Peace between people is rooted in the inner peace of individuals. In this podcast Smajo Bešo and Emlyn Pearce discuss their radically different childhood experiences of conflict and peace. At age seven Smajo was the target of genocide during the Bosnian war and spent nine months living under siege in Mostar, while Emlyn was the beneficiary of a fragile peace built upon apartheid South Africa’s racist systems of oppression.

In examining their countries’ traumatic histories, and their own entwined stories, Smajo and Emlyn try to answer the most important question of our age: how can we make deep and lasting peace between people while making peace with our own painful histories?