Dr. Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress, and the first woman and the first African-American ever to hold that prestigious pose.  Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Carla grew up in Queens and in Chicago.  Her parents were both talented musicians – her father taught music at Florida A&M University – but Carla, by her own admission, did not have the music gene.  What she did have was a love of knowledge and of reading.

After graduating from Roosevelt University in Chicago, and while looking for work, she became an “Accidental Librarian.”  A college friend gave her a lead on a job in a public library.  That tip led to a career in librarianship, including a doctorate in library science from the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago, a teaching post at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Science, and leadership roles in the public library systems in both Chicago and Baltimore.

In Baltimore, as Executive Director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Carla led that city’s magnificent public library system for almost a quarter of a century and was widely praised – and properly so – for keeping the libraries open in the wake of riots that shook Baltimore in 2015, following the death of Freddie Gray - an African-American - man in police custody.

In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Carla to serve as the 14th Librarian of Congress.  Upon her confirmation by the Senate, she took over that prestigious post.

The Library of Congress is a crown jewel.  It dates to 1800, and one of its first large acquisitions of books came from the personal library of Thomas Jefferson.  Though the Library of Congress was originally housed in the U.S. Capitol Building itself, fires in 1814 and 1851 – the first set by the British, the second, an accident – and a burgeoning collection required that the library move to its own building. 

Today, its astonishing collection is housed in numerous buildings, including the Jefferson Building, which contains the breathtaking Main Reading Room, completed in 1897.  The Library of Congress today has more than 171 million items, including 32 million catalogued books in 470 languages, 61 million manuscripts, 15 million photographs, 5 million maps, the papers of 23 presidents, and extraordinarily rare and precious books, including an original Gutenberg Bible and the Lincoln Bible. 

In fact, when Carla Hayden took the oath of office for the post she now holds, she took it on the original Lincoln Bible.  She shares with podcast host Chuck Rosenberg a wonderful story about that day, that Bible, her mom, and the oath.

In 2021, Carla is also leading a new Library-wide initiative, Of the People: Widening the Path, to connect the national library more deeply with Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other underrepresented communities.  To do this, the Library of Congress plans to expand its collections, use technology to enable storytelling, and offer more internship and fellowship opportunities to attract diverse librarians and archivists. The initiative, supported by a $15 million investment from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will allow the Library of Congress to share a more inclusive story about our contemporary American culture, our historical record and how we understand our past.

The Library of Congress is a Palace to Knowledge.  It is one of the most important cultural institutions in the United States, and in the world.  The person privileged to run it is Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress.

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Carrie Hessler-Radelet – a native of Michigan and the former Director of the Peace Corps – and her extended family have a remarkable and unique relationship with that storied organization. They hold the distinction of being the only Peace Corps family to have four generations serve as volunteers, including both of her grandparents, her aunt and her nephew. In fact, Carrie’s aunt, Virginia Kirkwood – who served in Turkey and was the 10,000th volunteer – inspired Carrie to join the Peace Corps.

After her graduation from Boston University, Carrie and her husband served as Peace Corps volunteers in Western Samoa, where they taught at an all-girls school. Her story of their relationship with their host family – Losa and Viane and their nine children – is incredibly moving.  

Part of that story includes a return visit to their host family while Carrie was Director of the Peace Corps – 32 years after she served as a volunteer in Western Samoa. If you want to understand how a volunteer can change lives in a remote corner of the planet, Carrie’s story is illuminating and inspirational.

The Peace Corps is one the most popular, successful, and admired organizations in America. President John F. Kennedy, shortly after his inauguration in 1961, created the Peace Corps and called on volunteers to immerse themselves in another culture and another community, in every corner of the globe.   

Today, these volunteers (of all ages), work side by side with local leaders, to tackle some of the most difficult and vexing problems on the planet – from health care, to education, to food security, to climate change. The men and women who serve in the Peace Corps are truly among America’s best, representing the best of America.

In 2014, following her nomination by President Barack Obama, Carrie became the Director of the Peace Corps. As Director, she led an extensive organizational reform effort, most notably to enhance the health and safety of volunteers, including the development of a sexual assault risk reduction and response program. That, she will tell you, had a very personal component to it – as a young volunteer in Western Samoa, Carrie was sexually assaulted. When other victims came forward and shared their own stories with her, Carrie knew that the Peace Corps had to take decisive action to ensure the health and safety of its volunteers around the globe.

Carrie’s description of the Peace Corps and the stories of service, humility, compassion and dedication among the volunteers – including a story Carrie shares about a volunteer named Peter – are inspirational. Carrie illustrates beautifully, why the Peace Corps plays such a vital role in America and around the world, and why we should always choose optimism.

If you would like to learn more about this marvelous organization - which celebrates its 60th anniversary on March 1 of this year - you can visit its website at The Peace Corps.

Frank Figliuzzi grew up in southern Connecticut, but with his eyes and ears tuned to the nearby New York City media market and to enthralling stories of mob busting FBI agents. Those amazing tales made a big impression on a young Frank. As an 11-year-old, he wrote a letter to a senior FBI special agent, asking how he could one day join their ranks. To this day, he still has the personal reply that he received, encouraging him to pursue that dream.

Back then, the FBI primarily hired attorneys and accountants to become special agents, and so Frank later went to law school, to polish his resume for the FBI. It worked, and in 1987, after graduating from the FBI Academy, Frank was assigned to the Atlanta field office, where he began a career working – among other things – counterintelligence cases.  

In counterintelligence work, the FBI tries to identify and neutralize threats from foreign intelligence services that seek to steal our military, economic, and trade secrets. Our adversaries also attempt to recruit US persons and to turn them against our own country. In this episode, Frank describes the vital work he did in counterintelligence, including how his recruitment of a double agent from another country to assist the United States, came to a sudden halt when the FBI and the United States was betrayed by one of its own – Robert Hanssen – a disgraced former FBI special agent now serving a life sentence in a federal prison for espionage. It is a fascinating and disturbing story.

Frank’s long and distinguished career in the FBI, took him to many different places – San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Cleveland. Among the most challenging posts he held was in the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, where he imposed discipline – including dismissal – on men and women who violated the FBI’s strict code of conduct – decisions that were often agonizingly difficult but necessary to preserve the integrity of the organization.

At the end of his FBI career, Frank ran the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI, and instituted important changes to ensure that intelligence analysts and special agents worked more closely together to protect our nation from relentless foreign adversaries.

Frank was a thoughtful and principled leader and has written eloquently about his time at the FBI and about its core principles – such as compassion, credibility, and consistency – in his new book, The FBI Way.

If you have thoughtful feedback on this episode or others, please email us at theoathpodcast@gmail.com.

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Matt Olsen held so many important and difficult jobs in federal law enforcement and national security that it is hard to know where to begin.  A son of North Dakota and a graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School, Matt worked as a civil rights prosecutor, an Assistant United States Attorney, on the staff of FBI Director Bob Mueller, as the Executive Director of the Guantanamo Review Task Force, as the General Counsel of the National Security Agency, and as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Though we could dedicate an episode to his work in any one of those posts, his work as a civil rights prosecutor – fresh out of a judicial clerkship – was fascinating and vital.  There, he focused on enforcing the Voting Rights Act – a landmark civil rights statute – in several southern states to ensure that minority citizens were not disenfranchised.  

Later, appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to lead the Guantanamo Review Task Force, Matt found that assignment to be among his most challenging and difficult.  In that role, it was his responsibility to try to meet one of President Obama’s earliest stated objectives – to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay within the president’s first year in office.  That, as Matt describes, turned out to be an enormously complex task – a conundrum given the population there and the difficult decisions that had to be made about who should be released, who should be tried – either in a civilian court or in a military commission setting – and who could neither be tried nor released.  The process that Matt and his team built to inform those decisions was serious and thoughtful, but the task was inordinately complex and the headwinds that his task force confronted – political and practical – were fierce.  

Matt also served as the General Counsel for the National Security Agency – the leading signals intelligence agency in the world, and one of the most important sources of information for U.S. national security officials.  That job required striking a balance on uncertain and often shifting legal terrain.  One one hand, Matt was keenly aware of – and devoted to – his duty to the Constitution and to the laws that govern intelligence collection.  He knew his lawyers and NSA operators should never cross “the line” and that it was therefore crucial that they understood where the line was and not get too close to it.  On the other hand, Matt clearly understood the need to confront dangerous and relentless counterterrorism and counterintelligence adversaries because of the harm they could inflict on U.S. persons and our national security interests.  He approached this job – and this balancing act – in a careful, ethical, and deliberate manner. 

Matt Olsen was a thoughtful and principled public servant, a gifted leader, and a true expert on national security.  He is also humble, kind, and deeply thoughtful about the proper role the government should play to secure our nation and protect its citizens while honoring its commitment to civil rights and civil liberties.

If you have thoughtful feedback on this episode or others, please email us at theoathpodcast@gmail.com.

Find the transcript and all our previous episodes at MSNBC.com/TheOath 

Mike Bush, the former Commissioner of the New Zealand Police, served for more than four decades in law enforcement – starting as an 18-year-old constable, serving as a detective, and promoting up through the ranks of this highly professional and respected organization.

The population of New Zealand is roughly five million people. About one in six New Zealanders are of Maori descent – an indigenous Polynesian community – and that community has historically been underserved. Building ties to the Maori community was a priority for Mike, as was recruiting more citizens of Maori descent to the department, so that the New Zealand Police better reflected the diversity of the country.

One of the initiatives Mike developed and promoted as Commissioner was something he called “Prevention First” – to change the focus of policing from a model of locking people up to a model of early intervention, designed to prevent crime in the first place. Mike knew that gave his officers more of an opportunity to help people and to keep them safe.

The New Zealand Police have long been leaders in community policing. More than half a century ago, the New Zealand Police dropped the word “force” from their name and to this day their officers do not routinely carry firearms. The New Zealand Police have a well-deserved reputation for integrity and decency, and Mike describes their efforts to earn and preserve that reputation and to serve the diverse communities in his country.

Though violent crime is relatively rare, Mike investigated some of the biggest and most interesting cases in New Zealand history, including the successful recovery of a five-year-old girl who had been kidnapped, and a cold case investigation of a young murdered woman, solved through ingenious forensic work.

And, while posted overseas for part of his career, Mike was a first responder to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that struck Thailand – where he was stationed – and many other south east Asian nations, killing almost one quarter of a million people. Mike describes how law enforcement officers from around the world responded to that horrific tragedy.

Mike Bush had a fascinating career in the New Zealand Police, ultimately running the service and leading its 13,500 men and women. He helped transform policing in his nation, and is widely regarded as a visionary law enforcement professional.

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Find the transcript and all our previous episodes at MSNBC.com/TheOath

Heather Penney was born in Tucson, Arizona, the daughter of a fighter pilot. Flying was in her blood, and Heather earned her own pilot’s license while studying as an English major at Purdue University. Heather harbored a dream of being a fighter pilot, like her dad, except that there was one problem: back then, women were not allowed to fly in combat.

Fortunately for Heather and for the nation, Congress removed the combat exclusion for aviation while she was in graduate school. Heather immediately applied for one of these highly competitive openings, and secured a slot with the District of Columbia Air National Guard. That changed her life.

At Air Force pilot training, Heather was the only woman in her class. She was an excellent student and an excellent pilot but there she struggled with one particular old-school navigational skill – flying fix to fix. To graduate – to earn her Air Force flight wings – she had to master it.

And so, she practiced and studied – including by sitting in a kitchen chair, staring at a mock cockpit hung in her closet in her apartment, a toilet plunger substituting for her control stick. “Chair flying,” memorizing every movement, over and over, until she had it down. With grit and practice she mastered fix to fix navigation and ultimately graduated from flight school as an F-16 pilot - a single engine supersonic fighter aircraft.

In the late summer of 2001, Heather was a first lieutenant in the 121st Fighter Squadron, D.C. Air National Guard, stationed at Joint Base Andrews. She had been the only woman in her Air Force flight class, and was now the only woman in her squadron. And then, in an instant, her life almost changed again.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States was under attack. Hijacked commercial planes had been crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and another into the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia. Thousands of innocent people were dead. One hijacked plane was still in the air. It was headed for Washington, D.C.

Lieutenant Penney was ordered up that late summer morning; ordered to fly a mission. It was, she believed, the last mission she would ever fly. It is a riveting story. And nobody tells that story better than Heather.

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Jon Jarvis grew up in rural Virginia, in the magnificent Shenandoah Valley. With national forest land in his backyard he learned to love the outdoors, roaming, hunting, and fishing with his father and brother. Shortly after graduating with a degree in biology from the College of William and Mary, Jon began a four-decade career with the National Park Service that culminated in an eight-year tour of duty – from 2009 until 2017 – as its Director.

The great American author and Pulitzer Prize winner, Wallace Stegner, wrote that our “[n]ational parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best….” That is certainly true. But these parks are more than the best idea we ever had. They are spectacular sanctuaries, and they are beloved.

From Acadia to Zion, from Yellowstone to Yosemite; from Glacier to Grand Canyon, our national parks offer breathtaking natural landscapes and seascapes. In all, the National Park Service manages 419 national parks and historical sites that cover 84 million acres and draw 330 million annual visitors. Jon Jarvis knows these places as well as anyone.

Jon served in eight national parks, from his days as a ranger, through his turn as the superintendent of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska – the largest park in our national system. Wrangells, by itself, covers 13 million acres – roughly the size of six Yellowstones. It is a place of pristine beauty and utter solitude.

What do park rangers do? Jon’s resume includes a delightful entry that answers that question: rangers do “ranger things.” Jon fought fires, trapped bears, forded glacial rivers, rappelled off cliffs, rescued lost people, gave tours, patrolled on skis and horses, climbed mountains, hiked, and watched sunsets. Ranger things.

From 2009 until 2017, Jon served as the Director of the National Park Service, in charge of its 22,000 employees and its 3-billion-dollar annual budget. He is a passionate advocate for our great national park system, and knows it is both a stunning resource for us to enjoy and a gift to preserve for those who come after us.

If you have thoughtful feedback on this episode or others, please email us at theoathpodcast@gmail.com.

Find the transcript and all our previous episodes at MSNBC.com/TheOath