Episodes
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Stoicism is having a moment.The ancient philosophy--which posits that you can’t control events, but you can control how you respond to them--has lately been embraced by self-help gurus and tech bros. But Nancy Sherman writes that the tenets of Stoicism have long found a receptive audience in “the military mind.” Whether they know it or not, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are guided by many of the principles espoused by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.
Sherman, a professor at Georgetown University, is the author of several books, including Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind. She spoke with Shane Harris about why Stoic virtues resonate with those who serve in uniform and what the philosophy can teach everyone about how to live well amid uncertainty and struggle.
Books and people discussed in this episode include:
“Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind” by Nancy Sherman https://global.oup.com/academic/product/stoic-warriors-9780195315912?cc=us&lang=en&
Cicero https://iep.utm.edu/cicero-roman-philosopher/
Marcus Aurelius https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius/
Epictetus https://iep.utm.edu/epictetu/
Seneca’s “De Beneficiis” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3794/3794-h/3794-h.htm
James Stockdale https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/2097870/medal-of-honor-monday-navy-vice-adm-james-stockdale/
Thomas Gibbons-Neff https://www.nytimes.com/by/thomas-gibbons-neff
Ian Fishback https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1192996954/ian-fishback-who-blew-the-whistle-on-torture-by-the-u-s-military-was-laid-to-res
Hugh Thompson https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai-hugh-thompson-20180316-story.html
Edward Villella https://sab.org/scenes/sab-trailblazer-edward-villella/
More about Nancy Sherman https://www.nancysherman.com/
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Isabelle Kerby-McGowan and Megan Nadolski of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Jake Effoduh, Assistant Professor at Lincoln Alexander School of Law, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to share his research on the Global South’s perspective on AI. Jake has carved a unique and important research agenda looking into how AI advances are impacting the pursuit and realization of human rights in Africa.
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Episodes manquant?
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Kyle Cheney, Senior Legal Affairs Reporter for Politico, discusses his recent Politico article on the legal and political landmines threatening the criminal prosecutions of rioters involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege.
Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff sat down with Kyle to discuss a serious legal challenge to the key misdemeanor charge leveled in more than 90 percent of Jan. 6 cases, a troubling ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declaring most so-called “geofencing” warrants unconstitutional, and former President Trump’s promises to pardon many Jan. 6 defendants if he wins reelection.
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This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on October 3 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom.
Lawfare Senior Editor Scott Anderson spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, and Roger Parloff about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s immunity motion in the Jan 6 case against former President Trump, what it means for the future of the case and of course took audience questions.
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From October 11, 2023: This past Saturday, the terrorist group Hamas launched an unprecedented raid from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel that left more than 1000 people – most of them Israeli civilians, many of them women, children, and the elderly – brutally murdered. Dozens more were taken as hostages back into Gaza. A shocked Israel has in turn responded with missile attacks into Gaza that have killed more than 800 Palestinians there, and is planning a broader offensive there. And as people search for more information on what’s transpired, there are concerns that events may yet spiral out into a broader regional war – one that, among other consequences, might derail efforts at normalization in the Israeli-Saudi relationship that have been a major focus of the United States in recent weeks.
To discuss these tragic events and their potentially seismic consequences, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott Anderson sat down with a panel of leading experts: Natan Sachs, Fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of our Center for Middle East Policy; Dan Byman, from the Center for Strategic & International Studies as well as Lawfare’s foreign policy editor; Ghaith al-Omeri of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Lawfare’s own Editor-In-Chief Benjamin Wittes. They discussed the ripple effects the attack is having throughout the region, the role that Iran and other actors may have played, and what it may yet mean for the region and the broader world.
Please note that this episode contains content that some people may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom recently vetoed SB 1047, the controversial AI safety bill passed by the California legislature. Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with St. Thomas University College of Law Assistant Professor Kevin Frazier and George Mason University Mercatus Research Fellow Dean Ball to discuss what was in the bill, why Newsom vetoed it, and where AI safety policing goes from here.
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This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Quinta Jurecic, and Tyler McBrien to try to make sense of the week’s biggest national security news stories, including:
“Pulling Up the Escalation Ladder.” Israel’s escalating campaign against Hezbollah turned regional yesterday, as Iran launched a salvo of more than 180 ballistic missiles against Israel. While the damage was limited, both Israel and the United States have promised consequences. What strategies are Israel, Iran, and the United States pursuing in all this? And where will it lead?“At Least He Didn’t Get Aslan Killed.” New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s passion for Turkish delights has led to his indictment on multiple charges relating to alleged corruption, specifically at the behest of individuals associated with the Turkish and potentially other foreign governments. Adams, in turn, claims he is being targeted for, among other reasons, speaking out about immigration concerns. What is the real driver behind Adams’s indictment? “Devil Came Down to Georgia.” Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc on the American southeast this past week—not just in coastal areas accustomed to hurricane season damage, but also deep inland as it cut through and past the Gulf of Mexico. In parts of southern Appalachia, the storm caused immense flooding that has wiped out whole towns and resulted in dozens of deaths. The aftermath is raising countless policy concerns, from ways to heighten resilience to concerns over the impact on the forthcoming general election. How should hurricanes and other extreme weather events—widely understood to be, in part, products of climate change—figure into our national security?To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.
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For today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Richard Gowan, the U.N. Director for the International Crisis Group, to review what went down at the recent U.N. General Assembly High-Level Week.
They discussed how the national leaders who gathered in New York for the meetings responded to the ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan; how strategic competition between China, Russia, and the United States shaped the proceedings; and what it can tell us about where the United Nations is headed.
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Israel has hit Hezbollah very hard over the past few days, killing much of its senior leadership and eroding its capabilities. It has also displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and now has ground forces in Lebanon. Iran has responded with a missile barrage against Israel, to which an Israeli response is widely expected. To discuss the latest events in the expanding war, Lawfare's Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Firas Maksad of the Middle East Institute, Natan Sachs of the Brookings Institution, and Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson.
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Conspiracy theories about supposed Jewish control of global finance and politics have been circulating and influencing popular culture for centuries, with the spotlight often falling on the Rothschild family. Author Mike Rothschild (no relation), who has researched and written about the phenomenon in his book Jewish Space Lasers, joined David Priess to discuss the appeal of conspiracy theories overall, the genesis of the Rothschilds' wealth, legends about the family's involvement in the Battle of Waterloo and other major world events, how the expansion of Rothschild commercial interests in the 1800s spurred paranoia about the family's influence, Nazi-era movies about the Rothschilds, why the family failed to gain traction in the United States, the connections between anti-Semitism and grand conspiracy theories, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Marjorie Taylor Greene's "Jewish space lasers" comments, and more.
Works mentioned in this episode:
The book The Storm Is Upon Us by Mike Rothschild
The book Jewish Space Lasers by Mike Rothschild
The movie Eyes Wide Shut
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.
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Robert Mahari, a joint JD-PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Law School, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to explain how increased use of AI agents may lead humans to form troublingly and even addictive relationships with artificial systems. Robert also shares the significance of his research on common uses of existing generative AI systems. This interview builds on Robert’s recent piece in the MIT Tech Review, which he co-authored with Pat Pataranutaporn.
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New York Mayor Eric Adams is facing indictment in connection with a foreign influence scheme involving Turkey. It’s the latest in a long string of actions by the Justice Department to counter foreign efforts to interfere in the American political system. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic, and Contributing Editor Brandon Van Grack to discuss the charges against Adams and the larger pattern of which they are a part.
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From September 21, 2022: This past Monday, the criminal trial of Thomas Barrack began in federal court in the Eastern District of New York. Barrack, who served as an informal advisor to the 2016 Trump campaign and then as chair of Trump's inaugural committee, is alleged to have acted as a foreign agent of the United Arab Emirates. According to the indictment, Barrack acted as a back channel for the UAE to influence U.S. foreign policy.
Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Alex Iftimie, a partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster, and a former Department of Justice attorney specializing in national security matters, including the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, and related statutes. They discussed the case against Barrack, the significance of the charges to broader enforcement strategy, and why foreign influence matters for U.S. national security.
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This episode of “Lawfare Live: National Security and the 2024 Election” was recorded on September 24 in front of a live audience on Youtube and Zoom.
Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Molly Reynolds, Quinta Jurecic, and Anna Bower and Professor of Law at Stanford Law School Nate Persily. They discussed how Congress has prepared for the 2024 election, including the passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, how the government and social media companies are addressing election-related disinformation, and how states have used the lessons of 2020 to prepare for the 2024 election.
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Geoff Schaefer, Head of Responsible AI at Booz Allen Hamilton, and Alyssa Lefaivre Škopac, an independent responsible AI strategist, join Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to detail the Responsible AI Top-20 Controls. As governments, corporations, and nonprofits face increasing pressure to integrate AI into their operations, how to do so in an ethical and responsible fashion has remained an open question. Geoff and Alyssa offer their insights on jumpstarting AI governance within any institution.
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This week, Scott was joined by Natalie Orpett, Anna Bower, and Matt Gluck to talk over some of the week's big national security news, including:
“Some Assembly Required.” On Tuesday, President Biden gave his fourth and final speech as president to the U.N. General Assembly. He used the occasion to reflect on the many foreign policy decisions of his presidency, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the (thus far unsuccessful) pursuit of a ceasefire in the conflict in Gaza. What does this speech—and the year’s U.N. General Assembly more broadly—tell us about the state of his foreign policy legacy?“Keeping it Peachy.” Georgia’s state election board is in the news for rules changes that some allege could delay finalization of the 2024 election results, opening a possible door for Congress to manipulate the results. But what will these rules changes really mean? And what does it tell us about the potential for (and limits on) efforts to manipulate the outcome of the 2024 presidential election?“Memo-ries of the Way We Were.” Last week, the New York Times published excerpts from several memoranda prepared by then-President Trump’s White House Counsel addressing questions he appears to have posed regarding his ability to direct the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute individuals. Given Trump’s repeated pledges of vengeance if he were to return to the White House, what do these memoranda tell us about what he might be able to accomplish? And what obstacles may lie in his way, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s intervening decision on presidential immunity?For object lessons, Natalie recommended Helen Phillips' new novel “Hum.” Anna stole Scott's object lesson and recommended season two of Rings of Power along with season three of Industry. Scott sang the praises of the best tiny speaker he ever did see (er, hear). And Matt Gluck dug into the sportsball file to urge listeners to begin following the Detroit Tigers' historic playoffs run.
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Steve Coll’s latest book, “The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq,” seeks to explain why Saddam Hussein would put his regime at risk over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that didn’t exist. Saddam ultimately lost his regime, and his life, in part because he saw America as an omniscient puppeteer seeking to dominate the Middle East. The United States put thousands of troops in harm’s way in pursuit of a rogue WMD program that turned out to be a fiction. Were these outcomes inevitable?
Lawfare Student Contributor Preston Marquis sat down with Coll, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, to explore this question. “The Achilles Trap” is unique in that it relies on Saddam’s secret tapes and archives to unpack twists and turns in the U.S.-Iraq bilateral relationship dating back to the Cold War. The full review is available on the Lawfare website.
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Itsiq Benizri, counsel in WilmerHale’s Brussels office, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to review the shocking and significant resignation of former European Commissioner Thierry Breton. Breton served as the EU’s commissioner for the internal market and played a major role in shaping and enforcing the EU’s digital regulations.
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The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986 riveted millions of Americans, who watched the horrific event live on television. What they didn’t know then was that the tragedy was largely preventable, a disastrous result of hubris and “magical thinking” as much as flawed engineering.
Journalist Adam Higginbotham’s new book, “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space,” is a definitive account of what went wrong, and how NASA failed to learn from its own mistakes. Higginbotham’s story begins with an earlier fatal accident, a fire in the capsule of the Apollo 1 mission, which presaged Challenger’s fate. He then recounts the early days of the space shuttle program. Astonishingly, the very mechanical flaws that led to Challenger’s destruction were known, but the warnings of a few engineers were ignored by more senior officials, who by the time Challenger was set to launch the first teacher into space faced tremendous political and public pressure to make the mission happen, despite obvious risks.
Higginbotham spoke with Shane Harris about his book, why he wanted to tell the Challenger story, and the future of human spaceflight.
Books, events, and people discussed on this episode include:
“Challenger”: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Challenger/Adam-Higginbotham/9781982176617
“Midnight in Chernobyl”:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Midnight-in-Chernobyl/Adam-Higginbotham/9781508278511
The Apollo 1 fire:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission/apollo-1/
Roger Boisjoly, rocket engineer:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle-challenger-launch
The crew of Challenger STS-51L:
https://www.nasa.gov/challenger-sts-51l-accident/
The Columbia disaster:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/04/09/denial-of-shuttle-image-requests-questioned/80957e7c-92f1-48ae-8272-0dcfbcb57b9d/
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.
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Israel and Hezbollah seem to be headed for a major war. Over the past several weeks, Israel has taken a series of escalatory steps along its northern border, targeting major Hezbollah figures, blowing up pagers used by thousands of Hezbollah operatives, and—most recently—hitting targets all over southern Lebanon associated with Hezbollah. Will it lead to all-out war? Lawfare’s Editor-in-Chief, Benjamin Wittes, sat down with Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman to talk over the latest developments between Israel and its most capable military foe.
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