Beyond Intractability Videos

Beyond Intractability guest video interviews plus BI Frontiers online lectures.

Some of our newsletters share the highlights of recorded interviews we have done with practitioners and scholars who are working in noteworthy ways to reduce hyper-polarization and destructive conflict.  These are shown in the list below, and the full interviews (videos and transcripts) can be found in links at the top and the bottom of all these newsletters. The videos are also all available on our Vimeo Channel and some are currently available on YouTube as well. (We plan to put them all on YouTube, but have not finished doing that yet.)

This listing was updated August 11, 2025. For more recent interviews see our Newsletter Archive.

Interviews and Discussion Videos

• Jacob Bornstein Shares His Strategies for Building Consensus, Even Under the Most Difficult Circumstances — Jacob Bornstein gives a master class on how to assemble and facilitate a collaborative process over very contentious issues -- and easier ones.
• Teacher, Consensus Builder and Advocate Frank Dukes Talks with Guy and Heidi Burgess About Balancing Those Three Roles — Frank Dukes talks about how he balances his three roles of conflict resolution practitioner, teacher/trainer, and human rights advocate in this wide-ranging interview.
• Richard Harwood Talks With Heidi Burgess About His "New Civic Path" — Heidi Burgess talks with Richard Harwood, President and Founder of the Harwood Institute about how community members can work together to overcome even their most difficult problems
• Ashok Panikkar, Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess Discuss: Whither Peacebuilding? Is There Life After USAID and USIP? — The peacebuilding field has been seriously shaken by the closure of USAID and USIP. What does this (and other real-world pressures) mean for the field? A conversation with three people who have been thinking about these challenges for a long time.
• Heidi and Guy Burgess Talk with Tom Klaus and Lamar Roth in their "Third Space" — Tom Klaus and Lamar Roth talked with Guy and Heidi Burgess about Beyond Intractability, hyper-polarization, constructive conflict, and ways we are going to get out of the "mess" we are in.
• Harry Boyte Talks with Heidi Burgess about the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and the Lessons it Can Teach Us — Harry Boyte explained how the ideas of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s and 1960s can be adapted by anyone wanting to make positive change in their communities and their societies.
• Representative Derek Kilmer on the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress and De-polarization — Guy and Heidi Burgess talked with Rep. Derek Kilmer on how to break down polarization in Congress and in society in order to actually solve problems collaboratively. There is much to learn and copy here!
• A Reasonable Peace: Can Critical Thinking Save the Field of Peacebuilding? — Ashok Panikkar, Heidi and Guy Burgess (with facilitation from Merrick Hoben) talk about why peacebuilding is failing in much of the world, and how the use of critical thinking explains why and what might be done to be more successful.
• Ariel Markose, the Chief Strategy Officer of Amal-Tikva, Talks About How To Do Peacebuilding in Wartime — Peacebuilding looks different in the context of war, but it can (and must) be done, explains Ariel Markose, CEO of a leading Israeli-Palestinian NGO. And, she explains, it is being done, despite tremendous obstacles.
• Emma Addams and Jennifer Thomas Talk about Mormon Women for Ethical Government — Emma Addams and Jennifer Thomas talk about the founding, the principles, and the "magic sauce" that has made the Mormon Women for Ethical Government so successful.
• Caleb Christen and Vinay Orekondy Talk about the Better Together America Project — Caleb Christen and Vinay Orekondy talk about the democracy and civic hubs they are helping form around the country to bring "democracy back to the people" where it can actually work.
• Guy and Heidi Burgess Talk with David Eisner about Threats to Democracy and How to Address Those — The Burgesses talked with David Eisner about what he thinks the threats to democracy are, and how (and when) we might respond to them. We agreed, citizen involvement in governance is key.
• Susan Carpenter and Heidi Burgess Reflect on Susan's 40+ Years' Experience Doing Consensus Building — Susan Carpenter has been working in the field of collaborative problem solving for over 40 years. She talked about the changes she's seen over those years, and the time-tested approaches she has come to rely on for success.
• Walt Roberts and Caleb Christian Talk about the Inter-Movement Impact Project — Caleb Christen and Walt Roberts talk about the Inter-Movement Impact Project -- another example of massively parallel problem solving and democracy building "in the real world."
• Nealin Parker Talks about Search USA's Efforts to Reduce Polarization and Tension in the United States — Heidi Burgess and Nealin Parker talk about how Search for Common Ground is adapting its pathbreaking international peacebuilding work to healing divides in the United States.
• Martin Carcasson Talks with Heidi and Guy Burgess about Wicked Problems, Polarization, Deliberation, and Democracy — In an hour-long interview, Martin talks about the "wicked problem mindset" as a way to diminish polarization, and encourage collaboration, creativity, and healthy democracy, at least at the local level.
• Crisis, Contradiction, Certainty, and Contempt — Columbia Professor Peter Coleman, and expert on intractable conflict, reflects on the intractable conflict occurring on his own campus, suggesting "ways out" that would be better for everyone.
• Heidi Burgess Talks With James Coan about Taking De-Polarization Work "to Scale." — Dialogue is great for the few participants, but it simply cannot be scaled up enough to change societal attitudes and behaviors. James Coan and Heidi Burgess discuss alternative ways to scale depolarization work.
• Bill Froehlich Talks about the Ohio State Divided Community Project — A summary of a conversation Bill Froehlich about the work of the Divided Community Project which works to help deeply divided communities come together to prevent, and respond to civic strife.
• Talking Peacebuilding and Democracy with Ashok Pannikar and Guy and Heidi Burgess — A report on a thought-provoking conversation that explored some of the most difficult challenges facing the peacebuilding field.
• Peter Coleman on The Way Out of Polarization and Intractability — Polarization is destroying our relationships with friends and family. Peter Coleman has a way to fix that -- and possibly fix our society as well.
• Talking Race and Democracy with Grande Lum — Reflections on the Community Relations Service, the Divided Community Project, the Rebuild Congress Initiative, the Disagree Better Campaign, and many other topics.
• Daniel Stid Talks about Ways to Strengthen Democracy by Replacing Polarization with Pluralism — Polarization is afflicting both leaders and followers, and the feedback between the two makes the problem worse. Key to fighting that is reinvigorating the value of political pluralism and openness to divergent views of problems and solutions, starting first at the local and state levels.
• Katie Hyten Explains how Essential Partners is Taking Dialogue to Scale — Essential Partners has figured out both how to scale dialogue to the community level (if not beyond) and to make the relationship improvements dialogue engenders sustainable over the long term.
• Jay Rothman on Large Scale Interventions — In this interview, Jay Rothman continues to reflect on strategies for scaling up small group processes in ways that enable whole communities to develop "both-and" solutions the common problems.
• Jay Rothman and Daniela Cohen on the Aria Group School Intervention in Yellow Springs, Ohio — Highly polarized conflicts are typically systems problems, and they need system-based solutions to be successfully addressed. Here's an example where that was done very well.
• Paul Monteiro, Former Director of the Community Relations Service, Talking About How CRS Works its Magic — A few of the many important and interesting things Community Relations Service Paul Monteiro shared about the way CRS operates, what makes it successful, and most importantly, how it needs help from locals.
• D.G. Mawn Talks About Community Mediation and NAFCM — A short summary of a longer interview highlighting the important role that community mediation can play in helping societies handle local conflicts more constructively.
• Julia Roig Talks about Weaving a Healthy Democracy in the United States — Julia Roig talks about her efforts to build a social movement to support democracy in the U.S. Such a movement needs to both block and build: block bad actors, and build a new pluralistic society that works.
• Return to the List of Newsletter Post Types

Conflict Frontiers Videos

Also included here is a list of the extensive series of around 90 Conflict Frontiers Videos.  These short PowerPoint mini-lectures highlight some of the most important topics that Guy and Heidi featured in their courses. While these videos were created several years ago (and some of the examples may be obviously dated), they still cover timeless topics that go to the core of understanding the the nature of hyper-escalated, hyper-polarized intractable conflict, and constructive responses to that. While they aren't newsletters, we are mentioning them here, so that all the BI videos are available in one place.

These videos, are grouped into the 10 units described below. Just follow the link to each unit to get a list of videos.  While these units are loosely organized around a self-study online from, this "seminar" is not being actively "taught." We do not have the capacity to have students "enroll," study this material together, discuss it, and be tested on it or otherwise be graded and get a certificate upon completion, as is generally the case for most "seminars."  However, the material is freely usable to whomever wants to use it to learn the basics of conflict resolution in a self-taught, unstructured, manner.

Topic Area 1: Scale, Complexity, & Intractability Here we introduce the Conflict Frontiers Seminar and discuss what we mean by the term "intractable conflict." We then explain why we think our inability to successfully address such conflicts is the single greatest threat facing humanity today.  This seminar goes on to explore the factors that make intractable conflict so difficult, including, especially, the challenges posed by the enormous scale of society-wide conflict and the social and psychological complexity of these conflicts. 

• Unit 1: The Challenge of Complex, Large-Scale Intractable Conflict - Here we introduce the Conflict Frontiers Seminar and discuss what we mean by the term "intractable conflict." We then explain why we think our inability to successfully address such conflicts is the single greatest threat facing humanity today.  This seminar goes on to explore the factors that make intractable conflict so difficult including, especially, the challenges posed by the enormous scale of society-wide conflict and the many problems posed by the social and psychological complexity of these conflicts.  For a much shorter, text-based version of the same content, see The Challenge of Complex, Intractable Conflicts.
   
• Unit  2: Pushing the Frontier: Limits of Business as Usual Approaches - It is often assumed that all conflicts can be addressed with the same well-tested, very successful conflict resolution techniques that work for small-scale intractable conflict.  We assert here that these "business-as-usual" strategies are not sufficient for intractable conflicts for a variety of reasons--they are highly complex, they are very large scale, and the people involved have concerns that go beyond a rational weighing of interests.
   
• Unit  3: Introduction to Complexity and "Systems Thinking" - Theoretical Antecedents - Some conflict theorists and practitioners have recognized the limits of traditional approaches to conflict and have been developing a variety of ideas about "systems" and "complexity-based" approaches to conflict which are reviewed here.
   
• Unit  4: Moving Toward a Complexity-Oriented Paradigm - In this seminar we (Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess) present "our take" on systems thinking and complexity, drawing from these earlier authors but also integrating the ideas of Kenneth Boulding and Wendell Jones relating to levels of systems and complex adaptive systems. These ideas have led us to develop the concept of "Massively Parallel Peacebuilding," which is explored in the next Featured Seminar. Note: This seminar is made up of 13 short (10-15) minute videos.  For a much shorter overview of the key ideas, you can read our essay on A Complexity-Oriented Approach to Intractable Conflict.

Topic Area 2: Massively Parallel Peacebuilding - In the next part of the Frontiers Seminar we explain how we think that a strategy of Massively Parallel Peacebuilding (MPP) can help address these problems.  MPP is a highly-decentralized strategy for meeting the scale and complexity challenge. Building on what we now know (and can reasonably expect to find out), MPP identifies an Action List over 100 steps we can all take to help address ten big challenges that lie at the core of the intractable conflict problem. 

• Unit  5: Introduction to Massively Parallel Peacebuilding -Here we introduce Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess's concept of Massively Parallel Peacebuilding (MPP) as a systems approach to intractable conflict.  MPP introduces ten "challenges" that need to be met to overcome intractability, and suggests over 100 things (10 or so per challenge) that need to be done (by 1000s of people and organizations) working in parallel to successfully address any intractable conflict. (The last Frontiers video explains how this isn't a totally crazy idea.)
• Unit  6: Figuring Out What is Going On (MPP Challenge 1) - One of the common traps of intractability is that there is a tendency to over-simplify a conflict to a simple "us-versus-them" struggle.  But they are always much more than that. The first challenge in Massively Parallel Peacebuilding is simply figuring out what is really going on in any particular conflict. 

Topic Area 3: Authoritarian Populism - Authoritarian Populism is a term that we and others use to refer to the rise of "light" or "would-be authoritarian leaders" who purport to be "men of the people," who are, indeed, being elected by popular vote in a number of democracies around the world. Their behavior, once in office, however, is much more like an autocrat than a democratic leader. In this unit, we explore how our ideas of Massively Parallel Peacebuilding can contribute to an understanding of this problem, as well as suggesting constructive responses to it.

• Unit  7: Using MPP to Understand the Authoritarian Populism Problem - As an example of how MPP can be used, in this seminar we explore one of the greatest threats to world and national peace today — what we (and others) call "authoritarian populism."  This unit contains a series of posts explaining what this is, and how and why it has developed in the U.S. and elsewhere. Then we will be utilizing the MPP approach to explore avenues for reversing or resisting such tendencies.
   
• Unit  8: MPP-based Strategies for Addressing the Authoritarian Populism Problem - Seminar 7 introduced and explained the nature of the "Authoritarian Populism Problem."  In this seminar we introduce a series of posts that begin to explore ways to constructively address the problem.
   
• Unit 9: The 2020 US Election – What Happens When We Have an Election That Both Sides Absolutely Positively Can't Afford to Lose? - This was written in the months before the U.S. 2020 election, which pitted Joe Biden on the Democratic side versus Donald Trump on the Republican side.  Hyper-polarization had been building throught the Trump presidency and was escalating even further from the campaign.  This seminar looks at the threats that created, and ways to diminish them as well.
   
• Unit 10: The Biden Years – Saving Democracy and Biden’s Challenge to the Conflict and Peacebuilding Fields - This was written shortly after Joe Biden's inauguration speech which promised to pull America back together.  We reflect on what it would take to do that.
   
• Unit 11: Challenging "Bad-Faith" Actors Who Seek to Amplify and Exploit Our Conflicts - Traditionally, the conflict and peacebuilding field has concentrated on supporting the good-faith efforts of citizens trying to find a way to move beyond their differences and build a society in which everyone would like to live. But we also need to contend with Bad-Faith Actors who seek to undermine these efforts and drive people apart.

Topic Area 4: Constructive Confrontation - This fourth Frontiers Topic Area builds on our earlier "Constructive Confrontation Initiative." Unlike the other topic areas, which combine several individual Conflict Frontiers Seminars, this Topic Area only has one seminar of the same name.

• Unit 12: Constructive Confrontation - The purpose of this seminar is to highlight what we mean by the term “constructive confrontation,” to (briefly) explain how it is different from what most advocates are doing now, and to explain things that everyone – including YOU! – can do to confront YOUR personal and our societal conflicts more constructively.

Continuing development of "Frontiers Ideas."

We began the Conflict Frontiers and Conflict Fundamentals Seminars in 2016, when the hyper-polarization between the left and the right in the U.S. was heating up with the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Obviously, the problem of hyper-polarization and the resultant destructive politics has only gained speed since then. We are no longer adding material to the Conflict Frontiers Seminar, but we are adding material two to three times a week to a Substack Newsetter which is copied, as well, on BI.  We have also developed a new Guide to Constructive Conflict which is a combination of the Conflict Frontiers and Conflict Fundamentals Seminars, along with the best materials from our Newsletters and our Colleague, News, and Opinion posts.