On the Other Hand

In this first part of our interview with John Patton, president of the Strange Birds of Little Rock, & Paul Tull, musician and Strange Birds member, Glen White and co-host John O’Brien talk with John and Paul about the local chapter of Parrot Heads in Paradise, the national fan organization built around Jimmy Buffett's music and community service. Parrot Heads in Paradise has contributed $61 million and 5 million volunteer hours over the last 18 years to charity. The Arkansas chapter was formed in 2004 and has donated $20,000 and 3,000 volunteer hours to local not for profits since 2020. John and Paul trace how the "Parrot Head" name emerged from a 1985 Buffett concert near Cincinnati, when Eagles bassist Timothy Schmit likened the Hawaiian-shirted crowd to Grateful Dead fans, and how the movement grew out of an early Atlanta fan club.  Both hosts and guests share personal Buffett stories — including Tull's account of ending up on stage with Buffett and Stephen Stills at a political event in Orlando — and discuss how the club got its name from "Strange Bird," the moniker Buffett used for his jet company, which was serviced in North Little Rock. Patton and Tull describe how the group has kept its momentum since Buffett's 2023 death, and they explain the meaning behind the club's motto, "Party With A Purpose" — a condition Buffett himself set for any group using his name, requiring real community service in return.

In the third and final part of our conversation with Nate Coulter, Director of CALS, the Central AR Library System, Nate lays out libraries' five-fold values — preserving everyone's stories, education, civic space, filling social-service gaps (three social workers on staff), and defending intellectual freedom. Recent CALS events Nate describes include: Be Mighty Little Rock (50,000+ meals), 500–600 at summer reading kickoff, digital cards for 57,000+ K-12 students. He discusses a bipartisan push on exploitative social media/device use in schools, and his approach to disagreement (find common ground, stay in the conversation). Nate closes on hope for reduced political negativity, consistent-principle leadership, and partnering with groups like the Civic Action Network of Arkansas to engage young people in local government.

In part two of our conversation with Nate Coulter, Nate describes reopening CALS safely during the pandemic and parlaying that credibility into a tax-adjustment win that funded raises and renovations without a tax increase. He walks through Act 372 — the 2023 law that would have criminalized librarians for "harmful to minors" materials — his conversations with sponsors Dan Sullivan and Rob Steinbuck, and his concern that a "government speech" legal doctrine could let officials purge collections based on political makeup. He distinguishes good-faith concerns about kids' access from bad-faith actors exploiting homophobia & transphobia, and notes the fight has quieted locally but remains live at the state level.

In this first part of our interview with Nate Coulter, Director of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), Nate traces his path from a small Arkansas town to Harvard Law, describing the culture shock of Cambridge and his choice to return to Arkansas for family ties and a bigger impact in a smaller community. He credits his father's furniture store with teaching him respect for employees at every level, and his mother, a schoolteacher, with shaping his values. After two losing statewide campaigns in the 1990s (Lt. Governor to Huckabee, 1993; U.S. Senate primary to Lincoln, 1998), he practiced law 25+ years before moving to library leadership in 2016, seeking a less adversarial role that still used his legal problem-solving skills. Hear the details in this first part of our interview and get ready for his next two parts, when he shares his thoughts about challenges he has encountered along the way, up to and including the present as he steps down from his current position.

On The Other Hand podcast episode #167:  Premier episode of A Braver Arkansas TV show, July 7 2026:
This audio-only recording of the debut episode of A Braver Arkansas, a new TV program on Arkansas TV created in conjunction with Braver Angels Arkansas, sets the stage for the whole series. Co-hosts Glen White and April Chatham-Carpenter open with candid personal stories about relationships in their own lives strained by political division — what they tried, what worked, and what didn't. From there, they turn to the bigger picture — what Braver Angels actually is and why it started in 2016.  They summarize what Braver Angels Arkansas has been doing across the state since its origin in 2018, and they explain what "depolarizing America" means (and explicitly does not mean — not abandoning convictions or finding a mushy middle, but changing how people disagree). Glen and April also discuss why this TV show was created now, and they issue an invitation for people to join in as the series continues. To view the video of our first episode of A Braver Arkansas, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8T4VADH_2I&list=PLeFP4XlwSUnk&index=3.
Our On The Other Hand podcast listeners can expect to hear periodic future recordings from later episodes of A Braver Arkansas, along with continued episodes of our interviews with community leaders, as we continue to explore, in both audio and video format now, how we can reduce political polarization in Arkansas, find common ground with those of differing views, and work toward better communities in Arkansas.

Note: This special episode of On The Other Hand is a recording of April Chatham-Carpenter and Glen White, co-hosts of their On The Other Hand podcast, being interviewed by Jonathan Seaborn for his KUAR sponsored podcast "Insight" (https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/podcast/insight-with-jonathan-seaborn). Glen and April stepped in front of the mic as guests on Jonathan Seaborn's Insight program on Little Rock Public Radio (KUAR), talking about Braver Angels Arkansas, their On The Other Hand podcast, and how to talk across political divides. 
Summary: In this special crossover episode, April and Glen turn the tables and become the guests, joining Jonathan Seaborn on Little Rock Public Radio's Insight to talk about Braver Angels Arkansas and the origins of On The Other Hand. They describe how the podcast began as Glen's idea after his retirement from a career as a psychologist, and how their own differing political outlooks make them a natural team for modeling civil, respectful conversation. April walks through Braver Angels' LAPP framework — Listen, Acknowledge, Pivot, Perspective — and both hosts discuss the research behind it, including how identity and emotion, more than facts, tend to drive political belief, and how contact theory helps explain why real relationships change minds when argument alone does not. April shares how she kept her relationship with her sister intact across a divisive election by choosing to listen rather than argue, and Glen discusses road rage, social media, and the case for treating media literacy as a kind of civic hygiene. They close by describing Braver Angels' new "courageous citizenship" direction under CEO Maury Giles, local Arkansas bridge-building efforts underway in Eureka Springs, Conway, and Hot Springs, and how listeners can get involved with Braver Angels Arkansas at arkansas.braverangels.org.

In the second half of our conversation, Janie and Scott describe the practical and legal dimensions of their work, including joining a successful lawsuit over a special election in North Little Rock that was delayed well beyond the 150-day statutory requirement. They offer a straightforward assessment of Arkansas' current political landscape — a Republican supermajority with internal divisions, an opposition party they see as struggling to be effective, and what they observe as a broader pattern of executive branch consolidation. They also make the case that accountability journalism and depolarization work are more compatible than they might seem, pointing to the bipartisan coalition that formed to defend Arkansas' Freedom of Information Act as an example of citizens across the political spectrum uniting around shared values. Looking ahead, Tracking Arkansas has investigations underway into hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, and an insurance industry story now spanning nine states. They close with honest reflections on what success looks like — sustainable independent journalism, a stronger public understanding of how policy gets made, and, only half-jokingly, making their own work unnecessary. Listeners can find Tracking Arkansas at TrackingArkansas.com or on Substack and Facebook, with a GoFundMe in the works to support ongoing accountability litigation.

Glen and April talk, in this first part of our conversation, with Janie Ginocchio and Scott Perkins, co-founders of Tracking Arkansas, a nonpartisan accountability journalism outlet they launched in 2025. What began as a public resource for tracking legislative bills has grown into a publication that combines policy analysis with investigative reporting. Janie and Scott walk us through that evolution, describe their framework for deciding which stories warrant deeper investigation, and introduce their ongoing series "The Arkansas Machine," which examines how political relationships, lobbying, and money influence public policy in Arkansas — across both parties. They also take us inside a specific case involving campaign finance reports and connections between the Attorney General's office and members of the legislature, explaining how that reporting led them to file formal ethics complaints and what they learned about the ethics complaint process itself — including its strengths, its limitations, and the gaps in current law that the process revealed. Throughout, they reflect on what it means to do this kind of work in a state with concentrated political power, and why they believe an informed public is essential to a functioning democracy. Tracking Arkansas is available at TrackingArkansas.com, on Substack, and on Facebook.

In part 2 of our conversation with Bill Kopsky, Executive Director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, Bill gets personal — starting with the moment a Yell County cattle rancher sized him up in a Walmart parking lot and told him flat out he didn't know anything about hog farms. That story, and what came from it, captures something central to how the Arkansas Public Policy Panel works: relationships, storytelling, and finding the human stakes beneath the political ones. Bill also unpacks a striking fact about Arkansas rental housing law — or rather, the lack of it — that may surprise you, and he explains how powerful special interests have managed to block what most Arkansans actually want. He offers a candid assessment of where Arkansas politics is headed, with both frustration and genuine optimism, and closes with a challenge to listeners: Arkansas doesn't suffer from too much ideology — it suffers from too little participation.

Join Glen and April as they talk with Bill Kopsky, Executive Director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, who says he planned to stay a couple of years but has spent 30 years with the organization. Bill traces the Panel's origins back to a remarkable group of mothers who launched it during the civil rights era, and he explains how it evolved into a statewide force for community organizing across economic, racial, and environmental justice issues. You'll hear why Bill thinks partisan polarization is largely a Capitol building phenomenon — and why the communities his organization works with tell a very different story. He also dives into a high-stakes battle playing out right now over Arkansans' century-old right to put measures on the ballot directly — a fight that's ended up in federal court, and that 80% of voters across party lines say they care about. If you've ever wondered whether ordinary citizens can actually move the needle on problems that have plagued Arkansas for generations, Bill has some answers — and some homework for you.