Making Peace Visible

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 cli...

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 indepen...

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 poli...

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 compl...

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 ...

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 s...

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 ...

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 f...

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. Bu...

Support this podcast with a tax-deductible donation. 

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 ...

In the 2024 election, it was clearer than ever that Americans are  “watching different movies,” as political analyst Van Jones put it. Essentially, we’re living inside different narratives that aren’t of our own making. During this campaign season more than ever before, the presidential and VP candidates appeared on sympathetic podcasts as a way to appeal to younger voters. 

As a podcaster, journalist, and Senior Fellow for Public P...

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 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 S...

"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 Inte...

 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...

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 mo...

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 step...

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”), pe...

On July 28, 2024, 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...