-strausbaugh/?lens=twelve
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Raised in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), Dr. Anaïs Maurer is assistant professor of literature at Rutgers University and author of The Ocean on Fire. Her research and writing, including this book, have explored the intersection of the legacy of colonial powers' massive nuclear detonations in Oceania, critical threats from climate change, and the stories the people of Oceania tell about it all.
David Priess chatted with Maurer about her experience growing up in Oceania, the scope of the nuclear detonations in the region, how the people of Oceania have addressed radiation effects through stories, why cultural resilience has remained a greater theme than individualism or victimhood, how these narratives inform our current era of climate change, and more.
Works mentioned in this episode:
The book The Ocean on Fire by Anaïs Maurer
The book Quand le cannibale ricane by Paul Tavo
The short story "Eden" in the collection Vai: La Rivière au ciel sans nuages by Ra'i Chaze
The book The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
The visual art French Apocalypse Now by Cronos
The Coconut poetry series by Teresa Teaiwa
The book Pensées insolentes et inutiles by Chantal Spitz
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tim Alberta is an American journalist and author, and son of an evangelical pastor. Following his father’s death in 2019, Alberta began a four year journey, talking to American evangelicals ranging from megachurch pastors who preach to thousands to pastors at churches with a few dozen congregants to understand the schism occurring in the American evangelical community. His book “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” puts American evangelicalism under a microscope as Alberta grapples with how the community he grew up in has changed.
Lawfare Associate Editor Anna Hickey spoke to Alberta about what led him to write this book, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the evangelical community, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, what Croatian theologist Miroslav Volf warns about creeping totalitarianism that results from religion, how evangelicals talk about Christian nationalism, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” by Tim Alberta
- Reporting in The Atlantic by Jennifer Senior
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was recorded by Noam Osband and produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Migration has always been a part of humanity's story. It will continue to be so long after any of us now living are gone. Population shifts in the coming century, spurred by climate change, are on track to become more extreme than at any point in our history--with hundreds of millions, probably billions, of people on the move.
For this episode, David Priess spoke with Gaia Vince, self-described former scientists and author of the book Nomad Century (among other works), about various aspects of climate change-driven mass migration, including perceptions of borders across history, attitudes toward climate change mitigation vs. adaptation, why the "Dubai model" isn't a global solution, demographic shifts in the global north, migration as a cause of evolutionary and cultural development, myths about migrants and jobs and wages, nurses from the Philippines as a case study, how enlightened leadership can guide the most productive migration outcomes, and much more.
Works mentioned in this episode:
The book Transcendence by Gaia Vince
The book Nomad Century by Gaia Vince
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
David Ignatius has worked at the Washington Post for more than 35 years in various roles and won many awards. He has written a column on foreign affairs for 25 years and reported some of the most significant national security stories over the last couple of decades. And he has done it while pumping out best-selling spy thrillers.
Lawfare Research fellow Matt Gluck spoke with Ignatius about his newest spy thriller, Phantom Orbit, which is a story of intelligence and the advance of space technology in the age of intensified geopolitical competition between the U.S., China, and Russia. They spoke about Ignatius’s character development in the book, what the book reveals about the new strategic space race, gender in the Central Intelligence Agency, and scientific discovery, among other things.
For more about David:
- His book “Phantom Orbit”
- David’s Twitter Page
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For a period of time in the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, employer in the city of Miami. The CIA had set up a base of operations there, aimed primarily at undermining the regime of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. From those early days, writes historian Vince Houghton, the Cold War battle against communism shaped the city, which he says should rank among the world’s great capitals of espionage.
Houghton and co-author Eric Driggs, both Miami natives, chronicle the city’s spooky history in their rolicking new book Covert City: The Cold War and the Making of Miami. Houghton spoke to Shane Harris about some of the colorful characters that span this decades-long story, why Miami has played such a pivotal role in the history of U.S. spying, and how the the Cuban intelligence service became one of the best in the world.
The books, people, events, films, TV shows, video games, and actors discussed in this book include:
- Covert City https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vince-houghton/covert-city/9781541774575/?lens=publicaffairs
- The Mariel Boatlift https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/cuba/mariel_port.htm
- Operation Mongoose https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2019-10-03/kennedy-cuba-operation-mongoose
- “Griselda” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15837600/
- “Contra,” the video game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_(video_game)
- Queen of Cuba: An FBI Agent's Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years https://44thand3rdbookseller.com/book/9781637589595
- Chatter episode about Montes with author Jim Popkin https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/chatter-podcast-ana-montes-american-who-spied-cuba-jim-popkin
- 537 Votes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13128292/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
More about Vince Houghton
- https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/News-Highlights/Article/Article/2423003/from-soldier-to-scholar-vince-houghton-named-director-of-national-cryptologic-m/
- https://twitter.com/intelhistorian?lang=en
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
David Sanger has been writing for the New York Timessince he graduated from college more than four decades ago. Over that period, Sanger has served as a business correspondent in Silicon Valley, the Times bureau chief in Japan, and has covered the last five presidents—which has given Sanger a front-row seat to U.S. foreign policy for much of the post-Cold War period. It is that experience that informs Sanger’s newest book, “New Cold Wars,” in which Sanger argues—relying on a voluminous and colorful set of interviews with administration officials—that the U.S. has entered two new military, technological, and economic conflicts with Russia and China.
Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck spoke about the book with Sanger. They discussed how the United States slipped into these conflicts through misreading Chinese and Russian geopolitical intentions and how the U.S. is seeking to navigate this new era. They also discussed how close Biden administration officials believed Vladimir Putin was to using a nuclear weapon in the fall of 2022.
For more about David:
- His book “New Cold Wars”
- David's Twitter Page
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Author and speaker Virginia Postrel has spent many years researching and writing about, among other things, various aspects of the economics and societal context of fashion, glamour, and consumer choice. A few years ago her book The Fabric of Civilization tackled the history and global effects of fabric-making, dyeing, the clothing trade, and other textile-related activities. So when host David Priess had his curiosity piqued by some displays at the International Spy Museum related to silk, dyes, and espionage, he knew who to call.
David talked to Virginia about the origins of string and of fabric, togas in fiction and reality, the value of purple in the Roman Empire, the importance of fabrics for outfitting armies and making warships' sails, the development of weaving, how textile merchants led to the modern political economy, Jakob Fugger, Chinese silk and espionage, Spain's 200 year monopoly on vibrant reds, efforts to steal Spain' cochineal secret, the long history of indigo, French efforts to steal Indian indigo, the invention of synthetic dyes, modern sneaker culture and conceptions of value, Jackie Kennedy, fashion and glamour on the world stage today, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The book The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel
- The TV show The Vikings
- The Chatter podcast episode Private Sector Intelligence with Lewis Sage-Passant, June 9, 2022
- Virginia Postrel's YouTube channel
- The book The Power of Glamour by Virginia Postrel
- The Star Wars prequel movies
- The TV show Game of Thrones
- The TV show The Regime
- The article "Trump isn't just campaigning; He's selling his supporters a glamorous life" by Virginia Postrel, Washington Post, March 18, 20
- The movie The Hunger Games
- The book The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
- The book Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For decades, country music has had a close and special relationship to the U.S. military. In his new book, Cold War Country, historian Joseph Thompson shows how the leaders of Nashville’s Music Row found ways to sell their listeners on military service, at the same time they sold country music to people in uniform.
Shane Harris spoke with Thompson about how, as he puts it, Nashville and the Pentagon “created the sound of American patriotism.” Thompson’s story spans decades and is filled with famous singers like Roy Acuff, Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, and Lee Greenwood. Collectively, Thompson says, these artists helped to forge the close bonds between their genre and the military, but also helped to transform ideas of race, partisanship, and influenced the idea of what it means to be an American.
Songs, people, TV shows, and books discussed in this episode include:
Thompson’s book Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism https://uncpress.org/book/9781469678368/cold-war-country/
“Goin’ Steady” by Faron Young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNqhVyPxPk8
Grandpa Jones https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/grandpa-jones
“Hee Haw” https://www.heehaw.com/
The Black Opry https://www.blackopry.com/
“Okie from Muskogee” by Merle Haggard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68cbjlLFl4U
“Cowboy Carter” by Beyoncé https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beyonce-cowboy-carter-tops-country-album-chart-number-one-1234998548/
“God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KoXt9pZLGM
Learn more about Joseph Thompson and his work:
https://www.josephmthompson.com/
https://www.history.msstate.edu/directory/jmt50
https://twitter.com/jm_thompson?lang=en
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The "deep state." The "blob." Foreign policy elites are often so labeled, misunderstood, and denigrated. But what influence on presidents and on public opinion do they actually have?
Elizabeth Saunders, professor of political science at Columbia, has researched this topic deeply and written about it in her new book, The Insiders' Game. David Priess spoke with her about her path to studying foreign policy, the ups and downs of archival research, the meaning of foreign policy "elites," the differences between the influences of Democratic and Republican elites, a counterfactual President Al Gore's decisionmaking about invading Iraq, pop cultural representations of foreign policy elites, how heightened polarization changes the dynamics of elite influence, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book The Insiders' Game by Elizabeth Saunders
The book Leaders at War by Elizabeth Saunders
The TV show The West Wing
The movie The Hunt for Red October
The TV show The Diplomat
The TV show The Americans
The movie Thirteen Days
The article "Politics Can't Stop at the Water's Edge" by Elizabeth Saunders, Foreign Policy (March/April 2024)
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Without warning, North Korea launches a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile at the United States. American satellites detect the launch within seconds, setting off a frantic, harrowing sequence of events that threatens to engulf the planet in a nuclear holocaust.
That’s the terrifying hypothetical storyline that journalist Annie Jacobsen imagines in her new book. It’s a minute-by-minute, and occasionally second-by-second account of how the vast U.S. national security apparatus would respond to a “bolt out of the blue” attack with a nuclear weapon. It’s a riveting story and the supreme cautionary tale.
Shane Harris spoke with Jacobsen about the book, the present threat of a nuclear world war, and her body of work, which has dug deeply into the dark corners of intelligence and national security.
Books, interviews, movies and TV shows discussed in this episode include:
Nuclear War: A Scenario https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/748264/nuclear-war-by-annie-jacobsen/
Chatter interview with A.B. Stoddard about The Day After https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/chatter-the-day-after-and-dad-with-a.-b.-stoddard
Top Gun: Maverick https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1745960/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_top%2520gun
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5057054/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_3_nm_5_q_jack%2520ry
Find out more about Annie Jacobsen on:
Her Website: https://anniejacobsen.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/anniejacobsen?lang=en
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Charlie Sykes recently stepped down as host of the Bulwark Podcast. He's a regular commentator on MSNBC, and has written a number of books. He tells the story here of his political journey, from being a page for the Wisconsin delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, to being a working journalist increasingly disenchanted with conventional liberalism, to finding a home in Reagan Republicanism and becoming more of a political warrior than he ever meant to be--and then leaving the whole thing behind over Trumpism.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
If you’re listening to this podcast, chances are you’ve heard stories about the CIA’s experiments with drugs, particularly LSD, during the infamous MKUltra program. But you may not know that the characters involved in that dubious effort connect to one of the 20th Century’s most famous and revered scientists, the anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Shane Harris talked with historian Benjamin Breen about this new book, Tripping on Utopia, which tells the story of how Mead and her close circle launched a movement to expand human consciousness, decades before the counterculture of the 1960s popularized, and ultimately stigmatized, psychedelic drugs. Mead and Gregory Bateson--her collaborator and one-time husband--are at the center of a story that includes the WWII-era Office of Strategic Services, a shady cast of CIA agents and operatives, Beat poets, and the pioneers of the Information Age.
Psychedelics are having a renaissance, with federal regulators poised to legalize their use - Breen’s book is an engrossing history that explores the roots of that movement and how it influenced and collided with the U.S. national security establishment.
Books, movies, and other points of interest discussed in this conversation include:
- Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science by Benjamin Breen
- Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age by Norman Ohler
- MKUltra
- The intelligence community’s research on “truth drugs”
- The Manchurian Candidate
- The Good Shepherd
- Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer
- The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
- Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death by Deborah Blum
- “Operation Delirium” by Raffi Khatchadourian in The New Yorker
Also check out:
- Ben’s website
- Ben’s Substack
- Ben on Twitter
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Jonna Mendez advanced in her Central Intelligence Agency career to become Chief of Disguise despite the many institutional challenges to women's promotions. And now she has written a memoir, In True Face, about it all.
David Priess spoke with Jonna about career options for women at CIA in the early Cold War, her own start there in the 1960s, how photography classes set her on a path that ultimately led to service as Chief of Disguise, her interactions over the decades with Tony Mendez, the tandem-couple problem for intelligence professionals, semi-animated mask technology and other CIA disguises, her experience briefing President George H. W. Bush in the Oval Office, how the story behind the Canadian Caper became declassified and eventually the movie Argo, the International Spy Museum, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book In True Face by Jonna Mendez
"How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran," by Joshuah Bearman, WIRED, April 24, 2007
The movie The Ides of March
The movie Argo
The book Argo by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio
The book The Master of Disguise by Antonio Mendez
The movie Mission Impossible
The TV show The Americans
The TV show Homeland
The movie Casino Royale
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We all know how superpower competition spurred one giant leap for mankind on the lunar surface in July 1969. But the story of how the Moon and its tides affect national security is deeper and wider than most of us realize.
David Priess explored this intersection with science journalist Rebecca Boyle, author of the new book Our Moon, about her path to writing about astronomy, Anaxagoras, Julius Caesar, lunar versus solar calendars, the Battle of Tarawa in 1943, the genesis of NOAA, tides and flooding, Johannes Kepler, Jules Verne and science fiction about travel to the Moon, lunar missions and the Cold War, the Moon's origins, the return of lunar geopolitical competition, prospects for a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Our Moon by Rebecca Boyle
The book From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne
The movie Fantasia
"Massive New Seamount Discovered in International Waters Off Guatemala," from the Schmidt Ocean Institute, November 22, 2023
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Joe Biden took office with a big ambition: To repair America’s reputation abroad and set the country on a new path, where foreign policy would be crafted with the middle class in mind. So writes journalist Alexander Ward, whose new book, The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump, chronicles Biden’s first two years in the White House.
The central players in Ward’s cast as the president’s senior advisers, chief among them National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who, four years earlier, had expected to be serving in the Hillary Clinton administration. Ward joined Shane Harris to talk about the Biden team's early efforts to sketch out a new agenda, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the triumphs of the early days of war in Ukraine. His book offers a detailed, behind-the-scenes look at what may be one of the most experienced teams of foreign policy experts in a generation.
Ward is a national security reporter at Politico. He was part of the reporting team behind one of the biggest scoops in recent memory, the leak of a draft opinion by the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. Ward was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
Ward’s book, The Internationalists: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704738/the-internationalists-by-alexander-ward/
An excerpt from the book: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/19/jake-sullivan-globalization-biden-00141697
Ward’s newsletter at Politico: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily
Ward’s scoop on the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
Ward on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexbward?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
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In February 2022, Russia launched a full scale invasion into Ukraine in the largest attack on a European country since World War II. This invasion did not start a new war, but escalated the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War that started in 2014 when Russian forces captured Crimea and invaded the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
In his book, “The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine,” author and journalist Christopher Miller tells the story of the past fourteen years in Ukraine through his personal experiences living and reporting in Ukraine since 2010. For this week’s Chatter episode, Anna Hickey spoke with Chris Miller about his book, what led to the full scale invasion in 2022, the 2014 capture of Crimea, and his journey from being a Peace Corps volunteer in Bakhmut in 2010 to a war correspondent.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The book, “The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine,” by Christopher Miller
- The article, “Documents show Russian separatist commander signed off on executions of three men in Sloviansk” by Christopher Miller
- The book, "Voroshilovgrad" by Serhiy Zhadan
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Some people call it "investor citizenship" while others label it a "passport for sale" scheme. Either way, the last few decades have seen the global citizenship industry grow and evolve in ways that both reflect and impact issues around national sovereignty, tax regimes, international business, and global inequities.
David Priess chatted about these and related issues with political sociologist and author Kristin Surak, whose recent book The Golden Passport takes a multidisciplinary look at global mobility for the wealthy and the complex system that has developed around it. They discussed the new "most powerful passport" rankings, the types of people who seek different citizenship through investment, Turkey's rise as a major Citizenship By Investment (CBI) player, the rise and fall of the program in Cyprus, how intermediary companies power the CBI system, the trailblazing CBI role of St. Kitts and Nevis, the challenges of European countries attempting to start and keep CBI programs, differing perceptions of CBI around the world, issues of equity and ethics, and the recent phenomena of digital nomads.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
"The Henley Passport Index", Henley & Partners
The book The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires by Kristin Surak
The book Moneyland by Oliver Bullough
The book Making Tea, Making Japan by Kristin Surak
The book The Despot's Guide to Wealth Management by J. C. Sharman
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
American aid to global victims of natural disasters might seem like a relatively new phenomenon, perhaps linked to the Marshall Plan and other major programs in the past several decades. But US efforts to assist those suffering from earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, major flooding, and other such catastrophes actually goes back to the James Madison administration, followed by a burst of intense activity and the birth of the modern US approach at the very start of the 1900s.
David Priess chatted with Julia Irwin, history professor at Louisiana State University and author of the book Catastrophic Diplomacy, about the academic study of disaster assistance, why some natural disasters stick in collective memory more than others, how US aid for catastrophes started in 1812 in Venezuela, why US disaster aid expanded in the late 1800s, case studies from Martinique (1902) and Jamaica (1907) to Italy (1908) and Japan (1923), the effects of the two world wars on US disaster aid, the genesis of USAID and other governmental entities, the modern role of former presidents in raising money for disaster relief, the concept of disaster risk reduction, what contemporary US catastrophic assistance efforts have learned from the past, and the disaster movie genre.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Catastrophic Diplomacy by Julia Irwin
The book Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation's Humanitarian Awakening by Julia Irwin
The book The Great Kantō Earthquake and the Chimera of National Reconstruction in Japan by J. Charles Schencking
The movie Waterworld
The book Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era by Jacob A.C. Remes
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Outer space is back in style. For the first time in decades, NASA is sending astronauts back to the moon. Millionaires are exiting the atmosphere on a regular basis. And Elon Musk says humans may land on Mars to set up settlements by 2030. But would mastering space be worth it?
In their new book, “A City on Mars,” co-authors (and spouses) Dr. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith argue that it’s probably not. From biology to engineering to international law, they charmingly survey the many charms and dangers that space inevitably entails, with pictures to boot. For this week’s Chatter episode, Scott R. Anderson spoke with Kelly and Zach about their book, what role they think space exploration and settlement should play in humanity’s future, and why space may not be all it’s cracked up to be anytime soon.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The book “Soonish,” also by Kelly and Zach.
- The book “Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity” by Daniel Deudney.
- The book “The Creation of States in International Law” by James Crawford.
- The television series “The Expanse.”
- The 1970s film “Libra.”
- The television series “For All Mankind.”
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lloyd Austin's hospitalization and delayed communication about it have spurred much commentary and questions about the role of the secretary of defense in the US nuclear-strike chain of command.
David Priess spoke with Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, about his path to expertise on nuclear issues, the chain of command for nuclear strike authorization (and recent comments from elected representatives that misunderstand it), alternatives to the current system, fictional scenarios of nuclear launches, what is known about different nuclear states' authorization processes, the "letters of last resort" for UK nuclear submarines, deterrence and human psychology, and more.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Brandon Stoddard was one of the most accomplished executives in broadcast television history. In his career at ABC, he helped bring to the small screen such legendary mini-series as “Roots” and “The Winds of War,” as well as the acclaimed television series “Moonlighting” and “Roseanne.” But arguably his most consequential and controversial decision was to air the made-for-TV movie “The Day After,” which graphically depicted the effects of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Stoddard faced opposition from his colleagues, pundits, and even the Reagan White House, which pressured ABC to pull the film. But having conceived of the project as an impetus for people around the world to grapple with the potential of a devastating war, Stoddard forged ahead and broadcast the film in November 1983.
It was an epochal event in U.S. history. One hundred million people tuned in to watch, and the movie became the most-watched in television history. It was a national moment of the kind Americans rarely share today.
Journalist A. B. Stoddard, Brandon’s daughter, spoke with Shane Harris about her dad’s determination to air the film and what he hoped to achieve. Stoddard is well known for her political commentary and work at The Bulwark. But today, she shares personal memories of her father, his illustrious career, and the legacy of his work. In November of last year, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of “The Day After,” she wrote a column, “The Day My Father Scared America.”
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
A.B. Stoddard’s column on her dad
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/brandon-stoddard-the-day-after
Shane’s previous conversation with Nicholas Meyer, who directed “The Day After”
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-day-after-with-nicholas-meyer/id1593674288?i=1000558946928
A.B. Stoddard’s columns for The Bulwark
https://substack.com/@abstoddard
The catalog of Brandon Stoddard’s work
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0830992/
Brandon Stoddard’s induction in the Television Academy Hall of Fame
https://www.emmys.com/bios/brandon-stoddard
“The Day After” (on YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utGRP9Zy1lg
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Jay Venables of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
From the protests in Brazil initially focused on bus fares to the protests in Hong Kong seeking to stop an extradition bill to the protests across the Middle East now collectively referred to as the "Arab Spring," the political and economic mass demonstrations from 2010 to 2020 made it a decade of public protest like no other. Yet the vast majority of these efforts failed to bring about their desired changes--and many of them actually led to the opposite of what they wanted. Vincent Bevins, author of the new book If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, has chronicled this decade with stories from his on-the-ground reporting and extensive interviews with activists in ten countries around the globe.
David Priess spoke with Vincent about why mass protests during this decade so often fell short of their objectives, the principle of horizontalism, the role of social media in mobilization and action, and other themes as they relate to the mass protests in Brazil, Turkey, Hong Kong, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, South Korea, and other countries.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins
The movie The Candidate
The book From Mobilization to Revolution by Charles Tilly
The book Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
The book Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus by Georgi Derluguian
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, we're taking time off for the holidays, so we reached into the Chatter archives for one of our favorites.
In this episode from January 13, 2022, Shane Harris and David Priess teamed up to talk with John Sipher, a former senior intelligence officer who has gone Hollywood. With his partners at Spycraft Entertainment, John is bringing compelling and, yes, accurate stories about espionage to the screen. Before working in the entertainment industry, he spent 28 years in the CIA, where he served multiple overseas tours as a chief of station. Shane, David, and John talked about their favorite spy movies, the fine line between the espionage and action-adventure genres, and the kinds of stories they’d like to see more of.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with engineering assistance from Ian Enright. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Modern representative democracy was born in darkness. Transparency in representative bodies can spur unintended consequences for freedom, while secrecy in those bodies can lead to optimal outcomes for the public.
These are uncomfortable truths that emerge from the history of the US and French revolutionary experiences. Many of our governance challenges today, from malign misinformation to persistent leaks to skepticism toward authority, derive in part from the fact that fundamental issues about how to manage openness in a representative deomcracy remain unresolved.
David Priess chatted with Katlyn Carter, assistant professor of history at Notre Dame and author of the new book Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions, about the concepts of reflective representation and insulated representation, how to understand and research the will of the people, the Continental Congress's secrecy, the closed-door policy of the Constitutional Convention, the consequences of its secrecy for the doctrine of originalism, the crucial cases of the Jay Treaty and the Alien and Sedition Acts, James Madison's evolving views about representation and openness, the difficult realization that open dialogue and debate do not always lead to truth, and Thomas Jefferson's complicated legacy.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the summer of 1944, a group of artists, visual designers and sound engineers--all of them GIs--began a series of secret operations in occupied France. Their mission: to deceive German forces about the location and size of U.S. military units, using a combination of inflatable vehicles, sound recordings, and “actors” posing as officers.
The ranks of the “Ghost Army” included future stars of the worlds of art and design, including Ellsworth Kelly, Bill Blass, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey. Journalist Rick Beyer has chronicled their ingenious exploits in a book and a documentary.
December marks the 80th anniversary of the order that created the unit, which remained secret for decades. Shane Harris talked with Beyer about its creation, its success, and the ghost army’s role in the storied history of intelligence deceptions.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The Ghost Army book
https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/ghost-army-of-world-war-ii
The Ghost Army documentary
https://shop.pbs.org/WC3752.html
The Ghost Army Legacy Project
https://ghostarmy.org/
Smithsonian magazine feature
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-ghost-army-of-wwii-used-art-to-deceive-the-nazis-180980336/
The National WWII Museum
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/visit/exhibits/traveling-exhibits/ghost-army-combat-con-artists-world-war-ii
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
World War I was a seminal event for American national security and foreign policy, as the United States deployed nearly two million soldiers and sailors to Europe and engaged in the most intense overseas combat in its history up to that point. Yet the development of modern American intelligence just before and during the war, and even the magnitude of the war itself, have been largely forgotten by the US public.
David Priess spoke with historian and former intelligence officer Mark Stout, author of the new book World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence, about early steps toward peacetime US military intelligence in the 1880s and 1890s, the importance of Arthur Wagner and his late 19th century textbook about information collection, the intelligence impact on and from the Spanish-American War and the Philippine insurgency, how the war in Europe spurred intelligence advances in the mid-1910s, German sabotage in the United States, how General John Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces used intelligence in combat, the growth of domestic intelligence during the war, the scholarly group gathered by President Woodrow Wilson called "The Inquiry," and why World War I generally fails to resonate with Amercians today.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence by Mark Stout
The book Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain by Christopher Moran
The movie Gone with the Wind (1939)
The book Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole
The Chatter podcast episode The JFK Assassination and Conspiracy Culture with Gerald Posner
The book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
The movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Megan Nadolski and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Peter Strzok is a former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. He was the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He speaks with Ben Wittes about the numerous places he has called home and a career spent in counterintelligence.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sixty years ago today in Dallas, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John Kennedy. For almost as long, various (often contradictory) conspiracy theories about that day have been circulating. Gerald Posner used overwhelming evidence and logic to dismantle these theories in his classic book Case Closed, first published in 1993 and re-issued with updates in the three decades since then.
David Priess spoke with Gerald about why some anniversaries of major events resonate more than others; the limits of memory; what drove him to first research and write about the Kennedy assassination; what actually happened on November 22, 1963; early conspiracy thinking about it; Jim Garrison's flawed investigation of Clay Shaw; Oliver Stone and his influential film JFK; speculation about the Dealey Plaza "umbrella man" and about Cuban government involvement; decades of US government document releases; new memories from a former Secret Service agent; the impact of grand conspiracy thinking on society; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Case Closed by Gerald Posner
The book Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi
The book Hitler's Children by Gerald Posner
The book Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane
The book Six Days in Dallas by Josiah Thompson
The movie JFK
The Lawfare Podcast episode The JFK Assassination Documents, with Gerald Posner and Mark Zaid (December 22, 2021)
The book Day of the Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In October 1983, Maurice Bishop, the revolutionary leader and prime minister of Grenada, was executed alongside seven others amid a power struggle in the island nation. Ever since, a mystery has persisted: What happened to their bodies? The whereabouts of Bishop’s remains is unknown, and for the past two years, Washington Post journalists have been trying to find them.
Martine Powers hosts the new Post investigative podcast, “The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop.” She’s been fascinated by Bishop’s story for years, and she takes listeners on a journey through his rise and untimely death. The podcast is part mystery, party history. Bishop was a dynamic, charismatic leader, and an important figure in the history of Black power and politics, his influence felt in Grenada and the United States. The Reagan administration saw Bishop as a socialist threat and worried that the Soviet Union might build a base on Grenada. Days after Bishop was killed, the United States led an invasion of the island.
Listeners may also know Martine as the host of “Post Reports,” the news organization's daily podcast. Shane Harris and Martine have spent a lot of time together in the recording studio, but this is the first time he’s asked her the questions. They discussed her new project, how she made her way from print reporting to podcasts, and what she thinks audio journalism gives readers that traditional news reporting often can’t.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- “The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop” episode guide
- Martine’s bio
- Bishop speaking in New York in 1983
- President Ronald Reagan speaking about Bishop and Grenada (around 14:20): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfLGDxnRH-Q
- Excerpts of Reagan’s address following the invasion of Grenada
- Washington Post coverage of the invasion:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/10/26/the-invasion-of-grenada/cc0f5e1c-9a3b-4d53-bc42-a5708da9f77f/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/10/26/the-invasion-of-grenada/18d2aa63-f54f-4e76-932b-275fae48c3ea/
- White House photos during the invasion
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When she's not hosting The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow has been diving deep into the history of fascism in America. First on her podcast, Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra, and most recently in her new book, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, she has unearthed the stories for popular audiences both of an earlier era of foreign authoritarian influence in American politics and of those who fought against it.
In this conversation, Maddow sat down with Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss Prequel and its relationship to the modern fight against populist authoritarianism. They talked about the many striking similarities between then and now, some key differences, the necessity but ultimate inadequacy of law enforcement as a solution to authoritarian movements, the role of journalism, whether grifting is an inherent feature of right-wing authoritarianism, and why so many heroes of that era's fight against fascism are almost forgotten today.
For future reading on this subject, Maddow recommends:
- Charles R. Gallagher, "Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front"
- Steven J. Ross, "Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America"
You can also watch Rachel's full conversation with Ben at https://youtu.be/Y1Yc4Ss8_OI.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The British Empire was already buckling under its own internal tensions in the 1920s. One hundred years later, historian and author Matthew Parker uses stories from across the globe to fill his new book One Fine Day, centered on the territorial peak of the empire on September 29, 1923. It reveals much about the limits of empire, the effects of liberation movements on colonized peoples around the world, and the dynamics of strategic transition.
David Priess and Matthew chatted about his globally mobile upbringing; the experiences driving him to this topic; the state of the British Empire on and around September 29, 2023; the story of Ocean Island (Banaba); how the First World War affected how colonized people viewed imperial rule; the emergence of social anthropology and its impact on racist views underlying colonialism; the influence of sport in the empire; George Orwell's experience in Burma; the activities of Marcus Garvey; Ian Fleming's time in Jamaica at the house he called Goldeneye, where he wrote all of the James Bond novels; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book One Fine Day by Matthew Parker
The book Goldeneye by Matthew Parker
The book Panama Fever by Matthew Parker
The book The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker
The book The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan
The book The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
The book A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Many will recognize the voice of Steve Inskeep from his nearly two decades-long role hosting NPR's Morning Edition. But he's also the author of what is now a trilogy of books about political relationships in the United States during the 19th century, including his newly published Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America. His newest book uses a unique framework to study Lincoln's leadership and growth: Describing in detail difficult interactions Lincoln had with sixteen individuals, ranging from generals to political opponents to his wife Mary Todd Lincoln.
David Priess spoke with Steve about what drew him to Lincoln as a subject; the challenges of recreating private exchanges from long ago; the links between Differ We Must and his earlier books; Lincoln's difficult conversations with Joshua Giddings, Frederick Douglass, Jessie Benton Frémont, Lean Bear, and others; and enduring lessons of Lincoln's pragmatic leadership.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Differ We Must by Steve Inskeep
The book Instant City by Steve Inskeep
The book Jacksonland by Steve Inskeep
The book Imperfect Union by Steve Inskeep
The book series Abraham Lincoln: A History by John Nicolay and John Hay
The book series Abraham Lincoln by Carl Sandburg
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Journalist Liza Mundy’s new history of the world’s most storied spy service focuses on the women of the CIA, who for decades worked in jobs that men found less glamorous or career enhancing, and that proved vital to the interests of U.S. national security. The Sisterhood covers practically the entire history of the agency, from its pre-World War II days as the Office of Strategic Services, through the Cold War and the 9/11 attacks, followed by the successful hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Shane Harris spoke with Mundy about why she decided to write about the women of the CIA and what that story reveals about the hidden history of the agency. Mundy’s previous book, Code Girls, was about American women who worked as code breakers during WWII.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653184/the-sisterhood-by-liza-mundy/
Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/liza-mundy/code-girls/9780316352550/?lens=hachette-books
Mundy’s website: http://www.lizamundy.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Conventional wisdom has long held that countries, and even businesses, should not be run by those suffering from mental illness, especially during times of war or other dramatic challenges. Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, Director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tufts Medical Center and Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, disputes this notion. In his book A First-Rate Madness and other writings, he lays out a compelling case that in times of crisis, we are actually better off being led by mentally ill leaders than by mentally normal ones.
David Priess and Nassir talked about the challenges (and surprising advantages) of assessing the mental illnesses of historical figures; the lingering impact of Freudian psychoanalysis within the psychiatric community; why the best crisis leaders are either mentally ill or mentally abnormal; the differences between mental illness and extreme personality; the indicators of manic depression; the cases of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, William Sherman, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Adolf Hitler; enduring stigmas associated with mental illness; Nassir's father's political activism and its influence on his son; the American Psychiatric Association's "Goldwater Rule" against offering a professional psychiatric opinion without a patient examination and proper authorization; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book A First-Rate Madness by Nassir Ghaemi
Memoirs of Emil Kraepelin
The book Bipolar General: My Forever War with Mental Illness by Gregg Martin
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week on Chatter, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Ben Wittes sat down with author and journalist Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution. In a wide-ranging conversation, they spoke about Jonathan's numerous books, his start in journalism, and his focus on liberalism, Madisonian Pluralism, and religion within democratic institutions.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
As humanity builds settlements beyond Earth, myriad ethical issues will arise--many in a different way than they do terrestrially. Astrophysicist and space communicator Erika Nesvold has devoted extensive thought and research to how to ethically govern space settlements, most notably on her podcast Making New Worlds and in her book Off-Earth.
In a conversation that pairs well with Shane Harris's March 2022 Chatter discussion with astrobiologist Lucianne Walkowicz about ethical space exploration, David Priess spoke with Erika about her grounding in Star Trek and other science fiction, the JustSpace Alliance that she co-founded with Lucianne, that alliance's interactions with space industrialists, Erika's application to be an astronaut, conflicting motivations for humanity to settle space, how we should select space settlers, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the concept of legal personhood for non-terrestrial bodies, labor law and criminal justice in space settlements, how motivations for settling space influence openness to various forms of government, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The podcast Making New Worlds
The book Off-Earth by Erika Nesvold
The Chatter podcast episode Ethical Space Exploration with Lucianne Walkowicz
The Star Trek universe
The Foundation book series by Isaac Asimov
The Dune book series by Frank Herbert
The YouTube video All Tomorrows
The movie 2012
The book 2010 by Arthur C. Clarke
The book Artemis by Andy Weir
The movie Sunshine
The book A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Pinketty
The book series The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
The book Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The British royal family and UK intelligence operations have been linked since Queen Victoria's time, involving everything from personal protection to matters of international intrigue to concerns about blackmail. Professor and author Rory Cormac, who has conducted extensive research on the British intelligence services, has recently added to his corpus of writings in the field with a book about the modern royal-intelligence intersection: Crown, Cloak, and Dagger, co-authored with Richard Aldrich.
David Priess and Rory discussed the difference in US and UK education about the royal family; intelligence foundations during the reign of the first Elizabeth; why it fell apart under her successor; the seeds of modern intelligence under Victoria; the involvement of UK intelligence officers in the death of Grigori Rasputin; the challenges and advances involving intelligence and Edward VII, George V, and Edward VIII; the contributions of George VI to the Allies' massive D-Day deception operations; Elizabeth II's reading of intelligence reports; Soviet spy Anthony Blunt's close relationship with the royal family; Elizabeth's role as a diplomatic "helper;" the exposures of Charles III and Prince Willliam to intelligence; why Clement Attlee was an underappreciated prime minister; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Crown, Cloak, and Dagger by Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac
The book How To Stage a Coup by Rory Cormac
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When he was 18 years old, Ted Hall, then a Harvard undergraduate, was recruited to join the Manhattan Project, becoming the youngest physicist on the U.S. team racing to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis. When it became clear that Germany would lose the war, Hall feared that the Americans might maintain a monopoly over nuclear weapons, an imbalance he thought could lead to global tyranny. So he decided to share secret designs with the Soviet Union, which was then an ally of the United States on its own path to build a bomb.
That fateful action, and the life-long consequences for Hall and his wife, Joan, are the subject of filmmaker Steve James’ new documentary, “A Compassionate Spy.” Using original interviews with members of Hall’s family, and archival footage of the now deceased physicist, James explores Hall’s motivations for sharing nuclear secrets and the FBI’s attempts to charge him with that crime. It’s a complex story about espionage, idealism, and ultimately the love between Ted and Joan that helped to keep the truth hidden for decades.
Shane Harris spoke with James about the film and his career as a documentary filmmaker. James directed several acclaimed films, including “Hoop Dreams,” “Life Itself,” and “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.”
“A Compassionate Spy” trailer: https://participant.com/film/compassionate-spy
Steve James’ filmography: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0416945/
Also discussed in this interview:
“Mission to Moscow,” the surprising pro-Soviet film from “Casablanca” director Michael Curtiz: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036166/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_39_dr
“Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy,” by Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel https://www.amazon.com/Bombshell-Secret-Americas-Atomic-Conspiracy/dp/081292861X
The Venona program, which helped to finger Hall as a spy for Moscow
https://www.nsa.gov/Helpful-Links/NSA-FOIA/Declassification-Transparency-Initiatives/Historical-Releases/Venona/
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945-present/venona.htm
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The English language has recently developed a historically unique dominance in the global marketplace--a situation that brings plenty of benefits and just as many downsides. Rosemary Salomone, Kenneth Wang Professor of Law at St. John's University, has researched and analyzed various perspectives on English's supremacy in her recent book The Rise of English, which has a paperback version with a new preface coming early in 2024.
David Priess spoke with Rosemary about her background in linguistics and education studies, the origins of the English language's dominance, the role of pop culture in the balance between English as spoken in the United States and as spoken in the United Kingdom, divergent official language policies of international organizations like the United Nations and the European Union, the Anglophone bubble, English as a marketable skill, the debate about the English language within France, French vs Chinese inroads in Africa, the role of the French and English languages in the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, the controversy over the People's Republic of China-funded Confucius Institutes, the rise of English as the language of protest internationally, the culture around foreign language learning in the US, views about computer coding as a "foreign langauge," Ukrainian President Zelensky's use of the English language, the possibility of Spanish replacing English as the most global language, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book The Rise of English by Rosemary Salomone
The book True American by Rosemary Salomone
The book Visions of Schooling by Rosemary Salomone
The book Madam Speaker by Susan Page
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On April 13, 2022, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes conducted his first “special military operation” at the Russian embassy in Washington, DC. Now, Wittes is conducting these protests abroad on what he calls the ERAS (Eradicating Russian Ambassadorial Sleep) Tour. In his conversation with Katherine Pompilio, one of Lawfare’s associate editors and this week’s Chatter guest host, Wittes talks about his most successful special military operation yet, dealing with international law enforcement, NATO’s impact on Baltic countries, the American versus European understanding of the war in Ukraine, and more.
Works mentioned in this episode:
- Ben’s Substack Dog Shirt Daily
- Ben’s speech at a rally in Stockholm
- The work of Nikita Titov
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dr. Calder Walton, assistant director of the Applied History Project and Intelligence Project at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, has become one of the world's most highly respected intelligence historians. His most recent book, Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West, describes the long history of Russian spying--placing it into the wider context of the hundred-year espionage war between the East and West. And this gives him a remarkable perspective on how Soviet and Russian operations against the West have been portrayed in movies and television.
David Priess spoke with Calder about his path to researching and writing within the intelligence history subfield; the story of the Mitrokhin archive; the Cambridge Five; the Rosenbergs; Oleg Penkovsky; Aldrich Ames; Robert Hanssen; Russian disinformation campaigns in historical context; enduring popular myths about the master recruits of the KGB; and much more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The article "How Oppenheimer's Atomic Bomb Secrets Were Really Stolen by Soviet Russia," Fortune (July 24, 2023), by Calder Walton
- The play Hamilton and book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
- The book The Sword and the Shield by Christopher Andrew
- The book The Mitrokhin Archive by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin
- The book Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew
- The book The Secret History of MI6 by Keith Jeffery
- The book Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ by John Ferris
- The book Empire of Secrets by Calder Walton
- The book Spies -- digital expansion website
- The book Spies, Lies, and Algorithms by Amy Zegart
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Katie Benner is a features writer for the New York Times, who covered the Justice Department for a number of years beginning in 2017. In a wide-ranging conversation, she sat down with Lawfare editor-in-chief to talk about the challenges of walking into the Justice Department beat during the Trump administration and covering the post-election uprising within the department. She also gave a textured assessment of the department’s criminal investigation of Trump and other Jan. 6 defendants. And she talks about what makes a Justice Department source, and how the department has changed in the era of Merrick Garland.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The article, "Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General," by Katie Benner.
- The article," Louisiana School Made Headlines for Sending Black Kids to Elite Colleges. Here’s the Reality," by Erica L. Green and Katie Benner
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Isabelle Kerby-McGowan and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In June 2017, FBI agents arrived at the home of Reality Winner, a translator working for the NSA, to question her about an unauthorized leak of classified information concerning Russian interference in U.S. elections. Six years later, Tina Satter’s new film, “Reality,” tells the story of that fateful day, which led to Winner’s imprisonment.
Satter’s screenplay relies almost entirely on a verbatim transcript of Winner’s conversations with the FBI agents. The dialogue is by turns quotidian and suspenseful. "Reality" is partly a psychological thriller as well as an exploration of the mind and motivations of Winner herself. She received the longest prison sentence ever given by a federal court for the unauthorized release of government information to the media.
Shane Harris talked with Satter about her film, which is based on her stage play, “Is This a Room.” Satter says she became fascinated with Winner after reading about her arrest in the press. She thought the transcript had dramatic potential. To Satter, it read like the script for a play, with a list of characters and dialogue. “Is This a Room” received critical praise and won important theatre awards. The movie, “Reality,” is streaming on Max.
Satter began her theatrical career in Portland, Oregon, and has worked with some of the biggest names in experimental theatre. She now lives and works in New York.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
“Reality” on Max: https://www.hbo.com/movies/reality
“Is This a Room” review: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/theater/is-this-a-room-review.html
The New York magazine article that first got Satter interested in Winner's story: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/who-is-reality-winner.html
Satter’s production company, Half Straddle: http://www.halfstraddle.com/
Reality Winner’s interview with Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/reality-winner-interview-prison-nsa-1261844/
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Creators of science fiction movies and television shows often build worlds with at least some attention to governance systems and international (or interplanetary) political interactions. Sometimes, they develop central plot points out of national security matters, even if they play out in entirely different galaxies or dimensions. So it's not surprising that political scientist and author Stephen Dyson has spent years looking closely at how the genre influences--and, in turn, is influenced by--international relations theory and practice.
David Priess hosted Stephen for a conversation about the definitions of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction; teaching international politics in China; how science fiction helps us to understand international relations and how IR inform our viewing of science fiction; politics in the Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars universes; and much more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The book Otherworldly Politics by Stephen Benedict Dyson
- The books Imagining Politics, The Blair Identity and Leaders in Conflict by Stephen Benedict Dyson
- The book Metamorphoses of Science Fiction by Darko Suvin
- The YouTube channel UConnPopCast
- The TV shows Star Trek (The Original Series), Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009), Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979), and Game of Thrones
- The movies Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope and Rogue One
- The article "Images of International Politics in Chinese Science Fiction: Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem," in New Political Science (2019), by Stephen Benedict Dyson
- The book Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- The book Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Isabelle Kerby-McGowan and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Gaming might seem far removed from national security, but Volko Ruhnke's experience proves otherwise. During his career as an intelligence analyst and manager, he designed and published many commercially successful historical board games that, in turn, informed his work. Additionally, he applied his skills in gaming to training intelligence officers.
David Priess hosted Volko for a deep dive about board games that included discussion of various game types, the value of in-person vs. virtual gaming, Volko's intelligence career, his many published games, the use of cards in gameplay, the importance of honoring historicity while avoiding forced recreation of exact historical timelines, similarities between game design and intelligence questions, the collaborative nature of historical boardgaming, why military wargaming matters, complexity in intelligence analysis, games ranging from political coalition management to Polynesian exploration and from the suffrage movement in the early 1900s to the manipulation of public perceptions about the functionality of Machu Picchu, and much more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
Volko Ruhnke's page at GMT Games
The Kevin McPartland-designed game Conquest of Paradise
The Alison Collins-designed game Wiñay Kawsay
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Kori Schake is the Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has also worked in policy positions at the State Department, the Defense Department and the White House, taught at West Point, and more recently, served on the commission tasked with renaming military bases named for confederate figures. She sat down with Lawfare's editor in chief Ben Wittes, to talk about her unusually diverse career in national security, her work at AEI in a period when principled conservatism isn’t popular, and about the recent NATO summit.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Political scientist Ethan Scheiner appeared on Chatter in early 2022, right before the Olympics in Beijing, to talk about the fascinating intersection of politics, security, and Olympic events. This week, he returns to talk about the compelling connections between hockey and international relations--with a special focus on Czechoslovakia before, during, and after the Cold War. His new book, Freedom To Win, uses the stories of a range of larger-than-life characters across several decades to describe the importance of international hockey play to the Czech and Slovak national experience and to increase awareness of a too-little-known quest for freedom from oppression.
David Priess and Scheiner discussed the broad intersection of hockey and politics, the intensity of the Swedish-Finnish rivalry on the ice, the origins of the game in Europe, how Czechoslovakian hockey players used their sport to fight back against Soviet domination, the 1969 Ice Hockey World Championships in Stockholm, prominent sports figures' defections from the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War, the internationalization of the US National Hockey League, hockey in the former Czechoslovakia after the end of Communist rule in Eastern Europe, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The Chatter episode The Olympics, Politics, and Security
The book Freedom to Win: A Cold War Story of the Courageous Hockey Team that Fought the Soviets for the Soul of its People--and Olympic Gold, by Ethan Scheiner
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane sits down with law professor and hacker historian Scott Shapiro to rant, and rave, about hacker movies. From War Games to the Die Hard franchise to TV’s “Mr. Robot,” Hollywood has portrayed hackers as heroes and villains. Sometimes filmmakers get the art and culture of hacking right. Sometimes they get basic technology very wrong. But the results are almost always entertaining.
Scott is a professor at Yale Law School and the author of the new book Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks.
Here’s a list of movies Shane and Scott discussed:
War Games
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm
Sneakers
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Live Free or Die Hard, aka Die Hard 4
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337978/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Snowden
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3774114/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Mr. Robot
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4158110/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_mr%2520robot
Hackers
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
The Net
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113957/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Die Hard 2
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099423/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_die%2520hard%25202
Scott’s book, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374601188/fancybeargoesphishing
Scott on Twitter
https://twitter.com/scottjshapiro?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Scott’s interview on the Lawfare podcast about his book
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dark-history-of-the-information-age/id498897343?i=1000614119459
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Since day one, Roger Parloff has been a constant presence at the January 6th trials. Based in Washington, D.C, he has regularly contributed to Yahoo Finance and Air Mail News, and has also been published in The New York Times, ProPublica, New York, and NewYorker.com. As a senior editor at Lawfare, he's played a major role in analyzing the Jan. 6th Report, breaking down the outcomes of each trial, and laying out the ongoing challenges prosecutors face in holding Jan. 6th insurrectionists and former President Trump accountable.
In his conversation with Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare’s editor in chief and this week’s Chatter guest host, Roger talks about giving live play-by-play of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers trials, the Venue Transfer Motions filed by many Jan. 6th defendants, the other journalists and "sedition hunters" who have been crucial in gathering information and reporting on the Jan. 6th cases, and more.
Parloff’s latest essay on Lawfare on this subject is entitled: “Should Nine Oath Keepers Receive Terror-Enhanced Sentences?”
Water, essential to the emergence and endurance of life on Earth, has both spurred technological advances and driven many types of conflict. For the first time in humanity's long history with water, we are starting to suffer the consequences of widespread unsustainable water use, and we soon will face a crucial collective choice about what future generations' interactions with water will look like.
Hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick has studied the issues at the intersection of water, climate change, security, and conflict for decades; he recently wrote The Three Ages of Water to bring together much of his life's work on how water has shaped the course of human history and why acting now is so vital for fostering a sustainable hydrologic future. David Priess hosted him for a conversation covering his early interest in hydrology, the importance of interdisciplinary studies for water issues, early civilizations' relationship with water, ancient epic flood stories, early legal codes' attention to water conflict, the scientific revolution's water impacts, water poverty, the difference between so-called water wars and conflicts involving water, Hollywood's portrayals of water conflicts, NASA's GRACE satellites, the peak water debate, the path to a more sustainable future, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book The Three Ages of Water by Peter Gleick
The article "Water and Conflict: Fresh Water Resources and International Security," International Security (1993) by Peter Gleick
The article "Environment and Security: The Clear Connections," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2015) by Peter Gleick
The book Bottled and Sold by Peter Gleick
The Water Conflict Chronology project at the Pacific Institute
The Water at the Movies compilation by Peter Gleick
The movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The movie Mad Max: Fury Road
The movie Waterworld
The movie Quantum of Solace
The movie V is for Vendetta
The movie Dune (1984)
The book Dune by Frank Herbert
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Shane and David have hosted many former intelligence officers, mostly of the American variety, during more than 80 episodes so far on Chatter. But, until this week, you haven't heard us speak with one who has turned her intelligence experience into a career as a professional genealogist. Lisa Maddox of Family History Investigations has carved out that unique path, and her story reveals much about the nature and wider applicability of analytic skills.
David Priess talked to Lisa about her entry into the national security world; the role of intelligence within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS); differences and similarities among NCIS, DIA, and CIA; her work at CIA as an analyst and manager of analysts; the research, analytic, and presentational aspects of intelligence analysis; structured analytic techniques; the coordination process within the Intelligence Community; the discipline of targeting analysis; her decision to start a genealogy business; how the elements of analysis apply to genealogical work; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The TV show NCIS
- The TV show Finding Your Roots
- The book Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies
- The book Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Alicia Wanless is one of the pioneers of the idea of information ecology, the notion that we should think about information and disinformation as part of a complex ecosystem, the management of which she analogizes to environmental policy. Wanless has been complaining for several years that the war on “disinformation” skates over important question: What are the collateral effects of anti-disinformation policies? How do interventions against information pollution operate in the real world?
In her conversation with Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare’s editor in chief and this week’s Chatter guest host, Wanless talks about how she became interested in information management, what’s wrong with the discussion of disinformation, what a more environmentalist approach to information spaces might look like, and what a useful research agenda for the nascent field would focus on.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- Wanless’s latest essay on Lawfare: “There’s No Getting Ahead of Disinformation Without Moving Past It.”
- The book Network Propaganda
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
From the birth of the republic, American presidents have communicated with the public in one form or another. The frequency and exact nature of such efforts have varied quite a bit over time due to variables ranging from the extent of partisanship in the media to each commander in chief's personal preference to travel technology. Political scientist Anne Pluta has explored this history deeply, including extensive analysis of contemporary newspaper accounts back to the late 18th century. And her insights, contained in writings like the book Persuading the Public: The Evolution of Popular Presidential Communication from Washington to Trump, provide plenty of surprises and even challenge some conventional wisdom about the presidency.
David Priess chatted with her about her favorite presidents and her assessment of the best communicators among them; the precedents set by George Washington; Thomas Jefferson's State of the Union delivery method; changes in the communication environment during the Andrew Jackson era; Abraham Lincoln's exceptional presidency; the importance of train travel for presidential contact with the public; Rutherford Hayes's underappreciated importance in presidential communication; Theodore Roosevelt as a speaker; Woodrow Wilson's decision to deliver the State of the Union address in person; the importance for presidential communication of radio, television, and the availability of Air Force One; the relatively brief period of national, "objective" media; the late 20th century shift to splintered media; Donald Trump's social media use; Joe Biden's communication practices; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The play Hamilton
- The TV show John Adams
- The movie Lincoln
- The book Persuading the Public by Anne Pluta
- The TV show The West Wing
- The TV show Veep
- The movie The American President
- The movie Air Force One
- The movie Independence Day
- The TV show Scandal
- The book The Devil's Teeth
- The book Twelve Days of Terror
- The book The Wave
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On April 13, 2022, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes conducted his first “special military operation” at the Russian embassy in Washington, DC. It involved 14 theater stage lights that Wittes and other activists used to project images of the Ukrainian flag onto embassy walls. Since then, Wittes’s special military operations have garnered increased attention and become more complex—technically and diplomatically.
In his conversation with Katherine Pompilio, one of Lawfare’s associate editors and this week’s Chatter guest host, Wittes talks about the genesis of these special military operations, what it’s like conducting international negotiations with Russian diplomats via the U.S. Secret Service, the international law of light protests, how a paper mache washing machine is involved in all of this, his career, his other projects, and more.
Works mentioned in this episode:
Ben’s Substack Dog Shirt Daily
The video Defect and Repent: A Laser Poem
The video "It's Almost Like the Russians Don't Negotiate in Good Faith": A Video Parable.
The video U.S. Ukrainian Activists Presents Umbrella Boy
The podcast #LiveFromUkraine: Katya Savchenko Survived Bucha—and Wrote About It
The Washington Post article “Activists train spotlight of Ukrainian flag on Russian Embassy”
The video of the spotlight cat and mouse game
The work of Robin Bell
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Olivia Nuzzi gets Washington in a way many journalists don’t. As the Washington correspondent for New York magazine, she has written perceptive, piercing, and enduring portraits of Donald Trump and the bizarre characters in his orbit. Now she’s turning her reporter’s eye to history, hosting a companion podcast to HBO's “White House Plumbers,” a five-part series that imagines the Watergate scandal through the lives of two notorious Nixon operatives, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.
Olivia came up as a journalist writing about politics in New Jersey. She began covering Trump at The Daily Beast, where she worked with Shane. They discussed her career, what fascinates her about politics, and the prospects for the 2024 presidential campaign, where Trump appears likely to be the Republican nominee.
They also discussed Hollywood and Washington’s mutual fascination with each other, and why they’d both rather live in L.A. than New York.
Olivia’s work at New York magazine: https://nymag.com/author/olivia-nuzzi/
The White House Plumbers podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/white-house-plumbers-podcast/id1682542231
The White House Plumbers series on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/white-house-plumbers
Olivia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Garrett Graff’s new book on Watergate, which serves as a history companion to the podcast and was just named a Pulitzer Prize finalist: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Watergate/Garrett-M-Graff/9781982139179
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Ian Enright and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Private equity firms rank among the largest employers in the United States and invest many billions of dollars in a wide variety of industries. Yet the public understanding of how private equity works and its impact on myriad areas of American life, including national security, remains limited.
Brendan Ballou is trying to change that. A federal prosecutor who works in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, he has written a new book, Plunder: Private Equity's Plan To Pillage America. David Priess spoke at length with him about his previous work in the Justice Department's National Security Division, his current role working antitrust issues, the origins of his interest in private equity, the business model of private equity, its effect on industries from mortgages to nursing homes, private equity's link to the SolarWinds hack, foreign involvement in private equity, the impact of private equity on U.S. competitiveness, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It by Louis Brandeis
The book Plunder: Private Equity's Plan To Pillage America by Brendan Ballou
The movie This Is Spinal Tap
The book Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free by Jed Rakoff
The movie Alien
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
As satellites around the planet proliferate, the tug they feel from international tensions seems to rival the gravitational pull exerted by the Earth itself. On issues from Space Traffic Management to scientific data sharing, the need for global cooperation is high but rarely easy.
Dr. Mariel Borowitz is head of the Program on International Affairs, Science, and Technology at Georgia Tech's Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, where she is an Associate Professor, and author of Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data, which dives deeply into the history of government agencies' and international organizations' tough choices about when and how to share scientific information collected by various orbiting platforms.
David Priess chatted with her about space diplomacy as a domain; auroras and satellites; the Artemis crew; the Space Force; the James Webb Space Telescope; working at NASA headquarters; the changing nature of satellite constellations; Starlink; Space Situational Awareness and Space Traffic Management; countries' choices about making data from satellites freely available; the evolution of LANDSAT; the history of satellite data sharing by entities in the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and India; the inhibiting effects of Russia's war in Ukraine; commercialization of satellite systems; how to grow space diplomats; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The movie 2001
- The movie 2010
- The movie The Martian
- The TV show The Expanse
- The movie Arrival
- Queen guitarist Brian May's work on the New Horizons mission
- The Chatter podcast episode Satellites, Space Debris, and Hollywood with Aaron Bateman
- The movie Gravity
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Widespread power outages have happened before, but authorities usually diagnose the cause and restore electricity within days, if not within hours. And with few exceptions, such blackouts occur without dissolving social bonds and prompting massive violence.
In big screen and television fiction, however, things are different. Thrillers show us the dangerous, life-or-death scenarios that can arise when regular power and all it provides disappear. Science fiction explores diverse causes and implications of blackouts. Horror stories take full advantage of the darkness and the resort to pre-modern technology. All of them say something about us and about modernity.
Denis Newiak has extensively researched and written about the intersection of crises, film and TV, and modern humanity. Most recently, his book Preparing for the Global Blackout: A Disaster Guide from TV and Cinema jumps into how fictional representations of lost electricity show us the contradiction that modern life is both safer and more dangerous than it was before the widespread availability of power. David Priess chatted with him about the field of media theory, their childhood attraction to disaster films, the many causes of fictional blackouts, how characters tend to react when realizing that things will be very different, the importance of radio in blackout fiction, the importance of darkness, what becomes valuable in no-electricity worlds, how comedies handle power outages, and Newiak's hope that government officials and business leaders with emergency management responsibilities are paying attention to what movies and TV reveal about humanity pushed to the edge.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The movie WALL-E
- The TV show The Big Bang Theory
- The TV show 13 Reasons Why
- The TV show Bates Motel
- The book Wicked by Gregory Maguire
- The movie Solo
- The movie Contagion
- The TV show The Walking Dead
- The TV movie 14 Hours
- The movie The Book of Eli
- The TV show Grey's Anatomy
- The TV show Tribes of Europa
- The movie The Purge
- The movie How It Ends
- The TV show Blackout
- The movie Cloverfield
- The movie 10 Cloverfield Place
- The movie The Cloverfield Paradox
- The TV show V (1984-85)
- The TV show V (2009-11)
- The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- The TV show Superstore
- The TV show Community
- The TV show The Flight Attendant
- The movie Moonraker
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nancy Youssef has reported on war and conflict around the world and from Washington. As a young journalist, she went to Iraq and sensed early on that a war most presumed would be over quickly was only just beginning. Her career has taken her to Afghanistan, Egypt, and into the center of power at the Pentagon. Nancy is now a national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
In her conversation with Shane, Nancy talks about her Journal colleague, Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested last month in Russia and accused of spying, charges that his family, his employer, and the U.S. government vociferously deny. Like Nancy, Evan is the child of immigrants. She says she admired his reporting for giving voice to the Russian people at a time of war. Nancy has seen other colleagues taken prisoner amid conflict and shared her thoughts about the risks that journalists face both in war zones and from states that see information as a weapon.
Shane and Nancy are old friends and worked together at The Daily Beast, where they covered U.S. national security and foreign policy.
Nancy’s work at The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/news/author/nancy-a-youssef
Nancy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nancyayoussef
A recent profile on Evan Gershkovich from The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/08/evan-gershkovich-russia-wsj-journalist-arrested-profile/
More on Austin Tice, a friend of Nancy’s who went missing in Syria: https://www.austinticefamily.com/
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Since the days of the USSR, the Russian people have expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the country's environment. The post-Soviet years witnessed an explosion of grassroots, professional, and government-affiliated groups to advocate in this space, but widespread public support and lasting impact on government policy haven't developed. And now, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, prospects for progress on environmental concerns seem especially dim.
David Priess hosted this conversation with author and Bowdoin College Professor of Government Laura Henry about this topic and its implications. They discussed what it was like for her to conduct research across the Russian Federation starting in 1991 and in the decades since, the roots of environmentalism in the Soviet Union, what changed under Boris Yeltsin, how environmental organizations in Russia vary, the benefits and risks to these groups of taking funding from outside Russia, Russia's Foreign Agent Law, Russian environmentalists' attention to the oil and gas industry, how to think about measuring "success" of the environmental movement in Russia, how the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted environmental cooperation and impacted climate policy, sources of cautious optimism for the future of the Russian environment, and more.
Works mentioned in this episode:
The book Red to Green: Environmental Activism in Post-Soviet Russia by Laura Henry
The book Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
The book Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Misperceptions about nuclear proliferation attempts abound, particularly when we find authoritarian leaders involved. It is easy to picture these determined owners of nuclear weapons as omnipotent, unconstrained micromanagers--willing and able to do whatever is necessary to take their country over the threshold.
Political scientist Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer disagrees. She conducted extensive research in IAEA and other archives as well as in-depth interviews with senior scientists and regime officials from Iraq and Libya, including Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi. What she discovered led her to question much conventional wisdom about the Iraqi and Libyan nuclear programs, and about proliferation writ large. Her book Unclear Physics--which borrows its title from a typo in an Iraqi report from the late 1960s that characterized well the vague objectives of the early Iraqi nuclear program--presents intriguing information and insight on all of this.
David Priess speaks with Braut-Hegghammer about her interest in WMD proliferation, how she researched secretive nuclear programs, the value of archives, Iraq's quest for the bomb, the impact of Israel's strike on the Osirak reactor in 1981, how close Iraq was to breaking out when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the origins of Libya's nuclear program, Gaddafi's turn to the A.Q. Khan network for the equipment and blueprints needed, implications for the potential proliferation paths of countries from North Korea and Iran to Saudi Arabia and South Korea, the rising salience of nuclear weapons in Arctic security debates, and Norwegian views on nuclear deterrence in today's evolving strategic environment.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A former president accused of treason. Talk of secession. Concerns about the lack of accountability for insurrection. These issues appear in headlines today, but we've been here before--in the 1860s.
For this episode, David Priess talked with legal historian Cynthia Nicoletti about her passion for the intersection of history and law, what the U.S. Constitution says and does not say about secession, differing legal arguments on the topic during and after the Civil War, the government's indecision surrounding the prosecution of former Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis, the strengths of Davis's primary lawyer Charles O'Conor, O'Conor's strategy for preventing a treason prosecution, how the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. White (1869) declared secession invalid, how and why public anger about acts against the U.S government fades, and lessons from the 1860s for secession calls today.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Mentioned during this episode:
The book Secession on Trial by Cynthia Nicoletti
The book Rehearsal for Reconstruction by Willie Lee Rose
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Academy loves a good spy flick, and so do we! This week, Shane Harris talks with Washington Post culture critic Alyssa Rosenberg about the enduring power of espionage on the big screen.
Movies like Zero Dark Thirty, the Mission: Impossible franchise, and this year’s Top Gun: Maverick and All Quiet on the Western Front, which both took home Oscars, help us understand global conflict as they wrestle with questions of personal morality. How do the stories of James Bond and George Smiley help us make sense of the fate of nations? And why is Hollywood finding it nearly impossible to tell stories about great power competition between the U.S. and China?
Shane and Alyssa go way back, and this is a fun, lively conversation about spy stories that have resonated through the decades. Alyssa has written for years about popular culture, books, and more recently parenting.
Alyssa’s work at The Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/alyssa-rosenberg/
Alyssa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlyssaRosenberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Alyssa’s podcast on movies, Across the Movie Aisle: https://www.thebulwark.com/podcast/across-the-movie-aisle/
Movies discussed in this episode:
Zero Dark Thirty
Top Gun: Maverick
Mission: Impossible
All Quiet on the Western Front
Casino Royale
Skyfall
The Hunt for Red October
Breach
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mark Hertling retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant general a decade ago, but he's kept busy since then as a CNN military analyst, hospital organization executive, book author, speaker on leadership, and adjunct professor. Most recently, he accepted President Biden's appointment as Chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission. Celebrating its 100th anniversary this month, the commission is a unique institution that commemorates the service and sacrifices of members of the U.S. military, with a special focus on the battle monuments and military cemeteries outside of the United States.
David Priess asked Hertling about his road to West Point, his experiences there and throughout his military career, leadership and training in the military and beyond, the origins and mission of the American Battle Monuments Commission, some of the worldwide cemeteries and memorials to fallen U.S. service members, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Mentioned during this episode:
The book Growing Physician Leaders by Mark Hertling
The book Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure by J.F.C. Fuller
The American Battle Monuments Commission
The Chatter podcast episode 9/11 Memorialization with Marita Sturken
Mark Hertling on Twitter
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For the past 20 years, Richard Haass has led the Council on Foreign Relations, building on his national security experience in government and his related work in academia and think tanks. Although his efforts have focused overwhelmingly on foreign policy, his central concern has turned to something closer to home: the decline of democratic norms in the United States. He's even written a new book about this problem and something we all can do about it, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.
David Priess and Haass discussed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and Haass' experiences leading it, reflections on his service in the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations, the mission of the Council on Foreign Relations and Haass's longest-ever tenure of leading it, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its many implications, the roles of China and India in this shifting strategic landscape, democratic decline in the United States, the ten habits that American citizens can adopt to heal our divisions and safeguard representative democracy in the U.S., and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works mentioned during this episode:
The book The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens by Richard Haass
The book Foreign Policy Begins at Home by Richard Haass
The movie History of the World: Part I
The book Thinking in Time by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May
The TV show Full Swing
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
James Fallows on What is Happening in the Sky
It’s been an eventful few months for flying objects. A Chinese spy balloon captured national attention and sparked an international incident--and a lot of hot air. But closer to the ground, there have been two near collisions of commercial jets at U.S. airports.
This week, Shane talks to journalist (and pilot) James Fallows about “What the hell is happening in the sky?” to borrow from one of his recent posts. Fallows has been chronicling American life for decades, most notably as a longtime correspondent for The Atlantic. Now he’s writing about aviation, spy balloons, politics, and whatever else catches his observant eye on his new site, “Breaking the News,” hosted on Substack.
Fallows talked about the two near misses at Austin airport and JFK, which could have led to a catastrophic loss of human life, and how an overburdened commercial aviation system may be poised for a disaster. He shared his insights about the Chinese spy balloon kerfuffle, informed in part from his time living in China as a correspondent. And Fallows reflected on the life and legacy of President Jimmy Carter, for whom he wrote speeches at the White House.
“What the Hell is Happening in the Sky?” Fallows recent post on his new Substack page https://fallows.substack.com/p/what-the-hell-is-happening-in-the
Fallows on Twitter https://twitter.com/JamesFallows?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Fallows’ archive at The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/author/james-fallows/
And his recent reflections on Jimmy Carter’s lucky life https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/jimmy-carter-accomplishments-james-fallows/673146/
Books about flying discussed on this episode include:
West with the Night: A Memoir by Beryl Markham https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865477636/westwiththenight
Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K. Gann https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fate-is-the-Hunter/Ernest-K-Gann/9780671636036
Inside the Sky, among others, by William Langewiesche https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/16660/william-langewiesche/
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Ian Enright of Goat Rodeo.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Along with co-editors Peter Feaver, William Inboden, and Meghan O'Sullivan, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley is editor of the new Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama. This unique and massive book contains 30 Transition Memos prepared in 2008-2009 under Hadley's direction by the outgoing George W. Bush administration’s National Security Council staff for the incoming Obama Administration—each with a postscript by these same experts critically assessing the Bush foreign policy legacy.
Historians and national security junkies usually have to wait a long time for such materials to see the light of day; this consolidated content reveals much, and relatively quickly, about the various policies of the time and the extensive effort that was put into the gold-standard 2008-2009 transition.
David Priess asked Hadley about his experiences with presidential transitions dating back to the 1970s; how it felt to be on the receiving end of the transition process in 2000-2001; President George W. Bush's transition mandate to him and to Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in 2008; the substantive NSC transition memos on the Freedom Agenda, the War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and PEPFAR; public perceptions of the national security advisor's role; how much national security advisors should interact with the media; and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works mentioned during this episode:
The book Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama, edited by Stephen J. Hadley
The TV show The West Wing
The book Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger
The book The Icon and the Axe by James Billington
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Flat earth beliefs have been spreading alarmingly in recent years. They offer plenty of fodder for punchlines, yes--but they also have ties to more nefarious conspiracy theories like QAnon and to other manifestations of political extremism.
As a reporter at the Daily Beast, Kelly Weill has been covering it all. And she has written Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything, a book that tells the history of flat Earthism, relates many stories from and about its current adherents, and traces its connections to other forms of radical belief.
David Priess and Weill discussed the genesis of her interest in conspiracies; what drives people toward conspiracy theories; 9/11 trutherism as a "gateway drug" to other conspiracies; the origins of modern flat earth thinking in the 1800s and its links to religious fundamentalism; how flat earth believers took over and ran Zion, Illinois in the early 20th century; different flat Earthers' conceptions of what's above, below, and around the ground; how online videos and social media helped drive a rise in flat Earthism; what a flat Earth conference is like; the negative impact that flat Earth beliefs can have on individuals; how flat Warth thinking intersects with other manifestations of conspiracism and with political extremism; how to help people who fall prey to conspiracy theories; and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by David Priess and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works mentioned during this episode:
The book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything by Kathy Weill
The book The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The documentary Behind the Curve
Kelly Weill's articles at tyhe Daily Beast
The podcast Fever Dreams
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A sunken Soviet submarine. A secret CIA plan to lift it from the bottom of the ocean with a giant claw. And reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. It sounds like the makings of a Netflix series--and it should be. But the story of the Glomar Explorer is the stuff of fact, even if it has long been shrouded in secrecy.
In his new book, intelligence historian M. Todd Bennett pierces the veil surrounding this most improbable of intelligence operations and surfaces a riveting tale of underwater espionage and high-stakes foreign policy. The sub-salvage mission, which the CIA codenamed AZORIAN, was greenlit at a time of remarkable daring and ingenuity by the spy agency, which enjoyed only minimal oversight from Congress. But journalists brought the Glomar operation to light in another era, when scandals and excesses led lawmakers to reign in the intelligence community.
Shane Harris talks with Bennett about his book, Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency, which shows how the exposure of the secret program led to a public backlash against disclosures of classified information and helped reenforce the culture of secrecy that envelops the CIA’s work. The phrase “neither confirm nor deny,” which Bennett tells Harris has become a kind of coy cliche, originates from attempts to uncover the facts of the Glomar mission.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works mentioned during this episode:
Bennett’s book, Neither Confirm nor Deny: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/neither-confirm-nor-deny/9780231193474
The Foreign Relations of the United States Series. A volume that Bennett edited includes declassified records documenting the Glomar incident. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/about-frus
Bennett’s bio and other writing: https://history.ecu.edu/m-todd-bennett/
Bennett on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mtoddbennett?lang=en
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Yaya Fanusie has explored his analytic side and his creative side throughout his life and multifaceted career. Comic book writer and illustrator in junior high. International economics in graduate school. Author of nonfiction and fiction. Work at the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Counterrorism Center fighting corruption and terrorism. Sound designer. Nonprofit expert on financial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. And now producer, writer, and voice talent of the audio spy thriller called The Jabbari Lincoln Files.
David Priess spoke with Fanusie about his path to the CIA and NCTC, what analytic work on international economics and financial intelligence is like, the unique environment at NCTC, his departure from the intelligence community, the fundamentals of cryptocurrency and bitcoin, the national security risks around cryptocurrencies, the U.S. government's coverage of those risks, the experience of fictionalizing financial intelligence, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works mentioned during this episode:
The movie Philadelphia
The podcast spy thriller The Jabbari Lincoln Files
The book The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For almost 25 years, until his death in November 2018, former president George H. W. Bush's chief of staff was Jean Becker. For event after event through both the best of those times and the worst--from dozens of affirming trips overseas to several parachute jumps in his latter years to many funerals--Becker was there to schedule it, plan it, manage it, and often attend it. All of this has given her a uniquely wide and deep understanding of the challenges and rewards of a long post-presidency.
For the 30th anniversary of Bush 41's departure from the White House, David Priess chatted with Becker about how she first came to work with First Lady Barbara Bush, how that led to her work as chief of staff for Bush after he'd left office, the diverse activities of a lengthy post-presidency, former presidents' interactions with intelligence and classified material, Bush 41's choice to refrain from frequent political statements, his relationships with other presidents ranging from his son to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama to Joe Biden, and what a chief of staff for a former president actually does.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works mentioned during this episode:
The book The Man I Knew: The Amazing Story of George H. W. Bush's Post-Presidency by Jean Becker
The book The President's Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
The book 41 by George W. Bush
The book Pearls of Wisdom by Barbara Bush
The book The Nazi Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch
The TV series Ted Lasso
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 2001, the FBI arrested a top U.S. intelligence officer who had spied for Cuba for nearly two decades. The story of Ana Montes, whose colleagues called her “The Queen of Cuba,” has all the hallmarks of an espionage thriller. She was among the most damaging spies of her generation, and yet her story remains lesser known than more notorious Cold War-era turncoats.
In his new book, journalist Jim Popkin tells the story of Montes’ radicalization, her recruitment by Cuban intelligence, and how she managed to spy so long undetected. Montes was released from prison earlier this month, after serving a lengthy prison sentence. New details of her story have come to light in Poplin’s book, Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy—and the Sister She Betrayed.
Popkin sat down with Shane Harris to talk about Montes’ story, what drove her to become a spy, and the investigation that brought her to justice.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was engineered by Ian Enright and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode are:
Popkin’s book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/code-name-blue-wren-jim-popkin?variant=40333137838114
Popkin’s feature on Montes in The Washington Post magazine: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/04/18/ana-montes-did-much-harm-spying-for-cuba-chances-are-you-havent-heard-of-her/
Popkin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JimPopkin?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Abigail Spanberger, who represents Virginia's 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives, is one of the few members of Congress to have served as an operations officer at the Central Intelligence Agency. She also worked in law enforcement as an officer of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Not typical experiences for a thrice-elected politician--but useful for the role she finds herself in now.
David Priess chatted with Rep. Spanberger about her recent re-election to the House, the nature of "swing districts," working across the aisle, her road to working at CIA, her experiences as a postal inspector and intelligence operations officer, what she sees as important national security issues right now, her advice for former colleagues considering a run for elective office, and how listening skills she learned at CIA have helped her as a representative.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
This week, we're taking time off for the holidays - so we reached into the Chatter archives for one of our favorite shows from the last year.
In this episode, Shane Harris sits down with veteran journalist Leslie Kean, who has done groundbreaking and widely admired reporting on unidentified flying objects. And, no, that does not mean aliens. Kean's bestselling 2010 book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, was a sober account of credible, first-hand witnesses to unexplained aerial phenomena. In 2017, Kean co-authored a major New York Times article that revealed a secret Pentagon effort devoted to the study of UFOs. More recently, the U.S. government has begun to standardize UFO reporting by military personnel and has declassified more information about what it knows about strange objects in the sky. Kean's reporting played a significant role in those disclosures.
Kean discusses her early career as a journalist, her travels in Burma, and her interest in Buddhism. She talks about the important questions that remain about UFOs, and what the U.S. government may be on the cusp of answering.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode are:
Leslie Kean's website: https://www.lesliekean.com/
UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/114166/leslie-kean/
"Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program:" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html
"Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (Office of the Director of National Intelligence): https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Donald Trump is trying to do something rare--very rare--in American history: lose a presidential election, run again, and get elected to a second term. Only one president, the underappreciated Grover Cleveland, has ever accomplished that feat. Yet his story remains largely unknown.
David Priess invited Troy Senik, author of a new biography of Grover Cleveland called A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland, to Chatter to explore how the stories of rejected presidents in the past shed light on Trump's effort to retake the Oval Office now--with a whole lotta Grover in the conversation.
They discussed how we rate U.S. leaders, the cases of presidents who lost their reelection bids and then tried again, what drove those men to do so, Grover Cleveland's formative experiences, his political offices in New York, how he became president, his predilection for vetoes, his loss in 1888, his comeback in 1892, why Cleveland is largely forgotten, how our views of presidents change over time, how Cleveland's effort in 1892 to regain the presidency compares to Trump's attempt now, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Grover Cleveland, Again! by Ken Burns
The book A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik
The book Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage by Allen Nevins
The book James Monroe by Tim McGrath
The book The Number Ones by Tom Briehan
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Ronald Reagan stands among the most consequential national security presidents in United States history, not least of which because his policies helped to end the Cold War without a direct war between the superpowers. Reagan's vision for ending the Cold War evolved during his presidency, but followed clear principles he brought with him to the office.
Will Inboden, a historian and former policymaker who leads the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, has written a new survey of the 40th president's national security policies, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. In it, he uses newly declassified documents and policymaker interviews to give an informative and insightful reassessment of the formation, development, execution, and impact of Reagan's foreign policy.
In this discussion, David Priess and Inboden touch on the challenges of conducting research on decades-old administrations, the National Security Council process under different presidents, Reagan's influence on an entire generation, the origins of Reagan's national security views, the impact of the 1981 assassination attempt, the nature and influence of Reagan's faith, his evolving relationship with Soviet leaders, the Reykjavik summit, how close the US and USSR came to agreeing to eliminate nuclear weapons, Reagan's legacy beyond the Cold War, what Will would ask Reagan if he had the chance to do so, how Reagan might view the United States today, why Reagan is hard to capture onscreen, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink by William Inboden
The book Reagan's War Stories by Benjamin Griffin
The book Rawhide Down by Del Quentin Wilber
The book Reagan at Reykjavik by Kenneth Adelman
"Democracy's Next Battle," Ronald Reagan's address to the Oxford Union Society (December 4, 1992)
The film Lincoln
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Longtime Russia watcher Andrew Weiss took an unconventional approach to his new biography, Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin. Teaming up with illustrator Box Brown, Weiss wrote a graphic novel that tells the story of Putin’s rise from an impoverished childhood in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to the undisputed authoritarian ruler of Russia.
A big theme of the book is how Putin imagined an idea of himself as a strongman through spy movies and pulp novels that he devoured as a young person. The graphic novel seems a particularly fitting format for exploring Putin, who has successfully cultivated a caricature of himself in the West as a cunning, sophisticated, hyper-masculine leader. But, as Weiss writes, “seeing Putin as he wants us to see him, rather than as he is,” makes it harder to confront the challenge Russia poses to Western interests and security in Europe.
Shane Harris talked to Weiss about his own childhood in California and why he was drawn at an early age to studying Russia. Weiss previously served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council staff, as a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. He’s now the James Family Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, where he oversees research on Russia and Eurasia.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
Andrew Weiss’ graphic novel on Putin: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250760753/accidentalczar
Weiss’ bio: https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/824
Weiss on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Illustrator Brian “Box” Brown: https://www.boxbrown.com/
Other graphic novels that inspired Weiss:
Maus by Art Spiegelman: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/171065/the-complete-maus-by-art-spiegelman/
On Tyranny Graphic Edition by Timothy Snyder, Illustrated by Nora Krug https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653012/on-tyranny-graphic-edition-by-timothy-snyder-illustrated-by-nora-krug/
Movies and TV shows discussed in this episode:
The Shield and the Sword: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166790/
Seventeen Moments of Spring: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069628/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Plagues periodically exact a heavy toll on human life--and much more. They devastate economies, exacerbate social disorder, shock governance systems, provide fodder for political violence, and interact in surprising ways with terrorism.
In this conversation, David Priess and longtime RAND Corporation terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins talk about the long nature of pandemics, the history of public resistance to efforts to protect public health, links between plagues and social unrest, how the concept of comorbidity applies to the effects of pandemics, the relationship between plagues and political violence, the challenges of rumors and rapid communication, the threat of biological terrorism, and pragmatic ways to counter domestic political violence.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Plagues and Their Aftermath by Brian Michael Jenkins
The short story "The Stolen Bacillus" by H.G. Wells
Brian Michael Jenkins's article, "Elements of a Pragmatic Strategy to Counter Domestic Political Violence," in the CTC Sentinel (October 2022)
The book The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
The book The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It's been just longer than one year since Shane Harris and David Priess embarked on a voyage of new adventures aboard the S.S. Chatter, seeking out creative conversations on the distant shores of the national security ocean.
And what a journey it's been.
To date, they've hosted more than 50 long-form conversations on topics from spy novels to Olympic security, from surveillance-related art to assassins' poisons, from 9/11 memorialization to ethical space exploration. The only thing more intriguing to Shane and David than the sheer diversity of topics so far has been the experience of digging deep with such a variety of amazing, creative people.
They are, to put it simply, thankful for the opportunity to have hosted such rich exchanges and to share them with so many listeners.
In this episode, Shane and David review the origin story of the podcast, reflect on some of the conversations on Chatter that stand out to them most many months later, give specific shout outs to several of each other's hosted episodes, subject each other to the random curiosity of the "Chatter Box," and preview a few forthcoming discussions to be featured in episodes yet unreleased. The unifying purpose behind it all? To give thanks to everyone involved in this experiment, from the intrepid Cara Shillenn and her wonderful colleagues at Goat Rodeo, to the team at Lawfare, the podcast's fascinating guests and its faithful listeners.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
A healthy subset of the past year's conversations on Chatter
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Satellites have held a special place in military planning and in spy fiction alike for more than half a century. Both domains ended up devoting much attention to satellite-based weapons and anti-satellite weaponry; both have also dealt with the problem of space debris related to the latter.
In this chat, David Priess and George Washington University historian Aaron Bateman talk about Bateman's early interest in satellites, early satellite technology and attempts at anti-satellite activity, the Outer Space Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, actions by presidents from Eisenhower through Biden related to the testing of satellite and/or anti-satellite weapons, the Strategic Defense Initiative (commonly called the "Star Wars program"), the problem of space debris, the Kessler Syndrome, other countries' satellite and anti-satellite activities, the Space Force, and on-screen portrayals of satellite warfare and space debris from the James Bond movies to Gravity.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
Aaron Bateman's article, "Anti-Satellite Weapons Are Creating Space Hazards. Here's a Way To Limit the Damage," in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (January 21, 2022)
The film You Only Live Twice
The film Moonraker
The film GoldenEye
The film Gravity
The Star Wars franchise
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Modern presidents both influence and are influenced by books, movies, and television; with no commander in chief is that more clear than with Ronald Reagan. Dr. Benjamin Griffin, chief of the Military History Division at the United States Military Academy, has researched and written the definitive book about the 40th president's interactions with Tom Clancy and other authors, Hollywood films, and other pop culture: Reagan's War Stories: A Cold War Presidency.
In this chat, David Priess and Griffin discuss Tom Clancy's influence on an entire generation, how books with clear moral narratives informed Reagan's childhood, the influence of Whittaker Chambers on Reagan's iconic "A Time for Choosing" speech in 1964, the rich relationship between Reagan and Clancy, the outsized impact of Clancy's first two books, and the complicated notion of presidential "vision."
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- The book The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
- The book The Third Word War by Sir John Hackett
- The book Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
- The book Subregional Security Cooperation in the Third World by William Tow
- The book That Printer of Udell's by Harold Bell Wright
- The film High Noon
- The John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- The book Witness by Whittaker Chambers
- The book Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
- The book The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
- The film All the President's Men
- The film Apocalypse Now
- The film The Deer Hunter
- The film Patton
- The film Back to the Future
- The TV movie The Day After
- The movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
- The book Euromissiles by Susan Colbourn
- The book The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Although codemaking and codebreaking often receive less attention in the public imagination than swashbuckling HUMINT operations and ingenious spy gadgets, they have changed history. The under-appreciation of cryptography might stem from a combination of the complexity of encryption, the classified nature of much of its technology, and the difficulty of conveying codebreaking effectively in pop culture.
David Priess spoke with Vince Houghton about the realities and fictional representations of cryptography, as well as the challenges and rewards of making a compelling museum experience out of U.S. codemaking and codebreaking efforts. Houghton is director of the National Cryptologic Museum, the open-to-the-public museum of the National Security Agency. They talked while walking through the newly redesigned museum in Annapolis Junction, Maryland, highlighting various artifacts including early American codebreaking computers, German Enigma machines, the oldest known book of cryptography (from the 16th century), and code generators for U.S. nuclear weapons. They discussed the provenance of highly unusual items and the value of having so many of them on display. And they traded views on movies incorporating ciphers or codes, from The Da Vinci Code to Sneakers to The Empire Strikes Back to The Imitation Game.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The film The Imitation Game
The film The Da Vinci Code
The TV show Andor
The film Rogue One
The film The Empire Strikes Back
The film Sneakers
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Andrew Kirsch didn’t grow up watching James Bond movies and dreaming of becoming a spy. Like many Canadians, he was barely aware his country had an intelligence service. But when terrorists attacked not far from his office in London, where he was working in the financial services industry, Kirsch decided to apply for a job with CSIS--not the think tank, but the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Kirsch chronicles his decade as a spy for Canada in his memoir, I Was Never Here: My True Canadian Spy Story of Coffees, Code Names, and Covert Operations in the Age of Terrorism. It’s a light-hearted but often suspenseful account of his work in offices as well as in the field.
Kirsch and Shane Harris discussed what CSIS is and what it does--it’s not quite the Canadian version of the CIA--how he made it through recruitment and training, and the work he ultimately did breaking into cars and mapping out terrorist networks.
Kirsch’s memoir appears to be the first by a former CSIS officer, which presented a novel dilemma when he wanted to get his manuscript cleared: There was no one to say yes or no. Kirsch says he joked that his second book might be written from prison - but so far, Canadian authorities haven’t come looking for him.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with engineering assistance from Ian Enright. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
Andrew Kirsch’s book: https://pagetwo.com/book/i-was-never-here/
Kirsch on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/as_kirsch
More on CSIS: https://www.canada.ca/en/security-intelligence-service.html
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Olivia Troye has worked in the Republican National Committee, the Pentagon, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Department of Homeland Security. But it was her role on the small team directly supporting Vice President Mike Pence that brought her the most challenging experiences of her career while making her all too aware of the surprisingly thin staffing for the next in line to the presidency.
David Priess spoke to Troye about her path from El Paso to Philadelphia to Washington, her experience on Capitol Hill on 9/11, serving in Baghdad after the U.S. invasion, working at the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security, differences between core National Security Council staff and the support staff for the vice president, the many different tasks that support to a vice president entails, Mike Pence as a customer of the President's Daily Brief, the value of civil service professionals, the ups and downs of working with Pence during the COVID-19 pandemic, the inappropriate handling of classified material she saw during her final years on the job, the ethical reasons spurring her to leave government service, the importance of reasonable gun control, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The TV show Homeland
The TV show Veep
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The American Revolution was fought not only over taxation and representation, but also information. Foreign news, received inconsistently and reprinted according to newspaper editors' biases and misperceptions, helped define the boundaries of early American politics and ultimately spurred colonists to rise up against the British authorities. Digging deep into the horribly flawed media environment from the mid 1700s to the birth of the nation, and then through the first post-revolutionary generation, reveals much about why events played out as they did.
To explore these dynamics, David Priess hosted historian Jordan Taylor--author of the new book Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America. They covered the persistence of misinformation and claims of "fake news," the origins and severe limits of newspapers in colonial America, the trans-Atlantic communication system, the importance of information and its pathologies during the revolution, Patriots' misperceptions of British politics and society, the French Revolution's portrayal in various American media, information mediation as an elite phenomenon, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Illuminati scare of 1798-99, lessons of the early American experience for today, how to avoid pessimism in an era of misinformation, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America by Jordan Taylor
The play Hamilton
The published works of Mike Caulfield
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Darrell Blocker retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2018 after serving as an operations officer and manager in many countries, especially within Africa. His self-described lack of success recruiting assets during early assignments nevertheless taught him important lessons about the intelligence business, about how people work, and about himself; later tours of duty gave him the chance to make up for lost time by excelling at the job while also getting shot at and even gaining minor fame as the lead singer in an African jazz band. Blocker left CIA service as one of the most senior black officers in the Agency's history--and he was reportedly on President Biden's shortlist to become the Director of the CIA. Now, he's involved in several creative projects in Hollywood.
David Priess chatted with Blocker about his career and his activities since retirement. They discussed getting spy stories told on film, growing up as an Air Force brat, understanding the pledge of allegiance, stumbling early in an intelligence career, appreciating the operational environment in Africa, growing from mistakes, accepting lessons from 360-degree feedback, performing on stage in a jazz band, singing the national anthem, being considered as a CIA director, enhancing the CIA's interactions with the media, learning about the benefits of fictional representations of Hollywood's take on intelligence, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The TV series Condor
The TV series Homeland
The Pledge of Allegiance
The Star-Spangled Banner
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Every year, the eastern United States faces the prospect--and, too often, the reality--of major hurricanes that cause extensive physical and financial damage. This year is no exception; even as Hurricane Ian approaches the Gulf Coast, more storms are likely in the coming weeks.
David Priess chatted with author Eric Jay Dolin about the history of Atlantic hurricanes, with a special focus on such storms' influence on U.S. national security. They spoke about the devastating 2017 hurricane season, how tropical systems are covered in the media, Ben Franklin's role in hurricane science, the role of Caribbean hurricanes in the American Revolution and the Spanish-American War, the evolution of the federal government's storm forecasting and crisis response efforts, hurricane hunter flights, attempts to use technology to disrupt massive storms, Hurricane Andrew (1992), the effects of climate change on tropical systems and their impact, viewing hurricanes as national security threats, how humans assess risk, and films about hurricanes.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book A Furious Sky by Eric Jay Dolin
Other books by Eric Jay Dolin
The film The Day After Tomorrow
The film The Perfect Storm
The film Violent Earth: New England's Killer Hurricane of 1938
The film Titanic
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In her day, Josephine Baker was one of the most famous women in the world. Fans recognized the superstar singer, actress, and dancer everywhere she went, particularly on the streets of Paris, where she often walked a pet cheetah on a diamond leash. Why would anyone think such a conspicuous person might make the perfect spy?
Author Damien Lewis set out to answer that question in his latest book, “Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy.” It chronicles Baker’s remarkable career as an agent for French counterintelligence during WWII. Baker participated in numerous clandestine missions, and her work informed British and U.S. intelligence as well.
Baker left the United States in the Jim Crow era and was embraced by French audiences. But she became a target of Nazi propagandists. When Germany invaded France, Baker devoted herself to the Resistance and the Allies’ cause. It turned out that her performing talents were well suited to work as an intelligence agent. Baker used her connections to get close to Axis VIPs, including in the Italian government, who didn’t know she was passing valuable details from their conversations back to her French compatriots. She used her extraordinary fame as a cover, at times hiding secret documents practically in plain sight while on tour.
Lewis and Shane Harris discussed Baker’s remarkable and little known espionage career, which reveals much about the inner life of one of the 20th Century’s biggest stars.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
Damien Lewis’ book, “Agent Josephine:” https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/damien-lewis/agent-josephine/9781541700666/
Lewis’ other books” https://damienlewis.com/books/
Lewis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/authordlewis
Baker and Lewis in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/josephine-baker-was-the-star-france-wanted-and-the-spy-it-needed-damien-lewis-agent-josephine
Baker inducted into the Pantheon: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/30/1059776777/josephine-baker-france-pantheon
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Of all of the Central Intelligence Agency's activities, paramilitary operations might remain the least understood. This, in part, is both a cause and a consequence of inaccurate portrayals of such work in prominent movies; it's also because fewer memoirs come from the CIA's Special Activities Division than from traditional human intelligence collectors and from analysts.
David Priess chatted with former CIA officer Ric Prado about the fiction and the reality of CIA paramilitary operations, including stories Ric tells in his book Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior. They spoke about what Hollywood gets wrong about intelligence work, Ric's escape as a child from Castro's Cuba, his path to a CIA career, differences between paramilitary operations and intelligence collection, his years of work with the Contras in Central America, the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at CIA before and on 9/11, the work ethic in CTC after 9/11, why his book has substantial chunks of redacted text, and who he thinks played the best James Bond.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by David Priess with Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with additional editing by Cara Shillenn. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior by Ric Prado
The film Argo
The film Three Days of the Condor
The Jason Bourne films
The film True Lies
The Mission Impossible films
The James Bond films
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
You don't have to look very far under the surface of the average game in the National Football League to find cloak-and-dagger machinations worthy of governmental intelligence agencies. During the past several decades, teams have used both myriad spying tactics to gain extra advantages and extensive counterintelligence techniques to thwart them. The line between traditional espionage and NFL methods is surprisingly thin.
David Priess chatted with author Kevin Bryant about historical and present-day examples of it all, building on Kevin's new book Spies on the Sidelines: The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage. They discussed known cases of spying before and during the draft, extraordinary means of collecting information about opposing teams' practices and playbooks, common countermeasures of security officers employed by various teams, attempts to intercept signals and play calls, electronic interference with headset communications, locker room spies, evolving league rules about dirty tricks, and the ethics of it all. And, of course, a conversation about covert action in the NFL wouldn't be complete without attention to the recent twin scandals involving the New England Patriots, Spygate and Deflategate.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by David Priess, with editing by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, we take our listeners back to November 18, 2021, when we were just starting Chatter, to bring back one of our very special episodes.
David Priess's guest that day was former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (PDDNI) and longtime intelligence officer Sue Gordon, who shared stories about her experiences in team sports, lessons on leadership, her role in creating the CIA’s non-profit venture capital firm (In-Q-Tel), what it was like interviewing with Donald Trump for the PDDNI job, and more.
Enjoy this archive episode, and we will return next week with an all new conversation.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
NASA next week plans to launch the first of several Artemis missions, which collectively aim to land astronauts on the Moon again for the first time in more than half a century, explore the lunar surface more extensively, and establish a long-term presence on the Moon. Controversy lingers over both the launch system selected for these missions and the next step of human spaceflight to Mars.
David Priess spoke with science journalist Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today and co-host of Astronomy Cast, about why exploring the Moon matters, what to expect from the launch and voyage of Artemis-I, and the challenges of missions to Mars. They also chatted about international space competition vs. cooperation during the Cold War and now, NASA's rollout of initial images from the James Webb Space Telescope, space-based threats ranging from gamma ray bursts and rogue black holes to near-Earth objects and coronal mass ejections, Cain's evolution in communicating science both online and through podcasts, the downward spiral of engaging conspiracy theorists, frustrations with popular culture's association of unidentified aerial phenomena with "aliens," and the interaction of science fiction and real-world space exploration.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
The book The Martian by Andy Weir
The movie The Martian
The movie Don't Look Up
The Alien film franchise
The movie Avatar
The book Death by Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson
The book Death from the Skies by Phil Plait
The podcast The Skeptics Guide to the Universe
The TV show For All Mankind
The Foundation book series by Issac Asimov
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Gone with the Wind--the top-grossing movie of all time, adjusted for inflation--remains an iconic influence in American culture, despite its deeply troubling portrayal of social and political dynamics in the South during and after the Civil War. The continued popularity of the film points to a need to examine its influence on nearly a century's worth of American race relations, fascistic movements, and denialism in the United States. And why did Adolf Hitler reportedly love it so much?
David Priess spoke with cultural and literary historian Sarah Churchwell of the University of London, author of The Wrath To Come, a book that dives deeply into the film, how it reflects a mythologized "Lost Cause" version of the Old South, and its connection with today's increasing political violence. They discuss the popularity of the movie, its differences from the book it was based on, some of the challenges for filmmaker David O. Selznick and for the film's actors, the "Lost Cause" theme that the movie conveys, its intersection with fascist thinking in America and with modern racism, why it attracted Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders, its links to various iterations of the Klan and "America First" campaigns, and how even disturbing movies like this can spur social progress.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
The movie Gone with the Wind
The book Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The book The Wrath To Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells by Sarah Churchwell
The article "Agglutination Test for Americanos" by Leslie L. Jones, The Smart Set magazine, May-Aug 1922.
The book Behold, America: The Entangled History of "America First" and "the American Dream" by Sarah Churchwell
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mary Louise Kelly is one of the most recognizable voices in American journalism. A co-host of NPR’s flagship program “All Things Considered,” she has spent years interviewing top newsmakers and traveling the world to chronicle stories about national security and foreign policy.
And on top of all that, she’s a novelist. Kelly has written two books that incorporate many of her own experiences covering corridors of intelligence and international intrigue. This week, Kelly talked to Shane Harris about how she got her start, where her travels have taken her, and how journalism has proven to be a rich source of material for her fiction.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
Mary Louise Kelly’s bio: https://www.npr.org/people/2780701/mary-louise-kelly
Kelly’s books, Anonymous Sources and The Bullet: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Mary-Louise-Kelly/408483298
Kelly’s website: https://marylouisekellybooks.com/
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Climate change and its effects are increasingly recognized as important subjects of national security research and analysis. Few issues of international political economy or international security avoid some intersection with warming global temperatures, evolving environments for human habitation, and/or changing geography.
Erin Sikorsky has been studying these and related issues for decades, first within the US Intelligence Community and now at the Center for Climate and Security. David Priess had a wide ranging conversation with Erin about her career in government and beyond, how intelligence officers look at climate, a method of categorizing climate risk, how NATO is tackling climate-related issues, the missed opportunity to emphasize renewables over fossil fuels after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Climate Security Advisory Group, increasingly bipartisan support for climate security action, the roles of the public and Hollywood in addressing climate change, how various movies and books have examined these issues, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
- Erin Sikorsky's page at the Center for Climate and Security
- The Chatter podcast episode Arctic Security and Cooperation with Marisol Maddox
- "Summer Heatwave Underscores Importance of NATO's Climate Security Focus," Center for Climate and Security website, July 21, 2022, by Erin Sikorsky
- "Climate Security Next Steps for the U.S. Government," Lawfare, May 6, 2022, by John Conger and Erin Sikorsky
- The movie Avatar
- The movie Interstellar
- The movie The Day After Tomorrow
- The movie Don't Look Up
- The book The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
- The book trilogy The Broken Earth by N. K. Jemisin
- The book Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
- The report Groundswell, Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration, by the World Bank
- John Conger's page at the Center for Climate and Security
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Fake news has been around for thousands of years in different forms that have changed with media technology, and there's little doubt that it's here to stay. For reasons ranging from human biases to financial incentives to the need for speed, it remains a hard problem. Cindy Otis, who worked for about 10 years at the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst and a manager, now writes about fake news and related matters in articles and books--including True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News, which she targeted at a Young Adult audience. She balances a deep understanding of the challenges of fake news with a deep commitment to providing practical guidance for dealing with it.
David Priess spoke with Cindy about writing about fake news and other national security issues for the Young Adult audience, the history of fake news, the challenges of writing about the Holocaust, the changing terminology for disabled persons, the continuing challenges of wheelchair use in travel and in government buildings, her experiences at the CIA, why she writes for outlets ranging from Teen Vogue to USA Today, how to avoid falling prey to fake news, and why the exposure of Russian fake news about Ukraine gives her optimism about our collective ability to counter disinformation.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
The book True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News by Cindy Otis
The book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling
Cindy Otis's writing for Teen Vogue
Preview of the forthcoming book At the Speed of Lies by Cindy Otis
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris talks with international best-selling novelist Daniel Silva, the creator of the long-running Gabriel Allon series. His latest installment in the adventures of the spy/art restorer is out now.
Before he became a full-time fiction writer, Silva was a journalist. He produced successful shows at CNN and was a reporter overseas. Those early experiences informed his current career. Silva is known for crafting stories with a meticulous eye to factual detail.
In this wide-ranging discussion, Silva talks about his decision to leave journalism and make writing novels his full-time job; his writing process; how he created the beloved spy Allon; and why Silva has decided to make Washington, DC, his home. He also gives us a preview of his latest book and explains how a long-running fascination with art forgery sent his hero on one of his most challenging missions yet.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works mentioned in this episode include:
- Daniel Silva’s latest novel, Portrait of an Unknown Woman https://danielsilvabooks.com/books/portrait-of-an-unknown-woman/
- The complete list of Silva’s books https://danielsilvabooks.com/the-books/a-complete-listing/
- Silva on Twitter https://twitter.com/danielsilvabook?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mass shootings are now such a frequent occurrence in the United States that reporters like CNN's Josh Campbell sometimes have to travel from one tragic location directly to a second one as news of another event breaks. Josh's experience as an FBI special agent helps to give him a rich perspective on the practical and ethical challenges involved in this line of work.
Josh Campbell spoke with David Priess about relations between the FBI and police departments, J. Edgar Hoover's influence on Hollywood's portrayal of the Bureau, CIA-FBI frictions, comparisons between special agent work and journalism, his experiences getting to and making his way around the scenes of mass shootings, the cost-benefit calculus of naming suspects in such incidents, the personal challenges of covering mass shootings, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
- The movie Die Hard
- The book Crossfire Hurricane: Inside Donald Trump's War on Justice and the FBI by Josh Campbell
- Josh Campbell's CNN reporting
- Texas Tribune coverage of the Uvalde school shooting
- Daniel Silva's books
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Brad Thor is a #1 New York Times bestselling author who has more than twenty thrillers behind him and shows no signs of slowing down. Rising Tiger, just published on July 5, 2022, yet again places his franchise hero - former world-class skier, Navy SEAL, Secret Service agent, and private intelligence operative Scot Harvath - into deadly situations backlit by realistic geopolitical developments. How does Thor come up with his plots full of international intrigue and his detailed settings for Harvath's globetrotting adventures?
Some of it comes from his parents, a US Marine and a flight attendant. Some of it comes from his personal experience before becoming a full-time novelist. Thor started out as an award-winning creator, producer, writer, and host of the critically acclaimed national public television series, Traveling Lite; since then, he has served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Analytic Red Cell Unit and shadowed a Black Ops team in Afghanistan.
Thor joined David Priess to discuss these questions and much more. They talked about how Thor's writing career started, the work of Secret Service agents, rebuilding trust in American institutions, US-Indian relations, the perils of rising partisan extremism in what Thor calls the "political-entertainment complex," how to write realistic descriptions of widely varied international locations, the value of bad-ass women characters, how he keeps current on geopolitical developments, how and why he places easter eggs in his novels, his encounters with celebrities from George Clinton to Michael Hayden to Mandy Patinkin, and the value of writing fiction by the seat of your pants.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
- The TV series Rick Steves Europe
- The TV series Traveling Lite
- The book Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor
- The movie Iron Man 2
- The podcast episode Secret Service Dilemmas and Training with Jon Wackrow on Chatter
- The book Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg
- Brad Thor's other novels
- The book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- The TV series The Old Man
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Working for the Secret Service comes with inherent dilemmas. One of them can arise if agents become partisan actors or allow themselves to even be perceived as such. We heard another one described in shocking terms during this week's testimony before the Jan. 6 committee: A protectee and the agents protecting him or her can disagree with the protectee about the latter's presence in a threatening situation or movement toward it.
It turns out a whole lot of training prepares agents for these contingencies--as well as more predictable ones like how to respond instantaneously to myriad threats. Many lessons emerge from the study of past service failures, up to and including presidential assassinations and attempts. And some others can shed light elsewhere, such as on personal security and safety of institutions from schools to churches.
Jonathan Wackrow knows about it all better than most. Before becoming COO and Global Head of Security for Teneo Risk and a law enforcement analyst for CNN, he worked for decades as a US Secret Service special agent. His work gave him experience in both sides of the organization's mission: investigations and protection, the latter including time on the details for the president and first lady.
Wackrow joined David Priess for a deep and wide discussion about how cable news networks cover tragedy, the challenges of providing insight on security incidents in real time, his path into the Secret Service, how agents are trained, the lessons learned from historical failures of presidential protection, his own experiences with security breaches during the Obama administration, the dangers of perceived or actual politicization in the service, the balance between protecting a president and allowing a president's desired movements, agents' duty to testify in criminal investigations involving their protectees, how Secret Service experiences can help other institutions during an era of rising political violence, the benefits and drawbacks of school active shooter drills, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
The movie The Bodyguard
The movie In the LIne of Fire
The book Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig
The book The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters by Juliette Kayyem
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris talked with historian Tim Naftali about the legacy of Watergate and how we tell stories, fifty years later, about America’s most notorious presidential scandal. What is it about Watergate that still captures our attention? What do historians, journalists, and citizens misremember about the events? And how does the scandal shape our understanding of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol?
Naftali was the first federal director of the Richard Nixon library and earned accolades from historians--and criticism from Nixon loyalists--for his efforts to truthfully tell the story of Watergate in the Nixon museum. Naftali has written about intelligence, counterterrorism, national security and the American presidency in the modern era. He is currently a professor at New York University.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
Naftali’s recent article in The Atlantic about a controversial proposal from the National Archives on presidential libraries: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/national-archives-george-bush-privatize-history/639429/
Naftali on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TimNaftali?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Naftali’s book on the secret history of U.S. counterterrorism, Blind Spot: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XBZ2QZ7/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Freemasonry for centuries has been more influential than any other known secret society. Among its prominent members have been five kings of England, fourteen US presidents (including George Washington), and a veritable Who's Who of writers, artists, and politicians. Masons helped with everything from founding the United States to starting the Sicilian mafia, from connecting distant parts of the British Empire to coordinating revolutions, from being the bogeymen for the Catholic Church and fascist dictators alike to performing great works of charity. NASA's Buzz Aldrin even founded a Masonic lodge on the Moon.
Through it all, Freemasonry has featured in conspiracy theories about subversion, perversion, and world domination. Some of these claims, such as those positing Masonic plots to kill John Kennedy and to start the Russia-Ukraine war, are laughable. Other associations between Freemasons and nefarious deeds are more plausible; there was, for example, significant Freemason involvement in modern Italy's most explosive political scandal.
Historian John Dickie, author of the deeply researched history of Freemasonry called The Craft: How Freemasons Made the Modern World, recently joined David Priess to discuss it all. They talked about the secret rituals of Freemasonry; its origins and development in Europe and America; the importance of George Washington and other early American Masons; Masons, the French Revolution, and the Illuminati; the complicated relationship of Freemasonry and race relations in the United State; Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Last Symbol; the rise and fall of Masonic influence in 20th century America; what Freemasonry is such an easy target for conspiracy theorists; and the links among Italian Freemasons, organized crime, and political elites.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
The book Blood Brotherhoods: A History of Italy's Three Mafias, by John Dickie
The book The Craft: How Freemasons Made the Modern World, by John Dickie
The movie The Godfather Part II
The book The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
The TV show The Flintstones
The book American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building Communities, by Mark Tabbert
The book A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry, by Mark Tabbert
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
When the term "intelligence" comes up regarding an organization, most of us immediately think of government institutions. And there's a good reason for that; nation-states have become the centers of the most prominent intelligence collection, analysis, and direct action. But that's far from the whole story. Increasingly, corporations are developing intelligence units of their own to uncover and assess threats to their personnel and facilities, analyze geopolitical and environmental risks that might affect their business prospects, and even take actions traditionally associated with governments.
In this episode of Chatter, David Priess chats about all of this and more with Lewis Sage-Passant--who has built on his experiences in British military intelligence, private sector intelligence, crisis management, and related PhD research to explore the history, evolution, and ethics of this intriguing and challenging domain. They discuss the long history of private sector intelligence efforts, the difficulty disentangling early commercial efforts from government purposes, the fabled Pinkertons in the United States, the development of intelligence around modern corporations, the ethical issues that arise in this realm--and James Bond.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
The book Venice's Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance, by Ionna Iordanou
The book The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger, by Greg Steinmetz
Lewis Sage-Passant''s writing at Encylopedia Geopolitica
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris talks with journalist Jamie Kirchick about his new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Kirchick’s story unfolds over several decades and reveals the secret history of gays and lesbians in the capital, as well as the history of secrecy in which they played pivotal roles.
The book is a set of personal stories as well as an exploration of the national security bureaucracy at the heart of power and influence in Washington. And Kirchick explores a provocative idea: Were gays and lesbians, already accustomed to living secret lives, well-suited to work as intelligence officers?
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works discussed in this episode:
Jamie’s book: Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627792325/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_YF2CX5FTCSS1BTCXSATM
His website: https://jameskirchick.com/
Follow Jamie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jkirchick?s=21&t=E5hDivNZ2g89sHSeSB6DCA
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week marks the 80th anniversary of the start of principal photography on Casablanca, the 1942 film that would win Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Curtiz), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Philip Epstein, Julius Epstein, and Howard Koch). Often ranked by critics and the general public in the top five films of all time, Casablanca was first screened just as the city in French Morocco was hitting headlines because of the Allies' Operation TORCH invasion of North Africa during World War II.
To talk about the movie, the city's wartime history, and the veracity of Casablanca's representations about Casablanca, David Priess chatted with Meredith Hindley--who back in 2017, wrote the richly entertaining book Destination Casablanca: Exile, Espionage, and the Battle for North Africa in World War II. Their conversation covers her advocacy for the humanities and history, unexpected discoveries in archival research, an appreciation of the film, American and French resistance intelligence operations in French Morocco, intersections between wartime Casablanca and personalities from Franklin Roosevelt to Josephine Baker, and what the film got right and wrong about the experiences of refugees and many others in this vibrant city.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works discussed in this episode:
The book Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace, by Christopher Blattman
The movie Casablanca
Meredith Hindley's book Destination Casablanca: Exile, Espionage, and the Battle for North Africa in World War II
Meredith's other writings
Megan Kate Nelson, Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America
Woody Holton, LIberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution
Rush, "Freewill"
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris speaks to Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman, who co-created the new Showtime series “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” It’s about an alien, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who comes to Earth in search of technology to help save his home planet, which has been ravaged by a changing climate. He seeks out a brilliant scientist, played by Naomie Harris, who has the knowledge to help build the planet-saving device. But she is struggling to care for a young daughter and an ill father on her own and can barely make ends meet.
The show is based on the cult-classic film of the same name, which starred David Bowie, as well as a novel by Walter Tevis. The new telling is an allegory about climate change, and how humans have the potential to destroy worlds and to save them. It’s also an exploration of the lives of refugees and immigrants. The alien is trying to assimilate and survive in a new world whose traditions he doesn’t understand but whose fate is tied up with his own. And the scientist has been forced by circumstance to leave her old life behind and is struggling to understand where she fits in a different and hostile world.
Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman have been working together for years and have had long and distinguished careers of their own. Jenny wrote the screenplay for “Rachel Getting Married” and has executive produced several TV series. Alex has executive produced numerous science-fiction shows, including the Star Trek series “Discovery” and “Picard.”
Shane talked to the filmmakers about their careers, the stories they are moved to tell, and their creative influences. Jenny also shared some great stories from her unusual childhood. She’s the daughter of Sidney Lumet, one of the 20th century’s most celebrated directors, and grew up in a house surrounded by talented and eccentric artists.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with engineering assistance from Isabelle Kerby-McGowan. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works discussed in this episode:
“The Man Who Fell to Earth” on Showtime: https://www.sho.com/the-man-who-fell-to-earth
The official trailer for the series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqM5UeQVRvI
A New York Times interview with Ejiofor about how he developed his character’s unusual physical movements: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/arts/television/chiwetel-ejiofor-the-man-who-fell-to-earth.html
Jenny Lumet’s filmography: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0525886/
Alex Kurtzman’s filmography: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0476064/
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris speaks to artist Trevor Paglen, who explores themes of surveillance, security, and secrecy.
Shane first got to know Trevor’s work through his delightful and spooky book I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed By Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World. It’s a collection of patches and insignia used by secretive military units and classified programs. They’re interesting works of art in their own right. But they also use images and numbers to communicate a hidden meaning. Trevor has spent much of his time decoding those messages and turning them into visual art.
Trevor has turned secret code names into visual installations, tracked and photographed spy satellites as they crossed the night sky, and taken rare photographs of intelligence agency complexes and military installations. He told Shane about his career, as well as his days as a punk musician and his work in journalism.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo with engineering assistance from Ian Enright.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Trevor Paglen’s website: https://paglen.studio/
I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed By Me: https://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-Destroyed/dp/193555414X
From the Archives of Peter Merlin, Aviation Archaeologist https://www.amazon.com/Trevor-Paglen-Archives-Aviation-Archaelogist/dp/173209862X
ImageNet Roulette: https://excavating.ai/
Trevor’s photos of intelligence agencies https://theintercept.com/2014/02/10/new-photos-of-nsa-and-others/
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Millions of hostile rivalries exist between groups worldwide, but their conflicts rarely escalate to protracted violence. Because would-be combatants know that all-out conflict usually proves immensely costly to all sides, they regularly find ways to avoid open warfare. And when it comes to international affairs in particular, we tend to focus on the wars that do occur at the expense of internalizing the core truth that, most of the time, they simply don't happen.
Political scientist and economist Christopher Blattman has a fresh take on these big issues of war and peace. He argues for sustained attention not only to the mechanisms by which conflict wins out over compromise but also to the remedies that routinely shift incentives away from protracted violence and get rivals back to deal-making. His research has put him in the room with street gang leaders and African dictators, British football hooligans and drug kingpins--experiences that combine with his insights from political science, economics, and psychology in his new book, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace.
David Priess hosts this long and fascinating conversation with Blattman about his hands-on field work, his framework for understanding why groups do and do not choose violence, and what it all means for practical efforts at conflict avoidance and resolution. Along the way, they find their way from the Godfather films to game theory to the U.S. wars with Iraq--and, most of all, they relate much of it to the current war between Russia and Ukraine.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works discussed in this episode:
The book Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace, by Christopher Blattman
The Godfather movie
The Godfather II movie
The book The Insane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia, by John Hagedorn
Breaking Bad TV series
The book Beyond Plunder: Toward Democratic Governance in Liberia, by Amos Sawyer
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris speaks to filmmaker Nicholas Meyer about the renewed threat of nuclear war amid the conflict in Ukraine. Meyer directed the 1983 film “The Day After,” which remains the most-watched film in television history. The story follows a group of Kansans before, during, and after a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It shocked hundreds of millions of viewers--including President Ronald Reagan--with its graphic depiction of the ferocious power of nuclear weapons and the poisonous, lingering fallout that made the world effectively uninhabitable.
Meyer has had a remarkable career as a storyteller. He directed Hollywood blockbusters including Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Time After Time. He is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter and an accomplished novelist. He and Shane talked about making The Day After, a film Meyer thought might never make it to air. He felt he had a duty to tell the story as a warning to the world, and hoped it would prevent Reagan from winning reelection. That didn’t happen, but, as Shane and Nick discuss, The Day After did change Reagan’s thinking about the nature of nuclear war, and thus helped alter the course of history.
The lessons of Meyer’s film resonate loudly again today, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works discussed in this episode include:
Nicholas Meyer’s website: https://www.nicholas-meyer.com/
Read about The Day After: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After
Learn more about Television Event, a documentary about the 1983 film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Event
Watch the 1983 ABC News town hall that followed the movie’s premiere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3CLeA2bOKU
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
No one understands the surreal aspects of a large, long-established bureaucracy like someone who has worked in it. And few have written satire about the particular bureaucracy known as the Central Intelligence Agency like former intelligence officer, prominent yacht-watcher, and book author Alex Finley.
For this episode, Shane Harris and David Priess speak jointly with Finley about her career in the CIA's Directorate of Operations (which became the National Clandestine Service during her tenure there), her keen observation and analysis of Russian oligarchs' mega-yachts (which brought her onto cable news networks this spring after several countries started to seize the ships in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine), and her experience writing a series of spy satire novels (which take espionage absurdity to a new level). The three of them also kicked around views on a range of spy satire films, from 1985's Spies Like Us to the puppet-centric Team America to Spy with Melissa McCarthy.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works discussed in this episode:
Victor in the Rubble by Alex Finley
Victor in the Jungle by Alex Finley
Victor in Troubleby Alex Finley
The Miernik Dossier by Charles McCarry
The Thunderbirds (TV show)
Movies mentioned include Office Space, The Interview, Team America, Spies Like Us, the James Bond series, Central Intelligence, Spy, Burn After Reading, and the Austin Powers series.
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Artificial Intelligence algorithms are increasingly being used to make decisions for us. But, as NBC technology correspondent Jacob Ward argues, these are not necessarily the ones we want to perpetuate. Preying upon our brains' evolved shortcuts, biases, and hidden processes, they are becoming ever harder to escape.
For this episode, David Priess spoke with Ward--author of the new book The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and How To Fight Back--about artificial intelligence and much more. They discussed Ward's previous roles as editor in chief of Popular Science magazine and as host of the PBS mini-series Hacking Your Mind, the importance of social psychology to many fields of study, the development of automated pattern-recognition systems that ultimately reduce human agency and choice, the ethics of working on algorithms without knowing their end uses, the challenges for reporters working on AI and related technologies, and how movies from Minority Report to Star Wars to WALL-E capture elements of AI.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works discussed in this episode:
Popular Science magazine’s announcement of its comments policy change (2013)
Hacking Your Mind PBS miniseries (2020)
The Loop by Jacob Ward
Movies mentioned include Minority Report, the Star Wars franchise, and WALL-E.
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
For decades, humanity has failed to address climate change and prepare for its devastating impact. Without significant changes to our consumption of fossil fuels, the coming reckoning will be severe. But there is hope; the same forces that have confused the public's mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed. And the insurance industry is likely to lead the way.
To understand how we got to the cliff's edge--and how to avoid going over it--David Priess speaks with Eugene Linden, a longtime writer on issues at the intersections of science, culture, and business. They discussed Linden's previous books on animal intelligence and how civilizational rises and falls are linked to climate change. They talked about a new way of looking at the climate story, as four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change itself; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag further still; and, perhaps most important, business and finance. And they spoke about the changes in these clocks decade by decade, from 1979 forward, with a focus on the insurance industry as one loud canary in the coal mine.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Works mentioned in this episode:
Fire and Flood: A People's History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present
Eugene's previous writings can be found here.
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris speaks to Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer and astrobiologist at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Walkowicz is the co-founder of the JustSpace Alliance and studies the ethics of space exploration.
This was a wide-ranging conversation about the moral and ethical dimensions of humanity’s search for life in the universe and exploration of other planets. We often think about what cities on the moon or Mars might look like, but how should humans live on those worlds and interact with their new environments? For instance, what if human visitors find microbes living in Martian water, but also need that water as a source of nourishment? Do we kill the organisms living in it, which might also be the first evidence of life on other planets?
They also talked about the risks and rewards of sending out signals of human life on Earth in the hope that distant species might discover it. Should we try to make contact in order to find more intelligent life forms we can learn from, or do we risk opening ourselves to conquest by alerting potentially hostile species to our existence?
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the resources cited in this episode:
Lucianne Walkowicz’s web site. https://notnotrocketscience.com/
The JustSpace Alliance https://justspacealliance.org/
The SETI Institute https://www.seti.org/
Some movies we discussed:
Contact (1997) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/
Arrival (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris talks with journalist Catherine Belton about the rise of Vladimir Putin from KGB officer to president of Russia.
Belton’s book, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West, traces how Soviet-era spies siphoned billions out of the state economy, creating vast networks for laundering money and hiding assets. After Putin came to power, he pushed out the tycoons of the post-Soviet era and set up his own cadre of loyal oligarchs.
Today, as the West levies massive sanctions against Putin and his supporters, Belton’s work reveals much about how he managed to amass such vast wealth and control of the Russian state. Putin now finds himself increasingly isolated, surrounded by a small circle of loyal advisers. Will Western sanctions help pressure the oligarchs to take back control? What is Putin’s endgame in Ukraine? Shane and Catherine’s discussion is a timely exploration of what made Putin and what could bring him down.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode:
Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West https://www.amazon.com/Putins-People-Took-Back-Russia/dp/0374238715/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647978957&sr=8-1
Catherine Belton on Twitter https://twitter.com/CatherineBelton?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Russia's most recent invasion of Ukraine is reverberating around the globe--including in the Arctic. An area that had seen increasingly productive cooperation, due in large part to multilateral institutions like the Arctic Council, is now facing even greater uncertainty.
To dig deep into all things Arctic as the war in Ukraine continues, David Priess spoke with Marisol Maddox, senior Arctic analyst at the Polar Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and non-resident research fellow at the Center for Climate & Security. Her research and communication sits at the intersection of Arctic politics, climate change, and security.
We spoke about her unusual education combining ecology and international security, how climate change is driving heightened geopolitical interest in the Arctic, the regional importance of the Law of the Sea, the unique legal status of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, the Arctic Council and other international institutions focusing on the region, the damage that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has done to Arctic cooperation, China's increasing interest in the Far North, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week's episode goes back a decade and a half to the 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia--and brings the conversation to today, both with lessons we can learn from the country's digitalization and information security awareness and with discussion of how Russia's earlier aggression previewed its recent invasion of Ukraine.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves served as Estonia's Ambassador to the United States, Canada, and Mexico and then its Foreign Minister (twice) before becoming the country's president in 2006. During the first of his two five-year terms in that office, Estonia suffered a wave of Russian or Russian-backed cyberattacks that shut down much of the highly online country. But Estonia recovered quickly, using the crisis as an opportunity to speed up its already advanced digitization and to expand its cyber education efforts.
David Priess spoke with Ilves about his parents' experience fleeing wartime Estonia as Russians started mass deportations to Siberia, his education and early exposure to coding in 1971, the cyberattacks of 2007, how the government and society responded, how others in Europe reacted to this and other Russian provocations, Estonian education and E-government initiatives, and why the new Russian invasion of Ukraine has (so far) lacked a major cyber warfare element.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo.
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris talks with professor and author Elizabeth Samet about Hollywood’s portrayal of World War II and how that influences what Americans think about “the good war.”
Samet’s book Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness explores how generations of filmmakers have depicted the conflict. Many of their stories, she argues, have inspired a nostalgia for a war that seemed clearer cut and more virtuous than subsequent American conflicts.
Contemporary movies in particular have emphasized the righteousness of the war and the United States’ role in it. Saving Private Ryan, for instance, reintroduced a new generation of Americans to “the greatest generation,” and portrayed the war as seemingly less complicated and fraught than the Vietnam War.
But Samet writes that many of these Hollywood renderings are misleading and don't accurately capture how those fighting the war, and those on the homefront, truly felt about it. She also shows how veterans of the war have not always been flatteringly portrayed.
Samet is a professor of English at West Point.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode:
Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Good-War-American-Happiness/dp/0374219923/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1646252298&sr=1-1
New York Times review https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/books/review-looking-for-good-war-elizabeth-samet.html
About Elizabeth Samet and her other books https://us.macmillan.com/author/elizabethdsamet
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week's episode takes a walk on the dark side, with a molecular look at a prominent international poisonings.
Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov died in 1978 after a ricin pellet was shot into his leg, from an air gun disguised as an umbrella. Twenty-eight years later, former KGB/FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko suffered horribly and died after the poison polonium-210 was slipped into his tea. And former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia nearly died in 2018 from the effects of a nerve agent attack.
To understand how the molecules used in these assaults do their worst to the human body, David Priess speaks with Dr. Neil Bradbury, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science--where he teaches and conducts research on genetic diseases, especially cystic fibrosis. He is the author of A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them, which combines elements of popular science, medical history, and true crime to show how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison.
We spoke about the four routes through which poison can be delivered to a victim, the physiology and biochemistry behind a few poisons, the prominent assassinations of Markov and Litvinenko, the attempted assassination of Skripal, and the difficulty of getting away with murder using even rare poisons once their effects are known. The information in this episode is purely for educational and entertainment purposes and is not intended to give the advantages and disadvantages of the use of any particular poison in the commission of any crime.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Among the works cited in this episode:
A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them, by Neil Bradbury
Dr. Bradbury's research on cystic fibrosis
"Murder by Numbers," The Police (the PoliceWiki)
"A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie" (agathachristie.com)
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
It's Presidents' Day! To mark the day, David Priess recorded this special episode with historian and author Lindsay Chervinsky about the history of this odd holiday--and the legacy of the first president, George Washington.
They discuss the tensions historians face when writing about current events, the origins of Presidents' Day, the advisory bodies that Washington explored before settling on a cabinet, the first president's development of that institution during his administration and its role in early national security decisions, the impact of Washington's choices on his successors, how recent presidents have used the cabinet quite differently than their predecessors had done in the 18th and 19th centuries, and what Washington might think about assertions of executive privilege during the past few years.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo with engineering assistance from Ian Enright. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode:
"A diverse Cabinet will make Joe Biden a better president and unify the country" by Lindsay Chervinsky, Washington Post, November 11, 2020
"Five Best: Books on Presidential Cabinets" by Lindsay Chervinsky, Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2021
"The Disturbing Precedent for McConnell's Debt-Ceiling Brinksmanship" by Lindsay Chervinsky, The Bulwark, October 1, 2021
The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution by Lindsay Chervinsky
Hamilton: The Musical
Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life by Kathleen Dalton
There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, for our first episode after the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, I chat with author and CNN senior political analyst John Avlon about Lincoln's underappreciated plan for post-Civil War peace--and how we can apply its lessons today. Avlon's new book, Lincoln and the Fight for Peace,explores both how Lincoln's character fostered his vision for achieving a just and secure peace after the Civil War and how Lincoln's plans informed future peacemakers.
We spoke about popular applied history and why it matters, Lincoln's qualities and their application to issues of war and peace, Andrew Johnson's disastrous turn away from Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction and its effects, and the influence of Lincoln's peace vision on everyone from Woodrow Wilson to Lucius Clay to Douglas MacArthur.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo with engineering assistance from Ian Enright. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode:
Lincoln and the Fight for Peaceby John Avlon
Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations by John Avlon
CNN's Reality Check with John Avlon
Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt
Lincoln by David Herbert Donald
Abraham Lincoln, A Life(two volumes) by Michael Burlingame
9/11 Memorialization with Marita Sturken, Chatter Podcast, January 25, 2022
Wingnuts: Extremism in the Age of Obama by John Avlon
Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed Americaby Jared Cohen
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris talks with journalist Erich Schwartzel about one of the most intense arenas of the great power competition between the United States and China: the movies.
Schwartzel's new book, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy,is a deeply reported and riveting story about how American movie studios have spent decades breaking into the multi-billion dollar Chinese market. The moviemakers' success has come at a price. They’ve made concessions to Chinese censors--going so far as to erase all negative references to China from films--and increasingly find themselves caught between their Chinese fans and the U.S. government, as tensions rise with Beijing.
Schwartzel also tells the story of how China’s government has promoted an indigenous film industry. It often turns out propaganda. But more recently, Chinese studios have also produced global blockbusters and created Chinese stars - only this new entertainment A-list isn’t beyond the government’s control.
Schwartzel covers the film industry for The Wall Street Journal.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode are:
Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611545/red-carpet-by-erich-schwartzel/
Read an excerpt of the book: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/02/china-captured-hollywood/621618/
Erich Schwartzel’s work for The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/news/author/erich-schwartzel
Erich on Twitter: https://twitter.com/erichschwartzel
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, David Priess talks with professor and writer Ethan Scheiner about the history of the Olympic games, the many political controversies in and around the games since 1896, and the security challenges they present. A professor of political science at the University of California, Davis, who has specialized in Japanese politics and democratic representation in party systems, Scheiner has focused his recent research, teaching, and writing on the intersection of sports--from hockey to gymnastics to basketball--with both international and domestic politics.
In this extended conversation, they discuss the origins and evolution of the modern Olympic games, early athletes' protests against competing under imperial flags, the dramatic 1936 games in Berlin, international sports competition as a Cold War battleground, Olympic boycotts and near-boycotts, controversies surrounding the 1968 games in Mexico City, the security debacle at the 1972 Munich Olympics, athletes' growing comfort in recent decades with taking political stands, and much more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode are:
Democracy without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State, by Ethan Scheiner
Games of Deception: The True Story of the First U.S. Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Germany, by Andrew Marinness
"How a Hockey Game Powered a Revolution" by Ethan Scheiner, Washington Post, February 12, 2018
"The Silent Protest During a National Anthem That Made Americans Cheer" by Ethan Scheiner, Politico, September 5, 2018
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris talks with veteran journalist Leslie Kean, who has done groundbreaking and widely admired reporting on unidentified flying objects. And, no, that does not mean aliens. Kean's bestselling 2010 book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, was a sober account of credible, first-hand witnesses to unexplained aerial phenomena. In 2017, Kean co-authored a major New York Times article that revealed a secret Pentagon effort devoted to the study of UFOs. More recently, the U.S. government has begun to standardize UFO reporting by military personnel and has declassified more information about what it knows about strange objects in the sky. Kean's reporting played a significant role in those disclosures.
Kean discusses her early career as a journalist, her travels in Burma, and her interest in Buddhism. She talks about the important questions that remain about UFOs, and what the U.S. government may be on the cusp of answering.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode are:
Leslie Kean's website: https://www.lesliekean.com/
UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/114166/leslie-kean/
"Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program:" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html
"Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (Office of the Director of National Intelligence): https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, David Priess talks with professor and author Marita Sturken about 9/11-related memorials, museums, and architecture. Her research and writings have examined everything from visual culture to the connection between memory and consumerism, with much of her recent work addressing memory of the attacks on September 11, 2001 as both the battleground and the site for negotiations of national identity.
In this conversation, they talk briefly about various historical memorials and the purposes of such work before comparing and contrasting some of the 9/11 memorials around the country and those at Ground Zero, next to the Pentagon, and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. They also discuss controversies surrounding the National September 11 Memorial Museum (commonly called the "9/11 museum"), including those about its gift shop and the human remains currently stored in the facility.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode are:
Memorials, Museums, and related sites:
The National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial
Flight 93 National Memorial
The National September 9/11 Memorial and Museum
World Trade Center Oculus
Empty Sky Memorial in Jersey City, New Jersey
Reflect 9/11 memorial in Rosemead, California
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
The Korean War Veterans Memorial
WWII Memorial
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial
Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial
Books:
Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era, by Marita Sturken
Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero, by Marita Sturken
Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering, by Marita Sturken
Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, by Alison Landsberg
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris talks with pioneering multi-media artist Laurie Anderson. A retrospective of her work, called “The Weather,” is currently showing at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Several of Anderson’s works explore themes of security, terrorism, and surveillance. Her piece “Habeas Corpus” is a monumental scale video and sculpture installation about Mohammed el Gharani, who was imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for seven years.
Anderson talks about her life in New York during the pandemic, her creative influences, and the surprising ways that her storytelling intersects with national security. For instance, her biggest musical hit, “O Superman,” was inspired by the Iran hostage crisis.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with engineering assistance from Ian Enright. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works mentioned in this episode are:
Laurie Anderson: https://laurieanderson.com/
“The Weather” at The Hirshhorn: https://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/laurie-anderson-the-weather/
“Habeus Corpus”: https://laurieanderson.com/?portfolio=habeas-corpus
Anderson’s Norton Lectures: https://laurieanderson.com/2021/12/16/norton-lectures-spending-the-war-without-you/
“O Superman”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkfpi2H8tOE
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down's "Phenom": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGwQZrDNLO8
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Shane Harris and David Priess team up and talk with John Sipher, a former senior intelligence officer who has gone Hollywood. With his partners at Spycraft Entertainment, John is bringing compelling and, yes, accurate stories about espionage to the screen. Before working in the entertainment industry, he spent 28 years in the CIA, where he served multiple overseas tours as a chief of station. Shane, David, and John talked about their favorite spy movies, the fine line between the espionage and action-adventure genres, and the kinds of stories they’d like to see more of.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with engineering assistance from Ian Enright. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works cited in this episode:
Movies: The Good Shepherd, The Spy, Sneakers, Bridge of Spies, The Courier, 12 Strong, Argo, Spy Kids, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, The Hunt for Red October, A View To a Kill, Mission Impossible, The Lives of Others, Breach, The Mauritanian, Snowden, Citizenfour, The Little Drummer Girl, Clear and Present Danger, Rogue One, Ronin
TV shows: Homeland, Mare of Easttown, The Americans, The Bureau, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, The Night Manager
Books: Betrayal in Berlin (Steve Vogel), Damascus Station (David McCloskey), The Spy’s Son (Bryan Denson), Billion Dollar Spy (David Hoffman), First Casualty (Toby Harnden), Russians Among Us (Gordon Corera), The Dead Hand (David Hoffman), Playing to the Edge (Michael Hayden), The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (John le Carré), The Little Drummer Girl (John le Carré), The Night Manager (John le Carré), The Nightingale’s Song (Robert Timberg), The Book of Honor (Ted Gup)
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
On this special January 6 episode of Chatter, David Priess speaks with historian and author Joanne Freeman about the history of violence on Capitol Hill and its relevance for the political situation today. They discussed the origins of assaults by and between U.S. representatives and senators, the culture and practice of dueling, the infamous caning of Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber in 1856, how increasing violence in Congress reflected the country's movement toward Civil War, and why all of it has echoes today in the violent imagery and increasing threats of assault on Capitol Hill.
Joanne is Professor of American History and of American Studies at Yale University, and her book, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, provides the backdrop for much of the discussion.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
On this week’s episode of Chatter, David Priess speaks with political scientist and author Brian Klaas about why certain people seek power, what holding power does to them, and how to get better leaders. They discuss the nature of political research, what kind of people become rulers, corruption and system effects, and ways to keep the most corrupt people out of power--as well as meerkat signaling, a cannibalistic dictator, and Brian's new book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Producing and audio engineering by Hamza Shittu of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
On this week’s episode of Chatter, David Priess speaks with author and women's health advocate Anushay Hossain about the intersection of national security and women's health. They discuss her childhood in Bangladesh as part of a powerful political family, her work on Capitol Hill promoting global health, her research into how women--especially women of color--face systemic sexism in American healthcare, and her new book about it all, The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
This week, Shane Harris talks with Noah Shachtman, the editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone. Before he took over the world’s most iconic music publication, Shachtman was a national security journalist. He co-founded the highly-regarded blog Danger Room and wrote for Wired magazine. Later, he ran the news division of Foreign Policy and then became the top editor of The Daily Beast, where he oversaw a team of national security reporters--including Shane! On this episode, they discuss Shachtman’s earlier career as a musician, how that prepared him for his new gig, and where journalism is succeeding and failing today.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with engineering assistance from Ian Enright.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
This week, Shane Harris talks with former CIA analyst turned spy novelist David McCloskey. His new book, Damascus Station, has been widely praised for its accurate portrayal of intelligence operations. The story plays out amid a burgeoning civil war in Syria, where McCloskey served. Shane spoke to David about his influences, his writing process, and why it was important to get tiny details right about life in the CIA.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with engineering assistance from Ian Enright.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
On this week’s episode of Chatter, David Priess has a special World AIDS Day conversation with longtime HIV/AIDS activist Emily Bass. They talk about the evolution of U.S. policy towards HIV/AIDS in Africa - including PEPFAR, the largest disease-specific foreign aid effort in world history, which started in the George W. Bush administration and saved millions of African lives. They discuss the evolution of that program, the on-the-ground fight against HIV/AIDS in Uganda and beyond, the conception of human security versus national security, and Emily's book chronicling the history of PEPFAR, To End a Plague: America's Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
This week on Chatter, Shane Harris talks with journalist, historian, and now-fiction writer Garrett Graff. They discuss how Garrett first began writing about the FBI and the 9/11 attacks, as well as his new novella, what he calls a work of “speculative nonfiction,” about a real terror scare that got surprisingly little attention.
Garrett’s new book, “Dragonfire: Four Days That (Almost) Changed America,” is available from Scribd Originals.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with engineering assistance from Ian Enright.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
On this week’s episode of Chatter, David Priess has a conversation with former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (PDDNI) and longtime intelligence officer Sue Gordon. Sue shares stories about her experiences in team sports, her lessons on leadership, her role in creating the CIA’s non-profit venture capital firm (In-Q-Tel), her interview with Donald Trump for the PDDNI job, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo with engineering assistance from Ian Enright.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
On this week's Chatter, Congressman Adam Kinzinger sits down in his office with David to share his thoughts about his career in congress on heels of his announcement to not seek re-election. They talk about leadership, what the partisan divide means for future office holders, and how his time in the cockpit prepared him for tough matters of national security.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
On this, the debut episode of Chatter, Shane interviews a great American. The creator of The Americans, Joe Weisberg! Joe shares his journey from the agency to Hollywood, his work as a lifelong student of Russia, and his new book Russia Upside Down: An Exit Strategy for the Second Cold War.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Coming soon from Lawfare:
Weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security. Unscripted. Informal. Always fresh. Hosted by Lawfare's David Priess and Shane Harris of the Washington Post.
Chatterguests roll with the punches to describe artistic endeavors related to national security and jump into cutting-edge thinking at the frontiers where defense and foreign policy overlap with technology, intelligence, climate change, history, sports, culture, and beyond. Each week, listeners get a no-holds-barred dialogue at an intersection between Lawfare's core issue areas and something from Hollywood to history, science to spy fiction.
Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Available on the App Store, https://apps.apple.com/app/id1454398991