Today is the two year anniversary of the first episode of @inlieuoffunshow, an event that makes me absurdly proud of this little project that @Klonick and I undertook at the outset of the pandemic. It makes very happy that the show has helped keep a lot of people happy and sane
during a difficult time. Through it, I have made new friends—particularly @scottjshapiro and @GenevieveDFR, who became cohosts, but also lovely people from around the world who just showed up to be part of the self-named #GreekChorus.
The anniversary also makes me think about @lawfareblog, a prior experiment done impulsively with friends and colleagues, @BobbyChesney and @jacklgoldsmith—an experiment that kind of bit me in the ass and took over my life. The other day, I noticed that there were literally 20
people in Lawfare's Monday editorial meeting. I could not be prouder of the team we have built or the people whom I have had the privilege to work with on this project over the years. It's an honor and a pleasure.
Most of the best things that happen to us professionally are accidents. To everyone who is trying to build a career out there, let accidents happen. Let experiments go the way they want to go.

Good things happen.
And please do join us for Second Anniversary Cheese Night this evening on @inlieuoffunshow. We will be posting the link later today and I'll append it to this thread when we do.

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More from @benjaminwittes

Mar 27
One other point on this film: It will make you never take the Pulitzer Prizes seriously again. I actually had a front-row seat for a late episode in the Walter Duranty, when @anneapplebaum and @dongrahamdc1 undertook to have the Pulitzer Board consider retracting
The Walter Duranty Pulitzer. Anne did a great deal of historical research on the degree of Duranty‘s corruption—work you can read about in “Red Famine.” The result was this truly shameful statement from the Pulitzer Board:
pulitzer.org/news/statement…
The film covers the underlying events, not the modern day politics of the Pulitzers. But it made me think of what Anne and Don tried to do. Because in important ways, they were still fighting, in a small way, Gareth Jones’s fight to tell the truth about Stalinism and what it
Read 5 tweets
Mar 26
One other point on Biden’s comment: there are things we cannot give the Ukrainians for fear of escalation. There’s not going to be a no-fly zone, for example. NATO is not going to intervene militarily. And there are weapons systems we won’t give them. Fair enough. Russia is a
major nuclear power. Particularly given the limitations on what we can do, it is critically important that we look the situation in the face and tell the truth. Biden has been very good about this, for the most part, despite being a remarkably inarticulate fellow.
But this statement is an important breakthrough, one he owed the Ukrainians given the functional limits of the support we can provide.

It is good when an American president, speaking on behalf of the entire free world, says what every Ukrainian knows: that there can be no
Read 4 tweets
Mar 25
The real question is which Bible character would make the BEST podcast host. Here's my nominee: Any of the Four Horsemen. I would listen to that.
Other Biblical podcast hosts I would be interested in hearing from: Hagar, Korach, the Golden Calf, Goliath, Jezebel...
I really think the Golden Calfcast would be lit.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 17
We are going to have to rename some important works so they can appear in Russia:
—“Special Military Operation and Peace,” Tolstoy
—“Star Special Military Operations,” Lucas
—“The Art of Special Military Operations,” Sun Tsu
—“On Special Military Operations,” Clausewitz
—“Special Military Operation Games,” Badham
—“The Looking Glass Special Military Operation,” Le Carre
—“Man, the State, and Special Military Operation,” Waltz
Read 4 tweets
Mar 13
Some thoughts for all of Law School Twitter: I've been corresponding with @dietellewoods, whom I interviewed here, about the situation of displaced Ukrainian law students, and I think there's a big role for U.S. law schools to play here. THREAD
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…
A note in advance: I am certain everything I am about to say applies to a lot of other professions too, and by focusing on law here, I'm not suggesting that the profession is unique or that law students are facing usual disruption relative to others. But I work with a lot of
lawyers and law schools, and this is the field about which I know something and know people. So I'm writing this about law because that's where I think the people I know can most easily make a difference consistent with the work they do every day anyway.
Read 9 tweets
Mar 13
You might have to know a little bit about about the history of opera and a little bit about the history of Italy to be moved to tears by this.
Then again you may not.
Background: the so-called Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s early work Nabucco, which expresses the yearning of Jewish exiles in Babylon to return to Israel, was widely understood and certainly intended as a metaphor for Italian national unity and independence.
Read 5 tweets

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