Podcast
A Peace of My Mind
Hosted by John Noltner · EN
Stories to bridge divides and build community.
12episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The Troubles - Shelley Cowan and Tracey Farry
1w ago01:02:49Tap to summarizeShelley Cowan is a disability advocate, speaker, and founder of Justus, a community organization creating inclusive social spaces and opportunities for adults with disabilities across Northern Ireland. After becoming severely ill at age fifteen, Shelley spent more than a decade confined to bed, unable to walk, eat independently, or continue her education. Through years of determination, family support, and rehabilitation, she gradually regained mobility, returned to school as a mature student, and earned a master’s degree focused on accessibility and inclusion.Today, Shelley is known for transforming personal hardship into community impact. Alongside her close friend and caregiver Tracey Farry, she advocates for accessibility, disability awareness, and connection across social and cultural divides. Together, the pair have become known for their humor, honesty, and deep friendship—building spaces where people of all abilities feel seen, welcomed, and celebrated.Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Martina Byrne
Mar 2600:40:48Tap to summarizeMartina Byrne is a community builder and quiet changemaker rooted in Hilltown, County Down. Originally trained in marine biology and business development, Martina’s path shifted after becoming a mother, when she experienced firsthand the isolation that can exist in rural life. Rather than wait for connection, she created it.As a co-founder of a local women’s group that has now thrived for more than a decade, Martina has helped cultivate a space where women gather, learn, and grow—often in unexpected ways, from coffee mornings to creative workshops. What began as a simple effort to bring people together has evolved into a powerful platform for community development, cross-border collaboration, and grassroots peacebuilding.Guided by the belief that real change happens in small, consistent steps, Martina works to bridge divides—social, political, and personal—by building trust one relationship at a time. She is especially passionate about elevating the role of women in peacebuilding and creating opportunities for voices that have too often gone unheard.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Vincenta Leyden
Mar 1100:59:59Tap to summarizeVincenta Leyden lives in Hilltown, County Down, Northern Ireland, near the Mourne Mountains. Born in Northern Ireland and raised partly in the Republic of Ireland, her life has unfolded along the border between two places and identities. Growing up during the Troubles, she experienced the conflict not through dramatic moments but through the everyday realities of living in a divided society. Those experiences shaped her curiosity about history, identity, and the ways communities understand the past.A creative thinker and lifelong learner, Vincenta is drawn to poetry, music, and art as ways to explore emotions and open conversations across differences. Inspired by poets like Seamus Heaney, she writes and reads poetry as a way to reflect on personal and collective stories.As a mother, she encourages her children to engage with a wider world through music and cross-border cultural experiences. Vincenta believes creativity and curiosity can help people challenge assumptions, connect across communities, and imagine a more hopeful future.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Nula McNulty
Mar 500:49:59Tap to summarizeNula McNulty is a lifelong resident of North Leitrim, Ireland, who returned home in 2003 after years working on Ireland’s east coast and two years in China as a food technologist. Raised on a mixed farm near the Northern Ireland border, she grew up during the Troubles with a father from the North and a mother from the South. Her upbringing instilled in her a strong sense of inclusivity, social conscience, and respect for others regardless of religion, politics, or background.Living near the border deeply shaped her understanding of conflict. As a child, crossing into Northern Ireland meant passing through multiple military and police checkpoints—an experience she accepted at the time but later recognized as extraordinary. She recalls both the deep divisions and the gradual healing that followed, particularly through integrated schools, cross-border initiatives, and community-based projects.Nula believes peace requires communication, acknowledgment of harm, and sustained relationship-building. She has seen healing happen when people work side by side—through women’s groups, cross-border arts projects, and community campaigns. For her, the process of collaboration matters more than the finished product; shared work creates understanding and dissolves “othering.”Nula sees prejudice as an ongoing challenge but insists the work of peace is never finished. True progress, she says, comes from listening, acknowledging pain on all sides, apologizing where necessary, and respecting both people and the natural world. Ultimately, she believes respect—for oneself, for neighbors, and for the environment—is the foundation of peace. Love, she says, is easier and more sustaining than hate.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Carmel Loughlin and Lauri McCusker
Feb 1201:53:06Tap to summarizeTwo stories again in this episode:Carmel Loughlin grew up in the Republic of Ireland but spent time crossing the border frequently to visit family in the North, until the Troubles broke out when she was about 12 years old. She has spent much of her career in mental health, helping people navigate the ongoing challenges and lingering effects of the violence.Lauri McCusker works in community development in an effort to make life better in County Fermanaugh. And while he becomes frustrated by “watching people find reasons and excuses for not creating positive change in our society,” he is driven forward, looking for the next — sometimes small — win for his community. Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Gerry Creamer and Elaine O'Hara
Jan 2201:14:47Tap to summarizeIn this episode we share two conversations with people we met in Manorhamilton in the Republic of Ireland, just across the border from Northern Ireland. Like so many things, conflict and tensions are not confined within a political line that is drawn on the map.Gerry Creamer is the youngest of five children. He grew up in a traditional and devoutly Catholic family in the Republic of Ireland, close to the border with the North. Although he has several family members who have been active in politics, Gerry is more interested in community work and spends his time trying to find funding for programs that can make his community a better place to live.Elaine O’Hara has spent most of her life in Manorhamilton with short stays in Cork and Belfast, just after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. She is active with a women’s group in Manorhamilton. Although life has taken some unexpected turns, she says she knows who she is, she holds her head up high, and she is immensely proud of the three sons she has raised.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Israel Eguaogie
Jan 1500:22:41Tap to summarizeIsrael Eguaogie was 17 when he left Nigeria and relocated to Germany as an asylum seeker. A decade later he moved to Dublin and soon after that, shifted north to Belfast. It was a decision that horrified his mother back in Nigeria, who had heard news reports of the sectarian violence in the country. But Israel said that he experienced the calm and the peace of Northern Ireland and recalled it was the first place since living in Germany, where someone said hello to him first.Israel has also experienced racism in Northern Ireland, and in recent public protests and violence directed at immigrants, Israel says he is concerned that previous rivals in the Protestant and Catholic communities will find unifying common ground in their backlash against newcomers, and that the rocks they once threw at each other will now land on the immigrants instead.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Lewis Lyttle and Roxy Lyttle
Jan 800:49:28Tap to summarizeLewis Lyttle is an ex-Loyalist prisoner. He was sentenced to 15 years for attempted murder during The Troubles and was released early, with the signing of The Good Friday Agreement. Now Lewis works to facilitate cross-community groups with Black Mountain Shared Space, a community center built on the site of a former peace wall and designed to bring people from both Protestant and Catholic communities together to get to know one another and build relationships and trust.Stay tuned toward the end of the recording for some generational insights from Lewis’ daughter Roxy, a high school student, who is engaged with programs at Black Mountain Shared Space as well.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Bronagh McAtasney
Dec 3100:58:59Tap to summarizeBronagh McAtasney is the daughter of John Bosco McAtasney, a master weaver and the last hand loom weaver in Ireland. She recalls his curiosity, his desire to learn, and his passion to instill the same in his children. When he passed away in 2018, Bronagh used her small inheritance to leave her job in administration, go back to school for a master’s degree in public history and now, in her own words, “I’m actually getting paid to be nosy about people’s lives.”Growing up during the Troubles, Bronagh kept a diary that weaves the threads of daily headlines and historical trauma with the day-to-day realities of life as a 13-year-old girl in Northern Ireland. In 2013, she started sharing her diary posts daily on Twitter (and now BlueSky) as a way to document and juxtapose the geopolitical realities with her personal experience.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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The Troubles - Aoife Moore
Dec 2600:39:56Tap to summarizeAoife Moore is an independent investigative journalist from Derry, Northern Ireland and formerly worked as a political correspondent for the BBC.She calls herself a victim of England’s legacy in Ireland and says that every facet of her life has been marred by British colonialism, including the death of her uncle in the violence of Bloody Sunday.Aoife chose her path to become a journalist because of her frustration with the British media’s unwillingness to challenge the government’s official narrative of what happened on Bloody Sunday and her desire to be a part of revealing the truth.She is the best-selling author of The Long Game: Inside Sinn Fein, a book that explores the growth of Sinn Fein from the armed struggle of the IRA to its current political dominance in the country.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.
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