Host of Cyberwire Network (0:02)

You're listening to the Cyberwire Network powered by N2K. We've all been there. You realize your business needs to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast?

Dr. Andrew Hammond (0:22)

Well, it's easy.

Host of Cyberwire Network (0:23)

Just use Indeed when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post noticed Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you stand out and hire fast. Your post jumps to the top of search results so the right candidates see it first and it works. Sponsored jobs on indeed get 45% more applications than non sponsored ones. One of the things I love about Indeed is how fast it makes hiring. And yes, we do actually use Indeed for hiring here at N2K CyberWire. Many of my colleagues here came to us through Indeed. Plus, with Sponsored Jobs. There are no subscriptions, no long term contracts. You only pay for results. How fast is Indeed? Oh, in the minute or so that I've been Talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed Data Worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners to this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com cyberwire just go to indee indeed.com cyberwire right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com cyberwire terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

Dr. Andrew Hammond (1:57)

My name is Dr. Andrew Hammond and I'm the historian and curator at the International Spy Museum. The most important stage for me was being in the Royal Air Force. It's not like I was, you know, like a major general or anything like that, but in a humble way I felt like I was an actor in a play, but I didn't understand the plot. That was really as a result of 9 11. So I joined the Air Force. In 1998, 911 happened. I was in the dark room of a military intelligence section in Germany and I saw the South Tower be struck. And I guess we all knew that in one way or another, all of our lives would be changed then. But for me, it just led to a really deep desire to try to work out what was going on in the world. And ever since then, in one way or another, I've been trying to understand what the plot was that led me to leave the Royal Air Force and go back to school and start studying in history and international relations. I enjoyed both subjects, but I don't know, history just spoke to me more. The only way to kind of try to anticipate where we may be going or to Try to get any wisdom out of the whole journey is to look at what came before. The pathway was in some ways straightforward, in some ways quite circuitous. But I went to school, went to do a master's and a PhD. I had a number of different postdoctoral fellowships. I spent a couple of years in New York City. Quite fittingly, given where my journey began at the 911 Museum, it was quite moving because where my desk was directly overlooked ground zero. So occasionally I had to pinch myself a little bit just to think about how I'd ended up there. I was working on my research. I was also a fellow at nyu. I was learning the museum business, went back to the uk, went into academia for a little bit, and then came back to the US for a fellowship at the Library of Congress. After that, the job came up at the International Spy Museum. My day to day can really vary, but some of the typical things that I would do would be researching, editing, producing our podcast spycast. The other one is our collection. It's not hyperbole to say that we've got the world's greatest collection of intelligence and espionage related artifacts. So I research them, I engage with them, I help to interpret them, I help to communicate them to other people. So there's always new things to find out about the collection of I think around 9,000 artifacts. One of the greatest parts of the job, being able to engage with the artifacts. It can be a multi sensory experience. Sometimes the artifacts give off a particular smell, they sound a particular way. If you press the key on an Enigma machine makes a particular type of like, noise. You can see some of the lights light up, you can move some of the plugs around. It's a really fascinating way to engage with them. And as a historian as well, the historian and curator role just go so well together. Because historians mainly look at documents and curators mainly look at artifacts. If you combine both of them, it's quite a synergistic enterprise, I think. And I think another fascinating thing that I love about the artifacts is that through the artifact, it's like a portal into a different world. I feel incredibly lucky. I could go there now and just look at or engage with some of the artifacts or research more about them. So I've kind of got the keys to Aladdin's cave. I think if you have a bit of imagination and a bit of empathy and a bit of historical knowledge, you can use those artifacts to go back into a different place and time. I think that in the past, a lot of museums, it would be a label and it would say this is what this artifact is. I think that now there's different approach. How do we stitch together narratives where we can, you know, almost sprinkle an artifact along and if you connect all of the artifacts, then you're hanging onto a particular story. The history of espionage and intelligence is just filled with incredible stories. It engages the people that like the big historical canvas because when we're talking about espionage and intelligence, we're talking about international relations, war, peace, life, death, you know, all the biggies. I'm just a sucker for stories. I just love unearthing these absolute doozies and humdingers that are attached to these. For example, we have a depth analyzer that was used to basically crack Japanese naval code GN25. And that is one small part of the US victory at the Battle of Midway, one part of the war in the Pacific and America's role in the world. You can inductively move up to the bigger historical canvas or you can deductively go down, but I think it's the stories that make it all hang together.