The job comes with all sorts of risks and responsibilities plus exposure to a lot of violence and trauma — whether that’s out in a war zone or in the office, where analysts may work on cases involving horrific human rights abuses. All of that can take its toll. CIA Director William Burns has acknowledged the agency needs to do more to “take care” of its officers. You’ll hear how stressful and crushing intelligence can be from former intelligence officers who did it and from the CIA’s top psychologist and the CIA’s new wellbeing chief, about what can be done about it. (Originally published 1/20/2024.)

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In the annals of violent conflict, the decades of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland seemed especially intractable. As the long-running strife flares violently again between Israelis and Palestinians, two negotiators of the astonishing and lasting peace agreement in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s, Monica McWilliams and John Alderdice, explain what it takes to get people to sit down with their enemies and whether the path to peace in Northern Ireland offers a way forward for the Middle East.

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American Presidents have been addicted to international sanctions for much of the modern era, as a way to influence the behavior of other countries. Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria – all have been subject to U.S. sanctions over the past four decades. But these regimes remain as defiant of U.S. geostrategic goals as ever. This week we explore Russian yacht snatching, the impact of sanctions on the Iranian people, and how a once-obscure office inside the Treasury Department ended up putting a chokehold on national economies all over the world.

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In recent years, several high-profile abuses of power have fractured public trust in police and created a false tension between police accountability and public safety. But somewhere between a blanket defense of the police and “defund the police” lie effective solutions. Peter talks with three thoughtful, accomplished people who have worn the badge to find out what they’ve learned about what is broken in American policing, how to fix it, and whether some types of police work might be better left to someone else. (This episode contains strong language.)

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The FBI has had a cozy relationship with Hollywood since the days of the Bureau’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, working behind the scenes with filmmakers to burnish its image. We explore how the collaboration actually works, how extensive it is, and whether moviegoers are getting spoon-fed a sugar-coated version of the truth.

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Declaring something a matter of “national security” is a great way to get people to take it seriously — and Congress to fund it. After all, what matters more than keeping the United States and its citizens safe from foreign attack? But what about the economic security of the citizenry? Or their health? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought those should be included too — and that if the government didn’t prioritize them as national security issues, Americans might begin to look to autocrats to provide for their well-being. Was FDR right?

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After instigating violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, the alt-right movement seemed to crumble — but journalist Elle Reeve, who’s been talking with them for years, says that doesn’t mean their ideas have gone away. She says that their extremist ideology is actually on the rise — and has spread from the darkest corners of the internet to the heart of American politics.

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When the CIA got started in 1947 it recruited women for one type of job: typing and filing. Very few women were out in the field gathering intelligence and recruiting foreign agents. But once they finally got the chance, they proved instrumental to obtaining secret codes and tracking down terrorists — despite sometimes facing discrimination and harassment. Women also found ways to use gender stereotypes to their advantage in their spycraft. Peter speaks with a former agent who entered the CIA in 1968, another who got her start just before 9/11, and the author of The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA. (Originally published 6/4/2024.)

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