David and I are staying in a 300-year-old house, and we've both smashed our head on the beams

twice already.

But this is our first Davos, David.

It's the first Davos.

We've been here for 24 hours, and any first impressions here?

It's interesting.

We're staying very far away.

Yeah.

Apparently they didn't want you to be part of this. They didn't want me too close. Yeah. But we finally got you, finally got you an invitation. Your invitation did not get lost in the mail. My invitation didn't get lost in the mail this time. For those of you watch the pod, you know what I'm talking about. Inside joke. Yes. But it's great to be here and great to be here at USA House.

Thanks to all the

sponsors and really delighted for our first guest for the pod Sarah Rogers works for is the

undersecretary for public diplomacy at the state department for members here who don't know this position or what you've been charged with or what you've decided to work on. I'm curious about that. Do they tell you what to do or do you come up with your own mandate? But yeah, tell us everything about what you're doing. Long-time listener, first-time guest, and thank you to both of us. Thank you from all of us at America House for joining us here.

So I am the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, and when I got this nomination, my friends and family all congratulated me and then kind of furtively said, what is that?

Yeah.

So diplomacy traditionally concerns the relationship between the American government and foreign governments.

To ambassadors, shake hands, make a deal, solve a war.

But public diplomacy is different.

Public diplomacy addresses the relationship between the American government and foreign publics.

And this has become a very important undersecretariat with the rise of the internet.

And then during the Biden administration, especially, these mushrooming concerns about

so-called disinformation and what do we do when there are allegedly malign influences on

the public view of America, the public's intersection with American interests, how do we interact with

...