Podcast

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 fails to do its job.

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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 has “a bullseye” on it. So how did this tropical island become central to U.S. strategy in the Pacific?

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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 over America’s past threaten our security today?

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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.

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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.

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Nov 14 2023
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.

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By: Peter L. Bergen

Nov 7 2023
Length: 43 mins
Podcast

Summary
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.

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Narrated by: Peter L. Bergen
Oct 31 2023
Length: 31 mins
Podcast

Summary
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.

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By: Peter L. Bergen

Oct 27 2023
Length: 46 mins

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 recounts the harrowing story of how she discovered her son’s plans to shoot up a school — and what happened next.

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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” in their stories. But it wasn’t always like this. Two veteran Russian journalists who’ve experienced the changes firsthand, explain what has happened.

Narrated by: Peter L. Bergen
Oct 24 2023
Length: 41 mins
Podcast

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