Podcasts

RFK, Jr.’s views on vaccines and his penchant for questioning official narratives have kept him on the fringes of American politics for years. But now, as a third-party presidential candidate he is polling around 10% — enough to affect the outcome of an election that is expected to be decided on a razor-thin margin. In […]

David Sanger thinks so. After four decades at The New York Times, he may be America’s most experienced national security reporter, and he thinks superpower conflict is back. He describes how the U.S. overestimated the democratizing power of globalization, underestimated the ambitions of Russia and China, and what, if anything, can be done to counter […]

What Happened When the Migrant Crisis Came to Chicago? In the Room with Peter Bergen Busloads of migrants have been arriving in northern cities for the past two years, testing the patience of some residents and bringing out empathy in others. We go to Chicago to find out what the real, local effects of this […]

By Peter Bergen April 16, 2024 American voters say immigration is the number one issue on their minds in this crucial presidential election year. How did we get here? In part one of this series we look at Venezuela, a country that has seen a massive exodus of its population over the past decade, many […]

The Pentagon UFO office just released its investigation of UFO sightings going back to the 1940s. We talk with maybe the most serious historian to study UFOs, Garrett Graff, to learn what UFO questions the Pentagon investigation has laid to rest, what new questions have been raised, why it’s sometimes in the interest of national […]

Counterterrorism Chief Says Hamas Attack and Gaza War Have Reshaped Terror Threat In the Room with Peter Bergen When Christine Abizaid — the director of the National Counterterrorism Center — first began working for the United States government in 2002, the biggest terror threat facing the U.S. was from Al-Qaeda. Now, homegrown far-right terrorists pose […]

The answer is probably not. And that has to do with oil, the internet, and one of America’s most persistent foes, Iran.

Almost immediately after Hamas attacked Israel, the US began a well-coordinated, high-level, high-wire effort to free the Americans taken hostage. It wasn’t always like this. Until a few years ago, the US had no effective approach to securing the release of its citizens held overseas. After multiple Americans died in captivity while the government flailed, […]

Episode 45: A Friendly Warning for America Mar 12 2024 With November’s election approaching, it feels like the United States is at a crossroads — not just at home, but abroad too. Will the country continue to lead the global order, as it’s done so successfully since the end of WWII? Or will it retreat […]

China is Stalking its Dissidents — Even on U.S. Soil In the Room with Peter Bergen The United States is home to countless dissidents from around the world who have fled repression in places like Iran, India, Russia and, increasingly, China.