Against the tide: tech for social cohesion

After over two decades as a journalist, including ten years covering terrorism and disasters for TIME Magazine, Amanda Ripley thought she understood conflict. But when momentum started to build around the candidacy of Donald Trump, she questioned what she thought she knew. Ripley interviewed psychologists, mediators, and people who had made it out of seemingly intractable conflicts for her book, High Conflict: Why We Get Stuck and How We Get Out.  In this conversation with host Jamil Simon, she shares insights about how people in conflict can move forward, and how journalists can get at the "understory" of what's beneath any conflict. 

Order Amanda Ripley’s book, High Conflict: Why We Get Stuck and How We Get Out. Watch Amanada’s talk on High Conflict for The Alliance for Peacebuilding. Follow her column in the Washington Post. 

Find our episode on the Colombian peace process here. You can watch the documentary “A Call for Peace” for free here: vimeo.com/305983614. Enter password peace2019. Learn more at acallforpeace.org.

Music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions and Pianobook. 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Reza Sayah is an Iranian-American journalist, currently based in Tehran. He’s reported on major events around the world including the Ukrainian Revolution of 2004, the Second Iraq War, and the Egyptian Revolution. 

Reza has spent much of his career working for major broadcast news networks including ABC, CNN, and Al Jazeera. In those roles, he’s had to explain complicated conflicts - in the form of very brief segments. And he says the corporate news model often works to perpetuate conflicts. But, another way is possible. 

This episode was originally published in June 2022. 

Watch:

Top Hamas official discusses Israel attack, Iran relations for PBS Newshour

Reza Sayah reports on Iran’s Jewish community for PBS Newshour

Reza Sayah: How This Iran-Backed Militia Helped Save Iraq from ISIS for PBS Newshour

Reza Sayah’s Tedx talk: How to Spot News that is NOT News

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

As of May 2023, there were an estimated 110 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 

Many are escaping wars, gang violence or repressive regimes, others are fleeing climate change impacts. Some are leaving collapsed economies where they can’t feed their families. How journalists cover refugees and immigration has a major impact on public perceptions. 

This is the first in a series of episodes looking at the intersection of journalism, refugees and immigration because it’s such an important issue, and because how journalists report on it has such a strong impact on public attitudes.

Guest Dina Francesca Haynes is an immigration and human rights attorney with decades of experience around the world. She worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Rwanda, among other international organizations. She’s personally represented hundreds of asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking. 

Haynes also writes for publications like The Jurist and The Hill, and has served as an expert source for journalists at CNN, Vice News, NPR, and other news outlets. She is the founder and president of the legal aid organization Refugee Projects, and directs the Immigration Law Certificate Program at New England Law. In this interview, she shares moving stories about clients trying to escape war and human trafficking; as well as advice for both journalists and activists on how to communicate fairly and accurately about immigration in a highly politicized atmosphere. 

LEARN MORE

Visit refugeeprojects.org, and follow on Instagram @refugeeprojects.

Read Dina Haynes’ article in Jurist: Rule of Law Chronicles: Migration, Xenophobia and the Immigrant Other (May 2023)

Read the Vice News article on human trafficking in Afghanistan quoting Dina Haynes: The Anti-Trafficking Movement Is Pivoting to Afghanistan (October 2021)

Music in this episode by Poddington Bear, Bill Vortex, Meavy Boy and Doyeq. 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

On Making Peace Visible, we are always questioning the mantra, if it bleeds, it leads. Boston’s Charles Stuart murder case is a classic example of what can go horribly wrong when you follow that mantra.    

Charles Stuart was a father-to-be from the suburbs of Boston. Shortly after attending a birthing class in the city with his wife, Carol, Charles Stuart placed a 911 call. The couple had both been shot in their car. Stuart said a Black man pulled the trigger. 

Carol died from her injuries the next day. She and Charles were white, and the reaction from authorities was worlds away from what usually happened when a Black person was shot in Boston. Mayor Ray Flynn asked the police commissioner to assign every available detective to the case. Police immediately began raiding the homes of Black residents and conducting strip searches of young Black men in the Mission Hill area. With TV news playing and replaying the 911 call and a photo of the Stewarts bleeding on the front page of the Boston Herald the next day, a media circus ensued. 

But two months later - when Charles Stuart died by jumping off a bridge – it quickly became clear he was in fact the killer. 

This episode, we’re joined by Adrian Walker, an associate editor and columnist at the Boston Globe who was a rookie reporter there at the time of the Stuart case. Walker headed up a team of investigative reporters who recently revisited this story in a new and fascinating way. 

In the podcast Murder in Boston, and web series Nightmare in Mission Hill, investigative reporters at the Globe brought new evidence to light – like law enforcement officials who knew about Stuart’s guilt, but kept quiet. The podcast and the report also give voice to the family of Willie Bennett, the Black man who was the Boston police’s prime suspect. 

In this retelling, Walker – who hosts the podcast, – and other journalists discuss the media’s shortcomings in covering the Charles Stuart story, and how the news reports often fanned the flames of racial tension around it. The project also offers a blueprint for how journalists can help bring about healing following community trauma. 

Listen to the podcast, Murder in Boston

Read the web series, Nightmare in Mission Hill

This episode was edited by Faith McClure, and we had production help from Kristin Nelson. Special thanks to Lazzaro. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

In this episode we’re featuring a recent interview with our host, documentary filmmaker and lifelong peace activist Jamil Simon on This is My Silver Lining, a podcast about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, with an emphasis on life’s unexpected twists.

Jamil has certainly had plenty of those. In 1990 he took a job in Tunisia designing communication strategies to promote water conservation and family planning. He would go on to promote social and environmental reform in 25 developing countries. Through these experiences, Jamil became convinced that peace efforts must become more visible and that journalism is the most powerful way to advance positive change globally. 

In 2018, he organized a symposium in New York City titled War Stories, Peace Stories: Peace, Conflict, and the Media, which brought together peace builders and journalists for a dialogue on covering war and violence more thoughtfully. It was this symposium that inspired Jamil to launch his podcast, in order to continue these important conversations. Jamil was awarded the 2019 Luxembourg Peace Prize for his work building global awareness of peaceful solutions to conflict. 

Jamil has also protested the Vietnam War, hitchhiked from Mexico City to de Janeiro, and driven a taxi cab, and that’s just scratching the surface. 

Find This is My Silver Lining wherever you get your podcasts and at thisismysilverlining.com.

Listen to previous Making Peace Episodes referenced in this interview:

Building peace on a walk through the Middle East with Anisa Mehdi and Joshua Weiss from the Abraham Path Initiative 

Un-embedding Western narratives about Afghanistan with Dutch journalist Bette Dam

This episode was edited and produced by John Keur at Wayfare Recordings, with additional production by Andrea Muraskin. Special thanks to Lauren Passel. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Xylo-Ziko. 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

Making Peace Visible is a show about how the media covers peace and conflict. One of the major reasons we make it is because peace gets so little coverage in the news media. When we do hear news about peace, it's usually focused on signing an agreement. When that’s done, the cameras, and the world's attention move on.  

But that handshake moment is just a fragment in a peace process. It often takes years of building trust and openness between warring parties to get to an agreement. And then more years after, to transition from violent conflict towards a political process; and see if peace can stick, and whether the grievances that led to war in the first place are being addressed.  

The slow speed and complexity of these processes may not lend themselves to mainstream news formats. But they are happening, and we're missing out on valuable lessons in reconciliation that can be adapted to other conflicts around the world.  

That’s why we invited Jonathan Cohen, executive director of the peacebuilding organization Conciliation Resources, or CR. In this episode, he shares stories from two ongoing peace processes: In Ethiopia, an ethnic Somali state called Ogaden. And on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, a new autonomous region called Bangsamoro.  

You’ll also hear about CR’s work in Nagorno-Karabakh, where journalists from both sides – Armenian and Azeri – collaborated to make documentaries about that conflict. And we’ll discuss why this kind of storytelling still matters, even after most of the region’s Armenians were displaced during an Azerbaijani offensive in September 2023.

LEARN MORE

Parts of a Circle: Nagorny Karabakh conflict documentary series (Scroll to bottom to watch 2019 Summary Film)

Ethiopia: persisting with peace – short film about Ogaden peace process

Southern Philippines: Making Peace Stick in the Bangsamoro – May 2023 Crisis Group report

Music in this episode by Bill Vortex

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

Between democracy and autocracy is an anocracy, defined by political scientists as a country that has elements of both forms of government — usually one that’s on the way up to becoming a full democracy or on the way down to full autocracy. This messy middle is the state when civil wars are most likely to start, and the one that requires the most diligence from that country’s citizens to prevent a civil war from breaking out.

This week we're featuring an interview from our friends at Democracy Works, a podcast about what it means to live in a democracy  from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. Host Jenna Spinelle speaks with  Barbara F. Walter, political scientist and author of the book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them. Walter has spent decades studying civil wars around the world and working with other political scientists to quantify how strong democracy is in a given country. The interview covers those findings, how the democratic health of the United States has shifted over the past decade, and more.

Barbara F. Walter is the Rohr Professor of International Affairs at the School of Global Policy & Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and completed post docs at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University and the War and Peace Institute at Columbia University.

LEARN MORE:

How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them

Barbara F. Walter on Twitter

We need your help to continue producing Making Peace Visible. Make a one-time or recurring tax-deductible donation here. 

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

In the United States, about one sixth of the federal budget goes to defense. This year the country spent more on the military than any year since 2001 – over $816 billion. Why does spending continue to rise in the wake of US withdrawal from Afghanistan?  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 to help 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. 

We need your help to continue making this podcast. Make a one-time or recurring tax-deductible donation here. 

Read the first issue of our new journal NUANCE.

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

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Xylo-Ziko

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

Trey Kay knows both sides of America's partisan divide intimately. He was born and raised  in a conservative family in Charleston, West Virginia. As a young man he moved to New York City, where he later became a producer on the arts and culture program Studio 360, at WNYC. 

These days, Trey splits his time between New York and West Virginia to make Us & Them, an award-winning  narrative podcast about America’s culture wars, in partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting. 

On Us & Them, Trey treats people with respect, he listens carefully to their point of view whether he agrees or not, and he facilitates conversations that might not otherwise happen. A guiding value is empathy – no matter who the interviewee happens to be.  This episode was originally published in May 2023. 

EPISODES OF US AND THEM EXCERPTED IN THIS EPISODE, with photos and additional context

The Gun Divide

Critical Race Theory

Please Pass the Politics

Subscribe to Us & Them on your podcast player

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ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Our mission is to bring journalists and peacebuilders together to re-imagine the way the news media covers peace and conflict, and to facilitate expanded coverage of global peace and reconciliation efforts. Join the conversation on Twitter: @warstoriespeace. Write to us at jsimon@warstoriespeacestories.org. 

Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure.

Music in this episode by Doctor Turtle

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project

Western media has often referred to India as the world’s largest democracy. But during the last decade, the world has witnessed the decline of many democratic institutions in India. In a recent Time Magazine article our guest Suchitra Vijayan questions whether India can still be called a democracy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have been especially harsh towards critics of the regime, including journalists. Journalists who have criticized the government have been harassed, detained, imprisoned, and even murdered. Meanwhile, 75% or more of news organizations are now owned by 4 or 5 large corporations, all led by allies of Modi. As you’ll hear in this episode, today’s Indian government uses complicit media outlets as a weapon against non-violent descent. 

Suchitra Vijayan is a journalist and attorney based in New York City. Her new book, How Long Can the Moon be Caged? co-authored with Francesca Recchia, tells the stories of political prisoners in India today, including artists, activists, academics, and journalists. 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. 

Read Vijayan’s reporting in The Nation about the government’s targeting of Kashmir’s free press.

Something we didn’t have time to include in this episode is the legacy of journalism and activism in Suchitra Vijayan’s family. That includes her grandfather, who took part in India’s freedom struggle – and became one of the new country’s first political prisoners. You can find that story and more in our newsletter, which publishes on Thursday, November 9th. To sign up, go to warstoriespeacestories.org/contact. If you’re reading this after that day, email us at info@warstoriespeacestories.org, and we’ll be happy to forward it to you. 

Making Peace Visible is produced by Andrea Muraskin. We had editing help on this episode from Faith McClure. Peter Agoos is the creative director of the War Stories Peace Stories Project. Our host is Jamil Simon.

Listen to a recent interview with Jamil on the podcast This is My Silver Lining: Learning to Walk in the Shoes of Another:  a Prayer for Peace with Documentary Filmmaker and Podcaster Jamil Simon.. The New York-born son of Iraqi Jewish immigrants, Jamil’s curiosity about the world had him traveling independently from the age of 15. In this interview, Jamil talks about discovering his love for film and photography, working on communications projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, and developing the War Stories Peace Stories project – including this podcast – to illuminate peace efforts. Plus, twists and turns along the way, including a stint as a taxi driver in Boston. Find This is My Silver Lining wherever you listen to podcasts. 

If you find this show valuable, please consider supporting our work. Visit warstoriespeacestories.org/take-action. You can choose a one-time or a recurring tax-deductible donation.  Thank you. 

Music in this episode by Siddhartha Corsus and Blue Dot Sessions

ABOUT THE SHOW

Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Learn more at warstoriespeacestories.org. 

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Support this podcast and the War Stories Peace Stories project