Brent chats with Jennifer Mitzen of Ohio State university. Jennifer talks about growing up in Evanston, Illinois, going to Wesleyan, living in New York after college and being an aerobics instructor, calling her mentor from a pay phone at 22 to ask for advice on grad school. Going to U of C for the PhD, her master’s thesis on Morgenthau/Waltz, her first dissertation topic on Arendt and how/why she changed. The transition to teaching at Ohio State, how she and Catarina Kinnvall met and got ontological security studies going as a research community, her ‘healthier’ views now on approaching research topics that others work on, how she writes, walking her puppy, traveling to conferences and workshops with her children, and how Chris Agius taught her daughter how to play pool.