In the Room with Peter Bergen

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. All of that can take its toll. CIA Director William Burns has acknowledged the agency needs to do more to “take care” of its officers. You’ll hear how stressful and...

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 out about sightings going back to Roswell, and what he thinks is the biggest UFO conspiracy of all. Go to audible.com/news where you'll find Pete...

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 for the possibility of conflict. So how will the U.S. defend its interests in a place where most of us have never set foot? Go t...

Meet the newest branch of the American military and learn how life as you know it could stop if it fails to do its job. Go to audible.com/news where you'll find Peter Bergen's recommendations for other news, journalism and nonfiction listening. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

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. But not everyone on Guam is convinced that all this additional military buildup, me...

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 the true cause of the Civil War, thre...

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. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sel...

Some countries have fallen into a toxic cycle of tit-for-tat prosecutions, where every ex-president has to expect they’ll eventually end up behind bars. Could the U.S. be next? Two constitutional experts warn that some of the criminal cases against Donald Trump could cause cycles of retribution that poison our politics. And why our saving grace just might be — get this — government bureaucracy. Se...

Experts on urban and underground warfare explain why an aerial campaign alone can’t defeat Hamas, what the shortcomings are of the Israeli Defense Force, and how long, complicated, and tragic this war will be. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

How do two of America's leading nonfiction writers turn some of the biggest issues affecting us into juicy narratives that change hearts and minds — and maybe even policies? Patrick Radden Keefe on how he rendered the opioid crisis as a dramatic tale of money, power, and human suffering in his book Empire of Pain , and Elizabeth Kolbert on how she illuminates what we are losing as global temperatu...

General David Petraeus and historian Andrew Roberts, co-authors of the new book “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine,” discuss how they believe this war will evolve, how it compares to other conflicts of the last seven and a half decades, and what we can learn from the mistakes made during those wars. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice...

Another mass shooting is making headlines in the United States. With it comes the familiar feeling of powerlessness. But a rare peek inside the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit reveals that at least some shootings are being prevented, using techniques to identify people headed down the ‘pathway to violence.’ In the absence of gun reform, agents share what ordinary people can do to help. And a mother...

When Ukrainian soldiers liberated the town of Bucha, Ukraine in March, 2022, news reports showed scenes of bodies lying in the streets. Human Rights Watch documented cases of summary executions. But on Russian state television, the news was presented as “fake,” a staged event. Objective reporting about the war in Ukraine is now against the law in Russia and journalists can’t even use the word “war...

New tools like Chat GPT have sparked futuristic fears about intelligent machines wiping people out or, at the very least, taking all our jobs. But there’s a more immediate A.I. threat coming for us, as soon as the next election. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face,” Mike Tyson famously once said. Vladimir Putin thought he could defeat Ukraine in three days. How did he get it so wrong? And what can we learn from his mistake? Throughout history, according to one of the world’s leading experts, wars have almost never played out as predicted. But if that’s the case, how are we supposed to prepare for future...

Twenty years ago, a massive statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down in Baghdad, a day that for many Iraqis signaled hope for the future of the country. But America’s invasion did not come with a coherent plan for what should come next, and those hopes were dashed. What is the legacy of U.S. intervention in the country today? Peter travels to Iraq to find out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.c...

Please note: The views shared in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of Audible or "In the Room with Peter Bergen." RFK, Jr.’s views on vaccines and penchant for questioning official narratives have kept him on the fringes of American politics for years. His blistering critiques of the Biden Administration on everything from the pandemic to the war in Ukraine have earned him praise from...

The wild story of the 'worst corporate data breach ever,' the man who got blamed for it, and the sleuths who figured out who actually did it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Meet Admiral William McRaven, the Navy SEAL who literally wrote THE book on special operations, and who says the best way to plan the raid for the world’s most wanted man - or do pretty much anything else - is to start by making your bed. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

It's impossible to understand the events of 9/11 without understanding Osama bin Laden. Who was he? What was he hoping to achieve with the attack? How did the US track him down? And what can we learn from that story now? Three women - a CIA analyst, an FBI investigator, and a scholar who read 6,000 pages of documents recovered from bin Laden’s compound after he was killed - recount how they came t...

We can’t do much without batteries and microchips; they power everything from smartphones to electric cars to defense systems. But the U.S. ceded control of the raw materials required to make them - to its chief rival, China. Is it possible to catch up, especially given America’s more stringent labor and environmental standards? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privac...

Malcolm Nance was retired from the U.S. Navy, but the Russian invasion of its neighbor compelled him to dig out his old weapons and equipment, and join up with the International Legion fighting in Ukraine. He explains how the International Legion functions, what it’s like to take a direct hit from a Russian shell, and why he doesn’t believe he and his fellow legionnaires have run afoul of an 18th...

Actually, there basically is - led by the same guy. They have found that President Trump didn’t cause the botched response (although they label him a “comorbidity”). Neither did partisan politics (although there are some isolated exceptions). And if you think that’s surprising, wait till you hear how prepared we are (not) for the next pandemic. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and C...

In the final chaotic days of the US presence in Afghanistan, a young survivor of a Taliban attack was trying to get to the airport, the top American diplomat was doing his best to make the departure as orderly as humanly possible, and the Afghan national security advisor was fleeing with the president on a helicopter. You will hear from all of them and more in this exploration of how the US pullou...

After a 20-year war that cost the United States two trillion dollars and led to nearly 200,000 deaths, the Taliban are back in power - and offering safe haven to Al Qaeda once again. General David H. Petraeus, Trump advisor Lisa Curtis, Afghan ambassador to the US Roya Rahmani and others, bring us "in the room" to explain how this debacle came to pass, and warn us of the consequences. See Privacy...