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 B...
Nov 09, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 108
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...
Nov 02, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 107
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 individ...
Oct 26, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 106
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 Harri...
Oct 19, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 105
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 bein...
Oct 12, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 104
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 mus...
Oct 05, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 103
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,...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 102
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 Aldri...
Sep 21, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 101
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.
Sep 14, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 100
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...
Sep 07, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 99
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...
Aug 31, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 98
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 operatio...
Aug 24, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 97
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 ...
Aug 17, 2023•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 96
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...
Aug 10, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 95
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 sus...
Aug 03, 2023•57 min•Season 1Ep. 94
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--...
Jul 27, 2023•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 93
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 gami...
Jul 20, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 92
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 principl...
Jul 13, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 91
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 desc...
Jul 06, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 90
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 D...
Jun 29, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 89
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 hav...
Jun 22, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 88
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 chang...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 87
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 ...
Jun 08, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 86
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...
Jun 01, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 85
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 ...
May 28, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 84
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 Kathe...
May 18, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 83
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...
May 14, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 82
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...
May 04, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 81
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: T...
Apr 27, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 80
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 implica...
Apr 20, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 79
