Rational Security: The “Too Much Molly” Edition

Scott R. Anderson (0:00)

I'm very excited to have both Molly R's on the podcast. This is a scenario we've tried desperately to avoid. We kicked Molly Reynolds off just like the same week we brought in Molly Roberts just to avoid this situation. And here we've stumbled back into it again. I don't know how we're going to deal with this exactly, but we'll work through it together as a team, I'm sure.

Benjamin Wittes (0:19)

I think we should just call them by their last names.

Scott R. Anderson (0:23)

Well, so I have, this is like echoing trauma for me because growing up in elementary school, I was one of four Scots in my grade, and they were Scott A, Scott, which was me, Scott B, Scott C, and then Scott W, just ruining the sequence that kid could never get on the same page as everybody else. And so it's just like, I deeply sympathized. When you came and used the last additional, I mean, where do we go from here?

Molly Roberts (0:45)

I don't know. I was going to say I like it. I feel like I'm in good company having another Molly around who is a human, because when I was growing up, the other Mollies were all dogs. And my sleepaway camp, the camp dog was named Molly, and people would be calling Molly, and I'd think that they wanted to say hi to me, and they were always calling for the dog.

Molly Reynolds (1:04)

When I was in high school, I went to a big high school, like pushing 3,000 kids, and there weren't a lot of other Mollies, but there was one year when I was in 11th grade, and there were two Mollies in the 10th grade. We all had class at the same time in one of these rooms that has a collapsible divider in the middle, so you could hear everything that was happening on the other side. This is an entire semester of that teacher calling on one of his Mollies and me turning around and like, who's talking to me?

Scott R. Anderson (1:32)

Was she the bad Molly and you were the good Molly, and you got the vicarious discipline that came in from the screaming across the barrier?

Molly Reynolds (1:38)

We were all pretty similar.

Molly Roberts (1:39)

Well, you could distinguish between us here with bad Molly and good Molly, but we might have to fight over which was which.

Scott R. Anderson (1:45)

That's going to vary week to week. We're going to grade you the way we're going to go.

What are your middle initials? This is my secret weapon, of course, is working the middle initial and everything. That's what I've been forced to do because of the other, Scott Anderson. What are your middle initials? Are they the same? Have we checked this?

Molly Roberts (2:01)

L.

Molly Reynolds (2:02)

Okay. Mine is E.

Molly Roberts (2:03)

Okay.

Scott R. Anderson (2:04)

We're good.

Molly Reynolds (2:04)

Because again, generationally, my middle name is Elizabeth. That's basically a requirement for being an elder millennial. There are like four middle names that women my age have, and Elizabeth is one of them.

Molly Roberts (2:16)

My middle name is Lampson, which I do not think is anywhere high on any list of middle names at any point in history.

Benjamin Wittes (2:22)

My middle name is also Lampson.

Scott R. Anderson (2:31)

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security, the show where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team, which we tried to make sense of the week's big national security news stories, whether they are in our lanes or not. I am your host, Scott R. Anderson, thrilled to be back with you for another week, dissecting the week's headlines, a few of my very talented and wonderful colleagues joining us this week for the first time in a very long time. It is well down technically law for anything at this point, but my boss, Miss Molly Reynolds from the Brookings Institution, Vice President of Brookings Institution. Molly, thank you for joining us.

Molly Reynolds (3:02)

Thanks for having me. I could not pass up an invitation to talk about pocket rescissions.

Scott R. Anderson (3:07)

There you go. Exactly.

I know how to get Molly in the room. It's like a couple of key phrases that we can bring in. Pocket and rescissions in that particular order is one of them. Joining me as well is my other boss, Lawfare Attorney Chief, Benjamin Wittes. Ben, thank you for coming back on the podcast as always.

Benjamin Wittes (3:24)

This is actually not a rational security recording. It's actually your annual review for both of your respective jobs.