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PODCAST

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek

Peace Is Here explores the deep architecture of a life unweaponed with a light-hearted touch and a scholar’s heart. Join Avis Kalfsbeek, writer of feisty fiction, for a daily curriculum of peace. We explore historic treaties, nature’s quiet wisdom, and the creative art-vision required for #TheGreatDisarmament. From deep-dive series on peace heroes to fiction stories and personal riffs, we look beneath the surface to see the peace that is already here.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

9:21

Ep 98 The Great Disarmament - The Great Disfarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/29

The Great Disarmament: Gas & Conscience – When the World Said Never Again World War I ushered in the age of mechanized killing—from mustard gas to machine guns. But amid the devastation came something new: organized resistance, international treaties, and the first serious conversations about disarmament. In this episode, we mark the moment when the world’s conscience awoke—and disarmament began. Download the Peace Resource Guide: AvisKalfsbeek.com/PeaceGuide Follow my Kickstarter:

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9:41

Ep 97 The Great Disarmament - The Great Disfarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/26

The Great Disarmament: Powder & Principles – When Conscience First SpokeAs gunpowder redefined the global balance of power, another force quietly emerged—conscience. This episode explores the 1600s to 1800s, when the rise of modern empires was met by the first organized refusals to fight. From the Quaker Peace Testimony and early abolitionist resistance to Enlightenment philosophers imagining peace as policy, we follow the voices who rejected war, empire, and extraction as the price of

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8:35

Ep 96 The Great Disarmament - The Great Disfarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/24

Spears & Surrender – When Peace Was Older Than Progress Before nations, before bombs, before “progress,” there was another kind of peace—one rooted in ritual, kinship, and restraint. In this episode, we trace the earliest forms of disarmament: warriors who buried weapons before councils, spiritual leaders who practiced nonviolence, and poetic traditions that chose mercy over might. With voices from The Bhagavad Gita, the Rig Veda, and Zulu proverbs, we rediscover surrender as sacred wisdom. 📚

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10:10

Ep 95 The Great Disfarmament - The Great Disarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/22

This episode marks the turning point between The Great Disfarmament (Parts 1 - 6) and The Great Disarmament (Parts 8 - 13). We look back across centuries of agricultural violence—fertilizer bombs, chemical dependency, and genetic control—and begin to see a new story taking root. We recap key voices: the ecological grief of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the defiant poetry of William Blake, the wartime witness of Erich Maria Remarque, the prophetic science of Rachel Carson, the double-edged legacy of Norman

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10:43

Ep 94 The Great Disfarmament - The Great Disarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/19

In this episode, Avis Kalfsbeek marks the final chapter of The Great Disfarmament—and the quiet rise of a different kind of power.As war tactics evolved from Cold War standoffs to post-9/11 surveillance and global contracting, the logic of control continued to infiltrate the land. Seeds were genetically modified, patented, and, in some cases, designed never to reproduce. Farmers were no longer growers but users—dependent on licensing, chemicals, and contracts. The soil was stripped. Sovereignty was

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11:45

Ep 93 The Great Disfarmament - The Great Disarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/17

In this episode, host Avis Kalfsbeek examines the Cold War’s eerie balance between restraint and escalation. While world powers held their fire through Mutually Assured Destruction, another kind of battle intensified in the fields. The Green Revolution promised to end hunger, but often delivered dependency. With hybrid seeds, fossil-fuel fertilizers, and pesticides drawn from wartime chemistry, agriculture became a new theater of control. Countries in the Global South were offered technological

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10:21

Ep 92 The Great Disfarmament - The Great Disarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/15

What happens when chemical warfare doesn’t end at the battlefield—but follows us home? In this episode of The Great Disfarmament – The Great Disarmament, we travel from the trenches of World War I to the poisoned fields of mid-century agriculture. We explore how the same compounds used for mustard gas and explosives were rebranded as fertilizers and pesticides—and how the Green Revolution masked a deeper ecological unraveling. We meet Sir Albert Howard, a botanist who saw soil not as a battleground

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9:35

Ep 91 The Great Disfarmament - The Great Disarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/12

What happens when the hunger for yield becomes an imperial mission?In this episode, we travel to the 18th and 19th centuries to explore two seemingly unrelated substances—gunpowder and guano. One shaped the battlefield. The other reshaped the farm. But both emerged from a growing belief that nature could be extracted, measured, and conquered. We trace the rise of nitrogen obsession, colonial fertilizer wars, and the passing of the Guano Islands Act—all moments that reveal how food systems were

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9:30

Ep 90 The Great Disfarmament - The Great Disarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/10

What if we remembered the wisdom buried in the soil? In this second episode of The Great Disfarmament – The Great Disarmament, we go back—before fertilizers, before bullets, before the conquest of land and people. We trace the quiet origins of farming and war, when both were bound by ritual, proximity, and care. We explore ancient practices of composting, communal stewardship, and restraint—methods rooted in renewal, not extraction. We meet a voice from the Sumerian world—Shuruppak—whose

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8:51

Ep 89 The Great Disfarmament - The Great Disarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/08

What if I told you The Great Disarmament has already begun? Not as a headline, or a treaty, or a dream—but as something quiet. Ongoing. Something you might not have noticed. In this opening episode, we trace the overlapping histories of agriculture and war—and ask what it means to disarm a system built to dominate. We start with a simple truth: for most of human history, farming and war were opposites. One fed. One destroyed. But in the last century, their paths began to merge—military chemicals

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6:21

Ep 88 The Great Disfarmament - The Great Disarmament...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/07

Welcome to The Great Disarmament – The Great Disfarmament. Host Avis Kalfsbeek, peace storyteller, ecofiction author, leads us in this 14-part nonfiction podcast tracing how violence became embedded in agriculture, policy, and culture—and how people across history have resisted it. From soil to soul, this series blends history, science, activism, and hope. 🔹 First: The Great Disfarmament explores how agriculture became a war zone—through guano, pesticides, and genetic control—and how farmers,

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18:47

Ep 87 Birth Day Peace: Mark Twain, Truth, and The War...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/02

On her 63rd birthday, author and peace storyteller Avis Kalfsbeek takes a break between creative seasons to reflect on what peace really means—on Earth, in words, and in action. In this intimate episode, she reads Mark Twain’s The War Prayer, a searing and ironic satire written during America’s imperial turn but withheld during Twain’s lifetime for fear it would be “not publishable.” Twain was Vice President of the Anti-Imperialist League (1901), opposing U.S. intervention in the Philippines. His

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10:08

Ep 86 Gaslit Granola and Syndown Syrup (Council Warns...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/09/01

What happens when your granola comes with spin instead of oats? In this bonus satire bulletin from Peace Is Here, Kitty O’Compost reports on Syndown Industries’ latest inventions: Gaslit Granola™ and Syndown Syrup™.With ads promising “freedom from inconvenient nutrition” and products boasting “pre-canceled fiber,” watchdogs warn breakfast may now contain 85% less reality than advertised. Each box comes with free Feel-Good Glasses™, rose tint only. Because in the world of Syndown, ignorance really

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7:14

Ep 85 Seeds, Satire, and the Outlawing of Joy (Public...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/08/31

When was the last time you heard joy described as a public health threat? In today’s satirical bulletin, the Centers for Control of Happiness warn of dangerous “joy clusters” linked to Mono Mutante readings—and propose emergency bans on shared laughter in community gardens. Then, in our excerpt from Mono Mutante, we meet Lova Saskatoon, a Canadian farmer whose battle against a GMO giant became a legal precedent for seed sovereignty. Her story—rooted in courage, resilience, and loss—is a reminder

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9:46

Ep 84 Lettuce Seized in Lunchroom Raid (Alert:...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/08/30

In today’s War of the Worlds–style satire, the Department of Culinary Compliance issues a national security alert after “unpermitted lettuce” is detected in public school lunchrooms. We go live to the scene of a kale salad confiscation, before it can “radicalize the spinach.” Then, it’s an excerpt from Mono Mutante—a dirt-splattered, laugh-out-loud eco-satire about food, farming, and the fight for diversity. In this scene from Chapter 20, children take the stage at a farm conference to share

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10:20

Ep 83 Confessions in the Seed Swap (A Trojan Horse of...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/08/29

What happens when your novel gets outed for “tucking impossible optimism into every chapter”? In this launch-week episode for Mono Mutante—a dirt-splattered eco-satire through the monoculture Midwest—we bring you a breaking bulletin from the Bureau for Imaginative Compliance. A compostable thumb drive has been unearthed at the Decorum seed swap, carrying a handwritten confession: the author admits she wrote the book as a Trojan Horse of hope. Officials warn the manuscript could spark “direct action,

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7:53

Ep 82 Steak Futures and BeefCoin (Council Warns of...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/08/28

What happens when meat leaves the dinner table and enters the stock exchange? In this launch-week episode for Mono Mutante—a dirt-splattered eco-satire through the monoculture Midwest—we cut to a breaking bulletin from the Council on Consumable Compliance. The charge? Corporations have launched BeefCoin™—the world’s first meat-backed cryptocurrency—and are marketing Freedom Cuts™, beef you can finance like a new pickup. A whistleblower even warns of “synthetic nostalgia,” bottled to make your

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9:19

Ep 81 Emergency Meeting of the Council on Narrative...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/08/27

What happens when your novel gets dragged before the Council on Narrative Morality for “uplifting satire in zones of regulated despair”? In this launch-week special for Mono Mutante—a dirt-splattered eco-satire through the monoculture Midwest—we interrupt our regularly scheduled program for a War of the Worlds–style bulletin on the dangers of “dangerous inspiration.” First up: a breaking news alert about fiction accused of reducing productivity by making people… hopeful. Then, an excerpt from Mono

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7:47

Ep 80 Pedro's 12% Revolutionary DNA (Baesamen Demands...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/08/26

What happens when your dog gets accused of “carrying genetic traces of historical dissenters”? In this launch-week episode for Mono Mutante—a dirt-splattered eco-satire through the monoculture Midwest—we break in with a bulletin from the Baesamen Institute for Genetic Purity, demanding a DNA test on Pedro. The charge? He’s allegedly “up to 12% revolutionary.” The evidence? Tail wags at peace rallies and suspicious eye contact with farmworkers. Then, we dive into Chapter 10, where Camas and Tilly’s

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7:00

Ep 79 Uplifting Satire in a Zone of Regulated Despair...

Peace Is Here with Avis Kalfsbeek ·

2025/08/25

What happens when your imagination gets flagged for “unsanctioned acts of hope”? In this launch-week episode for Mono Mutante—a dirt-splattered eco-satire through the monoculture Midwest—we break in with a Bureau for Imaginative Compliance bulletin, charging the author with “uplifting satire in zones of regulated despair” and “inciting optimism without a license.” Then, we dive into an excerpt from Mono Mutante, where Camas tests out her festival jokes, Tilly counters with a pesticide-poisoning

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199 results

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