Podcasts

Did Oppenheimer’s Atomic Bomb Make the World Safer? The wild success of Oppenheimer, with 13 Oscar nominations and nearly $1 billion in ticket sales, has revived a debate about the most destructive weapon ever created — and renewed concerns about how close the world might be to nuclear war.

In the Room with Peter Bergen The January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol was the culmination of political trends in the United States that have festered for decades. And it may be a dress rehearsal for what comes next.

Episode 40: Hunting the Bidens Feb 6 2024 How did Hunter Biden’s laptop, a digital chronicle of misadventures by President Joe Biden’s troubled son, become a political flashpoint and help spark potential impeachment proceedings? What personal and business secrets buried in the old computer are being weaponized against the Biden family during the 2024 campaign? […]

Narrated by: Peter L. Bergen Jan 30 2024 Length: 43 mins Podcast Summary The job comes with all sorts of risks and responsibilities plus exposure to a lot of violence and trauma — whether that’s out in a war zone or in the office, where analysts may work on cases involving horrific human rights abuses. […]

Narrated by: Peter L. Bergen Jan 23 2024 Length: 40 mins Podcast Sean Kirkpatrick is one of the best guys on earth to answer that question. He set up the Pentagon’s new office tasked with investigating UFO sightings by the US military. But he rarely gives interviews. Until now. You’ll hear what his investigators found […]

Narrated by: Peter L. Bergen Jan 16 2024 Summary Until recently, the eight nations whose borders creep into the icy Arctic haven’t had much of a reason to fight over this forbidding landscape. But as climate change melts the ice and opens up access to all kinds of precious resources, the United States is preparing […]

Episode 36: Yes, the United States has a Space Force. Stop Laughing. By: Peter L. Bergen Narrated by: Peter L. Bergen Jan 9 2024 Length: 38 mins Podcast 5.0 out of 5 stars5.0 (2 ratings) Meet the newest branch of the American military and learn how life as you know it could stop if it […]

In the summer of 2022, the United States military ran a major training exercise to prepare to respond if its ally Taiwan gets invaded by China. Central to the strategy: the tiny American island of Guam, the westernmost part of the United States, where the U.S. has more than doubled defense spending in recent years. […]

Revisiting history is never simple. Especially the history of the United States, which is often painful, and, invariably political. At dinner tables, school board meetings, and political protests, Americans disagree not only about how our past should be interpreted, but what actually happened in the first place. From the myth about George Washington’s teeth to […]

Hollywood may have portrayed him as a nerd, but Mike Vickers was the superstar architect of America’s covert war in the 1980s that drove the Soviet army out of Afghanistan. And this alum of the Green Berets and the CIA has some ideas about how to do the same thing in Ukraine today.