Welcome back to Kitty Reads Literature for Peace, a quiet act of daily storytelling in a noisy world. In this episode, Kitty O’Compost reads from the opening of Zadig, or Fate by Voltaire—one of the sharpest pens of the Enlightenment and a long-standing troublemaker for anyone allergic to truth or reason.

With her small town lilt, Kitty slows Voltaire down just enough for us to hear the wisdom beneath the wit. These brief readings are her daily warm-up for a larger assignment: CTRL–AI–DISARM, an upcoming Peace Is Here series on truth, power, and the systems shaping our future.

At the end of the episode, we return to The Next Peacelands, where Avis Kalfsbeek reads a real-time list of global warzones and arms suppliers. It is grounding, sobering, and quietly insistent—an invitation to stay awake, to stay human, and to stay committed to peace.