In Part 2 or our conversation with Dr. Kevin Heifner, local physician, writer and community activist, Kevin opens up about what genuine bridge-building actually looks like from the inside. He's enthusiastic about Braver Angels and its contributions, but he's equally blunt about what doesn't work: "performative peacemaking" — the kind of conflict avoidance that mistakes niceness for progress. Real dialogue, Kevin argues, requires sincerity, integrity, and the courage to engage difficult differences rather than paper over them. Then comes a moment of refreshing self-disclosure. When Kevin reached out to friends to brainstorm how to connect across political and social divides, he realized — mid-call — he had been operating under an unconscious bias. Hear from Kevin about this moment of honest self-reckoning, a process he says is essential before any meaningful conversation can happen with others. The episode also touches on religious diversity, the surprising common ground found between thinkers as different as Robbie George and Cornel West, and what it might take to build a more inclusive Arkansas — though Kevin is candid that he doesn't have all the answers. A conversation marked by humility, hard questions, and genuine hope.

In this first part of Glen and John’s interview with local physician, writer and community activist Dr. Kevin Heifner, we wondered: what does a nephrologist with 35 years of practice have to say about faith, politics, and the state of American civic life? Quite a lot, it turns out. Kevin talks about the community work that keeps him engaged beyond the exam room — and why the same ethic that drives him to treat every patient equally drives his passion for bridging divides in public life. Shaped by a father who traded the pulpit for philosophy, Kevin brings a nuanced, shades-of-gray perspective to questions of faith and social ethics, including his work with Good Faith Media and the Baptist Center for Ethics. The conversation gets lively when the labels come out — or rather, when Kevin pushes back on them. "Progressive." "Conservative." He argues these words don't clarify; they dehumanize. And in a culture built on tribal sorting, that's a problem worth talking about honestly. A conversation that doesn't flinch from the hard questions.

In this third & final part of our interview with Robert Steinbuch, law professor and government transparency advocate, Glen and April explore several key issues with Rob. He outlines the tension between FOIA's essential role in exposing government behavior and the equally legitimate need to protect private citizens' personal information — and candidly addresses why ordinary people struggle to enforce their own privacy and defamation rights when attorneys won't take the cases. Rob turns a critical eye on legal academia itself, describing what he sees as a pronounced left-of-center monoculture in law schools, and he recounts the controversy at UA - Fayetteville's Law School, where legislative pushback over a dean search put the tension between academic independence and government accountability on full public display. He reflects on his view of the proper — and improper — roles of government in institutional hiring at state-funded universities. The conversation broadens to Arkansas's societal divides, where Rob argues that while political polarization gets the headlines, economic and racial fault lines run just as deep. He closes with a personal story from a Republican Party meeting where he chose procedural fairness over possible strategic advantage, and he shares reflections from his experience moderating a conversation on Arkansas PBS TV among philosophical opponents on a controversial current issue.