Hope Is My Middle Name
by Kate Tucker
We're striking out across the country in search of hope, talking with everyday Americans finding innovative, often unconventional ways to build resilience, build community, build hope. Whether designing a town for the homeless, cleaning up boatloads of trash in the bayou, bringing folks out of incarceration and addiction, transforming coal mines into farmlands, or saving the planet to save our lives, these people remind us that we too can make a difference in our own unique way. I'm Kate Tucker, and HOPE is my middle name.
Episodes
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The Unbreakable Bond: Service Dogs and Their Life-Saving Impact with Jennifer Arnold
Educating dogs to change the world, that’s the work of Canine Assistants founded in 1991 by Jennifer Arnold, in the wake of her father’s unexpected death and her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at age 16. Fueled by legacy and limitation, Jennifer funded her scrappy startup with wide-ranging odd...
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Hope and Healing for Kids and Families Living with Autism: Dr. Theresa Hamlin
“What happens here matters everywhere” is the motto for The Center for Discovery, tucked away in the hills of upstate New York, where for the past forty years Dr. Theresa Hamlin has been hard at work revolutionizing care for people with autism and other complex needs. With a robust team of...
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Empowering Art and Community In and Out of Prison: Rahsaan “New York” Thomas
What if art could build a bridge from incarceration to liberation? For Rahsaan “New York” Thomas the road was long, but he turned a 55 to life prison sentence into an opportunity. Through art, he would empower fellow incarcerated artists to transcend the limits of their sentences, and maybe even...
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A Tornado Destroyed Greensburg So They Rebuilt as America’s Greenest Town
Growing up on a farm in Kansas, Bob Dixson never dreamed of being mayor. But when a tornado leveled 95% of his small town he came out of retirement and into rebuilding from the rubble, a thriving climate resilient community. Today Greensburg is America’s greenest town, powered entirely by…
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Veterans Turning PTSD into Posttraumatic Growth with Boulder Crest’s Ken Falke
Ken Falke loves jumping out of airplanes. As a 21-year veteran bomb disposal specialist in the U.S. Navy, he’s a high risk, high pressure kind of guy. But when a jump went bad at age 27, he found himself out of commission and staring down a discharge. At that moment, Ken faced a decision he says...
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From Teen Motherhood to Saving Lives with Nurse-Family Partnership’s Maria Rush
Sometimes it just takes a moment to change someone’s life. That’s what Maria Rush understands as a nurse advocating for mothers and babies in Cleveland, Ohio. Maria has a superhero-sized calling, born from a near-death experience during childbirth at the age of fifteen. She’s dedicated her life…
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Elevating Teachers and Their Exponential Impact with Nínive Calegari
Why aren’t we paying teachers for their exponential impact? We all have teachers who have made a difference in our lives and we might be surprised to learn how little they are compensated. In fact, 62% of parents advise against a career in education due to this wage gap. Teacher morale is the...
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Building Bridges Across America: The American Exchange Project with David McCullough III
Do you think America is more divided than ever? Do you feel we’re more different than we are alike? What would happen if you took a free week-long trip to a community vastly different from your own? And then brought folks from that far off town to your neighborhood? These are the questions we’re...
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Transforming Neighborhoods: The Radical Hospitality of Deep Listening with De'Amon Harges
From dyslexia to deep listening, De'Amon Harges transformed his life and the life of his Indianapolis neighborhood by practicing radical hospitality. As the “Original Roving Listener,” he would go door to door asking folks to tell him their stories. In listening, De'Amon discovered such a wealth…
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Connecting Faith and Science to Solve the Climate Crisis with Katharine Hayhoe
Chief Scientist at the Nature Conservancy, climate researcher, “Science Mom,” and evangelical Christian, Katharine Hayhoe is not out to save the planet, she’s out to save us from the devastating impacts of climate change. As a scientist, Katharine knows that the earth will adapt to global…
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Hope Is My Middle Name: Stories that Inspire Hope
Welcome to Hope Is My Middle Name, the podcast where Kate Tucker interviews everyday Americans doing big daring things to make the world a little better. Hope can be complicated these days, and hearing their stories reminds us that we too can make a difference, wherever we are. Join us for a new...
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What’s in the Water: West Virginia’s WaterKeeper on the Future of Appalachia’s Rivers
Almost Heaven, West Virginia isn’t just coal mines and country roads. Called the Birthplace of Rivers, the state sits on the Eastern Continental Divide, where 40 rivers and 56,000 miles of streams provide drinking water for millions of people from the Chesapeake Bay out to the Gulf of Mexico. And...
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Fighting Wildfires with 5,000 Rescue Goats
Terri Oyarzun can’t imagine life without goats. She grew up with goats, she met her husband out herding goats, and together they rescued 55 “Charlie Brown” goats and trained them to fight wildfires. Today, the 5,000 strong Goats R Us herd works with government agencies, universities, and...
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Building Climate Resilience in a Coastal Florida Floodplain
What do you do when your hometown has been ranked in the top 4 US cities most vulnerable to coastal flooding? If you’re Nancy Metayer Bowen, you run for office. And you become the first Haitian-American to be elected to office in Coral Springs, Florida. Now as a city commissioner, Nancy is hard…
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Landing a Life-Changing Job Out of Prison and Addiction
Out of prison and addiction into a full-time job with big-time responsibility, Kyle Wedge transformed his life in no small way, with the help of a whole host of folks who had faced that same hard recovery. Now, as Field Operations Manager at MaineWorks, he is helping people move from…
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Transforming a Toxic Wasteland into a Wildlife Haven
Where’s your creek? Atlanta’s own Sally Sears asks, as she spills the tea on how she and her neighbors discovered an urban paradise, hidden in swaths of kudzu, swamped with sewage and asbestos, but there nonetheless, waiting for them to reclaim it. This is the story of Zonolite Park, an…
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A Radical Take on Helping the Homeless
When a young Alan Graham chided a homeless man panhandling next to a taco stand in Austin, he could not have imagined that 36 years later he’d be living in a vibrant neighborhood of formerly homeless people, a neighborhood that he built. In 1998, real estate developer Alan Graham launched Mobile...
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How a Philly Bouncer Became an Organic Farmer
Kegan Hilaire was hard at work as a bouncer in Philly, with no plans to become an organic farmer. Until one day, he cracked open a pasture-raised egg with an impossibly orange yolk and he wondered, “Why is this egg so much better than the ones in the grocery store?” This is the story of a…
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Doug Naselroad: Building Instruments to Recover from Floods and Addiction in Appalachia
Doug Naselroad says, “Recovery from a substance abuse disorder is not that different than recovery from a catastrophic disaster. It's a work that you're going to be doing for the rest of your life.” That understanding energizes Doug’s work helping people recover from addiction by teaching them to...
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Bayou Dave: Cleaning Up Trash to Save the World
Bayou Dave, aka David Rivers, has a calling. It involves a whole lot of trash and a vision for a clean, healthy, vibrant world that his kids can grow up in. So every day, he goes out on Houston’s Buffalo Bayou on a big makeshift barge and picks up trash—167 dump truck loads every year. He’s been...
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Betty Reid Soskin: Remembering a History for All Americans in Our National Parks
Betty Reid Soskin became a park ranger at the age of 85, bringing a wealth of experience to the National Park Service. As Betty says, “What gets remembered is a function of who’s in the room doing the remembering,” and Betty’s history is helping other untold stories come to light at Rosie the...
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Mary Goddard: Restoring Native Culture with Regenerative Tourism in Alaska
In the age of TikTok and Instagram, it seems there’s no place we haven’t seen, but if you’ve ever been to Alaska, you know there’s a whole lotta world left to discover—a world on the forefront of climate change, the energy transition, advocacy for Native rights, and... regenerative tourism.…
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Kevin Berthia & Kevin Briggs: Listening to Understand the Mental Health Crisis
Kevin Berthia and Kevin Briggs are an unlikely pair. But their friendship saves lives. And it was hard won, founded on what matters – mutual respect, trust, and listening. They met when Sergeant Briggs was in the state highway patrol and Kevin Berthia was jumping off a bridge. Today they stand…
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Tim & Beth Reese: Building Small Town Resilience in West Virginia
Are America’s small towns in decline? Not if you ask Beth and Tim Reese. They’re part of a powerful revitalization effort in Capon Bridge, West Virginia, a town of 400 nestled on the Cacapon River, at the “Gateway to the Mountains” of Appalachia. The community of Capon Bridge believes that...
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Ron Pringle: An American Dream to End Hunger
Ron Pringle believes in a hunger-free America. And he’s determined to help build it. But with more than 38 million people, including 12 million children, experiencing food insecurity in the United States, it could take a lifetime. Ron's powerful personal story energizes his work as CEO of...
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John Christian Phifer: Finding Life in Death with Natural Burial
John Christian Phifer’s life revolves around death. He performed his first burial at the age of six, wrapping a grasshopper in a shroud of leaves, and today he digs bigger graves on a sweeping nature preserve in the hills of Tennessee. With each funeral, the land is restored and loved ones have...
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A Tale of Two Truckers: Hauling Hope Across America
Truckers make the world go round, especially these days with serious supply chain disruptions, the ongoing crisis of the pandemic, and the ever-increasing importance of front-line workers. We talk with two truckers out there delivering hope and crucial supplies on rough roads, in bad weather, in...
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George Patterson: From Mine Land to Farmland
Twenty-six year-old farmer George Patterson expands on his family’s coal-mining heritage with a new enterprise—reclaiming abandoned mine land to grow food and restore the land for generations to come. When George’s dad told him he could go to business school or go into business, he set up shop in…
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Jon Turner: Veteran on a Life-Giving Mission
Iraq War veteran Jon Turner takes us from an ambush in Ramadi to a homestead in Vermont, where he’s found a way to heal a traumatic brain injury through farming. Hands in the dirt, boots on the ground, Jon Turner is on a mission to build community and serve our country as a farmer, father…
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Brittany Comins: Hiking to Healing on the Appalachian Trail
Grief can make us do the wildest things, and sometimes it takes getting lost in the middle of nowhere to find where we belong. For our debut episode, we follow long-distance hiker Brittany Comins on a 2,000 mile journey through loss, gratitude, and the great outdoors. Hosted by Kate Tucker, Hope…
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Hope Is My Middle Name Trailer
We’re striking out across the country in search of hope, bringing you voices of people doing big daring things to make the world better, even in the most challenging of times. These people give me hope, and I think they'll give you hope too. I’m Kate Tucker, and Hope is My Middle Name.
About this show
We're striking out across the country in search of hope, talking with everyday Americans finding innovative, often unconventional ways to build resilience, build community, build hope. Whether designing a town for the homeless, cleaning up boatloads of trash in the bayou, bringing folks out of incarceration and addiction, transforming coal mines into farmlands, or saving the planet to save our lives, these people remind us that we too can make a difference in our own unique way. I'm Kate Tucker, and HOPE is my middle name.
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Kate Tucker
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