Making Peace Visible

What does it mean to be Ukrainian? What is Ukraine’s significance to Europe? What is the war with Russia really about? Why should the world pay attention? These are the kind of big-picture questions journalists Anastasiia Lapatina and Jakub Parusinksi tackle on their podcast, Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World. Jakub and Anastasiia (aka Nastya) founded the Kyiv Independent in 2021 as part of a group of journalists who had been fired from the Kyiv Post by an owner who threatened that paper’s editorial independence. On Power Lines, they interview academics, policy experts, aid workers and others with deep insight into the Ukraine-Russia war and regional history, providing vital context to an English-speaking audience.  In this episode of Making Peace Visible, Nastya and Jakub speak with host Jamil Simon about topics including Ukrainian identity and values, the politics of language, and the possibility of peace. Also, what podcasting offers that other media do not. Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World is a project of the Kyiv Independent and Message Heard. Listen and subscribe here, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more about the Kyiv Independent at kyivindependent.comFollow Jakub Parusinksi on Twitter @j_parus.Follow Anastasiia Lapatina on Twitter @lapatina_.Making Peace Visible is a production of War Stories Peace Stories. It’s hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin and Faith McClure. Support our work: warstoriespeacestories.org/take-action 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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind and writer Alisa Sopova create intimate, accessible portraits of Ukrainian civilians living close to the frontlines of the Russian invasion. Sometimes their subjects are picnicking in a park or tending a garden. Other times, they’re repairing a ceiling damaged by shelling or waiting for departure on an evacuation train. Anastasia and Alisa have been working together in Ukraine since the Maidan Revolution, also known as the “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014. And over the years, they’ve returned to visit the same families, witnessing how the war touches men, women, and children over time. An exhibition of their work in Ukraine is showing at the Imperial War Museum in London from February 3 through May 8, 2023. Independent Projects5K From the Frontline (ongoing)Welcome to DonetskInternational media work:NPR: The Ukraine war isn't new. These intimate photos show 3 families enduring it for yearsThe New Humanitarian: How seven years of war and COVID-19 split Ukraine in twoThe New York Times: Opinion: Where There Are Fish in the Tap Water and Women’s Uteruses Fall OutTime Magazine: The Strange Unreality of Life During Eastern Ukraine's Forgotten WarMaking Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer is Faith McClure. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Follow us on Twitter @warstoriespeace.Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.  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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Whether you get your news from social media, read an email digest from a trusted website, turn on the TV, or open up a newspaper, the world through the lens of the news media can feel like a pretty depressing place. But according to our guest, Solutions Journalism Network co-founder David Bornstein, that’s a distorted view of reality.Solutions Journalism provides an alternative model, actively seeking out stories about solutions to societal and environmental problems, and trying to learn how those solutions could be applied broadly. In this episode, we learn the basics of solutions journalism, explore some of the research done on it, and discuss how it may be applied to covering conflict and peacebuilding. Learn more about Solutions Journalism, and the Solutions Journalism Network, at solutionsjournalism.org. Try their story tracker tool to explore news from around the world, or search by topic.  Follow David Bornstein on Twitter @dnbornstein. Check out our interview with Amanda Ripley, a solutions journalist focused on conflict and reconciliation. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Additional production by Faith McClure. Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko and Bill Vortex. Making Peace Visible is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Support our work.  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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Paul Solman, a business, economics, and occasional arts reporter for the PBS NewsHour since 1985, is passionate about bridging the political and cultural divides that Americans face – between right and left, rich and poor, rural and urban, and others. He channels some of that passion into helping run a nonprofit called the American Exchange Project – a domestic exchange program where high school students from across the United States travel to spend a week getting to know and living alongside teens from way outside their own bubbles. Last year, Solman reported a segment about the American Exchange Project and other efforts to counter polarization, as part of a series reflecting on what led up to the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol. But, he argues the TV news format presents major barriers to telling more stories about peace and reconciliation. In this episode, Paul Solman and host Jamil Simon discuss why it's so difficult to tell peace stories on TV news. Also: how economic inequality factors into polarization, and the power of youth programs to promote the mindset that “we’re all in this together.” Watch Paul Solman's Reports: Political Polarization Prompts Efforts to Bridge the GapWhy Louisianans blame government, not corporations, for pollution problemsLearn about the American Exchange Project at americanexchangeproject.org. Follow Paul Solman on Twitter @paulsolman.Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The associate producer is Faith McClure. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Follow us on Twitter @warstoriespeace.Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.  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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably concerned by the level of polarization we’re seeing in societies around the world.  We can point fingers at social media, the news media, political parties, fear mongering leaders, poor education, broken political systems… the list is long. The divides can seem so vast, the problems so huge. It’s easy to retreat into a huddle with people who see the world the same way you do. But our guest for this episode, Columbia University psychology and education professor and author Peter T. Coleman, says there are things each of us can do to help heal these societal wounds. And he says the press and media can play an important role in decreasing polarization. That's the subject of his latest book, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization. Coleman outlines evidence-based practices that you can do on your own- or with a group- to help recalibrate assumptions, and re-create bonds with people you disagree with. Coleman also partnered with the organization Starts With Us to turn the lessons from the book into an online challenge, called Finding the Way Out. It's like an exercise routine, for strengthening your compassion muscles. The book is focused on the United States, but the exercises can be done anywhere. Follow Peter T. Coleman on Twitter: @PeterTColeman1Making Peace Visible is  hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. We had help on this episode from Faith McClure. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Follow us on Twitter @warstoriespeace.Support our work with a tax-deductible donation. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Bill Vortex 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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Our guest this episode has some advice for international journalists working abroad: "If you work with local journalists, give them a byline - they're not your free fixers. The security of locals is more important than any story. And  YOU, international journalist, you are not the story." And she would know. Award-winning journalist and communications consultant Zaina Erhaim comes from Idlib in northern Syria. And she got started in journalism covering the Syrian revolution and the civil war that followed. Her reporting made her a target, and she left Syria in 2016. She now lives in the UK, where she continues to mentor Syrian journalists and report on the Middle East. In this interview she shares razor sharp insights into reporting on conflict, while upholding the dignity of sources and collaborators. This episode was originally published in August, 2022. Find more advice from Zaina including her ten tips for international journalists here.Follow Zaina on Twitter @zainaerhaim. Read her reporting at zaina-erhaim.com. 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.Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin. 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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel is on a mission to bring about social change through food. A Palestinian Israeli citizen who operates in both Arab and Jewish cultures, she says “being stuck in the middle is the best place to be.” After winning the Israeli cooking competition show MasterChef– the first Muslim Arab to do so– she founded an annual food festival in the city of Haifa to showcase dishes with roots in the region. And she added a twist: Arab and Jewish chefs are paired together to recreate “extinct” or little known dishes. The award-winning 2020 documentary film Breaking Bread showcases the friendships that emerge through these collaborations, along with mouth-watering food cinematography. Our guest, American filmmaker Beth Elise Hawk, discusses how making the film challenged preconceived notions about Israeli society, and choices she made to avoid inflaming attitudes in a place where politics is inescapable. Breaking Bread is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google Play. Making Peace Visible is  hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. The podcast is a project of War Stories Peace Stories. Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.  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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

In the news media, war receives more attention than peace. But some wars get more attention than others. From November 2020 to November 2022, a civil war bloodier than Russia's war in Ukraine was fought in Tigray, a region in northern Ethiopia. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and millions were displaced. Yet depending on where you get your news, you may have heard very little about it. One reason for the shortage of coverage was the communications blackout in Tigray. Ethiopia’s government shut down internet and phone communications across the region, and barred journalists from entering war zones. But that didn’t stop our guest. Freelance journalist Lucy Kassa investigated some of the worst atrocities of the conflict, including those carried out by all sides. Her reporting helped show the world that Ethiopian troops’ actions inside Tigray amounted to an ethnic cleansing campaign. Her articles have been published in major international outlets, including The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and the LA Times. While a peace deal was signed in November, Lucy continues to investigate reports of human rights violations in Tigray. She spoke with host Jamil Simon about how she verifies accounts, how she approaches interviewing survivors of sexual violence, what she sees as her role in the conflict, and what it will take for real peace to hold. Follow Lucy Kassa on Twitter: @berhe_lucy. Read Lucy’s report for Al Jazeera. “‘A Tigrayan womb should never give birth’: Rape in Tigray,” awarded a 2022 Amnesty International Media AwardRead Lucy’s account of the raiding of her apartment in 2021 by Ethiopian government agents Learn more about the Tigray conflictStart Here from Al Jazeera: The Conflict in Ethiopia“How a new ‘Great War of Africa’ is raging under the cover of a media blackout,” by Will Brown, Lucy Kassa, and Zecharias Zelalem for The Telegraph“Tigray forces in Ethiopia say 65% of fighters have left frontline,” by Al Jazeera 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 and on LinkedIn at War Stories Peace Stories.Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Music in this episode by Podington Bear, Zero V, Doyeq, Meavy Boy, and Bill Vortex. 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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

“Understanding Dignity means understanding a profound aspect of what it means to be human.” - Dr. Donna HicksGuest Donna Hicks has worked in conflict resolution around the world, including Israel/Palestine, Sri Lanka, and Northern Ireland. A few years back, she realized that all conflicts shared an essential commonality:  someone’s dignity had been violated. This episode explores where dignity violations showed up in the midterm elections, how peacebuilders can partner with the media to have a greater impact, and more Donna Hicks is an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and a co-founder of the Dignity Index. Find Donna’s book here. 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 and on LinkedIn at War Stories Peace Stories. Sign up for our biweekly email newsletter to be notified of new podcast episodes, new films in our Peace Docs series, and events. Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with editing by Faith McClure. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Doyeq, and Podington Bear.  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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

On Making Peace Visible, we cover national peace processes like the one unfolding in Colombia. But we also interview journalists who’ve made their careers covering violent conflict. So what’s the connecting thread? This episode gets at that question– looking through the lens of the practice of Peace Journalism.Guest Steven Youngblood is a professor of communications and peace studies at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, and the founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism there. He has organized and taught Peace Journalism seminars, and workshops in over 30 countries and territories. Steven is the editor of The Peace Journalist magazine, and an advisor to the initiative behind this podcast - the War Stories Peace Stories Project. Learn more:Side-by-side comparisons of traditional journalism and Peace JournalismPeace Journalism definitions, characteristics, and guidelinesPeace Journalist MagazineMaking 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.Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon, and produced by Andrea Muraskin.  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.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!