In the Room with Peter Bergen, the first podcast hosted by Bergen (CNN’s National Security Analyst, widely known for landing the first televised interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997), was created to fill a gap in the news/politics podcast space, presenting current events and trends through a uniquely security-focused lens. Featuring unbiased, nonpartisan conversations with experts and those “in the room” for world events and key policy decisions, each episode is designed to give listeners the information they need on topics like artificial intelligence, conflicts in the Middle East, UFOs, and more, in order to discern which threats they really need to worry about, and which they don’t.
In a media landscape that rewards hyperbole and alarm-setting, In the Room was created to be a source of knowledge, historical context, and expert, level-headed assessment on all things security-related.
To achieve its goal of empowering listeners with the information they need to assess the security threats presented by events and decisions of the day, Fresh Produce assembled a team with industry-leading journalistic and investigative experience to work on In the Room. That team is led by Executive Producer Alison Craiglow, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist and former EP of Freakonomics Radio, and includes producers, researchers, and editors who are veterans of ABC News, The Christian Science Monitor, The Intercept, KQED, and WBEZ whose work has also been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Post and The Los Angeles Times.
To best convey the material in each episode, a multi-discussion format was chosen to highlight the perspectives of experts from various disciplines and sides of issues. Topics covered through this format have included the Israel-Hamas War, election fraud, mass shootings, pandemics, and more. Guests have included former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, US Former Director of Policy Planning Kiron Skinner, Thomas Friedman (New York Times foreign affairs columnist), an eyewitness of the 1968 Chicago DNC riots, and more.
One-on-one interviews that require fewer editing hours have also been utilized to tackle timely issues. Guests for some of these special one-on-ones have included Clarissa Ward (CNN's Chief International Correspondent, sharing experiences from reporting in conflict zones), Michael Flynn (Former National Security Advisor, discussing his views on US national security), and CNN host Fareed Zakaria, among others.
In the Room with Peter Bergen has been written about extensively in media such as The Guardian, The Hill, Politico, Washington Times, and more, and its original reporting has been covered by CNN, NPR (segments in Here & Now, 1A, The Brian Lehrer Show), Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, and many more. The podcast has also been recognized with nominations from The Shorty Awards, The Webby Awards, The Signal Awards, and won the Sigma Chi Delta Awards’ “Best Conversational Podcast” category in 2024.
