For Nashville attorney John Day, there is no overstating how important the rule of law is to our everyday lives — not just when it comes to our personal freedoms, but also in making the economy work in a predictable fashion. He compares it to oxygen: You don't notice it until it starts to go way. John was recently named president of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a nationwide group that has advocated to preserve the rule of law under increasing pressure.

He had always planned to study and practice law with his father in Wisconsin, but a college professor suggested John see some of the world first: North Carolina first, for law school, then Nashville for an internship. The law community at the time was much smaller than comparable Southern cities, and he felt like could fit in. He's been practicing here ever since.

Guest: John Day, attorney

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Throughout his career, Mark Deutschmann has tried to balance preservation — he worked to develop the historick Werthan Mills complex into lofts — with progress. He's a big advocate for the development of the city's greenway system, and hopes for more ways to build attainable (rather than "affordable") housing.

Mark had a winding path to Music City — one that included working with orcas, nearly getting lost at sea, and winding up on an island with only two inhabitants. Once here, he managed to take up juggling (peaking at seven balls at a time) and start his own real estate company, Village, in 1996. He was recently inducted into the Nashville Entrepreneur Center's hall of fame.

Guest: Mark Deutschmann, developer, founder, Village Real Estate

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

-More local news at nashvillebanner.com

-Sign up for our free morning newsletter

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Raised in a military family and a graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School, Sharon K. Roberson has drawn on years in the corporate world to lead the YWCA of Nashville & Middle Tennessee (not to be confused with a similarly named but unrelated organization that you might associate with workout equipment). Moving in to the nonprofit world was an adjustment, but in a way she's returned to her roots in service to others.

The YWCA has an ambitious mission: "eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all." That might sound like a tall order, but for Sharon, it's a calling that brings all her years of professional experience to bear on making the world a better place. With domestic violence a persistent problem and hunger on the rise, it's more urgent work than ever.

Guest: Sharon K. Roberson, president and CEO, YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

- More local news at nashvillebanner.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve Norris had never set foot inside a prison when became commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction. And he had only been on the job three months when he was suddenly thrust into one of the biggest crises in the state's history: an inmate uprising, including a "full on riot," across multiple prisons. Five correction officers were taken hostage. Inmates were allowed to give a live press conference. "I thought about turning it down,'' Steve says, " but ultimately concluded that it was in everybody's interest that the media be allowed in and everybody could see what we were dealing with."

Looking back at those 36 hours in the summer of 1985, Steve says it was a turning point. And around the same time, an upstart company called Corrections Corporation of American — now known as CoreCivic — was just beginning. Today, it operates several Tennessee prisons, including the troubled Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility. Steve says he has no special knowledge of what's going on there, but he does have some ideas about how to turn the situation around.

Guest: Steve Norris, former commissioner, Tennessee Department of Correction

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a long time, Barry Mazor (along with fellow music writers) puzzled over what struck them as a glaring omission: There was no dependable, carefully sourced book on one of music's most important groups, The Everly Brothers. Eventually, Barry's agent asked a question that seems somewhat obvious in hindsight: "Why don't you write it?" That is the origin story of Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story.

Barry's painstakingly researched new book captures not only the story of the duo's music and lasting influence, but also dives into Don and Phil Everly's close and sometimes fraught relationship. As for himself, Barry knows a bit about having performers in the family — some of his relatives were vaudevillians — and as both one of the country's top music writers and a lifelong Everlys fan, he knows his way around the legend and the lore.

Guest: music writer, author of Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Bob Bernstein announced that beloved Hillsboro Village coffee shop Fido will be closing — three years from now, on June 1, 2028. In the announcement, which was posted below a digital countdown clock, he wrote: "As leases expired, many of those who put their savings and dreams into their small businesses and created the look, feel and taste of Nashville became victims of their own success." The news sparked conversations around the changing character of the city.

Bob didn't intend to open one of Nashville's most beloved coffee shops. In fact, he first moved here to be a journalist. But hearing about plans for growing the city, he bought into the idea that something special was happening in Music City. He opened a coffee house — even though he didn't drink coffee at the time — because he loved the culture. Bongo Java, intended to be a gathering place for Nashvillians of all stripes, opened on Belmont Boulevard with a line out the door on its very first day.

Guest: Bob Bernstein, owner, Bongo Java and Fido

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Growing up, Stephen Bargatze got into plenty of trouble. He wasn't a very good student. His home life was rocky at best, and he had a terrible relationship with his mother. But with some help from family, he got a chance to turn his life around. And when he found he had some skill at magic tricks, his world brightened a bit. Then he discovered that with clown make-up on, "talking funny" was actually an asset.

These days, Stephen is still dazzling audiences with his sleight-of-hand and enjoying the outsize fame of his son, comedian Nate Bargatze. (His parents still think of him as Nathaniel.) He'll soon be recording his first special with his family's production company — one of the many doors that Nate's success has opened for the family.

Guest: Stephen Bargatze, magician and comedian

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liz McLaurin looks at the landscape a little different than the rest of us. As the head of the nonprofit Land Trust for Tennessee, she works with landowners who want to set aside some (or all) of their property for conservation. So when she sees forests and farmlands, she's not just thinking about what's there now; she's also thinking about what that land might look like decades or even centuries from now. Will it be protected and left unspoiled?

In her line of work, the answer is often yes. The Land Trust helps owners make arrangements for their land, to make sure it doesn't get paved over or covered in condos. Hers was an indirect path to this work, starting with years as a working actor. In the years since, she's come to know that people who've lived on land know that land and the stories it holds — and her job is to listen for how to sustain those stories for the future.

Guest: Liz McLaurin, president and CEO, The Land Trust for Tennessee

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shane Caldwell got his start on public access television as "kind of a goof," after watching a comedy show and thinking he and his fellow bartender friends could do much better. What they came up with, The Sylvan Brothers, became an underground sensation. That led to a local sketch comedy show called Cuts that aired right after Saturday Night Live. The first musical guest? Vince Gill.

The child of performers, Shane hails from Savannah, Tenn. — fishing worm capital of the world — where some of the off-kilter residents he observed growing up informed the characters he eventually created for his shows. Clips of one of those characters, the indelible "Rehab Guy," still get shared on social media. Since those days, Shane has worked with a long roster of collaborators, including Jeff Foxworthy and professional wrestler Dusty "The American Dream" Rhodes.

Guest: Shane Caldwell, comedian

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You should never meet your heroes, the old saying goes. But for Jim McGuire, it has turned out pretty well. Jim grew up listening to country radio, and then — after a roundabout path took him to an Army base in Oklahoma, then to Vietnam and eventually to Nashville — he made a career capturing photos of some of the stars he had once only known through their music.

He started out in an old grocery store that he converted into a photo studio — he slept in the back — but it wasn't long before his skill behind the camera drew a steady stream of notable subjects: The Nashville Portraits include legends like Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Doc Watson, Earl Monroe and Dolly Parton, to name but a few. He doesn't often give interviews, so this is a rare chance to hear his story firsthand.

Guest: Jim "Senor" McGuire, photographer

Host: Demetria Kalodimos

Producer: Steve Haruch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices