Glen and April talk with Dr. Sybil Hampton, who at 15 became one of a small group of Black students to integrate Little Rock Central High School in the years following the Little Rock Nine. Hampton describes the family and church network that prepared her for that role — her parents' work with the NAACP, her paper route for the Arkansas State Press, and a home life built around what she calls "the long game." She explains how the Little Rock School Board's pupil placement law forced Black students through a screening process before they could enroll, and how two board members opposed her admission after she was quoted defending fellow students. Hampton was placed as the only Black student in her grade, sat through three years in which almost no classmate spoke to her, and describes the silence as harder to endure than open hostility. She talks candidly about what carried her through it — her parents' insistence that she never cry at school, and the "foot soldier" framing her father gave her, distinguishing the quiet work of desegregation from the more visible roles of the Little Rock Nine.

In the second part of our conversation, Dr. Hampton traces her path from Central High to a career spent almost entirely helping other people find their footing. She talks about arriving at Earlham College and discovering, for the first time, that she wasn't the strongest student in the room — graduating as a C+ student and doubting she could go to graduate school at all. A conversation with a professor at the University of Chicago, and later a decision to leave her first marriage and move to New York on her own, opened a career in higher education administration that took her to Wisconsin, Iona College, and Southwestern University, mostly working with students who didn't fit traditional admissions criteria. Hampton then explains what drew her back to Arkansas after three decades away — the presidency of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation — and describes a major project she led: a four-year effort with UALR and the Japanese American National Museum documenting the wartime internment of Japanese Americans at Rohwer and Jerome, Arkansas. She reflects on why she resists being called a leader, and what she thinks that word obscures about how change actually happens.

In the final part of our conversation, Dr. Hampton turns to what she's learned about building community across division. She talks about what it means to make someone feel seen — a lesson she says she learned by living through three years when almost no one looked her in the eye — and about a moment decades later, at her 50th high school reunion, when a former classmate spoke up on her behalf and changed the room. Glen and April ask her directly about current divisions, including concerns in the Jewish community following the war in Gaza, and Hampton talks about the difficulty of hearing criticism of one's own community without immediately going on the defensive. She introduces the idea of a "bridge too far" — the point at which a community finally decides to act, as Little Rock's business leaders did after federal troops arrived in 1957 — and closes with her thoughts on hope, purpose, and what she'd say to people who feel too discouraged by today's politics to stay engaged.

This episode is an audio only version of our TV program "A Braver Arkansas," a TV partnership between Braver Angels Arkansas and Arkansas TV, Arkansas's public television network. It was first aired August 18, 2026. A Braver Arkansaspremiered Tuesday, July 7, 2026, at 6 p.m. on Arkansas TV. A new episode is shown every two weeks, and all episodes are available on demand after they air by searching for the show A Braver Arkansas in the Public Affairs section of the Arkansas TV YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/@arkansastv.

In this episode, hosts April Chatham-Carpenter and Glen White open by demonstrating something Braver Angels calls the LAPP skills — Listen, Acknowledge/Agree, Pivot, Perspective — including an unscripted admission from Glen about times he's gotten it wrong, and a live role-play on a genuinely divisive topic that shows how the skills work (and don't) in real time. Then they sit down with Dawn Groover, a retired hospice nurse from Carroll County who found Braver Angels while she was losing the ability to talk to her own sons about politics. What she describes isn't a tidy fix — it's a slow, sometimes humbling process that changed how she listens, what she reads, and eventually where she'd place herself on the political spectrum. She's since helped start a new Braver Angels alliance in Northwest Arkansas. Glen and April close with a franker-than-usual discussion of the psychology behind why these conversations are so hard in the first place.

Check out Part 1 of our On The Other Hand podcast conversation with Dr. Daniel Fudge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of the Ozarks, Glen and April talk with Daniel about the winding path that took him from studying English and business at UA Fort Smith to a political science PhD at Ole Miss—including a brief detour toward law school and a formative stint working both sides of the aisle during a 2012 campaign internship in Charlotte. That experience left him determined to teach politics without the "boogeyman" framing, and he explains how that shapes what happens in his classroom. Daniel also shares what he's seeing in student attitudes toward civic engagement right now—some surprising, some predictable—and points to a specific example of local civic energy in Fort Smith worth knowing about.

Check out Part 2 of our On The Other Hand podcast conversation with Dr. Daniel Fudge, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of the Ozarks. In this half, Glen and April dig into Daniel's work with Civic Arkansas and the Arkansas Collegiate Civic Leadership Academy, including how he keeps a program built on non-partisan ground rules, working even with speakers as different as a former Republican governor and a sitting Democratic state senator. Daniel offers a practical, Stoic-influenced framework for civic engagement he uses with students, then turns to a topic with real teeth: how the 24/7 news cycle is reshaping political trust, and a specific approach he recommends for sorting reliable information from noise. The conversation closes on a debate worth hearing in full — a proposal that would change who gets to vote in Arkansas primaries, and what Daniel thinks it would mean for an already low-turnout state.

In this episode (originally aired July 21, 2026 as "A Braver Arkansas," a TV partnership between Braver Angels Arkansas and Arkansas TV, Arkansas's public television network), we feature audio only from that program, in which Glen and April talk with Lisa McNeir, a retired psychologist and longtime member of Braver Angels Arkansas leadership, currently serving as the organization's statewide Alliance Co-chair. The conversation opens with Glen and April reflecting on moments that showed them this work actually makes a difference, along with some background on how Braver Angels Arkansas got started in 2017 and how its leadership is deliberately structured to keep Red and Blue voices equally represented. Lisa then joins to share a psychologist's perspective on polarization — what she sees underneath political disagreement that people outside that field tend to miss — her take on common stereotypes people hold about those on the "other side," what she's seen change in the people and groups she's worked with, and what she'd tell someone new to Braver Angels who wants to get better at respectful conversation across political lines. Glen and April close out with their own reactions to the conversation.

A Braver Arkansas premiered Tuesday, July 7, 2026 at 6 p.m. on Arkansas TV. A new episode is shown every two weeks, and all episodes are available on demand after they air by going to the Public Affairs section of the Arkansas TV YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/@arkansastv. Just look for the show A Braver Arkansas.

In part 2 of our conversation with John Patton, president of the Jimmy Buffett fan club Strange Birds of Little Rock, & Paul Tull, musician and Strange Birds member, John and Paul detail the community service work behind the Strange Birds' motto, including their long-running water station at the Little Rock Marathon, food drives with the Arkansas Foodbank, and recycling volunteer work with Keep Little Rock Beautiful at the Little Rock Zoo. They also describe the group’s support for veterans through the Arkansas Veterans Home and the new Fisher House in Little Rock — where Tull recounts helping fund a red guitar donated through singer-songwriter Thom Shepherd's Red Guitar Campaign. They also discuss the club's longtime support of Alzheimer's Arkansas, a cause tied to Buffett's own father, and how the group rotates its fundraising among several causes each year. Turning to Braver Angels' focus on bridging divides, Patton and Tull describe a club where members "check politics at the door," united instead by shared music, service, and what Tull calls the "sweat equity" of working side by side at events. They close with an invitation: the Strange Birds meet the third Thursday of each month at a local restaurant or bar, with more information available on Facebook and at lrphc.org.