Audio Recordings
Are You Powered by Connections?
Podcast with Peter Block
Peter talks with Lewis Alloro of The Change Lab on many aspects exploring how creating wellbeing and change is all about connection. To listen, read key takeaways and sign up to get the supporting “Making It Work Cheatsheet,” go here.
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Connect to Others and Connect to Yourself
Podcast with Peter Block
Peter shares insights on why having community is critical to all humanity, starting with yourself. Sponsored by One Idea Away. To listen and read key takeaways, go here.
The Church in Action: Faith and Church with No Bricks and Mortar
Conversation with Father Joe Kovitch
Download or listen to John and Peter’s June 26, 2018 conversation with Father Joe Kovitch, pastor of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Westerville, Ohio. Father Joe had just been appointed to serve at St. Matthew’s when the parish came face to face with its financial realities, put a”For Sale” sign in the front yard and began to completely re-envision themselves in the community. As the church shed its identity of brick, mortar, financial security and want, as well as any fear of losing traditions and control, it began to find freedom and renewed purpose.
Running time: 00:57:03
Read more about Father Joe and his work here. Click title to listen or download his conversation with John and Peter. Watch this space to learn when a transcript is available.
Restorative Practices: A Toolbox for Turbulent Times
Conversation with Thom Allena
Thom Allena is a community and organizational psychologist who for nearly thirty-five years has worked in the fields of community and restorative justice, applying creative approaches to respond to crime, violence and group conflict. In Thom’s community justice work, citizens are invited to play active rather than passive roles in determining the shape of justice and become more directly involved in redressing the quality of life issues that are breached by crime.
Read more about Thom and his work here. lick title to listen or download his conversation with John and Peter. Watch this space to learn when a transcript is available.
Organizing the Unorganizables
Conversation with Ann Livingston
Download or listen to John and Peter’s March 27, 2018 conversation with Ann Livingston. Ann invented the movement to eliminate harms associated with drug use. In 1998, she co-founded the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), a group of users and former users who work to improve the lives of people who use drugs. Through user-based peer support and education, VANDU helps people who use drugs to live healthy, productive lives and ensures they have a real voice in their community and in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them.
Running time: 01:02:16
Read more about Ann and her work here. Click title to listen download her conversation with John and Peter. Read a transcript of the conversation with John and Peter here.
How to Connect Neighborhood Churches to Your Local Community
Conversation with Paul Sparks
Download or listen to John and Peter’s February 20, 2018 conversation with Paul Sparks, a leading voice in the growing Parish Movement. Paul has worked in more than 1,000 neighborhoods around the world to identify, connect, and support groups that want to have their neighborhoods flourish. Paul talks about his own and his colleagues’ work with local churches, academic institutions, and community organizations in the United States and abroad. Then he explores with John and Peter ways that this approach to community building can be translated into local neighborhoods.
Running time: 00:58:03
Read more about Paul and his work here. Click title to listen download his conversation with John and Peter. Go here to read a transcript.
How Neighborhoods and Local Government Can Work Together to Make Both Stronger
Conversation with Ron Dwyer-Voss
Download or listen to John and Peter’s November 6, 2017 conversation with Pacific Community Solutions Founder Ron Dwyer-Voss about his work helping communities to discover the power within them and mobilize their assets before looking for outside resources. Some of the most important part of this work is organizing or re-organizing those assets to make a stronger community with powerful local leadershiplocal leadership.
Running time: 00:56:34
Read more about Ron and his work here. Click title to download his conversation with John and Peter. Go here to read a transcript.
Who Has the Skills to Build Community? We All Do
Conversation with Sarah van Gelder
Hear John and Peter’s September 12, 2017 conversation with YES! Magazine co-founder Sarah van Gelder talking about her 12,000-mile cross-country journey learning from people who were re-making America from the ground up and how it led to starting up a new project: PeoplesHub, an online space where communities can learn and share the skills of making powerful change.
Running time: 00:49:32
Read more about PeoplesHub, Sarah’s journey and other work here. Click title to listen or download Sarah’s conversation with John and Peter or the button below to just listen. Go here to read a transcript.
How Community Animators Work Around the World
Conversation with Cormac Russell
Cormac has worked around the world using the asset-based community development approach to train communities, agencies, NGOs and governments in ABCD and other strengths based approaches, including Kenya, Southern Sudan, South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia. Some of his recent work concerns addressing health inequalities in low income communities and promoting a strengths based approach to working with young people.
Running time 00:60:00
Read more here about Cormac’s work here, including links to his website with downloadable publications. Click title to listen or download Cormac’s conversation with John and Peter.
How Community Action Shapes Health
Conversation with Deborah Puntenney
Deborah has been a colleague of John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann at the Asset-Based Community Development Institute for 25 years. Her work uses the asset-based community development approach to addressing neighborhood health issues. Much of Deborah’s work focuses on how engaged citizens can become effective co-producers of their own health and well-being.
Running time: 00:57:10
Read more here about Deborah’s work, including links to her website and downloadable publications. Click title to download or listen to Deborah’s conversation with John and Peter.
Old Age as an Asset
Conversation with Parker Palmer
Parker is a world-renowned writer, speaker and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He has reached millions worldwide as founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal and through his many books, articles, speeches, podcasts and videos.
Parker said to us recently that, rightly understood, “aging as an asset” has a lot to do with community development. We will take about fifteen minutes to talk about what he means by that and then transition into how all of our experiences in working with citizens to build asset-based communities can be translated into your own work.
Running time: 01:04:43
Read Parker’s blog post Withering into the Truth here. Click title to download or listen to his conversation with John and Peter.
Good Food for Everybody
Conversation with Mike Basher
Mike is the Vice President of Retail Operations for Fare & Square, the first nonprofit grocery store of its kind in the US, which has made healthy, affordable food available in what was once a food desert. What is unique about Mike and his food store is that it operates in a low-income neighborhood and demonstrates that people can eat healthy food at the same or lower cost than fast food. Fare & Square is proof that when a business decides to care for the common good, they can compete with anyone.
Running time: 00:58:46
Click title to download or listen to his conversation with John and Peter.
You Are the Guest
Informal Dialog with John and Peter
Themes for John and Peter’s December 12, 2016 exchange on their latest thinking were four questions:
- What’s shifted in our thinking
- What’s been confirmed
- What gives us hope for the future
- What are we worried about
Their conversation, plus questions and reflections from listeners, revealed new thoughts and practices for discovering people’s gifts and building new relationships to strengthen our neighborhoods and communities.
Running time: 00:58:48
Click title above to download or listen. To read a transcript, click here.
Discovering Assets of a Small Town
Conversarion with Priscilla Corcoran Mooney
Priscilla is the former mayor of Branch, Newfoundland, a small town of 250 citizens on the Atlantic coast. There she led residents to think about their assets and how to make their community stronger.
Running time: 00:54:00
Click title above to download or listen. To read a transcript, click here.
Be a Neighbor First
Conversation with Lisa Hadden
In her work with the Michigan Area Health Education Center executive director Lisa Hadden has developed creative ways to get medical professionals oriented to support rather than control local partners. In this discussion with John and Peter the focus is how health care professionals can support neighborhood life and work with citizens to take charge of their well-being.
Running time: 00:54:31
Click title to download or listen to her conversation with John and Peter.
Visions of a Just Economy
Conversation with Adam Clark
Peter talks with Xavier University theology professor Adam Clark, a leading voice in reimagining all the issues facing urban America, about how consumerism has become our modern religion and what justice looks like in terms of different social, economic and political arrangements. Hear new ways of thinking about poverty, debt, African American culture, confronting today’s forms of slavery and the place of religion and the faith community in reducing the costs of a consumer world.
Running time: 00:57:33
Click title to download or listen.
Sustainable Jobs, Sustainable Local Economies
Conversation with Michael Peck and Kristen Barker
John and Peter talk with Michael and Kristen about how co-operatives are emerging as powerful forces of change and the role citizen-workers have in bringing new opportunities and family-sustaining jobs to local neighborhoods.
Michael is a co-founder of 1worker1vote.org (2014) and has served as Mondragon Corporation‘s North America delegate since 1999. 1worker1vote is a nationwide economic development catalyst mobilizing the union-coop hybrid model reflecting Mondragon values of single class equity and workplace solidarity democratically practiced in profitable enterprises to overcome structural inequalities. Kristen is a co-founder of 1worker1vote and the president and co-founder of the Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative (CUCI). At CUCI she is using a model passed on from the Mondragon Corporation to help Cincinnati be a leader in the worker-owned co-operative movement.
Click title to download or listen to their conversation with John and Peter.
Peter Block Interview by Barry Daniel
Barry Daniel holds the gift of intelligent and caring curiosity. He embodies the Middle Way, the name of his group (http://www.middlewaysociety.org), in his way of thinking and being. This conversation covers the landscape of economics, neighborliness and the alternative to consumption. Thanks to Barry for what he is evoking in the world.
~ Peter
Go here to download or listen to the interview from the Middle Way Society archive.
An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture
Conversation with John, Peter and Walter Brueggemann
Peter, Walter and John have a wide-ranging conversation inspired by their new book, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture, moderated by Peter Pula and Michelle Strutzenberger of Axiom News.
Running time: 00:58:47
Click title to download listen to the conversation. Read a transcript here.
Neighbors As Citizens Making Democracy Work
Conversation with David Mathews
John, Peter and their special guest, Kettering Foundation president and CEO David Mathews, talk about the role of citizens in making democracy work as it should.
For more than three decades, David has led the Foundation’s work with communities and institutions who are trying to solve local problems. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? KF’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation:“We trade what we have learned for what they are learning, and both benefit.”
Running time: 00:56:24
Click title to download or listen to the conversation.h
Live Local, Love Local
Conversation with Michelle Long
John, Peter and their special guest Michelle Long, Executive Director of BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies), talk about what is driving the local economies movement, why small changes in buying and investing practices have such a huge impact and how BALLE works with entrepreneurs in low income communities to create economic vitality so people don’t have to leave their neighborhoods to be successful.
Running time: 00:57:19
Click title to download or listen to the conversation.
How a City Solicitor Builds Community and a Neighborhood Economy
Conversation with Paula Boggs Muething
Most of our focus on abundant communities is about what citizens can do to create stronger neighborhood connections and work on projects together or about how citizens are taking back into their own hands what the years of outsourcing and privatization has moved out of the neighborhood. We have leaned away from giving attention to systems and those who manage them. We recognize that systems and their leaders are essential to community, but we are often more attuned to the limits of what they can achieve, rather than the transformation they can catalyze.
This conversation gives some balance in talking with a super-involved city senior executive, Paula Boggs Muething. She is Solicitor of the City of Cincinnati, which means she is on the Mayor’s Cabinet, serves as a close advisor and runs the legal team for the city. Paula was formerly in charge of legal matters for the Regional Port Authority, a major investor in revitalizing vulnerable neighborhoods.
John, Peter and Paula talk about how to create economic vitality in poor neighborhoods. One focus will be what Peter and Paula call the Friends and Family small business loan fund, a way of creating access to capital for individuals who want to create place-based or neighborhood businesses but don’t have the connections or opportunities to do so through a network of family and friends or traditional sources of capital.
Running time (with Q&A) 00:52:16
Click title to download or listen to the conversation.
A Place at the Table
Conversation with Edd Conboy
John and Peter talk with their special guest Edd Conboy, Director of Social Services and the Counseling Center at Broad Street Ministry and Senior Staff Therapist at the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia, about different ways people and communities can shift from a scarcity, helplessness and hopelessness stance to one of abundance, gifts and empowerment in their work with people on the margins.
When Edd took over orchestrating the Breaking Bread meals at Broad Street Ministry, he wanted to counteract the constant messages about being deficient that receivers of service encountered every day. Like having to stand in line for food, or this service or that program. He realized that waiting is one of the most powerful reinforcers of the class system. It symbolizes helplessness, hopelessness and the constant concern that there is not enough … and that it will run out just before it is my turn. So Edd did something about that.
Running time (with Q&A) 00:51:25
Click title to download or listen to the conversation.
Powering Communities and Empowering People
Conversation with Ruston Seaman
John and special guest Ruston Seaman of New Vision Renewable Energy talk about different ways about different ways people and communities can enable others to recognize and use their gifts to do great things wherever they are.
Running time (with Q&A) 00:42:58
Click title to download or to listen to the conversation.
Working in the Gap to Enhance Citizen Productivity
Conversation with Tom Mosgaller
John, Peter, special guest Tom Mosgaller and others from the front lines of community work talk about different ways people working in the “gap” can enable systems to shift from needs to gifts so that institutions and agencies can be a stronger force in supporting citizens in coming together to create a thriving and prosperous community.
Running time (with Q&A) 00:59:15
Click title to download or listen to the conversation.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:59:15
Time Banking: Edgar Cahn and Peter Block on Thought Grenades
Peter and Edgar Cahn, the founder of TimeBanks, join Robert Thompson and co-host, Mike Neiss in their latest installment of Leadership and the Common Good. What exactly is TimeBanking and why has Cahn dedicated much of his life to this effort? Cahn answers this question and more as he shares his insights into building core economies around families and communities in this thought-provoking interview.
Click here to go to Thought Grenades March 2, 2015 program. Or listen or download at iTunes.
Restorative Justice: Peter Block and Mike Butler on Thought Grenades
Peter and Mike Butler, Chief of Safety for Longmont, Colorado, join Robert Thompson and co-host Mike Neiss to kick off their first installment of Leadership for the Common Good, a new Thought Grenades series that highlights real leaders solving real problems in real time.
In their discussion they share insights around Restorative Justice. What is it? How did it help Longmont overcome serious issues in their community? Could Restorative Justice have helped solve problems in Ferguson and New York City?
Click here to go to Thought Grenades February 9, 2015 program. Or listen or download at iTunes.
Conversation with John and Peter: The Hometown of Your Dreams
Conversation with Jeff Yost
John, Peter and their special guest Jeff Yost talk about different ways neighborhoods, communities and local organizations can organize and manage economic and social assets to support places where people want to live, raise families, do business, work and enjoy the good life.
Jeff is the president and CEO of the Nebraska Community Foundation. Not your typical charitable foundation, NCF believes that community development philanthropy is more than just grant making and donor-directed gifts. It is all about actively engaging the only people who can build and sustain local communities: the people who live and work there.
Click title to download or listen to the conversation.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:56:43
Conversation with John and Peter: The Meaning of Genuine Wealth
John and Peter talk with their special guest Mark Anielski, author of the best-selling book The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth, about different ways for communities and other organizations can assess, build and sustain their genuine wealth — the human, social, natural, built and financial capital assets that contribute to well-being, sustainability and ultimately happiness.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:58:32
Conversation with John and Peter: How the “Empty Half” Isn’t Really Half Empty
John and Peter talk with with their special guest Judith Snow about how people on the margin have contributions to make to the neighborhood and the way social policy sustains dependency by putting the money in the hands of paid institutional staff, not the family of the individual.
Judith is a trailblazing author, artist and global leader in the disability movement. She has led training and education programs for more than 30 years throughout the US, the UK, Europe, the Caribbean and Canada, and her models have resulted in thousands of people with disabilities getting jobs, homes, new relationships and support systems that lead to full community participation and personal respect.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:57:14
Rebuilding Journalism: Peter Block and Chuck Peters on Thought Grenades
What is The Gazette Company doing that is so unique? How do print, digital and broadcast work together in this new system? Is this the future of quality journalism? Learn the answers to these questions and more as Thought Grenades co-hosts Robert Thompson and Mike Neiss talk with Peter and his guest, Chuck Peters, on how his organization is rebuilding journalism one word and picture at a time.
Click title to go to Thought Grenades October 20, 2014 program. Or listen or download at iTunes.
Conversation with John and Peter: Health Is a Neighborhood Issue
Download or listen to John and Peter’s September 9th conversation with their special guest Jackie Reed, the founder and former president and CEO of Chicago’s Westside Health Authority, on how to use the capacity of community residents to improve the health and well-being of the community.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 01:03:11
Conversation with John and Peter: Welcoming the Poor in from Exile
Download or listen to John and Peter’s July 15th conversation with special guest Walter Brueggemann, world-renowned Old Testament scholar, about the ways we produce poverty and the idea of Jubilee, a path to economic justice.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:57:51
Conversation with John and Peter: Putting Technology to Work in Building Community
Download or listen to John and Peter’s May 13th conversation with special guest Ed Everett, former city manager and now city strategist at nextdoor.com, on how technology and social media can bring neighbors closer together and strengthen community ties.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 01:04:12
Conversation with John and Peter: Innovative Funding for Citizen-Initiated Change
Download or listen to John and Peter’s April 1st conversation with Janis Foster Richardson on how funding organizations and institutions support neighborhoods where everyday people can individually and together as community builders and change-makers. Janis is Executive Director of Grassroots Grantmakers, a nationwide network of people, organizations and institutions leading citizen-driven community change.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:58:44
Conversation with John and Peter: Heart Surgeon Leads the Way Toward Collaborative Health Care
Download or listen to John and Peter’s February 11th conversation with Paul Uhlig, M.D. and W. Ellen Raboin. Paul and Ellen are leading proponents of collaborative health care, a movement that aims to shift the focus in health care from the professional practitioners to patients and their families. Paul is a cardiothoracic surgeon, associate professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita and Executive Director of the Mid Continent Regional Center for Health Care Simulation.Ellen is a health care researcher/consultant and principal at Care Quest Consulting in Danville, CA.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:55:23
Freedom at Work
Peter and “Insights at the Edge” host Tami Simon have a wide-ranging discussion on creating workplaces and communities that work for all, bringing change into the world through consent and connectedness rather than through mandate and force, the signals Peter sees of a shift in consciousness in the business world toward caring for the common good … and much more.
To listen or download, go to http://www.soundstrue.com/weeklywisdom/?source=podcast&p=8803&category=IATE&version=full.
Running time: 00:73:00
Or read a transcript here.
Conversation with John, Peter and J. Kim Wright: Integrative Law — A Legal System That Builds Relationships
Download or listen to John and Peter’s December 10 conversation with J. Kim Wright, author of the American Bar Association bestseller Lawyers As Peacemakers: Practicing Holistic, Problem-Solving Law, on the shift in law from a system that focuses on differences and separation to a system that includes and honors the opinions, perspectives and humanity of all stakeholders.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:47:00
Lawyers As Peacemakers: Peter Block and J. Kim Wright on Thought Grenades
Thought Grenades co-hosts Robert Thompson and Mike Neiss talk with Peter and his guest, J. Kim Wright, author of Lawyers as Peacemakers, in a thought-provoking discussion of how lawyers can practice holistic, problem-solving law.
Running time: 00:30:29
Facilitating Community: A Virtual Conversation with Peter Block
During this hour-long conversation moderated by Martin Pearson of the UK’s Kinharvie Institute, Peter shares his vision of what it means to be an abundant community and outlines ways to make the communities where we work, play and live move from away from an interest in deficiencies, interests and entitlement and toward a context endowed with possibility, generosity and gifts. In the Q&A following the initial interview, Peter and listeners from around the world explore some of the fundamental shifts involved and discuss how to overcome common obstacles in facilitating community.
Sponsored by the Kinharvie Institute and the International Association of Facilitators Scotland Chapter
Running time (with Q&A): 00:60:00
Conversation with John, Peter and Howard Lawrence: The Abundant Communities Initiative
Download or listen to John and Peter’s October 22 conversation with Howard Lawrence of Edmonton, Alberta’s Abundant Communities Initiative. An ordained minister, neighborhood consultant and active volunteer with Edmonton’s Highlands Community leadership, Howard was inspired by John and Peter’s book The Abundant Community to launch the city’s effort to strengthen the social fabric of its neighborhoods.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:54:37
Walter Brueggemann and Peter Block: Living an Economics of Compassion
Peter joins Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann in a two-part exploration of how to build and sustain a locally lived economics that works for all. Walter provides the theological foundation to assess our economic systems in light of biblical values of human dignity, community and justice, and Peter expands with practical models for sustaining a local alternative economic movement of relationship and collaboration.
In listening to Part One, “Clarifying a Biblical Alternative Economic Vision,” to skip the preliminaries (including four minutes of silence while participants are reflecting on their purpose for attending) go to approximately 17:00. Walter’s presentation begins at 19:01 and Peter at 41:45.
See Events for details on Part Two, “Living the Biblical Alternative Economic Vision as a Local Movement,” on Monday, October 21.
Conversation with John, Peter and Bruce Anderson: Approaches to Gifts, Welcoming and Hope
Download or listen to John and Peter’s September 10 conversation with Bruce Anderson, nationally recognized speaker, community activist and leadership coach, on how to apply the core practices of gifts, welcoming and hope within organizations and communities.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:49:38
Related:
- 20 Things You Can Do When You Know Someone’s Gift (Anderson)
- We All Belong (Anderson)
- Welcome Vashon (Anderson)
Conversation with John, Peter, Allison Pinto and Tim Dutton: Building Community with “Neighborkids”
Download or listen to John and Peter’s July 23 conversation with Allison Pinto and Tim Dutton, Co-Executive Directors of the Sarasota Community Studio. Established and run by neighbors in the Sarasota (FL) Central-Cocoanut neighborhood, the Studio is “a creative space where neighbors come together around the talents of neighborkids to invent powerful approaches to community change.”
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 00:57:37
Related:
Conversation with John, Peter and Ross Chapin: Making Space for Community
Download or listen to John and Peter’s June 5 conversation with architect Ross Chapin, the leader in defining and designing pocket neighborhoods. Ross believes that scale and design impact the quality of our conversations, relationships and our sense of community. His work has inspired news stories in dozens of major U.S. newspapers, magazines and TV shows, and his projects have won numerous design awards, including the American Institute of Architects Housing Awards for 2005, 2007 and 2009.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 0:50:21
Related:
Conversation with John, Peter and Mary Nelson:
How to Use Local Assets to Make Your Community Effective
Download or listen to John and Peter’s March 5 conversation with Mary Nelson on asset-based approaches to building community generally and what makes them effective. Mary is the founder and longtime Director of Bethel New Life, one of the nation’s best neighborhood development organizations. She is on the faculty of the Northwestern University’s Asset Based Community Development Institute (ABCD) and consults, speaks and does workshops in the U.S. and internationally (South Africa, Australia, East Timor, Germany, Mexico).
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 0:57:10
Collective Healing in Community
How do we come together to re-imagine how we are going to raise our children? To consider how we might support local food production? To invite those on the margins to feel connected? How do we learn to forgive?
Clips from Peter’s recent online seminar and discussion with Tamarack president and co-founder Paul Born explore how community is instrumental in healing because it repairs the cause of the pain. In their discussion and responses to questions from participants, Peter reflects on how we might pursue healing within our nation, institutions, our workplaces and our neighborhoods.
Conversation with John, Peter and Jim Diers:
Powerful Partnerships — Neighborhood Groups and Local Governments
Download or listen to John and Peter’s January 17 conversation with Jim Diers on the role, power, and limits of local government in building community. Jim has been called “the Albert Einstein of local government” and “the Pied Piper for the Seattle neighborhood movement.” Both labels are right on target, for Jim is truly passionate about getting people engaged with their communities and in the decisions that affect their lives. That energy and experience comes through in this thought-provoking and far-reaching conversation.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time (with Q&A): 1:00:00
Transforming Education: Peter Block and Ward Mailliard on Thought Grenades
Thought Grenades co-hosts Robert Thompson and Mike Neiss talk with Peter and his guest, Ward Mailliard, one of the key founders of Mt. Madonna Center in Watsonville, CA, on transforming education to produce the citizens the world needs now.
Conversation with John, Peter and Sarah van Gelder: Journalism That Tells the Story of What Is Working in the World and the Localism Movement Behind It
Download or listen to John and Peter’s November 20 conversation with Sarah van Gelder, co-founder and executive editor of YES! Magazine in which they talked about where the movement toward abundant neighborhoods is happening, what gives energy to this movement, where neighborhoods have sustained themselves over time and what citizens can do to share similar experiences of community.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time: 1:00:00
Conversation with John, Peter and Mike Mather: From Charity to Empowerment
Download or listen to John and Peter’s October 9 conversation with Mike Mather, the pastor of Broadway United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. Their conversation centered on what truly innovative institutions can do to make the move from charity to empowerment and how the church can build a neighborhood by moving from serving the poor to ending their poverty. Supposing we thought about how to make our community better and we didn’t come up with a program? What would we do? In the neighborhood, how do you see beyond needs and discover the treasures that are there? What is Christian service? How do you think about a church as a community member?
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time: 1:00:00
Journalism Leadership: Changing the Conversation – Peter Block and Peter Pula on Thought Grenades
Thought Grenades co-hosts Robert Thompson and Mike Neiss talk with Peter Block and his guest, Peter Pula of Axiom News, on the role the new journalism can take in creating a renewed and thriving world. At Axiom News, they call it Generative Journalism and focus on how it shifts the framework from “if it bleeds it leads” to an asset-finding and possibilities worldview in the stories the media tells. Is there a need for another kind of journalism? Can journalism really change the public narrative that is so bitter today? Listen and learn what they all have to say on these important questions.
Running time: 29:23
Conversation with John, Peter and Al Etmanski: Innovators Out of the Box
Download or listen to John and Peter’s August 28 conversation with Al Etmanski, curator, author, blogger (www.aletmanski.com), advocate and social entrepreneur specializing in innovative, multi-sector solutions to complex societal challenges. They talk about how our frameworks create the challenges we perceive, how different language can move us away from the economic/governance view of social change, the importance of openness to be with others, not just allies and colleagues but also opponents and strangers … and much more in this thought-provoking and inspirational conversation.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time: 1:00:00
Transformational Leadership: Awakening the Power of Community
Peter and VoiceAmerica Business host Kate Ebner have a big conversation that challenges conventional wisdom about leadership — and share what you can do as a citizen to shape our future.
Click title for more background or button below to just listen.
Running time: 58:08
Conversation with John, Peter and Karen Lehman: Good Food for All
Download or listen to John and Peter’s July 10 conversation with Karen Lehman, director of Fresh Taste, a funder collaborative formed by several Illinois foundations and the City of Chicago to relocalize Chicago’s food system and improve equity of access to good food. They talk about the local food movement today as a convergence of social movements that reminds people that food is something they control — and not just in the kitchen — and Karen tells lots of stories from her three-decade career in food system work and from communities in the Chicago region.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time: 1:00:00
Building a Positive Workplace Culture
Dr. Susan Cain of the Corporate Learning Institute interviews Peter and author John Christensen on building collaborative communities in the workplace and why now, more than even, a positive corporate workplace culture matters.
Running time: 30:17
How Our Religious Narratives Affect Us
Where are we going to look for our future? Where can we find stories and language of neighborliness? How can we bring narratives of fallibility, faith, relatedness, forgiveness, and apology into the center of our conversations of community? These questions and more are the focus of Peter’s discussion with Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann.
In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking interview with Robert Thompson and Mike Niess of Thought Grenades, Peter and Walter start at the intersection between our religious narrative and our economics and how it affects every dimension of our lives, describe the corporatization of our institutions and culture, and explore some of the thinking and actions that can shift us into a different narrative for our future.
Running time: 31:39 | Home page photo: Lel4nd
Conversation with John, Peter and Mike Butler: Building a Healthy and Just Community
Download or listen to John and Peter’s May 29th conversation with Mike Butler, Longmont, CO Police and Fire Chief. Here’s Peter’s reflection on the discussion:
Today’s conversation with John McKnight and Mike Butler was so really good. Mike integrates theory and his own practice like no one else. The conversation makes so clear what is possible when committed people make a commitment to a place, over time and all along keep inviting and inviting and inviting everyone into the conversation. When the Police Chief brings restorative practice into the heart of community, something is happening here. Listen to this if you can, and let me know what you think. Maybe there is some enduring value to this technology thing after all.
Click title to download or button below to just listen.
Running time: 1:00:00
Related:
Connecting4Community Conference Call
In April, 2012, Charles Holmes and Louise van Rhyn convened a conference call with John McKnight, Walter Brueggemann and Peter Block for a group of community builders in anticipation of a conference held in Cincinnati, Ohio, in May 2012. This clip features parts of John, Peter and Walter’s comments on small group discussions that have wider interest.
Conversation with John, Peter and Edgar Cahn: No More Throw-Away People
Download or listen to John and Peter’s April 2nd conversation with social activist and inventor of timebanking Edgar Cahn. In this hour-long audio clip they share their thoughts on abundance and scarcity, money and institutions, ways to re-valuing what has been de-valued in the economic world … and much more.
Related:
- Time Banking: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? (Cahn)
- The Lathrup Village Time Bank (video)
- About Time (Clare Goff)
Olivia Saunders and Peter Block: How to Create Abundance and Eliminate Scarcity
Peter and Olivia discuss how we can shift our thinking from such mainstream socioeconomic concepts as individualism, competition and scarcity to ideas like abundance and service. If we stop trying to hold on to an economic system that is geared toward self-perpetuation and does not serve people, we can effect real change in the world.
March 5, 2012 on Robert Thompson’s Thought Grenades BlogTalkRadio. Running time 30:18.
Related:
- The Economics of Neighborliness (Block)
- The Economy Is in Our Hands, We Just Don’t Know It (Block)
- Enterprising Economy (Block)
John and Peter: The Conversation on Fallibility
Download or listen to the hour-long February 7th “Conversation on Fallibility” to hear John and Peter’s thoughts on reframing how to see people in terms of their gifts, how increasing competition and proliferating technology affect our ability to share our gifts, how our culture deals with the reality of deep fallibility… and much more.
Related:
- The Gift of Fallibility: Conversing with John McKnight (video)
- Fallibility: The Value of Imperfection
Peter Block: Creating Change through Consent and Connectedness
Clips from Peter’s recent online seminar and discussion with Tamarack president and co-founder Paul Born explore the emerging narrative of community that results when we shift our thinking from reforming what is to focusing upon the alternative we want to create.
Topics include: What Time Is It? What We Need More Of. Overcoming Isolation. Youth, Community and Social Media. Revitalizing Neighborhoods. Writings to Ground This Work.
Conversation with John and Peter: Health Care Reform
Download or listen to the hour-long December 6th conversation Health Care Reform to hear John and Peter’s thoughts on the difference between health and medical care, the role of local food and culture in producing health, what leadership means for helping local people overcome isolation…and much more.
Peter Block: On Robert Thompson’s Thought Grenades
Peter chats with Robert Thompson and Mike Neiss about small things with large results for empowering neighborhoods and building community.
Conversation with John and Peter: Occupy Wall Street—An Opening for Abundance
Download or listen to the hour-long October 18th conversation Occupy Wall Street—An Opening for Abundance to hear John and Peter engage with callers on questions and issues like how to detach ourselves from systems that devalue out gifts and assets, Main Street as an opportunity to know one another commercially, and “the value of nothing.” Links, website and other recommendations at Recommended Reading.
Peter Block: Focusing on What Is Possible
What happens when people choose to focus on what they can achieve to improve their communities, not just on what is wrong? This is the question that leads to successful community change, Peter says, as he talks about how people and organizations can focus on the strengths of their communities and then build on those assets to create a future together.
Interview with Hildy Gottlieb of Making Change, podcast of The Chronicle of Philanthropy
June 7, 2011
Peter Block: Community—The Structure of Belonging
In a series of clips from his 2010 interview with Tamarack president and co-founder Paul Born, Peter talks about who he is, what led him to his work and his thoughts about why we need to “give voice” to a new narrative for community. He shares his ideas on what is needed to create this new narrative and how it can help to transcend the isolation and polarization that dominates many of our communities.
Topics include: What Is Community? The Cost of Isolation. Creating a New Narrative. The Dynamic Relationship of the Small Group and the Whole.
John McKnight: Building Grass-Roots Movements
Interview with Hildy Gottlieb of Making Change, podcast of The Chronicle of Philanthropy
December 8, 2010
John McKnight and Peter Block: The Abundant Community
Interview with Wayne Hurlbert on Blog Talk Radio
November 23, 2010
Peter Block: Empowerment, Stewardship and Bringing Communities Together One Conversation at a Time
Interview with Mary Claybon of Middle Way Health
November 4, 2010
John McKnight and Peter Block: The Abundant Community
Teleseminar sponsored by Tamarack: An Institute for Community Engagement
October 26, 2010
