18. We are a Storytelling Species

In this episode Lindsay Martin interviews host patience kamau in an effort to understand the behind the scenes development of this podcast, the motivations for its creation and the preparation that goes into each episode. 

Lindsay Martin is associate director of Development for CJP. 


Guest

Profile image

patience kamau

patience kamau’s passion is for the earth’s “wild” creatures. She is a peacebuilder-conservationist who at heart, sees her role as a conciliatory one between humans and our global environment’s complex ecosystems. Along with others who feel and think similarly, she seeks to continually step into the flashpoint and convince fellow humans that, though we now contextually exist in a free market economic system based on exultations of short-term growth and endless profits, a blind pursuit of interest maximization with little thought to environmental impact only serves to undermine our species’ long-term survival.


Transcript

Theme music:

[Theme music begins and fades to background]

Lindsay:

Hello everybody, and welcome back to Peacebuilder, a conflict transformation podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. My name is Lindsay Martin. I’m the Associate Director of Development for CJP, and today we are flipping the script. Our guest this episode is patience kamau, your regular host. I’m very excited to talk with her.

But before we begin, we’d like to remind you to plan to attend our virtual 25 plus one anniversary celebrations later this week on June 4, 5, and 6. For details on our lineup of speakers and to register go to emu.edu/CJP/anniversary. We hope you can join us.

Theme music:

[Theme music fades back in and plays till end]

Lindsay:

Welcome to this interview with peacebuilder podcast host patience kamau.

My name is Lindsay Martin. I am currently the Associate Director of Development at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. And I have been here since 2015 in this role.Thrilled to call patience my colleague and to spend the next hour with you, patience….

patience:

Thank you.

Lindsay:

…talking and sharing a little bit of what you’ve been up to with this wonderful podcast.

patience:

Wonderful.

Lindsay:

Welcome to everyone. Just to give a little bit of context about the podcast, last year more than 6,500 listeners, 102 countries, over 1,200 cities across the globe listened to season one of the peacebuilder podcast hosted by patience kamau, featuring faculty

and staff from Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Season two is currently underway. That’s a little bit about the podcast.

A little bit about patience:

She is the digital media strategist and designer at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding here at EMU. At heart, she is a peacebuilder conservationist who sees her role as a conciliatory one between humans and our global environment’s complex ecosystems. Along with others who feel and think similarly, she seeks to continually step into the flashpoint and convince fellow humans that, though we now contextually exist in a free market economic system based on exaltations of short-term growth and endless profits, a blind pursuit of interest maximization with little thought to environmental impact only serves to undermine our species long-term survival.

Wow.

Before we get started, I just wanted to note for all of you tuning in via Zoom, you can feel free to, as you think of questions that you’d like to ask patience, to put them in the Q&A. Click the Q&A at the bottom of your screen and put in your question there. We’ll get to questions from the audience at the end. If you’re tuning in via Facebook, feel free to put your questions in that comment section and we’ll see what we have time to get to at the end of the hour.

Patience! Good to see you on this lovely afternoon here in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The sun is shining. Look forward to talking.

patience:

Thank you. I’m happy to be here doing this. It’s exciting. (laughs softly)

Lindsay:

I read your bio that you had written up, but I wonder if you could share a little bit more of your story, your journey, how you arrived here at EMU and CJP and what all your current role here entails.

patience:

Indeed. I am from Kenya, central Kenya specifically. I came to EMU to attend undergraduate, and graduated in 2002 with a degree in computer information systems, which is… at the time, I don’t know whether it currently is, but at the time it was both a computer science and business degree. After graduating, I was feeling my interests sort of shifting toward the end of my undergraduate studies but I wanted to be in peacebuilding, but at the time there was a major then called JPCS or something like

that, but I couldn’t switch. It was already too late for me if I didn’t want to stay an extra year or so. Or even two. I graduated in computer information systems and then started working at EMU soon thereafter. And I’ve been here since working in various departments, which has been a great joy.

My role at CJP began in 2015. We also chose a time when I was taking my master’s degree within conflict transformation through the program, graduated in 2017 and… still working within the program as a digital media strategist and designer right now. So that’s exciting. That’s my path to EMU at CJP.

Lindsay:

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. And, we’re delighted that you’ve stuck around and fulfilled many important roles here at EMU, including for a while in the alumni office. Is that right?

patience:

Correct. Yes. Yes. I was in the same division in which you work right now, development. I was there for a couple of years. And then transitioned into institutional research for… I don’t know, maybe two or three years which was directly just before my role at CJP.

Lindsay:

The podcast. How did this start last year? Now you’re in season two?

patience:

Exactly.

Lindsay:

What is the origin story of the peacebuilder podcast?

patience:

The origin story goes back to the summer of 2019, specifically June 2019.

I am a person, well… I’m a child of Africa, so I really, really like heat. I much prefer heat to winter. I remember it being very hot, and June is my favorite month.

And I tend to take time off within that month. I was off, and in that space of not needing to be, you know, productive, work wise. It tends to be a very creative space, at least in my head.

And out of… what felt like out of the blue, came this idea. Personally, I’m a very voracious podcast listener. I listen to a lot of podcasts while doing all kinds of things. It’s just a way to learn and be engaged in a different sort of way while doing other things.

While I was listening to all kinds of podcasts, I thought we should have a peacebuilder or peacebuilding podcast that actually speaks to concepts and ideas within peacebuilding, conflict transformation or conflict resolution, these fields. And then I wondered if that’s out there. Then, I picked up my phone and started looking, I maybe found two. They were not directly in peacebuilding, but they were in the larger field of what I would say… Maybe they were in peacebuilding, but not in the context in which we do peacebuilding currently. So they were in the periphery and it just felt like such a field that isn’t crowded.

Podcasts have become… they are just growing exponentially. They’ve become what blogs were in the early 2000s. Podcasts have just become the thing. Of course, after the invention of the iPhone, that’s why podcasts exist. Because without that, they wouldn’t exist. I just looked in and I thought, oh, well, this is actually a niche. This is an area where we could… because I would want to listen to a podcast like that. When it wasn’t there, I thought, hmm, maybe create it.

Then I thought, how do you even do that? I layed on my couch right here where I’m sitting with my phone and just literally searched “How do you create a podcast?” That was a simple beginning, and about two to three days later of reading and watching YouTube tutorials I felt like I had the baseline knowledge of actually how to do it. And then once I returned to work, I presented the idea to Jayne [Docherty], who is the executive director at CJP right now. She said, “go for it” And so we did, and here we are.

At least in the first season, we recorded everything in the fall of 2019, and then the episodes began to air last January for the first season, which went through the end of May. And now we’re doing a second season, which is wonderful, which will go again till maybe the beginning or mid-May.

That’s the origin story of the Peacebuilder Podcast. Lindsay:

And am I right that it was originally the first season thought to be a great tie-in with

CJP’s anniversary celebration?

patience:

Absolutely, yes yes, you’re absolutely right. We were heading toward celebrating CJP’s 25th anniversary, which was beginning officially on July 1, 2019. So it felt like a really natural tie-in to have this… this medium that can hold a story as human beings. I mean,

we’re a species that is made of and responds to story in a very specific way. And podcasts lend themselves excellently well to that.

And we have all these voices that are currently present within CJP who were founding voices and also who have been, even if they weren’t co-founders they are still here at the moment. It felt important to capture their thoughts. What was CJP at the beginning? What is it now? And what do they hope that CJP can be or will be in the future– say if, whoever will be here in 25 years from now– what do they envision CJP could be then? And it just felt like a perfect way to capture those thoughts. Maybe put them in a time capsule just because of the natural trajectory of human life a lot of these voices will not be here 25 years from now. And so, yes, it lent itself very, very well to the celebration of the silver jubilee of CJP which we then had to delay because of a certain testy pandemic. But we will re-celebrate again here virtually in just a couple of weeks on June 4, 5, and 6.

Lindsay:

Thank you. Well, you alluded a little bit to kind of why a podcast, what the appeal is in terms of the sort of sheer numbers of podcasts out there. But can you say anything more about why the peacebuilding field might want or need a podcast like this?

patience:

Absolutely.

Lindsay:

From your perspective.

patience:

From my perspective, yeah. (laughs softly)

So at the very least, like I said, podcasts are just proliferating in every field. And in any particular area it is very crowded… The areas are just crowded. You will easily find 10, 15, 20 podcasts, but that’s not true yet about peacebuilding. I’m sure that will not be true for too much longer.

And it just feels like a place where people who are inclined toward peacebuilding can go and listen to different ideas. The different ways that peacebuilders present themselves, what they’re thinking about, what they’re researching, and just engage with that sort of information. And personally, I think peacebuilding or conflict transformation is a way of life. Yes, it is a field of study, but I also think that it is a way of life. We use this conflict transformation for ways, you know, high-level conflict resolution, but it is also on an

interpersonal sort of level. If we bring them now to a level of how we relate to one another as friends, as siblings, as spouses, as lovers, we actually have richer relationships. So I see it as a way of self-actualization. If we can engage with these ideas and concepts in a format that presents it in a story-kind-of-way that is accessible to people in ways that are not, you know… You don’t have to sit and I mean, it’s different from a book, you can’t read a book while you’re driving. You can listen to a podcast while you’re driving. You can paint and listen to a podcast. You can cook and listen to a podcast. You can take a shower and listen to a podcast.

And so, then, you’re able to engage your mind in a different sort of way while doing other things. I think it’s important, because I feel very passionately about peacebuilding, it is important to bring these ideas into this field so that people actually engage with that and help people live deeper ways of who they actually are, the divine within ourselves, within all of us.

Transition music:

[Transition music plays]

Lindsay:

That leads well into my next question just about this: the numbers have shown over 6,000 listeners in the first season.

patience:

Right.

Lindsay:

A lot of people are interested and are accessing the podcast. Has that surprised you? What has your reaction been to know that there are so many people across the world listening to this?

patience:

It has completely surprised me. I’m like… (laughs) Within the first season, I mean, because it’s really very small. Podcasts are in this day and age produced by studio outfits. What we do, how we create this, is basically a computer. It’s really really small, but we try to make it the best that we can with good voice quality. And there’s a lot of preparation that goes into it. So it’s actually of good quality. But for how small we are, I was very, very surprised, and pleasantly so, to actually see that there was that people responded with a thirst that I maybe suspected was there… Because, like I said, I thought that I would listen to a peacebuilding kind of podcast. And then there were other people who were feeling the same. In the first season, when I began to realize that

there were about a thousand people listening per month, every four weeks, it would just increase by a thousand. I thought, “Whoa, wow, okay, something’s happening here.

People are appreciating this. This is good.” So then we kept creating. And then the season ended, which meant that the active promotion of it, (you know, when we drop an episode, there are specific things that we do to actually let people know it’s out there) was done. Then, we weren’t doing those things that are active promotion. But it is a public facing medium. And so people access it depending on… we can’t even anticipate how it is that people come across these episodes and how they listen to them. And on its own inertia it kept itself going for eight months at the very least. Before we picked up again, there were 100 downloads a month and we were doing no promotion at all. It was just people doing it on their own.

That was wonderful. And now that we’ve begun a second season, it’s even ticked up a little more. We are a little more than a thousand listeners per month. It’s fantastic. It is an absolute surprise to me, but a pleasant one. It gives me joy. I am happy because this is really important, very rich content in very many areas. I learned a lot myself while going through it. It’s good to know that it’s a companionship of people from all over the world and we’re working together, learning together, and listening together.

Lindsay:

I’m wondering if maybe you could say just a little bit about the kinds of content that there has been on the podcast so far in case folks haven’t haven’t listened to any of them.

What’s the range? What are all the discussion points or how might you sort of summarize what it’s all about?

patience:

Yeah. So the first season and the second season feel different just because of the natural process of how things evolve. The first season was heavily about the history of CJP, but within that there were very specific people… For example, Howard Zehr is in one episode, “Journalist of Justice” and he talks about his own journey into how he started theorizing about Restorative Justice and how it came to be. And so we go into that quite a bit with him.

We talk with Carl Stauffer, who talks about Transitional Justice and what that means to him. A lot of these people also reflect on what the spiritual impact is to them, because many people (at least in my experience) who are in peacebuilding and conflict transformation or conflict resolution work have a spiritual resonance to it. People are not doing it just to make a living. Yes, that’s an important part, but there’s also a process of

meaning making that gives their life a certain sense of richness because of engaging in this work.

We have another episode by Dr. Katie Mansfield who engaged a lot on racial issues and she was ahead of the curve. This was before George Floyd was murdered, and her episode had preceded that in so much of what she talked about was so relevant. I could see even after the season was done, a lot of people, especially in the summer when we were having all the protests about Black Lives Matter, were really engaging in that particular episode.

We have another episode by Jayne Docherty, which is on world viewing, which examines or talks about how people engage things differently depending on how they view the world. I don’t know whether she uses this, but it’s something that I’ve internalized is that worldview is common sense to us as individuals until it encounters your common sense (Lindsay and patience laugh together) and then they don’t line up. And how do we make those work? So she talks about that.

In the second season, it’s a bit different in that we’re not necessarily too much engaged in the history of CJP because we’ve covered it. Well, the first episode does, because it’s with Dr. Vernon Jantzi, who was a co-founder of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

But the second and third one, which has been with Catherine Barnes, goes more deeply into concepts of peacebuilding. So Dr. Catherine Barnes talks about deliberative dialogue processes, which is how we design ways of talking with one another, especially with large groups and talking about difficult or vexing problems. That it matters how we create the container in which people come to discuss things, so that then people show up fully as themselves, bring fully who they are, and are able to engage with other people who are in the room. It’s an excellent episode. That could be an episode all on its own about how it is that we engage conversations right now with how the ultra right and the ultra left… we feel like we’re not able to actually converse with one another as a nation here. She talks a little bit about how we can go about doing that, creating containers where we all are just sold out of our mechanical responses that we can fall into very easily just because it feels routine or we take our position, then we don’t want to move away from them

And then the third one is with Dr. Tim Seidel, who talks a lot about the legacies of colonialism throughout and how we should pay attention to how that affects us today, and transnational movements and how a movement in the middle east could possibly encourage a movement here in the US and paying attention to things. He talks a lot

about political economy. Things he specifically talks about are the example of a drone that’s flying over the Mexico border, the U.S.-Mexico border versus a drone flying in Palestine-Israel border and trying to look at… “If they’re owned by the same company, who’s benefiting from these sorts of things?” And that sort of larger picture of colonial impact or colonial mindsets and imperial mindsets. And how human beings just sort of… extricate themselves, organize, survive and push back or resist without necessarily looking at the permissions of the central powers, which he calls the metropoles. So yeah, it’s a huge range.

The next episode will be with Dr. Carolyn Stauffer, which is on sexual harm. She’s done a lot of research on that.

We have great guests coming up this season, and the whole first season had very impressive guests in and of itself.

Lindsay:

Wonderful.

And just a couple of points that I think of to draw out of that are the fact that all of these wonderful guests so far have been connected to faculty or staff of EMU and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and even just having been here for a number of years, to know that there’s all of this wonderful knowledge and experience, and how you’re drawing it out in a different package than what an academic institution would normally do, I think, is wonderful. And also just as you’re talking about some of these really big things, they’re systems, they’re structures… They’re the big thing that we have to grapple with, right? The systems of oppression and all these different things. But one thing that I really love about the podcast is how through these one-on-one interviews with folks it’s brought so down to earth; and it’s such an approachable personalized human way as you ask folks…

Even just listening to the to the one with Tim Seidel recently, you sort of asked him “how do you manage to know all this and have all this heaviness and navigate that, especially as you’re working with undergraduate graduate students who would probably love some just straightforward answers that you don’t have to give them” And just his ability to acknowledge the daily tensions, the importance of relationships, his family, and all of these things as such a reminder… You know, you can read an article or a book which names all of these problems and forget that there’s people that make up the movements, and the community organizers, the teachers, and all the people who are doing this… They’re people! And you’re sort of highlighting their stories through this

podcast, which I think is one of the bright, bright points of it. So I appreciate that you’re doing that with these folks.

patience;

Thank you. And that will be more and more. We will move forward with even inviting other faculty of EMU in general, because I think all faculty at EMU are peacebuilders in and of themselves and looking at the different programs and majors and how Peacebuilding is actually relevant within that, because this is relevant to EMU as an institution in general. It is who we are.

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[Transition music plays]

Lindsay:

Back to the bigger picture, the reach of the podcast, what are some of your hopes that you wish listeners will come away with? New knowledge, new connections… What are some of your hopes as you think about the people out there listening to this?

patience:

My greatest hope, honestly, is to encourage a curiosity for self-actualization, because I think every single one of us is so deep and complex. And when we are exposed to ideas and we engage them in the context of the story, then it becomes relevant to us, and we’re able to reach deeper parts of who we are and we can bring that forth. And I don’t think that there’s anything more beautiful than that. (laughs softly) In terms of how we show up as individuals in a very difficult, complex world that breaks us in so many ways…

Even if we’re not having impacts that are worldwide, we can have those changes within our own little circles, within our small relationships with the people that we love, care about or even that we interact with, that we work with. They’re people that we’re in a relationship with. My hope is that as people listen, they can come away with something that is planted in their mind and they can wonder “Oh yeah, what’s that about? Let me go research it again or listen to it again.” And just let it percolate in the back of their mind. I think it changes people when we’re able to engage with such things. It’s the secret of sermons, even in church, you know? It’s something put in you… You hear something that actually moves you, then you walk away thinking about it. I mean, it’s in sermons, it’s in media, it’s what movies do. Good movies will do that. You know, you watch something and you walk away trying to think about it, but it changes you in some way. That’s the hope with the podcast that it does that to some level with the listeners.

Lindsay:

Great. Well, as a listener, I can say that that’s absolutely been the case for me and I think it’s even just so interesting to think about how, like you said, you recorded what ended up airing a lot last spring, even throughout much of the early stages of the pandemic, had actually been recorded the previous fall when we had no idea what was coming. And yet it all felt so timely and relevant and just… In some ways it was a reminder of how like the work that we do at CJP is is about expanding our understanding of… or building these skills and these frameworks and these tools that allow us to then respond in whatever circumstances arise, even when they’re as unprecedented. (they both laugh softly)

patience:

A global pandemic.

Lindsay:

A year-long global pandemic.

As I think about even just being able to go back and listen to the first season again and hear different things now that we’re, you know, a year later and even following up with some of the the folks that you’ve interviewed to go back to them and say “Well, would you still state this the same way or would you think about it differently now with everything that’s happened?” Almost like these stories that have been recorded are at this point in time that can be a reference point as we continue to do the work.

patience:

Exactly. Yeah. That precisely goes back to the point that I was saying then that peacebuilding is so much larger… Even if these were recorded a year and a half ago, it’s still relevant because the concepts are larger. They’re just larger than the moment, than the time.

Lindsay:

Well, I’m curious, just folks might be interested in knowing more about, how do you actually do this podcast? How do you prepare who is involved? How do you plan your interviews? How has all of that been?

patience:

Yes. It’s a small team of three. I work with Luke Mullet and Steven Angelo. Luke is an excellent composer, so all the music literally on every episode that you hear and any musical kind of sound that you hear has come from the creative mind, the creative genius of Luke Mullet.

And the smoothness, the quality of the sound is as a result of what Steven Angelo does. He is a sound mixer. I’m going to just step back a bit to when we were talking about how this all started and I researched, how do you create a podcast, all that.

What was clear to me: among the podcasts that I enjoy, they have music in them. I thought: we need to include music. And I happened to have been friends with Luke Mullet on Facebook. I didn’t know him personally. He would post his compositions, and I was always so moved by them. In my head, I thought, “Oh, maybe Luke would do that” But I didn’t know. I happened to run into him at the post office in the campus center right there, outside the window. I stopped him and I said, “Hey, I’m having this idea.

Would you consider composing music for this theoretical podcast?” He unhesitatingly said, “Yes, yes, but let’s talk more”. A couple of weeks later, we met at Merge and we talked a little more.

In the meantime, I had an idea. I don’t really know much about music, but I knew the sound that I wanted. I had recorded some sounds on my phone. When we met, I played two different kinds of sounds for him. Let me brag a bit on his genius because I’m just always blown away by it. He listened to it at that moment, then he went away and just composed 30 different sounds that were so beautiful, and within they sounded like what I had played for him. I didn’t even have to play it twice. He just heard it once and boom, he did it.

While we were in that meeting, he said, “I always work with Steven Angelo”, who is a sound mixer I had never heard of. I didn’t even know what a sound mixer was. He explained to me: it’s a person who makes a smooth sound. As soon as he said it, I knew what he meant because I have listened to podcasts where the sound is jagged. At one moment it’s very loud, and another time it’s very low because that’s just the cadence of how we speak as human beings. Like right now, I move forward to the computer and backward, which changes the volume. So for a podcast that needs to be leveled out and that’s what a sound mixer does. And so then Steven was folded in. We had a meeting and boom, we are the team.

What’s the process itself? I invite people, I send them an email, whoever the guests are going to be and I ask them: “Would you consider being part of this podcast?” So far, not a single person has said no, which is really fantastic. They always accept, which is wonderful. I then tend to tell them ”Okay, it’s going to be a two-hour commitment.” Half an hour usually ahead of time to just sort of go through where we meet. I know my invitation to them is usually because I know they have something to say, but what I ask them is: what specifically do you want to talk about? In that half hour, we go over what they want to talk about and then they write it down, they send it to me and then we take a week apart, just letting the information percolate in our heads. No interview is the

same from one person to the other because I think each episode reflects who the guest is, and how they show up. As you listen, you will feel the difference. I don’t think any episode is like any other.

I don’t approach any of the recording sessions, which is usually the other half at one and a half hours with the “we will do this and this” In general, I asked them what their path was to CJP and EMU. They answer that. From there, it just goes in the direction of their particular expertise or area of research yeah and then once we record it, then I edit it using GarageBand.

I don’t edit for content, I edit for quality, so I don’t change what the person said in the editing process. Because again, in the cadence of how we speak, we have words, filler words that we go back to. And when it’s recorded, those stand out very quickly. I just edit those out. I’m sure as I’m speaking here, there are words that I keep going back to. If it was recorded and I wanted to edit I would recognize, oh, I’m saying like a lot. So then I’ll remove two likes and leave one like.

[Lindsay laughs]

That’s the process of editing. And once I’m done, then I send it to both Luke and Steven. Luke then scores it for the mood of what the conversation is, where the transition will be, he sends that to Steven who puts it all together, then he sends it back to me, I transcribe it and we drop it. We drop new episodes every other Wednesday.

Monday and Tuesday preceding is usually for transcribing. We transcribe the whole thing, which makes it accessible to people who are hearing impaired

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[Transition music plays]

Lindsay:

I’m curious what kind of stories, feedback…I mean, do people who listen to the podcast know about CJP or don’t know about CJP? Are you getting messages from them?

patience:

Yes. Yes. People communicate, they send messages back. I just spoke about transcribing the Monday and Tuesday before the episode drops on Wednesday. Transcribing is the most painful part for me, it is very hard. It’s such a tedious task. But last year during the first season someone wrote to me and they had just encountered the transcript. They were listening and then they happened to find that there was a transcript with it. They wrote, and I could feel their joy and excitement

that… They were forwarding it to a relative of theirs who was hearing impaired and they

said “She loves this sort of topic, but it’s not accessible besides books”. In a podcast, you would not be able to listen to it and he was just excited to send it to her. Within a couple of days, they both responded in an email and the hearing impaired person was just so gushy about how delighted they were to be able to engage this stuff. And in that moment, it gave meaning to all the painful spies that I had put in it in the trenches of transcribing. And it gave meaning to even the most tedious parts. It reminds me that this is having an impact on at least one person. I’m aware of her. I don’t know how many other people are out there who have that sort of effect.

… Then people will write and say, “Hey, I listened to this and these were my thoughts” and they’ll post the comments after the transcript and said, “I was book binding I’m in Mexico, and this is what I was doing while I was listening to this episode and this is what came to mind.” Other people write, “Hey, I was jogging and I was listening to this and this is what was happening.” When the pandemic started, someone said, “Hey, I am in a cabin somewhere in East Europe. And I was listening and this is what (…)”, so yes, people get in touch and I’m always very amazed at the diversity of where they are, and the activities that they always say that they were doing while they were listening. Other people were gardening. That’s always fun.

Lindsay:

Has anyone had any suggestions for wanting you to cover any particular topic or guest or, sharing what they think we should do?

patience:

Not yet. That would be welcome. Not active listeners. I have had people… you can tell that these are just people trolling who are like, “hey, let me be a guest on your podcast because… whatever.” I’ve had a couple of people who do that and I’m like… Mmm… It doesn’t really line up. But we haven’t. We would welcome that from our listeners, obviously, to know what it is that they would like to hear. I imagine that that will be a direction that naturally, organically develops in that way.

Lindsay:

I guess I should ask you where folks can find the podcast, if they don’t know much about podcasts. My sister recently confessed to me that she’s never listened to a podcast and she is 36 years old.

patience:

She’s a millennial!

[patience and Lindsay laugh together]

Lindsay:

So. How do you find a podcast?

patience:

Multiple ways. The way we’ve tried to make peacebuilder as accessible as possible. Podcasts came to be because of the cell phones, but particularly the iPhone. But this is true for all sorts of cell phones now. If you, for example, have an iPhone, there’s a place that just says “podcast” – it actually says “podcasts.” If you just open that application and then search for Peacebuilder, it’ll show up. Then you can just subscribe and you would be ready to listen to it anywhere you are in the world.

You can do the same with Spotify. If you have Spotify on your phone or anywhere, even on a computer, you can search peacebuilder and it’ll show up.

So anywhere you have digital access to even a computer. And we also have it on our website. This is where the transcript lives. It’s called Peacebuilder, and CJP has had a magazine called Peacebuilder for years. On that page: emu.edu/CJP you can find links directly to Peacebuilder, both the magazine and the podcast. And you can listen to them directly there. So you don’t necessarily have to be on your phone to do that. If you have a computer and internet connection, you can listen to it.

Lindsay:

I think you talked a little bit about how season two was different from season one. Did you have any other comments on that? Or what might season three might look like…? Or your plans?

patience:

Season two is obviously getting a little more deeper into ideas and concepts within peacebuilding, which were touched on in the first season but didn’t get as deeply into it. Second season is doing that a bit more.

In my mind, a season three would probably then keep expanding and bringing back, featuring maybe our alumni and the work that they’re doing because…Like we said, peacebuilding is just so huge. We can tap some of our alumni and what they’re doing, and even peacebuilders who are noteworthy, you know, like the sujatha baliga comes to mind. We can have somebody like that who then can bring her knowledge into our listeners’ knowledge and that can mingle. Season three is exciting to think about.

Lindsay:

When you think about how this connects to CJP’s future and the potential for growth of the podcast especially in relation to the other things that are happening at CJP… Do you see a lot of connection there and potential for growth?

patience:

Yes. What immediately comes to mind is… The world has just changed since the pandemic and it’s exponentially changing faster. [laughs softly] Especially in how we occupy digital spaces. I think going forward, if what we do –which is important, in my opinion– at CJP is to educate peacebuilders and put these ideas out there, we need to have a very healthy infrastructure that creates the digital classroom, in a way that helps people learn. And the podcast is just one way to start. I think there are just so many possibilities to do that. And it’s just impossible to even imagine what we will be doing five years from now. But I think the digital classroom will be so different from what it is right now. It’s already different from what it was a year ago. Imagine what it’ll be a year from now.

I think if we can move or at least shift our attention to constructing that infrastructure of the digital classroom or even how we interact with one another that way, we will only be benefiting ourselves and of course the world. I know I’ve said this to you before. In the past, we’ve put a lot of energy in capital campaigns to build physical buildings. I think we will need to put that sort of energy into building digital infrastructure for spaces where people can learn together in ways that are actually engaging and not flatten our interaction… Which kind of feels like that’s where we are right now, when we’re trying to get out of the tensions that we talked about with Tim’s (Seidel) episode. I think that’s part of the tension here in that we were thrust into this space. And so we do the best that we can with it. But I think it serves us best to actually now begin to think ahead about, okay, how do we actually deepen the experience of how we create that digital classroom and how people interact with it so that it actually responds to who we are as social creatures. Does that make sense?

Lindsay:

Yeah. And I can imagine a lot of folks after a year of a lot of digital interaction, Zoom, phone calls, missing the in-person and in some ways…It feels like both more important than ever to create more meaningful digital spaces, and also it feels a little bit exhausting because we all just want to be together again. [they both laugh] And I think about how CJP made the decision for our Summer Peacebuilding Institute to be online again for 2021, just because it’s such a global community, not being sure if people would be able to come together in person… And I’m hearing a lot of feedback that folks are just so ready to get back to being together in person, which totally makes sense.

patience:

I’m ready!

Lindsay:

Yeah! I think people are acknowledging that the reality is that we will be in more digital spaces. From an environmental perspective, not having to travel across the globe in a plane has a lot of advantages too, if we can create really robust and meaningful social spaces in a virtual environment. So I’m excited to think about and envision what that might look like based on the unique offering that CJP has had; with its own way of doing learning in the classroom, co-learning and interactive learning, and thinking about what that looks like in a digital space too.

So thanks.

I see where we have about 10 minutes left and just want to remind folks, if you have any questions for patience, use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen, or if you’re on Facebook, you can write a comment. Do you have any particular question? If there’s something you’re curious about the peacebuilder podcast, something you’d love us to get more into or someone you’d like to hear from, feel free to share a question or a comment. I’ll try to keep an eye out for those.

In the meantime, patience, I can ask you… What other podcasts do you recommend as a voracious podcaster? Do you have anything else we should be paying attention to if we’re interested in the peacebuilder podcast?

patience:

At least the ones that I listen to, I don’t know whether I recommend them. Obviously, people’s interests are very, very diverse.

One of my very favorite ones is called WickPod, which is hosted by Chris Hayes of MSNBC. What he does… I don’t know, it may be peripherally related to peacebuilding, but it just puts into context what’s happening in the world. It’s called Why is this happening? which is really great because he takes a topic… Like for example, two that come to mind are: he took Yemen, what’s happening in Yemen, what has been happening in Yemen for the last two years or, actually four! Which is… a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but Yemen is just like caught in the middle and people are just starving. And I hadn’t really wrapped my mind around the forces that were driving that, so when I listened to this episode of Why Is This Happening? He had a Yemeni guest come in and they provided so much context of what was going on. They

went deep and I left there thinking, “Oh! Now I actually understand what is going on in Yemen, and why Saudi Arabia and Iran are so interested there”.

In another episode that really stood out to me, at least with that, was when the former president was elected and there was this entire conversation about rewriting trade agreements between countries. He got elected partly because of the populist message around “America first” and breaking all this stuff around. This one woman was in it (the guest that he invited). She was talking about trading agreements that need to be rewritten, but who writes them actually makes a difference that the message that former President Trump was actually saying was not wrong. But he was not the right person to lead those sorts of conversations because he was coming from a mindset of how do we make people rich versus there’s another area where it’s okay we need to trade agreements that help people live fulfilled lives, that are actually paid fairly and all that sort of stuff that’ll flattening all that. That was interesting to actually tease that out because I was getting a bit confused. So that’s one podcast that I really love to listen to that is, yeah, fantastic.

Lindsay:

Great. Thanks. We actually do have a couple of questions here from attendees.

The first one is: “What would you say the biggest challenge has been in creating the podcast?”

patience:

[laughs softly, greets the person making the question] Hi Orlando, nice to see you.

It is very fast moving. It’s extremely labor intensive. From the moment of recording to the moment it drops there are just so many pieces that need to be done within such a short amount of time. It’s always a challenge that feels miraculous every time [chuckles briefly] an episode drops. I breathe a sigh of relief: “It actually happened and we got it out in time!” Because it always feels extremely daunting from the moment of beginning that I’m never sure that we’re going to actually meet that. When we do, then I’m relieved, and it’s good…

So that’s the most [challenging thing]… it’s a very labor intensive process. And that’s mainly because we’re such a small team. When I listen to other podcasts, I’m very aware that this work is done by at least 10 people [chuckles softly] who are doing the various little pieces all together. When it’s just the three of us, we have to do more.

That’s the most challenging, but it’s also rewarding when we actually push it out and then see people interacting with it.

Lindsay:

Thanks for the question. Next question from David Brumaker, who I think was one of your guests in the first season.

patience:

Yes, episode five: When the Center Does Not Hold

Lindsay:

Yes.” How much research do you do before each interview? Because it seems like you’re very familiar with every interviewee.” Dave is wondering how much of that is pre-existing knowledge, and how much is research based.

patience:

Mmm… It’s a combination.

In the second season, there has been more research. When I meet with them ahead of time, when I meet with guests, that half hour ahead of time, we talk through what they want to talk about. I ask them to send me stuff about what it is we’re going to be talking about. I read it and obviously they already know it. I very intentionally allow a week to 10 days so that I can read it, actually internalize it and let my brain truly internalize it, so that if I’m having a conversation, then I’m able to engage the content in which they are speaking at the level of… obviously not completely on their level, and I’m going to say: at least 50% of the time, the questions that I ask on the podcast, it’s because I want to know. I generally don’t know the answer. I am learning at the same time with the listeners.

So yeah, half and half I know what I’m asking about… Other times they say something and I genuinely want to know what it is that they mean. To be able to do that, with a second season there has been more research dedicated. Time dedicated to actually understanding the topic that the person will be bringing to the table.

Lindsay:

I’ll put out one more call for questions as I also ask you, patience (like you like to do in your podcast!), is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you would hope we would get to?

[they both laugh]

patience:

No, no, you’ve covered it pretty well. I think we’ve talked about everything. Thank you for a lovely conversation. I’ve enjoyed it.

Let me mention this: the very final episode of season two will be this conversation, so that our larger listeners are able to access that and maybe have a little more knowledge behind the scenes.

I also want to thank Lauren Jefferson–and you!– for doing this. To Lauren Jefferson for the idea of having this conversation to begin with. That’s wonderful. And for all the work she did to put it together, place Walter in the background who’s helping us run it. Thank you, everyone.

Lindsay:

Absolutely. Thank you for your time today, as well as just my deep appreciation for the lot of work it is to put these podcast episodes together as such a small team. You really have carried this. I think it’s really increased the visibility of CJP and it’s meant a lot to a lot of folks.

I even think about going back to our founding donors, James and Marion Payne, who are no longer with us. They had such a hope that we would find ways of communicating what CJP was about and communicating the message of what peacebuilding is, what it means, like you said, how everyone can be a peacebuilder. I wish that they were alive so that they could listen to this podcast. I think that they would have loved that we’re doing this as a way of really making the mission and the work of CJP accessible to folks. So thank you again.

patience:

My pleasure.

Lindsay:

For all your work with it. And I wanted to invite you to close us, to close our hour if you would with a quote or a poem that I think you’ve been using to center or meditate on lately. And then we’ll sign off.

patience:

All right. Thank you so much.

So this is a poem, a Rumi poem from a book translated by Omit Safi. That’s the book,

Radical Love. The poem is called Unafraid.

My lips parched through, though I drown in the ocean. I ask my soul for the secret of the beloved.

My only desire to know the secret Monsters seek to kill me.

I’m unafraid.

Infidelity and faith both show up at my heart’s door, hand in hand. I open the door.

Welcome. Come inside.

I am unafraid.

I know if God opens the door here on the inside, there is neither infidelity nor faith.

I love that because it just reminds us of the complexity of our existence. We hold both extremities within ourselves: the tensions, again, that Tim [Seidel] talked about, that we need to balance. There’s neither infidelity nor faith. They’re both within us all the time.

So thank you very much.

Lindsay:

Thank you!

patience:

Bye.

Lindsay:

Bye, everyone.

A final reminder here, please join us for our anniversary events this weekend, June 4 through 6. All events will be online. Please register to attend at emu.edu/cjp/anniversary Thanks so much for joining us for the second season of the peacebuilder podcast. Stay tuned for season three next year.

Outro music:

[Outro music begins to play and fades to background]

patience:

All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is Steven Angelou. And the podcast executive producer, all your recording engineer, editor, and host patience kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, read and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. Thanks so much for listening and join us again next time.

Outro music:

[Outro music resumes and plays till end]

3 comments on “18. We are a Storytelling Species”

  1. Merwyn De Mello says:

    Thanks so much patience for the dedication and creativity in putting together these podcasts. They serve to inspire and connect.
    A suggestion: how about interviewing alumni – their Peacebuilding journeys would serve several purposes: stories of successes and challenges; the CJP curriculum brought to life; and, advertise CJP!

    1. patience says:

      Thank YOU so much Merwyn for your faithful accompaniment throughout the season.

      Indeed, that is a great suggestion; will take it into serious consideration!

  2. Merwyn De Mello says:

    Another possibility is 'dialogue podcasts' where an alum dialogues with a staff member, or dialogues between alumni with a focus on a particular theme of looking into the future.

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