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Episode: 365

The Exact Words You Need to Hear Today

with Bryan Stevenson

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, exhausted, or numb by what you’re seeing in the news, today’s episode is for you.

Today, Mel talks with civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative), whose work has saved 140+ people from death row. 

You’ll learn:

  • How to stay hopeful without denying reality
  • Why compassion is a form of courage
  • What resilience looks like when life is hard
  • How to stop numbing out and start showing up again
  • How small actions create real change

Bryan is here to show you how to look deeper within yourself and to stand up even when the world is telling you to sit down.

And in doing that, he’ll remind you that hope might just be the most powerful gift you can give to the world, to other people, and to yourself.

Listen on:

Hope is our superpower. It's the thing that will get some of us to stand up, even when people say sit down. It will get some of us to speak even when people say be quiet. It's the thing that will get us to believe we can do things that maybe other people think we can't do.

Bryan Stevenson

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Key takeaways

  1. When you choose compassion as a daily practice, you feel strong, grounded, and unexpectedly beautiful, because leading with care in hard moments gives your life a deeper sense of purpose and meaning.

  2. You are not defined by your worst mistake, your worst day, or a single harmful act, and when you remember this truth, you create space for justice, mercy, and real human dignity.

  3. Mercy is not something people earn by showing regret; it reflects who you are, and when you give it freely, you refuse to live in a world shaped by fear, division, and us versus them thinking.

  4. When you get close to people who are suffering, you stop making quick judgments and start seeing humanity, because closeness reveals stories, pain, and strength you will never understand from a distance.

  5. Hopelessness allows injustice to thrive, but when you hold onto hope as an orientation of the spirit, you find the courage to stand up, speak out, and act even when change feels impossible.

Guests Appearing in this Episode

Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson is a world-renowned civil rights lawyer and author of Just Mercy, one of the most powerful books of our time which was turned into a movie in which Michael B. Jordan played Bryan. 

Bryan is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and has argued and won cases before the United States Supreme Court. 

He has saved over 140 people from death row, many of them who were wrongly convicted, and his work has fundamentally transformed the conversation about justice, mercy, and human dignity.

  • Book: Just Mercy

    A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Esquire, Time

    Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

    Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.

    Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction • Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize • An American Library Association Notable Book

  • Movie: Just Mercy

    After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned or those not afforded proper representation. One of his first cases is that of Walter McMillian, who is sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of an 18-year-old girl, despite evidence proving his innocence. In the years that follow, Stevenson encounters racism and legal and political maneuverings as he tirelessly fights for McMillian's life.

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