Peace Talks: The radio series about peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution strategies. This is one of many newscast friendly hours that are currently available from Good Radio Shows, Inc. and producer Paul Ingles. This time on Peace Talks, Nonviolent Communication (NVC) with the late Marshall Rosenberg. NVC is a verbal technology for exchanging information and resolving differences peacefully. Marshall Rosenberg, who founded the NVC technique is captured before a live Albuquerque audience talking about how this communication style helps to resolve conflict. He also helps members of the studio audience develop solutions to conflict scenarios using the principles of Nonviolent Communication. Co hosts: Paul Ingles and Suzanne Kryder. The program was taped at the First Church of Religious Science Auditorium on February 7, 2005.  Rosenberg died in February of 2015.

Peace Talks Radio, the series on Peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. On this edition, we invite you to do some critical thinking about competition. Does competition create character and excellence, or more often conflict and disillusionment? Or a bit of both? The flood of competition-based entertainment on television suggests our fascination with winners and losers, but is there a cost? What's behind our desire to see our favorite sports teams do well. What's the impact of competition on academics, workplaces and politics? Host Paul Ingles talks with author Alfie Kohn, who has pondered these and similar questions in his many provocative books. For another perspective, we talk with someone whose life has been a nearly unbroken string of competitions, college basketball coach Steve Alford. We also visit with a couple of teens to get their take on competition. Program is formatted to allow for a news window. For newscast stations use the opening billboard, then parts 1, 2 and 3 in order for a total of 54 minutes. For non-newscast stations, you can add the optional Part 4 to fill out to 59 minutes. A 29 minute version of this program is posted elsewhere at PRX.

In an in-depth conversation, James Douglass, author of "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters", spells out his theory that the 35th President was the victim of a murder conspiracy and that he died because of his peacemaking policies. He tracks Kennedy's transformation from a hawkish anti-Communist to someone who helped save the world from nuclear war by establishing back-channel conversations with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Listeners will also hear much of Kennedy's 1963 speech at American University during which he laid out his vision for world peace, less than 6 months before his murder. Paul Ingles hosts. Language Advisory: A film clip includes the characters saying "Those god-damn Kennedys...." about 18:20 into Part A. If you feel it offensive to your listeners, you may edit it out or contact the producer for a version with that clip stripped out. paul@paulingles.com.

On this special edition of Peace Talks Radio, we recall the several years when musician John Lennon and his wife, performance artist Yoko Ono, were among the most high profile peace advocates on the planet.  John was shot dead outside his apartment in New York in 1980 – 11 years after he wrote the song that – since its creation in 1969, has been a fixture at just about any gathering for peace.   We’ll talk with Yoko Ono as well a the producers and directors of two fine films about this part of their lives: David Leaf who co-created the film The US vs. John Lennon , and the co-producers of the film John and Yoko, Give Peace A Song , Paul McGrath and Alan Lysaght.  Lennon's voice is heard in clips from both films and in his songs including, Give Peace A Chance, Happy Xmas (War Is Over), Power To The People, Revolution, and Imagine.

There is also a 29 minute version of this program available at PRX:

http://www.prx.org/pieces/37503-peace-talks-radio-the-peace-work-of-john-lennon

In the U.S., about 50% of all marriages end in divorce.  Divorce is often described in the language of war. The ex-spouses battle over possessions and children. Attorneys look for ammunition. The warring partners burn bridges, plunder bank accounts, and drop bombshells. In a sense, the script is already written for us. Divorce is a civil war in a family. But does it have to be that way? What happens when both parties want to write the ending a different way and divorce peacefully? Can they?

On this edition of Peace Talks Radio , we'll hear the divorce story of the couple who created Peace Talks Radio and still work together to produce it: Paul Ingles and Suzanne Kryder.  Guest reporter Sasha Aslanian tells how the couple managed to steer around divisive divorce troubles and stay friendly, civil and even helpful to each other in the post-divorce years.  Also, a conversation with therapist Samuel Roll who offers ideas about managing divorces that don't go so smoothly and may involve children.  Finally, some examples of programs that help couples and kids find that peaceful place after divorce.

PEACE TALKS RADIO host Paul Ingles tells the story of losing a friend to a
domestic homicide and wanting to explore efforts to help young people learn
the building blocks for experiencing healthy relationships as adults.
Researchers say those who turn into stalkers and jealous, violent lovers
often experience abuse as children and have limited positive role models for
good relationships.  Paul talks with two people involved in developing
programs for schools that help youngsters learn how relationship conflict
can be handled and how relationship breakups can be managed and survived
without turning to violence.  David Wolfe co-developed a program called "The
Fourth R" in which "Relationship" joins the traditional "reading, 'riting,
and 'rithmetic" in middle and high school training.  Alexandra Smith
oversees a program called "Start Strong Bronx" in New York that makes use of
"The Fourth R" curriculum in middle schools.

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 can one who is facing the death of a loved one or friend adopt to nurture a more peaceful place for themselves during the transition and afterwards?  We talk with three women - two nurses and a physician - who have worked closely in the hospice community for some suggestions, including hospice nurse Camille Adair who also produced the film "Solace: Wisdom of the Dying."  Also, hospice nurse Denys Cope who wrote the book "Dying: A Natural Passage," and hospice physician Karin Thron.  Host Paul Ingles, who lost both his mother and an aunt in a two week stretch in 2011, also shares his own story.

80 percent of Americans find political campaigns uncivil and 85 percent say that politics in general is becoming more uncivil.  

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 Literacy Project, who’ll comment on the media’s role in heightening incivility in political discourse.  And we’ll hear from a woman who’s launched an online project she thinks may help things a bit, by taking a kitchen table around the country.  Paul Ingles hosts.

Program also available in half-hour long version on PRX: http://www.prx.org/pieces/84061

On this edition of the radio series Peace Talks Radio, we recall the life and times of Nelson Mandela, who led the decades long resistance to the white government’s system of apartheid in South Africa.  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 held from 1994 to 1999.

Today, we’ll hear some of our former Peace Talks Radio guests who, during our interviews with them assessed the importance and impact of Mandela’s life and example.  We’ll hear from others too, including radio producer Joe Richman who researched Mandela’s life for over a year to produce the 2004 series and special Mandela: An Audio History.  Joe’s allowing us to excerpt some of the more compelling moments from his award-winning series which blended archival tape, news reports, old and new interviews to tell the tale both of Mandela and the black South African’s and anti-apartheid activist’s decades long struggle for civil rights.  Also, Mandela's inaugural address in 1994 when he became President of South Africa.

Peace Talks Radio producer Paul Ingles interviews two leading King scholars, asking each to pick speeches from those years to focus on.    You’ll hear from the late 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.  (Dr. Harding died in May of 2014 about 6 months after this interview)  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 speeches these scholars chose were… King’s last address, the night before his assassination in Memphis in April, 1968.  Also, the speech he made a year to the day before he was killed, called “Beyond Vietnam,” in which Dr. King came out publicly and explicitly in opposition to the Vietnam War. And from March of 1965, Dr. King’s remarks that he made at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery marches, considered a turning point in the struggle for Voting Rights and equality for African Americans.

Link to SELMA TO ALABAMA SPEECH (1965):   http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_address_at_the_conclusion_of_selma_march/

Link to BEYOND VIETNAM SPEECH (1967):  http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

Link to BEEN TO THE MOUNTAINTOP SPEECH (1968):  http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm

Known for his co-leadership of the United Farm Workers movement, Cesar Chavez is remembered for his commitment to nonviolent resistance in his campaigns for social, racial, and labor justice.  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 significantly to the peacemaking toolkits of more celebrated nonviolence heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Finally, we hear from Texas community organizer Juanita Valdez-Cox, who worked the fields there with her family in the 1950's and 60's and recalls Chavez and Huerta leading the organization of farm workers in her state.  Our guests will discuss what Chavez' own actions and theories about nonviolence have to offer to our daily lives as well as how they can be used to address today's social and political issues.  Archival comments from Cesar Chavez are included, along with comments made by President Barack Obama at the dedication of the Cesar Chavez National Monument in 2012.

Carol Boss host with Paul Ingles.

Today, the story of a person, who quite unexpectedly, wound up diffusing a conflict situation that appeared to be heading down an all-too familiar path.  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 funerals a week later, and there was no shooter turning the gun on himself or a good guy with a gun finishing the suspect off.   There was, however, Antoinette Tuff, the 46 year old school clerk there , using calm words, empathy and compassion --- while most of the time, having an open line to the 911 operator…and truly being in the line of fire.

In part, what Antoinette Tuff employed was a kind of nonviolent communication that we’ve covered before on Peace Talks Radio.  We go back into our archive to re-visit one of those conversations with NVC expert Jorge Rubio.

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;  Former Albuquerque Police Department employee Karen Fischer, Albuquerque Police officers John Garcia, Shermane Carter and Brian Werle; Bernalillo County Deputies Aaron Schwartz and Autumn Neas; Santa Fe Police Officer Gardner Finney; Jim Ginger, CEO of Public Management Rources;  Mike Scott, former police officer and director of the Center for Problem Oriented Policing: Greg Saville, police training expert and former police officer; Glenn Ivey, former prosecutor and former state's attorney in Prince Georges County, Maryland.

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.

Earlier in our series, we devoted a couple of episodes to conversation about how parents might handle some of the most common conflicts and challenges they face in trying to raise young boys into adulthood.  This time, we’re presenting the first of two episodes that even the score up and allow us to hear some ideas for parents - and youngsters too - about how to navigate some of the common, and even not so common, conflicts and challenges of the world of girls striving toward adulthood.  We visit with writer and scholar Lara Dotson-Renta, Michele Coleman, founder and CEO of the Attachment Healing Center in New Mexico, and therapist and author Dr. Lisa Damour, Ph.D. who published the 2016 book, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through The Seven Transitions Into Adulthood . 

September 13, 1993 is a date that many of a certain age will recognize as the day the OSLO ACCORDS were signed.  It was marked by a White House Rose Garden ceremony with President Bill Clinton officiating over a handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Itzak Rabin and Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.  Papers were signed by both warring parties to set up a framework for peace between the two adversaries.  Back then, and still today, the OSLO ACCORDS represent at least a hopeful moment for peace.

Although the Oslo Accords didn’t result in a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine, how they came to be at all makes for a fascinating study in the hope for change, the persistence and bravery of negotiators on both sides of a conflict, and, in this case, the dogged determination of two Norwegian peacemakers who  drove the whole process.   

A stage dramatization of the story of OSLO was written by J.T. Rogers and directed by Bartlett Sher.  It started modestly in 2016 at a small theater at New York’s Lincoln Center.  Later it advanced to the Lincoln Center’s Broadway stage, and went on to win the award for BEST PLAY at 2017’s Tony Awards. 

Back in 2010, Peace Talks Radio did a program of an especially creative joining of music and peace.  An outfit called Playing For Change was flying around the globe to record an eclectic collection of musicians playing together on some popular songs to promote the power of music to bring us together.  In fact the Playing for Change motto was Peace Through Music. 

In the years since the first big Playing For Change video ("Stand By Me"), and that early report by us here at Peace Talks Radio, Playing for Change has continued to add to its collection of amazing worldwide performances.  We’ll hear some of the tracks from the project's 2018 CD called Listen To The Music, which included the title cut with members of the original Doobie Brothers who recorded it first in the 1970's, and again added musicians from around the world contributing to the track.

Again, we got Playing For Change producer Mark Johnson on the line with us from California to update us on the project.

The late 17-term Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis is remembered in a special that includes the memorial ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol when his body laid in state in the Rotunda, a week after his death July 17, 2020.  Also included are other tributes, and archival tapes of John Lewis speeches and interviews.  Paul Ingles hosts.

On this episode of PEACE TALKS RADIO, we consider a 2020

Host Paul Ingles talks with the film's directors: Academy Award-nominee Kahane Cooperman, and six-time Emmy winner, John Hoffman. The film is available on several platforms for online viewing.  

Among the stories featured in the film is a program offering health service to the homeless in Boston; a resettlement support services project helping refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo adjust to a very different life in Anchorage, Alaska; a community college in Amarillo, Texas really going the extra mile to remove the emotional, logistical and financial barriers students face as they try to improve themselves to contribute more substantially to their families and the community;   a Decatur, Georgia Baptist church going off the more common script in opening up its doors to embrace and include the LGBTQ+ community; an intentionally intergenerational living community in Portland, Oregon matches young people in foster care with elderly residents who offer love and compassionate guidance.

Paul also talks with 2 of the kindness agents featured in the film.  One is DeAmon Harges in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He’s a community organizer who seems to be crafting meaningful change by bringing out the gifts and talents of his neighbors in a neighborhood that’s been through tough times.  The focal point of the project is a bike shop that employs young people to re-condition bikes for others.  Multigenerational and multi-ethnic adults pitch in to help.  We also visit with Modesto, California high school teacher Sherry McIntyre who has, since 2000, been teaching freshman about the history of World Religions. The ninth graders learn how to engage with different ideas, cultures and beliefs in McIntyre’s class and are on their way to becoming more open-minded, accepting young adults.

PEACE TALKS RADIO host Paul Ingles postulates that advertising of all kinds crowds our brains with messages that may not help us to inner peace or peace among us. Many of us just let TV, radio and online ads wash over us in our homes, cars and through our devices. We talk with three media educators who think teaching young people and adults to critically analyze ad messages may help us build some immunity to the persuasive power the ads ply to our minds, and to our attitudes about ourselves or each other.  We'll ask our guests, media literacy advocates and teachers, about it.   And while the idea of teaching media literacy in schools has been kicked around for about 25 years, to promote critical analysis by students of advertising and other mediated messages, the movement hasn't really taken off. 

Our guests include Pamela Pereyra, the founder and CEO of Media Savvy Citizens, Allison Butler, media literacy expert from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Ben Boyington, a veteran high school teacher, researcher, and media literacy studies advocate.