Hope Is My Middle Name

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 jobs and a donation bucket at the local Walmart. To date, the non-profit has placed over 3,000 service d...

“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 researchers, Dr. Hamlin developed the HealthE6 model, a holistic approach to calibrating brain, body, and env...

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 one day walk free, like Rahsaan did in 2023.  Today Rahsaan directs Empowerment Avenue, a non-prof...

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 renewable energy with smart infrastructure for water conservation, and the most LEED-certified buildings per c...

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 all trauma survivors must make – he chose to be a victor, not a victim.  What seemed like the end,...

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 to saving mothers and their babies just like the nurse who took a moment to see what Maria truly needed...

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 lowest in our lifetime. Yet we know that education is so important when it comes to ensuring the health of...

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 exploring on the new episode of Hope Is My Middle Name with the fabulous David McCullough III, co...

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 of talent and opportunity on his street that he started a consulting company with his neighbors. Today,...

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 warming, but the conditions, if left unchecked, will ultimately lead to our extinction. As a Christian, she vi...

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 season of Hope Is My Middle Name, every Tuesday now through December.  New to Hope? Start w...

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 yet, while West Virginia serves the country with her pristine headwater streams, there are entir...

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 communities to find innovative solutions for fire control and prevention, while advancing animal husbandry and...

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 at work, what storms may come – hurricanes, Imposter Syndrome, sea level rise – building a mor...

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 incarceration and addiction into aliveness and connection.  Founded in 2010 by Margo Walsh, MaineWorks is an e...

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 industrial wasteland abandoned for decades, declared a brownfield by the EPA, only to be rescued by a hand...

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 Loaves and Fishes to help communities offer food, housing, and employment for neighbors coming up...

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 nightclub bouncer who found himself in the middle of a field with a handful of seeds and a dream to bring heal...

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 build stringed instruments. Doug lives in the small town of Hindman, Kentucky, which on July 28, 2022...

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 called King of the Bayou, and he notices every little shift in the ecosystem. To hear him talk about th...

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 Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. From working in a Jim Cr...

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. Because in the midst of all that Alaskans are navigating, including challenges with transportation, supply c...

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 side by side as suicide prevention advocates, helping people know they’re not alone, that there is hope a...

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 restoring old buildings, rather than tearing them down, attracts young people and new businesses, like the Fa...

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 Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, a massive force for good in North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham area, growing and servin...