Can nonviolent civil resistance be successful even against the most militarily sophisticated and brutal regimes? My podcast guest this month, political scientist Maria Stephan, says unequivocally “yes."

Co-Lead and Chief Organizer at The Horizons Project and the former Director of the Program on Nonviolent Action at the United States Institute of Peace, Maria is the co-author, with Erica Chenoweth, of the award-winning book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. The result of two years of research — collecting and analyzing data on over 330 major, violent and nonviolent campaigns — the book makes the case for a surprising conclusion: nonviolent campaigns were actually twice as effective as violent ones in achieving their political goals.

It's a stunning finding. And at a time when a war in Ukraine threatens the entire planet with a nuclear catastrophe, and when political turmoil in the U.S. has people wondering if we're headed toward a civil war, it's a finding that, more than ever, is essential to our collective future.

So please, check out this interview with Maria. You’ll learn about what non-violent action is, why it’s so powerful, the forces working against non-violent action today, and how those forces can be overcome. You'll also learn about Maria's current work at The Horizons Project, which focuses on the threat of authoritarianism in the United States. She discusses the U.S.’s long history of authoritarian tendencies, exactly how those tendencies are manifesting today, and how the tools and strategies of nonviolent action can be used to effectively counter them.

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Two other resources on the power of nonviolent action:

• A Force More Powerful is a two-part, multiple-award-winning documentary series “on one of the 20th century’s most important and least-known stories: how nonviolent power overcame oppression and authoritarian rule. It includes six cases of movements, and each case is approximately 30 minutes long.” This is the documentary that motivated Maria to study nonviolent movements.
• The Strength of Nonviolence in Ukraine. Yes, there’s a war in Ukraine. But as Maria mentions in the podcast, there’s also a very strong, rarely covered nonviolent movement as well. This website is a rich resource on the effectiveness of nonviolent action, even, and perhaps especially, in the midst of war.

Kern Beare is the founder of the Difficult Conversations Project and the author of Difficult Conversations: The Art and Science of Working Together. He also facilitates a workshop based on his book, which is free for non-profit organizations and community groups.

If there's one thing we could all be doing to make the world a better place, it would be to become better listeners. That's why I'm so interested in the work of listening guru Kay Lindahl.

Kay is the founder of The Listening Center in Long Beach, CA, and conducts workshops and retreats around the world on the sacred art of listening for religious, spiritual, community and business groups. A Certified Listening Professional and an ordained interfaith minister, Kay is the author of several books on the power of listening, including The Sacred Art of Listening, Practicing the Sacred Art of Listening, and How Does God Listen?

What got me most interested in Kay's work is the seriousness with which she approaches the discipline of listening. Where many might see listening as a passive exercise, Kay sees it as a powerful creative force for change; where others might assume listening is a simple act requiring little preparation, Kay sees listening as a sacred act and a life-long discipline.

In this podcast, Kay talks about:

• The role of ritual in setting the context for listening.
• The difference between dialogue and discussion, and why it's important to know whether you're having one or the other.
• Why listening presence is more important than listening technique.
• How three three essential and interconnected practices unleash our full listening powers:
  • Listening to source (the practice of silence).
  • Listening to self (the practice of reflection).
  • Listening to others (the practice of presence).

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Kern Beare is the founder of the Difficult Conversations Project and the author of Difficult Conversations: The Art and Science of Working Together. He also facilitates a workshop based on his book, which is free for non-profit organizations and community groups.

Like a lot of people, I find the news these days dispiriting. But it’s not just the events being reported that I find depressing, it’s the way they’re being reported: scored with a relentless drumbeat of negativity that makes me feel as if I’m being marched to the edge of an abyss, only to be left there alone to contemplate our increasingly bleak future.

They may not think of themselves this way, but journalists are storytellers, and the way they tell their stories shapes how you and I see each other and our world. The problem, however, is that journalists usually tell us only half the story – leaving us with a very distorted view of reality.

In this interview with David Bornstein, co-founder and CEO of the Solutions Journalism Network, we learn how journalists around the world are being trained in a new approach to the stories they write, one that doesn’t shy away from the problems, but that also, with equal journalistic rigor, reports on how those problems are being solved.

It’s an approach to journalism that not only helps create a more complete, and more hopeful, understanding of our world, it also has the crucial side effects of helping good ideas spread around the planet, while simultaneously helping to restore the people’s trust in the Fourth Estate.
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Kern Beare is the founder of the Difficult Conversations Project and the author of Difficult Conversations: The Art and Science of Working Together. He also facilitates a workshop based on his book, which is free for non-profit organizations and community groups.