Veteran journalist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria has made a career of putting hard questions to many of the world's most powerful people. Taking the temperature of global politics these days, he’s worried democracy is on a dangerous downward slide. He explains why — and where — leaders are taking their countries down dark paths, and what can be done to rescue democracy as we know it. Go to audible.com/news where you'll find Peter Bergen's recommendations for other news, journalism and nonfiction l...
Jun 18, 2024•40 min•Ep. 59
You may have heard some ruckus about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 887-page plan to overhaul the federal government, fire thousands of career bureaucrats and bring in loyalists if Trump wins a second term. But what would this look like in practice? You’ll hear from the author of one chapter of the plan who says curing what ails the US State Department should start with replacing many of its diplomats. And you’ll hear why a couple of veteran US diplomats believe doing so will threaten n...
Jun 11, 2024•48 min•Ep. 58
When the CIA got started in 1947 it recruited women for one type of job: typing and filing. Very few women were out in the field gathering intelligence and recruiting foreign agents. But once they finally got the chance, they proved instrumental to obtaining secret codes and tracking down terrorists - despite sometimes facing discrimination and harassment. Women also found ways to use gender stereotypes to their advantage in their spycraft. Peter speaks with a former agent who entered the CIA in...
Jun 04, 2024•45 min•Ep. 57
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is the most popular leader in the world — and he’s poised to win reelection to a third term. With his embrace of religious nationalism, is India’s secular democracy in peril? Or is Modi just giving the country’s 1.1 billion Hindus what they want? 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://a...
May 28, 2024•47 min•Ep. 56
How could the US lose a war with China? What happens if American political divisions keep getting more extreme? And what in the world will A.I, mean for national security? These are the questions that keep the former commander of NATO, retired Admiral James Stavridis and retired Marine Captain Elliot Ackerman up at night. But unlike a lot of people in their shoes, they haven’t been harrying policymakers with op-eds or whitepapers. Instead they teamed up to write a set of novels showing how badly...
May 21, 2024•36 min•Ep. 55
Mina Al-Oraibi is the editor of The National , an English-language newspaper headquartered in Abu Dhabi. She shares how the post-October 7th news landscape looks inside the Middle East: how Hamas is viewed in the region, how much of a threat Iran poses, and why she calls the conflict in Gaza “Joe Biden’s war.” 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 ...
May 14, 2024•39 min•Ep. 54
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 this lengthy sit-down, first published in September, 2023, Peter probes Kennedy’s unrelenting skepticism about a wide range of issues, from the war in Ukraine to the fentanyl epid...
May 07, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 53
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 the “grand delusion” that kept so many smart observers from seeing this new era coming. Go to audible.com/news where you'll find Peter Bergen's rec...
Apr 30, 2024•36 min•Ep. 52
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 surge are — not just what the politicians with their megaphones say they are. And we explore some solutions to a problem that has become the number one issue on voters' minds in this crucial election year. Go to audible.com/news where you'll find Peter Bergen's recommendation...
Apr 23, 2024•49 min•Ep. 51
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 of whom end up in cities and states across the U.S. 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 ...
Apr 16, 2024•35 min•Ep. 50
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 security to keep information secret, and the connection Graff sees between UFO conspiracy theories and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Go to audible.com/...
Apr 09, 2024•38 min•Ep. 49
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 a key threat, the Hamas attacks on October 7th and the ongoing war in Gaza are fueling new risks, and some American politicians claim that lots of terrorists are entering the U.S. through the southern border. In a rare interview, Abizaid describes the real...
Apr 02, 2024•42 min•Ep. 48
The answer is probably not. And that has to do with oil, the internet, and one of America’s most persistent foes, Iran. 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 .
Mar 26, 2024•41 min•Ep. 47
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, their loved ones set out on a campaign to force change. This episode's guests are two of the top-ranking administration officials currently t...
Mar 19, 2024•49 min•Ep. 46
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 into isolationism? A distinguished foreign friend of America’s — the British soldier, diplomat, politician, and adventurer Rory Stewart — shares his views on what’s at stake, both for the world and for the U.S. itself. Go to audible.com/news where you'...
Mar 12, 2024•38 min•Ep. 45
New tools like Chat GPT have sparked futuristic fears about intelligent machines wiping people out. But there’s a more immediate A.I. threat coming, in a year when half the world’s population is headed to the polls. 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 ....
Mar 05, 2024•44 min•Ep. 44
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. The leader of the project to build the bomb during WWII, Robert Oppenheimer, believed — at first — that it could help prevent wars between the superpowers. There hasn’t been one since. So was he right? Go to audible.com/news where you'll find Peter Bergen's r...
Feb 27, 2024•42 min•Ep. 43
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. But US soil — even U.S. citizenship — isn’t a guarantee they’ll be left alone. Why are foreign governments daring to harass, hurt, or even kill their foes in the U.S. — and what's being done to stop them? Go to audible.com/news where you'll find Peter Bergen's recommendations for other news, journalism and nonfiction listening. See Privacy ...
Feb 20, 2024•43 min•Ep. 42
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. 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 ....
Feb 13, 2024•41 min•Ep. 41
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? Are any of them cause for concern about our government’s integrity or our national security? And how does the Hunter Biden saga stack up against corruption allegations against oth...
Feb 06, 2024•51 min•Ep. 40
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 crushing intelligence can be from former intelligence officers who did it and from the CIA’s top psychol...
Jan 30, 2024•43 min•Ep. 39
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 Peter Bergen's recommendations for other news, journalism and nonfiction listening. See Privacy Policy a...
Jan 23, 2024•40 min•Ep. 38
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 to audible.com/news where you'll find Peter Bergen's recommendations for other news, journalism and nonfic...
Jan 16, 2024•30 min•Ep. 37
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 .
Jan 09, 2024•38 min•Ep. 36
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, meant to deter China, will ultimately make them safer. As one legislator put it, it’s like the island ...
Dec 19, 2023•35 min•Ep. 35
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, three historians bring us into the impassioned debates about America’s origins and ask, does the fight o...
Dec 12, 2023•37 min•Ep. 34
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-sell-my-info ....
Dec 05, 2023•32 min•Ep. 33
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. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/pri...
Nov 28, 2023•35 min•Ep. 32
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 .
Nov 14, 2023•28 min•Ep. 31
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 temperatures rise, as in her most recent book, Under a White Sky . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/pr...
Nov 07, 2023•43 min•Ep. 30
