I've said many times that I don't think I ever would have become president if I hadn't been born in Arkansas just after World War Two into a family that didn't have a lot of money to spend on entertainment. We didn't own a television until I was ten, and like most people, we knew our biggest form of entertainment was storytelling. So from a young age, at the dinner table with my extended family or at my grandfather's little store, I heard stories all day long. And when you were a kid, you couldn't tell a story unless first you proved you could listen to one. So when someone would tell a story, he turned to me and say, Bill, did you hear that? I said yes, He said, did you understand it? What was the story? So I'd repeat it back, And after I did that a couple of times, I could tell a story if I had one. Now, why am I telling you this because from a young age I learned that once you really start listening, you discover that everyone's got a story, and every person story has value. And when we truly hear other people's stories, we can recognize some part of ourselves in them too. Then our differences begin to slip away, and we become people to each other, not cartoons. I'm very lucky to be joined now by someone who's one of the most acclaimed storytellers working in music today, not just because of what he has to say, but because of his ability to hear what others have to say as well. Raised in rural Alabama by an extended family who loved playing music together, Jason Nizble is a four time Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His workspans rock, folk, Americana, and country genres. He's also an outspoken advocate for progressive causes and a voice for fairness of and sensible public health measures in the music industry and all across our society. His most recent album with his band, the four hundred Unit, it's called Georgia Blue, and it's a collection of covers that pay tribute to the state of Georgia, with proceeds going to organizations standing up for voting rights there. Jason can tell his own story much better than I can, so I'm going to turn to him now. Jason, welcome, and thanks so much for talking with me today. Thank you so much for having me, and thanks for that kind introduction that was nice to hear. One of the reasons that I was so interested in talking to you is that I identified with so much of your childhood and how it led you to your calling. So let's start by telling us a little about where and how you grew up and how that led you into both playing music and writing songs. Yeah, you know, I grew up in Green Hill, Obama, which is uh, northwestern Alabama, right up in the corner by Mississippi and Tennessee. And um, my grandfather on my dad's side was a Pentecostal preacher and um, a musician by hobby, not by trade. He he painted houses by trade. But uh, he and my dad and and my uncle had a house painting company together and so they all worked together. And then my parents were really young when I was born. My dad was nineteen, my mom was seventeen, and the only you know, they were both working throughout my childhood. So the only place that I really went for childcare was to my grandparents house. And my grandfather, you know, he wouldn't watch a lot of TV. He would watch old westerns and uh he liked watching baseball. But outside of that, you know, nothing really him being a Pentecostal preacher. Everything else was a little bit uh beyond what he was willing to to watch with his and son. I did one year I talked to him into watching the Grammys because I said, you know, this is not like music videos, this is actual people performing and accepting awards. And it was the year Bono said the F word on live on air. So I never got to pick what we did ever again. In my grandparents house, that was the end of that. But you know, we watched baseball games together and old westerns, and we played music together. And most of my time with them was spent playing rhythm guitar while my grandfather played what he referred to as a lead instrument like banjo or mandolin or fiddle. I was born in Tinny, Southern tim I grew up with all my family around. He made music on the BArch on Sunday, now old man with old guitars again Winston Live. He would show me these three chord gospel songs and old country and Western songs, and uh if I would accompany him for a couple of hours playing rhythm guitar on the big, huge flat top acoustic. When I was you know, too small to really reach my arms around it. Then he would reward me by playing the blues. So he would tune his guitar to an open tuning and play slide guitar. Something something when you feel like giving up something. And this happened hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times when I was a kid. Every day, you know, I would go over there in the summer all day and after school I would walk across the track field to their house because they lived behind the school, and I would just stay with them and we would play music, and uh, you know, I think it was his way of spending time with me and connecting with me, and also just keeping me busy and giving me something to do where I wouldn't get myself in trouble. Turn out to be pretty effective. Chalk. Yeah, I got really lucky. I got really really lucky because, you know, music was introduced to me as a way to communicate with the people that I cared about. And the first songs that I heard were songs that had been around for a long long time. I mean this was in the eighties, you know, it wasn't in the nineties, forties or fifties, but the songs that I was here and we're already h tried and true, and they stuck with me. And the way those songs were written and the way those stories were told, uh, you know, it influenced the kind of music that I wound up making as an adult, and and all the things that are important to me, uh now really came out of that time that I spent with my family making music. I love a lot of your songs, and they reveal both a lot about your own life and background, and I think you're rather remarkable ability to create characters and scenes from your own imagination. And one of my favorite of your songs, the Last My Kind You You've got a riff that says, Mama says God won't give you too much to bear. That might be true in Arkansas, but I'm a long long way from there. Mama says God won't give you too much to beg might be true in Arkansas, but I'm a long long way from me. Where did the Arkansas thing come from? So when I was a teenager, I worked at what was then the largest Walmart in the world. It was in Florence, Alabama, and they had me out in the parking lot pushing buggies even I think uh Sam himself came in at one point in his overalls. You know, he would go into some of the stores back in the days and not tell anybody he was there, and just go in and look around and check up on everything. And I was working there during the Tickle me Elmo Black Friday in the nineties, you know, when people were fighting and climbing all over each other. Um, that was the first real job that I had. And when I was writing this song, you know, the character that I created in this in this song was of course based on myself, but also he was somebody who was from a small town in Arkansas and had tried to get out and and tried to make something of his life by leaving the place where he grew up. And uh then when he got out into the great big world, he realized that things were a little more complicated than he had thought. I'm very interested, and you're making your acting debut and Killers of the Flower Moon. Yeah, I think it's one of the best books I read in years. I'm very interested in the plight of Native America, both historically and today. And I love Marty Scorsese. So tell us a little about becoming an actor and how you felt about that was terrifying. It was one of the one of the scariest things I have ever done in my professional life. And uh, you know, I took that to be a good sign because I've been playing music and writing songs for a long time and that's not really frightening to me anymore. And uh, I went through this long process of auditioning. All of it was done in the room I'm in right now via zoom, just like this, because it was during the pandemic, you know. And uh, and she said, all right, next time, we're gonna have you come back in the audition, uh, for Marty. And I thought, oh my god, you know they're taking this seriously. I didn't realize it was going to go this far, you know. So I come back and there's there's Scorsese, and I do that audition and they and you know, I don't hear back for a couple of weeks, and they said, okay, you got one more around. You gotta read with Lee and Marty's gonna be watching, you know, giving you guys pointers. And it's like, I gotta read with Leo on zoom in my bedroom at my house and this was on my birthday last February, on my birthday, and I was I was terrified. I thought, there's no way they're gonna put me in this movie. I mean, this is a big part. You know, there's a lot of a lot of lines, and I've never done this before. But I read with DiCaprio and found out that afternoon that I had gotten a gig, and so I went out and spent about three months in Oklahoma. Um, you know, surrounded by people uh who were either professional actors and the best of the best, you know, the people that Scorsese uses. Everybody from the makeup person to the prop directors all everybody was really really good at their job. But there was also a large group of UH of indigenous folks oh stage, and then people from other tribes who were there. Some of them were playing their grandparents or their great grandparents or you know, people in the community that they had known when they were children, heard stories about. And one day something that will always stick with me, we were shooting a scene where um, I was sitting with the uh the three sisters. You know, there's three sisters as the story revolves around, and we were shooting and saying together, and they were all speaking in O Sage to each other and uh yeah, and they were all speaking the language, you know. And the three actors had learned the O Sage language in order to speak it for the for the movie. And there was an O Sage man who was an extra and his job was when they when they rolled tape, his job was just to walk across in front of us, and that was all he had to do for that scene. But he couldn't do it. And this is a man in his late forties probably, And I looked up and every time they would call action, he would just stop and shake his head, and he looked like he was to overcome. And finally we got the scene done. And the next day we were shooting in a different location and I went up and introduced myself to him, and uh, he said, you know, my grandfather, he said, had written the O Sage to English dictionary and this was the first time that I've ever heard it spoken in conversation this way, you know. Um, And uh. That really had a huge impact on me. At that point, I thought, this is more than just entertainment, you know. It was a really beautiful thing to be a part of I'm just thrilled. I think it's it's a stunning book, and I can't wait to see the movie. I think it's gonna be great. I can't see how it's not gonna be great, just from everything I witnessed my my first day there. Um, I had a rehearsal with Marty and De Niro and DiCaprio and and me, you know, and I'm I'm not a professional actor. This is the first time I've ever spoken in a movie. And we're rehearsing Saturday morning, and Marty introduces me to Robert de Niro, and I said, Mr de Niro's great to meet you. I'm happy to be on the set, honor to work with you. And I think he thought that I was in character, because you know, we were just rehearsing when wearing their street clothes. But I think he didn't realize this is really how I talk. I think he thought the accent was was some kind of method acting, and he was so confused. And after a few days and he saw that I just normally spoke like this, it was fine. You know, he opened up. There's no problem. I can see he's very attuned to that. I remember one night he appeared at a fundraiser for Hillary, which he was running for the Senate, and I was there and he said, you know, you could be a big liability to your wife because of your accent. So he said, you gotta learn how to say forget about it. Whether they would saying in New York City so he said, so he had me up in fron a few hundred people. You don't practicing the line forget about it? Forget He's really that's identified. I guess we'll leave in town again. When moving out and moving in got a breaking news to all my friends. With anyone more after this. One of the things I'd like to you to talk about is how you came to feel comfortable being a performer and using your fame and physician to advocate for everything from good public health policies including requiring attendees at your concerts to be vaccinated, to to voting rights. How did that happen? Did you always know you were going to do that? Events drive you in that direction? And were you're worried about losing fans? You know, at the start, all I wanted to do was make music, and that was all I did with any of my spare time. Um, I wanted to play the guitar. And I started playing the guitar when I was seven or eight years old, and I spent hours every day playing the guitar. My parents would have to pride out of my hands to get me to eat dinner. You know. I slept with a guitar in the bed. And then after I realized what songwriting was when I was probably twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Um, and the fact that I could merge, you know, the two things that I loved the most at that time, which we're reading books and playing the guitar, I could merge them together into one thing. Um. Then I just wanted to do that all the time. And I never had an end goal in mind. I mean, I got in front of the mirror and dreamed that I was a rock star like every other kid with a guitar at that age. But I didn't I didn't think too much farther than the process because I just loved the sound that the instrument made. And I know, as a musician, you probably understand that it's that kind of uh communication. You know, you can get outside yourself, but you can also show people the depth of your spirit and the depth of your soul and and and really more than just technique, you can show people how you feel, you know, how your how your innermost self feels. And that to me was was everything. Um. But then when I got older and it started to become a job, what struck me was how fortunate I had been, you know, to be born into the family that I was born into, where we were a close knit family, and we had a lot of musicians around and they were willing to spend the kind of time with me to teach me how to love music. Um, you know, because I think, really, you know, talent, what people call God given talent, it's just being fortunate enough to love something so much that that's what you want to do all the time. And uh. And then you know, when I grew up in Alabama, we were all about the same uh social class. I mean we were you know, I was probably middle class for the place where I grew up, but for the rest of America, I would have been closer to the bottom. You know. But it didn't occur to me at that point because I thought, well, nobody, we're all, you know, living on a farmer's home loan in the same little brick houses. Uh, you know, going to the same public school. There was fifty four people in my graduating class, and I went to the same building from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Um, we were all in pretty much the same boat. I got a little bit older and I got out in the world, went to college, and I thought, oh, I grew up poor. Um. You know, it occurred to me, well, these people all have more than I had when I was a kid. But then I got older than that, and I started touring, and I rode out through the Navajo Nation, first time I ever went out where, you know, I went through Uh Reservation and and and saw how folks were living in that part of the country. And I thought, oh, I was fine. I grew up with way more than I needed. You know, I didn't have extra, but but I was just fine. I got very, very lucky to be born to the people that I was born to in that place. And the more grateful I am, the more responsible I feel to use whatever platform I might have uh for something greater than just serving myself. It really all comes from gratitude. For me. Every time I count all the things that I've been given, it gives me a responsibility to try a little bit harder to express myself in ways that might help people who don't have that kind of voice. Um. And that's really it, you know. I just I have to be able to go to sleep at night. And I've been very lucky, you know. I've got to do everything I want. I have a beautiful family. I have all these old guitars and amps that I really could just sit around and play with all day like I was fifteen years old. Um. But I also have a voice that people are willing to listen to to some extent, and I think I have a responsibility to use that and to tell people the truth and where I stand on it because I have been so fortunate and I am so grateful for it. Well. Thanks, that's a wonderful thing. Tell our viewers about Georgia Blue. How did the album come about and what did you do with the money. When the Georgia results from the presidential election, we're coming in and it looked like Biden might win, I thought I gotta do something to celebrate this. And this was all spur of the moment, you know. Right there, as I was looking at my phone, I thought, I've got to do something to celebrate this because Georgia is about to go blue. And so I tweeted, if Georgia goes blue, um, you know, I'll make a record of all of our favorite Georgia songs, either written by Georgia or this or about the state of Georgia or somehow connected to the state of Georgia. And then we'll donate all the proceeds to uh voting rights organizations, you know, people who are trying to make it easier to vote in the state of Georgia. So Georgia went Blue and I produced it myself and used my band and brought in a bunch of friends to sing. Because there's some music that I don't feel qualified singing. Uh, Like I love the blues more than anything else in the world. I could. I could listen to uh uh you know Elmore James or a Son House um all day and never get tired of it. But I don't feel qualified to sing the blues and any kind of commercial capacity because I think I'll always just be a student of that particular type of music, in that particular way of life. Um. So I'm also not gonna sing uh you know, precious Bryant. I'm not gonna sing a James Brown song. I didn't want to sing Midnight Train to georg just so I brought in some friends of mine who I knew could pull that off. And my friend Britney Spencer came in and she's a young black country singer here in town who did the Gladdys Night part. And then she and my wife. This was something I was really very very happy about. But Brittany and my wife rewrote the lyrics of It's a Man's World James Brown's song, keeping that same title but writing it, you know, from the perspective of a woman and the James Brown estate. Let us do that, and let us put that song on that record and put it out. And I think what they did with it was just brilliant and really beautiful and and sort of the high point of the whole project for me. Yeah, I thought maybe it was the best track on the record. It was so interesting. There was something happening there that was really really outside of the norm. Um. And then we got a Da Victoria who is a blues singer but also a country singer um and she's here in Nashville as well, and she sang on the record, and um, you know, we we we covered some rock songs, and we covered some R and B songs and some blue songs. And I got Baila Fleck and Chris Seeley to play on an R. E M song on night Swimming, and we did kind of a kind of a hillbilly version of night Swimming. Um. And that's kind of like having like Michael Jordan and Lebron James, you know, play pick up basketball with you one day, because those two guys, I know a lot of people who aren't in the bluegrass world might not realize this, but Baila Fleck and Chris Theely are about as good at what they do as anybody is at anything, you know. So that was that was a real honor. It was a great album. So you gave the money to voting rights activists. Yes, yes, the money went to UH, Black Voters Matter and UH and fair Fight and stand up with a certain one. How do you deal with the people who disagree with you on this who are your face? Yeah, you know, I don't think most of them are my fans, and I don't think most of them ever were gonna be my fans to start with. Um, I think that's rule Number Number one for me is is you know, just realize that most of the people who are pushing back and who who are arguing with me, weren't ever on board with what we were doing. Because I've been singing songs about, you know, my beliefs and uh and and what I view as the truth for a long time. I've never held back. I mean, I used to be in a band called to Drive by Truckers, UM, and we were we were very you know, seriously to the left as far as what we were singing about, you know, and and uh and unafraid to say those things in the songs. And and I learned early on that you know, if if you if you just go ahead and get it out there, you're gonna weed out most of the trouble, you know, right off the bat. So I think a lot of them are are coming to me in bad faith and saying I used to be your fai and but now I'm not because of the vaccine, because of this, because of that. But I don't think that's really true. Um. And for the most part, I don't. I don't deal with them if I feel like I have an opportunity to make a point. Then I will use what they're saying to me in social media as a prompt to make that point to a broader audience. But um, you know, I can't spend my time arguing with with people who just disagree with me and refuse to see my side of the story. Why do you think that the culture we grew up in has moved so far to the right and it's so vulnerable to the kind of siren song of the narratives they're getting. Um, I think they may be a little more desperate now than they were twenty or thirty or forty years ago. It's easy to convince hungry people to be afraid, uh, you know, and I think they're having a harder time making ends meet, um financially, Um, you know. And I think, uh, what has happened with um prescription painkillers, with you know, with with with Fenton Hill, before that, meth amphetamine, before that crack cocaine. I think, you know, especially now with the epidemic of opioids. You know, I think a lot of hope is gone from a lot of people who when I was a kid growing up in Alabama, and maybe when you were a kid in Arkansas, you know, they had more things to be proud of, and they had more paths to succeed. And I think, now, uh, you know, they're they're missing some of that hope, um, And so it's easier to to convince them, um of the things that the right tries to convince people of. This is somebody else's fault. This is another group of people's fault. This is the fault of immigrants, this is the fault of elites, this is the fault of the Libs, this is you know, it's easier to convince people of those things when they're desperate, and right now, rural Americans are at a pretty desperate place, you know, for a convergence of reasons. I think we were and death was it, Joe, We'd go out on the sidewalking snow. We'll be right back. Last night I dreamed I've been drinking, same dream I had about twice a week. I had one glass wine. I woke up feeling fine. And that's how I don't even was a dream last night. I'm dreaming that though you're coming up on your coming up on tan for sure. Yeah, I got lucky. I'd called my brother ten years younger than me. I called him this morning, and he loves music. And I told him I was going to interview you, and I said what day is today? He said, tell him, I'm chasing it. You know. Interesting people always know though, Like if somebody tells you that they're sober, and you don't believe him, ask them how long? How many days do you have and and and they don't know up to the month at least, you know, right off the bat, they won't have to add it up. Um. Yeah, that's good to hear, you know that. I mean I've lost some friends. Uh, you know, Finton Neill has taken some friends of mine recently who didn't know that that's what they had, you know, something else that they thought they were doing that had been cut with Finton Neill to say the dealer's money and you know, a little bit too much, and that was it. You know, I'm spending a lot of my life on this. I tell you. We do a lot of work with faith groups all over the country in my foundation, but ironically especially in the South where a lot of them really they agree with this across political lines, that they got to do something about us. Yeah, because we gotta keep people alive until we can. You know, do the things we need to do on the supply side. So long term, what do you think would help the most on the OPIJORID crisis. Yeah, I mean, I think this the the stigma, it's still preventing us in a lot of ways from from solving the problem or even or even helping with the symptoms. Like when I was playing, I do every October, I do a run at the Rhyman Auditorium downtown here in Nashville, And that's about the only time I go down to Broadway, you know and hang out. And I was down there watching all all kids were party and raisin hell, you know, and I thought, Man, Nashville is never going to give out testing kids for finneill in cocaine. I mean, if if they did, you know, it would probably save a lot of people's lives. But I think, you know, I know they're doing it in New York, Chicago, l a UM, and I think it's a good thing because kids will use it, they will test their drugs if they're giving the testing kids and the education on what can happen if they don't. What do you see doing with your life for the next ten years. Where do you think this is going. I think, if I'm lucky, I can just keep doing this because I love it. I love it so much. You know that there's challenges in writing songs and and making records and working with different producers and engineers and musicians. It's plenty challenging for me. And um, I still I just love working the machines so much. It's just like when I was fourteen or fifteen, you know, and and I had cheaper versions of the instruments that I have Now, you know, I go back to being fourteen or fifteen, except now I've got a nineteen fifty nine less Paul and a big Marshal and a barn and can go out and turn it all the way up and nobody makes me turn it down. And you know, I'll be damned if I'm not going to enjoy that, because there's still the fifteen year old inside out of me is still so excited to do it. Um, I just want to keep writing songs and making records and touring. I don't think I'll ever retire. Uh, you know, I just I just love my job so much. And um, you know, if I see something that I feel like, like with the vaccine stuff, you know, I anytime I see something like that, that that I don't know, helps me do my job and be happy when I'm on stage and not be concerned and not be worried about people's safety or about um, you know, the kind of audience that I have. You know, I just want to keep making those right decisions and uh and keep making music. And that's it. Ten years, twenty years, thirty years, That's that's all I want to do. Do you think that a lot of the vaccine deniers really understand and believe that if you get vaccinated, yeah, you might still get test positive because these variants come at us pretty quick, and the vaccines are directed at this target, and when the target moves a little bit, it may get through. But the death rate is still thirteen to sixteen times higher for people who aren't vaccinated than for people who are. And I don't understand why that's not enough. It doesn't seem like much of a decision there, does it. Well. The thing that really bothers me, the only thing I ever dealt with like this, in addition to vaccine, But nobody thought about vaccines when when I was there. But when I was a governor, all the bikers came to see me, and they had a big group, and they kind of liked me before, you know, and they had they wanted to repeal the helmet law and I wouldn't sign it. I told him I was going to veto it if they did it. And so they came in. They're all sitting there, you know, Tattoo's letter jackets. It was great. I liked them, but they were sitting in my office and they said, how can you do this? You know, we we thought you were a guy who believed in liberty. I said, I do believe in liberty body, I said, I also even responsibility. And yes, if you want to kill yourself and destroy your motorcycle, you have a right to do that. You go up and drove a sucker right off a mountain. But I said, if you don't wear a helmet, what you're really saying is well, I might get hurt, and I might get severely brain damage that I might be imbobile for the rest of my life and the rest of you have to support me. Or I might get hit by a scared seventeen year old driver and I could destroy that kid's life because he never get over the fact that he hit me. I said, you guys act like your choices just to operate in a vacuum, and they don't that we whether we like it or not, you know what we do im facts other people, and I have not been I wish I could make the argument better than I apparently have, because you know, there's still a lot of people hold them out out there. Yeah there are. And I like the way you say that that you wish you could make the argument better rather than saying I wish the bone heads would understand what I'm saying, but you know I have. I mean, I think sometimes they assume they being people who don't believe the vaccine is uh a good and healthy and smart idea. I think a lot of those folks assume that we're all arguing in bad faith for some reason or another. And I think that's part of the problem right now. It's like it's it's it's hard to convince somebody. Uh No, I really mean this what I'm saying, I really truly mean I think you should get the vaccine, or I think this job should mandate vaccines, or I think this venue should mandate vaccines. That's the reason that I'm telling you this is because I believe it. And I think we've gotten to a point where so many bad faith actors have come onto the scene and argued things that they didn't really believe in order to rile up their fan base, or their constituency or their family. Um, you know that that it's easy to assume that everybody is arguing in bad faith. I think if we could figure out a way just to just to convince people that, you know, I'm not trying to trick you into anything, I really just truly believe this is better for all of us, then you know, we might be able to make some progress with it. But some people just don't want to listen. But I wish you would think about that, because you your songs. I read these lyrics, and you reach people in a place where their defenses aren't, where the walls aren't solid. Your best songs feel like they are the song for you, a song for me, Leon Russell's great song, I love you in a place that has no space or time. I love you for my life. You're a friend of mine. You give people the fact, the feeling that you're their friend. And I wish you'd think about that. Because we have to do a better job we can't give up. I just don't think you should ever underestimate your power to reach people. But getting through all that because most Americans don't want that. Most Americans really don't want to give up on their country. They don't want to give up other neighbors. They don't want us to become a hate field country. And you have it's amazing to me, maybe just because I identify what your upbringing, but it's amazing, and I wish you will thank you, Mr President. I really appreciate it. I mean, we have we have the we have the songs and the stories and the movies and the ability to to get people's defenses out of the way before we tell them the story that we want them to hear. You know, that's kind of the beautiful thing about about music. It it's it's like, look at this magic trick. All right now, I'm going to tell you something that I that I want you to know. And and that's how I learned about people who are different from me. Um. You know, listen to Muscle Shoals records, you know, cut thirty minutes away from where I grew up. You know, otis reading and the staple singers and Aretha Franklin's early stuff, and I thought, oh wow, these people can't be much different from me at all, because what they're saying is resonating perfectly with my own experience, you know. Um, so yeah, I think there's a way, there's a there's a path through the defenses, uh with the arts. I really believe that, and uh yeah, thank you good luck. Couldn't be happy in the city tonight. You can't see the stars from you on like sidewalks dirty in the river is worse underground. Trains are run in reverbs. Nobody here can dance like me. Everybody clapping on one end, three man, last of my damn I last? Why am I telling you? This is a production of My Heart Radio, the Clinton Foundation and at Will Medium. Our executive producers are Craigmanescian and Will Molnadi. Our production team includes Mitch Bluestein, Jamison Kansufas, Tom Galton, Sara Horowitz, and Jake Young, with production support from Louis Referee and Josh Fornham. Original music by What What Special Thanks to John SIGs, John Davidson on hell, Orina, Corey Ganstley, Kevin thurm Oscar Flores, and all our dedicated staff and partners at the Clinton Foundation. Hi, I'm Chris Thrasher, and I serve as the Senior Director of Substance Use Disorders and Recovery with the Opiated Response Network at the Clinton Foundation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year we lose tens of thousands of lives to an opiate overdose in the United States, and now with COVID nineteen, this tragic and preventable epidemic has only worsened. An intensive vide at the Clinton Foundation, we're working to combat this crisis head on by getting hundreds of thousands of doses of the life saving medication and locks on into the hands of community members, first responders, and recovery homes nationwide. We are committed to making this life saving medication affordable, available, and accessible. Our work is aimed at reducing both the stigma and the shame that is all too often associated with persons who suffer from a substance use disorder. We know that addiction is not a moral failing, but rather a chronic illness. One of the cornerstone initiatives within our Opioid Response Network is our pioneering work with our faith leaders from across this country. Our nation's faith leaders are trusted messengers who serve as a solemn source of support to the countless victims and their families. They have a unique ability to educate, to motivate, and to mobilize their communities, and it's second to none. We work with these faith leaders from across traditions to equip them with the knowledge, the skills, the resources, and perhaps most importantly, the confidence that they need to fight the opioid epidemic from the pulpit and beyond. Together, we can save lives, We can reduce stigma. We can create a future of hope where no individual or family needs to suffer from the harsh realities, isolation, and struggles of a substance use disorder. There is hope. We invite you to learn more about our work and see how you can get involved. Please visit us at Clinton Foundation dot org. Slash podcast

I've said many times that I don't think I ever would have become president if I hadn't been born in Arkansas just after World War Two into a family that didn't have a lot of money to spend on entertainment. We didn't own a television until I was ten, and like most people, we knew our biggest form of entertainment was storytelling. So from a young age, at the dinner table with my extended family or at my grandfather's little store, I heard stories all day long. And when you were a kid, you couldn't tell a story unless first you proved you could listen to one. So when someone would tell a story, he turned to me and say, Bill, did you hear that? I said yes, He said, did you understand it? What was the story? So I'd repeat it back, And after I did that a couple of times, I could tell a story if I had one. Now, why am I telling you this because from a young age I learned that once you really start listening, you discover that everyone's got a story, and every person story has value. And when we truly hear other people's stories, we can recognize some part of ourselves in them too. Then our differences begin to slip away, and we become people to each other, not cartoons. I'm very lucky to be joined now by someone who's one of the most acclaimed storytellers working in music today, not just because of what he has to say, but because of his ability to hear what others have to say as well. Raised in rural Alabama by an extended family who loved playing music together, Jason Nizble is a four time Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His workspans rock, folk, Americana, and country genres. He's also an outspoken advocate for progressive causes and a voice for fairness of and sensible public health measures in the music industry and all across our society. His most recent album with his band, the four hundred Unit, it's called Georgia Blue, and it's a collection of covers that pay tribute to the state of Georgia, with proceeds going to organizations standing up for voting rights there. Jason can tell his own story much better than I can, so I'm going to turn to him now. Jason, welcome, and thanks so much for talking with me today. Thank you so much for having me, and thanks for that kind introduction that was nice to hear. One of the reasons that I was so interested in talking to you is that I identified with so much of your childhood and how it led you to your calling. So let's start by telling us a little about where and how you grew up and how that led you into both playing music and writing songs. Yeah, you know, I grew up in Green Hill, Obama, which is uh, northwestern Alabama, right up in the corner by Mississippi and Tennessee. And um, my grandfather on my dad's side was a Pentecostal preacher and um, a musician by hobby, not by trade. He he painted houses by trade. But uh, he and my dad and and my uncle had a house painting company together and so they all worked together. And then my parents were really young when I was born. My dad was nineteen, my mom was seventeen, and the only you know, they were both working throughout my childhood. So the only place that I really went for childcare was to my grandparents house. And my grandfather, you know, he wouldn't watch a lot of TV. He would watch old westerns and uh he liked watching baseball. But outside of that, you know, nothing really him being a Pentecostal preacher. Everything else was a little bit uh beyond what he was willing to to watch with his and son. I did one year I talked to him into watching the Grammys because I said, you know, this is not like music videos, this is actual people performing and accepting awards. And it was the year Bono said the F word on live on air. So I never got to pick what we did ever again. In my grandparents house, that was the end of that. But you know, we watched baseball games together and old westerns, and we played music together. And most of my time with them was spent playing rhythm guitar while my grandfather played what he referred to as a lead instrument like banjo or mandolin or fiddle. I was born in Tinny, Southern tim I grew up with all my family around. He made music on the BArch on Sunday, now old man with old guitars again Winston Live. He would show me these three chord gospel songs and old country and Western songs, and uh if I would accompany him for a couple of hours playing rhythm guitar on the big, huge flat top acoustic. When I was you know, too small to really reach my arms around it. Then he would reward me by playing the blues. So he would tune his guitar to an open tuning and play slide guitar. Something something when you feel like giving up something. And this happened hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times when I was a kid. Every day, you know, I would go over there in the summer all day and after school I would walk across the track field to their house because they lived behind the school, and I would just stay with them and we would play music, and uh, you know, I think it was his way of spending time with me and connecting with me, and also just keeping me busy and giving me something to do where I wouldn't get myself in trouble. Turn out to be pretty effective. Chalk. Yeah, I got really lucky. I got really really lucky because, you know, music was introduced to me as a way to communicate with the people that I cared about. And the first songs that I heard were songs that had been around for a long long time. I mean this was in the eighties, you know, it wasn't in the nineties, forties or fifties, but the songs that I was here and we're already h tried and true, and they stuck with me. And the way those songs were written and the way those stories were told, uh, you know, it influenced the kind of music that I wound up making as an adult, and and all the things that are important to me, uh now really came out of that time that I spent with my family making music. I love a lot of your songs, and they reveal both a lot about your own life and background, and I think you're rather remarkable ability to create characters and scenes from your own imagination. And one of my favorite of your songs, the Last My Kind You You've got a riff that says, Mama says God won't give you too much to bear. That might be true in Arkansas, but I'm a long long way from there. Mama says God won't give you too much to beg might be true in Arkansas, but I'm a long long way from me. Where did the Arkansas thing come from? So when I was a teenager, I worked at what was then the largest Walmart in the world. It was in Florence, Alabama, and they had me out in the parking lot pushing buggies even I think uh Sam himself came in at one point in his overalls. You know, he would go into some of the stores back in the days and not tell anybody he was there, and just go in and look around and check up on everything. And I was working there during the Tickle me Elmo Black Friday in the nineties, you know, when people were fighting and climbing all over each other. Um, that was the first real job that I had. And when I was writing this song, you know, the character that I created in this in this song was of course based on myself, but also he was somebody who was from a small town in Arkansas and had tried to get out and and tried to make something of his life by leaving the place where he grew up. And uh then when he got out into the great big world, he realized that things were a little more complicated than he had thought. I'm very interested, and you're making your acting debut and Killers of the Flower Moon. Yeah, I think it's one of the best books I read in years. I'm very interested in the plight of Native America, both historically and today. And I love Marty Scorsese. So tell us a little about becoming an actor and how you felt about that was terrifying. It was one of the one of the scariest things I have ever done in my professional life. And uh, you know, I took that to be a good sign because I've been playing music and writing songs for a long time and that's not really frightening to me anymore. And uh, I went through this long process of auditioning. All of it was done in the room I'm in right now via zoom, just like this, because it was during the pandemic, you know. And uh, and she said, all right, next time, we're gonna have you come back in the audition, uh, for Marty. And I thought, oh my god, you know they're taking this seriously. I didn't realize it was going to go this far, you know. So I come back and there's there's Scorsese, and I do that audition and they and you know, I don't hear back for a couple of weeks, and they said, okay, you got one more around. You gotta read with Lee and Marty's gonna be watching, you know, giving you guys pointers. And it's like, I gotta read with Leo on zoom in my bedroom at my house and this was on my birthday last February, on my birthday, and I was I was terrified. I thought, there's no way they're gonna put me in this movie. I mean, this is a big part. You know, there's a lot of a lot of lines, and I've never done this before. But I read with DiCaprio and found out that afternoon that I had gotten a gig, and so I went out and spent about three months in Oklahoma. Um, you know, surrounded by people uh who were either professional actors and the best of the best, you know, the people that Scorsese uses. Everybody from the makeup person to the prop directors all everybody was really really good at their job. But there was also a large group of UH of indigenous folks oh stage, and then people from other tribes who were there. Some of them were playing their grandparents or their great grandparents or you know, people in the community that they had known when they were children, heard stories about. And one day something that will always stick with me, we were shooting a scene where um, I was sitting with the uh the three sisters. You know, there's three sisters as the story revolves around, and we were shooting and saying together, and they were all speaking in O Sage to each other and uh yeah, and they were all speaking the language, you know. And the three actors had learned the O Sage language in order to speak it for the for the movie. And there was an O Sage man who was an extra and his job was when they when they rolled tape, his job was just to walk across in front of us, and that was all he had to do for that scene. But he couldn't do it. And this is a man in his late forties probably, And I looked up and every time they would call action, he would just stop and shake his head, and he looked like he was to overcome. And finally we got the scene done. And the next day we were shooting in a different location and I went up and introduced myself to him, and uh, he said, you know, my grandfather, he said, had written the O Sage to English dictionary and this was the first time that I've ever heard it spoken in conversation this way, you know. Um, And uh. That really had a huge impact on me. At that point, I thought, this is more than just entertainment, you know. It was a really beautiful thing to be a part of I'm just thrilled. I think it's it's a stunning book, and I can't wait to see the movie. I think it's gonna be great. I can't see how it's not gonna be great, just from everything I witnessed my my first day there. Um, I had a rehearsal with Marty and De Niro and DiCaprio and and me, you know, and I'm I'm not a professional actor. This is the first time I've ever spoken in a movie. And we're rehearsing Saturday morning, and Marty introduces me to Robert de Niro, and I said, Mr de Niro's great to meet you. I'm happy to be on the set, honor to work with you. And I think he thought that I was in character, because you know, we were just rehearsing when wearing their street clothes. But I think he didn't realize this is really how I talk. I think he thought the accent was was some kind of method acting, and he was so confused. And after a few days and he saw that I just normally spoke like this, it was fine. You know, he opened up. There's no problem. I can see he's very attuned to that. I remember one night he appeared at a fundraiser for Hillary, which he was running for the Senate, and I was there and he said, you know, you could be a big liability to your wife because of your accent. So he said, you gotta learn how to say forget about it. Whether they would saying in New York City so he said, so he had me up in fron a few hundred people. You don't practicing the line forget about it? Forget He's really that's identified. I guess we'll leave in town again. When moving out and moving in got a breaking news to all my friends. With anyone more after this. One of the things I'd like to you to talk about is how you came to feel comfortable being a performer and using your fame and physician to advocate for everything from good public health policies including requiring attendees at your concerts to be vaccinated, to to voting rights. How did that happen? Did you always know you were going to do that? Events drive you in that direction? And were you're worried about losing fans? You know, at the start, all I wanted to do was make music, and that was all I did with any of my spare time. Um, I wanted to play the guitar. And I started playing the guitar when I was seven or eight years old, and I spent hours every day playing the guitar. My parents would have to pride out of my hands to get me to eat dinner. You know. I slept with a guitar in the bed. And then after I realized what songwriting was when I was probably twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Um, and the fact that I could merge, you know, the two things that I loved the most at that time, which we're reading books and playing the guitar, I could merge them together into one thing. Um. Then I just wanted to do that all the time. And I never had an end goal in mind. I mean, I got in front of the mirror and dreamed that I was a rock star like every other kid with a guitar at that age. But I didn't I didn't think too much farther than the process because I just loved the sound that the instrument made. And I know, as a musician, you probably understand that it's that kind of uh communication. You know, you can get outside yourself, but you can also show people the depth of your spirit and the depth of your soul and and and really more than just technique, you can show people how you feel, you know, how your how your innermost self feels. And that to me was was everything. Um. But then when I got older and it started to become a job, what struck me was how fortunate I had been, you know, to be born into the family that I was born into, where we were a close knit family, and we had a lot of musicians around and they were willing to spend the kind of time with me to teach me how to love music. Um, you know, because I think, really, you know, talent, what people call God given talent, it's just being fortunate enough to love something so much that that's what you want to do all the time. And uh. And then you know, when I grew up in Alabama, we were all about the same uh social class. I mean we were you know, I was probably middle class for the place where I grew up, but for the rest of America, I would have been closer to the bottom. You know. But it didn't occur to me at that point because I thought, well, nobody, we're all, you know, living on a farmer's home loan in the same little brick houses. Uh, you know, going to the same public school. There was fifty four people in my graduating class, and I went to the same building from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Um, we were all in pretty much the same boat. I got a little bit older and I got out in the world, went to college, and I thought, oh, I grew up poor. Um. You know, it occurred to me, well, these people all have more than I had when I was a kid. But then I got older than that, and I started touring, and I rode out through the Navajo Nation, first time I ever went out where, you know, I went through Uh Reservation and and and saw how folks were living in that part of the country. And I thought, oh, I was fine. I grew up with way more than I needed. You know, I didn't have extra, but but I was just fine. I got very, very lucky to be born to the people that I was born to in that place. And the more grateful I am, the more responsible I feel to use whatever platform I might have uh for something greater than just serving myself. It really all comes from gratitude. For me. Every time I count all the things that I've been given, it gives me a responsibility to try a little bit harder to express myself in ways that might help people who don't have that kind of voice. Um. And that's really it, you know. I just I have to be able to go to sleep at night. And I've been very lucky, you know. I've got to do everything I want. I have a beautiful family. I have all these old guitars and amps that I really could just sit around and play with all day like I was fifteen years old. Um. But I also have a voice that people are willing to listen to to some extent, and I think I have a responsibility to use that and to tell people the truth and where I stand on it because I have been so fortunate and I am so grateful for it. Well. Thanks, that's a wonderful thing. Tell our viewers about Georgia Blue. How did the album come about and what did you do with the money. When the Georgia results from the presidential election, we're coming in and it looked like Biden might win, I thought I gotta do something to celebrate this. And this was all spur of the moment, you know. Right there, as I was looking at my phone, I thought, I've got to do something to celebrate this because Georgia is about to go blue. And so I tweeted, if Georgia goes blue, um, you know, I'll make a record of all of our favorite Georgia songs, either written by Georgia or this or about the state of Georgia or somehow connected to the state of Georgia. And then we'll donate all the proceeds to uh voting rights organizations, you know, people who are trying to make it easier to vote in the state of Georgia. So Georgia went Blue and I produced it myself and used my band and brought in a bunch of friends to sing. Because there's some music that I don't feel qualified singing. Uh, Like I love the blues more than anything else in the world. I could. I could listen to uh uh you know Elmore James or a Son House um all day and never get tired of it. But I don't feel qualified to sing the blues and any kind of commercial capacity because I think I'll always just be a student of that particular type of music, in that particular way of life. Um. So I'm also not gonna sing uh you know, precious Bryant. I'm not gonna sing a James Brown song. I didn't want to sing Midnight Train to georg just so I brought in some friends of mine who I knew could pull that off. And my friend Britney Spencer came in and she's a young black country singer here in town who did the Gladdys Night part. And then she and my wife. This was something I was really very very happy about. But Brittany and my wife rewrote the lyrics of It's a Man's World James Brown's song, keeping that same title but writing it, you know, from the perspective of a woman and the James Brown estate. Let us do that, and let us put that song on that record and put it out. And I think what they did with it was just brilliant and really beautiful and and sort of the high point of the whole project for me. Yeah, I thought maybe it was the best track on the record. It was so interesting. There was something happening there that was really really outside of the norm. Um. And then we got a Da Victoria who is a blues singer but also a country singer um and she's here in Nashville as well, and she sang on the record, and um, you know, we we we covered some rock songs, and we covered some R and B songs and some blue songs. And I got Baila Fleck and Chris Seeley to play on an R. E M song on night Swimming, and we did kind of a kind of a hillbilly version of night Swimming. Um. And that's kind of like having like Michael Jordan and Lebron James, you know, play pick up basketball with you one day, because those two guys, I know a lot of people who aren't in the bluegrass world might not realize this, but Baila Fleck and Chris Theely are about as good at what they do as anybody is at anything, you know. So that was that was a real honor. It was a great album. So you gave the money to voting rights activists. Yes, yes, the money went to UH, Black Voters Matter and UH and fair Fight and stand up with a certain one. How do you deal with the people who disagree with you on this who are your face? Yeah, you know, I don't think most of them are my fans, and I don't think most of them ever were gonna be my fans to start with. Um, I think that's rule Number Number one for me is is you know, just realize that most of the people who are pushing back and who who are arguing with me, weren't ever on board with what we were doing. Because I've been singing songs about, you know, my beliefs and uh and and what I view as the truth for a long time. I've never held back. I mean, I used to be in a band called to Drive by Truckers, UM, and we were we were very you know, seriously to the left as far as what we were singing about, you know, and and uh and unafraid to say those things in the songs. And and I learned early on that you know, if if you if you just go ahead and get it out there, you're gonna weed out most of the trouble, you know, right off the bat. So I think a lot of them are are coming to me in bad faith and saying I used to be your fai and but now I'm not because of the vaccine, because of this, because of that. But I don't think that's really true. Um. And for the most part, I don't. I don't deal with them if I feel like I have an opportunity to make a point. Then I will use what they're saying to me in social media as a prompt to make that point to a broader audience. But um, you know, I can't spend my time arguing with with people who just disagree with me and refuse to see my side of the story. Why do you think that the culture we grew up in has moved so far to the right and it's so vulnerable to the kind of siren song of the narratives they're getting. Um, I think they may be a little more desperate now than they were twenty or thirty or forty years ago. It's easy to convince hungry people to be afraid, uh, you know, and I think they're having a harder time making ends meet, um financially, Um, you know. And I think, uh, what has happened with um prescription painkillers, with you know, with with with Fenton Hill, before that, meth amphetamine, before that crack cocaine. I think, you know, especially now with the epidemic of opioids. You know, I think a lot of hope is gone from a lot of people who when I was a kid growing up in Alabama, and maybe when you were a kid in Arkansas, you know, they had more things to be proud of, and they had more paths to succeed. And I think, now, uh, you know, they're they're missing some of that hope, um, And so it's easier to to convince them, um of the things that the right tries to convince people of. This is somebody else's fault. This is another group of people's fault. This is the fault of immigrants, this is the fault of elites, this is the fault of the Libs, this is you know, it's easier to convince people of those things when they're desperate, and right now, rural Americans are at a pretty desperate place, you know, for a convergence of reasons. I think we were and death was it, Joe, We'd go out on the sidewalking snow. We'll be right back. Last night I dreamed I've been drinking, same dream I had about twice a week. I had one glass wine. I woke up feeling fine. And that's how I don't even was a dream last night. I'm dreaming that though you're coming up on your coming up on tan for sure. Yeah, I got lucky. I'd called my brother ten years younger than me. I called him this morning, and he loves music. And I told him I was going to interview you, and I said what day is today? He said, tell him, I'm chasing it. You know. Interesting people always know though, Like if somebody tells you that they're sober, and you don't believe him, ask them how long? How many days do you have and and and they don't know up to the month at least, you know, right off the bat, they won't have to add it up. Um. Yeah, that's good to hear, you know that. I mean I've lost some friends. Uh, you know, Finton Neill has taken some friends of mine recently who didn't know that that's what they had, you know, something else that they thought they were doing that had been cut with Finton Neill to say the dealer's money and you know, a little bit too much, and that was it. You know, I'm spending a lot of my life on this. I tell you. We do a lot of work with faith groups all over the country in my foundation, but ironically especially in the South where a lot of them really they agree with this across political lines, that they got to do something about us. Yeah, because we gotta keep people alive until we can. You know, do the things we need to do on the supply side. So long term, what do you think would help the most on the OPIJORID crisis. Yeah, I mean, I think this the the stigma, it's still preventing us in a lot of ways from from solving the problem or even or even helping with the symptoms. Like when I was playing, I do every October, I do a run at the Rhyman Auditorium downtown here in Nashville, And that's about the only time I go down to Broadway, you know and hang out. And I was down there watching all all kids were party and raisin hell, you know, and I thought, Man, Nashville is never going to give out testing kids for finneill in cocaine. I mean, if if they did, you know, it would probably save a lot of people's lives. But I think, you know, I know they're doing it in New York, Chicago, l a UM, and I think it's a good thing because kids will use it, they will test their drugs if they're giving the testing kids and the education on what can happen if they don't. What do you see doing with your life for the next ten years. Where do you think this is going. I think, if I'm lucky, I can just keep doing this because I love it. I love it so much. You know that there's challenges in writing songs and and making records and working with different producers and engineers and musicians. It's plenty challenging for me. And um, I still I just love working the machines so much. It's just like when I was fourteen or fifteen, you know, and and I had cheaper versions of the instruments that I have Now, you know, I go back to being fourteen or fifteen, except now I've got a nineteen fifty nine less Paul and a big Marshal and a barn and can go out and turn it all the way up and nobody makes me turn it down. And you know, I'll be damned if I'm not going to enjoy that, because there's still the fifteen year old inside out of me is still so excited to do it. Um, I just want to keep writing songs and making records and touring. I don't think I'll ever retire. Uh, you know, I just I just love my job so much. And um, you know, if I see something that I feel like, like with the vaccine stuff, you know, I anytime I see something like that, that that I don't know, helps me do my job and be happy when I'm on stage and not be concerned and not be worried about people's safety or about um, you know, the kind of audience that I have. You know, I just want to keep making those right decisions and uh and keep making music. And that's it. Ten years, twenty years, thirty years, That's that's all I want to do. Do you think that a lot of the vaccine deniers really understand and believe that if you get vaccinated, yeah, you might still get test positive because these variants come at us pretty quick, and the vaccines are directed at this target, and when the target moves a little bit, it may get through. But the death rate is still thirteen to sixteen times higher for people who aren't vaccinated than for people who are. And I don't understand why that's not enough. It doesn't seem like much of a decision there, does it. Well. The thing that really bothers me, the only thing I ever dealt with like this, in addition to vaccine, But nobody thought about vaccines when when I was there. But when I was a governor, all the bikers came to see me, and they had a big group, and they kind of liked me before, you know, and they had they wanted to repeal the helmet law and I wouldn't sign it. I told him I was going to veto it if they did it. And so they came in. They're all sitting there, you know, Tattoo's letter jackets. It was great. I liked them, but they were sitting in my office and they said, how can you do this? You know, we we thought you were a guy who believed in liberty. I said, I do believe in liberty body, I said, I also even responsibility. And yes, if you want to kill yourself and destroy your motorcycle, you have a right to do that. You go up and drove a sucker right off a mountain. But I said, if you don't wear a helmet, what you're really saying is well, I might get hurt, and I might get severely brain damage that I might be imbobile for the rest of my life and the rest of you have to support me. Or I might get hit by a scared seventeen year old driver and I could destroy that kid's life because he never get over the fact that he hit me. I said, you guys act like your choices just to operate in a vacuum, and they don't that we whether we like it or not, you know what we do im facts other people, and I have not been I wish I could make the argument better than I apparently have, because you know, there's still a lot of people hold them out out there. Yeah there are. And I like the way you say that that you wish you could make the argument better rather than saying I wish the bone heads would understand what I'm saying, but you know I have. I mean, I think sometimes they assume they being people who don't believe the vaccine is uh a good and healthy and smart idea. I think a lot of those folks assume that we're all arguing in bad faith for some reason or another. And I think that's part of the problem right now. It's like it's it's it's hard to convince somebody. Uh No, I really mean this what I'm saying, I really truly mean I think you should get the vaccine, or I think this job should mandate vaccines, or I think this venue should mandate vaccines. That's the reason that I'm telling you this is because I believe it. And I think we've gotten to a point where so many bad faith actors have come onto the scene and argued things that they didn't really believe in order to rile up their fan base, or their constituency or their family. Um, you know that that it's easy to assume that everybody is arguing in bad faith. I think if we could figure out a way just to just to convince people that, you know, I'm not trying to trick you into anything, I really just truly believe this is better for all of us, then you know, we might be able to make some progress with it. But some people just don't want to listen. But I wish you would think about that, because you your songs. I read these lyrics, and you reach people in a place where their defenses aren't, where the walls aren't solid. Your best songs feel like they are the song for you, a song for me, Leon Russell's great song, I love you in a place that has no space or time. I love you for my life. You're a friend of mine. You give people the fact, the feeling that you're their friend. And I wish you'd think about that. Because we have to do a better job we can't give up. I just don't think you should ever underestimate your power to reach people. But getting through all that because most Americans don't want that. Most Americans really don't want to give up on their country. They don't want to give up other neighbors. They don't want us to become a hate field country. And you have it's amazing to me, maybe just because I identify what your upbringing, but it's amazing, and I wish you will thank you, Mr President. I really appreciate it. I mean, we have we have the we have the songs and the stories and the movies and the ability to to get people's defenses out of the way before we tell them the story that we want them to hear. You know, that's kind of the beautiful thing about about music. It it's it's like, look at this magic trick. All right now, I'm going to tell you something that I that I want you to know. And and that's how I learned about people who are different from me. Um. You know, listen to Muscle Shoals records, you know, cut thirty minutes away from where I grew up. You know, otis reading and the staple singers and Aretha Franklin's early stuff, and I thought, oh wow, these people can't be much different from me at all, because what they're saying is resonating perfectly with my own experience, you know. Um, so yeah, I think there's a way, there's a there's a path through the defenses, uh with the arts. I really believe that, and uh yeah, thank you good luck. Couldn't be happy in the city tonight. You can't see the stars from you on like sidewalks dirty in the river is worse underground. Trains are run in reverbs. Nobody here can dance like me. Everybody clapping on one end, three man, last of my damn I last? Why am I telling you? This is a production of My Heart Radio, the Clinton Foundation and at Will Medium. Our executive producers are Craigmanescian and Will Molnadi. Our production team includes Mitch Bluestein, Jamison Kansufas, Tom Galton, Sara Horowitz, and Jake Young, with production support from Louis Referee and Josh Fornham. Original music by What What Special Thanks to John SIGs, John Davidson on hell, Orina, Corey Ganstley, Kevin thurm Oscar Flores, and all our dedicated staff and partners at the Clinton Foundation. Hi, I'm Chris Thrasher, and I serve as the Senior Director of Substance Use Disorders and Recovery with the Opiated Response Network at the Clinton Foundation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year we lose tens of thousands of lives to an opiate overdose in the United States, and now with COVID nineteen, this tragic and preventable epidemic has only worsened. An intensive vide at the Clinton Foundation, we're working to combat this crisis head on by getting hundreds of thousands of doses of the life saving medication and locks on into the hands of community members, first responders, and recovery homes nationwide. We are committed to making this life saving medication affordable, available, and accessible. Our work is aimed at reducing both the stigma and the shame that is all too often associated with persons who suffer from a substance use disorder. We know that addiction is not a moral failing, but rather a chronic illness. One of the cornerstone initiatives within our Opioid Response Network is our pioneering work with our faith leaders from across this country. Our nation's faith leaders are trusted messengers who serve as a solemn source of support to the countless victims and their families. They have a unique ability to educate, to motivate, and to mobilize their communities, and it's second to none. We work with these faith leaders from across traditions to equip them with the knowledge, the skills, the resources, and perhaps most importantly, the confidence that they need to fight the opioid epidemic from the pulpit and beyond. Together, we can save lives, We can reduce stigma. We can create a future of hope where no individual or family needs to suffer from the harsh realities, isolation, and struggles of a substance use disorder. There is hope. We invite you to learn more about our work and see how you can get involved. Please visit us at Clinton Foundation dot org. Slash podcast