Making Peace Visible: Recent Episodes
Jamil Simon
In-depth conversations with key players on the frontlines of peace efforts, and with those who report on them.
Making Peace Visible is brought to you by the War Stories Peace Stories project. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to do everything possible to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts.
This is the second episode in Beyond Polarization, a special series about what polarization is costing Americans, and what we can actually do about it. You can find Episode 1, where we analyze research on polarization and disagreement, here.
In this episode: how the news media can do less to reinforce polarized narratives, and more to meet the needs of audiences.
Journalism is an essential component of our democratic system. But when it comes to politics, how much reporting do you read that actually helps you decide who to vote for?
During an election cycle, candidates tell the press that if elected, they’ll work to solve problems that matter to their voters. Those with more controversial opinions or spicy personal backgrounds get more airtime. And pundits prognosticate about which candidate can win which demographic.
Yet between elections, there’s a lot less coverage of how office holders are fulfilling their campaign promises, or trying to. News organizations cover corruption and scandal, an important role of journalism. But what about when things go right?
Without good information about solutions to society’s problems, it’s easier to vote based on fear of the other side, vote along party lines, or just stay home. Outside of politics, everyday news coverage skews negative too.
Our guests this episode are journalists committed to reporting on communities and current events in de-polarizing ways. They do that by focusing on what people need and want and how politics could affect that: covering the stakes, not the odds.
Tina Rosenberg is a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter and cofounder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which promotes rigorous reporting on solutions to social problems. At the New York Times, she wrote the Fixes column with David Bornstein.
Sarah Jane Weaver is the editor-in-chief of the Deseret News based in Salt Lake City, Utah – one of the first outlets to embrace the Solutions Journalism model in the 2010s. Weaver first joined Deseret as a reporter in 1995.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
“The Perception Gap: How False Impressions are Pulling Americans Apart,” report from More in Common
Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low, 2024 Gallup poll
Outlier Media, local news outlet in Detroit that provides information on housing, utilities and other essential information via text
Sisters fight to pick up the pieces after catastrophic car crash, reporting by the Deseret News
Small-town America is arguing over whether to welcome Syria’s refugees or fear them, story by The World from PRX
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
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Political polarization in the U.S. can feel like a lost cause. Trying to have productive conversations with people you disagree with over politics can seem pointless, especially now. News media and social media often reduce “the other side” to its most extreme forms. This creates a negative feedback loop, weakening our ability to function as a democracy.
But research suggests that Americans — on both the Left and the Right — often misperceive how hostile, uniform, or different their opponents really are.
In our seven part Beyond Polarization series, we're talking to experts and practitioners from across the political spectrum — in journalism, education, government, and more — about what it’s costing Americans, and what we can actually do about it. The point isn’t to agree (not gonna happen), or even to move toward the center. As our guest for this first episode Julia Minson puts it, we need to learn to “disagree better.”
Julia Minson is a social psychologist and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She’s the author of How to Disagree Better published in March 2026, and the founder of the behavioral science consulting firm Disagreeing Better, offering speaking and training on effective management of conflict. In this episode she shares some of her research findings about what we get wrong about each other, and what interventions have worked to correct misperceptions. Plus, a proven formula you can use to have a meaningful conversation in conflict situations.
Thoughts on this episode? Find us on social media @makingpeacevisible (details below) or email info@makingpeacevisible.org. The Beyond Polarization series publishes biweekly through October 2026, with our second episode on August 4.
LEARN MORE:
Read an excerpt from Julia Minson’s book How to Disagree Better
Strengthening Democracy Challenge megastudy led by Stanford University
Heineken – Worlds Apart: Watch the 2017 beer commercial that proved most effective at reducing polarization in the Stanford study
The political polarization of COVID-19 treatments among physicians and laypeople in the United States, published in PNAS
Special thanks to Adam Dusenberry and Harvard University Education Support Services.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
Often the news covers crises without context. That's especially true when it comes to coverage of the Global South in international media.
Our guest this episode, journalist and documentary filmmaker Etant Dupain, gives us a behind-the-headlines look at events in Haiti, his home country. Dupain says that the gangs who control much of the country now are supported by powerful elites. Their aim, his says, is to suppress a grassroots protest movement that is calling for accountability for the embezzlement of billions of dollars in development funds.
Dupain's documentary film, The Fight for Haiti, tells the story of the Haitian movement against corruption and impunity, which started with a tweet and at its height had hundreds of thousands in the street. This episode was first recorded in February 2025, and has been updated.
In this episode, you’ll learn about
- The problematic history of foreign aid in Haiti including the aftermath of the the 2010 earthquake
- The Petrocaribe agreement with Venezuela that was supposed to fund crucial infrastructure projects in Haiti
- Creative tactics activists used to demand accountability
- Who profits when gangs overtake a country
- What the end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians in the United States could mean for Haiti's future
Watch a trailer and learn more about the film and the movement at thefightforhaiti.com. Want to host a screening? Email info@thefightforhaiti.com.
Protest audio used in the episode is from the film The Fight for Haiti, used with permission. Other music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko, Toby Tranter, and Reed Mathis.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
Polarization in the U.S. is not just a Washington problem. It also shows up in our newsrooms, our social media feeds, our schools, our dinner tables, and most importantly, in the stories we tell about each other.
That's why Making Peace Visible is launching a new limited podcast series called Beyond Polarization. We're speaking with people from across the political spectrum to break down what these deepening divisions are actually costing Americans — all of us.
Across six sectors — journalism, new media, higher education, technology, government, and civil society — we’ll examine where familiar solutions have fallen short, what evidence-based efforts are working, and how trust can be rebuilt in practical, durable ways.
Beyond Polarization launches in this feed on July 21 and will include in-depth conversations with:
Harvard professor Julia Minson, author of How to Disagree Better, whose research explores the psychology of conflict and what it takes to engage more productively across political divides.
Tina Rosenberg of The Solutions Journalism Network and Sarah Jane Weaver, Editor-in-Chief of Deseret News on the role solutions journalism can play in depolarization.
Ethnomusicologist and University of Maryland dean Stephanie Shonekan and John Rose, professor of civil discourse at UNC Chapel Hill, who are teaching college students how to have difficult conversations with dignity.
Larry Rosen, host of The Enemies Project YouTube Channel, and Monica Guzman, host of A Braver Way podcast, on telling stories that unite within an online ecosystem built on division.
Plus technologists, elected officials, community leaders, and more.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
The MPV team is currently hard at work on Beyond Polarization, a limited series where we talk to people who are finding solutions to the increasing polarization we face in the United States. In the meantime, we bring you this episode from our friends at Disrupting Peace, a podcast from the World Peace Foundation about "why peace hasn't worked, and how it still could."
What beliefs make people willing to commit violence, and what could change their minds? This episode explores what makes individuals vulnerable to white supremacist beliefs, what it means when extremism becomes mainstream, the surprising permeability of these groups, and how to talk to people in your life who express racist ideology.
Peter Simi is a professor of Sociology at Chapman University, and an expert on extremist groups and violence in the US. Among his many publications, he is co-author of American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate, and Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacy and How It Can be Stopped.
Sara Winegar Budge holds a doctorate in Psychology and is a licensed psychologist in Oregon. She is the Director of US Programs at Moonshot, which builds technology to identify and disrupt organized crime, child sexual exploitation, and trafficking, among other forms of abuse and violence. Her clinical work focuses on individuals who are or have been involved in violent extremism.
Disrupting Peace is produced by Bridget Conley and Emily Shaw. Engineering by Jacob Winik and Aja Simpson.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
Suzette Brooks Masters is a thought leader, political strategist and Senior Fellow at the Democracy Funders Network. She says that for American democracy to thrive, it's not enough to defend the existing system against attack, because the system doesn’t work well for most people.
She’s been researching ways to invigorate democratic practice, including citizen’s assemblies and participatory budgeting – frameworks that give ordinary people a bigger say in government. And she advocates for storytelling that envisions positive, possible futures.
LEARN MORE
Suzette Brooks Masters’ articles for The Fulcrum
Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy report
Becoming Futures Ready: How Philanthropy Can Leverage Strategic Foresight For Democracy report
This episode was originally published in May 2025.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
The world is missing the perspective of peacebuilders at a critical moment, as we live through this time of one war after another. We need skilled negotiators and mediators who know how to listen to both sides of a dispute and find common ground.
We invited Joshua Weiss to the podcast to help us understand what happened in the negotiations that preceded the Iran war, and how negotiators might bring it to an end.
Josh Weiss is an internationally recognized conflict resolution expert, educator, and author. He is co-founder of Harvard University's Global Negotiation Initiative and Senior Fellow at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. He also directs the Masters in Leadership and Negotiation program at Bay Path University, and runs a private consulting firm. And he’s a co-founder of the Abraham Path Initiative, a network of walking trails that connect communities and helps support local economies in the Middle East. Weiss’ latest book is Getting Back to the Table: 5 Steps for Reviving Stalled Negotiations.
Explore related episodes:
How one Iranian content creator is fighting the information war (February 2026)
Reporting from Iran with a bias towards peace (February 2024)
Building peace on a walk through the Middle East (June 2022)
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
For her whole life, Iranian-American actor and activist Nazanin Nour has been calling attention to the distinction between the Islamic Republic – the face of Iran in the news – and the Iranian people. And she’s not stopping any time soon.
In normal times, Nour hosts Iranian diaspora musicians, comedians, journalists and others on her online show Mehmooni with Nazanin. But since mass protests began in December, she's been using social media to amplify the message of the protesters and call attention to the massacre and disappearances of thousands.
She's also calling out others – including news organizations that cover nuclear talks without mention of the government's brutality, social justice activists who are strangely quiet on Iran, and content creators who've taken government-sponsored trips to the country.
Making Peace Visible spoke with Nazanin Nour on February 10, 2026.
Follow Nazanin Nour
Instagram @iamnazaninnour
Youtube @nazaninnour
Facebook @iamnazaninnour
Follow Mehmooni with Nazanin on Spotify
Human rights organizations mentioned in the interview
Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran / @iranrights
Center for Human Rights in Iran/ @centerforhumanrights
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
"I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."
This aphorism from political philosopher and journalist Antonio Gramsci is one of our guest Neha Sanghrajka’s favorite quotes. When you learn her story, you’ll understand why.
A Kenyan born lawyer, Sanghrajka spent almost a decade in Mozambique mediating a peace process between the country’s president and a guerrilla leader stationed on a remote mountaintop. Sanghrajka and her colleague, Swiss Ambassador Mirko Manzoni, travelled back and forth between the capital of Maputo and the militant headquarters in the remote Garongosa Mountains 45 times – a journey of over 1000 km each way. And when she wasn’t hoofing it up the mountain, Sanghrajka spent many hours just listening to local people, without expectation.
The peacebuilders walked a delicate line. Knowing that previous processes had failed when they were over-exposed to the media, they protected the negotiations from scrutiny. At the same time, they engaged journalists and civil society with the public implementation of the process.
Neha’s story presents a fascinating example of how polarized groups can actually buy into a process of reconciliation, despite major setbacks along the way; and how journalists can report responsibly and critically, while still supporting the aspiration of peace.
Before moving to Mozambique, Neha Sanghrajka worked with former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan during the 2007 election crisis in Kenya and helped facilitate election reform there. She’s now a fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.
Learn more about Neha Sanghrajka
Read Sanghrajka and Mirko Manzoni’s report on the peace process in Mozambique
Visit the Maputo Accord website
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
Public funding for peace efforts took a massive hit with the gutting of USAID last year, and other donor countries have ramped down aid as well, in a world that feels increasingly less safe for many. That’s why our ears perked up when we heard about Brian Abrams, an American venture capitalist who is investing in technology to find solutions to violent conflict.
In the new field of ‘peace tech,’ companies are using AI to predict the likelihood of major events – like military invasions or popular uprisings, and modeling how to prevent violence before it starts. With their ability to process massive data sets from intelligence, journalism and other sources, these tools can also quickly gain insights on what’s driving conflicts on a population level. Important tools for governments and mediators, they also appeal to corporations working around the world – customers who Abrams hopes will bring in revenue to sustain the peace tech sector. And as you’ll hear, he’s very optimistic.
Brian Abrams founded B Ventures Group, a venture capital firm for peace tech, in 2023. Prior to that he was president of Ibex Investors and a managing partner at Row Capital.
Connect with Brian Abrams on LinkedIn.
Learn more about the peace tech companies discussed in this episode:
Anadyr Horizon
From Business Insider: Inside the Billion-Dollar War over Peace Tech
Transcend AI
CulturePulse
odr.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
It’s hard to keep up with the number of unprecedented actions the second Trump administration has taken, but what happened on January 3 – when the US military extracted Venezuela’s president and first lady amidst an aerial assault on Caracas – is impossible to ignore. Also seemingly overnight the U.S. government’s narrative on why they were taking action against Venezuela changed – from interdicting the drug trade to restoring the country’s oil sector.
In this special episode, we look at the many narratives surrounding the U.S. action in Venezuela, and separate fact from fiction. We also discuss what this power shift means for Venezuelans, who have been living under a repressive regime, and a longrunning economic crisis. Our guest is Enrique Roig, an international relations expert whose career has spanned government, NGOs and the private sector, and more than 40 countries. Roig has more than two decades of experience in diplomacy, development and human rights, including extensive experience in Central and South America. He’s testified before Congress about human rights abuses committed by the Maduro regime.
Roig served in the State Department during the Biden administration, as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Currently the Vice President for External Affairs at Human Rights First, he writes about Venezuela and U.S. foreign policy on Substack at Enrique Roig - Unleashed.
LEARN MORE
Enrique Roig’s Substack
On human rights in Venezuela from Human Rights Watch
On journalism in Venezuela and the diaspora:
How Venezuelan journalists broke the information blockade with a 10-hour broadcast of Maduro’s ouster
Listen: MPV’s episode with Caracas-based journalist Tony Frangie Mawad:
Journalism under authoritarianism: An indie reporter persists in Venezuela
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
William Ury is one of the world’s most influential peacebuilders and experts on negotiation. He advised Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos in the lead up to that country's historic 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, and played a key role in de-escalating nuclear tensions between the U.S. and North Korea in 2017. Getting to Yes, which Ury co-wrote with Roger Fisher back in 1981, is the world’s best selling book on negotiation. Ury co-founded the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, as well as the Abraham Path Initiative, an NGO that builds walking trails connecting communities in the Middle East.
His new book is called Possible: How we Survive - and Thrive - in an Age of Conflict. It’s filled with incredible stories from Bill’s career. In this episode, Bill talks about how lessons from the failures and success of the past – in places like Northern Ireland, Colombia, and the Middle East – can be instructive when dealing with the conflicts of today. He shares exciting ideas about how journalists can tell stories about peace. What’s more, his insights on managing conflict can be applied anywhere from the UN to the boardroom to your own family.
William Ury’s ideas aren’t easy to implement – in fact they’re incredibly challenging. Ury says conflicts don’t end, but they can be transformed, from fighting with weapons to hashing differences out in a democratic process. And if Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Colombia – places where people said violent conflict would go on forever – could transform their conflicts, then there’s hope for the seemingly “impossible” conflicts of today.
Music in this episode by Joel Cummins, Podington Bear, Kevin MacLeod, Meavy Boy, and Faszo.
This episode was originally published in May 2024.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
This week we’re featuring an episode from American UnExceptionalism, a limited podcast series that examines the intersection of authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism around the world – looking for lessons that Americans can learn from to resist Christian nationalism and the threat it poses to our democracy.
The series turns the idea of American exceptionalism on its head, asking: What can we learn from others about protecting democracy when the stakes are high? Co-hosts Susan Hayward and Matthew D. Taylor bring their expertise to bear as scholars of religion, religious extremism, and peace.
In this episode, Taylor and Hayward explore Sri Lanka and Myanmar (Burma), two Buddhist-majority countries. In the words of one guest, a “minority complex” exists in both countries – the sense among members of the dominant group that they’re under threat from minority groups inlcuding Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Authoritarian leaders have exploited these fears, but religion has also been used in creative ways as a tool of resistance. And in Sri Lanka, a nonviolent uprising unseated an elected president who had become increasingly authoritarian, amidst an economic crisis in 2022.
Guests are Geethika Dharmasinghe from Sri Lanka, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, with a PhD in Asian Literature, Religion and Culture, and David Thang Moe from Myanmar, is a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University.
American UnExceptionalism is a project of Axis Mundi in collaboration with the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. This episode was produced by Scott Gill and engineered by Scott Okamoto, with production help from Kari Onishi. The executive producer is Bradley Onishi.
Additional producer by Andrea Muraskin and Jamil Simon at Making Peace Visible.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
In the last decade, the field of peace-building has turned its eye toward the United States, as polarization has gotten worse, and political violence has increased. Our guest Peter T. Coleman is a part of that movement to bring peace-building or bridge-building to Americans. Coleman is a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University, and a renowned expert on conflict resolution and sustainable peace. He first appeared on Making Peace Visible in January 2023 to discuss his book The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization.
The bad news is polarization efforts in the United States haven’t been very successful, according to an analysis of 77 interventions aimed at decreasing partisan animosity, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It showed that while interventions can briefly reduce animosity, their effects are small and short-lived.
But Coleman’s not giving up - he's just changing tactics.
In this episode, we discuss some of the most recent findings from Coleman’s lab at Columbia University Teachers’ College, which he says is part of a “radical new science of peace.” In their latest study, Coleman and colleagues focus on the media: using AI to comb through 700,000 news reports from a diverse group of 18 countries, including the United States. What they found points to a new way to understand what makes a society more peaceful – or more polarized.
LEARN MORE:
Peter T. Coleman’s research lab: The Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution
Coleman’s Medium post on classifying peace in global media, “A Radical New Science of Peace.”
AI for Good? AI Finds Lasting Peace in Unexpected Places in Psychology Today, by Peter T. Coleman and Larry S. Liebovitch.
Take the Polarization Detox Challenge
Listen to our December 2022 episode with Peter Coleman.
Follow Peter T. Coleman on Bluesky
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
“ Military children serve alongside their parents, except they're invisible.” – Harold Kudler, M.D.
Millions of American children have had parents serve in Iraq, Afghanistan, or other wars following September 11, 2001. This episode focuses on the wellbeing of those children, who tend to grow up fast.
Susan Hackley is the director of the short documentary film Veteran Children. The film offers a window into the often hidden lives of military spouses and kids. Through interviews and roundtables, viewers meet children who have suffered as a result of their parents’ service, and also those who stepped up to help a wounded parent.
Hackley made the film after a long career in peacebuilding, during which she served 19 years as managing director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, one of the world’s leading centers of negotiation and conflict analysis. She also served as Chair of the Alliance for Peace Building. Military lives and families are personal to Hackley. She lost a boyfriend in the Vietnam war, and her son served as a Marine Corps infantryman in Iraq.
Dr. Harold Kudler is a psychiatrist and expert on the mental health of veterans and their families, who is featured in Veteran Children. He’s a Medical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University.
LEARN MORE
Watch Veteran Children for free (30 minutes)
Statistics and recommended reading from the Veteran Children Project
Issue of the journal The Future of Children on Military Children and Families, with chapter Building Communities of Care for Military Children and Families co-written by Dr. Harold Kudler
The Military Child Education Coalition
Sesame Street’s Resources for Military Families
Zero to Three’s Resources for Military Families
The Military Family Research Center at Purdue University
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
Instagram @makingpeacevisible
YouTube @makingpeacevisible
LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
In our time when rumors and lies spread across the internet with lightning speed, journalists play a vital role in debunking misinformation and disinformation.
Media outlets run by and for non-white audiences, while working under great financial pressure, occupy a special role in the information ecosystem. With immigrants and people of color so often targeted, ethnic and indigenous media outlets are often paying closer attention to these rumors and lies about their own communities. So, they’re well positioned to address disinformation before it reaches the general population. And they offer lessons for mainstream journalists and news consumers.
A new report, Disarming Disinformation: United States takes an in-depth look at how disinformation shows up in ethnic and indigenous communities and in their news media, and also highlights ways these outlets are fighting disinformation. It was published in October 2025 by the International Center for Journalists in collaboration with journalism schools at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University.
Our guests this episode are:
Garry Pierre-Pierre, editor-in-chief of The Haitian Times, an English-language news outlet that covers Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. The Haitian Times was one of five case studies highlighted in the disinformation report.
Sarah Oates, Associate Dean for Research/Professor and Senior Scholar at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Oates is a co-author of Disarming Disinformation: United States, and of the book Seeing Red: Russian Propaganda and American News.
Special thanks to Nabeelah Shabbir. Music in this episode by Doctor Turtle.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Our guest Megan K. Stack began a recent op-ed in the New York Times describing a contentious debate about anti-immigration riots in the Northern Ireland Assembly, “each speaker straining to upstage the last in outrage and fervor.” But unlike many opinion writers, she doesn’t go on to expound on the importance of civility in public discourse. Instead, she marvels that this debate is happening at all – amidst the children of Protestant paramilitaries and I.R.A. bombers, people who grew up in communities that battled each other bitterly for about 30 years – but now share power under a peace agreement that’s endured for almost as long.
Megan K. Stack is a journalist and contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, who’s reported from several conflict zones including Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland. In this episode, she analyzes key moments and actors in the negotiations that ended the “Troubles,” the 3 decades of violence between Irish Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. And she makes the case for applying lessons from that peace process to Israel’s negotiations with Gaza – including on the sensitive issue of disarmament.
Read Megan Stack’s essay Northern Ireland, Gaza and the Road to Peace.
Use this link to share the episode: www.makingpeacevisible.org/megan-stack
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Joel Cummins.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer and graphic designer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Making Peace Visible is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts dedicated to creating a more informed, civically engaged electorate.
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Since his election in 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has transformed Hungary from a democracy into a quasi-authoritarian country. In Hungary today, elections, economic policies, and the media are warped to benefit Orbán and his conservative Fidesz Party.
Orbán’s government, with its consolidation of executive power, Christian nationalist and anit-LGBTQ policies served as inspiration for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for Donald Trump’s second term. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts has called modern Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”
A new documentary film, Democracy Noir, shows how Orbán changed Hungarian politics. In the words of Budapest-based journalist Babett Oroszi, Orbán has “hacked democracy” – quietly using the levers of democracy, rather than a violent revolution, to accomplish his aims. The film tells the story of modern Hungary through the eyes of three female members of Hungary’s resistance – reporter Oroszi, nurse and activist Niko Antal, and Tímea Szabó, an opposition leader in Hungary’s parliament.
Our guest, director Connie Field, has followed Hungarian politics since the country’s first years as a democracy in the early 1990s. An American progressive and award-winning documentarian, she has a shrewd eye on how Orban’s actions are being mirrored in the United States. The episode also includes discussion of a new leader who observers think has a real chance of upending Orbán’s hold on power in the 2026 election.
LEARN MORE:
Stream Democracy Noir now!
Watch a trailer for the film, find out where it’s being screened, or request a screening
Download the discussion guide.
Connie Field bio
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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When we first read Suchitra Vijayan’s reporting on the media in India we were shocked to learn that much of the press in the world’s largest democracy, had fallen in line with Narendra Modi’s authoritarian agenda. Now it feels like a portent of what could happen in the United States. In India today, 75% or more of news organizations are now owned by 4 or 5 large corporations, all led by allies of Modi. In contrast, journalists who have dared criticize the government have been harassed, detained, imprisoned, and even murdered.
Suchitra Vijayan is a journalist and attorney. She is the author of two books: How Long Can the Moon be Caged? Voices of Indian Poltiical Prisoners, co-authored with Francesca Recchia, and Midnight's Borders. Vijayan is also the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a journalism and research organization focused on authoritarianism and state oppression. She was born and raised in Madras, also known as Chennai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and lives in New York City.
Read Vijayan’s reporting in The Nation about the government’s targeting of Kashmir’s free press.
Follow Suchitra Vijayan on Substack.
This episode was originally published in November 2023. Music in this episode by Siddhartha Corsus and Blue Dot Sessions
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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This episode comes to us from independent journalist Scott Gurian.
In the Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen, there's a small building with a garden and wooden seats. At first glance, it looks like some sort of neighborhood cafe, but it's actually the Menneskebiblioteket or Human Library, where the "readers" and "books" are people having deeply personal and intimate conversations about topics that might normally be considered off-limits or taboo in polite society. The library is staffed by volunteers whose life stories and experiences mean they face some sort of stigma, whether it be due to their ethnicity, religion, orientation, occupation, disability, or social status.
Gurian visited the Human Library and produced this episode for his award-winning documentary-style travel and culture podcast Far from Home.
Since its beginning in Denmark, the Human Library concept has now spread to more than 80 countries on 6 continents. You can visit the library's Facebook page to find out about upcoming library events near you.
Find all four seasons of Far from Home where ever you listen to podcasts.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Peace negotiations and reconciliation processes can change the world – but they’re not much to look at. The shortage of compelling images is one of many challenges to making peace more tangible in our very visual world.
But if we expand the concept of peace to include what peace actually means to people who have lived through conflict, then what peace looks like can be expansive. Like a portrait of a family reunited after a war. Or something unexpected, like a photo of a man walking on stilts through a refugee camp, entertaining a host of children.
Our guests this episode are Tiffany Fairey, a Senior Research Fellow based at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and Ingrid Guyon, a photographer and participatory visual media practitioner. They’ve both spent over 15 years working around the world helping communities affected by conflict to tell their own stories through photography.
Fairey and Guyon are co-authors of Peace Photography: A Guide, which presents a methodology and approach that celebrates peace efforts and encourages creativity, drawing on projects in 21 countries. Fairey’s upcoming book Imaging Peace: How People Use Photography to Resist Violence, Transform Conflict, and Build Connection will be out this autumn from Edinburgh University Press.
To view the images discussed in this episode, go to makingpeacevisible.org/podcast.
LEARN MORE
Download a free copy of the guide in English, Spanish or French; browse peace photography projects, explore Fairey’s research, and more at imagingpeace.org.
Follow the Imaging Peace project on Instagram @imaging_peace.
Read Tiffany Fairey’s essay on the Everyday Peace Indicators project in Colombia in The Conversation
Read Ingrid Guyon’s blog post for Beyond Skin on visiting Belfast as a peace photographer
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Think about the infrastructure that makes your community tick. Roads, schools, buses and trains, parks and playgrounds, the sewage treatment plant are probably the kind of things that first come to mind. But what about local news?
Our guest this episode, journalism scholar Jennifer Henrichsen, says local newspapers, news webistes, and TV and radio stations are a necessary part of public infrastructure too.
Local news journalists play crucial roles in times of crises, like wildfires and floods. They also play a less visible watchdog role in keeping local governments accountable. And even less visible -- there's evidence that the erosion and closure of local news outlets is contributing to increasing polarization.
Jennifer Henrichsen is an Assistant Professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University. She's also the research director of the Washington Local News Ecosystem Project -- a publicly-funded initiative to measure the health of local news around the state. Washington State University is using the data collected by Henrichsen's team to help match up young reporters with newsrooms that need them.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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This podcast is a project of Making Peace Visible, is a small 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Somerville, Massachusetts. What we do is unique -- consistently analyzing how the media covers conflict, and amplifying stories of resolution and reconciliation that are often ignored by the mainstream media.
In the month of July, we're working to raise $40,000 to continue and grow this work. With your help, we can fund journalists producing rigorous, underreported stories of conflict transformation through the Making Peace Visible story awards, and convene strategic gatherings of peacebuilders and journalists to shift how stories get told. Your donation also keeps this podcast going and helps us reach more listeners. Make a one-time or recuring gift at makingpeacevisible.org/donate.
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When Pope Leo XIV addressed over a thousand journalists at the Vatican just days after his ordination, his message was both striking and urgent: “Let us disarm words, and we will help disarm the world.” In a time of escalating global conflict and diminishing trust in institutions, the new pope placed moral responsibility on the media: to move away from aggression and polarization and toward communication that fosters understanding and peace.
In this episode, we hear from Miguel Díaz, 9th U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See (under President Barack Obama), and Elizabeth Hume, Executive Director of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. Drawing from their respective fields—diplomacy and international peacebuilding—they reflect on the broader implications of Pope Leo’s message, particularly the role that religious institutions like the Vatican can play in addressing global division, violence, and institutional fragility.
Díaz offers context on the Vatican’s long-standing diplomatic role. He describes how Pope Leo’s formation in both the U.S. and Latin America, along with his theological grounding in justice and bridge-building, may inform his priorities as pontiff. Hume brings a sobering view from the peacebuilding field, where violent conflict is on the rise and support for prevention is declining. Together, they examine how the Catholic Church, under Pope Leo, might offer renewed institutional leadership in a world in search of stability.
Further Reading:
Pope Leo’s address to journalists, May 12, 2025 (English translation):
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2025/may/documents/20250512-media.html
NYT coverage of Pope Leo’s address to the media:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/world/europe/pope-leo-vatican-journalists.html
‘The pope is Peruvian!’ How 2 decades in South America shaped the vision of Pope Leo XIV:
https://theconversation.com/the-pope-is-peruvian-how-2-decades-in-south-america-shaped-the-vision-of-pope-leo-xiv-256415
Maria Ressa’s speech at the Vatican on January 25, 2025:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0kHvIeYN5M&t=12s
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support our work
Connect on social:
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We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
This podcast is a project of Making Peace Visible, is a small 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Somerville, Massachusetts. What we do is unique -- consistently analyzing how the media covers conflict, and amplifying stories of resolution and reconciliation that are often ignored by the mainstream media.
In the month of July, we're working to raise $40,000 to continue and grow this work. With your help, we can fund journalists producing rigorous, underreported stories of conflict transformation through the Making Peace Visible story awards, and convene strategic gatherings of peacebuilders and journalists to shift how stories get told. Your donation also keeps this podcast going and helps us reach more listeners. Make a one-time or recuring gift at makingpeacevisible.org/donate.
Our guest this episode is Terrell Jermaine Starr, an independent journalist based in Ukraine. His work focuses on interconnection: how Ukrainian politics and society relates to the rest of the world, especially the United States, Europe, and Africa. In the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion, Starr gained international attention for his up-close-and-personal reporting style, and for helping vulnerable Ukrainians flee the country. And, for being a rare Black American reporter on the ground.
On Starr's podcast, Black Diplomats, and his Substack blog, Terrell provides reporting and analysis on politics in the Ukraine, the United States, and beyond. He pays special attention to equity and discrimination, drawing parallels between Putinism and the MAGA movement in the United States. Terrel is also a contributor to Foreign Policy magazine, the Washington Post, and MSNBC.
MPV digital media producer Andrea Muraskin sat down with Terrell Jermaine Starr on July 3, 2025, just days after his home city of Kyiv was bombarded by Russian missiles and drones.
Follow him on X @terrelljstarr
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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In hopes of learning from the past and In light of US missile strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and subsequent retaliation in an escalating regional conflict, we're revisiting one of our best episodes on how Western media covers war.
Guest Bette Dam is a Dutch journalist who covered the war in Afghanistan for 15 years. She began her coverage in 2006, embedded with the Dutch military. She’s the author of two books: Looking for the Enemy, Mullah Omar and the Unknown Taliban, and A Man in a Motorcycle, How Hamid Karzai Came to Power.
In the course of her reporting Dam realized that most Western journalists were providing a distorted view of the war. It left out the perspective of the Afghan people, and made the country appear more dangerous than it really was. And Dam says the press missed opportunities to hold the U.S. and NATO to account for major blunders – including largely overlooking the fact that the Taliban surrendered in December 2001.
This interview was recorded in October 2023.
In 2024, Dam completed a PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels on the role of Western media in conflict, where she now serves on the faculty. In February 2025 she launched UNHEARD in partnership with the Tow Center at the Columbia School of Journalism, a project that aims to help news organizations reveal potentially overlooked narratives by using AI to audit who is quoted in their articles.
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MORE FROM BETTE DAM
TEDx talk: The shortcomings of war reporting
Follow Bette on X (formerly Twitter)
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Zero V, and Doyeq.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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In the United States, about one sixth of the federal budget goes to defense. Why are many Americans so passive in the face of the massive expenditures for defense that crowd out spending on human needs like education, healthcare and infrastructure? Why does much of the media accept the status quo? And is all of this spending making Americans and the world any safer?
Our guest helping tackle these questions is anthropologist Stephanie Savell. Savell is the Co-Director of Costs of War at Brown University, an interdisciplinary research project focused on the impact of the post 9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond; the U.S. global military footprint; and the domestic effects of US military spending. Savell's own research highlights US military involvement around the world, most notably in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. In many of these places, American assistance has served to fuel existing conflicts, and provided governments with tools and justification to target Muslim populations. But, Savell says, it doesn’t have to be this way.
This episide was originally published in December 2023.
MORE FROM COSTS OF WAR
Stephanie Savell’s map of US counterterrorism operations 2021-2023
The Costs of United States’ Post-9/11 “Security Assistance”: How Counterterrorism Intensified Conflict in Burkina Faso and Around the World by Stephanie Savell
Why Media Conflation of Activism with Terrorism Has Dire Consequences: The Case of Cop City by Deepa Kumar
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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“Humans are not rational beings with emotions. In fact, we're just the opposite. We're emotionally based beings who can only think rationally when we feel that our identities, as we see them, are understood and valued by others.”
Those words from neuroscientist Bob Deutch triggered a lightbulb moment in the mind of Tim Phillips, a veteran peacebuilder and educator. Over the past twelve years, Phillips has worked with neuroscientists and psychologists to integrate brain science into research and practice at Beyond Conflict, the peacebuilding organization that he founded in 1991 and where he serves as CEO.
In this conversation, we focus on Beyond Conflict’s research on dehumanization. If you perceive another person or group as less than human, it’s much easier to justify violence against that group or person. Dehumanizing rhetoric – like describing people as animals or vermin – is often a precursor to violence.
But Phillips says if we can identify signs of dehumanization early on, we can make changes to decrease the likelihood of violent conflict. Phillips and host Jamil Simon also discuss the difference between fear and disgust – both motivators of conflict that are each processed differently in the brain and require different interventions. Plus, how Beyond Conflict has applied this research to create media interventions in Nigeria and the United States. And, how journalists can utilize knowledge of how the brain works to reach more people and avoid incitement.
This episode was originally published in April 2024.
LEARN MORE
Watch the video “America’s Divided Mind” by Beyond Conflict
Read key takeaways from Beyond Conflict’s research on dehumanization
Read Beyond Conflict’s Decoding Dehumanization policy brief
Listen to our episode with psychologist Donna Hicks: “Dignity: A new way to look at conflict”
Watch “How to Grow Peace Journalism” webinars from the George Washington University Media and Peacebuilding Project. Presentations from Making Peace Visible host Jamil Simon, education director Steven Youngblood, and producer Andrea Muraskin in this video.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Support for Donald Trump is slipping lately, at least in part because of the President’s violations of democratic rules and norms. In a New York Times/ Sienna College poll, a majority of respondents disapproved of Trump’s recent actions, including moves to eliminate government programs enacted by Congress, deport legal immigrants who have protested Israel, and ignore Supreme Court rulings.
This episode we’re joined by Suzette Brooks Masters, a thought leader, political strategist and Senior Fellow at the Democracy Funders Network. She says that for American democracy to thrive, it's not enough to defend the existing system against attack, because the system doesn’t work well for most people.
She’s been researching ways to invigorate democratic practice, including citizen’s assemblies and participatory budgeting – frameworks that give ordinary people a bigger say in government. And she advocates for storytelling that envisions positive, possible futures.
00:00 Introduction and Current Political Climate
00:40 First 100 Days of the New Administration
01:35 Guest Introduction: Suzette Brooks Masters
02:08 Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy
03:36 Challenges and Opportunities in Democracy
05:57 Why the Right Sees Democracy as Under Attack
11:31 Bridge Building and Civic Engagement
16:44 Innovations in Democratic Processes
22:59 Telling a Different Story About the Future
30:57 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
LEARN MORE
Suzette Brooks Masters’ articles for The Fulcrum
Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy report
Becoming Futures Ready: How Philanthropy Can Leverage Strategic Foresight For Democracy report
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Brazil’s Arariboia Indigenous Territory is a green island that spans more than 413,000 hectares (1.02 million acres) in a sea of deforestation. Though the territory is protected by law, it’s become the site of incursions by loggers and cattle ranchers.
In a five-year investigative series for the environmental news outlet Mongabay, reporter Karla Mendes exposed environmental crimes in Arariboia and other protected areas of the Amazon, including palm oil production, logging, and cattle ranching. She also investigated the murder of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, an indigenous Forest Guardian who was ambushed by loggers. He was one of more than 50 indigenous Guajajara individuals killed in the last 20 years. Mendes’ reporting is helping to bring justice to these remote areas where impunity has been the norm.
Her investigation was part of a Pulitzer Center Rainforest Investigations fellowship. She says as the climate changes, Brazilians are showing increased interest in journalism like hers that highlights the importance of protecting the rainforest.
LEARN MORE
Read Karla Mendes’ report: Revealed: Illegal cattle ranching booms in Arariboia territory during deadly year for Indigenous Guajajara.
Learn more about the impact of the investigation.
Watch a short documentary film about the Guardians of the Forest and the search for justice for Paulo Paulino Guajajara.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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What's it like to lead without a military? This episode, from our friends at Disrupting Peace, focuses on Costa Rica, and explores what happens when a country abolishes its military, Costa Rica’s approach to domestic security, and the ways that having a military can increase violence and instability in a country.
Carlos Alvarado Quesada served as President of Costa Rica from 2018 to 2022. While president, he focused on combating climate change, defending human rights, democracy, and multilateralism, which is when countries cooperate to solve problems. Carlos currently teaches graduate courses on leadership at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, where the World Peace Foundation is based. Follow Carlos on Instagram @carlosalvq.
Jorge Vargas is Director of the State of the Nation Program in Costa Rica. As an academic researcher, he focuses on state reform and democracy in Central America. Find out more about Jorge’s work at estadonacion.or.cr.
Disrupting Peace is a podcast about why peace hasn't worked, and how it still could, from the World Peace Foundation. It's hosted by Bridget Conley, and produced by Bridget Conley and Emily Shaw. Engineering by Jacob Winik and Aja Simpson.
Additional music in this episode by Kevin MacLeod and Xylo-Ziko.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Venezuela is a tough place to be a journalist. Our guest this episode, Tony Frangie Mawad wrote last year about the possibility of an opposition victory that would upend the regime of President Nicolás Maduro in the country's July elections. But even though the opposition candidate won the vote, Maduro held on to power, and this year has cracked down further on his opponents and an already-weakened media.
Frangie Mawad is an independent journalist and political analyst, based in Caracas, Venezuela. He writes the Substack Venezuela Weekly, where he keeps a close eye on developments both at home, and in the Venezuelan diaspora. He’s written for international news outlets including Bloomberg, The Economist, and Americas Quarterly, and was an editor for the Caracas Chronicles.
Making Peace Visible producer Andrea Muraskin spoke with Tony about what it’s like to work in an authoritarian context, where journalists are often censored and threatened, and sometimes arrested. As you’ll hear, it helps to have a sense of humor, and a long view of history.
This interview was recorded on March 24. Things may have shifted in Venezuela by the time you hear it.
LEARN MORE
tonyfrangie.com
Venezuela Weekly (English edition)
El Chiguire Bipolar - "The Bipolar Capybara" Venezuelan satire website
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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After the end of the Cold War, many academics and policymakers believed that a global state of peace was achievable. People talked about a “peace dividend”: A long-term benefit. as budgets for military spending would be redirected to social programs or returned to citizens in the form of lower taxes.
Our guest this episode, Bridget Conley, started her career in peacebuilding in the 1990s. At that time, Western academics and politicians spelled out a formula for creating peaceful nations. You would hold elections, convert the economy to a free market, pursue human rights, and prosecute bad actors. But the post 9/11 years showed that the militarized world order was not going away.
There’s been a push in recent years to localize peace efforts – meaning fund them and run them based on direction from people in the effected countries. But to a considerable extent, peacebuilding still revolves around that formula from the 1990s.
That’s why Conley launched Disrupting Peace, a podcast that explores why peace hasn’t worked, and how it could.
Bridget is the research director at the World Peace Foundation, a research organization affiliated with Tufts University. Her research is currently focused on mass incarceration in the United States, and she teaches college classes inside the prison system in Massachusetts as part of the Tufts University Prison Initiative. For Conley, prison abolition and international peacebuilding are all about creating societies that solve problems through debate and discussion, not through coercion.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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When the Trump administration slashed the budget and suspended most of the staff of the United States Agency for International Development last month, their representatives said the agency was using taxpayer dollars to fund a radical, “woke” agenda around the world. Criticism coming from the Left since the founding of USAID in 1961 has characterized USAID as an arm of American imperialism.
The reality, of course, is much more complicated. It’s heartbreaking to hear stories of children suddenly unable to attend school and receive essential vaccinations. But beyond the shockwaves of a sudden halt in the flow of assistance, there's a lot about US foreign aid that's up for debate. Questions like what does it accomplish? Does it really help? How does it help? Should it continue? Or, should foreign aid be scaled down over time?
Our host, Jamil Simon, has seen USAID projects succeed, and fall short – having worked for more than three decades as a USAID contractor, developing communication strategies to promote reform in more than 20 countries.
Our guest, Gregory Warner is a Peabody Award - winning journalist who has reported on USAID on the ground in places including Sub-Saharan Africa, Ukraine and Afghanistan. He was the creator and host of NPR's international podcast Rough Translation. Before that, he was an international correspondent for NPR, based in East Africa. Warner has reported on USAID on the ground in Africa, as well as in Ukraine and Afghanistan. He writes the Substack blog Rough Transition.
MORE FROM GREGORY WARNER
Subscribe to get Rough Transition in your inbox.
Read Warner’s recent reporting about the gutting of USAID and what it says about the perception of America in the world.
Listen to the Rough Translation episode about a woman who lied so she could receive aid designated for sexual violence survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Explore the Rough Translation podcast archive.
CONNECT WITH US
Do you have a story of your own about USAID? Keep the conversation going on LinkedIn, or drop us a line at info@makingpeacevisible.org.
Music in this episode is by Xylo-Ziko, Blue Dot Sessions, Gavin Luke, Feras Charestan, and Caro Luna.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social
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Often the news covers crises without context. That's especially true when it comes to coverage of the Global South in international media.
Our guest this episode, journalist and documentary filmmaker Etant Dupain, gives us a behind-the-headlines look at events in Haiti, his home country. Dupain says that the gangs who control much of the country now are supported by powerful elites. Their aim, his says, is to suppress a grassroots protest movement that is calling for accountability for the embezzlement of billions of dollars in development funds.
Dupain's new documentary film, The Fight for Haiti, tells the story of the Haitian movement against corruption and impunity, which started with a tweet and at its height had hundreds of thousands in the street.
In this episode, you’ll learn about
- The problematic history of foreign aid in Haiti including the aftermath of the the 2010 earthquake
- The Petrocaribe agreement with Venezuela that was supposed to fund crucial infrastructure projects in Haiti
- Creative tactics activists used to demand accountability
- Who profits when gangs overtake a country
Watch a trailer and learn more about the film and the movement at thefightforhaiti.com.
Protest audio used in the episode is from the film The Fight for Haiti, used with permission.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Israel and Hamas are just over two weeks into a ceasefire agreement, after fifteen months of fighting.
This is a paradoxical moment to talk about long term peace. The horrific October 7th attacks and the near - destruction of Gaza that followed, served to amplify already high levels of distrust, hate, and trauma. At the same time, the war has demonstrated to Gazans that their government placed conflict with Israel above their own survival. And it has shown Israelis that an indefinite blockade of Gaza doesn’t ensure their security.
So while the ceasefire doesn’t mean the end of the conflict by any means, it does offer an opportunity to envision a way out.
Our guest for this episode is Ksenia Svetlova, an expert observer of politics and media in the Middle East and the executive director of the Regional Organization for Peace, Economics, and Security, or ROPES.
Svetlova is an immigrant to Israel from the Soviet Union, an Arabic speaker and a Middle East specialist. For fifteen years. Svetlova reported from Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, and different countries in the region. She served four years in Israel’s parliament representing the center-left Zionist Union Coalition.
MORE FROM KSENIA SVETLOVA
Read: Netanyahu’s phase two dilemma: Political survival vs defying President Trump, for Chatham House
Listen: ROPESCAST, the podcast from ROPES
Watch: Webinars and more on
ROPES’ YouTube channel
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Imagine you’re living through a crisis in your part of the world. It could be a natural disaster, a contentious election, or even a coup d’etat. Rumors are swirling on social media, on television, and even your family group chat. Events are unfolding rapidly, and you don’t know what to believe.
What if, just by sending a text message, you could reach a trusted source for an instant fact check?
Our guest today, Ed Bice, heads an organization called Meedan, that provides a consumer-facing fact checking service in countries around the world. Meedan’s software integrates with messaging apps, to connect people quickly with trusted news organizations. Instead of asking Chat GPT or Google, you can ask a customized chatbot, and get an answer based on reporting from your local TV station or newspaper.
Meedan’s work has been especially impactful during contentious elections in countries like Mexico, India, and Brazil.
Unfortunately, Meta’s announcement that it will stop fact checking on its platforms this year – including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook – threatens the funding and support essential for tools like Meedan to combat misinformation.
Ed Bice has been working for two decades to make the Internet a more collaborative and democratic space. And he’s still optimistic.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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This is a pivotal moment in Syria, the abrupt end of a brutal dictatorship that killed and tortured thousands and terrorized Syrian society. The Assad regime also suppressed speech, and we’re now seeing a surge in independent reports on the news and social media. The big question is what happens next? And what does this change mean to the region?
In this episode, we welcome back Zaina Erhaim to share her perspective on the sudden fall of the Assad regime, and what's ahead for Syria. Zaina is an award winning Syrian journalist, who is widely recognized for her commitment to ethical reporting and amplifying marginalized voices. She began her career reporting on the civil war in Syria, but fled to the UK after both the Assad regime, and opposition forces threatened her life.
Zaina Erhaim is the managing editor of Jeem, and a communications consultant.
Note: This interview was recorded on December 22, 2024. On December 30, Syria’s transitional government appointed Maysaa Sabrine as head of the Syrian central bank, the first woman to hold the role.
Listen to our 2022 episode with Zaina Erhaim, Decolonizing international journalism
More from Zaina Erhaim on Syria after Assad:
New York Times Opinion | Al-Assad Is Gone, and One Idea Fills My Brain
New Internationalist: Where to now for Syria’s women?
Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post: Images and narratives of Syria’s historic moment
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Please consider supporting our work at the intersection of peace, conflict, and the media! Make a tax-deductible contribution today at makingpeacevisible.org. Thank you!
When you look at the online reactions to major events, or watch news footage of political rallies, you might conclude that people on the political Left have a completely different moral compass, – or sense of right and wrong–, from people on the political Right. But Kurt Gray, a social psychologist who studies morality and politics, says that’s not true.
The main thesis behind Gray’s work at the Deepest Beliefs Lab at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his new book Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics, and How to Find Common Ground – is that humans share a sense of morality based on fear of harm, the product of our evolutionary heritage. However perceptions of who is vulnerable to harm and how those vulnerable should be defended differs widely across the divide.
In this episode, Kurt Gray draws on research to shed light on issues including
- Why so many people reacted positively to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
- Why we often think our communities and our children are less safe than they actually are
- How the decline of local news may contribute to polarization
- Why facts rarely change minds in a political argument
- How to approach politics with a sense of “moral humility”
Learn more about Kurt Gray and the book at kurtjgray.com. Follow his newsletter, Moral Understanding: The Science of What Divides Us, at moralunderstandingnewsletter.com.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably concerned by the level of polarization we’re seeing in societies around the world.
We can point fingers at social media, the news media, political parties, fear mongering leaders, poor education, broken political systems… the list is long. The divides can seem so vast, the problems so huge. It’s easy to retreat into a huddle with people who see the world the same way you do.
But our guest for this episode, Columbia University psychology and education professor and author Peter T. Coleman, says there are things each of us can do to help heal these societal wounds. And he says the press and media can play an important role in decreasing polarization.
That's the subject of his latest book, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization. Coleman outlines evidence-based practices that you can do on your own- or with a group- to help recalibrate assumptions, and re-create bonds with people you disagree with.
Coleman also partnered with the organization Starts With Us to turn the lessons from the book into an online program, called The Polarization Detox Challenge. It's like an exercise routine, for strengthening your compassion muscles. The book is focused on the United States, but the exercises can be done anywhere.
This episode originally published in January 2023.
Follow Peter T. Coleman on X: @PeterTColeman1
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. We had help on this episode from Faith McClure.
Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Bill Vortex
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Our guest in this episode is a scholar and peacebuilder who knows the world of peacebuilding intimately, and offers a critique from the inside.
Qamar-ul Huda is the author of Reenvisioning Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution in Islam, published in April 2024. He’s worked for major players like the US Institute of Peace and the UN Development Program. He served in the Obama Administration as Senior Policy Advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry, and is now a professor of International Affairs at the US Naval Academy.
In this conversation, Huda shares a refreshingly positive perspective on the possibility of peace in Islamic countries, rooted in his deep understanding of Islamic religion and cultures. In his book, he reflects on some of the mistakes made in the early years of the War on Terror, by the US government, and other international actors. He says many of these mistakes were rooted in seeing peacebuilding as a secular project, which failed to acknowledge the conflict resolution tools and ethics that exist in Islamic tradition. And he says this thinking continues to influence foreign policy to this day. He also highlights more constructive examples of conflict resolution in the Muslim world.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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"Nature knows no political borders. " - David Lehrer
On a small desert campus, students from Israel, Palestine, and other parts of the Middle East take classes in ecology, earth sciences and renewable energy. They also debate the hot button issues: history, politics, religion, war, occupation, terrorism, while learning to listen actively, and living together amidst contradicting narratives.
Our guest David Lehrer is Director of International Development at the Arava Institute, based at Kibbutz Keturah in Israel. He teaches there, and also heads up Arava's action arm, working with Palestinian partners to bring clean water, sanitation, and eco-friendly temporary housing to displaced people in Gaza -- among other projects.
Learning to care for a shared environment in the region, providing essential infrastructure in wartime, and working together across divides are usually treated as a footnote in the media, David says. But he hopes that as Arava continues to work with Palestinian partners in the face of a war with no end in sight, peacebuilding becomes news.
LEARN MORE:
The Arava Institute
Arava Institute on Instagram
David Lehrer's bio
Times of Israel: Palestinians, Israelis partner to bring off-grid solutions to Gaza camps
Special thanks to Tamar Miller and Rachel Kalikow. Music in this episode by One Man Book, Blue Dot Sessions, Doyeq, and Joel Cummins.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Ali Abu Awwad is hard to summarize. He grew up with a mother in the PLO, and served jail time for his role in the resistance during the First Palestinian Intifada. In an Israeli prison, Ali learned the power of nonviolence when he and his mother went on hunger strike to see each other. After his brother was killed by Israeli soldiers, his family met with a group of bereaved Jewish parents. Awwad says witnessing the shared humanity of Palestinian and Israeli mourners "turned his world upside down."
Awwad has been working as a peacebuilder since 2002, and has given talks around Israel, Palestine, and the world. His current work is leading Taghyeer, a Palestinian movement —"to take nonviolent responsibility for self-development and forging a path to end occupation." Awwad says he founded Taghyeer, a "DNA Palestinian movement" to focus on the "homework" needed to lay the foundation for true Palestinian self-governance and an end to Israeli military occupation. In this conversation, Awwad gives us an intimate view of his own inner transformation, and an inside look at Palestinian identity and self-determination.
LEARN MORE
Watch: An Israeli and a Palestinian talk peace, dignity and safety a conversation with Ali Abu Awwad and Ami Dar, Israeli peace activist and founder of Idealist.org, from TED.
Read: “I Don’t Want to Resist the Occupation—I Want to End the Occupation” an interview with Ali Abu Awwad in the Nation Magazine
Read: Nonviolence Is the Missing Path to Israeli-Palestinian Peace editorial by Ali Abu Awwad in "The Daily Beast"
Listen: Ali Abu Awwad and Robi Damelin on Nonviolence as The Path to Freedom for Palestinians and Israelis on "Unlocking Us" with Brené Brown
Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko and Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Cloe Shasha Brooks.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
Support this podcast
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Most people feel that peacebuilding – resolving conflicts and decreasing violence – is a positive thing. But as we've said many times on this podcast, peacebuilding is virtually invisible in the world.
Today’s guest, veteran mediator and peacebuilder Mark Gerzon, says to strengthen peace and reconciliation efforts, we need to make peacebuilding mainstream. And to do that, the reasons behind the practice need to be practical and more accessible to both the public and to donors. He says the messaging we've been using for years, grounded in a moral imperative for peace, isn't working. And today, he’s working in the United States to train leaders to work across the partisan divide.
Gerzon has served as advisor to the UN Development Program and multinational corporations. He is president of the Mediators Foundation, an incubator for social action projects that bridge divides around the world, and has authored several books on the topic of polarization and reconciliation.
LEARN MORE
Leading Through Conflict and other books by Mark Gerzon
Harvard Business Review: To Resolve a Conflict, First Decide: Is It Hot or Cold?
Documentary by Mark Gerzon: The Reunited States
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and SFmusic.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Social entrepreneurs are a unique breed of people, capable of conjuring up a vision, a new way of doing something, a solution to a problem; but they also have the skill and the determination to overcome all the obstacles to implement their vision. John Marks is a remarkable social entrepreneur who, with his wife Susan Collins Marks, built the largest peace building organization in the world, Search for Common Ground. When they stepped down from leadership in 2014, Search had 600 full time employees and offices in 35 countries. Search was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.
His new book, From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship,explains what made Search for Common Ground so successful. The book delivers practical guidance on building bridges and creating meaningful change. Of particular interest to us, John is a seasoned expert in the use of media and communications to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts.
RESOURCES:
Virtual book talk with John Marks with Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, September 23, 2024
Clips from Common Ground Productions:
· Radio in Burundi: 1:42 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qghsd3-Wpv8
· Children’s TV in Macedonia with Sesame Workshop: 2:04 - https://youtu.be/ifyCYSbHp2A
· Reality Series: CNN piece on “The President: 2:45 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQFlmUzi6ys
· Adult Drama: Team trailer: 2:14 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqYVapttDEQ&feature=youtu.be
· PSA: Ziggy Marley: 0:23 -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llinHdw_gdU
· Music Video: Ring the Bells: 3:38 - https://youtu.be/5Rs94ztNROI
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. The Associate Director of Making Peace Visible is Steven Youngblood. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Imagine living next door to a person who murdered your father, raped your sister, or even killed your child. This was the case for many people in Sierra Leone who endured a brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002: the majority of the 50,000 who died were those killed by their own neighbors.
While working with a program that facilitates ritual reconciliation processes in Sierra Leone, a process known as fambul tok (or “family talk”), peacebuilder and philanthropist Libby Hoffman learned that justice for Sierra Leonians isn't about punishing or ousting a perpetrator. Rather, justice comes through making the community whole again. “When you hurt somebody, you don't just hurt them; you hurt the community as well,” says Hoffman.
In this episode, host Jamil Simon speaks with Libby Hoffman about fambul tok, a process she calls “building peace from the inside out.” Fambul tok is an ancient tradition where disputes are solved through community-wide conversation around a bonfire. In this post-war context, Hoffman and her team facilitated the revival of the practice for Sierra Leonians.
Hoffman also documented this remarkable peacebuilding process in her award-winning documentary film Fambul Tok, which has itself catalyzed further reconciliation within Sierra Leone’s war-torn communities. Hoffman's book about her experiences in Sierre Leone is called The Answers Are There: Building Peace from the Inside Out.
Libby Hoffman is the founder and President of Catalyst for Peace, a US-based private foundation building peace from the inside-out – creating space for those most impacted by violence to lead in building the peace, supported by healthy, inclusive systems. A former Political Science professor, Hoffman has a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and a BA in Political Science from Williams College.
The film Fambul Tok is available for private viewing through MPV's Peace Docs initiative. Watch the film here: vimeo.com/26644766.
This episode was produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. It was originally published in October 2022.
Music by Xylo-Ziko via freemusicarchive.org.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. The Associate Director of Making Peace Visible is Steven Youngblood. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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On July 28, a teenage boy carried out a fatal stabbing attack on a dance class in Southport, England. Three little girls were killed, and eight other children and two adults were injured. Police arrested and detained the assailant. They didn't release his name, because he was under 18.
A user on X posted that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker named Ali Al-Shakati. A prominent YouTuber claimed the attacker was an "illegal migrant." As rumors quickly spread on social media, attracting tens of millions of views, Brits on the far right used platforms like X and TikTok to organize violent protests around the country. In one town, a mob started a fire outside a hotel housing asylum seekers and and smashed a glass door, chanting "get them out." In another, demonstrators attacked a mosque. By the end of the next weekend, violent protests had taken place in at least 18 towns and cities, and 147 people had been arrested, as Tortoise reported.
When a judge eventually released the attacker's name, Axel Rudakubana, it turned out he neither Muslim not a migrant, but a Christian and the British-born son of Rwandan parents.
This is just one of many stories of online misinformation leading to real world harm. Our guest this episode, Lena Slachmuijlder, is working to stop the flow of misinformation in a world where so many get their news from social media. She heads Search for Common Ground's Digital Peacebuilding initiative, which identifies and trains "digital stewards" around the world, people who are trusted by their communities and help stop the spread of fake news online. Also, in her work as co-chair of the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion, Lena is envisioning ways to design new tech the fosters real conversations online, including the use of AI.
Learn more:
Digital Community Stewards free online course
Digital Peacebuilders' Guide
Searching for Safer, Healthier digital spaces - review of digital peacebuilding initiatives
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. The Associate Director of Making Peace Visible is Steven Youngblood. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Gloria Laker Aciro was a teenager when war upended her family’s life in Northern Uganda. The Lord's Resistance Army, led by the infamous Joseph Kony, were known for their brutality, and for kidnapping children and making them child soldiers or child brides.
As a young displaced person, Aciro became a journalist so the world would know about the suffering in Northern Uganda: The abductions, killings, the ambushes, the destruction. But after a few years, she wondered if focusing on bloodshed was the right approach. What if journalists like her could help bring peace to the country?
Today, Aciro is director of the Peace Journalism Foundation of East Africa. Peace Journalism -- as you might remember from one of our previous episodes -- is when editors and reporters make choices that improve the prospects for peace. She covers peace and conflict, refugee issues, and the environment, and trains journalists around East Africa in peace journalism.
Aciro was a finalist for the 2022 Women Building Peace Award given by the United States Institute of Peace. And in 2019, she received a Golden Jubilee Medal awarded by Ugandan President Yoweri, for her coverage of the LRA conflict and her contributions to current peace efforts in Northern Uganda.
Aciro sat down with Making Peace Visible Education Director Steven Youngblood to reflect on her decades in the field in Uganda, and the real impact of peace journalism in the face of war and gang violence.
Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko and Joel Cummins.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. The Associate Director of Making Peace Visible is Steven Youngblood. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Close your eyes and think of the word “war” or “gun violence.” What’s the first image that comes up? Maybe it’s news footage of the wars in Gaza or Ukraine. Or maybe it’s a scene from a movie like Hotel Rwanda or Bridge on the River Kwai, or a shoutout in any number of crime and cop dramas.
Scripted storytelling, with its ability to get up close and personal with human emotions and struggles, also has a powerful influence on our perceptions of the world. And with news outlets increasingly politically siloed, perhaps Hollywood has a better chance of shifting perspectives than journalists do.
Our guest Kate Folb is director of the Center for Hollywood Health and Society, a project of the Lear Center at USC Annenberg. Hollywood Health and Society (HHS) provides expert guidance for screenwriters, producers and actors about issues from HIV, to immigration, to gun violence. They have projects on the threat of nuclear war and the impact of military expenditures on our lives and wellbeing. In this interview Jamil and Kate discuss how HHS gets Hollywood writers to think differently, as well as shows and movies featuring compelling heroes without guns that you should be watching.
Series and films mentioned in this episode, in order of appearance:
How to Get Away with Murder (ABC)
The Cleaning Lady (Fox)
Mayor of Kingstown (Paramount Plus)
Arrival (Paramount Pictures)
The Diplomat (Netflix)
Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
Madame Secretary (CBS, available in the US on Netflix)
Getting Bombed (YouTube)
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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“The United Nations was not created in order to deliver us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” - Dag Hammarskjöld.
“To Save Us From Hell” is a new weekly news and analysis podcast about the UN. Mark Leon Goldberg, a veteran global affairs journalist and editor of the news outlets UN Dispatch and Global Dispatches, and Anjali Dayal, a political science professor and author at Fordham University, co-host the show. They join us on Making Peace Visible to explain the significance of the UN today, especially when it comes to deescalating conflicts and laying the groundwork for peace.
Goldberg and Dayal’s intense focus on the UN and its work comes at a time when the world’s focus on the institution seems to be diminishing, while violent conflicts are increasing. We also have global crises like climate change, infectious disease, and refugees. The one global institution designated to deal with problems at that scale is the UN. So what’s missing from mainstream news coverage of the UN, and can it save us from hell?!
Subscribe to “To Save Us from Hell” at globaldispatches.org.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Siddhartha Corsus, and SFmusic.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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On February 14, 2018, a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with an assault rifle he’d purchased legally.
Hiding in a janitor’s closet, David Hogg recorded his classmates on his phone.
"I interviewed my classmates so that if we didn't make it out of there, hopefully our voices would carry on,” Hogg told NPR.” And it wouldn't be possible for the NRA and gun lobby to say, 'Oh, you can't talk about this. You're politicizing this.’”
Seventeen students and staff died that day. Later that year, David Hogg co-founded March for Our Lives, and helped organize hundreds of thousands of young people to rally for an end to gun violence in the United States. In the years since, they’ve had some wins, including the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, which enhanced background checks for 18 to 21 year-olds, and provided funding for community violence intervention and mental health services.
Hogg’s new project, Leaders We Deserve, helps young progressives run for office.
This week, we’re bringing you a recent interview with David Hogg from Democracy Works, a podcast about what it means to live in a democracy, from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University.
Something that stands out about Hogg, from our perspective as a podcast about peace, is how he works across the aisle to get laws passed. Like many in the peacebuilding field, Hogg recognizes that change is often incremental, and a compromise that will save lives is more useful than political gridlock.
Democracy Works co-host Jenna Spinelle spoke with David Hogg on his trip to Penn State’s campus this spring.
You can find the original Democracy Works episode and a transcript here.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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How do you measure peace in a country? Do you look at the rates of violent crime? Assess the justice system? What about freedom of the press, the health of the economy, or general happiness?
Today's guest, Steve Killelea, is the founder and Executive Chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace, an internationally renowned think tank. Each year, IEP publishes the Global Peace Index and the Positive Peace Index.
IEP researchers draw on reems of data to determine how the world is doing when it comes to peace. They also study the elements that make for peaceful societies: things like strong social cohesion, satisfaction with living standards, and resilience to crisis.
IEPs work has promotes peace as a positive, and achievable state of well being. It also serves as a kind of warning system in times like the one we're living in, where violent conflict is on the rise in many parts of the globe.
Visit visionofhumanity.org/peace-academy to take IEP's free short course on positive peace.
Music in this episode by Joel Cummins, Jesse Gallagher and SFmusic.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Vanessa Bassil is the founder and president of the Media Association for Peace, and has personally trained journalists and journalism students in Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East. She is currently in graduate school at the University of Bonn in Germany, working towards a PhD in Peace Journalism.
Peace Journalism, the guiding practice behind Media Association for Peace, (MAP) is when editors and reporters make choices—of what to report, and how to report it—that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict.
Growing up in an insulated Christian community in the wake of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), Vanessa never had the opportunity to meet a Lebanese Muslim. As a rookie journalist, instead of working inside of one of her country’s ethnic media silos, she chose independence. She was drawn towards peacebuilding, and would report on camps that brought together groups of Sunni and Shia Muslims and Christians in the mountains. With the founding of MAP in 2013, Vanessa created a space where journalists learn to report on Lebanon’s divisive issues – including an economic crisis, the difficulties of hosting Syrian refugees, and LGBTQ rights – in ways that are nuanced and depolarizing.
Watch videos produced by MAP to break stereotypes about Syrian refugees (Arabic with English subtitles)
The Genius Syrian Refugee
Myassar, the Woman Who Never Gives Up
The Robot Team
Watch Vanessa Bassil’s webinar presentation to learn more about MAP (about 15 minutes)
To learn more about Peace Journalism, listen to our episode with Steven Youngblood, founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University, and now Making Peace Visible’s Director of Education.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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William Ury is one of the world’s most influential peacebuilders and experts on negotiation. He advised Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos in the lead up to that country's historic 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, and played a key role in de-escalating nuclear tensions between the U.S. and North Korea in 2017. Getting to Yes, which Ury co-wrote with Roger Fisher back in 1981, is the world’s best selling book on negotiation. Ury co-founded the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, as well as the Abraham Path Initiative, an NGO that builds walking trails connecting communities in the Middle East.
His new book is called Possible: How we Survive - and Thrive - in an Age of Conflict. It’s filled with incredible stories from Bill’s career. In this episode, Bill talks about how lessons from the failures and success of the past – in places like Northern Ireland, Colombia, and the Middle East – can be instructive when dealing with the conflicts of today. He shares exciting ideas about how journalists can tell stories about peace. What’s more, his insights on managing conflict can be applied anywhere from the UN to the boardroom to your own family.
William Ury’s ideas aren’t easy to implement – in fact they’re incredibly challenging. Ury says conflicts don’t end, but they can be transformed, from fighting with weapons to hashing differences out in a democratic process. And if Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Colombia – places where people said violent conflict would go on forever – could transform their conflicts, then there’s hope for the seemingly “impossible” conflicts of today.
Music in this episode by Joel Cummins, Podington Bear, Kevin MacLeod, Meavy Boy, and Faszo.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible
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When India-based reporter Amy Yee got a call from her editor to cover a press conference with the Dalai Lama, she stopped what she was doing and booked the next flight. She was headed for Dharamsala, where the Buddhist leader and thousands of Tibetan refugees make their home. It was March 2008, and the Dalai Lama was responding to violence in Tibet, where demonstrations against Chinese rule led to a government crackdown. At least 120 people had died, mostly ethnic Tibetans.
On that first visit to Dharamsala, Yee was struck by the throngs of Tibetans protesting peacefully in the streets. She was also surprised when the Dalai Lama approached her after the press conference, asked if she was Chinese, and embraced her in a warm hug.
A few months later, Yee quit her job at the Financial Times and moved to this small city in the foothills of the Himalayas as a freelance reporter. She writes that “Dharamsala is more than an ethnic enclave; it’s a unique microcosm of a culture fighting for survival.” Her new book, Far from the Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents follows the stories of ordinary Tibetans who have lived extraordinary lives. It also documents this community in exile: its education system, self-expression, and non-violent resistance.
In this second episode in our series on refugees and immigration, we take a look at what it means to build a new life, when you may never be able to go home; and how Tibetans have forged their own path in India and elsewhere.
Music in this episode by Joel Cummins, One Man Book, and Podington Bear
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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“Humans are not rational beings with emotions. In fact, we're just the opposite. We're emotionally based beings who can only think rationally when we feel that our identities, as we see them, are understood and valued by others.”
Those words from neuroscientist Bob Deutch triggered a lightbulb moment in the mind of Tim Phillips, a veteran peacebuilder and educator. This is what the field of conflict resolution had been missing: a science-based understanding of how the human brain works in conflict situations. Over the past twelve years, Phillips has worked with neuroscientists and psychologists to integrate brain science into research and practice at Beyond Conflict, the peacebuilding organization that he founded in 1991 and where he serves as CEO.
In this conversation, we focus on Beyond Conflict’s research on dehumanization. If you perceive another person or group as less than human, it’s much easier to justify violence against that group or person. Dehumanizing rhetoric – like describing people as animals or vermin – is often a precursor to violence.
But Phillips says if we can identify signs of dehumanization early on, we can make changes to decrease the likelihood of violent conflict. Phillips and host Jamil Simon also discuss the difference between fear and disgust – both motivators of conflict that are each processed differently in the brain and require different interventions. Plus, how Beyond Conflict has applied this research to create media interventions in Nigeria and the United States. And, how journalists can utilize knowledge of how the brain works to reach more people and avoid incitement.
LEARN MORE
Watch the video “America’s Divided Mind” by Beyond Conflict
Read key takeaways from Beyond Conflict’s research on dehumanization
Read Beyond Conflict’s Decoding Dehumanization policy brief
Listen to our episode with psychologist Donna Hicks: “Dignity: A new way to look at conflict”
Watch “How to Grow Peace Journalism” webinars from the George Washington University Media and Peacebuilding Project. Presentations from Making Peace Visible host Jamil Simon, education director Steven Youngblood, and producer Andrea Muraskin in this video.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Intergenerational trauma, also called historical trauma, is defined as cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma experiences.
The brutal October 7th attacks by Hamas inside of Israel, and the IDF’s seemingly relentless assault on Gaza have captured the world’s attention for the past six months. In this episode, we attempt to understand the psychological state that’s developed over generations on both sides, which enables people to commit such violent acts.
Our guest is Lydia Wilson, a research fellow at Oxford’s Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies, and the Culture Editor at New Lines Magazine. Lydia has spent a good part of her career studying radicalization and the long-term psychological impact of violence on a population level.
LEARN MORE
Articles by Lydia Wilson
The Psychology of the Intractable Israel-Palestine Conflict, New Lines Magazine, October 2023
Jordan’s Fragile Balancing Act, New Lines Magazine, December 2023
What I Discovered From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters, The Nation, October 2015
Follow Lydia Wilson on X: @lsmwilson
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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In the news media, war gets more headlines than peace, conflict more airtime than reconciliation. And in our polarized world, reporting on conflict in a way that frames conflicts as us vs. them, good vs. evil often serves to dig us in deeper. On Making Peace Visible, we speak with journalists and peacebuilders who help us understand the human side of conflicts and peace efforts around the world. From international negotiations in Colombia to gang violence disruptors in Chicago, to women advocating for their rights in the midst of the Syrian civil war, these are the storytellers who are changing the narrative.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories (www.warstoriespeacestories.org), and hosted by Boston-based documentary filmmaker Jamil Simon.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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After over two decades as a journalist, including ten years covering terrorism and disasters for TIME Magazine, Amanda Ripley thought she understood conflict. But when momentum started to build around the candidacy of Donald Trump, she questioned what she thought she knew. Ripley interviewed psychologists, mediators, and people who had made it out of seemingly intractable conflicts for her book, High Conflict: Why We Get Stuck and How We Get Out. In this conversation with host Jamil Simon, she shares insights about how people in conflict can move forward, and how journalists can get at the "understory" of what's beneath any conflict.
Order Amanda Ripley’s book, High Conflict: Why We Get Stuck and How We Get Out. Watch Amanada’s talk on High Conflictfor The Alliance for Peacebuilding. Follow her column in the Washington Post.
Find our episode on the Colombian peace process here. You can watch the documentary “A Call for Peace” for free here: vimeo.com/305983614. Enter password peace2019. Learn more at acallforpeace.org.
Music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions and Pianobook.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
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We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
Reza Sayah is an Iranian-American journalist, currently based in Tehran. He’s reported on major events around the world including the Ukrainian Revolution of 2004, the Second Iraq War, and the Egyptian Revolution.
Reza has spent much of his career working for major broadcast news networks including ABC, CNN, and Al Jazeera. In those roles, he’s had to explain complicated conflicts - in the form of very brief segments. And he says the corporate news model often works to perpetuate conflicts. But, another way is possible.
This episode was originally published in June 2022.
Watch:
Top Hamas official discusses Israel attack, Iran relations for PBS Newshour
Reza Sayah reports on Iran’s Jewish community for PBS Newshour
Reza Sayah: How This Iran-Backed Militia Helped Save Iraq from ISIS for PBS Newshour
Reza Sayah’s Tedx talk: How to Spot News that is NOT News
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
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As of May 2023, there were an estimated 110 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Many are escaping wars, gang violence or repressive regimes, others are fleeing climate change impacts. Some are leaving collapsed economies where they can’t feed their families. How journalists cover refugees and immigration has a major impact on public perceptions.
This is the first in a series of episodes looking at the intersection of journalism, refugees and immigration because it’s such an important issue, and because how journalists report on it has such a strong impact on public attitudes.
Guest Dina Francesca Haynes is an immigration and human rights attorney with decades of experience around the world. She worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Rwanda, among other international organizations. She’s personally represented hundreds of asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking.
Haynes also writes for publications like The Jurist and The Hill, and has served as an expert source for journalists at CNN, Vice News, NPR, and other news outlets. She is the founder and president of the legal aid organization Refugee Projects, and directs the Immigration Law Certificate Program at New England Law. In this interview, she shares moving stories about clients trying to escape war and human trafficking; as well as advice for both journalists and activists on how to communicate fairly and accurately about immigration in a highly politicized atmosphere.
LEARN MORE
Visit refugeeprojects.org, and follow on Instagram @refugeeprojects.
Read Dina Haynes’ article in Jurist: Rule of Law Chronicles: Migration, Xenophobia and the Immigrant Other (May 2023)
Read the Vice News article on human trafficking in Afghanistan quoting Dina Haynes: The Anti-Trafficking Movement Is Pivoting to Afghanistan (October 2021)
Music in this episode by Poddington Bear, Bill Vortex, Meavy Boy and Doyeq.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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On Making Peace Visible, we are always questioning the mantra, if it bleeds, it leads. Boston’s Charles Stuart murder case is a classic example of what can go horribly wrong when you follow that mantra.
Charles Stuart was a father-to-be from the suburbs of Boston. Shortly after attending a birthing class in the city with his wife, Carol, Charles Stuart placed a 911 call. The couple had both been shot in their car. Stuart said a Black man pulled the trigger.
Carol died from her injuries the next day. She and Charles were white, and the reaction from authorities was worlds away from what usually happened when a Black person was shot in Boston. Mayor Ray Flynn asked the police commissioner to assign every available detective to the case. Police immediately began raiding the homes of Black residents and conducting strip searches of young Black men in the Mission Hill area. With TV news playing and replaying the 911 call and a photo of the Stewarts bleeding on the front page of the Boston Herald the next day, a media circus ensued.
But two months later - when Charles Stuart died by jumping off a bridge – it quickly became clear he was in fact the killer.
This episode, we’re joined by Adrian Walker, an associate editor and columnist at the Boston Globe who was a rookie reporter there at the time of the Stuart case. Walker headed up a team of investigative reporters who recently revisited this story in a new and fascinating way.
In the podcast Murder in Boston, and web series Nightmare in Mission Hill, investigative reporters at the Globe brought new evidence to light – like law enforcement officials who knew about Stuart’s guilt, but kept quiet. The podcast and the report also give voice to the family of Willie Bennett, the Black man who was the Boston police’s prime suspect.
In this retelling, Walker – who hosts the podcast, – and other journalists discuss the media’s shortcomings in covering the Charles Stuart story, and how the news reports often fanned the flames of racial tension around it. The project also offers a blueprint for how journalists can help bring about healing following community trauma.
Listen to the podcast, Murder in Boston
Read the web series, Nightmare in Mission Hill
This episode was edited by Faith McClure, and we had production help from Kristin Nelson. Special thanks to Lazzaro. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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In this episode we’re featuring a recent interview with our host, documentary filmmaker and lifelong peace activist Jamil Simon on This is My Silver Lining, a podcast about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, with an emphasis on life’s unexpected twists.
Jamil has certainly had plenty of those. In 1990 he took a job in Tunisia designing communication strategies to promote water conservation and family planning. He would go on to promote social and environmental reform in 25 developing countries. Through these experiences, Jamil became convinced that peace efforts must become more visible and that journalism is the most powerful way to advance positive change globally.
In 2018, he organized a symposium in New York City titled War Stories, Peace Stories: Peace, Conflict, and the Media, which brought together peace builders and journalists for a dialogue on covering war and violence more thoughtfully. It was this symposium that inspired Jamil to launch his podcast, in order to continue these important conversations. Jamil was awarded the 2019 Luxembourg Peace Prize for his work building global awareness of peaceful solutions to conflict.
Jamil has also protested the Vietnam War, hitchhiked from Mexico City to de Janeiro, and driven a taxi cab, and that’s just scratching the surface.
Find This is My Silver Lining wherever you get your podcasts and at thisismysilverlining.com.
Listen to previous Making Peace Episodes referenced in this interview:
Building peace on a walk through the Middle East with Anisa Mehdi and Joshua Weiss from the Abraham Path Initiative
Un-embedding Western narratives about Afghanistan with Dutch journalist Bette Dam
This episode was edited and produced by John Keur at Wayfare Recordings, with additional production by Andrea Muraskin. Special thanks to Lauren Passel. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Xylo-Ziko.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Making Peace Visible is a show about how the media covers peace and conflict. One of the major reasons we make it is because peace gets so little coverage in the news media. When we do hear news about peace, it's usually focused on signing an agreement. When that’s done, the cameras, and the world's attention move on.
But that handshake moment is just a fragment in a peace process. It often takes years of building trust and openness between warring parties to get to an agreement. And then more years after, to transition from violent conflict towards a political process; and see if peace can stick, and whether the grievances that led to war in the first place are being addressed.
The slow speed and complexity of these processes may not lend themselves to mainstream news formats. But they are happening, and we're missing out on valuable lessons in reconciliation that can be adapted to other conflicts around the world.
That’s why we invited Jonathan Cohen, executive director of the peacebuilding organization Conciliation Resources, or CR. In this episode, he shares stories from two ongoing peace processes: In Ethiopia, an ethnic Somali state called Ogaden. And on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, a new autonomous region called Bangsamoro.
You’ll also hear about CR’s work in Nagorno-Karabakh, where journalists from both sides – Armenian and Azeri – collaborated to make documentaries about that conflict. And we’ll discuss why this kind of storytelling still matters, even after most of the region’s Armenians were displaced during an Azerbaijani offensive in September 2023.
LEARN MORE
Parts of a Circle: Nagorny Karabakh conflict documentary series (Scroll to bottom to watch 2019 Summary Film)
Ethiopia: persisting with peace – short film about Ogaden peace process
Southern Philippines: Making Peace Stick in the Bangsamoro – May 2023 Crisis Group report
Music in this episode by Bill Vortex
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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Between democracy and autocracy is an anocracy, defined by political scientists as a country that has elements of both forms of government — usually one that’s on the way up to becoming a full democracy or on the way down to full autocracy. This messy middle is the state when civil wars are most likely to start, and the one that requires the most diligence from that country’s citizens to prevent a civil war from breaking out.
This week we're featuring an interview from our friends at Democracy Works, a podcast about what it means to live in a democracy from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. Host Jenna Spinelle speaks with Barbara F. Walter, political scientist and author of the book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them. Walter has spent decades studying civil wars around the world and working with other political scientists to quantify how strong democracy is in a given country. The interview covers those findings, how the democratic health of the United States has shifted over the past decade, and more.
Barbara F. Walter is the Rohr Professor of International Affairs at the School of Global Policy & Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and completed post docs at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University and the War and Peace Institute at Columbia University.
LEARN MORE:
How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them
Barbara F. Walter on Twitter
We need your help to continue producing Making Peace Visible. Make a one-time or recurring tax-deductible donation here.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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In the United States, about one sixth of the federal budget goes to defense. This year the country spent more on the military than any year since 2001 – over $816 billion. Why does spending continue to rise in the wake of US withdrawal from Afghanistan? Why are many Americans so passive in the face of the massive expenditures for defense that crowd out spending on human needs like education, healthcare and infrastructure? Why does much of the media accept the status quo? And is all of this spending making Americans and the world any safer?
Our guest to help tackle these questions is anthropologist Stephanie Savell. Savell is the Co-Director of Costs of War at Brown University, an interdisciplinary research project focused on the impact of the post 9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond; the U.S. global military footprint; and the domestic effects of US military spending. Savell's own research highlights US military involvement around the world, most notably in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. In many of these places, American assistance has served to fuel existing conflicts, and provided governments with tools and justification to target Muslim populations. But, Savell says, it doesn’t have to be this way.
We need your help to continue making this podcast. Make a one-time or recurring tax-deductible donation here.
Read the first issue of our new journal NUANCE.
MORE FROM COSTS OF WAR
Stephanie Savell’s map of US counterterrorism operations 2021-2023
The Costs of United States’ Post-9/11 “Security Assistance”: How Counterterrorism Intensified Conflict in Burkina Faso and Around the World by Stephanie Savell
Why Media Conflation of Activism with Terrorism Has Dire Consequences: The Case of Cop City by Deepa Kumar
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Xylo-Ziko
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
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Trey Kay knows both sides of America's partisan divide intimately. He was born and raised in a conservative family in Charleston, West Virginia. As a young man he moved to New York City, where he later became a producer on the arts and culture program Studio 360, at WNYC.
These days, Trey splits his time between New York and West Virginia to make Us & Them, an award-winning narrative podcast about America’s culture wars, in partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
On Us & Them, Trey treats people with respect, he listens carefully to their point of view whether he agrees or not, and he facilitates conversations that might not otherwise happen. A guiding value is empathy – no matter who the interviewee happens to be. This episode was originally published in May 2023.
EPISODES OF US AND THEM EXCERPTED IN THIS EPISODE, with photos and additional context
The Gun Divide
Critical Race Theory
Please Pass the Politics
Subscribe to Us & Them on your podcast player
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Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure.
Music in this episode by Doctor Turtle
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Western media has often referred to India as the world’s largest democracy. But during the last decade, the world has witnessed the decline of many democratic institutions in India. In a recent Time Magazine article our guest Suchitra Vijayan questions whether India can still be called a democracy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have been especially harsh towards critics of the regime, including journalists. Journalists who have criticized the government have been harassed, detained, imprisoned, and even murdered. Meanwhile, 75% or more of news organizations are now owned by 4 or 5 large corporations, all led by allies of Modi. As you’ll hear in this episode, today’s Indian government uses complicit media outlets as a weapon against non-violent descent.
Suchitra Vijayan is a journalist and attorney based in New York City. Her new book, How Long Can the Moon be Caged? co-authored with Francesca Recchia, tells the stories of political prisoners in India today, including artists, activists, academics, and journalists. Vijayan is also the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a journalism and research organization focused on authoritarianism and state oppression. She was born and raised in Madras, also known as Chennai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Read Vijayan’s reporting in The Nation about the government’s targeting of Kashmir’s free press.
Something we didn’t have time to include in this episode is the legacy of journalism and activism in Suchitra Vijayan’s family. That includes her grandfather, who took part in India’s freedom struggle – and became one of the new country’s first political prisoners. You can find that story and more in our newsletter, which publishes on Thursday, November 9th. To sign up, go to warstoriespeacestories.org/contact. If you’re reading this after that day, email us at info@warstoriespeacestories.org, and we’ll be happy to forward it to you.
Making Peace Visible is produced by Andrea Muraskin. We had editing help on this episode from Faith McClure. Peter Agoos is the creative director of the War Stories Peace Stories Project. Our host is Jamil Simon.
Listen to a recent interview with Jamil on the podcast This is My Silver Lining: Learning to Walk in the Shoes of Another: a Prayer for Peace with Documentary Filmmaker and Podcaster Jamil Simon.. The New York-born son of Iraqi Jewish immigrants, Jamil’s curiosity about the world had him traveling independently from the age of 15. In this interview, Jamil talks about discovering his love for film and photography, working on communications projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, and developing the War Stories Peace Stories project – including this podcast – to illuminate peace efforts. Plus, twists and turns along the way, including a stint as a taxi driver in Boston. Find This is My Silver Lining wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you find this show valuable, please consider supporting our work. Visit warstoriespeacestories.org/take-action. You can choose a one-time or a recurring tax-deductible donation. Thank you.
Music in this episode by Siddhartha Corsus and Blue Dot Sessions
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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On Making Peace Visible we usually focus on stories -- narratives about peace and conflict that are told in the news, on social media, and shared in our collective zeitgeist. We’ve seen examples of how storytelling can both stoke the fire of war and encourage peaceful dialogue. In this episode, we look at a different, but related way of creating space for peace: design.
Our guest Cynthia Smith is the Curator for Socially Responsible Design at the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City. She spent five years creating the remarkable exhibition Designing Peace, which includes 40 design proposals, initiatives and interventions from 25 countries, including maps, images, textiles, video games and film.
From a teeter-totter installed on the US-Mexico border fence to a crowd-sourced reimagining of war-damaged Damascus, the works in Designing Peace coupled with Smith’s vision present a world of possibility.
Designing Peace is on view at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco through February 4, 2024. Explore the virtual exhibit here. Purchase the beautiful companion book here.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is produced by Andrea Muraskin and hosted by Jamil Simon. Faith McClure writes our newsletter and designs our website. Creative direction by Peter Agoos. Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko, Doyeq, and Blanket Music.
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Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
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One way to cover war is to follow the road offered by the dominant army. In Afghanistan, that often meant journalists were embedded with U.S. or NATO troops, and saw the war and the world around it through their eyes.
Guest Bette Dam is a Dutch journalist who covered the war in Afghanistan for 15 years. She began her coverage in 2006, embedded with the Dutch troops fighting there. She’s the author of two books: Looking for the Enemy, Mullah Omar and the Unknown Taliban, and A Man in a Motorcycle, How Hamid Karzai Came to Power. Dam also teaches a class called "Unlearning Afghanistan" at Sciences Po in Paris, and is working on a PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels on the role of media in conflict.
In the course of her reporting Dam realized that most Western journalists were providing a distorted view of the war. It left out the perspective of the Afghan people, and made the country appear more dangerous than it really was. And Dam says the press missed opportunities to hold the U.S. and NATO to account for major blunders – including overlooking the fact that the Taliban surrendered in December 2001.
More than 2,000 have died and over 9,000 have been injured in an earthquake that hit western Afghanistan on Saturday, October 7. Dam is partnering with Sense of Humanity and Learn Afghanistan to raise funds for medical aid, food and shelter. Help provide medical aid, food and shelter by donating here.
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MORE FROM BETTE DAM
TEDx talk: The shortcomings of war reporting
Bette’s Substack
Follow Bette on X (formerly Twitter)
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is produced by Andrea Muraskin and hosted by Jamil Simon. Faith McClure writes our newsletter and designs our website. Creative direction by Peter Agoos. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Zero V, and Doyeq.
Sign up for our newsletter to be notified when episodes come out and learn more about our guests: warstoriespeacestories.org/contact.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
Support this podcast
We talk a lot on this show about the reasons why peace and conflict resolution aren’t more visible in the news media and our public conversation.
Our past guests have presented a variety of explanations: TV news segments are too short to talk about much beyond dramatic events, like battles and coups. For-profit media doesn't cover peace efforts because there's not enough interest in peace to attract advertisers. Conflict and divisiveness drive revenue on social media platforms. Professionals in the peacebuilding field speak in jargon that's not easily accessible to the average person. Or maybe, seeing so much violence in the news, has audiences thinking that peace isn't even possible, and therefore not worth working for.
Given all these challenges, we thought it was time to speak with someone whose job it is to make peace more visible.
Jack Farrell is Director of Communications for Search for Common Ground, the world's largest peacebuilding organization, with offices in 40 countries. Part of working in communications at an organization like Search is putting human lives before stories – Jack says many of the best stories about peacebuilding never reach the public to protect the safety of the people involved. Nevertheless, peacebuilding NGOs can and do play an important role in the media.
With over a decade of experience in nonprofit communications and politics and an eye towards the future, Jack has valuable advice for anyone looking to amplify their message, while exercising sensitivity and humility.
To get to know Jack a little better, sign up for our email newsletter, where we've got a more personal Q & A that you won't find on the podcast. Subscribe at warstoriespeacestories.org/contact.
Email Jack Farrell at jfarrell@sfcg.org and find him on X (formerly Twitter) @JackWFarrell.
You can get in touch with us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org, or on X @warstoriespeace. We’re also on LinkedIn.
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Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin with help from Faith McClure. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org
We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
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If you're interested in learning about how peace gets made and unmade and then remade, Colombia is an amazing laboratory. Guest Elizabeth Dickinson is a senior analyst with the Crisis Group in Colombia. Dickinson spends her days in discussion with communities most affected by the civil war, as well as former FARC members. She and her colleagues use information gathered in the field to make policy recommendations to the government and help facilitate dialogues. Before entering the conflict prevention field, Dickinson worked as a journalist, reporting for The Economist and Foreign Policy Magazine.
In this episode Dickinson paints a picture of a country in the midst of slow and difficult reforms. In the years since the FARC and the government signed a peace accord in 2016, putting an end to 50 years of violent conflict, breakthroughs in peace continue to happen. At the same time, armed groups who have taken the place of the FARC extort communities and fight each other. Violence between the military and guerrillas has decreased in the past year, but clashes between armed groups have increased since Gustavo Petro took the presidency in August 2022. According to one analysis, violence between these groups has risen 85% since Petro was inaugurated. However in August 2023, Petro’s government began a six-month ceasefire with the National Liberation Army, or ELN, an important armed group. Dickinson says the most important peacebuilding work is taking place at the community level, and she’s seen it with her own eyes.
For more on the evolution of peace in Colombia, check out our previous episodes:
Spotlight Colombia: After demilitarization, a new narrative with journalist Daniel Salgar
Spotlight Colombia: Behind the scenes of making peace with documentary filmmaker Juan Carlos Borrero
Learn more about Elizabeth Dickinson:
Twitter: @dickinsonbeth
Profile from Crisis Group: "I love understanding people. And I love listening to toads sing at night in the countryside"
Recent news and analysis on peace and conflict in Colombia:
Colombia's 'Total Peace' 1 Year On: Less State Violence, Stronger Criminal Groups from Insight Crime
Colombian gang leaders announce talks to address urban violence from Al Jazeera
The secret to Colombia’s drop in deforestation? Armed groups from Al Jazeera
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About us
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin with help from Faith McClure. Special thanks to Samantha Schmidt.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Doyeq, Poddington Bear, One Man Book, and Kevin MacLeod.
After the peace agreement their leaders signed with the Colombian government in September 2016, members of the FARC guerilla group began turning in their weapons to the UN. In exchange, rank-and-file members received amnesty for acts of violence they committed during the country’s long civil war. They could leave their jungle encampments and rejoin society – go to work or school like any other citizen. The FARC ceased to be a group of guerilla fighters and became a political party, with members even serving in congress.
But many Colombians saw the FARC as enemies, and were not ready to integrate them into society so quickly. Just over half of voters rejected the agreement in a referendum. Some ex-combatants were killed. And in 2018, the country elected Iván Duque, a vocal opponent of the peace accord.
But peace takes time. And our guest Daniel Salgar says that over time, more Colombians, including many journalists, have begun to accept former guerillas as members of society, rather than enemies. The election of President Gustavo Petro in 2022, who ran on the peace agreement, reflects that mindset shift.
Salgar counts himself among a generation of journalists who spent most of their careers covering peace efforts. When we spoke with him last year, he was wrapping up a job as an editor for the Colombia Truth Commission Report, which shed light on decades of atrocities and human rights violations that were committed during the civil war. Before working for the Truth Commission, he was a reporter and editor at the newspaper El Espectador, where he oversaw a project on peacebuilding called Colombia 2020. Salgar also served as editor and director of the Spanish news service for Anadalou, a Turkish international news agency.
Now working in communications for ACNUR Colombia/ UNHCR, Salgar says he continues to be optimistic about the implementation of the 2016 agreement and the possibility of peace with other guerilla groups in his country.
The original version of this episode was published in September 2022.
Follow Daniel Salgar on Twitter: @DanielSalgar1
View the Colombia Truth Commission Report (in Spanish)
Read Daniel Salgar’s interview with former FARC leader Timochenco (in English)
Read Daniel’s analysis piece on drug policy in Colombia (in Spanish)
Explore the peacebuilding journalism project Colombia 2020 (Now Colombia +20) (in Spanish)
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Visit our website: warstoriespeacestories.org
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Phil Larson, Meavy Boy, Podington Bear, Pianobook, and Kevin Mac Leod
A main premise of our podcast is that peace efforts are invisible in the mainstream media, or certainly not visible enough. But one place that has grabbed at least some of the world’s attention, is the peace process in Colombia. In 2016, after repeated failed negotiations, the FARC guerilla organization finally signed a peace deal with the government. After fifty years of war, militants turned in their weapons and they began a process of reintegration into society.
Our guest, filmmaker and Bogotá native Juan Carlos Borrero, used to from from the guerillas when filming in the Colombian countryside. Everyone he knew had a family member who had been kidnapped or killed. He never thought he’d see peace between the government and the FARC. Borrero’s documentary film “A Call for Peace” tells the story of the peace process in Colombia, through interviews with peace builders who played key roles behind the scenes. Skilled negotiators from places like Northern Ireland, Israel, and El Salvador shared their experience and counsel with then-President Juan Manuel Santos.
The implementation of the agreement has been rocky, with continuing violence surrounding the drug trade, and victims still waiting for reparations. In August 2022, newly elected President Gustavo Petro announced a campaign called “Total Peace.” He said he would work to follow through on the promises of the 2016 agreement, and to forge peace agreements with other militant groups. Just last week, leaders of the guerilla group ELN arrived in Bogotá, amidst negotiations – a historic show of cooperation with the government. But on the same day, President Petro’s son Nicolás confessed to receiving illicit donations to his fathers’ campaign.
Despite setbacks, there’s no doubt that the 2016 peace agreement was a significant achievement that offers hope and a new way forward for Colombians. This is the first episode in our Spotlight Colombia series, where we look at Colombia as a laboratory of peace, from the 2016 agreement to Petro's election, to today. We first recorded this interview with Juan Carlos Borrero in May 2022.
Watch "A Call for Peace."
Follow Juan Carlos Borrero on X (formerly Twitter) @juancborrero1
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure.
Music in this episode by MARiAN.
“The one embedded bias that we definitely have when we get up every day to cover the news anew is that we're biased for democracy. Let's just admit that. So if you're biased for democracy, then you have to be biased for racial justice, because racial justice is embedded in the democratic promise.” - Deborah Douglas
Some of the most polarized debates in the United States today stem from issues of race, from policing to how history should be taught in schools. Our guest this episode, award-winning American journalist Deborah Douglas, believes the answer to polarization isn’t to cloister ourselves in so-called “safe spaces.” Rather, she sees journalism as a “brave space” to excavate the impact of America’s racial history on the current moment. Like previous guests Amanda Ripley and David Bornstein, Douglas practices Solutions Journalism – which looks at how systems work to solve social problems – and how they could work better for more people.
Deborah Douglas is the Director of the Midell Midwest Solutions Journalism Hub at Northwestern University in Chicago. She’s also the author of US Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places and Events that Made the Movement. In the past, she’s been co-editor In chief of The Emancipator, founding managing editor of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, and much more.
Find Deborah Douglas on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @debofficialy. Learn more at debofficially.com.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure.
Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko, Doyeq, and Blue Dot Sessions
Our guest this episode, Daniel Estrin, is an international correspondent for NPR based in Jerusalem. There is a human element present throughout Daniel Estrin’s body of work that places listeners in the shoes of ordinary Palestinians and Israelis. Fluent in both Hebrew and Arabic and having lived in the region for over fifteen years, Daniel has a keen ear for both the suffering and the tenacity that coexist side by side. His insights are valuable for any journalist covering a contested place, and anyone looking to connect across deep-seeded divides.
WORK FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
A 70-year-old man in Gaza needed open heart surgery. It was a race against time July 2022
While Israel is in turmoil, tonight it marks its 75th Independence Day May 2023
Hotel Corona May 2020
Rooting for a Eurovision singer of the same name May 2023
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Interview in this episode by Andrea Muraskin.
Music in this episode by Doyeq and Eddy.
In the news, we might not hear much about a political movement in another country, or even in our own country, unless it “turns violent,” or when “violence breaks out." In reality, building a protest movement takes planning and coordination, and many movements are explicitly nonviolent. In fact, it’s often people unaffiliated with movements who are responsible for violence at protests.
Both activists and journalists are often frustrated. Activists complain that their actions don’t get enough coverage, or that the coverage tells an incomplete or skewed story. Journalists counter that activists need to get better at communicating with the media.
Our guest Hardy Merriman watches political movements and the media that covers them closely, and he has advice for how both sides can tell better stories. Merriman is Director of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), an organization that supports civil resistance movements globally through research and education. He’s deeply worried about the rise and strengthening of autocracy around the world. Authoritarians are cracking down on activists in ways that are hard to see – making the jobs of journalists more difficult, and even more crucial.
LEARN MORE
Chronicling Civil Resistance: The Journalists’ Guide to Unraveling and Reporting Nonviolent Struggles for Rights, Freedom and Justice
By Deborah Mathis and Hailey Grace Allen, edited by Hardy Merriman
ICNC, April 2021
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave: A Playbook for Countering the Authoritarian Threat
By Hardy Merriman, Patrick Quirk, and Ash Jain
ICNC and The Atlantic Council, March 2023
Read more from Hardy Merriman at hardymerriman.com
Please leave us a rating or review and let us know what you think of the episode.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org. More at warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Additional sound engineering by Faith McClure.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Podington Bear and Bill Vortex.
“Weapons and war do not keep us safe. Instead, we should put our money and time into programs that ensure real safety and security for everyone, like affordable health care, a just judicial system, and economic opportunities.”
Americans were asked if they agree or disagree with the above statement in a 2022 poll conducted by the American Friends Service Committee, an advocacy organization that promotes peace and social justice around the world. AFSC conducted the study for two reasons: to gauge US public opinion on cutting military spending, and to test how people would respond to different messages about why cutting the military budget is important. They found that when Americans across different groups were asked if they would support shifting Pentagon spending to domestic issues like healthcare and education, sixty percent said yes.
Guest Beth Hallowell, Director of Research and Analytics at the American Friends Service Committee, (AFSC) helped design the Pentagon spending study, along with a 2023 study on US attitudes towards peacebuilding. In this episode, Beth shares helpful insights about how peacebuilders can be more effective when communicating to the public, and the media.
Follow AFSC on Twitter @afsc_org.
Leave us a review and let us know how you talk to the people in your life, or to the public, about peace.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Podington Bear, Doyeq, and Bill Vortex
Trey Kay knows both sides of America's partisan divide intimately. He was born and raised in a conservative family in Charleston, West Virginia. As a young man he moved to New York City, where he later became a producer on the arts and culture program Studio 360, at WNYC.
These days, Trey splits his time between New York and West Virginia to make Us & Them, an award-winning narrative podcast about America’s culture wars, in partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
On Us & Them, Trey treats people with respect, he listens carefully to their point of view whether he agrees or not, and he facilitates conversations that might not otherwise happen. A guiding value is empathy – no matter who the interviewee happens to be.
EPISODES OF US AND THEM EXCERPTED IN THIS EPISODE, with photos and additional context
The Gun Divide
Critical Race Theory
Please Pass the Politics
Subscribe to Us & Them on your podcast player
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure.
Music in this episode by Doctor Turtle
The right to peaceful protest is considered fundamental in democracies around the world. Nonviolent protest movements, like the Gandhian movement for independence in India or The Civil Rights Movement in the United States are celebrated in history books. Yet if you go looking for coverage of nonviolent protest in the news media, most of the time you’ll come up short.
Guest Maria Stephan is a political scientist who studies nonviolent protest movements.
Stephan has worked as a Foreign Affairs Officer for the State Department under President Barack Obama, and directed the Program on Nonviolent Action at the U.S. Institute of Peace. With Julia Roig, she co-founded the Horizons Project, which is focused on community organizing as a means of combating polarization and oppression in the United States. Stephan is the co-author with Erica Chenoweth of the book Why Civil Resistance Works, along with other books on the topic.
In this interview, Maria widens the lens on nonviolent resistance, and offers tips for how journalists could apply that lens to tell more complete and captivating stories.
Follow Maria Stephan on Twitter @MariaJStephan.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions, Podington Bear, and Xylo-Ziko.
It’s no secret that digital technology, in particular social media, stokes division in society and sometimes provokes violent conflict. Toxic polarization prevents us from solving problems, from making decisions together, from being constructive in our approach. In this episode, we look at ways social media and other technology can be used to call out misinformation and even build bridges.
Guest Shamil Idriss, is the CEO of Search for Common Ground. SFCG is the largest peacebuilding organization in the world, and has a long history of using media in reconciliation efforts. Almost fifteen years ago, Shamil established a virtual exchange program connecting young adults in Europe and North America to their peers in the Middle East, and he’s been working at the intersection of peacebuilding and tech ever since. In February, Shamil helped launch the Council on Technology and Social Cohesion to foster collaboration between peacebuilders and tech workers. Shamil says it’s crucial for the peacebuilding field to understand and harness digital technology.
Follow Shamil Idriss on Twitter @ShamilIdriss.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions, Meavy Boy, and Bill Vortex.
Today, most agree that the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the war that followed was a major misstep. But in the leadup to the invasion and early months of the conflict, a majority of Americans, as well as our media and political leaders, stood in favor. What happened?
Guest Babak Bahador is a scholar who studies the relationship between peace, conflict, and the media – kind of like the academic version of this podcast. He teaches at George Washington University, where he directs the Media and Peacebuilding Project, and he founded the Peace News Network in 2015.
Babak has analyzed American news coverage of armed conflicts from World War II through the 2003 Iraq War, and he’s noticed a pattern in the way politics, public opinion, and the media inform each other over the course of each war.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Babak and host Jamil Simon begin by discussing coverage of the Vietnam War and the 2003 Iraq War. They also highlight the positive role of the media in Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace agreement; touch on Ukraine, and reflect on how journalists can attract more attention to reconciliation and rebuilding efforts.
LEARN MORE
Read Babak Bahador’s research and analysis
Mapping the Enemy Image through Different Conflict Stages, University of Canterbury, 2011
Did pictures in the news media just change U.S. policy in Syria? Washington Post, 2017
Peacenews.com
Listen
Peace Journalism: at least don't make matters worse, our 2022 episode on Peace Journalism and the importance of language with Steve Youngblood
Slow Burn: The Road to the Iraq War, a podcast from Slate that explores the people and ideas that propelled the country into the Iraq war, and the institutions that failed to stop it
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with hello from Faith McClure. Music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions, Xylo-Ziko, and SF Music.
HOW TO RATE AND/OR REVIEW MAKING PEACE VISIBLE
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Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with hello from Faith McClure. Music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions, Xylo-Ziko, and SF Music.
Herds of goats, pomegranate trees in bloom, and ancient architecture are just some of the things you might witness while walking The Abraham Path, a collection of walking trails established in the past fifteen years through parts of Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq. But the trail is also engineered for human experiences. Connecting cities and villages, it offers the opportunity to make one-on-one connections in a contested region. It's a kind of subtle peace-building project, but it's also an economic development project, an education project, and more. The path's development, spurred by American peacebuilders, has been met with some skepticism by journalists. But as locals have taken ownership of the trail, a good deal of stories have been published that convey a sense of hope, including a cover story in a travel-themed issue of The New York Times Magazine in April 2022.
Our guests for this episode are Joshua Weiss, a peacebuilder and co-founder of The Abraham Path Initiative, and Anisa Mehdi, the Executive Director of the project and a veteran broadcast journalist.
This episode originally published in June 2022.
Donate to help Abraham Path homestay hosts and guides rebuild in Southeast Turkey and Syria.
HOW TO RATE AND/OR REVIEW MAKING PEACE VISIBLE
In Apple Podcasts on iPhone
- Tap on the show name (Making Peace Visible) to navigate to the main podcast page
- Scroll down to the "Ratings and Reviews" section
- To leave a rating only, tap on the stars
- To leave a review, tap "Write a Review"
In Spotify
(Note: Spotify ratings are currently only available on mobile.)
- Tap on the show name (Making Peace Visible) to navigate to the main podcast page
- Tap on the star icon under the podcast description to rate the show
In Podcast Addict
(Note: you may need to sign in before leaving a review.)
From the episode page: On the top left above the show description, click "Post review."
From the main podcast page
- Tap "Reviews" on the top left.
- On the Reviews page, tap the icon of a pen and paper in the top right corner of the screen.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Music in this episode is by One Man Book, Doyeq, and Les Portes Du Futur.
This episode gets to the heart of what our project, War Stories Peace Stories, is all about: How do you talk about peacebuilding in a way where people will pay attention and feel compelled to take action?
Our guest Elizabeth Hume is Executive Director of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, the umbrella organization for NGOs working on conflict resolution, bridge-building, and reconciliation in the US and around the world. And she says, peacebuilders have been doing a poor job of communicating with the public—too academic, and not connecting with issues that concern everyday Americans.
A few years ago, Liz called on our other guest, Andrew Volmert, for help with this messaging problem. Drew is Senior Vice President of Research for the FrameWorks Institute, a think tank that helps non-profit organizations reframe social issues to gain broader public understanding and acceptance.
Drew and his team surveyed thousands of Americans to find out how they think about peace and peacebuilding, and how they’d respond to new ways of framing the issue. They came back with insights that peacebuilders, as well as journalists covering peace and conflict, can learn from.
Download the FrameWorks Institute’s reports on reframing peacebuilding:
Building the Bridge to Peace: A Messaging Guide for Peacebuilders
Communicating about Peace and Peacebuilding: Challenges, Opportunities, and Emerging Recommendations
Follow Liz Hume on Twitter: @Lizhume4peace
Follow the FrameWorks Institute on Twitter: @FrameWorksInst
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer is Faith McClure. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Follow us on Twitter @warstoriespeace.
Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.
What does it mean to be Ukrainian? What is Ukraine’s significance to Europe? What is the war with Russia really about? Why should the world pay attention?
These are the kind of big-picture questions journalists Anastasiia Lapatina and Jakub Parusinksi tackle on their podcast, Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World. Jakub and Anastasiia (aka Nastya) founded the Kyiv Independent in 2021 as part of a group of journalists who had been fired from the Kyiv Post by an owner who threatened that paper’s editorial independence. On Power Lines, they interview academics, policy experts, aid workers and others with deep insight into the Ukraine-Russia war and regional history, providing vital context to an English-speaking audience.
In this episode of Making Peace Visible, Nastya and Jakub speak with host Jamil Simon about topics including Ukrainian identity and values, the politics of language, and the possibility of peace. Also, what podcasting offers that other media do not.
Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World is a project of the Kyiv Independent and Message Heard. Listen and subscribe here, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more about the Kyiv Independent at kyivindependent.com
Follow Jakub Parusinksi on Twitter @j_parus.
Follow Anastasiia Lapatina on Twitter @lapatina_.
Making Peace Visible is a production of War Stories Peace Stories. It’s hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin and Faith McClure.
Support our work: warstoriespeacestories.org/take-action
Photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind and writer Alisa Sopova create intimate, accessible portraits of Ukrainian civilians living close to the frontlines of the Russian invasion. Sometimes their subjects are picnicking in a park or tending a garden. Other times, they’re repairing a ceiling damaged by shelling or waiting for departure on an evacuation train. Anastasia and Alisa have been working together in Ukraine since the Maidan Revolution, also known as the “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014. And over the years, they’ve returned to visit the same families, witnessing how the war touches men, women, and children over time.
An exhibition of their work in Ukraine is showing at the Imperial War Museum in London from February 3 through May 8, 2023.
Independent Projects
5K From the Frontline (ongoing)
Welcome to Donetsk
International media work:
NPR: The Ukraine war isn't new. These intimate photos show 3 families enduring it for years
The New Humanitarian: How seven years of war and COVID-19 split Ukraine in two
The New York Times: Opinion: Where There Are Fish in the Tap Water and Women’s Uteruses Fall Out
Time Magazine: The Strange Unreality of Life During Eastern Ukraine's Forgotten War
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer is Faith McClure. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Follow us on Twitter @warstoriespeace.
Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.
Whether you get your news from social media, read an email digest from a trusted website, turn on the TV, or open up a newspaper, the world through the lens of the news media can feel like a pretty depressing place. But according to our guest, Solutions Journalism Network co-founder David Bornstein, that’s a distorted view of reality.
“If we think that the world is full of the stock characters that journalism portrays, who tend to be…corrupt politicians or self-interested business people, or overly rich celebrities, why would we vote? Why would we want to get involved in society?” Bornstein asks.
Solutions Journalism provides an alternative model, actively seeking out stories about solutions to societal and environmental problems, and trying to learn how those solutions could be applied broadly. In this episode, we learn the basics of solutions journalism, explore some of the research done on it, and discuss how it may be applied to covering conflict and peacebuilding.
Learn more about Solutions Journalism, and the Solutions Journalism Network, at solutionsjournalism.org. Try their story tracker tool to explore news from around the world, or search by topic.
Follow David Bornstein on Twitter @dnbornstein.
Check out our interview with Amanda Ripley, a solutions journalist focused on conflict and reconciliation.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Additional production by Faith McClure. Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko and Bill Vortex.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Support our work.
Paul Solman, a business, economics, and occasional arts reporter for the PBS NewsHour since 1985, is passionate about bridging the political and cultural divides that Americans face – between right and left, rich and poor, rural and urban, and others. He channels some of that passion into helping run a nonprofit called the American Exchange Project – a domestic exchange program where high school students from across the United States travel to spend a week getting to know and living alongside teens from way outside their own bubbles.
Last year, Solman reported a segment about the American Exchange Project and other efforts to counter polarization, as part of a series reflecting on what led up to the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol. But, he argues the TV news format presents major barriers to telling more stories about peace and reconciliation.
In this episode, Paul Solman and host Jamil Simon discuss why it's so difficult to tell peace stories on TV news. Also: how economic inequality factors into polarization, and the power of youth programs to promote the mindset that “we’re all in this together.”
Watch Paul Solman's Reports:
Political Polarization Prompts Efforts to Bridge the Gap
Why Louisianans blame government, not corporations, for pollution problems
Learn about the American Exchange Project at americanexchangeproject.org.
Follow Paul Solman on Twitter @paulsolman.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer is Faith McClure. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Follow us on Twitter @warstoriespeace.
Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.
If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably concerned by the level of polarization we’re seeing in societies around the world.
We can point fingers at social media, the news media, political parties, fear mongering leaders, poor education, broken political systems… the list is long. The divides can seem so vast, the problems so huge. It’s easy to retreat into a huddle with people who see the world the same way you do.
But our guest for this episode, Columbia University psychology and education professor and author Peter T. Coleman, says there are things each of us can do to help heal these societal wounds. And he says the press and media can play an important role in decreasing polarization.
That's the subject of his latest book, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization. Coleman outlines evidence-based practices that you can do on your own- or with a group- to help recalibrate assumptions, and re-create bonds with people you disagree with.
Coleman also partnered with the organization Starts With Us to turn the lessons from the book into an online challenge, called Finding the Way Out. It's like an exercise routine, for strengthening your compassion muscles. The book is focused on the United States, but the exercises can be done anywhere.
Follow Peter T. Coleman on Twitter: @PeterTColeman1
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. We had help on this episode from Faith McClure. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Follow us on Twitter @warstoriespeace.
Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Bill Vortex
Our guest this episode has some advice for international journalists working abroad: "If you work with local journalists, give them a byline - they're not your free fixers. The security of locals is more important than any story. And YOU, international journalist, you are not the story."
And she would know. Award-winning journalist and communications consultant Zaina Erhaim comes from Idlib in northern Syria. And she got started in journalism covering the Syrian revolution and the civil war that followed. Her reporting made her a target, and she left Syria in 2016. She now lives in the UK, where she continues to mentor Syrian journalists and report on the Middle East. In this interview she shares razor sharp insights into reporting on conflict, while upholding the dignity of sources and collaborators. This episode was originally published in August, 2022.
Find more advice from Zaina including her ten tips for international journalists here.
Follow Zaina on Twitter @zainaerhaim. Read her reporting at zaina-erhaim.com.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.
Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel is on a mission to bring about social change through food. A Palestinian Israeli citizen who operates in both Arab and Jewish cultures, she says “being stuck in the middle is the best place to be.” After winning the Israeli cooking competition show MasterChef– the first Muslim Arab to do so– she founded an annual food festival in the city of Haifa to showcase dishes with roots in the region. And she added a twist: Arab and Jewish chefs are paired together to recreate “extinct” or little known dishes.
The award-winning 2020 documentary film Breaking Bread showcases the friendships that emerge through these collaborations, along with mouth-watering food cinematography. Our guest, American filmmaker Beth Elise Hawk, discusses how making the film challenged preconceived notions about Israeli society, and choices she made to avoid inflaming attitudes in a place where politics is inescapable.
Breaking Bread is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google Play.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.
In the news media, war receives more attention than peace. But some wars get more attention than others. From November 2020 to November 2022, a civil war bloodier than Russia's war in Ukraine was fought in Tigray, a region in northern Ethiopia. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and millions were displaced. Yet depending on where you get your news, you may have heard very little about it.
One reason for the shortage of coverage was the communications blackout in Tigray. Ethiopia’s government shut down internet and phone communications across the region, and barred journalists from entering war zones.
But that didn’t stop our guest. Freelance journalist Lucy Kassa investigated some of the worst atrocities of the conflict, including those carried out by all sides. Her reporting helped show the world that Ethiopian troops’ actions inside Tigray amounted to an ethnic cleansing campaign. Her articles have been published in major international outlets, including The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and the LA Times.
While a peace deal was signed in November, Lucy continues to investigate reports of human rights violations in Tigray. She spoke with host Jamil Simon about how she verifies accounts, how she approaches interviewing survivors of sexual violence, what she sees as her role in the conflict, and what it will take for real peace to hold.
Follow Lucy Kassa on Twitter: @berhe_lucy.
Read Lucy’s report for Al Jazeera. “‘A Tigrayan womb should never give birth’: Rape in Tigray,” awarded a 2022 Amnesty International Media Award
Read Lucy’s account of the raiding of her apartment in 2021 by Ethiopian government agents
Learn more about the Tigray conflict
Start Here from Al Jazeera: The Conflict in Ethiopia
“How a new ‘Great War of Africa’ is raging under the cover of a media blackout,” by Will Brown, Lucy Kassa, and Zecharias Zelalem for The Telegraph
“Tigray forces in Ethiopia say 65% of fighters have left frontline,” by Al Jazeera
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter @warstoriespeace and on LinkedIn at War Stories Peace Stories.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Music in this episode by Podington Bear, Zero V, Doyeq, Meavy Boy, and Bill Vortex.
“Understanding Dignity means understanding a profound aspect of what it means to be human.” - Dr. Donna Hicks
Guest Donna Hicks has worked in conflict resolution around the world, including Israel/Palestine, Sri Lanka, and Northern Ireland. A few years back, she realized that all conflicts shared an essential commonality: someone’s dignity had been violated. This episode explores where dignity violations showed up in the midterm elections, how peacebuilders can partner with the media to have a greater impact, and more
Donna Hicks is an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and a co-founder of the Dignity Index.
Find Donna’s book here.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts.
Join the conversation on Twitter @warstoriespeace and on LinkedIn at War Stories Peace Stories. Sign up for our biweekly email newsletter to be notified of new podcast episodes, new films in our Peace Docs series, and events.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with editing by Faith McClure.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Doyeq, and Podington Bear.
On Making Peace Visible, we cover national peace processes like the one unfolding in Colombia. But we also interview journalists who’ve made their careers covering violent conflict. So what’s the connecting thread? This episode gets at that question– looking through the lens of the practice of Peace Journalism.
Guest Steven Youngblood is a professor of communications and peace studies at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, and the founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism there. He has organized and taught peace journalism seminars, and workshops in over 30 countries and territories. Steven is the editor of The Peace Journalist magazine, and an advisor to the initiative behind this podcast - the War Stories Peace Stories Project.
Learn more:
Side-by-side comparisons of traditional journalism and Peace Journalism
Peace Journalism definitions, characteristics, and guidelines
Peace Journalist Magazine
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.
On September 16, 2022, a twenty-two year old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody. The Tehran police said she was arrested for not wearing her headscarf properly. A few days after the arrest, a photo surfaced of Amini in a hospital bed. The police claim she died suddenly of a heart problem, but many Iranians believe she was beaten or killed. In the weeks following, a protest movement has spread around the country, with young women chanting anti-regime slogans and demanding their rights.
Since Amini’s death, the regime has arrested and imprisoned at least thirty-one journalists, according to the nonprofit Reporters Without Borders. In a country without press freedoms, and especially at a time of unrest, it’s very difficult for journalists to do their jobs. So, most news reports are coming from outside of Iran. On social media, a mix of posts by protesters, regime-backed news agencies, and others paint a confusing picture. And now, the government has blocked major social media platforms, further restricting the flow of information.
So for this special episode, we invited Tehran-based journalist Reza Sayah back to the show to help us make sense of what’s going on in Iran. Reza has reported on Iran for CNN and Al Jazeera. Lately, he’s been covering developments there for PBS Newshour and France 24.
We recorded this interview on October 10, 2022.
For more of Reza Sayah on the news media, listen to our previous episode: Reza Sayah: a bias towards peace
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Meavy Boy, and Bill Vortex
Imagine living next door to a person who murdered your father, raped your sister, or even killed your child. This was the case for many people in Sierra Leone who endured a brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002: the majority of the 50,000 who died were those killed by their own neighbors.
While working with a program that facilitates ritual reconciliation processes in Sierra Leone, a process known as fambul tok (or “family talk”), peacebuilder and philanthropist Libby Hoffman learned that justice for Sierra Leonians isn't about punishing or ousting a perpetrator. Rather, justice comes through making the community whole again. “When you hurt somebody, you don't just hurt them; you hurt the community as well,” says Hoffman.
In this episode, host Jamil Simon speaks with Libby Hoffman about fambul tok, a process she calls “building peace from the inside out.” Fambul tok is an ancient tradition where disputes are solved through community-wide conversation around a bonfire. In this post-war context, Hoffman and her team facilitated the revival of the practice for Sierra Leonians.
Hoffman also documented this remarkable peacebuilding process in her award-winning documentary film Fambul Tok, which has itself catalyzed further reconciliation within Sierra Leone’s war-torn communities. Hoffman has now written a book on her experiences called The Answers Are There: Building Peace from the Inside Out.
Libby Hoffman is the founder and President of Catalyst for Peace, a US-based private foundation building peace from the inside-out – creating space for those most impacted by violence to lead in building the peace, supported by healthy, inclusive systems. A former Political Science professor, Hoffman has a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and a BA in Political Science from Williams College.
The film Fambul Tok is available for private viewing through War Stories Peace Stories' Peace Docs initiative. Watch the film here: vimeo.com/26644766.
This episode was produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Music by Xylo-Ziko via freemusicarchive.org.
Five years ago, the government of Colombia signed a historic peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, putting an end to a fifty-year civil war. The agreement allowed FARC members to turn in their weapons and begin to live as civilians. The Colombian Truth Commission was established to shed light on decades of atrocities and human rights violations that were committed during the war.
This summer the Truth Commission released its full report. Over 1,000 people worked on it, interviewing 24,000 Colombians. And in August, Gustavo Petro – a former guerilla combatant, and a vocal proponent of the peace agreement – took office as President.
Our guest this episode, Daniel Salgar, served as editor for the first volume of the Truth Commission Report, which focuses on Colombia’s history. Salgar is a journalist who’s worked in national and international media in Colombia for the past ten years. He was a reporter and editor at the newspaper El Espectador, where he oversaw a project on peacebuilding called Colombia 2020. He was editor and director of the Spanish news service for Anadalou, a Turkish international news agency. He teaches Journalism, Conflicts, and Migration at Externado University in Bogota.
Daniel counts himself among a generation of journalists who spent most of their careers covering peace efforts. With the Truth Commission report and the historic election, Daniel is optimistic about peace in Colombia, despite ongoing violence in the country.
Follow Daniel Salgar on Twitter: @DanielSalgar1
View the Colombia Truth Commission Report (in Spanish)
Read Daniel Salgar’s interview with former FARC leader Timochenco (in English)
Read Daniel’s analysis piece on drug policy in Colombia (in Spanish)
Explore the peacebuilding journalism project Colombia 2020 (in Spanish)
Watch the documentary “A Call for Peace” for an intimate look inside the process leading up to the 2016 Colombian peace accord between the government and the FARC: vimeo.com/305983614. Enter password peace2019.
Listen to our podcast interview with the film’s director, Juan Carlos Borrero, on the episode “A Filmmaker’s Perspective on the Colombian Peace Process.” Special thanks to Juan Carlos for connecting us with Daniel!
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Visit our website: warstoriespeacestories.org
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Phil Larson, Meavy Boy, Podington Bear, and Pianobook
Five years ago, the government of Colombia signed a historic peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, putting an end to a fifty-year civil war. The agreement allowed FARC members to turn in their weapons and begin to live as civilians. The Colombian Truth Commission was established to shed light on decades of atrocities and human rights violations that were committed during the war.
This summer the Truth Commission released its full report. Over 1,000 people worked on it, interviewing 24,000 Colombians. And in August, Gustavo Petro – a former guerilla combatant, and a vocal proponent of the peace agreement – took office as President.
Our guest this episode, Daniel Salgar, served as editor for the first volume of the Truth Commission Report, which focuses on Colombia’s history. Salgar is a journalist who’s worked in national and international media in Colombia for the past ten years. He was a reporter and editor at the newspaper El Espectador, where he oversaw a project on peacebuilding called Colombia 2020. He was editor and director of the Spanish news service for Anadalou, a Turkish international news agency. He teaches Journalism, Conflicts, and Migration at Externado University in Bogota.
Daniel counts himself among a generation of journalists who spent most of their careers covering peace efforts. With the Truth Commission report and the historic election, Daniel is optimistic about peace in Colombia, despite ongoing violence in the country.
Follow Daniel Salgar on Twitter: @DanielSalgar1
View the Colombia Truth Commission Report (in Spanish)
Read Daniel Salgar’s interview with former FARC leader Timochenco (in English)
Read Daniel’s analysis piece on drug policy in Colombia (in Spanish)
Explore the peacebuilding journalism project Colombia 2020 (in Spanish)
Watch the documentary “A Call for Peace” for an intimate look inside the process leading up to the 2016 Colombian peace accord between the government and the FARC: vimeo.com/305983614. Enter password peace2019.
Listen to our podcast interview with the film’s director, Juan Carlos Borrero, on the episode “A Filmmaker’s Perspective on the Colombian Peace Process.” Special thanks to Juan Carlos for connecting us with Daniel!
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Visit our website: warstoriespeacestories.org
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Phil Larson, Meavy Boy, Podington Bear, and Pianobook
Our guest this episode has some advice for international journalists working abroad: "If you work with local journalists, give them a byline - they're not your free fixers. The security of locals is more important than any story. And YOU, international journalist, you are not the story."
And she would know. Award-winning journalist and communications consultant Zaina Erhaim comes from Idlib in northern Syria. And she got started in journalism covering the Syrian revolution and the civil war that followed. Her reporting made her a target, and she left Syria in 2016. She now lives the UK, where she continues to mentor Syrian journalists and report on the Middle East. In this interview she shares razor sharp insights into reporting on conflict, while upholding the dignity of sources and collaborators.
Find more advice from Zaina including her ten tips for international journalists here.
Follow Zaina on Twitter @zainaerhaim. Read her reporting at zaina-erhaim.com.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.
Reza Sayah is an Iranian-American journalist, currently based in Teheran. He’s reported on major events around the world including the Ukrainian Revolution of 2004, the Second Iraq War, and the Egyptian Revolution.
Reza has spent much of his career working for major broadcast news networks including ABC, CNN, and Al Jazeera. In those roles, he’s had to explain complicated conflicts - in the form of very brief segments. And he says the corporate news model often works to perpetuate conflicts. But, another way is possible.
Watch:
Reza Sayah reports on Iran’s Jewish community for PBS Newshour
Reza Sayah: How This Iran-Backed Militia Helped Save Iraq from ISIS for PBS Newshour
Reza Sayah’s Tedx talk: How to Spot News that is NOT News
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace.
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.
Music in this episode is by Holizna, MARiAN, and Meavy Boy.
After over two decades as a journalist, including ten years covering terrorism and disasters for TIME Magazine, Amanda Ripley thought she understood conflict. But when momentum started to build around the candidacy of Donald Trump, she questioned what she thought she knew. Ripley interviewed psychologists, mediators, and people who had made it out of seemingly intractable conflicts for her book, High Conflict: Why We Get Stuck and How We Get Out. In this conversation with host Jamil Simon, she shares insights about how journalists can change the way they cover conflict, in service of the public good.
Order Amanda Ripley’s book, High Conflict: Why We Get Stuck and How We Get Out. Listen to her podcast How To!from Slate. Watch Amanada’s talk on High Conflictfor The Alliance for Peacebuilding.
Find our episode on the Colombian peace process here. You can watch the film “A Call for Peace” for free here: vimeo.com/305983614. Enter password peace2019. Learn more at acallforpeace.org.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions and Pianobook.
Herds of goats, pomegranate trees in bloom, and ancient architecture are just some of the things you might witness while walking The Abraham Path, a collection of walking trails established in the past fifteen years through parts of Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq. But the trail is also engineered for human experiences. Connecting cities and villages, it offers the opportunity to make one-on-one connections in a contested region. It's a kind of subtle peace-building project, but it's also an economic development project, an education project, and more. It's development, spurred by American peacebuilders, has been met with some skepticism by journalists. But as locals have taken ownership of the trail, a good deal of stories have been published that convey a sense of hope, including a cover story in a travel-themed issue of The New York Times Magazine in April 2022.
Our guests for this episode are Joshua Weiss, a peacebuilder and co-founder of The Abraham Path Initiative, and Anisa Mehdi, the Executive Director of the project and a veteran broadcast journalist.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to do everything possible to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace
Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Music in this episode is by One Man Book, Doyeq, and Les Portes Du Futur.
When Colombian filmmaker Juan Carlos Borerro worked on films or TV shows in the countryside as a young man, the crew would have to stop shooting and run from the FARC when the guerillas came near. Everyone he knew had a family member who had been kidnapped or killed, and he never thought he would live to see an end to the war in his country. So when the government and the FARC forged a peace accord in 2016, he set out to document how the agreement came together. Borrero’s documentary “A Call for Peace” tells the story of the peace process in Colombia, through interviews with international peace builders who played key roles behind the scenes.
In this episode, in conversation with host Jamil Simon, Borrero tells the story of peace in Colombia as not just a singular occurrence, but an unfolding that drew on past peace processes, and can inform future ones. You’ll also hear clips from the film.
You can watch the film “A Call for Peace” for free here: vimeo.com/305983614. Enter password peace2019. Learn more at acallforpeace.org.
Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to do everything possible to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts.
Making Peace Visible is produced by Andrea Muraskin.
Mari Fitzduff, is a peacebuilder and the author of a fascinating new book, Our Brains at War: The Neuroscience of Conflict and Peacebuilding. Mari’s book is deeply relevant to the polarization and violence that is happening right now in America. Our Brains at War explains a lot about the brain chemistry that’s driving the anger and violence we are seeing, almost every day in the U.S.
Making Peace Visible is brought to you by the War Stories Peace Stories Project, working to connect journalists and peace-builders to accelerate and elevate stories on reconciliation efforts in the mainstream media.
This is an interview with Nina Streich, the Director and Founder of the Global Peace Film Festival, which operates out of Orlando, Florida. Nina and her partner, Kelly DeVine have probably seen more films on peace than any two people on the planet. Nina talks about the nature of films on peace and what motivates filmmakers to make them. This year, the festival will be celebrating its 20th anniversary.
Making Peace Visible is brought to you by the War Stories, Peace Stories Project, working to connect journalists and peace-builders to accelerate and elevate stories on reconciliation efforts in the mainstream media.
This is an interview with Julia Roig, Chairman of the Board of The Alliance for Peacebuilding and Founder of The Horizons Project. The Horizons Project is dedicated to developing new narratives to help make the peacebuilding process more accessible to the public.
Making Peace Visible is brought to you by the War Stories, Peace Stories Project, working to connect journalists and peace-builders to accelerate and elevate stories on reconciliation efforts in the mainstream media.