In Northern Slant‘s inaugural podcast, Senator George Mitchell talks to Alina Utrata and Matt O’Neill.

Twenty years after he helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, Senator George Mitchell is still a man everyone in Northern Ireland wants to meet. 

Despite his commitments in the United States, Senator Mitchell travels to Northern Ireland quite regularly. This week, Senator Mitchell was at Queen’s University Belfast for a conference on global conflict co-hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice and the University Chicago. Despite his busy schedule, he agreed to sit down with Northern Slant for a conversation about the role of media in conflict communities, what he thinks about Northern Irish politics today, and advice for young people.

You can read a text transcript of the interview here.

If the Senator was tired of meeting people, he didn’t show it. The ever-patient negotiator, a smile lit up his face as we walked in and he asked each of us where we were from and how we liked Belfast. The team at Northern Slant had compiled some favorite articles for Senator Mitchell as a birthday present – he turned 85 last Monday. “My birthday! How nice!” He smiled, looking through the book.

Then we sat down, the view of Queen’s University Belfast courtyard visible through the window…

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Also published on Medium.