Jeremy: Hi, I’m Jeremy Courtney, founder of Preemptive Love Coalition. I’m here with my friend and co-worker Erin Wilson, senior field editor in Iraq, and we want to share some behind-the-scenes of the Love Anyway podcast. Episode one launches next week, and it might just challenge your assumptions about what it looks like to do this kind of work: To show up for “the other.” To love your enemy. And not just the enemy that turns out to be a friend once you get to know them. But the real enemy.

Jeremy: A couple of years ago, we started asking ourselves, “What if we did a podcast? As a way of peeling back the curtain, inviting people along on this peacemaking journey in a way that we just can’t do through a blog or a social media post?”

Erin: Each time we’d start getting excited about the possibilities—the stories we could share… and every time, something urgent would come up, and off we’d go.

Jeremy: Well today, this is that “something urgent.”

We’re more polarized than ever. The loudest, strongest voices are the ones telling us we should live in fear of “the other”—of refugees, Muslims, Middle Easterners, immigrants, those who pray differently than we do or look and love differently than we do.

And while our work in the Middle East looks a lot like relief and development—like emergency food, water, and medical care, starting refugee-owned businesses and creating jobs for displaced people—what we’re really about is creating peace between communities at odds. Remaking what was broken. Healing hearts across enemy lines, beginning with our own. And discovering that we really do belong to each other.

Erin: In episode one, you’ll hear from members of our team who nearly lost their lives. You’ll hear about us frantically tweeting coordinates to the US military to try to get them to stop the bombing.

Jeremy: But most of all, you’ll hear about how, even in the face of death—and in one case, even after coming face to face with ISIS—they chose to love anyway.

Erin: Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe to the Love Anyway podcast today, and follow along at preemptivelove.org/podcast. I’m Erin Wilson.

Jeremy: And I’m Jeremy Courtney. Join us here next week for episode one: The Longest Night.