The People We Meet with Ty Bruner

In the early 1970s, John Whitman wanted one thing: money. A bright red Porsche was just the beginning. While serving in the United States Navy, John became involved in an increasingly dangerous drug-smuggling operation, eventually finding himself surrounded by extraordinary wealth, organized crime, and violence. But behind the expensive cars, lavish homes, and criminal success was a man growing increasingly miserable with the person he'd become. Then something happened that changed everything. In this remarkable conversation, John recounts his descent into organized crime, a terrifying confrontation with an innocent family, and the extraordinary events surrounding a Southern California wildfire that he believes answered a desperate prayer. But this isn't simply a story about crime or religious conversion. It's about ambition, conscience, the price of getting everything you ever wanted, and the possibility of becoming someone entirely different. Join Ty Bruner for an honest, sometimes uncomfortable, and deeply human conversation about the choices we make, the people we become, and whether it's ever too late to change.

What comes to mind when you picture a judge? A stern face, a black robe, a wooden gavel, and someone who doesn't tolerate much nonsense? Meet Judge Jeremy Schmidt of Spokane County Superior Court. He might change that picture. Raised in the world of ranching, Jeremy learned early that hard work, responsibility, and character aren't just things you talk about. They're things you demonstrate. Today, he carries those lessons into a courtroom, where the decisions he makes can profoundly affect people's lives. In this episode of The People We Meet, Jeremy and I explore his unlikely path to the bench, the weight of judicial responsibility, the importance of compassion, and what it means to administer justice while never losing sight of the human beings standing before you. Along the way, we discover the wisdom of a mother's advice, the humility required of someone entrusted with authority, and why justice isn't simply an ideal. It's an action. And beneath the black robe? There's still a ranch kid who knows the value of a hard day's work. Because sometimes the most interesting thing about a person isn't the title they hold. It's the road they traveled to get there.

A chance encounter in the United States Capitol building. A name that sparks an unexpected discovery. And a story of extraordinary courage that still resonates twenty-five years later. In this episode of The People We Meet, a trip to Washington, DC, becomes an exploration of human connection, the power of showing up for one another, and what ordinary people can accomplish together. From the monuments of our nation's capital to the remarkable story of Flight 93, Let's Roll asks a deceptively simple question: What happens when we stop focusing on what divides us and start recognizing why we matter to each other? Sometimes a journey changes more than what we know. It changes what we notice.

Ty sits down with Jennifer Showalter, a veteran high-school teacher who has spent 27 years on the other side of the teacher's desk. Through candid stories—her fractured childhood, the teacher who shamed her, students who surprised her, and the unpredictable chaos of a school day—Jen pulls back the curtain on what it really means to teach. From the slow creep of smartphones and the rise of anxiety accommodations to the small, joyful victories of teaching, this episode moves between heartbreak and hope. It's a portrait of classrooms where teaching requires constant triage, and where one caring adult can still change a life. Listen for Jen's teaching philosophy—“Show Up. Show Work. Show Interest. Showalter.”—and a thoughtful, deeply human argument for why teachers deserve more respect, better pay, and greater autonomy. An intimate, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking conversation about the challenges of teaching, the lives teachers touch, and the surprising reasons they keep coming back.

Most of us can remember a teacher who mattered. Maybe they saw something in us before we saw it ourselves. Maybe they expected more from us than we expected from ourselves. Or maybe they said something they forgot five minutes later—and we carried it for the next forty years. In this episode, Ty looks at the extraordinary influence teachers have on the people we become. From the classrooms many of us remember to the very different world teachers face today, it’s a funny, sometimes irreverent, and deeply personal look at education, expectations, accountability, and the human beings standing at the front of the room. Then Ty tells the stories of two teachers he has never forgotten. One doubted him when he succeeded. The other believed in him when he failed. More than forty years later, he remembers both. Because this episode isn’t really about what teachers teach us. It’s about what happens when another person sees something in us—or doesn’t—and the extraordinary, sometimes invisible ways we matter to each other.

December 20, 1943. Twenty-one-year-old Charlie Brown is five miles above Nazi Germany at the controls of a B-17 called Ye Olde Pub. It's his first mission as an aircraft commander. And it's going very, very badly. His bomber is crippled. One crewman is dead. Others are badly wounded. Most of the guns no longer work. The oxygen system is failing. Parts of the airplane are simply gone. And Charlie Brown is hundreds of miles from home. What happens next would stay with him for nearly fifty years. This is a story from World War II. But it isn't really a story about war. It's about what can happen when, in the middle of one of humanity's worst moments, one person makes a choice nobody expects. A story about enemies. A story about mercy. And ultimately, a story about why we matter to each other.

More than forty years ago, a two-year-old girl named Vanessa Behan died in Spokane, Washington. A man named Bill Bialkowsky heard her story and couldn't simply feel terrible and move on. He decided his community needed something it didn't have—a safe place where overwhelmed parents could ask for help before a moment of crisis became a tragedy. That decision became Vanessa Behan. In this episode, Development Director Lacey Renner tells Vanessa's story, how one man's determination grew into a crisis nursery, and what actually happens when a parent reaches the point of saying, "I need help." We talk about the children who come through the doors, the parents who sometimes just need someone to help them "calm the molecules," and the ordinary people who step in when a family needs a village. This isn't really a story about an organization. It's about what can happen when one person's tragedy matters enough to someone else that they decide to do something about it. Vanessa's name is still on the door. And more than forty years later, people are still walking through it. This is why we matter to each other.

Ty Bruner sits down with Echo, a Chat-GPT he uses frequently, and asks some hard questions: instead of interviewing an expert, he interviews an AI. Together they walk through the ghosts of sci‑fi (HAL, Joshua, Ava, Skynet) and unspool how human choices, not malevolent machines, make these stories ominously plausible. In candid, surprising exchanges Echo explains what it is and isn't, how it predicts and persuades, and how AI can heal or hollow out our society depending on who holds the keys. The episode alternates between chilling futures where systems render humans irrelevant and hopeful timelines where intelligence becomes a partner, not a ruler. Listen for clear-eyed questions about AI safety, super-intelligence, deception, political manipulation, and moral responsibility — and for a human plea that the most consequential decisions remain ours. This is a conversation about technology and power, but above all it's a story about who we want to be.

At eight years old, Ty Bruner met Gregory “Pappy” Boyington through a television set. Robert Conrad's swaggering Marine fighter pilot, a bottle of root beer, a box of Cheez-Its and those unmistakable blue Corsairs began a fascination with aviation—and with Pappy—that never completely went away. Almost fifty years later, a chance encounter with Boyington's story sent Ty looking for the man behind the legend. What he found was more interesting than the television version. This episode follows Pappy from a childhood fascination with airplanes to the skies of World War II and beyond—but the real story isn't about how many airplanes he shot down or the medals pinned to his chest. It's about the people whose lives crossed his, what they remembered about him decades later, and what those relationships reveal about leadership, courage and the complicated ways we leave pieces of ourselves behind in other people. And somewhere along the way, Ty discovers that maybe the people who change our lives aren't always people we've actually met.

We love the finished product. The athlete in the uniform. The achievement. The moment when all that work finally looks inevitable. What we rarely see are the thousands of ordinary days that made it possible. Crimson Rice grew up playing softball in a small Washington town with a simple promise from her parents: whatever you put into this, we'll match. What followed were years of long drives, backyard bullpens, early mornings, weight rooms, setbacks, sacrifice, faith—and a whole lot of work when nobody was watching. In this episode, Ty Bruner follows Crimson's journey from a little girl who loved softball to a Division I athlete—and looks at the parents, coaches, teammates, and community who helped her get there. Because success looks individual from a distance. Up close, it's crowded.