SEASON 1: EPISODE 1 TRANSCRIPT

No Shouting Allowed

Gov. Bill Haslam: One of the things I'm committed to is not being somebody whose world gets narrower as I get older and I want my life to get broader. And your life gets narrower when you only listen to certain things or get people to tell you what you already believe to be true. And there's a lot of hard issues that I know where I stand, but also know I need to understand the other side of the argument better than I do.

Dr. Greg Jones: Our world is facing significant challenges and at every turn another conflict seems to await. Yet we survive, we overcome, we even thrive by relying on an intangible and undeniable gift, hope. It fills us, connects us, highlights our individual purpose and unites us in the goal to do more together. Hope fuels us toward flourishing as people and as a community. My name is Greg Jones, president of Belmont University, and I'm honored to be your guide through candid conversations with people who demonstrate what it really means to live with hope and lean into the lessons they've picked up along their journey. They are The Hope People.

Today I'm joined by two amazing champions of hope, former Tennessee Governors, Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam, from opposite sides of the political aisle, share stories from their unlikely friendship through their podcast, You Might Be Right, a show featuring civil conversations about tough topics.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: I think that an essential element of hope is having the opportunity to see a larger world. There's just so many different ways of living your life and seeing our world, and that's part of the wonderful thing about being a human being.

Dr. Greg Jones: These two agents of hope are inspiring the next generation of leaders in government, public policy and public service. They remind us that the most important issues facing the country today can be met with empathy to find common ground.

You both have great reputations as agents of hope, of people who've been problem solvers, whether that's been in business or in politics and the roles that you've played. How have you sustained that sense of hopefulness and looking at the good and focusing on solutions rather than being in a reactive mode or just in a managerial mode? How have you continued to lead and stay focused on that hope in your spirit?

Gov. Bill Haslam: The main takeaway I have from being able to be a mayor for almost eight years and a governor for eight years is the enormous amount of people who truly care. And so you go to some small community in Tennessee and the number of people who really care about their hometown is amazing and encouraging. And the same thing across the state, I just always choose to be way more impressed and encouraged by the percentage of people who care versus the small number of people who feel self-centered, narcissistic and just want their side to win.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: We're both people whose lives were complete without being governor or mayor. And so it was not something that I think for either of us we sort of thought about when we were in kindergarten, someday I wanted to be governor. In a way that kind of frees you up, it's not so much of your being and your personality to hold an office. And I've got eight years here I hope and I want to accomplish some things that are meaningful to me. And if I don't get reelected, I'll be sad for two days, but the world is not going to change and my life is not a disaster as a result of that. And I think people are responsive to that. I mean, I had the experience when I first came in as a governor, having to deal with Medicaid and take some really tough actions. And I had Democrats come in, I'm a Democrat, come in and talk to me and say, "This is awful and you're not even going to be renominated, let alone reelected." I kind of shrugged my shoulders and did what I thought I had to do. And in the end it was not an issue at all. I mean, it was like people, I think, ended up, whatever their opinions on the issue, respecting that someone was trying to solve a problem, maybe not exactly the way they thought it ought to be solved, but trying to solve it for the right reasons. It wasn't about getting reelected or getting publicity, it was about trying to solve the problem and that really encouraged me tremendously.

Dr. Greg Jones: I want to turn to the theme of friendship. Bill, last fall you joined us at our Hope Summit at Belmont and spent time talking with Anderson Spickard, the dear friend of yours and the dean of our College of Medicine. And I was really moved by the impact that that friendship has had in both of your lives, helping Anderson go through a season of suffering. How did friendship enable you to be a better person and leader?

Gov. Bill Haslam: One of the things, I think Phil will say this too, one of the things about being in public office is, and not unlike being a university president, everybody has an opinion about you. If you're the college president, the governor, the football coach, the pastor, you're in a very public visible role, everybody has an opinion and you just have to get used to that. And one of the things that helps you get past the fact that there's a whole lot of people that don't like you or like what you're doing is to have people who like you regardless. And I've just been blessed to have a number of close friends in my life that I would argue have been incredibly beneficial, back when I was the 30-year-old business guy too, but maybe never more than when you're running for office and in office and you have that visibility and vulnerability that comes from being in a public spot, and so you learn to treasure those friends.

Dr. Greg Jones: Phil, talk about how you and Bill became friends. It's a kind of unlikely friendship, particularly in this day and age, a Democrat and a Republican, and yet you've become good friends. And I remember at a Rotary Club luncheon where David Plazas was interviewing the two of you and he kept trying to get you all into a fight and you pretty well resisted it. Talk about the friendship that seems rather unlikely in these times we live in now.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: Yeah, I think it really started when Bill was mayor of Knoxville and I was governor and there were some things we had to do together, basically make road projects in Knoxville and things like that. And sometimes you just find somebody and you like them and you just say, "This is a person whose view of the world is one that I respect and the things that he's done or she's done, I really respect." And I think the friendship just kind of grew over time. I'm very appreciative of the fact that generally when somebody comes into office following somebody else of a different party, they lay all of the problems they're facing on their predecessor and so on. And Bill has been more than generous to me, I think out of friendship and so on, and I've tried to do the same in return. I also think the experience of the podcast we've been working on together has put us together more than we've been in the past. And he's a good guy, he's a little mixed up on his politics, but he's a good guy.

Gov. Bill Haslam: I've actually thought about this a little bit. When you follow somebody in office, you learn a lot about them. You just do because you see what they prioritize and what they did. I'm a Republican and will argue all day long about, well, I think that's right, but I don't divide the political world into Republicans and Democrats are right and left. I divide into people who are in it just for the politics of it and they're there to make a point, not make a difference, as we say, and then people who really are there to make a difference. And I knew by watching him and then by following him, Phil really was there to make a difference and to try to leave Tennessee a better place than he found it. And I just never saw any hint that he was doing it for any reason other than that. And so in a world where too many people are doing things for not so good reasons, for purely political reasons, it's just kind of refreshing, even if you don't agree with all their ends when, they really are doing it for what they think is the right outcome, you appreciate that.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: I have almost exactly the same feeling, which is when you're out of the governor's office and watching a new governor, I mean, you're a pretty sophisticated observer of what they do. You've been there and lived all those kinds of issues, and I just came to conclusion this is a guy who is doing this for the right reasons. He genuinely caress about it. We might differ on what's the strategy to achieve this end, but I think we probably wouldn't disagree on what the ends were and what we were trying to accomplish. But I like to think that if you looked around a little bit, that this kind of a friendship is not unique, that there are plenty of other places in the country where it certainly could exist.

Dr. Greg Jones: Although we haven't been shining a light on those kinds of unlikely friendships. And I think often and quote often a scholar from the middle decades of the 20th century, John Courtney Murray, a Jesuit who said what he longed for most was a meaningful disagreement, because it sharpened his own thinking. Your podcast is built on that kind of principle of bridge building, by saying, with some humility, you might be right. Talk about why you launched the podcast and why you think it's so important in this time to be focused in a way that says the other person might be right.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: Well, I think first of all, the original idea was Bill's and when we started and still, we're experimenting, I mean, it's like is this meaningful, is anybody going to be interested in this kind of an approach? I think what I've found with the feedback we've gotten is that it's less about the individual issues and people doing it. It's just people like the idea of two people with different, somewhat different worldviews trying to consider some of these issues.

I mean, my feeling is that your worldview, and I can put it simply on a liberal conservative axis kind of thing, there's always going to be that. I mean, people are programmed by everything, from genes to their background and so on, to look at things in a certain kind of way. We've got to, as a country, figure out how to not let that be destabilizing, that there are different people that are not ... neither one's right or wrong, they're just different ways you look at the world, and having, as Bill said, some humility about that. I have a mantle piece in a cottage that I've got, that I had carved into it a quote from 16th century, which is, "It's no one dream that pleases these all." That was Ben Johnson. And I just keep that in mind that there's just so many different ways of living your life and seeing your world, and that's part of the wonderful thing about being a human being.

Gov. Bill Haslam: What first appealed to me about this idea is I talked to so many people that they don't really know exactly what they think about gun control or immigration or abortion, or maybe they know what they think, but they hadn't really understood the other side of the argument. And my original idea for this podcast was to call it No Shouting Allowed, because you see these cable news, talk shows where they have people yelling at each other and I think, well, nobody's listening to that. I heard so many people saying, "I just kind of want to understand the argument better." And so what we're trying to do is have something that people understand on these difficult issues that are separating us as a country, maybe if I just understood the argument better and approach it with a little humility, we might end up in a better place.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: I think one of the things we've found in this is that when you have people who have got sighted views, very distinct views on these issues, if you don't do something that just triggers the automatic response, you get a lot more interesting conversation. If you're talking about gun control and your first question is, well, do you believe in the Second Amendment or not? You don't ever get beyond that. I mean, it's just like there's a programmed response that goes with that. But if we did, as Bill did in that particular interview, say, "Look, there was 30 or 40,000 people that were killed by guns in America last year and we can all agree that's not good. Now let's talk about is there anything we can do about it, and if so what?"

Dr. Greg Jones: I want to turn the tables on you all. You get to ask about questions to the experts on your podcast. Is there a story of where You Might Be Right actually changed your view as you listened to somebody else?

Gov. Phil Bredesen: Lots of times. I actually remember very early on in my political career, which is when I was mayor, I remember very well the first time that happened where I just completely changed around. And I had become very enamored of magnet schools and there's some excellent ones in Nashville and really wanted to dramatically expand that program as mayor. And I had a small group of teachers come in and see me and say, "Please don't do this. What you're going to do, I understand the rationale, what you're going to do is create a two class school system where all of the best students and the parents who care most about what their kids do are going to be in one system and everybody else is going to be in another." And it was a completely fresh way of looking at it for me, it completely changed my mind on the issue. I remember that very vividly.

Gov. Bill Haslam: For mine, one of the things that when you're elected governor, all of a sudden you're dealing with a wide range of things, from building roads to mental health issues, to educating four-year olds and PhD students. I mean, just the range is almost breathtaking. You run for governor to do a lot of things, but then you inherit a lot of other things that really weren't on your radar screen. One of those for me was the whole issue around judicial sentencing. I just had never had that much, fortunately, interaction with court systems and legal. And through a fairly complex set of circumstances, in the last year ended up dealing with a lot of pardons, exonerations and clemencies and all that, but started a lot of sentencing issues and I became convinced over time that particularly with younger people, we were sentencing far too many people for far too long, and the length of sentencing, particularly around juveniles became something that I think we've gotten wrong.

Dr. Greg Jones: Part of what strikes me that people admire about both of you is that you're good listeners. What has the show itself done in terms of shaping your own imagination as you listen to each other and to your guests on the podcast?

Gov. Phil Bredesen: For me, I mean, I think on any number of these issues, and they're all ones that I feel I know something about. I mean, just they're ones you've been dealing with and I have a normal citizen's interest in reading the newspapers and magazines and that kind of thing, but it's hard to think of one where I didn't come away with some kind of new perspective on things. We were just talking a moment about gun control and the conservative who was on talking about that talked about how this country has always been a violent country compared to European countries, and he had some statistics about these various things. And it just sort of struck me, if that's right and I checked it out, that does put a little different face on the issue and maybe on what the solutions to the issue are or what's practical and not. It's been an education.

Gov. Bill Haslam: One of the things I'm committed to is not being somebody whose world gets narrower as I get older and I want my life to get broader. And your life gets narrow when you only listen to certain things or get people to tell you what you already believe to be true. And we also just had an issue on artificial intelligence, I don't know what I think. I don't understand how it works, I barely understand what it is and certainly don't understand all the ramifications. But I want to start wrestling with that so as that issue does grow in importance, I have a little bit better fundamental understanding. And I feel that way about a lot of things. There's a lot of hard issues that I know where I stand, but also know I need to understand the other side of the argument better than I do.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: As someone, I don't remember who, the quote said, "You can learn a lot by just listening."

Dr. Greg Jones: Both of you, since you stepped out of public office, have maintained a real focus on the future and investing and growing and learning. One of the things we are trying to do with students at Belmont is to develop what we call an entrepreneurial mindset, to keep you focused on the future and that sense of learning throughout life and growing. How has your experience in business and entrepreneurship shaped that imagination and how do you see it continuing to do so in this third quarter, we'll say you're in?

Gov. Phil Bredesen: There's nothing that gives me more pleasure, and this is just a personality core, but it's just creating something where something didn't exist before. I never got to take art in school because art was something that you took if you weren't going to college and you took art and shop, and in a little rural school. But I think if I had, I think I easily could have ended up in that world as well, but just this need to create something where it wasn't before. And it gives me a lot of pleasure to start a company and frankly running for office and particularly if you're like me, you're from the other part of the country and all this kind of stuff. I mean, it's kind of entrepreneurship, which you're trying to solve a problem that hasn't been solved before and find ways to do it. But that kind of a problem solving and creating new things approach, it expresses itself in a lot of different ways.

Gov. Bill Haslam: Phil truly is the entrepreneur of the two of us. I mean, he started three or four companies that have been very successful and just in this area. I like to see things build and grow. I'm one of those people that everybody hates to ... they have a remodeling project, I actually like it because I love to come home and like, "Hey, look, wow, look what they did today." I just like that idea of growth. I do think I'm going to circle back to sort of where you started with this idea of hope and the importance of hope for all of us. My dad is this incurable optimist, but that optimism is based in hope and I think most successful people I know have a hope that springs into other things. In his case, it springs into an optimism like, we can solve that problem, we can grow this business. And I think I've hopefully inherited a little bit of that, but I do think hope is the ultimate foundation for entrepreneurialism of all kinds.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: I think that an essential element of hope is having the opportunity to see a larger world. I mean, I think one of the things that can be most important for kids who grow up in very restricted circumstances is just understanding what the rest of the world ... because I mean, that kind of is the basis for creating hope, that you can do something about it. And again, I grew up in a small rural community, but fortunately in a family that was very focused on what was going on nationally and had teachers who were very good about that. A different sort of upbringing where that stuff was concealed from you in a way or not important, I think produces a very different outcome. I just really think a precursor to having the kind of hope you described is having some understanding of what the rest of the world out there and the kinds of things you can hope for consists of.

Dr. Greg Jones: That also suggests the importance of empathy and the ability to care for and about other people. How does empathy play a role in your leadership?

Gov. Bill Haslam: If you boil it down, if people say, "How do we get to where we are as a country in our politics?" I actually think at the root of that is a total loss of the ability to empathize with people who don't think like we do. And there's been surveys that show what we have is this increasing sense that not just the other side's wrong, but they're wrong with bad motives. And so you get there when you can't empathize at all for somebody else's life experiences. So I hit the lottery when it came to being raised by parents who love me really well. I've had to learn that unfortunately, that's not most people's experience. So to learn to understand that and empathize with that has been a key part of my learning as I've grown.

Dr. Greg Jones: We're in a time of fragmentation and polarization where people are on their heels a lot and defining themselves more by what they're against than what they're for. I want to just focus in on where you see signs of hope in your own lives.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: I keep looking at just people I know, getting outside of the chat of news and blogs and everything else. I grew up in a very large extended family up in upstate New York. It's a very working class community and family and stuff. I know a lot of those people who have got some of these more extreme negative opinions, but underneath it, I mean, they're very decent loving people who do great jobs for their families. And my hope really is in the essential humanity that I think so many of these people have, will in the end triumph over this nonsense.

Gov. Bill Haslam: It's interesting, I'm actually involved in one of the presidential campaigns now, and when you go look at the data around people who are hyper politically involved, it can be a little discouraging no matter what side you're on, because you see how polarized and partisan everyone is and not just the other side is wrong, but they're wrong and they're bad people. And then I go to places, like I go to speak at a Rotary Club and I've started almost defining people as like, well, they're a Rotary Club person or they're a political party person and there's a world of difference. And a lot of the world is just really frustrated and exhausted by the politics of today, and yet I think some of the louder voices are discouraging everyone else. So if we can get away just from who's yelling the loudest and go have conversations with where most people are, I think you'll come away encouraged.

Gov. Phil Bredesen: I think it's important to remember how few people it actually is who are presenting the noise that we all hear. I mean, there's a huge premium on to get your views out there, you need to be outrageous and so on. It's a small group of people and we need to remember that.

Dr. Greg Jones: Part of what strikes me about both of you is that you've been oriented towards service, serving others, serving the state, serving your community, and enabling other people to flourish, which seems to me to be central to the idea of hopefulness and people focused on the future focused. What instilled that in you?

Gov. Phil Bredesen: I grew up with my grandmother who had 11 children, who all lived in the same small rural area. So I mean, I grew up in this big extended family. So I think the idea of just your life is in part about serving other people and helping other people, and it started out with family members, but it's a natural extension then into a wider group. Also, I think when there's that many people you know that intimately, it just gives you a lot more empathy for what some of the people in the world are really going through. And if you can find ways to help them, you should.

Gov. Bill Haslam: I always think the best lessons are caught, not taught. I hit the lottery when it came to growing up with a great role model, but my dad literally today is still my hero, and he's 92 and a half. And one of the things he taught us early is the scriptural admonition of those to whom much is given much is ... he said, "Everybody says it's expected, but it's required." Much is required. Those whom much is given much is required. And so I just grew up with that mentality and watching the way he gave of his time and resources and everything else. And that's also who introduced me to politics. He actually never ran himself, but he was involved a lot of things because he says, "Hey, this stuff really matters and I want to help people get elected who really want to serve. And so it's just a good reminder for all of us, the effectiveness of a role model or a mentor really never goes away.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's great. As you look back on your career, business, politics, governance, leadership, what advice would you have to a young person that you wish you had had when you were first starting out?

Gov. Phil Bredesen: For me, the issue was, and what I say to somebody is to really embrace where you came from. I mean, I grew up in this rural community in a family, my grandmother had a sixth grade education and had 11 children, and one of them had a college degree from the military and stuff. And when I got off to Harvard, I spent all my time trying to put that behind me. And I think when things really started working for me was I said, "No, no, you are who you are, and the background you had is one that has a lot of values that will serve you well in whatever you do." But I think that notion of really embracing who you are and building on that, as opposed to trying to reinvent yourself in some way, I would very much suggest to anyone.

Gov. Bill Haslam: The first thing that came to mind is what I'll stick with, and I stole it from a good friend of mine who unfortunately got cancer and died way too early, but he had a saying that everyone walks with a limp and we only understand our own problems. And everyone around us is walking with a limp of some type, and that includes us too. And if you kind of start there, then hopefully you revert to a more humility based look at life that I think changes everything.

Dr. Greg Jones: Thank you for participating in this conversation with The Hope People. Our aim is to inspire you to become an agent of hope yourself and to help us cultivate a sense of wellbeing for all. To join our mission and learn more about this show, visit thehopepeoplepodcast.com. If you enjoyed this conversation, remember to rate and review wherever you get your audio content.