Peace Talks Radio

Seeking Peace on Earth: A Peace Talks Radio Special (2015)

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.

Top Peacemaking Communication Themes

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, re...

Commerce With Compassion

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

The Effort to "Cure" Violence

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

The History of Peace Studies in the U.S. and a Profile of "Peace Pedalers"

On this edition of Peace Talks Radio, we hear from a professor who’s pulled the stories of those peace studies advocates together in a book. Then we’ll hear from a panel of folks supporting an effort to bring an honest to goodness peace studies class to a New Mexico high school, and later, a conversation with a man who took a tandem bike all around the world to try to promote peace and compassion.

Reducing Sibling Rivalry

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 ar...

Improving Relations Between Citizen's and Police

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...

Considering Loneliness

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...

Love or Fear: Which Motivates Us More?

Indigenous Experiences, Values, and Peacemaking

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

Forgiveness and Redemption Following the Death of Amy Biehl

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 condit...

2014 Seeking Peace on Earth, Peace Talks Radio Special

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, fi...

The Roosevelts

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, ...

Using Sports to Point to Peace

This time on Peace Talks Radio, how sports can be used to point to peace. While sports headlines these days are as much about pro football players facing domestic violence,  child abuse, shooting crime charges and crippling game injuries, there are still examples of the potential for sports to bring together athletes from all ethnicities, nationalities and sexual preferences to bond and celebrate the fun, skill and mutual respect of sport.  We spotlight an annual sporting event that on the su...

Raising Boys (Part 2)

This is the second of two programs exploring the special challenges of raising boys into becoming young men who DON’T turn to violence and crime and sexual domination. Young boys and sex will be the focus of this program. Among the statistics that we heard in the first program are these sex-related crimes – the super huge majority committed by men, young men or boys – 87% of stalkers are male, 86% of domestic violence assaults resulting in physical injury are done by males, 99% of rapes ar...

Raising Boys (Part 1)

Statistics show that males commit about 90% of all the murders and almost all of the other violent crime in the United States.  On these programs, we’ve chosen to not just list the symptoms and multiple sources contributing to the culture of violence in the U.S., but to look upstream to learn what parents and the community can do to understand why some boys and men are drawn to violent themes and sometimes turn violent.  We’re asking our panel, what we can do to catch our boys and young men b...

Compassion and Empathy Thwart School Shooter

August 20, 2013, school clerk Antoinette Tuff was at her job at a Suburban Atlanta elementary school of 800 students. She was only temporarily filling in at the front office, when an agitated 20 year old man carrying an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition came in threatening to open fire. Now you may not remember this story because it only made news for about a day or two. There were no deaths, there was no community in mourning, no reporters camping out for the ...

Conscientious Objectors In The All-voluntees U.S. Military

If one had a philosophical or religious objection to military service, why would they volunteer? The modern CO application, as it’s called, comes from those who sign up for service, but come to their conscientious objection during their tour of duty, like Dante Searcy and Fanny Garcia who tell us their stories of being granted “CO” status on this program. Also on this program, we hear from Maria Santelli, the Executive Director of the Center on Conscience and War, an organization that bega...

Making Peace With Disability

Suzanne Kryder, co-founder of Peace Talks Radio, hosts this exploration of the world of disability two years after experiencing an AVM, an arteriovenous malformation, which disabled her in 2012, compromising her speech and movement. She shares details of her experience living with the disability and offers some ideas about how the disabled and non-disabled world can get along better. She also asks others about it - attendees at a 2013 disability conference and a college professor and research...

Hiroshima Survivor/ Anne Frank Diary/Foreign Aid

This episode features two stories born in World War 2. A Japanese man who was only 5 in 1945, but survived the Atomic Bomb blast in Hiroshima that led to the end of the war in the Pacific. He visited the U.S. recently to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. Also, an excerpt from a mid-1990's talk by the late Miep Gies (meep-geese), who helped hide Anne Frank's family from the Nazi's in World War 2. Ms. Gies was the one who found Anne Frank's now-famous dia...

The Nonviolent Path Of Cesar Chavez

This program will trace the influences on Chavez, as a child, young man and adult, that led him on a path to nonviolence. We'll also recall the major moments during his campaigns when his dedication to nonviolence and social justice were put to the test. We'll talk with Dolores Huerta, his colleague, friend and co-founder of the UFW. Also Jose-Antonio Orosco, whose book "Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence" seeks to elevate Chavez as an original thinker, who added significantl...

MLK: Three Landmark Speeches

You’ll hear from Dr. Vincent Harding, Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado and a personal friend and speech writing colleague of Dr. King in the 1960’s. Also mixed into our program, you’ll hear Dr. Clayborne Carson, who at Coretta Scott King’s request, has been directing the King Papers Project since 1985. Dr. Carson established the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in 2005. The speeche...

2013 Seeking Peace on Earth: A Peace Talks Radio Special

The program features conversations about restorative justice programs, peace journalism, activism to prevent gun violence, a winning domestic violence prevention project, and the peacemaking roots of Mothers' Day. Also excerpts of our programs about Nelson Mandela, Peace Pilgrim and Sister Peggy O'Neill. And we'll recap our countdown of the Top Ten Peace Songs of all time. Paul Ingles hosts.

The Nonviolent Life, Before Happiness, and Chasing the Moon Thieves: Three Peace Books The Nonviolent Life, Before Happiness, and Chasing the Moon Thieves: Three Peace Books

A new e-book for young people by Alex Paramo helps children understand and appreciate multi-culturalism, cooperation, forgiveness and more. Also positive thinking researcher and Ted Talk star Shawn Achor talks about his 2013 book Before Happiness . And John Dear, an internationally known peacemaker, organizer, and lecturer talks about the blueprint for living set out in his book The Nonviolent Life.

A Domestic Violence Story: Reforming Offenders / Protecting Victims

In Minnesota, 38-year old Robert King is trying to make peace in his relationship with his wife. After 20 years of abusing women, Robert finally was forced into getting help through what’s now being referred to in domestic abuse circles as “The Duluth Model” - a Domestic Abuse Intervention Program – the heart of which is to get both offenders and victims to talk openly about their experiences, and to get multiple agencies to work cooperatively around the understanding gleaned from the true s...

Top Ten Peace Songs

The hosts of Peace Talks Radio present a special program counting down the Top 10 Peace Songs since the late 1960's. Also featured are honorable mention selections that didn't quite make the list.

Recalling Mandela

While in prison from 1964 to 1990, Mandela became a symbol for the apartheid resistance which withstood bloody massacres and continued oppression while Mandela and other resistance leaders were in jail. Pressure from both within and outside of South Africa resulted in political changes that resulted in Mandela’s release and the allowance of parties like the African National Congress. Mandela helped negotiate the end of apartheid policies and was elected president of South Africa, a post he ...

Working For Peace After Gun Violence

In this episode, we’ll hear the stories of three people . One, Colin Goddard, the survivor of the mass shooting in 2007 at Virginia Tech where 32 were killed by a disgruntled highly armed student. After 2 years of healing, he joined national efforts to promote mandatory background checks on gun sales. Second, we’ll talk with Annette Nance-Holt, the mother of an innocent 16 year old boy who was shot and killed on a Chicago city bus. She's helped start an organization called "Purpose Over P...

Peace Journalism

Do common conventions of reporting instead inflame conflict and omit viable non-violent options for resolving conflicts. Can severe hate speech and alarmist propagandathat threaten lives in developing nations be quelled with targeted training? Our conversation today starts with Steve Youngblood, the director for the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University in Parkville, Missouri. Also we'll hear from Ugandan Journalist Gloria Laker who took Youngblood's "Peace Journalism" work...

Best of Ten Years Volume 2

More engaging, inspiring and informational clips from episodes featured onPeace Talks Radio, the series on peacemaking and nonviolent conflictresolution, between 2002 and 2012. Among the voices you'll hear in thissecond program of highlights: The Dalai Lama, Mairead Maguire, Rick Steves, William Ury and more...on ways to reduce conflict in our own lives and around the world.

Mother's Day Proclamation for Peace

The story of Julia Ward Howe's 1871 Proclamation for Peace and her call for a universal Mother's Day to promote peace and disarmament. Host Carol Boss talks with Kate Stickley, a direct descendent of Howe, and Jane Smith Bernhardt, an actor who portrays Howe onstage. Plus conversation with Susan Galleymore, author of a book called "Long Time Passing: Mothers Talk About War and Terror."

Peace Elders

Two women, two elders, who deep into the later years of life, made peace their goal – one, Catholic Sister Peggy O’Neill landed in war-ravaged El Salvador in the 1980’s and has been there ever since. The other, a woman who in 1981 had a 28 year personal campaign for peace come to an abrupt end when she had just turned 73. In 1953, Mildred Norman changed her name to Peace Pilgrim and started walking for peace. She kept doing it until the day she died.

Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice programs often bring offenders, victims, family members and other stakeholders in the society together to work through what happened, to identify the harm done and together to work out appropriate punishment and possible restitution. There have been examples of restorative justice style practices throughout history. As you’ll hear from some of our guests, many cite the talking circle model practiced by First Nation and Native American Communities as an inspiration for to...

Ten Years of Peace Talks Radio

Engaging, inspiring and informational clips from episodes featured on Peace Talks Radio, the series on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution, between 2002 and 2012. Among the voices you'll hear: Jimmy Carter, Jody Williams, Arun Gandhi, Daniel Goleman, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Marshall Rosenberg, Byron Katie and more...on ways to reduce conflict in our own lives and around the world.

The Best Of 2012 - Seeking Peace on Earth

SEEKING PEACE ON EARTH: A PEACE TALKS RADIO SPECIAL (2012). It's our annual compendium of compelling moments from shows of the past year. You'll hear: Young women from opposing sides in the Middle East conflict come together to work for peace. A former West Point grad and Army captain puts the 'warrior ethos' to use in his post-service peace work. A Republican and a Democrat agree on what to do to improve our political discourse. A West Oakland neighborhood coming together over an effor...

Is violence in decline? Also, learning how to show dignity.

Two Harvard scholars with recent books are featured in this edition of Peace Talks Radio. Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, says we seem to be living in one of the most peaceful eras in human history, despite the level of violence still at play in the world. He talks about his research. Then Donna Hicks talks about her book Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Conflict Resolution. She spells out 10 essentials for showing each other digni...

Seeking Civility in Political Discourse

On this special election season edition of Peace Talks Radio, an assessment of the degree of the problem, and some ideas on how to address it, from a number people. We’ll hear from current Democratic congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio, former long-term Republican congresswoman Connie Morella from Maryland – both of whom actually agree on several things they think will help. We’ll also talk with two media analysts - Western Washington University's Michael Karlberg and Hakim Bellamy of the Media Li...

The Legacy of a Peace Camp for Middle East Girls

On this episode of Peace Talks Radio, we revisit the story of a non-profit program called Creativity for Peace which includes a camp experience in the high desert of New Mexico for adolescent girls from all sides in the Middle East conflict. At the annual camp, t he girls speak their minds and hearts about their own suffering due to the hostilities. Despite being taught to see the other as the enemy, they learn to get along and even be friends. More importantly perhaps, they learn importa...

Learning International Negotiation

In the spring of 2012 - PEACE TALKS RADIO attended a training exercise put on by the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC. It's called SENSE - which stands for Strategic, Economic Needs and Security exercise. Forty to sixty people participate by taking on roles of business leaders, govt officials, security officers, non-governmental representatives and the like and, in three days, they work in a fictional world Akrona- a struggling state emerging from years of war and still vulnerable to ...

The Peace Symbol, Its History and Marketing

Draw the well-known peace symbol almost anywhere in the world, and show it to almost anyone over the age of 4, and you're likely to hear them tell you that the symbol means "peace." Walk through the halls of any elementary or junior high school and you'll see the peace sign all over in kids' fashion, young girls especially - t-shirts, shorts, shoes, backpacks, earings, pendants. People know the symbol means peace but not so many know where the symbol came from. On this edition of Peace Ta...

Veterans Turn to Peacemaking

After serving proudly in the US Armed Forces, what motivates a person to later work passionately for peace? On this edition of Peace Talks Radio, we’ll learn how two war veterans were changed by their military experience and about the peace work they now do. Our guests talked with host Suzanne Kryder about the role of the US military in peace building, their views on defense spending, and what all of us can do to bring an end to war. Paul K. Chappell is a West Point graduate who served in the...

Community Cohesion Through Food Security

When American psychologist Abraham Maslow introduced the Hierarchy of Needs in his seminal work A Theory of Human Motivation, he presented a pyramid that listed the most important, fundamental needs of humans toward the bottom. Food, Water, Breathing, and Sleep were among the needs supporting the base of the pyramid. Only one level up was "Safety" including security of body, health, resources and family. If one's safety is threatened by war, disaster or family violence - a peaceful life is ...

Making Peace With Death and Dying

If the inevitability of death - our own death or the death of our loved ones - or anyone for that matter - was something we could all handle with more calm, with more inner peace, how might the world change? What manner of thinking or perspective can one who is facing his or her own death adopt to create a more peaceful place to live out their days? What can a relative, friend or caregiver do to promote a more peaceful passage for one who is dying? What manner of thinking or perspective ca...

Becoming a Peace Ambassador

In this program, we explore an online training opportunity called Becoming a Peace Ambassador. James O’Dea, the facilitator of the Peace Ambassador training, is the guest. He’s a former official with both Amnesty International and the Institute of Noetic Sciences…and author of books like Creative Stress and Cultivating Peace. We also talk with two graduates of the online program. Paul Ingles hosts.

2011 Seeking Peace on Earth, Peace Talks Radio Special

For that time of year when everyone is wishing for more "Peace on Earth," share some hope with the latest in the annual Peace Talks Radio year-end specials. This one highlights programs aired in the series in 2011. Hear compelling conversation excerpts from programs on: The U.S. Institute ofPeace; Nobel Peace Prize winners Martti Ahtisaari and Liu Xiaobo; Heading off domestic and dating violence; Vietnam veterans finding peace by traveling back to Vietnam; Alternatives to Violence program ...

The Christmas Truce of 1914 and the Manassas Peace Jubilee of 1911

We spotlight two instances when peace broke out – right on the field of battle. First, the impromptu but widespread unofficial Christmas Truce of 1914 in the early months of fighting in Europe in World War 1. Soldiers from both sides essentially said, war is hell – let’s not do it near Christmas Day. To tell us that story, we have Stanley Weintraub, historian, professor emeritus from PennState University, biographer and author of many books including “Silent Night- The Christmas Truce of ...

A Call for Interfaith Dialogue and Harmony

Religious liberty and tolerance are complex issues, impacted by a variety of factors including education, politics, and the media. On this edition, conversations with participants in a 2011 conference called, "Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict." Guests include Dr. Kelly James Clark, a Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who co-chaired the conference and has written a book exploring the issue. Also Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi, an attorney, author,...

The Peace Message in Classical Music

Jane Ellen, a composer, performer and music historian tells stories about how classical composers have been influenced by the threat of war and the hope for peace in their works. Music by Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Crumb and others is featured. Paul Ingles hosts.

Vets' Healing Journeys To Vietnam

On this edition of Peace Talks Radio, stories about former enemies in war, reconciling between each other to achieve peace within themselves and, they hope, delivering a message about the futility of war. We talk with Dr. Edward Tick first, psychologist and author of book "War and the Soul" and founder of Soldier's Heart, an organization that promotes innovative approaches to healing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) -among them sponsoring trips for US citizens, veterans and non-vets, ba...

Imagining a Peace Economy

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” When President Eisenhower warned of the power of the military industrial complex in January 1961, he probably wouldn’t have guessed that the 2012 budget request for defense-related expenditures would be one trillion dollars. While conventional wisdom asserts that war and milita...