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 ...
Jun 04, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 138
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 ...
May 28, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 137
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 und...
May 21, 2024•57 min•Season 1Ep. 136
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 c...
May 14, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 135
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 technolo...
May 07, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 134
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,...
Apr 30, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 133
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 co...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 132
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...
Apr 18, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 131
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 fa...
Apr 11, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 130
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 differ...
Apr 04, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 129
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...
Mar 28, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 128
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 leav...
Mar 21, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 127
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...
Mar 14, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 126
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 tand...
Mar 07, 2024•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 125
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 flo...
Feb 29, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 124
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 Sulliv...
Feb 22, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 123
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 ex...
Feb 15, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 122
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 glob...
Feb 08, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 121
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...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 120
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 dange...
Jan 25, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 119
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), alt...
Jan 18, 2024•56 min•Season 1Ep. 118
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 Un...
Jan 11, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 117
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, auth...
Jan 04, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 116
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 s...
Dec 28, 2023•1 hr 43 min•Season 1Ep. 115
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 ...
Dec 21, 2023•59 min•Season 1Ep. 114
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 Kan...
Dec 14, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 113
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...
Dec 07, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 112
Peter Strzok is a former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. He was the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He speaks with Ben Wittes about the numerous places he has called home and a career spent in counterintelligence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 30, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 111
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 ot...
Nov 22, 2023•1 hr 39 min•Season 1Ep. 110
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 ...
Nov 16, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 109
