Peace Is Power — our new podcast! 

You feel it. The violence everywhere. The division. The sense that the world is coming apart. We are living through more armed conflicts than at any time since World War II. More than 120 million people have been displaced by force. War no longer stays on the battlefield — its effects ripple through food prices, migration, the environment, financial markets, and our digital lives.

But history keeps showing us something else: the greatest forces for peace have not always come from armies, governments, or official power. Gandhi had no army. Mandela had no weapons. King had no elected office. Leymah Gbowee helped mobilize women to end a civil war.

Again and again, ordinary people with moral courage have changed the course of history. We at Euphrates know that peace is not passive or naïve; it is a moral, creative, and spiritual force. It is the power to reduce violence, heal divisions, and choose connection even at the toughtest moments.

If war now affects all of us, peace has to be built by all of us.

This is the premise of Peace Is Power.

About the podcast

Peace Is Power is a podcast from Euphrates Institute for people who sense that force and domination are not the whole story.

Hosted by Janessa Gans Wilder — former CIA officer in Iraq, peacebuilder, and founder of Euphrates Institute — the podcast features conversations with diplomats, artists, activists, veterans, spiritual leaders, mediators, and movement-builders who are doing the deep, often invisible work of building peace.

Peace rooted in connection, inner transformation, moral courage, and the willingness to see the humanity in people we have been taught to fear.

Each episode asks:

What does peace require of us now?

How do we stay human in times of war, fear, and division?

And what if true power is not domination, but connection?

Why Peace Is Power now?

For twenty years, Euphrates Institute has worked to transform the way people understand conflict, power, and the “other.”

Our global community includes peacebuilders, educators, veterans, faith leaders, activists, artists, students, and everyday citizens working to advance peace in their own lives, relationships, and communities.

Peace Is Power is an extension of that mission.

At Euphrates, we believe peace is not simply the absence of violence. Peace is something we practice — inwardly and outwardly. It is the courage to listen across divides and the work of seeing the “Other” as a sister or brother.

Through programs like the Peace Practice Alliance, Euphrates has trained peace leaders from more than 60 countries. This podcast brings that same work beyond conference rooms, classrooms, and conflict zones — into the questions we are all living with now.

Peace is not only something negotiated by leaders. It is something built by people.

Season One

Season One features conversations with people at all levels of peacebuilding, including diplomats, nonviolence leaders, artists, activists, and people who have lived conflict from the inside.

Guests include Ambassador John Negroponte, Satish Kumar, Ali Abu Awwad, Shannon Watts, Sami Awad, Karim Wasfi, Ari Honarvar, Stephanie Nash, and others exploring what it means to choose peace not as an ideal, but as a way of living and leading.

Together, these conversations invite us to imagine power differently — as relationship, restraint, creativity, truth-telling, courage, and love in action.

Start listening

If you are grieving the state of the world, longing for a different kind of leadership, or searching for a more courageous way to respond to violence and division, this podcast is for you.

Listen to Peace Is Power — and join a global community working to make peace not just possible, but powerful.