Chatter

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Nuclear Launch Authority in Myth and Reality, with Hans Kristensen Jan 18, 2024

Show notes

Lloyd Austin's hospitalization and delayed communication about it have spurred much commentary and questions about the role of the secretary of defense in the US nuclear-strike chain of command.

David Priess spoke with Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, about his path to expertise on nuclear issues, the chain of command for nuclear strike authorization (and recent comments from elected representatives that misunderstand it), alternatives to the current system, fictional scenarios of nuclear launches, what is known about different nuclear states' authorization processes, the "letters of last resort" for UK nuclear submarines, deterrence and human psychology, and more.

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

“The Day After” and Dad with A. B. Stoddard Jan 11, 2024

Show notes

Brandon Stoddard was one of the most accomplished executives in broadcast television history. In his career at ABC, he helped bring to the small screen such legendary mini-series as “Roots” and “The Winds of War,” as well as the acclaimed television series “Moonlighting” and “Roseanne.” But arguably his most consequential and controversial decision was to air the made-for-TV movie “The Day After,” which graphically depicted the effects of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Stoddard faced opposition from his colleagues, pundits, and even the Reagan White House, which pressured ABC to pull the film. But having conceived of the project as an impetus for people around the world to grapple with the potential of a devastating war, Stoddard forged ahead and broadcast the film in November 1983.

It was an epochal event in U.S. history. One hundred million people tuned in to watch, and the movie became the most-watched in television history. It was a national moment of the kind Americans rarely share today.

Journalist A. B. Stoddard, Brandon’s daughter, spoke with Shane Harris about her dad’s determination to air the film and what he hoped to achieve. Stoddard is well known for her political commentary and work at The Bulwark. But today, she shares personal memories of her father, his illustrious career, and the legacy of his work. In November of last year, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of “The Day After,” she wrote a column, “The Day My Father Scared America.”

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

A.B. Stoddard’s column on her dad

https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/brandon-stoddard-the-day-after

Shane’s previous conversation with Nicholas Meyer, who directed “The Day After”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-day-after-with-nicholas-meyer/id1593674288?i=1000558946928

A.B. Stoddard’s columns for The Bulwark

https://substack.com/@abstoddard

The catalog of Brandon Stoddard’s work

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0830992/

Brandon Stoddard’s induction in the Television Academy Hall of Fame

https://www.emmys.com/bios/brandon-stoddard

“The Day After” (on YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utGRP9Zy1lg

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Jay Venables of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

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

Lessons from the Decade of Mass Protests, with Vincent Bevins Jan 04, 2024

Show notes

From the protests in Brazil initially focused on bus fares to the protests in Hong Kong seeking to stop an extradition bill to the protests across the Middle East now collectively referred to as the "Arab Spring," the political and economic mass demonstrations from 2010 to 2020 made it a decade of public protest like no other. Yet the vast majority of these efforts failed to bring about their desired changes--and many of them actually led to the opposite of what they wanted. Vincent Bevins, author of the new book If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, has chronicled this decade with stories from his on-the-ground reporting and extensive interviews with activists in ten countries around the globe.

David Priess spoke with Vincent about why mass protests during this decade so often fell short of their objectives, the principle of horizontalism, the role of social media in mobilization and action, and other themes as they relate to the mass protests in Brazil, Turkey, Hong Kong, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, South Korea, and other countries.

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

The book If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins

The movie The Candidate

The book From Mobilization to Revolution by Charles Tilly

The book Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

The book Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus by Georgi Derluguian

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

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

Chatter Archive: Spy Movies with John Sipher Dec 28, 2023

Show notes

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 Dec 21, 2023

Show notes

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 Dec 14, 2023

Show notes

In the summer of 1944, a group of artists, visual designers and sound engineers--all of them GIs--began a series of secret operations in occupied France. Their mission: to deceive German forces about the location and size of U.S. military units, using a combination of inflatable vehicles, sound recordings, and “actors” posing as officers.

The ranks of the “Ghost Army” included future stars of the worlds of art and design, including Ellsworth Kelly, Bill Blass, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey. Journalist Rick Beyer has chronicled their ingenious exploits in a book and a documentary.

December marks the 80th anniversary of the order that created the unit, which remained secret for decades. Shane Harris talked with Beyer about its creation, its success, and the ghost army’s role in the storied history of intelligence deceptions.

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

The Ghost Army book

https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/ghost-army-of-world-war-ii

The Ghost Army documentary

https://shop.pbs.org/WC3752.html

The Ghost Army Legacy Project

https://ghostarmy.org/

Smithsonian magazine feature

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-ghost-army-of-wwii-used-art-to-deceive-the-nazis-180980336/

The National WWII Museum

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/visit/exhibits/traveling-exhibits/ghost-army-combat-con-artists-world-war-ii

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

World War I and Intelligence in American Memory, with Mark Stout Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

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 Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

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.

The JFK Assassination and Conspiracy Culture, with Gerald Posner Nov 22, 2023

Show notes

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 Nov 16, 2023

Show notes

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.

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