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.

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.

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.