Photo by Alycia Kravitz
Hello! My name is Peter and I’m an audio journalist living in Brooklyn, NY. Here’s some of the stuff I’ve helped make.
FEATURED WORK
The Experiment - May 5th, 2022
Almost 30 years ago, a fed-up Manhattan-family-court judge named Judith Sheindlin was sitting in her chambers when she got a call from a couple of television producers. They pitched her the idea for a TV show with Judy at its center.
The result was Judge Judy, one of the most popular and influential television series ever made. Over its decades-long run, it beat out The Oprah Winfrey Show in ratings, led to the explosion of court TV, and influenced how large swaths of Americans think about crime and justice.
The Experiment’s Peter Bresnan has been watching Judge Judy with his mom ever since he was a kid. But recently, he began to wonder how the show managed to become such a force in American culture, and what impact it’s had on the thousands of litigants who stood before Judy’s TV bench. What he found was a strange story about what happens when the line between law and entertainment starts to blur.
Alec Soth / Magnum for The Atlantic
THE EXPERIMENT - March 17, 2022
James Sulzer has always loved building things. As a rehabilitation engineer, he spent years creating devices that he hoped would help patients recover from serious brain trauma such as strokes. And he believed strongly in the potential of rehab technology—that with the right robot, he could relieve a whole array of brain injuries.
But then, one spring day in 2020, there was a horrible accident. And suddenly James had to apply everything he knew about science and rehabilitation to help fix his own family. The Atlantic senior editor Daniel Engber spent months talking to James, following him as he used his scientific knowledge to try to find meaning in tragedy.
The Experiment - December 9th, 2021
On January 6, 2021, William J. Walker was head of the D.C. National Guard. He had buses full of guardsmen in riot gear ready to deploy in case Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally turned dangerous. But when rioters violently stormed the Capitol building, the Guard was nowhere to be found. Walker says he was forced to wait for three hours before his superiors allowed him to send in his troops. “My soldiers were asking me, ‘Sir, what the hell is going on?’” Walker says. “‘Are they watching the news? Are they watching what’s going on at the Capitol?’ And I had no answer. I don’t recall ever being in that position, where I did not have an answer for my soldiers.”
Now, almost one year later, Walker is the sergeant-at-arms of the U.S. House of Representatives—the first Black man to ever hold that office. The Experiment’s correspondent Tracie Hunte and producer Peter Bresnan visit Walker in his new office at the Capitol to ask him about what happened on January 6, and what he’s doing to make sure it never happens again.
Lisa Ferdinando, Department of Defense
The Experiment - October 28th, 2021
Just as the Navajo researcher Rene Begay started to fall in love with the field of genetics, she learned that the Navajo Nation had banned all genetic testing on tribal land. Now she is struggling to figure out what the future of genetics might look like, and whether the Navajo and other Indigenous communities should be a part of it.
MOTHERHOOD SESSIONS - JANUARY 9th, 2020
Dee grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Kenya, where her family struggled to make ends meet. But after racial violence flared up in her hometown, she came to the U.S. seeking asylum. Now she lives in a middle-class suburb of D.C. with her husband and her two year-old girl. But she’s unsure of how to raise a daughter in an environment so different from the one she grew up in. She’s worried that her daughter will become spoiled, and won’t learn the values Dee herself learned during her difficult upbringing—generosity, compassion, and gratitude.
Motherhood sessions - May 9th, 2019
Julia was born in South Korea, but was adopted and raised by a white family. Now that she has her own child—the first biological relative she’s ever known—she’s rethinking her relationship with her own family, and on a search to find her birth mother.
Motherhood Sessions February 27th, 2020
Last year we met Julia, a woman who was adopted from South Korea when she was just a few weeks old. She was raised by white parents who never encouraged her to explore her roots. However, after having her own children—the first biological relatives she’d ever seen—Julia began an active search to find her birth mother. Dr. Sacks spoke with Julia about this experience in a previous episode (“Rethinking Your Roots After Motherhood”). Then, over the summer, Julia told us that she'd actually booked a trip to Seoul so that she could meet her birth mom in person. In this special update episode, Julia takes us inside this journey back to where she was born, to reunite with the woman who gave her up more than 30 years ago.
HEAVYWEIGHT - november 8th, 2018
When Soraya was in college, her favorite professor hired her to help research a book she was writing. But when she fell into a deep depression and dropped out of school, she abandoned both the book and the professor who’d shown her so much kindness. Now, with Jonathan’s help, Soraya wants to make things right—with a grand gesture
Heavyweight - December 13th, 2018
16 years ago, Gimlet Media CEO and founder Alex Blumberg made a promise that he didn’t keep. And it’s been eating at him ever since. In this season finale, Jonathan sets out to clean up his boss’s mess.
The Habitat - April 18th, 2018
Episode 5. The crew gets pissed.
Nancy - April 2017
Peter fell in love with Joe when they were both in high school. But he never said anything—instead, he channelled his feelings into a series of love poems, Shakespearean sonnets that he tucked away until he felt ready to share his feelings with Joe.
Years later, Peter rediscovered the poems, and finally decided to share them with Joe.