Making Peace Visible

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, hi...

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 t...

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 w...

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 budget...

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 br...

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 beg...

"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 lead...

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,’...

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 interdicti...

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...

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 ca...

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...

“ 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...

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 a...

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 al...

Since his election in 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has transitioned Hungary from a democracy into a quasi-authoritarian country, and provided a blueprint for Project 2025 in the United States.  Elections, economic policies, and the media have been transformed to benefit Orbán and his far-right Fidesz Party. Orbán’s government, with its consolidation of executive power, Christian nat...

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...

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 t...

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 portrai...

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 infrastru...

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. W...

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. W...

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 auth...

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...

“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, Phi...