Chatter

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 c...

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 Civ...

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 mult...

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 foc...

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-author...

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 o...

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 im...

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 st...

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...

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 me...

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...

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 t...

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...

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 th...

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...

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 mo...

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, featuri...

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...

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 a...