{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"John Marks\u2019 Journey from Provocateur to Peacemaker","description":"It seems that almost everywhere in the world, there is conflict, distrust, and unrest \u2013 Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, and even here in the US. Oftentimes, any kind of diplomacy, cooperation, agreement, detente or finding a common ground seems impossible. But what if there was a different way? What if there was an organization that holds as its mission, \u201cto transform the way the world deals with conflict, away from adversarial approaches and toward cooperative solutions?\u201d What if those tactics included dialogue training, joint development projects, public art projects, sports leagues, and social impact entertainment via radio, TV, film, and print? Well, these are all accomplishments that John Marks has achieved in his work as President of Search for Common Ground, a peacebuilding NGO he founded in 1982 and built with his wife Susan Collin Marks, predicated on social entrepreneurship.  He is the coauthor of the controversial New York Times best-seller The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the award-winning Search for the \u201cManchurian Candidate,\u201d  and we\u2019ll be doing a deep dive into his latest book, From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship, just recently published by Columbia University Press.  John is also a Skoll Awardee in Social Entrepreneurship and an Ashoka Senior Fellow. The UN\u2019s University of Peace awarded him an honorary doctorate for is work, and in 2018, Search for Common Ground was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I found From Vision to Action to be both a memoir and somewhat of a practitioner\u2019s guide to the underlying principles of social entrepreneurship. It offers a master class in effective negotiation and conflict resolution. It builds on a core strategy of understanding differences and acting on commonalities. John uses his own experiences of creating real-life breakthroughs during his time leading Search for Common Ground.  John\u2019s pioneering work has genuinely made the world a safer and better place for us all \u2013 he is an inspiration. ","author_name":"Living A Life In Full","author_url":"http:\/\/www.alifeinfull.org\/podcast.html","html":"