Chatter

Closing the Chatterbox, with Shane Harris and David Priess

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 10:30:56 GMT

After more than three years, Chatter is ending its run. In this episode, Shane and David reflect on the diverse range of topics at the frontiers of national security that this podcast has explored—from spy fiction to lessons of history, from climate change to the visual and musical arts, and from sports and culture to the practice of intelligence.

Along the way, they refer back to many of the podcast’s brilliant guests while lamenting conversations yet unrealized and specific issues yet unaddressed. And they finally ask *each other* several questions from the Chatterbox before closing it. (Forever?)

Works mentioned in this episode: Many too many to list.

Goodbye, and thank you for listening.

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.

Intelligence Analysis, Intuition, and Precognition, with Carmen Medina

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 10:30:29 GMT

Carmen Medina defies simple description. She spent more than 30 years at the CIA, rising to the leadership team of the Directorate of Intelligence, despite her iconoclasticism and vociferous evangelism of new technologies. Since retiring more than a decade ago, she has co-written a book about rebelling within bureaucracy--and advocated the exploration of precognition for intelligence purposes.

She joined David Priess for a wide and deep conversation about her analytic and managerial career, the process and pitfalls of analytic coordination, cooperation between US and UK intelligence, the CIA's incorporation of publish-when-ready technology in the late 1990s, the downside of extensive editorial review of analytic products, the importance of including more intuition in intelligence analysis, why precognition should be taken seriously, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book Rebels At Work by Lois Kelly and Carmen Medina

The book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The article by Carmen Medina, "The Potential of Integrating Intelligence and Intuition," Cipher Brief, June 10, 2022.

The book American Cosmic by D. W. Pasulka

The book Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie

The book How To Be a Renaissance Woman by Jill Burke

The book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline

The book The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis Rasmussen

The book The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

The book The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

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 Legacy of “The Hunt for Red October” with Katherine Voyles

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 10:30:40 GMT

Shane Harris makes no secret about his love for the film version of this Cold War submarine thriller, based on the Tom Clancy novel. It’s his favorite movie. So he was delighted to welcome fellow obsessive Katherine Voyles to the podcast. A PhD in English, Voyles writes about national security in culture, as well as the culture of national security. She and Shane talked about why they love the movie, their favorite scenes and characters, and how the story influenced--maybe even created--an entire genre of fiction. They also discussed why it is, actually, a Christmas movie, and their mutual admiration for the martini.

Voyles’s writing has appeared in in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Task &

Purpose, Small Wars Journal, and War on the Rocks. She also works for the Department of Defense.

In addition to the greatest movie of all time, essays, TV shows, books, and restaurants discussed in this episode include:

Colson Whitehead’s “The Way We Live Now” https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-11-11-01-lost-and-found.html

Deutschland 83 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4445154/

Garrett Graff’s The Only Plane in the Sky https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Only-Plane-in-the-Sky/Garrett-M-Graff/9781501182211

Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/253471/american-spy-by-lauren-wilkinson/

Saltie Girl https://www.saltiegirl.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.

German Grand Strategy and ... Kraftwerk, with Ben Tallis

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:30:34 GMT

International politics and security expert Dr. Ben Tallis, who now directs the Berlin-based Democratic Strategy Initiative, joined David Priess to discuss the challenges of German grand strategy since 1945, the country's musical culture in the 1950s and 1960s, the origins and evolution of Kraftwerk and its members' effort to reconceptualize German identity, the band's influence on musicians globally, U2 and post-Cold War Europe, how Germany became the most respected country in the world by 2020, Chancellor Angela Merkel's missed opportunities to reconceptualize Germany's international role, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Zeitenwende speech, German rearmament since 2022 compared to Poland, the role of chancellor in the German system, the roster of future German leaders, and whether countries in Central and Eastern Europe would have enough confidence in German resolve to follow more assertive leadership from Berlin.

Mentioned in this episode:

Official website of the band Kraftwerk

The Democratic Strategy Initiative, at www.democratic-strategy.net

The journal article by Benjamin Tallis, "Kraftwerk and the International 'Re-Birth of Germany:' Multiplicity, Identity, and Difference in Music and International Relations," in Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 57:3 (2022)

The online article by Roderick Parkes, Florence Schimmel, and Benjamin Tallis, "Germany Needs a Strategy--Grand and Democratic," in Internationale Politik Quarterly, January 16, 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.

The Military, Climate Change, and the Environment, with Sherri Goodman

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 10:30:33 GMT

Sherri Goodman was the first Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Environmental Security and has worked on issues around climate change, the environment, and security for more than 35 years. She joined David Priess to discuss her work on the staff of the Senate Armed Service Committee starting in the 1980s, her impressions of Senator Sam Nunn, her duties as the first Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Environmental Security), the campaign to clean up the Defense Department's nuclear-related facilities, her visits to Russia in the 1990s, the threat climate change poses to military facilities, the US military as an environmental crisis responder, how climate change and environmental concerns have changed military training, climate change as multiplier of opportunities as well as a multiplier of threats, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

Threat Multiplier by Sherri Goodman

Military Responses to Climate Hazards (MiRCH) Tracker, at the Center for Climate & Security

New Cold Wars by David Sanger with Mary Brooks

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

The Heat and the Fury by Peter Schwartzstein

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.

1876, Election Security, and National Security, with Rachel Shelden

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 10:30:04 GMT

Rachel Shelden is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Richards Civil War Center at Penn State University. She joined David Priess to talk about the disputed presidential election of 1876 and how the political system found a way to avoid widespread violence and another civil war while resolving it in 1877. They discussed Abraham Lincoln's huge impact on kids growing up in Illinois, the status of Reconstruction by 1876, US political culture in the late 19th century, Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden, what happened on election day and night, how Congress handled contradictory election returns from three states, the creation and operation of the special commission created to resolve the issue, how Hayes won, what we can take away from 1876-77, and the importance of Constitutional creativity and flexibility.

Works mentioned in this episode:

"Americans worry about 2020 being another 2000, but the real worry is another 1876," by Rachel Shelden and Erik B. Alexander, Washington Post, October 20, 2000.

Washington Brotherhood by Rachel Shelden (2013)

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 Second Trump Administration with Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:05:31 GMT

Donald Trump is going back to the White House and is already busy stocking his future Cabinet. Shane Harris sat down with two of The Washington Post’s best political reporters to talk about Trump’s victory, some of his initial choices for top national security positions--which are drawing extraordinary controversy--and what we might expect in Trump’s second term.

Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey covered Trump’s first term in office as White House correspondents. They also covered his latest campaign and are reporting now on what is shaping up to be another chaotic presidential transition.

Read some of their latest reporting here:

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How the Norm Against Political Violence Eroded in the Roman Republic, with Catherine Steel

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 10:20:47 GMT

As the US tries to come to grips with a resurgence of political violence in recent years, it's instructive to look at how the norm against political violence eroded during the late Roman Republic and contributed to ultimately autocratic rule.

Catherine Steel, Professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow, specializes in the political history of the Roman Republic and its institutional structures and has written books and articles about the period. She joined David Priess to discuss her path from studying Cicero to researching and teaching the politics and history of ancient Rome, the core political features of the Republic, the concept of tribunal sacrosanctity, the challenges of dealing with primary sources on ancient Rome, how political violence flared in 133 BCE around Tiberius Gracchus, the political violence 12 years later around his brother Gaius Gracchus, the 20 years of off-and-on political violence around Marius and Sulla, the intent and effects of Sulla's constitution, the lead-up to Julius Caesar, Roman citizens' awareness of changes in the Republic, implications for today, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan
Mortal Republic by Edward J. Watts
The End of the Roman Republic, 146 to 44 BC, by Catherine Steel
"The Roman Senate and the Post-Sullan res publica," Historia (Journal of Ancient History) 63:3 (2014) by Catherine Steel
Roman Republics by Harriet Flower
The Art of Forgetting by Harriet Flower
Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture by Harriet Flower

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.

Our Fascination with the Presidency with Tim Naftali

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 10:30:00 GMT

It’s Election Day, but we’re not talking about the campaign. Shane Harris welcomes Tim Naftali back to the show to talk about Americans’ fascination with the presidency. When did the “modern presidency” begin? When did voters and the press become fixated on presidents’ private lives? And what do we get wrong about the nation’s highest office?

Naftali, a presidential historian, was last on Chatter in June 2022 to talk about Watergate, a subject on which he’s one of the country’s leading experts. Today’s conversation helps put the momentousness of this year’s election in some historic perspective. Have a listen while you’re standing in line to vote!

People, plays, and policies discussed in this conversation include:

Theodore Roosevelt, the first modern president

https://millercenter.org/president/roosevelt/life-in-brief

Oh, Mary! by Cole Escola

https://www.ohmaryplay.com/

The presidential “kill list”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/newly-declassified-document-sheds-light-on-how-president-approves-drone-strikes/2016/08/06/f424fe50-5be0-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html

The Jimmy Carter “running” photo

https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2025424_2025864_2025986,00.html

Teddy White

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/16/obituaries/theodore-white-chronicler-of-us-politics-is-dead-at-71.html

Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and the Cold War, with Mark Pomar

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 09:30:54 GMT

Mark Pomar served as assistant director of the Russian Service at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, director of the USSR Division at the Voice of America, executive director of the Board for International Broadcasting. He joined David Priess to talk about the origins of US government-funded international broadcasting, differences between RFE/RL and VOA, tensions between strategists and purists over the radios' content, the impacts of detente and of Reagan's more hawkish approach, KGB infiltrations of RFE/RL, changes to the radios toward the end of the Cold War, the role of RL in August 1991's failed coup against Gorbachev, perceptions of the radios after the Cold War, Mark's book Cold War Radio and his current research into Radio Liberty, the relevance of this history for today, 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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Constitutional Fragility with Sandy Levinson

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:30:36 GMT

Professor Sanford Levinson has written extensively about the fragility of the Constitution. A likely contested election, AI, and ongoing gridlock makes his long-stemming concerns all the more relevant. In this episode of Chatter, Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, sat down with Sandy, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law to explore how Sandy's thinking about the need for a wholesale revision of the Constitution has evolved, whether or not the Supreme Court is the most important decision maker in American society, the impact of constitutional amendments on the state level, and much more.

More about Sandy Levinson: https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/sanford-v-levinson/

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.

Freedom of the Seas, with David Bosco

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 09:30:56 GMT

The Earth's oceans differ from its land areas in many ways, including the historically powerful norm of "freedom of the seas." David Priess hosted David Bosco, Executive Associate Dean and Professor at Indiana University's Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, for a discussion about the origins and core principles of the freedom of the seas concept, Hugo Grotius, the practice of maritime commerce from ancient times until now, the three mile "cannon-shot" rule of territorial waters, privateering, piracy, the role of shipwrecks in spurring international cooperation on maritime safety, the norm of major canals being open to all, undersea cables, the unraveling of the freedom of the seas doctrine in the 20th century, the post-World War II era of expanding ocean claims, exclusive economic zones, optimism about the future of ocean governance, David Bosco's book The Poseidon Project, 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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stoicism and the Military with Prof. Nancy Sherman

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 09:30:21 GMT

Stoicism is having a moment.The ancient philosophy--which posits that you can’t control events, but you can control how you respond to them--has lately been embraced by self-help gurus and tech bros. But Nancy Sherman writes that the tenets of Stoicism have long found a receptive audience in “the military mind.” Whether they know it or not, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are guided by many of the principles espoused by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

Sherman, a professor at Georgetown University, is the author of several books, including Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind. She spoke with Shane Harris about why Stoic virtues resonate with those who serve in uniform and what the philosophy can teach everyone about how to live well amid uncertainty and struggle.

Books and people discussed in this episode include:

“Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind” by Nancy Sherman https://global.oup.com/academic/product/stoic-warriors-9780195315912?cc=us&lang=en&

Cicero https://iep.utm.edu/cicero-roman-philosopher/

Marcus Aurelius https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius/

Epictetus https://iep.utm.edu/epictetu/

Seneca’s “De Beneficiis” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3794/3794-h/3794-h.htm

James Stockdale https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/2097870/medal-of-honor-monday-navy-vice-adm-james-stockdale/

Thomas Gibbons-Neff https://www.nytimes.com/by/thomas-gibbons-neff

Ian Fishback https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1192996954/ian-fishback-who-blew-the-whistle-on-torture-by-the-u-s-military-was-laid-to-res

Hugh Thompson https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai-hugh-thompson-20180316-story.html

Edward Villella https://sab.org/scenes/sab-trailblazer-edward-villella/

More about Nancy Sherman https://www.nancysherman.com/

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Isabelle Kerby-McGowan and Megan Nadolski of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories and Pop Culture, with Mike Rothschild

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 09:30:41 GMT

Conspiracy theories about supposed Jewish control of global finance and politics have been circulating and influencing popular culture for centuries, with the spotlight often falling on the Rothschild family. Author Mike Rothschild (no relation), who has researched and written about the phenomenon in his book Jewish Space Lasers, joined David Priess to discuss the appeal of conspiracy theories overall, the genesis of the Rothschilds' wealth, legends about the family's involvement in the Battle of Waterloo and other major world events, how the expansion of Rothschild commercial interests in the 1800s spurred paranoia about the family's influence, Nazi-era movies about the Rothschilds, why the family failed to gain traction in the United States, the connections between anti-Semitism and grand conspiracy theories, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Marjorie Taylor Greene's "Jewish space lasers" comments, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book The Storm Is Upon Us by Mike Rothschild

The book Jewish Space Lasers by Mike Rothschild

The movie Eyes Wide Shut

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.

The Inside Story of the Challenger Disaster with Adam Higginbotham

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 09:30:51 GMT

The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986 riveted millions of Americans, who watched the horrific event live on television. What they didn’t know then was that the tragedy was largely preventable, a disastrous result of hubris and “magical thinking” as much as flawed engineering.

Journalist Adam Higginbotham’s new book, “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space,” is a definitive account of what went wrong, and how NASA failed to learn from its own mistakes. Higginbotham’s story begins with an earlier fatal accident, a fire in the capsule of the Apollo 1 mission, which presaged Challenger’s fate. He then recounts the early days of the space shuttle program. Astonishingly, the very mechanical flaws that led to Challenger’s destruction were known, but the warnings of a few engineers were ignored by more senior officials, who by the time Challenger was set to launch the first teacher into space faced tremendous political and public pressure to make the mission happen, despite obvious risks.

Higginbotham spoke with Shane Harris about his book, why he wanted to tell the Challenger story, and the future of human spaceflight.

Books, events, and people discussed on this episode include:

“Challenger”: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Challenger/Adam-Higginbotham/9781982176617

“Midnight in Chernobyl”:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Midnight-in-Chernobyl/Adam-Higginbotham/9781508278511

The Apollo 1 fire:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/apollo-1/

Roger Boisjoly, rocket engineer:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle-challenger-launch

The crew of Challenger STS-51L:

https://www.nasa.gov/challenger-sts-51l-accident/

The Columbia disaster:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/04/09/denial-of-shuttle-image-requests-questioned/80957e7c-92f1-48ae-8272-0dcfbcb57b9d/

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.

UFO Culture, with Sarah Scoles

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 09:30:03 GMT

Science journalist Sarah Scoles has written extensively about astronomy and the UFO community, including in her 2021 book They Are Already Here. She joined David Priess to discuss how scientists look at ETs, pop cultural takes on first contact with extraterrestrials, the incredible influence of Carl Sagan's Contact, the Allan Hills meteorite, the evolution over time of beliefs about aliens contacting humans, how the Roswell myth emerged, the International UFO Congress, the Mutual UFO Network, UFO investigators, seeing lights around Area 51, SETI salvationalism, extraterrestrial-visitation belief as a religious movement, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book Contact by Carl Sagan

The movie Contact

The book Making Contact by Sarah Scoles

The book They Are Already Here by Sarah Scoles

The book Countdown by Sarah Scoles

The event "UAP: The Search for Clarity," at the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security, November 15, 2023

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.

Ronald Reagan Reassessed, with Max Boot

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 09:30:42 GMT

Council on Foreign Relations fellow, Washington Post columnist, and author of military history books Max Boot has just completed a definitive biography of Ronald Reagan, eleven years after starting his research and writing for it. He joined David Priess to talk all about Reagan, including his appeal as a biography subject, his World War II experience, his speech preparation, his turn from New Deal Democrat to right-wing Republican, his path to electoral politics, his management style, his optimism, his pragmatism, his influence on pop culture in the 1980s, his role in ending the Cold War peacefully, his movies, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot

The movie Kings Row

The movie Bedtime for Bonzo

The movie Knute Rockne All American

The book The Unwinding by George Packer

The book Desert Star by Michael Connelly

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Jay Venables 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.

How Movies and TV Affect Everything, with Walt Hickey

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 09:30:16 GMT

Walt Hickey is the Deputy Editor for Data and Analysis at Insider News, and the author of You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything. His book explores the power of entertainment to change our beliefs, how we see ourselves, and how nations gain power.He joined Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, to talk about how we use media to express our societal apprehensions, the ways in which the military, NASA and the CIA collaborate with Hollywood, and the soft power of media productions.

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.

What Putin Wants, with Peter Clement

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 09:30:07 GMT

For more than 40 years, Peter Clement has studied Russian political culture and leaders--serving for most of that time as an analyst, manager, and executive at the CIA before his retirement in 2018. He has PhD in Russian history, teaches at Columbia University, and has thought long and hard about what makes Vladimir Putin tick.

He joined David Priess to discuss his road to studying Russia as a career, the art of Kremlinology, Putin's rise, Putin's feelings about Ukraine across the decades, the images of himself Putin projects to the West and within Russia, why FDR would be great to have around right now, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book First Person by Vladimir Putin

The essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" by Vladimir Putin

The article "Putin's Risk Spiral," Foreign Affairs (October 26, 2022), by Peter Clement

The book Present at the Creation by Dean Acheson

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gaming Out an Insurrection with Jesse Moss

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 11:30:16 GMT

It’s January 6, 2025. Congress has convened to certify electoral votes in the presidential election. But members of the U.S. military are in revolt, throwing their support behind the losing candidate. The legitimate president huddles in the Situation Room with his top advisers and Cabinet. They have six hours to prevent violent protests from exploding into civil war.

That’s the dire scenario imagined in the new documentary “War Game.” Real-world experts--including former elected officials and retired military officers--play the roles of government decision-makers. Over the course of the game, they are surprised with new and increasingly perilous complications, from the spread of online propaganda to a renegade general who exhorts military service members to take up arms against their commander-in-chief. All the while, they grapple with whether the president should invoke the Insurrection Act, a fateful decision that risks undermining the government’s legitimacy at the very moment the president is trying to preserve it.

Shane Harris spoke with the film’s producer and co-director, Jesse Moss, about what inspired him to make this real-life thriller and what it tells us about the state of the union as we head into the home stretch of an election.

Articles, organizations, and television shows discussed in this episode include:

The Washington Post op-ed that inspired the war game: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/17/eaton-taguba-anderson-generals-military/

Vet Voice Foundation: https://vvfnd.org/campaigns/war-game-film/

Trailer for the film: https://wargamefilm.com/

“The Bureau”: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4063800/

More about Moss and his work: https://www.jessemoss.com/Jesse-Moss-1

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Reconceptualizing National Security with Gina Bennett

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 09:30:07 GMT

Gina Bennett had a remarkable intelligence career of more than three decades, focusing on counterterrorism even before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and continuing to apply that expertise long after 9/11. She has written a book about how national security and parenting lessons reinforce each other, taught students at Georgetown University, and mentored women entering national security careers.

She joined David Priess to talk about her path into and through the intelligence community, the evolution of counterterrorism analysis since the late 1980s, motherhood and work pressures, the value of teaching, how security studies ignores lessons from more than 99 percent of human history, why a hunter-gatherer perspective illuminates security challenges better than traditional views, the limits of bumper sticker takeaways from 9/11 like "failure of imagination" and "didn't connect the dots," and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book National Security Mom by Gina Bennett

The TV miniseries Catch me a Killer

The article "Of Lice and Men: America Needs to Rethink Its National Security Paradigm," Georgetown Security Studies Review (February 2024), by Gina Bennett

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Art of Political Lawyering with Bob Bauer

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 09:30:59 GMT

On this week’s show, Lawfare’s Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with longtime Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer to discuss his mémoire of political lawyering, “The Unraveling Reflections on Politics Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis.” Bauer, a longtime Lawfare contributing editor, discusses his career as a litigating street fighter on behalf of Democratic Party causes and some of the regrets he has about party lawyering in an era of rising polarization.

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Confirmations for National Security Positions with Arnold Punaro

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 09:30:25 GMT

At the start of every presidential administration, the nominees for more than 1,000 civilian positions require Senate confirmation. A large number of those are in the Department of Defense, with confirmation responsibility going to the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). And whether it's a new administration or not, the committee processes dozens of civilian nominations for typical turnover reasons and thousands of military promotions as part of regular order.

Arnold Punaro, author of the new book If Confirmed, knows the Senate confirmation process as well as or better than anyone alive. For half a century, he has been central to the confirmation process for military-related nominees--including more than two decades in the US Senate (as SASC Staff Director and in other roles) and more than 25 years since then as an official or unofficial confirmation adviser for the Executive Branch. He joined David Priess to talk about the Constitutional foundations of confirmation, the overall process as it has evolved from nomination through confirmation to appointment, recess appointments and their limits, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and its quirks, how a presumption of confirmation can get nominees in trouble, why senatorial holds on nominees are getting out of control, which aspects of the confirmation process need to change, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book If Confirmed by Arnold Punaro

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rocky Mountain High with Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 09:30:24 GMT

This week, we’re at the Aspen Security Forum, the annual gathering of national security and foreign policy heavyweights. The conference regularly draws senior government and military officials from the United States and around the world to chew over the big issues of the day, and this time we had a full plate.

It’s not exactly hardship duty escaping to a glamorous mountain paradise. But the real world hardly felt far away. Questions linger about the November elections and the security failure that led to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump while two wars grind on with no clear sign of stopping.

Shane Harris sat down with his colleagues Courtney Kube of NBC News and Gordon Lubold of The Wall Street Journal to talk about the highlights of the conference and what people discussed on the sidelines, where the real action often happens.

Watch recordings of the security forum panels. https://www.aspensecurityforum.org/

Politics and National Security in the Star Wars Universe, with Chris Kempshall

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 09:30:51 GMT

The Star Wars universe gets a lot of attention for its lightsabers, space battles, and witty droids. But over the decades, a rich lore has developed around its history and politics.

Dr. Chris Kempshall researches and writes at the intersection of real-world history, with a focus on the First World War, and the Star Wars universe. His books include The History and Politics of Star Wars, which analyzes various aspects of Star Wars compared to our world, and Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, an examination of the Empire from the perspective of an in-universe historian. Chris joined David Priess to discuss World War I-themed video games, how Star Wars creator George Lucas used history, how to get one's hands around the ever-expanded lore of Star Wars, why the movie sequels differed from published books about the aftermath of the Empire's fall, the structure and operations of the Empire, the problematic politics of the Republic, the treatment of non-human species and droids in Star Wars canonical works, controversy over the redemption of Anakin Skywalker, fan theories about the extent of Emperor Palpatine's manipulation of events and about the evidence that Jar Jar Binks was a Sith, and much more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The Star Wars canon, across all media

Works in Star Wars Legends (formerly the Star Wars Expanded Universe)

The Chatter episode National Security Insights from Board Games, with Volko Ruhnke

The book British, French and American Relations on the Western Front, 1914-1918 by Chris Kempshall

The book The First World War in Computer Games by Chris Kempshall

The book The History and Politics of Star Wars by Chris Kempshall

The book Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Chris Kempshall

The Sharpe Series of books by Bernard Cornwell

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Largest Sting Operation of All Time with Joseph Cox

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 09:30:00 GMT

Joseph Cox is an award-winning investigative journalist and the co-founder of 404 Media. He is also the world’s leading reporter on the FBI's Anom sting operation, a topic he has written about in the new book, Dark Wire: The Incredbile True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever.

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.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Librarians Who Saved Books in World War II, with Kathy Peiss

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 09:30:00 GMT

As the Second World War started, an unsung cadre of US librarians and other information management professionals was making its way to Europe to acquire printed material that could help American analysts understand international threats. As the war went on, the mission of these experts expanded to also include an unprecedented effort to locate, preserve, and ultimately decide what to do with millions of printed items of Nazi propaganda--and with the books and documents that Germany had seized and hidden during the war.

Professor Kathy Peiss, who teached in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, joined host David Priess to discuss this, and more, including many stories from her compelling book Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe. They talked about the field of American Studies, her family connection that led her to study librarians and spies in World War II, the World War I-era connections between librarians and national security matters, the cooperation in the early 1940s between America's emerging intelligence efforts and the Library of Congress, extraordinary women who worked to gather materials in war-torn Europe, advances in microfilm technology and use as a result of their efforts, tensions between the US and UK in open source collection, the vital role Lisbon played in information hunting during the war, unique aspects of the material acquisition and preservation effort as the war ended, the heated debate over the destruction of Nazi books, challenges involved in the return of recovered materials, and more. Including zoot suits. Yes, really.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book Information Hunters by Kathy Peiss

The movie The Monuments Men

The book The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel and Bret Witter

The book The Hunter by Tana French

The book Dr. No by Percival Everett

The book World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence by Mark Stout

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.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Libertarianism and National Security with Katherine Mangu-Ward

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 09:30:00 GMT

Libertarianism doesn’t fit easily on the traditional left-right spectrum of American politics. The philosophy upholds personal liberty as a core value. What does it have to say about matters of foreign policy and national security, which encompass ideas about self-defense but also protection of the state?

Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with Shane Harris to discuss the libertarian view on war and diplomacy, how it approaches the question of nation-state conflicts, and the differences between libertarianism and the Libertarian Party. Mangu-Ward is the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, the leading publication on libertarian thought and ideas. She started her journalism career in 2000 as an intern at Reason and later worked at The Weekly Standard and The New York Times. Her writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many other publications.

Political philosophers, publications, and novel state concepts discussed in this episode include:

Ayn Rand https://aynrand.org/

Fusionism https://reason.com/2021/02/10/is-there-a-future-for-fusionism/

Friedrich Hayek https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friedrich-hayek/

The Yale Free Press

Students for a Democratic Society https://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/topics/politics/newsmakers_1.html

Prospera https://www.prospera.co/

Read and listen to more of Mangu-Ward’s work:

https://reason.com/people/katherine-mangu-ward/

https://reason.com/podcasts/the-reason-roundtable/

https://twitter.com/kmanguward?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

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.

The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, with Renée DiResta

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:30:28 GMT

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.

FDR, Charles Lindbergh, and Presidential Libraries with Paul Sparrow

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 09:30:33 GMT

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.

The Harrowing History of the Soviet Space Program with John Strausbaugh

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 09:30:32 GMT

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.

Oceania's Nuclear and Climate Storytelling with Anaïs Maurer

Tue, 28 May 2024 09:30:12 GMT

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.

American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, with Tim Alberta

Tue, 21 May 2024 09:30:40 GMT

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.

Climate Migration with Gaia Vince

Tue, 14 May 2024 16:07:04 GMT

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.

Phantom Orbit with Journalist David Ignatius

Tue, 07 May 2024 09:30:28 GMT

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.

How the Cold War Made Miami with Vince Houghton

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 09:30:47 GMT

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

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.

New Cold Wars with Journalist David Sanger

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 09:30:08 GMT

David Sanger has been writing for the New York Times since 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.

Fabric, Dyes, Glamour, and International Affairs, with Virginia Postrel

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 09:30:04 GMT

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.

The Pentagon’s Alliance with the Country Music Industry with Joseph Thompson

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 07:00:36 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why Foreign Policy Elites Matter with Elizabeth Saunders

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 07:00:47 GMT

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.

Nuclear War: A Scenario with Annie Jacobsen

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 07:00:42 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From Right-Wing Radio to the Heart of the Never Trump Movement, with Charlie Sykes

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT

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.

Margaret Mead, Psychedelics, and the CIA with Benjamin Breen

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 07:00:32 GMT

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:

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Spy Disguises in Fact and Fiction with Jonna Mendez

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 08:00:30 GMT

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.

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The Moon, Tides, and National Security with Rebecca Boyle

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 08:00:35 GMT

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.

President Biden’s Foreign Policy with Alex Ward

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:00:51 GMT

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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Life and Death in Ukraine with Journalist Christopher Miller

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 08:00:38 GMT

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.

The Global Citizenship Industry with Kristin Surak

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 08:00:22 GMT

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.

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The Long History of US Foreign Disaster Aid, with Julia Irwin

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 08:00:31 GMT

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.

"A City on Mars," with Dr. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 08:00:38 GMT

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.

Nuclear Launch Authority in Myth and Reality, with Hans Kristensen

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 08:00:22 GMT

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.

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“The Day After” and Dad with A. B. Stoddard

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 08:00:24 GMT

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.

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Lessons from the Decade of Mass Protests, with Vincent Bevins

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 08:00:39 GMT

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

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Chatter Archive: Spy Movies with John Sipher

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 08:00:34 GMT

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.

Secrecy and Transparency in Early America, with Katlyn Carter

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 08:00:58 GMT

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.

The Ghost Army of World War II with Journalist Rick Beyer

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 08:00:01 GMT

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

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World War I and Intelligence in American Memory, with Mark Stout

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:00:55 GMT

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.

Coups and Counterintelligence with Peter Strzok

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:24:21 GMT

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.

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The JFK Assassination and Conspiracy Culture, with Gerald Posner

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 09:00:56 GMT

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.

The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop with Martine Powers

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 08:00:23 GMT

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.

An American Fight Against Fascism with Rachel Maddow

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 10:00:23 GMT

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's Territorial Peak, 100 Years Later, with Matthew Parker

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 07:00:34 GMT

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.

Lincoln, Leadership, and Difficult Conversations with Steve Inskeep

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 07:00:21 GMT

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.

The Secret History of Women at the CIA with Liza Mundy

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 07:00:35 GMT

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.

Manic Depression and Crisis Leadership with Nassir Ghaemi

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 07:00:38 GMT

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.

Pluralism and Religion within Democratic Institutions with Jonathan Rauch

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 07:00:59 GMT

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.

Governing Space Settlements Ethically with Erika Nesvold

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 07:00:28 GMT

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.

Secret Intelligence and the British Royal Family with Rory Cormac

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 07:00:22 GMT

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.

Covering Unidentified Aerial Phenomena with Shane Harris

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 07:00:14 GMT

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 Spy in the Manhattan Project with Steve James

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 07:00:10 GMT

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.

Geopolitics and the Rise of the English Language with Rosemary Salomone

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 07:00:09 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The ERAS Tour (Ben’s Version) with Benjamin Wittes

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 07:00:27 GMT

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.

Russian Spies in Reality and Fiction with Calder Walton

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 07:00:50 GMT

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.

Covering the Justice Department During and After Trump, with Katie Benner

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 07:00:10 GMT

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 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 Story of Reality Winner with Tina Satter

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 07:00:06 GMT

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/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Science Fiction and International Relations with Stephen Dyson

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 07:00:51 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

National Security Insights from Board Games with Volko Ruhnke

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 07:00:05 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Renaming Military Bases and Principled Conservatism with Kori Schake

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 07:00:49 GMT

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.

Hockey, Global Politics, and Freedom with Ethan Scheiner

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT

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.

Hacker Movies with Scott Shapiro

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 07:00:29 GMT

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.

Covering the January 6th Trials with Roger Parloff

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 07:00:45 GMT

Since joining Lawfare in November 2021, Roger Parloff has been a constant presence at the January 6th trials. Now based in Washington, D.C, he had, earlier in his career, served as a staff writer for Fortune and American Lawyer Magazine, and has been published in The New York Times, Yahoo Finance, ProPublica, New York, NewYorker.com, and Air Mail News. As a senior editor at Lawfare, he's focused on January 6 related matters, including covering the more than 1,000 federal criminal cases that have been filed while also keeping up on the pending investigations of higher-ups.

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?”

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Water, Security, and Conflict with Peter Gleick

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 07:00:33 GMT

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.

Genealogy and Intelligence Analysis with Lisa Maddox

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 07:00:52 GMT

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.

Information Ecology with Alicia Wanless

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 07:00:23 GMT

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.

Popular Presidential Communication with Anne Pluta

Sun, 28 May 2023 09:00:45 GMT

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.

‘Special Military Operations’ Against the Russians with Benjamin Wittes

Thu, 18 May 2023 07:00:17 GMT

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.

Politicians and White House Plumbers with Olivia Nuzzi

Sun, 14 May 2023 09:00:14 GMT

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 and National Security with Brendan Ballou

Thu, 04 May 2023 07:00:49 GMT

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.

Space Diplomacy and Satellite Data with Mariel Borowitz

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 07:00:44 GMT

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.

Blackouts in Film and TV with Denis Newiak

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 07:00:46 GMT

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.

Reporting from the Front Lines with Nancy Youssef

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 07:00:57 GMT

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.

Environmentalism in Russia after the Invasion of Ukraine with Laura Henry

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 07:00:03 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Debunking Nuclear Proliferation Myths with Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 07:00:33 GMT

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.

Treason, Secession, and Accountability with Cynthia Nicoletti

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 07:00:37 GMT

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.

Spy Movies and the Oscars with Alyssa Rosenberg

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 07:00:04 GMT

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.

The American Battle Monuments Commission with Mark Hertling

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 08:00:00 GMT

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.

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.

Fixing America To Bolster National Security with Richard Haass

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 11:00:25 GMT

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.

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.

Aviation Oddities and Near Misses with James Fallows

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 08:02:19 GMT

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.

Former National Security Advisor Steve Hadley's Reflections on Presidential Transitions

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 08:00:21 GMT

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 and Conspiracism with Kelly Weill

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 08:00:43 GMT

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 earth 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.

M. Todd Bennett on the Secretive Story of the Glomar Explorer

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 08:00:33 GMT

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.

Financial Intelligence, Fact and Fiction with Yaya Fanusie

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 08:00:36 GMT

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.

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.

A Post-Presidency Done Right with Jean Becker

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 08:00:21 GMT

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.

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

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Ana Montes, the American who Spied for Cuba, with Jim Popkin

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 08:00:57 GMT

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.

CIA, Congress, and the Art of Listening with Abigail Spanberger

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 08:00:03 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chatter Archive: The Truth About UFOs with Leslie Kean

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 08:00:39 GMT

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.

Presidents Who Lose and Run Again with Troy Senik

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 08:00:41 GMT

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.

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:

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

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Reassessing Reagan's Foreign Policy with Will Inboden

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 08:00:05 GMT

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.

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:

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.

Visualizing Vladimir Putin with Andrew Weiss

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 08:00:11 GMT

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.

Pandemics and Political Violence with Brian Michael Jenkins

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 08:00:16 GMT

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.

Shane and David Give Thanks

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 08:00:19 GMT

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, Space Debris, and Hollywood with Aaron Bateman

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 08:00:49 GMT

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.

Ronald Reagan, Tom Clancy, and Storytelling with Benjamin Griffin

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 08:00:38 GMT

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.

Cryptography in History and in the Movies with Vince Houghton

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 07:00:12 GMT

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.

Life as a Canadian Spy with Andrew Kirsch

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:00:56 GMT

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.

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.

How To Support a Vice President with Olivia Troye

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 07:00:39 GMT

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.

Misinformation in Revolutionary America with Jordan Taylor

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 07:00:44 GMT

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.

The People Side of Intelligence with Darrell Blocker

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 07:00:08 GMT

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.

Hurricanes and Governmental Response with Eric Jay Dolin

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 07:00:53 GMT

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.

Josephine Baker, Singer and Spy, with Damien Lewis

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 07:00:05 GMT

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.

CIA Paramilitary Ops in Reality and Fiction

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 07:00:10 GMT

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.

Spying in the NFL with Kevin Bryant

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 07:00:36 GMT

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.

Chatter Archive: Leadership, Sports, and Intelligence Innovation with Sue Gordon

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 06:31:11 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Moon, Mars, and National Security with Fraser Cain

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 07:00:23 GMT

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

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Gone with the Wind, Hitler, and America First with Sarah Churchwell

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 07:00:57 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Journalism as Fodder for Fiction with Mary Louise Kelly

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 07:00:11 GMT

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/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Climate Change and National Security with Erin Sikorsky

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 07:00:20 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spotting Fake News with Cindy Otis

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 07:00:06 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From Journalist to Spy Novelist with Daniel Silva

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 07:00:59 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mass Shootings in America with Josh Campbell

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 07:00:16 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spy Thriller Fiction vs. Fact with Brad Thor

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 07:00:51 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Secret Service Dilemmas and Training with Jon Wackrow

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 07:00:54 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Misremembering Watergate and Jan. 6 with Tim Naftali

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 07:00:23 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freemasonry and Conspiracism with John Dickie

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 07:00:38 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Private Sector Intelligence with Lewis Sage-Passant

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 07:00:12 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Secrets of Gay Washington with Jamie Kirchick

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 07:00:48 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Movie "Casablanca" in Myth and Reality with Meredith Hindley

Thu, 26 May 2022 07:00:01 GMT

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"

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"The Man Who Fell to Earth" with Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman

Thu, 19 May 2022 07:00:27 GMT

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/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Art of the Security State with Trevor Paglen

Thu, 12 May 2022 07:03:23 GMT

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/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why We Fight with Christopher Blattman

Thu, 05 May 2022 07:00:01 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"The Day After" with Nicholas Meyer

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 07:00:22 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spy Satire with Alex Finley

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 07:00:54 GMT

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 Trouble by 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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Artificial Intelligence and its Perils with Jacob Ward

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 07:00:51 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Climate Change and Insurance with Eugene Linden

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 07:00:11 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ethical Space Exploration with Lucianne Walkowicz

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 07:00:27 GMT

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/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Putin’s People with Catherine Belton

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 07:00:03 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Arctic Security and Cooperation with Marisol Maddox

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 07:00:19 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recovering from a Russian Attack with Toomas Ilves

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 08:00:12 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WWII in the Movies with Elizabeth Samet

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 08:00:47 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Assassination by Poison with Neil Bradbury

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 08:00:28 GMT

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.

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)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Presidents' Day and Washington's Legacy with Lindsay Chervinsky

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 08:00:03 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lessons from Lincoln with John Avlon

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 08:00:57 GMT

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.

Among the works cited in this episode:

Lincoln and the Fight for Peace by 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 America by Jared Cohen

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

China’s Hold on Hollywood with Erich Schwartzel

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 08:00:07 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Olympics, Politics, and Security with Ethan Scheiner

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 08:00:13 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Truth About UFOs with Leslie Kean

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 08:00:32 GMT

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.

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.

9/11 Memorialization with Marita Sturken

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 08:00:31 GMT

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Security and Art with Laurie Anderson

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 08:00:04 GMT

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.

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

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Spy Movies with John Sipher

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 08:00:15 GMT

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.

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)

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Violence on Capitol Hill with Joanne Freeman

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 08:00:59 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Corruption and Power with Brian Klaas

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 08:00:18 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Women's Health and National Security with Anushay Hossain

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 08:00:10 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From National Security Blogger to Editor of Rolling Stone with Noah Shachtman

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 08:00:48 GMT

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.

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The Truth and Fiction of Life Inside the CIA with David McCloskey

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

America's Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa with Emily Bass

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 08:00:14 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Stories We Still Tell About 9/11 with Garrett Graff

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 08:00:14 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leadership, Sports, and Intelligence Innovation with Sue Gordon

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:00:29 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Core Values Amid The Partisan Divide with Adam Kinzinger

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 08:30:55 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From CIA-to-Hollywood with Joe Weisberg

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 08:30:51 GMT

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trailer: Chatter Coming Soon

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 14:44:45 GMT

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.

Chatter guests 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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.