Making Peace Visible

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 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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. An attorney from Nairobi, 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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. 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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: Gary Peirre-Peirre, 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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

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. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

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 Babbett 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 three female members of Hungary’s resistance – reporter Oroszi, nurse and activist Niko, 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: 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 Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

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 Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

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 Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

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 atthe Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and Ingrid Guyon, a photographer andparticipatory 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 Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

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 Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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. -- 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: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social 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 Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

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. **Copy this link to share this episode anywhere** 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 Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

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 Support our work Connect on social: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

“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. . 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: Instagram @makingpeacevisible LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible Bluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!