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What does empathy have to do with emergency aid? In this final episode of Season 4, Erin Wilson, podcast host and senior field editor, sits down with Jessica Courtney, Preemptive Love's vice president of international programs, for an honest look at what they've learned about themselves as they've cared for others.

This episode:

• Invites you into a behind-the-scenes look at emergency food distributions in Iraq and Syria. Ihsan Ibraheem, who does program documentation, gives an on-the-ground update.
• Takes you to Venezuela, where you'll hear — in their own words — from new friends who were able to make ends meet because of food deliveries.
• Welcomes you to peek behind the podcasting curtain, as Erin vulnerably shares about the photos that made her not only cry, but think about her global neighbors — and herself — in a new way, too.

Learn more.

We’ll be back next week with our last regularly scheduled episode of season four. But this conversation is too important to wait. Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, was jogging in a southern Georgia neighborhood on February 23 when he was chased, gunned down, and killed by two white men. (Only after a graphic video of his killing was recently posted online, and a wave of public outcry followed did authorities move to press criminal charges, more than two months after he was shot.)

This story is all too familiar—and all too common. Men and boys losing their lives, for no other reason than that they are Black. Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castille are a few names you might recognize...though there are countless more. And now there’s another. Ahmaud Arbery.

So we’re asking: What do we do in this moment? How do we respond? Can we possibly hope to end violence somewhere else in the world if we do not confront the violence in our own communities… and in our own hearts?

Learn more.

Remember when we used to eat together? In this episode, we travel everywhere from Atlanta to Iraq for a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to gather around the table with strangers.

War begins in our heads and hearts long before it reaches our hands. But that also means the solution can begin with us. And sometimes, healing all that’s tearing us apart starts with a meal.

If polarization is fueled by our isolation from anyone different, then what if interacting with people who are different is key to reducing prejudice and polarization?

Even as you listen to this episode while self-isolating, you can still prepare for the time when we get to come back together, face-to-face.

What starts as a simple meal around a shared table with strangers can lead to life-changing conversations. And those conversations can lead to a thirst for more.

Learn more.

In this episode, Jeremy and senior field editor Erin Wilson share a candid conversation about the themes Jeremy explores in his latest book, Love Anyway. He answers never-before-asked questions, uncovers his writing process, and shares the why behind his vision of how we can heal all that’s tearing us apart. 

Visit our show notes to enter to Win a signed copy or audiobook Version of Love Anyway by Jeremy Courtney.

In his book, Jeremy says that the way things are is not the way they have to be. There is a more beautiful world.

And as you'll hear in this episode, to find it, we have to we confront our fear—and end war where it starts: in our own heads and hearts.

Learn more.

Hear how late last year, before the coronavirus started it’s deadly spread across the world, Preemptive Love founder Jeremy Courtney was noticing striking parallels between the process for stopping the spread of infectious disease and stopping the spread of violence.

Travel back in time to 2016 with host Erin Wilson, when she met two Iraqi doctors in a displacement camp she'd never forget. In raw audio from her time there, hear how Dr. Qudama and Dr. Mustafa decided to create a health clinic from scratch in one of the toughest places you can imagine, learning along the way that trust is essential to healing.

In this episode, Jeremy shares a three-step effort as we work together to stop the spread of violence and work to end war:

1. We listen and show up fast so we can address felt needs as quickly as possible.
2. We create jobs to protect the vulnerable.
3. We foster community where diverse people can truly hear each other, discover common joys and fears, and maybe even change our ideas that lead to war.

Learn more.

This first episode of season four takes you behind the scenes of the Love Anyway tour that took place last fall. Peek behind the curtain into the making of the Love Anyway film, a short documentary we created to explore the ideas around how we can heal what’s tearing us apart. We let you in on some of the conversations that happened before and during the making of the film.

We were planning to share this immersive episode with you later this year to go along with a new Love Anyway tour across the US. But because of COVID-19, our spring tour is going online. So we bumped up our production schedule to share this with you now!

(Starting April 9, we’re hosting five online, interactive events with Preemptive Love founders Jeremy and Jessica Courtney. Free tickets are available now, but space is limited.)

Learn more.

Who are the helpers in times of the COVID-19 pandemic? They might be closer than we think.

In today’s special episode, we talk with people across the U.S. to explore what it looks like for all of us to not only look for the helpers — but to be the helpers — even in a global pandemic hitting very close to home.

Many of us are familiar with Mr. Roger’s admonition to “look for the helpers” in times of chaos. As life continues to change in the face of COVID-19, podcast producer Kayla Craig looks for the helpers in her own community, recording conversations along the way.

• Kayla talks with Preemptive Love grants officer Lindsey Pruett-Hornbaker about her online storytime for “little revolutionaries.”
• Dane Barnett, Preemptive Love’s student and university engagement manager, spends some self-isolation time interviewing his mom Kris, a nurse in a local hospital's pediatric emergency department.
• We also hear from Kayla’s four young children who are now figuring out what their days look like without school. She also receives a message from her brother Nathan, who is helping keep grocery store shelves stocked during the pandemic.

And Jeremy Courtney, founder and CEO of Preemptive Love, shares an important message about why he’s cutting his salary to $0 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn more.

Join us as we welcome Dr. Larycia Hawkins, who talks about her experience when, in 2015, she declared her intention to don a hijab in embodied solidarity with Muslim sisters throughout Advent and what transpired afterward. Host Lindsy Wallace and co-host Gina Ciliberto join in the conversation.

Dr. Hawkins is a scholar, political science professor, and activist teaching and researching at the nexus of politics, race, ethnicity, and religion and has been called a modern-day Rosa Parks by Rev. Jesse Jackson. 

In this episode, we:

• Dive into how Larycia decided to embody solidarity
• Soak in what was learned from Muslim women
• Examine the differences in proximity versus solidarity 
• Humbly consider embodied solidarity as a form of death
• Dare to be hopeful during the exile in the wilderness

Join us as we explore how to not only be for others but also with them. May we be people who are emboldened to embody justice to speak truth to power and to take risks as we follow Jesus.  

Recommended reading & resources:

• The Same God film
• Follow Dr. Larycia on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

News, Notes, and Links:

• Support more conversations like this on Upside Down Podcast! Please visit us, where you can pledge a few dollars of monthly support to help us pay our bills and keep the conversations going.
• Learn more at Upside Down Podcast.
• We’re on Instagram, too.
• Join the Upside Down Together listener group on Facebook!

It’s been a difficult week across the Middle East, from protests in Iraq to the recent news that the US administration is withdrawing its presence from northeastern Syria. On this breaking episode of the Love Anyway podcast, we hear from our Preemptive Love team about how the decision by the US to pull out of northeastern Syria could have reverberations that last generations.

We can’t follow the news right now without seeing headlines about US pullout from northeastern Syria. So, what’s happening? What are the implications? Why is this withdrawal so important...and so potentially devastating, not just for our friends in Syria, but for all of us?

We speak with Preemptive Love founder Jeremy Courtney, who has lived in the Middle East, including Turkey and Iraq, for more than a decade.

We also hear from Erin Wilson, Preemptive Love's senior field editor in the Middle East, who describes the sense she is getting from her friends and neighbors in Iraq, many of whom have Kurdish friends and family in the line of fire in northern Syria.

Learn more.

What's performative wokeness? How does our faith influence the destructive performativity of Internet activism? In this episode, join host Kayla, with co-hosts Lindsy, Alissa, and Gina, in this first discussion of Season 4 - "Get Your People."

In this episode, we:

• Laugh as we catch up with co-hosts after our summer hiatus
• Explore the definition of wokeness through our own experiences
• See the costs of awakening as the costs of the gospel, and the grace of the gospel as the grace of awakening
• Recognize why platform-building by promoting good deeds may not make the impact we desire
• Ask how we stay rooted in what we believe to be God’s Truth and how can that inform the ambiguous questions
• Discuss how we invest in who we love by how we spend our time through hands-on action, donate our money, and prayer focus
• Sit in the tension of the pull of social media activism against real-life conversations

Join us as we learn together to unpack wokeness and how it plays out on social media and IRL. May we be people who are willing to be awakened to the systematic oppression of image-bearers and allow it to cost us our sleep. 

Recommended reading & resources:

• Aziz Anzari’s Netflix special, Right Now

News, Notes, and Links:

• Support more conversations like this on Upside Down Podcast! Please visit us, where you can pledge a few dollars of monthly support to help us pay our bills and keep the conversations going.
• Learn more at Upside Down Podcast.
• We’re on Instagram, too.
• Join the Upside Down Tribe on Facebook!

Babies begin to notice race at six months old. Children are paying attention. And as we’ve learned this season, what they hear the adults in their lives say and do⁠—or not say and do⁠—deeply influences the people they are⁠—and who they’ll become.

Rapper and Preemptive Love's artist-in-residence Propaganda (Jason Petty), and his wife, university professor Dr. Alma Zaragoza-Petty, both of the Red Couch Podcast, join us for a candid conversation about parenting and talking to kids about race.

In this episode, Propaganda and Alma share their experiences growing up as people of color, share ways they've talked about race and peacemaking with their children, and speak into what they want white parents to know about humility and allyship.

Learn more.

Immigration is a complicated topic, even for adults. Some of us are afraid to say the wrong thing. Others of us fear those who are different. How do we talk about immigration with family members? With kids? On this episode, we start by listening.

On our second episode of the season, we hear from José Chiquito, a college student who came to the US with his family as an undocumented child. We also talk with Luisa, whom our colleague Billy Price met at the US-Mexico border after she traveled with her grandchildren from Honduras to legally seek asylum. And Laura Pontius, an immigration attorney, shares why the language we use about immigration matters.

We also provide a field update about the aid and assistance you've made possible to families seeking asylum on the US-Mexico border.

Learn more.

Can kids be peacemakers? Preemptive Love founders Jeremy and Jessica Courtney share how living in Iraq has influenced how they raise their children. With host Erin Wilson, they explore how culture, technology, and war changed their perception of parenting—and invite us all to enter into difficult conversations with the young people in our lives.

Their kids, Emma (14) and Micah (11), dive into their perspectives on growing up in Iraq, sharing thoughts on violence, media, and what makes home to them. Kids are often shielded from bad things, but what happens when that’s not possible? This episode also includes a call with Molly Goen, a teacher who confides what students taught her after they survived a traumatic act of violence in an Iraqi classroom.

Young people absorb more than we might imagine, and they understand more than we may assume. When we examine what it looks like to love anyway, we often come up with complicated answers. But ask a kid in your life what it means to love anyway, and you might be surprised at the depth even simple responses bring to the conversation.

We're inviting you to a behind-the-scenes look at the people and stories behind the Love Anyway podcast. Host Erin Wilson joins Ben Irwin, director of communications, for a casual conversation recapping season one with producer Kayla Craig.

Hear Erin share her favorite episode and what she finds most challenging about hosting a podcast. (And experience her infectious laughter that those of us at Preemptive Love get a front row seat to every day.) Discover the episode Ben was most skeptical of—and how it turned out to be his favorite.

You'll also catch an exclusive sneak peek into Season Two of Love Anyway, which launches in July.

Learn more.

They fled some of the world’s worst violence. Their future is uncertain. How can you stand in the gap for asylum seekers at the border?

This special bonus episode of Love Anyway features behind-the-scenes staff calls with Preemptive Love’s programs manager Jennifer Meyerson and donor relations coordinator Matt Malcom, discussing Preemptive Love’s time-sensitive response to what’s happening at the border between Mexico and the US.

While others wage partisan wars, we can be the people who love anyway.

Learn more.

What makes home feel like home? As our work has shown us, restoring homes ruined by war is a first step to bringing whole communities back to life.

Preemptive Love co-founder Jessica Courtney shares stories of her Iraqi and Syrian friends who have been displaced and are now remaking their homes. We also hear never-before-heard stories from the field, as Jessica shares her experiences of visiting homes that are being built after being destroyed by war.

Learn more.

Most of us have a very Western idea of what it means to be a millennial. But we’re all more than stereotypes.

We categorize each other into neat and tidy labels because, well, it’s easy. It’s a way to organize cultural ideas. Our social constructs act a way to help us try to understand the world.

In this episode, we set those stereotypes aside for a minute and ask: What does life look like for the roughly 7 million millennials—women and men between the ages of 23 and 38—in Iraq?

On Episode 5: The Millenials of Iraq, we find out. And if your primary picture of Iraq is what you've seen on TV, you might be in for a surprise.

Learn more.

Hope is still possible, even when the pain of the world feels like too much. What if kindness, empathy, and compassion are the way forward? Join host Kayla Craig and co-hosts Lindsy Wallace, Alissa Molina, and Gina Ciliberto with special guest John Pavlovitz. John is a writer, pastor, and activist. 

In the past five years, John's blog Stuff That Needs To Be Said has reached a diverse worldwide audience of millions of people. In 2017 he released his first book, A Bigger Table. His second book, Hope and Other Superpowers, arrived in November of 2018.

In this episode, we:

• Unpack what “hope” and “resistance” means and how we live them in today’s world
• Explore the role that community plays in hope
• Ask how we move beyond soundbites into embodied hope
• Reconcile the temptations of apathy against savorism 
• Identify steps each of us can take right now to be the kind of person the world needs

Join us as we explore hope as resistance, pulling those threads to see how it looks like in our actual lives. May we be galvanized, encouraged, and compelled by this conversation on pressing into pain and choosing a way of hope, even when the world feels pretty hopeless.

Recommended reading & resources:

• Hope and Other Superpowers by John Pavlovitz
• John Pavlovitz

News, Notes, and Links:

• Support more conversations like this on Upside Down Podcast! Please visit us, where you can pledge a few dollars of monthly support to help us pay our bills and keep the conversations going.
• Learn more at Upside Down Podcast.
• We’re on Instagram, too.
• Join the Upside Down Tribe on Facebook!

When we’re afraid, we build walls around ourselves. We yearn for protection. To feel safe. We hem ourselves in. And keep others away.

But what happens when our felt safety comes at a cost? What happens when our fear of “the other” contributes to others not being protected...or safe? Who is “the other," anyway?

How do we start deconstructing the walls around our hearts?

Learn more.