Reports From The Front: Bridgebuilding Fellows at Baylor University

Michael Whitenton (Ph.D.) directs the Bridgebuilding Fellows program at Baylor University, a program that seeks to help students to engage in healthy and virtuous civil discourse. Michael joins today’s episode to speak with Tim and Rick about the origins and aims of the program. Today’s episode helps listeners become aware of other groups and organizations who are responding to issues of polarization by championing the work of bridge building in civil discourse. Michael also gives examples on the art and value of constructive dialogue, and they discuss the importance and difficulty of achieving genuine disagreement.

Show notes and a full transcript are available.

Transcript

Rick Langer:

Welcome to the Winsome Conviction podcast. My name's Rick Langer. I'm a professor of Biola in the Biblical Studies and Theology Department, and also the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project, along with my good friend Tim Muehlhoff. Tim?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Rick, it's great to be back with you again. I know I've said this before, but my absolute favorite avenue that we take on this podcast sometimes of what we call people doing it right segment. And I just love that because there's so many great stories that just never make the headlines, and we come across people doing it in neighborhoods, churches, their own backyard, and we just think that it's absolutely amazing. So we got a chance to meet a kindred spirit at this conference that we attended.

Rick Langer:

Yeah, back in Chicago.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Back in Chicago. We just happened to bump into each other and discovered that Michael Whitenton created a whole course at Baylor on bridge building. So we thought, "How cool would it be-"

Rick Langer:

And this is in the Comm Studies Department, not civil engineering, just to be clear. So everybody knows what we're looking at.

Tim Muehlhoff:

It is in the Comm Studies Department.

Rick Langer:

Or religion or somewhere. Michael will tell us where it is.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yes, he will. I'm going to give a quick intro, but he can certainly intro himself, but let me just say a huge shout-out to Baylor because I have a son, Rick, who's a physical therapist, and got his DPT at Baylor, and that child works on me every Sunday. We literally got a table, me and my wife, and Michael will come, and it is absolutely giving. He is, I like to say publicly, my favorite son of the three. All right. Wish I was kidding.

Rick Langer:

Wow.

Tim Muehlhoff:

No, I love all my kids.

Rick Langer:

Great rhetorical move.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Come on.

Rick Langer:

Okay, good.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Dr. Michael Whitenton is a full-time lecturer at Baylor University in the Interdisciplinary Core. He teaches classes on rhetoric, which I love. I teach one class on rhetoric, fascinating class called The Examined Life, and is teaching and research focused on rhetoric, early Christianity, interfaith cooperation, that's how we met at a conference, and most importantly, bridge building. So we absolutely hit it off, me and Michael. And I thought to myself, "We just got to have him on the podcast." Michael, welcome to the pinnacle of your career being on our podcast.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I was trying my best not to laugh over here with you guys hamming it up. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, we really are excited and excited that other universities are really seeing the need to jump into the bridge building space, especially with the contentious presidential election coming. So Michael, is there anything else you want to add for our listeners? A little bit of your background, and then we just want to know what led you to this moment of not only teaching rhetoric, but bridge building.

Michael Whitenton:

Sure. Yeah. So thanks for the introduction. There's a new addition to my blurb now within, actually, the last couple of weeks. So I'm now the director of the Bridge Building Fellows program at Baylor. It's a new program that we started.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, wow. Congratulations.

Michael Whitenton:

Thank you. I'm thrilled to be able to share that with y'all and we'll talk more about that I would assume. But that's part of the grant that I got with Interfaith America, alongside this course helped us launch that program. So I'm not comm studies. My PhD is in religion, and for the longest time I did research on New Testament, early Christianity, ancient rhetoric and blending ancient rhetoric and modern cognitive science, which is not at all what we're talking about today, but it is how I got into it. And I ended up getting into this work through my program that I teach in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core. And maybe I can say more about that if y'all want, but it's an alternative core replacement program. So everything is interdisciplinary, which really stretches the students, but also stretches the professors into spaces that they had not... A lot of us don't have disciplinary background in some of the things that we're teaching. And so, along with some other things that I can get into in a bit, is ultimately what led me to this space over the course of about eight or so years.

Rick Langer:

Wow. And have you had any particular life experiences, mentors, people like that who've inspired you in this realm? Or is this the thing that you just backed into and suddenly found yourself in the midst of?

Michael Whitenton:

Just to dive right in, just as a side note, the more conversations I have with bridge builders, I realized like, "Man, we really go deep pretty quick." I would say that I am not innately a bridge builder. I am working on it and I am making a lot of progress, but I think for me, I am, as many people are, I'm really prone to in-group loyalty, I'm really prone to fighting for the side that I believe is right. And sometimes it's easy to reduce the people that I think are not part of my team to some easy slogan or something that puts them in the worst possible light. So I've been on many teams and I've fought on many sides, but my default tends to be fighting, if I'm honest, and if I'm really being self reflective, which I think part of bridge building work is being rigorously self reflective. And so-

Tim Muehlhoff:

Can I jump in right there, Michael?

Michael Whitenton:

Sure, yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

What's so encouraging about that, sometimes people think that bridge builders, peacemakers, that's just their personality. That's just how they're wired out of the gates. I love the fact that you would say initially, I wouldn't have seen this as a strength of mine, but it's something you were open to and that you could gradually learn. I think a lot of our listeners would be really encouraged by that is this is a skill set and an attitude that you can learn over time.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think for me, I got to a place where, and this is, we're talking about, I don't know, I guess this probably started about 10 years ago or so, 8 years ago, where I was so exhausted from fighting. And everything was a battle, and that's really stressful to always be scared that your side's going to lose. Eventually, I ended up in this space at Baylor because a friend of mine, Josh Ritter, a colleague and friend of mine here at Baylor, was working with the Public Deliberation Initiative. I don't know if y'all are familiar with the work of the Kettering Foundation, but that's through the Kettering Foundation. So it's very structured dialogue. And I ended up in an event with him as a participant, and it was the first time that I'd been in a space where everyone had the permission to disagree and let it be to be like, "I believe this way."

Rick Langer:

Without having resolve the disagreements in the space.

Michael Whitenton:

Exactly.

Rick Langer:

Yeah, got it.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, we weren't even trying. In fact, with the way that the Public Deliberation forum works, you spend equal time on three or four views on a pressing problem, and everyone empathizes with that view and with the drawbacks. But watching everyone else and noticing in me that like, "Wow, this is really liberating that I don't have to fight. I don't have to fight right now." And that doesn't mean that there aren't things that I cared about. Of course, there are things that I care deeply about. But it reminds me, Tim, you and I have a mutual friend in Simon Greer.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh yeah, Simon.

Michael Whitenton:

And you know him far better than I do. But we were talking at that conference in the summer and I said, "Simon, what about these issues that I really care about?" Because everybody's got these things. They're like, "Well, but I don't want to bridge on that thing and I'll bridge on the other things. Thank you, but this thing I'm going to fight." And so I asked him, "Well, what about those things?" And he looked at me with his wise eyes and said something to the effect, and Simon, if you're listening to this, my apologies if I get this wrong, but something to the effect of, "Sure, yeah. Legislation, for instance, is really important, but legislation without actually changing the hearts of the people is only of limited value." And so thus ends the Simon Greer quote, just to be clear. Now, I think of things like the civil rights movement. And so we had lots of really important legislation through the civil rights movement. And those things are great, and of course you wouldn't want to change that, but that's hardly gotten rid of racism.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's so good.

Rick Langer:

Yeah.

Michael Whitenton:

And so bridge building can do that.

Rick Langer:

On Simon Greer, we were talking with him and he was describing a bit of his story in terms of getting into bridge building, and it's actually quite similar to what you mentioned in terms of being really combative. What did he tell us about handcuffing himself to the pier in San Francisco or somewhere?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yes, he did.

Rick Langer:

I can't remember what they were protesting. It doesn't matter. When you're handcuffing yourself to the pier, in all likelihood, you're probably not bridge building at that moment.

Michael Whitenton:

That's intense.

Tim Muehlhoff:

But Michael, let me ask you this. So two questions. One, when you first met me, did you think I had wise eyes? I don't want to put you on the spot. Okay, second, second, second.

Michael Whitenton:

Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can we go back to that?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yes.

Michael Whitenton:

Actually, I thought that you had kind eyes.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, wow.

Rick Langer:

Good work, Tim.

Tim Muehlhoff:

All right, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Michael Whitenton:

That stood out to me, actually. I was just talking to a friend about that today.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, wow.

Michael Whitenton:

True story.

Rick Langer:

Good grief.

Tim Muehlhoff:

All right, keep going.

Rick Langer:

Now I'm going to have to say nice things to Tim for at least a week in penance, but go ahead.

Tim Muehlhoff:

You are probably my favorite guest we've ever had on our podcast. But let me ask this, though. So I appreciate the fact that you said you just got worn out with the fighting, but what would you say to a person who doesn't get worn out? They get energized, like, "Man, fighting energizes me and I love going at it, and I love proving people wrong." What would you say to a person who's in that vein?

Michael Whitenton:

Well, I think what I would want to know, and this I get is a classic bridge builder response, I'd want to know what experiences that led that person to want to fight so hard. So that might look like, "Can you tell me more about why this issue is so important to you? Maybe you could share a life experience that helps me understand why this is so important to you that the fight doesn't tire you out." Because if that's true of someone, if they're fighting that hard, then something is really at stake.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Which is a good thing. That's another bridge building thing is, "Hey, I want to commend your passion, even though I feel like maybe it's gone to be a bit much or gone in the wrong direction, but you care about this issue and I commend you for caring about the issue."

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right, yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Good. Whose idea was it to start a bridge building class? And then later we'll get to the program. That's really cool.

Rick Langer:

Yeah, talk to us about the whole package because this is an interesting thing that developed there.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, definitely. I don't want this to sound self-aggrandizing. I think it was my idea.

Rick Langer:

Oh, good for you.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, I'm really fortunate to be in a program where we have a lot of support and I enjoy a lot of support from colleagues and administrators. And so we have this class in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core... By the way, if I may for your listeners, if you're not familiar with this, so it's an alternative core program. So instead of taking the core classes at Baylor, they take a set of alternative core curriculum classes. So instead of taking history, sociology and religion, they take four courses in the world cultures sequence that blends those together. And then there's a rhetoric sequence, which is one of the classes I teach.

But we also have these examined life classes. The first one is an introduction to college. We're revamping it right now to include an introduction to interdisciplinary studies and civil discourse. And so all the students take these classes that are part of this program. They take them together as a cohort select community. Anyway, so that's the context. At the end of that program, they take a capstone class, and that capstone class is meant to help launch them into the world after graduation. I've been strongly influenced by the good folks over at Interfaith America, and I was just thinking about what do we need more of? And I just kept thinking about all this division that is pervasive, and I was thinking, "We don't have enough tools to navigate those waters."

And early on, I didn't really know what I was getting into in terms of just how much science there is around this field. And so I pitched it and said, "Hey, what if we did this thing where..." For instance, we have this wonderful class, Biblical Heritage and Contemporary Ethical Issues. Oftentimes instructors will take students through a variety of issues, and the real hot button ones, like abortion, immigration, euthanasia, real heavy and divisive topics and important stuff in higher ed, you should leave knowing what you think about those topics. And so in my head, what I was thinking was, "That's awesome. Hopefully you know what you think about those issues."

In this class, though, what we're going to do is can you work together with people who believe differently on those issues? And can you connect with people who believe differently about those issues? So they loved it. They loved the idea of it. And so I went off to get some training and we're off to the races. I fortunately got the grant from Interfaith America, the Institutional Impact Grant, and that funded the research and the planning and the implementation, especially of the university-wide training, which just required more money because it was a bigger project.

Tim Muehlhoff:

When you say you went off and got some training, where did you go and what specific training did you get?

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, so I did the Bridging the Gap training with Interfaith America. I've also done some professional development with the Constructive Dialogue Institute.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, Jonathan Haidt.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, that's right, that's right. And I haven't worked directly with Jonathan Haidt, although that would be awesome. So I worked with them. John Fay, I believe, is the guy over there that I did training with. And also, I'm pretty heavily influenced by the work of the folks at Essential Partners as well. John Sarrouf is the executive director over there. They do some reflective structured dialogue, is their model.

Tim Muehlhoff:

This is great stuff. I hope the listeners are encouraged that there's different groups out there. They may just be, for the first time, hearing about them. So I think I mentioned to you, Michael, that I got back from Israel, a trip of 15 people went to go study this historic conflict, partnered with Simon Greer, and somebody from the Constructive Dialogue Institute was there, Mylene, who is one of their top researchers. So can you give me a nugget from them? You walked away from the Constructive Dialogue training and said, "Okay, here's a nugget." And then the Essential Partners, what was a nugget from them? We'd just love to hear those kinds of things.

Michael Whitenton:

So Constructive Dialogue, one of the fascinating... I use this in classroom activities. They've got this really wonderful way of getting people to understand the importance of open-ended questions. And so what you do is you have students pair off. There's more to this exercise in terms of teaching them to listen for values. Instead of just hearing what someone's saying on the surface, try to get underneath. It sounds like issues of purity or maybe authority are really important. And you can find common ground a lot like, "Oh, well, I care about those things," or, "I can see that that's pulling them in that direction."

But where I see a lot of benefit from this particular exercise is in the back half of it where you ask students to come up with something that they really care about. So for your listeners, if you were doing this at home, you would just come up with some topic that you really care about that you don't mind talking about. That last part is pretty important because of what's coming next. So you pair off, and then the speaker just tells the listener what they care about. And this is how I've used it. I don't know if the folks at Constructive Dialogue would frame it differently, but this is how it's shown up in my classes. And then the listener just asks a bunch of questions that are designed to convince the speaker that they're wrong.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh.

Michael Whitenton:

That's all they do. So they just ask-

Rick Langer:

Like, "Have you thought about this kind of questions?" Direct or are they-

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, "Have you thought about this?" Or, "Well, doesn't that mean that you're supporting this?" Those sorts of things. The stuff that shows up when we get keyed up in conflict. And then the speaker answers, and we don't do this for too long. It's deeply uncomfortable. We ask students like, "Hey, what was that like?" And usually it's not great. It's not great for the speaker, it's not great for the listener. No one likes it, it turns out.

And so the round two, which is much more life-giving, I would never do this without round two. Round two, you come back in the same pair, and now the listener's job is just to ask questions of genuine curiosity that are designed to get the speaker to tell them more about this thing that they care about. And then they listen intently. And usually there, students don't want me to stop them because it's wonderful. And I actually had a student this semester who came up to me afterward and the student said to me... I thought, "Well, this is a really impactful kind of exercise." But I didn't think too much of it. And he came up afterward and he said, "You know what? I'm never going to be the same after that. That felt terrible to me to have someone try to convince me that what I want to go into spend the rest of my life studying was not worthwhile. And I never, ever, ever, ever want to do that to someone else."

Rick Langer:

Yeah. Oh, wow.

Michael Whitenton:

And I thought that's actually deeply profound because so much of the divisiveness that we see in society, I think, in churches and schools, in our homes, is predicated on this lack of concern for what it's actually like for the receiver. And if we thought about it, if we thought, "I wonder what this is like for them, I wonder how much we might get a little pause."

Tim Muehlhoff:

So can I ask a clarifying question?

Michael Whitenton:

Sure.

Tim Muehlhoff:

So I love this, and you don't need to speak for the Constructive Dialogue Institute.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, sure.

Tim Muehlhoff:

So is it the purpose of starting with those open-ended questions, but the more challenging kind, is it to mention the elephant in the room? Because otherwise, it'd be hard for me to have this dialogue. Is it to clear out space so then I can ask the life-giving questions? Why do we start there and not start with the life giving first and then the harder ones?

Michael Whitenton:

Okay. Yeah, so I'm glad you're asking this clarifying question. So at least the way I use this is I actually am not a fan of those questions at any point in dialogue. Well, doesn't this mean that you're supporting this cause? I don't think that those are particularly helpful. So the reason that we start there, at least for me, is to give them an experience of how limiting questions like that can be. So that when they get to the point of asking open-ended questions, they understand that actually open-ended questions are easy, and I learn more about the person. I care more about the person as a result.

At least for me, the hope is that they then start to ask more of those questions and less of the questions that shut down curiosity. If you tell me you believe, I don't know, X about Y, and I look at you and I say, "Well, but doesn't that mean..." No matter what I say next, one thing is clear, I'm not curious about you. I've made assumptions about you and the more work I do in this space, and I know you work in this space too, so I'm curious to see if you've encountered this as well, but the more work I do in bridge building, the less I trust the assumptions that I make. I still make the assumptions. Those are just always going to happen. But I'd say that they're wrong in my own experience about 80% of the time.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, that's interesting. Michael, let me push back just a little bit, not push back. Let me give you the pushback we get. Here's what they would say, "You guys at Winsome Conviction and you guys at Baylor are just interested in the curiosity loop. That's it. You just want to hear more. You want to empathize, you want to find common ground, but we never get to, I disagree with what you just said, and I think you're wrong." So we get the feedback here at the Winsome Conviction Project, "You guys are all Winsomeness, and you never get to the point where I get to just look at you and say, I'm sorry, man, I think you're wrong. And I do think this leads to that." You know what I mean? That's the critique we get. So this is a cathartic moment for me and Rick, because we want to hear what would you say to that kind of criticism?

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, it's a good question. And it's understandable. For me, I want people to first fully understand the person that they're talking to. So in bridging conversations, I think I'm probably pulling this from Simon Greer, a bridging conversation isn't over until you've exhausted your capacity to understand that person.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, that's one of Simon's favorite quotes. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah. If my goal is to convince you that you're wrong, that's not a bridging conversation. I guess that's the thing we can do. Not trying to be facetious here, but if you're interested in stepping out of the high conflict loop, and by high conflict, I'm talking about Amanda Ripley. She's got a book called High Conflict where we just get into this space where all we want is to fight. Look, I very much want "my side" to win on these issues that we care deeply about, but also, if I'm self-reflective, actually the way I would want to put that is there are things that I care deeply about, but I don't quite understand those issues like I need to if I don't understand the people that I disagree with.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's good.

Michael Whitenton:

It's not that there's not a time for me to say, "Yeah, I disagree." In fact, I think that any bridging conversation should look like that. Eventually it should take the turn that, "Yeah, I don't agree with you. I see that differently." But for me, the really interesting part, I'm much less interested in declaring a winner. I'm more interested in why is it that a view that feels so scary to me or dangerous to me or wrong to me feels good to you? Why is that?

And so for me, I'm not really trying to win. And in my experience, when people try to win, everyone loses. We don't get anywhere. I think our problem is that we don't understand each other, and the best way to do that is to talk. It reminds me of this quote from Monica Guzman. I don't know if you've read her fabulous book, I Never Thought of It That Way, but she's over at Braver Angels. She's got a podcast called The Braver Way. She's got this line in there. She says, "Anyone who is underrepresented in your world will be overrepresented in your imagination."

Tim Muehlhoff:

Wow.

Rick Langer:

That is a great line.

Tim Muehlhoff:

All right, say that again. Say that again, Michael.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, so this is from Monica Guzman, "Anyone who is underrepresented in your world will be overrepresented in your imagination."

If we don't talk to people across difference, it gets a lot easier for us to then level those questions like, "Well, but haven't you ever thought of..." "Maybe clearly you have it..." Or in religious context, "Well, I guess you haven't really read the Bible." That gets thrown out a lot. Well, maybe that person that you're talking to actually has read the Bible a whole lot. Maybe it's not actually about what's in the Bible. Maybe it has more to do with y'all's personal experiences that have led you to read the Bible in a particular way. But you'll never know that if you don't ask curious questions. If you stop at the like, "Well, but have you thought of," that's in the surface. And for me personally, it's boring. It hasn't always been, but compared to the wild ride of finding why it is that we disagree, kind of boring.

Rick Langer:

I had an interesting experience, just what you were just describing it reminded me of this. I was taking a summer school class, this is, I don't know, 20 years ago probably. And they were talking about the early Desert Fathers. And again, you can cross cultural boundaries or you can cross chronological boundaries. In either case, you're meeting a different set of people who read things in a really different way. So the Desert Fathers are rattling out there in Egypt and the fourth century A.D. or whatever, and they have these sayings of the early Desert Fathers that are collected together. And I imagine if you were to pick up a copy of that and start reading through these sayings that John Cassian, I think it is the guy who collected these, I would bet fully half of them you would read them and just get freaked out that these guys are crazy. And of course they look like it by our standards because they're living alone out there in the desert.

But there's another half of them that have this amazing wisdom. And the guy who was teaching the class made a great move the first day of class. He said, "Look, I'm going to be assigning readings. You'll read these things. If you want to identify sayings in the Desert Fathers that you think are atrocious, outrageous, racist, misogynistic, whatever you want to find, if you want to find them, you'll find them there every time you have a reading. If, on the other hand, you'd like to learn from them, I would encourage you to just pursue those sayings for whom that really work for you. And I think you'll find there's as much wisdom in there as there is things that cause you this great anxiety."

And lo and behold, I found that to be literally true. I have quoted things from those books and those sayings probably hundreds of times in between times, but by gosh, some of the things they said were just crazy in the negative sense of the word. And part of it is saying, "You know what? I can find something of value and it does make me read my Bible or understand my theology different by having encountered that lens." And I could have just rejected the entire thing. As it turns out, that word of caution from that instructor really turned what otherwise would've been a waste of time for me into a real blessing, even if I disagree still with a lot of things they say.

Michael Whitenton:

Sure. Yeah, I think it's a great point. There's a Persian poet, 14th century Persian poet named Hafez who says... Let's see, I want to get this right. He says, "How do I listen to others? As if everyone were my master speaking to me his cherished last words."

Rick Langer:

Oh, yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Isn't that great?

Rick Langer:

That is great.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's so good. Hey, let me mention one quick thing and then we want to invite you back sometime in the future for a segment because love to pick your brain about what books would you have a person read if you can only say one book I'll give to you to read. We had a person, Michael, on our podcast, a well-known Bible teacher. He is been around forever and has a huge following, and yet was dropped by 180 stations because he gave one piece of advice that they absolutely disagreed with. A grandmother literally asked the question, "Should I attend the wedding of a gay child?" And this guy gave a very nuanced, very, we thought, compassionate answer and got dropped by 180 radio stations. So that's what Rick you're saying is I come to the Deseret Fathers, I come across one quote, I'm like, "Okay, we're done. I'm closing that book. I'm not going to ever listen to them." And you're advocating the opposite, Rick, is, "Hey, maybe push past that and not so quickly cancel people."

Rick Langer:

People are image bearers. They bear the image of God. They look at the created order that God has made. They see things that apart from whatever number of just truly malicious human beings are rattling around nothing but malice. And I'm not even sure how many of those exist out there, but for most everybody you look at, you go, "There's something I can actually learn." And that's really different than saying, "I'm going to agree with everything they say." But to learn nothing, it just seems to be a waste of a perfectly good opportunity to learn and grow.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, Michael, thank you so much for being with us. I love that you brought in that poet. When you do bridge building work with Simon, we do Pomona dialogues. He's paired us with Pomona College.

Michael Whitenton:

Sure, yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

We've done this three years in a row. And the first night he has all of us read Hafez is how you say that. He has us read that part of a poem, and I think it's really powerful. So listen, would you come back sometime in the future, because we'd love to pick your brain more about books that you would suggest and things like that?

Michael Whitenton:

I would love to. I'd also love to tell you more about the Bridge Building Fellows program. That'd be wonderful.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, that'd be great. Hey, Michael, if people right now wanted more information about what you're doing at Baylor, where would they go to learn more about this?

Michael Whitenton:

I think just check out the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core website.

Rick Langer:

Well, thanks, Michael, so much for being with us here at the Winsome Conviction podcast. We'd like to thank all of our listeners for joining us as well. We'd love to have you become a regular subscriber by joining up on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you'd like to get your podcasts. And we'd also encourage you to check out the winsomeconviction.com website. We have more resources and articles there, but it's also a great place where you could sign up to join our quarterly newsletter. There's also a place there that you could give us a message. I would love to hear from you about questions you might have, things you'd like to have us address. And so we'd love to have you do that and just find us there at the winsomeconviction.com website. Thanks so much for being with us.