Peace Talks Radio

Memorable moments from Peace Talks Radio programs spotlighting Nobel Prize winners Mairead Maguire, Ralph Bunche, Muhammad Yunus, Jody Williams, Martti Ahtisaari, Liu Xiaobo, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.

On this edition of Peace Talks Radio, three guests who’ll touch on just a few of the many reasons political polarization continues in the U.S. Each have a few ideas and programs that could close the gap, even a little bit. Ideas that you could try that just might lessen political polarization at your dinner table, in your neighborhood, your state, and around the country. Suzanne Kryder hosts with Paul Ingles.

Doctors Without Borders has been serving the wounded and sick in conflict, disease and disaster sites around the globe since 1971. On this show, the organization's Mission Head Suzanne Ceresko talks about its work, which earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. In the second half of the program, the spotlight is one the Peace Corps which was established in 1961 by U.S. president John F. Kennedy. In this segment, five returned Peace Corps volunteers share stories and give their perspective on the history of the corps. Paul Ingles hosts with help from Carol Boss.

While the PEACE TALKS RADIO series goes out of its way to feature the less-heralded peace workers throughout history and in our world today, the personalities who rise to the top of world consciousness often do so for very good and powerful reasons that deserve more focused attention. On this program, we’ve gathered 6 whose stories in the 20th Century, and a couple whose stories have continued into the 21st century, who seem linked in many ways – and each has left succeeding generations inspiration to build on. Asked to name peace leaders, these are the names most people on the street would come up with – the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez & Dolores Huerta, Nelson Mandela and Mohandas K. Gandhi. The program includes some inspiration from each to create one big, always useful, dose of peace thought for us to take in.

Two history books are profiled that both provide a timeline of history for peace periods, peace leaders, key philosophers, important turning points and more. We’ll hear from both authors today. Canadian scholar Antony Adolf and Peter Stearns, Professor of History and former Provost of George Mason University in Virginia.

Some schools are trying programs that teach their students meditation techniques as a way to help them deal with stress in their lives. The results have been encouraging at some locations including reductions in fighting and suspensions along with a bump up in grades. Two programs (in Albuquerque and San Francisco) are spotlighting in this episode of Peace Talks Radio

We talk with two experts about how advances in the field of neuroscience may transform conflict resolution on an individual and global scale. Dr. Mari Fitzduff of Brandeis University talks about a hormone that promotes peace building and explains how conservatism and liberalism can appear in brain scans. Dr. Emile Bruneau, visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania uses neuro-imaging to better understand the often unconscious biases that drive conflict.

Over the last 100 years, how effective have nonviolent resistance movements been to effect social and political change, compared to armed violent uprisings? This was the question that researchers Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan set out to answer as they dug deep into the historical data on the subject over the period of 1900-2006. They conclude empirically that nonviolent resistance campaigns were more than twice as effective as violent ones in achieving their goals. On this edition of Peace Talks Radio, Ms. Chenoweth talks with Carol Boss about some of the data, including the conclusion that successful nonviolent resistance was also more effective at creating durable peaceful democracies. Erica Chenoweth is an assistant professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and an Associate Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo. Carol also talks with Ken Butigan executive director of Pace e Bene, an organization with a mission to work with individ

Compelling and timeless moments drawn from just one of the many seasons of programs in the Peace Talks Radio series on peacemaking and non-violent conflict resolution. Included are conversations about an effort to "cure violence" like an infectious disease, improving the relationship between police and citizens, understanding and coping with sibling rivalry, an indigenous people's history of the United States, and more.

Since 2002, PEACE TALKS RADIO has been talking with guests who have worked in all manner of non-violent conflict resolution scenarios. In sharing what works, certain themes about effective communication skills seem to come up again and again. This program features highlights from previous shows that point to a list of Top Peacemaking Communication Themes. Tips that you can put to use in your daily lives as you try to sort out conflict at your workplace, with your spouses, kids, relatives, strangers, sales clerks, friends or enemies. Guests include Daniel Goleman, Byron Katie, Marshall Rosenberg and Azim Khamisa.

Conversations with people in business who believe that business, social justice, fair labor practices, peacemaking and community building can go hand in hand.

A epidemiologist approaches violence as an infectious disease and former U.S. intelligence officer Ray McGovern talks presidents and peacemaking.

This time on Peace Talks Radio, the conflict scenario that we’re going to look into with our guests is sibling rivalry. It's something that seems ubiquitous across cultures and is as old as the oldest stories in human history. Approximately one-third of adults describe their relationship with their siblings as rivalrous or distant. Also, there’s this: A 2005 study put the number of assaults each year to children by a sibling at about 35 per 100 kids – so about a third of children are actually suffering physical violence at the hands of siblings. So, although the Smothers Brothers, and most sitcoms over the years have made sibling rivalry into an ongoing joke, it can lead to serious emotional and physical hurt. We hear ideas from our guests about how to reduce that pain – both during childhood and into adulthood if those bad feelings endure. Our guests are: Samuel Roll, a psychologist and professor emeritus in psychology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque; Jeanne Safer, a New York psychologist

In some communities in the United States, the relationship is frayed between law enforcement officers and the citizens they are sworn to serve. Some high profile police shootings or overly aggressive police encounters with citizens captured on video by police cams or citizens have only intensified the tension in some places. Since one of our goals in the PEACE TALKS RADIO series is to provide a forum that might lead to nonviolent conflict resolution strategies, we’ve sampled opinions from 13 people, all stakeholders in the issue, and asked each what they thought might help most to improve the relationship between the police and the citizenry. Then we followed up with a few questions for each. Current and former police officers, city councilors, community leaders, police trainers, and criminologists all suggest ways to bring more peace around the sometimes frayed connection between citizens and police. Guests include Steven Herbert, University of Washington Professor; Cleveland City Councilor Zack Reed; F

Put the words "murder" and "loner" into a web search and you won’t have any shortage of matches. Certainly it’s been a characteristic used to describe several perpetrators of mass violence in the fairly recent past. Some research about loneliness, and those who retreat deeply into it, suggests that a significant number suffer physical and emotional risks of their own…which sometimes can trigger backlash behavior against society. Statistics suggest that the percentages of people living alone keeps moving steadily forward and the number of people who report being lonely at any given point in time has jumped from 20% in 1980 to 40% more recently. A Guardian column was titled, THE AGE OF LONELINESS IS KILLING US, while on the other hand, a Psychology Today column was titled THE HAPPY LONER and began with the words “Loners get a bad rap.” We had a number of conversations with folks who have studied what’s happening when loneliness develops, how it can devolve into anti-social behavior, but more important still

How Indigenous people in the United States handle the conflict of living in a world taken from their ancestors.

On this edition of Peace Talks Radio…forgiveness on a grand scale as the family of slain American anti-apartheid activist Amy Biehl work together with two men who were involved in her 1993 murder in South Africa after the men were granted amnesty through the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We’ll hear from Amy’s mother, Linda Biehl, as well as Easy Nofemela, one of the two men granted amnesty, who now seem more like family to the Biehls as they and others work to improve conditions for South African youth and improve race relations. Also Marina Cantacuzino, the founder of the Forgiveness Project which has elevated this and dozens of other extraordinary stories of forgiveness. Paul Ingles hosts with Megan Kamerick.

On the show, you’ll hear part of a conversation with the Atlanta school clerk, who by showing compassion and empathy, helped foil a potential school shooter’s plan to wreak havoc on an elmentary school. Also some talk with historians who tell us about several peacemaking chapters in the stories of Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. And we’ll hear from the woman who walked side by side with Cesar Chavez in the farm workers movement recalling his deep commitment to nonviolence. Also, finding peace with disability, raising boys to steer them away from violence and crime, conscientious objectors in the volunteer military, and a couple of top scholars of the life of Martin Luther King Jr pick three of his many inspirational speeches to look more deeply at. Hosted by series producer Paul Ingles with Carol Boss and Suzanne Kryder.

We consider Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt through a peace studies lens. First, some details about the effort that won Teddy Roosevelt the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, the later we explore the war and peace philosophies of Franklin Roosevelt, and the peace and human rights work of Eleanor Roosevelt. Our guests are Charles Doleac, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire attorney and expert on The Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1905. Also Dr. Allida Black of the George Washington University in Washington, DC and author or editor of many books on Eleanor Roosevelt.