Carnegie Council Podcasts

"In the post-9/11 world, the job of being the senior legal authority for the Department of Defense is the perfect storm collision of law, national security, and politics," says Jeh Johnson. He describes 13-14-hour days working on such thorny issues as "Don't Ask Don't Tell," Guantanamo, and weightiest of all, the conflict with al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

It's not always easy to do the right thing. "Had I had children, had I been 10 years older, I wouldn't have done it." In a candid talk, Carne Ross describes how he struggled with his conscience for years before leaving the British Foreign Service because of the Iraq War, and what he learned from this experience.

A proposed EU ban on the use of dipping bowls and refillable glass bottles of olive oil in restaurants has people asking questions. Is this more useless meddling from the EU bureaucracy? Could the ban help struggling olive oil-producing states? Is there more to this story?

What does it mean to have frequent conversations with God, as so many evangelicals say they do? Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann spent over 10 years as an active member of evangelical churches in different parts of the U.S., and uses her personal experiences, interviews, and scientific training to report on the evangelical faith.

Victims of trafficking are both young and old, male and female. They can be found working in factories, fields, brothels, private homes, and innumerable other settings. They may be hidden behind walls or seen in plain view. How can trafficking be stopped?

In this in-depth, erudite talk, George Weigel discusses the historic shift taking place in the Catholic church; the character of the new mode of Catholicism that is coming into being; his personal impressions of the new pope; and the flourishing church in Africa.

Food for Peace, which ships American farm products to developing nations, has long been criticized for crowding out local agriculture. Now, to the dismay of the U.S. farming and shipping industries, President Obama is proposing sending nations cash grants. Is "Cash for Peace" a better idea?

"So I suppose, looking forward, what I would hope to see is a greater awareness of the richness of individual identities and less attention given to single, simple, distorted, misleading collective identities."

Childhood vaccination programs have been met with skepticism and hostility in the U.S. Some oppose them on religious grounds, while others worry about preservatives. Do governments have a right to make sure children are immunized against contagious diseases?

"A divided past is only part of the human story. It may be the one that makes the headlines, but, arguably, it's not the only one and it's probably not the most important one either," says David Cannadine. "Human relations are extremely messy. They are not primarily Manichean at all, but they are about blending, borrowing, interacting, and interconnecting."