Derate the Hate | Wilk Wilkinson

The Father and Daughter Who Created The Enemies Project

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:30:58 GMT

Larry Rosen built a career as a mediator, working through disputes between people who already knew each other and had a reason to want to get along — business partners, divorcing couples, families untangling an inheritance. He started wondering whether that same process could work between total strangers who disagreed about nothing more personal than politics. He didn’t know if the motivation would even be there. He built the Enemies Project to test it, with one structural addition borrowed from television rather than mediation: let people argue first, then guide them toward seeing each other as human beings before ever touching the actual dispute.

His daughter Sadie came on originally to help launch the project on social media. She ended up embedded in nearly every part of it — recruiting and screening guests, producing episodes, and, this past summer alone, having conversations with roughly a hundred people trying to find the right voices for the show.

Key Themes

● Stoke the flames, then build the bridge. Larry’s early instinct in mediation was to defuse conflict immediately. For the show, he learned to do the opposite — let people argue first — and found that the more heat there was at the start, the deeper and more surprising the resolution turned out to be.

● The bridging space may be aiming at the wrong audience. Larry argues that people already interested in “depolarization” and “cross-partisan dialogue” are a narrow, self-selecting group. The much larger audience is people who’ve simply tuned politics out because it’s exhausting — people who just want their own relationships to work better.

● Numbers versus individual impact. Larry and Sadie both describe the strange experience of watching follower counts climb into the hundreds of thousands while the moments that actually stick with them are single messages — a viewer who says a conversation with an estranged parent finally happened again.

● Two skills a mediator needs. Larry breaks down the two core abilities he believes this work requires: deep empathy, and the more analytical skill of mapping a conversation’s structure in real time. Few people, he says, naturally have both.

● Built at the family dinner table. Sadie traces her own instinct for seeing things from someone else’s perspective back to childhood car rides, where her dad’s oft-repeated advice eventually became a running family joke — “no dad lessons today” — that, as she got older, turned out to have worked anyway.

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Takeaways

● Structured conversation can transform a relationship even between two people who’ve never met and have no built-in reason to want to get along.

● The Enemies Project has grown into one of the most-watched shows in the bridge-building space — closing in on 200,000 Instagram followers and nearly 100,000 on YouTube — but Larry and Sadie both point to individual stories, not the numbers, as what actually keeps them doing the work.

● Learn more, watch episodes, or connect with the Enemies Project at enemiesproject.org.

Learn more about and connect with Larry and Sadie Rosen

Larry Rosen

Larry Rosen is the founder of the Enemies Project and of the mediation law practice Through Understanding, where he has spent decades helping people find their way through high-conflict disputes. His TEDx talk, “The Secret to Understanding Humans,” has been widely viewed and informs the approach behind the Enemies Project. In 2024 he completed a novel, The Enemy Dance, exploring whether a society split by tribalism can heal itself.

enemiesproject.org

LinkedIn — Larry Rosen

Sadie Rosen

Sadie Rosen is Head of Operations and Producer at the Enemies Project, and a senior at Washington University in St. Louis. She leads guest recruitment, production logistics, and strategic partnerships, overseeing the project from outreach through final edit.

enemiesproject.org

LinkedIn — Sadie Rosen

The Enemies Project — Social

Instagram

YouTube

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The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

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The Derate The Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels — America’s largest grassroots, cross-partisan organization working toward civic renewal and bridging partisan divides. Learn more: BraverAngels.org

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

Leave Your Bubble, Find Your Country

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:36:40 GMT

Wesley Warshawer grew up in Tucson, AZ, in a house full of difference: a dad from Los Angeles, a mom from rural Indiana, parents from different political parties, and four childhood best friends from four different religions. None of it felt unusual — until he left. A scholarship took him to India at 19, then to Korea on a Fulbright, immersed among students from 65 countries. He came home fluent in cultures across the globe — and landed a data analytics job in Silicon Valley, where he built a bubble of his own without realizing it.

Then in 2017, a single poll stopped him and sent his curiosity gear into overdrive: about half of America voted for Trump, about half lived with a gun in the house, a third believed in a literal reading of Genesis. None of it matched the people around him at work. The feeling wasn’t anger — it was embarrassment. He’d spent years learning about Korea and India and had never really tried to understand half of his own country.

When Covid sent his job remote, Wesley sold his apartment and drove to Bismarck, North Dakota — the U.S. city of more than 100,000 people that voted for Trump by the widest margin. He stayed 18 months, working by day and living in towns from North Dakota to Mississippi by night, before spending three more years as a digital nomad through Latin America, Africa, and Europe.

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Key Themes

Binary questions get binary answers. Instead of asking people whether they wanted the wall or who they’d voted for, Wesley asked them to “paint a picture” of the immigration policy or health care system they’d want to see. The answers he got in red-state America sounded remarkably similar to what he’d hear in California.
Bubbles aren’t good or bad — they’re just where you’re standing. Wesley traces the idea to a knock-knock joke that fell flat with a foreign exchange student in college: proof that culture, not intelligence or character, decides what makes sense to us.
Ridicule culture is more comfortable than it is honest. Wesley used to laugh along with shows built on mocking the other political side. Traveling outside his bubble changed that — he now sees those shows as a way of staying comfortable rather than getting closer to the truth.
The country’s foundational values hold up better than the headlines suggest. After 18 months in red America and years abroad in genuinely fractured countries, Wesley didn’t find the kind of deep divides the national conversation implies.

Takeaways

You don’t need a passport to break out of your bubble — Wesley points out it can be as simple as spending time on a different side of your own town.
Ask open questions, not binary ones, if you actually want to understand someone.
Courageous citizenship starts with recognizing what you don’t know — and choosing to find out anyway.
Wesley shares his essays and travels on Substack, at wesleywarshawer.com, and on LinkedIn.

Learn more about and connect with Wesley Warshawer

Wesley Warshawer grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and studied abroad in India and South Korea, including two years on a Fulbright Scholarship pursuing a Master’s in Global Economy and Strategy at Yonsei University. After a 2017 poll revealed how disconnected he’d become from much of his own country, he spent 18 months living in communities across red-state America — from Bismarck, North Dakota, to Biloxi, Mississippi — followed by three more years as a digital nomad across Latin America, Africa, and Europe. He was named University of Arizona Honors College Young Alumni of the Year in December 2025 and served as convocation speaker at graduation. In April 2026, he presented at the American Anthropological Association Conference. Wesley writes about his travels and insights on Substack.

Website: https://www.wesleywarshawer.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesley-warshawer

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The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

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Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

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Why Minnesota Is Building a Statewide Campaign of Neighbors

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:03:31 GMT

The Minnesota Land of Neighbors campaign is a new, multi-year effort built by a coalition of Minnesota foundations and bridging organizations to counter toxic division and help Minnesotans reconnect as neighbors, regardless of politics. It grew out of a call from a group of funders who noticed Minnesotans were tired of the toxicity but unsure how to act on it, and it’s built around a simple idea: start by listening, not by prescribing solutions.

Rather than arriving with a fix, the coalition behind the campaign — including Braver Angels, Civic Bridgers, Common Ground USA, CRD Connect, and Media Minefield — is holding listening sessions in all parts of the state to hear directly from Minnesotans about what neighboring looks like at its best. Libby Stegger and Bill Doherty, two of the people helping lead and speak for the effort, join Wilk to talk about how it’s built. (Full disclosure: Wilk is also part of the campaign’s leadership team, so this lands close to home, literally.)

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Key Themes

● Listening before solving. The campaign grew out of a recognition that two-thirds of Americans want less division but don’t know where to start — and that real solutions have to come from the people living the problem, not be handed down.

● A three-tier framework. The listening sessions are built around three levels — your immediate neighborhood, your town or city, and the state of Minnesota as a whole — asking the same three questions at each level: how are people supporting each other, how are they solving problems together, and how are they relating to outsiders.

● Start with values, not politics. Bill’s key insight from decades of bridging work: lead with policy and people find differences. Lead with values and shared aspirations, and people find common ground.

● The land and water example. In an early session in Fergus Falls, a shared love of Minnesota’s land and water emerged as a value crossing political lines — even though the environment often becomes a source of division rather than connection.

● Seeing the whole person. A central metaphor from the conversation: from a distance, people are hazy outlines — you can’t even tell what color shirt they’re wearing. Get close, and you start to see the texture — the details that make someone a whole, complex person. The campaign’s goal is to build that closeness at a statewide scale.

● Agency over overwhelm. Borrowing a phrase from a colleague, Libby and Bill emphasize asking “what are WE going to do about it” rather than “what are you going to do about it” — a shift that invites people into shared ownership instead of leaving them feeling powerless.

● Reaching every corner of the state. With listening sessions already held in Fergus Falls, the Twin Cities, and Lake City, and more planned from Beaver Creek to Hibbing to Moorhead, the campaign is deliberately built to reflect Minnesota’s geographic and cultural diversity, including the rural-urban divide and tribal nations.

● Turning stories into media. A partnership with the PR and marketing firm Media Minefield means the campaign is designed from the start to counter narratives of division with documented stories of connection.

Takeaways

● Big change starts close to home. The campaign deliberately begins with the people you already have direct contact with, then works outward — because that’s where common ground is easiest to see.

● Ask about aspirations, not just problems. Framing questions around what people want their community to look like at its best avoids the trap of asking “what’s wrong” and “who should fix it,” which tends to leave people feeling powerless.

● You don’t need all the answers to get started. The Minnesota Land of Neighbors team is intentionally holding off on prescribing next steps until they’ve listened first — the solutions are meant to be built by Minnesotans, for Minnesotans.

Get involved.

Visit Minnesota Land of Neighbors online or follow (@MNLandofNeighbors) on Social Media to find a listening session near you, sign up for updates, or volunteer to host one in your own community.

Website:

https://www.MinnesotaLandofNeighbors.org

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Learn more about and connect with Libby & Bill

Libby Stegger and Bill Doherty are two of the spokespeople for the Minnesota Land of Neighbors campaign, joining a broader leadership team of bridging organizations and funding partners behind the effort.

Libby Stegger

Libby Stegger is the founder and executive director of Civic Bridgers, a nonprofit dedicated to preparing leaders to bridge divides in civic life. Before founding Civic Bridgers, she spent a decade scaling hunger relief systems and K-12 schools, including as Chief Advancement Officer for Hiawatha Academies, one of Minnesota’s largest networks of public charter schools, and leading Hunger-Free Minnesota’s strategic grantmaking portfolio. She also launched one of the nation’s first SNAP Outreach Programs at the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Libby earned an MBA from Yale University and a BA in political science from Davidson College.

Website:

https://www.civicbridgers.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/libbystegger

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/civicbridgers

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CivicBridgers

Bill Doherty, Ph.D.

Bill Doherty is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota, where he taught marriage and family therapy for 38 years. Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he co-founded Braver Angels, a citizen initiative bringing conservatives and liberals together to counteract political polarization and restore the country’s social fabric. Braver Angels now has volunteers in all 50 states. His honors include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Family Therapy Academy.

Website:

https://www.BraverAngels.org

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with

A House Divided: Reality TV Meets Real Deliberation

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:59:43 GMT

Roshan Bliss didn’t set out to make television. He set out to be a mediator, then discovered that the conflicts he cared most about — the big, cultural, many-to-many kind — needed a different set of tools entirely. That discovery took him to the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, where he now leads efforts to bring democratic deliberation to a much bigger audience.

His latest project, A House Divided, is his boldest attempt yet: a reality TV show that brings three groups of people from across the cultural spectrum into a house for seven days to work through a real, community-defining conflict — with professional facilitators on hand and the audience voting along the way.

Key Themes

Many-to-many conflict. Roshan draws a clear line between the 1-on-1 disputes a mediator handles and the large-scale, cultural-level disagreements that require a fundamentally different, multi-stakeholder approach.
Define the problem before you argue the solution. Large groups can agree a problem exists while disagreeing on what the problem even is — and skipping that step is where a lot of public conversation goes wrong.
Entertainment as a delivery system. Roshan’s core insight: dialogue and deliberation are already dramatic — real characters, real conflict, real stakes — so why not put cameras on it and let that story reach people who’d never seek out a panel on civil discourse.
A House Divided, explained. Three participant groups — left, right, and center in cultural outlook, not necessarily party — are brought into a house for seven days to address a real hot-button issue from a real community, guided by expert facilitation and structured like a deliberative process rather than a shouting match.
Humanizing the other side. A core design principle of the show: no participant is edited into a villain. Roshan and Wilk talk about why seeing people as full, complicated humans — instead of caricatures — is what actually lowers the temperature.
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Takeaways

Most of our biggest disagreements aren’t 1-on-1 problems — they’re many-to-many, and they need many-to-many solutions, not just better debaters.
You can’t skip the step of agreeing on what problem you’re actually solving. Jumping straight to solutions is how conversations stall out before they start.
Good-faith conflict, done well, is genuinely compelling — which means the bridging space doesn’t have to choose between being substantive and being watchable.
A House Divided is already moving from concept to reality, with a sizzle reel filming this season and funding conversations underway with social-impact incubators and deliberative-tech partners. Learn more and sign up for updates at housedividedtv.org.

Learn more about and connect with Roshan Bliss

Roshan Bliss is a community organizer, nonprofit leader, and change strategist based in Denver, Colorado. He serves as Director of Democracy Innovations for the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD), a 20-plus-year-old network of practitioners working in conflict resolution, dialogue across difference, and democratic deliberation. In that role, he leads NCDD’s efforts to address democratic dysfunction and support depolarization at a cultural level. He is also the creator of A House Divided, NCDD’s experiment in pairing big-budget reality television with deliberative AI technology to reimagine the public square for the attention economy. Roshan also consults with public-sector organizations working to make their decision-making more democratic.

NCDD: www.ncdd.org

A House Divided: www.housedividedtv.com

Consulting website: www.blisscollaborations.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/roshanbliss

Instagram: @NCDD_Network

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We’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a real conversation.

The week of August 10th, join AllSides for a live conversation about the American Dream — how we’re thinking about it and navigating the challenges.

Your insights will be anonymized and included in a report to help leaders better understand how people see this issue.

___________________________________________________________________

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

Why Avoiding Conflict Doesn't Mean You're Keeping the Peace

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:16:13 GMT

Kelsey Blahnik, LCSW-S, has spent years working with clients across the full political spectrum—people from red places, blue places, and everywhere between. What she noticed, especially during the pandemic, is that most of us default to one of two extremes when conflict shows up: we go passive and swallow it, or we go aggressive and let it explode. Neither one actually solves anything, and both quietly wear down relationships over time.

Her book, The And Way: Assertive Peacemaking in a Divided World, is built around a third option—assertive peacemaking. It’s not about avoiding hard topics. It’s about learning to sit in the discomfort of a real conversation long enough to actually get somewhere with it.

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Key Themes

Assertive peacemaking as the middle path: Kelsey draws a clear line between avoiding conflict and welcoming it head-on. Real peace, in her framework, means having the uncomfortable conversation—not steering around it.
The Instant Pot problem: Kelsey’s analogy for what happens when people hold everything in—eventually it comes out as an explosion. Structured spaces for dialogue, like the ones Braver Angels builds, work like that pressure valve, releasing tension before it blows.
Assertive vs. aggressive: Confusing the two, Kelsey says, is like shooting yourself in the foot. Assertiveness is clear and grounded in what you actually want. Aggressiveness gets people’s ears to slam shut.
Requests over complaints: Plenty of people can tell you what they don’t like. Fewer can tell you what they actually want. Kelsey walks through why identifying and voicing a clear request is the real skill worth practicing.
Competing impulses, not fixed labels: Instead of “I’m a people pleaser” or “I’m the difficult one,” Kelsey encourages people to see themselves—and everyone else—as capable of more than one thing at once.

Takeaways

You don’t have to choose between keeping the peace and speaking the truth. Assertive peacemaking is a middle path between passivity and aggression.
Internal work comes first. Before you can navigate conflict well with someone else, Kelsey says you have to understand your own story and your own reactions.
Practice identifying what you want, not just what you don’t want. Clear requests build stronger relationships than vague complaints do.
Nobody is just one thing. Extending yourself the grace to be complicated makes it easier to extend that same grace to people you disagree with.
Learn more about Kelsey’s work, including The And Way Therapy Group and the book, at theandwaypress.com or on Instagram @theandway.

Learn more about and connect with Kelsey Blahnik

Kelsey Blahnik, LCSW-S, is a therapist and the founder of The And Way Therapy Group, a virtual practice serving clients in Texas and Florida. She’s the author of The And Way: Assertive Peacemaking in a Divided World and the creator of The And Way™ model for navigating conflict and building psychological flexibility.

Website: theandwaypress.com

Instagram: @theandway

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__________________________________________________________________________

We’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a real conversation.

The week of August 10th, join AllSides for a live conversation about the American Dream — how we’re thinking about it and navigating the challenges.

Your insights will be anonymized and included in a report to help leaders better understand how people see this issue.

__________________________________________________________________________

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

Holding the Line: Why Some Things Should Still Be Taboo

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:03:32 GMT

Erez Levin spent years working in the guts of Google’s advertising technology business — the systems that decide what gets seen, what gets monetized, and what gets buried. He watched marketers chase quantity over quality, watched that same logic bleed into the wider internet, and eventually left to write and advocate full time. His focus now is restoring the moral taboos he believes society has let erode, using what he calls principled ostracism rather than the blunt, tribal instincts of cancel culture.

Wilk and Erez spend this conversation working through where that line actually sits — and why drawing it clearly, rather than avoiding the conversation altogether, may be one of the more overlooked forms of courageous citizenship.

Key Themes

● Bad incentives, not bad people. Erez argues that most of what looks like online cruelty isn’t driven by evil intent — it’s driven by systems, ad tech included, that reward engagement over honesty. He leans on Upton Sinclair’s line about salaries and understanding to make the point.

● Principled ostracism vs. cancel culture. Erez draws a sharp distinction: cancel culture punishes disagreement and rarely allows a way back. Principled ostracism applies real consequences only to a narrow, widely shared category — celebrating violence, overt hateful bigotry — and always leaves room for someone to apologize, change, and return.

● Norms can move, and have moved before. Erez has driven cultural change before, including helping normalize paternity leave at Google. He and Wilk talk through how norms around smoking, and how norms around the KKK operating openly, shifted once society stopped tolerating them.

● Consequences work faster than people expect. Erez points to two real examples — the public reaction after Charlie Kirk’s death, and a memo from investor Bill Ackman that led a group of Harvard students to retract their names from a petition within days — as evidence that clear social consequences change behavior almost immediately.

● Accountability without dehumanizing. Both Wilk and Erez return to the same idea: you can hold someone to a real standard without reducing them to their worst moment. The goal is always a way back, not permanent exile.

Takeaways

● The problem usually isn’t malice — it’s misaligned incentives, and understanding that changes how you respond to bad behavior.

● Real consequences and forgiveness aren’t opposites. The path back is what separates principled ostracism from cancel culture.

● Follow Erez’s writing on moral taboos and principled ostracism at elevin11.substack.com.

Learn more about and connect with Erez Levin

Erez Levin is an advertising technologist and advocate who spent years inside Google’s ad tech business before turning his focus to restoring society’s moral taboos against overt hateful bigotry. He writes about principled ostracism and incentive design at his Substack, Holding the Line, and works through Emet Advisory.

Website: elevin11.substack.com

X (Twitter): https://x.com/elevin11

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erezlevin/

______________________________________________________________

We’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a real conversation.

The week of August 10th, join AllSides for a live conversation about the American Dream — how we’re thinking about it and navigating the challenges.

Your insights will be anonymized and included in a report to help leaders better understand how people see this issue.

______________________________________________________________

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

Paid Protesting Isn't What You Think It Is

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:15:15 GMT

“Paid protesting” is a phrase that tends to provoke an instant reaction — usually suspicion, sometimes outright dismissal. Adam Swart has spent over a decade inside that world as the founder of Crowds on Demand, organizing high-profile campaigns across the political spectrum. In this conversation, he makes the case that the topic deserves a more honest look than it usually gets — not because paid protesting is above scrutiny, but because most of the public conversation about it is built on assumptions rather than on how it actually works. It’s a divisive subject, and Adam and Wilk don’t shy away from that — they just insist on looking at it clearly.

Key Themes

● The history and evolution of paid protesting, and how it became a professionalized industry driven by money, messaging, and strategic optics.

● The real distinction between a protester, an agitator, and an activist — and why conflating the three fuels distrust in legitimate civic action.

● The three most common escalation triggers — close physical confrontation, blocking access, and disproportionate force — and the escalation cycle they set off.

● Why Adam believes transparency, not restriction, is the answer — including his proposed Transparency in Political Demonstrations Act, which would require funding disclosure for large demonstrations without limiting anyone’s right to protest.

● How social media has changed the speed and scale at which protests — and misinformation about them — spread.

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Takeaways

● Organized doesn’t mean illegitimate. Understanding how a protest is funded and coordinated isn’t the same as dismissing the cause behind it.

● Transparency builds trust across political lines — and that’s true whether you’re on the left, the right, or somewhere in between.

● Escalation almost always starts small. The first trigger — not the last reaction — is where prevention actually happens.

● Lawful, respectful protest remains one of the most powerful tools of civic engagement we have — and protecting it means being honest about how it’s sometimes misused.

Learn more about and connect with Adam Swart

Adam Swart is the founder of Crowds on Demand, the original paid protesting and advocacy firm. For more than a decade, he has organized high-profile campaigns across the political spectrum and become one of the most recognized voices on how modern protests are funded, coordinated, and used for political and media impact. Adam has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NewsNation, OAN, and Newsmax, where his commentary regularly draws millions of views. He is also the author of the Transparency in Political Demonstrations Act, a proposal aimed at bringing funding disclosure to large-scale political demonstrations.

Website: www.crowdsondemand.com

X (Twitter): @ceoadamswart — x.com/ceoadamswart

_______________________________________________________________

We’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a real conversation.

The week of August 10th, join AllSides for a live conversation about the American Dream — how we’re thinking about it and navigating the challenges.

Your insights will be anonymized and included in a report to help leaders better understand how people see this issue.

___________________________________________________________________

Subscribe now

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with

Subscribe now

The Paradox of Power: Nobody's All-Powerful, Nobody's Powerless

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:04:48 GMT

Elizaveta Friesem has built her work around a personal preoccupation with human suffering — and a conviction that most of it comes from people hurting each other and disconnecting from one another. Her book, Media Is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving Beyond Blame, argues that media isn’t some external entity manipulating people. It’s a form of human communication, governed by the same limitations and flaws that shape every other kind of human interaction.

In this conversation, she and Wilk work through how blame actually functions, why power isn’t the simple binary we treat it as, and what it takes to hold people accountable without dehumanizing them in the process.

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Key Themes

● Media isn’t “them” — it’s us. Elizaveta pushes back on the idea that media is an external entity manipulating people. It’s a form of human communication, governed by the same limitations and flaws that shape every other kind of human interaction.

● Blame quietly assumes things we can’t prove. When we blame someone, we’re making an assumption about how much power and control they actually had — and often about their motives. Wilk and Elizaveta unpack how much of our modern outrage rests on assumptions we’ve never actually tested.

● Micro power vs. macro power. In a single relationship — a parent and child, for instance — power can look clear and absolute. Zoom out to everything that person is embedded in — a job, a boss, a community, rules they didn’t write — and that certainty falls apart. Elizaveta calls this the paradox of power: nobody is completely powerless, and nobody is completely powerful.

● Holding two things at once. The conversation returns to a central tension: how do you take people’s pain and grievances seriously without collapsing into blame? Elizaveta’s answer isn’t to minimize what people feel — it’s to hold complexity and compassion at the same time.

Takeaways

● Before you assign blame, ask what you’re actually assuming about the other person’s power and motives — and whether you can prove it.

● Power looks different depending on how far you zoom out. The person who seems all-powerful in one relationship is constrained in a dozen others you’re not seeing.

● Elizaveta’s A-C-E model — awareness, compassion, collaboration — offers a practical starting point: acknowledge that real problems exist, then ask how to work on them together rather than assigning fault.

● Explore her work at elizavetafriesem.com and meaningsofpower.com.

Learn more about and connect with Elizaveta Friesem

Elizaveta Friesem is an independent interdisciplinary scholar and writer focused on conflict, polarization, empathy, compassion, and human meaning-making. She’s the author of Media Is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving Beyond Blame (2021), and her ongoing work lives across two projects: Me, Looking for Meaning and POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power.

Website: elizavetafriesem.com

Additional project site: meaningsofpower.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elizaveta-friesem

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We’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a real conversation.

The week of August 10th, join AllSides for a live conversation about the American Dream — how we’re thinking about it and navigating the challenges.

Your insights will be anonymized and included in a report to help leaders better understand how people see this issue.

___________________________________________________________________

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

How a Song Can Reveal What a Debate Never Will

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:03:34 GMT

Shaka Mitchell didn’t set out to become a bridge-builder. He’s a lawyer by training and an education-reform policy veteran by trade, spending two decades in some of the most contentious debates in American politics. But when COVID hit and he watched the connective tissue of community start to fray around him, he didn’t reach for another policy paper. He started getting together with friends once a month to listen to music and talk about why certain songs mattered to them. That habit became the Come Together Music Project - part podcast, part live event series - built on a simple bet: that a song can get people to open up in ways a debate never will.

Key Themes

● Music as a side door. Asking someone “what song reminds you of home” is a much lower-stakes entry point than asking them to defend a position - and it gets to something truer, faster.

● Storytelling is the real payload. Shaka’s found that people rarely remember the song itself months later - what sticks is the story it unlocked, often about a parent, a hometown, or a version of themselves they don’t usually talk about.

● Self-selection is the hidden problem in bridging work. Political dialogue events tend to draw people who already want to have that conversation. Concerts draw everybody. Shaka built Come Together around that lower barrier to entry on purpose.

● Keep it upstream of politics. Shaka is intentional about not turning the project into another venue for policy debate - he wants it to rebuild the basic muscle of listening to another person, which he believes makes the harder bridging work easier for everyone else.

● What changed when artists got political. Wilk and Shaka trace the shift from Woodstock-era protest music to the backlash faced by acts like the Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum, and why most working musicians just want to stay out of the fight.

Takeaways

● You don’t need to like the same music as someone else. You just need a way for them to reveal what resonates with them - and for you to recognize some of that in yourself.

● Real listening means sitting quietly through the whole song before anyone talks. In a culture built for instant reaction, that pause is doing a lot of the work.

● Learn more or bring the project to your own community at cometogethermusic.org.

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Learn more about and connect with Shaka Mitchell

Shaka Mitchell is a Nashville-based lawyer, facilitator, and national leader in education reform policy. He’s a Senior Fellow at the American Federation for Children and a member of the Aspen Institute’s Civil Society Fellowship. He’s the creator and host of the Come Together Music Project, a podcast that uses music to find common ground between people from divergent political, ideological, and socio-economic backgrounds, and he co-hosts the “Quality Matters” podcast. His work has appeared in print, TV, radio, and academic outlets, and he’s a multi-time TEDx Nashville speaker. He’s the past chair of the federally appointed Tennessee State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and he teaches American Government and Constitutional Law as an adjunct faculty member at his alma mater, Belmont University. He earned his J.D. from Wake Forest University School of Law, where he sits on the Board of Advisors for the Journal of Law and Policy.

Website:

https://cometogethermusic.org

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cometogetherpodcast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaka-mitchell-2b04931/

X (Twitter):

Instagram:

___________________________________________________________________

We’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a real conversation.

The week of August 10th, join AllSides for a live conversation about the American Dream — how we’re thinking about it and navigating the challenges.

Your insights will be anonymized and included in a report to help leaders better understand how people see this issue.

___________________________________________________________________

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

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Science, Humility and the Courage to Rebuild Trust

Wilk Wilkinson — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 15:38:07 GMT

What happens when two of the world's most respected scientists sit down, not to relitigate the past, but to ask how we move forward together?

In one of the most important conversations of the 2026 Braver Angels National Convention, former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and Stanford professor Dr. John Ioannidis join moderator Wilk Wilkinson for an honest discussion about science, humility, disagreement, public trust, and the responsibilities shared by scientists and citizens alike.

Rather than debating politics, this conversation explores something deeper:

• How should scientific uncertainty be communicated?
• Why did public trust deteriorate during COVID-19?
• What role does humility play in scientific leadership?
• How can disagreement strengthen science rather than weaken it?
• What responsibilities do citizens have in rebuilding trust?

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The discussion also examines the future of biomedical research, scientific integrity, misinformation, transparency, and the conditions necessary for the next generation of medical breakthroughs.

Whether you agreed or disagreed with pandemic policies, this conversation models something increasingly rare: thoughtful disagreement rooted in mutual respect and a shared pursuit of truth.

This discussion is part of the ongoing Truth & Trust Project, a collaboration between Wilk Wilkinson and Dr. Francis Collins that has explored difficult conversations about science, public health, and civic trust since 2022.

If we hope to navigate the next public health crisis better than the last, rebuilding trust cannot wait until the next emergency. It begins with conversations like this one.

If this discussion challenged your thinking, consider sharing it with someone who may see these issues differently.

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Who Built This Tension You Are Feeling?

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:00:31 GMT

Maryam Mehrtash has spent her career building narratives for some of the biggest names in entertainment, most recently leading global marketing for Marvel Studios and 20th Century Studios. But long before any of that, storytelling was survival. Her family fled Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, passed through refugee camps in Eastern Europe, and eventually settled in Montreal, where Maryam learned English by watching Disney cartoons because there was no one around who could teach her. Her grandmother, a celebrated Kurdish actress and singer before the 1979 revolution, was imprisoned and tortured for four years afterward. Maryam says she comes from a lineage of storytellers who were silenced, and that history shapes the work she does today: helping people understand how narratives are built, who’s building them, and how to build their own.

Key Themes

Authentic storytelling versus manufactured conflict. Maryam draws a clear line between finding the real tension in a story and fabricating outrage to drive engagement. The first builds trust. The second is what’s broken media, marketing, and politics alike.
Why your outrage might not be yours. Algorithms are built to start at the climax and provoke a reaction. Maryam walks through the three questions she asks before responding to anything that makes her angry online: who built this tension, what do they need me to feel, and why.
Living in tension instead of collapsing it into a binary. People crave certainty, Maryam says, and that craving is what turns nuanced, human disagreement into us-versus-them. The work, for storytellers and for audiences, is learning to sit in complexity without needing to resolve it immediately.
Reinvention as a muscle, not a pivot. The old narrative of staying in one job for fifteen years is collapsing, especially for the generations who were promised it. Maryam talks about why reinvention has to become a skill people practice deliberately, not a crisis they fall into.

Takeaways

Before you react to something online, pause and ask who built the tension you’re feeling and what they need you to feel it for.
Disagreement and conflict aren’t inherently bad. They’re human. The danger is in letting someone else fabricate or weaponize them for you.
If the old script for your career or your life is collapsing, that’s not a personal failure. It may just mean it’s time to build the muscle of reinvention on purpose.

About Maryam Mehrtash

Maryam Mehrtash is an entertainment marketing executive, writer, and speaker with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of media, technology, and culture. She most recently led Global Marketing Partnerships & Promotions at Marvel Studios and 20th Century Studios at Disney. She previously served as Vice President of Marketing Strategy & Brand Partnerships at Paramount and CBS Entertainment, where she led the go-to-market launch of Paramount+. She is currently writing her first book and publishes This Is Not a Memo, a weekly newsletter on leadership, reinvention, and courage. She serves on the Board of Directors for Waterwell and the Prohuman Foundation.

Website: thisisnotamemo.substack.com

Instagram: @maryammehrtash

TikTok: @maryammehrtash

X (Twitter): @maryammehrtash

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryammehrtash

Facebook: facebook.com/maryammehrtash

___________________________________________________________________

We’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a real conversation.

The week of August 10th, join AllSides for a live conversation about the American Dream — how we’re thinking about it and navigating the challenges.

Your insights will be anonymized and included in a report to help leaders better understand how people see this issue.

___________________________________________________________________

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

You're Listening, But Can They Tell?

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:26:19 GMT

Julia Minson didn’t get into the science of disagreement through politics or conflict resolution. She got into it through ballroom dancing. She and her now-husband trained together for years—same music, same coach, same goals—and spent most of that time in conflict. The question that stuck with her: how can two people share all the same information and still misunderstand each other so completely? That question became a PhD, a research lab, and eventually a book.

In this conversation, Julia and Wilk go deep on what her research actually shows about how people engage—or fail to engage—across disagreement. The headline finding: receptiveness is invisible. You can be thinking hard, genuinely considering the other person’s view, giving it real weight—and your counterpart has no idea. Because they can’t read your mind. That gap between internal receptiveness and visible receptiveness is where most conversations fall apart.

Key Themes

Receptiveness has to be performed, not just felt. Julia’s research found that you can’t teach people to be better listeners by changing what they think—you have to change what they say. The HEAR framework (Hedging your claims, Emphasizing agreement, Acknowledging what you heard, Reframing to the positive) gives people a concrete language toolkit to signal that they’re actually engaged.
Certainty is the conversation killer. Hedging—using words like “maybe,” “sometimes,” “many people believe”—isn’t weakness. It’s what creates space for a real exchange. Absolute statements signal you’re trying to win, not understand. And when someone is trying to win, the other person stops listening.
The why matters more than the what. When we hear someone’s political position, we automatically fill in a story about why they hold it. That assumed why—stupid, irrational, malicious—shapes how we respond. Asking for the actual why short-circuits that assumption and almost always reveals a more human picture than we expected.
Vulnerability is what makes stories land. Data alone rarely moves people anymore—there’s a counter-study for everything. But when someone shares a story that makes them a little vulnerable, it reads as true. It invites trust in a way that evidence alone doesn’t.
Changing minds isn’t the goal. Some conflicts will never resolve at the level of core beliefs. That doesn’t make the conversation pointless. Building understanding, reducing enmity, creating a foundation for something constructive—these are worth pursuing even when no one changes their mind.
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Takeaways

Ask yourself in the next hard conversation: would the other person know I’m listening? Not whether you are—whether they’d know it.
Try HEAR: hedge your claims, find something to agree on, actually restate what you heard, and frame what you want in positive terms rather than what you’re against.
Before you respond to a position you disagree with, ask why the person holds it. Don’t assume. The answer will almost always complicate your picture of them in useful ways.

Julia’s book is How to Disagree Better, available at disagreeingbetter.com. You can also follow her on X at @juliaminson or connect on LinkedIn.

Learn more about and connect with Julia Minson

Julia Minson, Ph.D. is a Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the author of How to Disagree Better. She is the founder of the Constructive Disagreement Lab and of Disagreeing Better, LLC—a behavioral science consulting firm offering speaking and training on effective management of disagreement and conflict. Her research focuses on the psychology of disagreement: how people engage with opinions, values, and judgments that conflict with their own, with applications across government, education, healthcare, and media.

Book: How to Disagree Better — https://www.disagreeingbetter.com

Website: juliaminson.com

X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/juliaminson

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-minson-5b511b150/

The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

What Happens When Immigration's Biggest Opponents Actually Listen to Each Other?

Wilk Wilkinson — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:29:47 GMT

Diego Sanchez has lived immigration policy—as an undocumented child, a DACA recipient, an immigration lawyer, and now as Vice President of Policy and Strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. Jim Robb helped build NumbersUSA into one of the most influential immigration restriction groups in the country, spending nearly three decades fighting for the interests of American workers.

For most of those years, their organizations were on opposite sides of nearly every fight. They weren’t talking. Neither side was moving. And Jim, newly named VP of Alliances at NumbersUSA, started wondering if there was another way.

Braver Angels provided the table. The Citizens Commission on Immigration—launched after the 2024 Braver Angels National Convention in Kenosha, Wisconsin—brought together representatives from across the full spectrum of the immigration debate: not to find a split-the-difference compromise, but to see if people with deep, substantive disagreements could still find common ground worth acting on.

Jim and Diego are now co-chairs of the 2026 Braver Angels National Convention in Philadelphia. This conversation, recorded just before the convention opens, is the story of how they got there—and what it actually looks like when former opponents learn to trust each other.

Key Themes

Trust is the prerequisite, not the outcome. Diego and Jim didn’t find common ground and then build a relationship—they built a relationship first, which made honest disagreement possible. Jim’s first impression of Diego wasn’t ideological; it was human. And that changed everything.
Common ground is not middle ground. Both guests push back hard on the assumption that bridge-building means watering down your positions. Jim still wants what NumbersUSA has always wanted. Diego still advocates hard for immigrant communities. What’s changed is how they engage—and what they’re able to accomplish together.
The system is broken. That’s not a talking point—it’s the one thing everyone in the room agrees on. The Citizens Commission starts from that shared frustration and works outward from there, into the harder questions where real disagreements live.
Talking past each other is a strategic failure. Diego has been doing this work for sixteen years. He’s worked across the aisle before—with Republican members of Congress, at Tea Party rallies, with evangelical communities. His read: when advocates only preach to their own side, nothing moves. The commission is trying to change that dynamic at scale.
Congress needs to be brought along, not surprised. The commission’s endgame is a national report on immigration—expected in late 2027. Jim explains why they’ve been quietly engaging members of Congress throughout the process: buy-in requires early investment. A report that lands without warning won’t land at all.
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Takeaways

You can disagree on everything and still find a place to start. The Citizens Commission isn’t built on agreement—it’s built on the willingness to keep talking even when agreement feels far away.
Listening to understand is a skill, not a personality trait. Both Diego and Jim describe learning to hear the other side’s concerns as real concerns—not as arguments to be defeated.
What Braver Angels provides is structure and neutrality. The organization doesn’t take a position on immigration policy. What it offers is a process—and a room where people who wouldn’t otherwise sit together actually do.
Civic courage looks like showing up when it’s uncomfortable. Diego, who came to this country as a child and built his life here, describes co-chairing this convention as part of what citizenship means to him—not just having status, but taking responsibility for how we move forward together.

About the Guests

Diego Sanchez

Diego Sanchez is Vice President of Policy and Strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, where he leads the organization’s policy team and legislative agenda. An immigration lawyer and policy strategist with over fifteen years of experience, he works at the intersection of higher education, immigration policy, and government relations. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Cornell University’s Center on Global Democracy and serves on the Leadership Team of Braver Angels’ Citizens Commission on Immigration. Diego’s commitment to immigrant students is deeply personal—he came to the United States from Argentina at age nine, spent years undocumented, and was a DACA recipient before eventually adjusting his status and becoming a U.S. citizen.

Organization: Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration

X (Twitter): https://x.com/DiegoNSanchez

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diegonsanchez/

Jim Robb

Jim Robb is Vice President of Alliances at NumbersUSA, the largest-membership immigration group in the United States. He helped found NumbersUSA nearly thirty years ago and pioneered online political activism tools that have generated more than fifty million contacts to Congress on behalf of members. Jim is the author of Political Migrants: Hispanic Voters on the Move, the first book to trace the movement of Hispanic voters into the Republican Party. He serves as co-chair of the 2026 Braver Angels National Convention and is a central figure in the Citizens Commission on Immigration.

Organization: NumbersUSA — www.NumbersUSA.com

X (Twitter): @jimrobbdc

LinkedIn: jimrobbdc

Learn more about the Citizens Commission on Immigration at braverangels.org/citizens-commission-on-immigration.

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The world is a better place if we are better people. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow the DTH podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube, Substack

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

From Argument to Action: Why Deliberation Changes Everything

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:41:01 GMT

Martin Carcasson didn’t set out to fix American democracy. He set out to fix a debate class he inherited at Colorado State University — one that reliably ended with students talking past each other after an entire semester of research. That frustration led to an insight that changed the direction of his career: the format of a conversation shapes everything about where it ends up.

Twenty years later, the Center for Public Deliberation at CSU has become a living laboratory for a different kind of civic engagement. Martin and his students have run over 600 community meetings — commissioned by city governments, school boards, senior centers, and nonprofits — using a deliberative process designed to bring people together around shared problems instead of dividing them over competing positions.

The core of his work is a reframe: stop treating complex community issues as debates to be won, and start treating them as wicked problems to be navigated. That shift — from looking for someone to blame to looking for something that might work — changes not just the tone of a conversation but its entire architecture.

Key Themes

Debate versus deliberation: Martin draws a sharp line between the two. Debate is about elevating good arguments and exposing bad ones. Deliberation is about action — answering the question ‘what should we do?’ together. Most of our civic life is stuck in debate mode, which is why so little actually gets resolved.
The wicked problems frame: The concept originated with civil engineers who realized that the problems they were asked to solve in real communities were nothing like the problems they were trained to solve in school. Wicked problems have no single correct answer. They involve values in genuine tension — freedom, equality, security, justice — that different people weigh differently. Once you understand that, you stop looking for a villain and start looking for a path.
Process design as a civic tool: Martin’s insight is that humans are actually excellent creative problem solvers — when the conditions are right. His deliberative processes are specifically designed to avoid triggering the defensive, tribal parts of our psychology and to activate the collaborative parts instead. The meeting design matters as much as the people in the room.
Civic hubs and bridging institutions: Martin draws a distinction between ‘bonding’ organizations — groups of like-minded people who already agree on solutions — and ‘bridging’ organizations that are passionate about an issue but open-minded about how to solve it. Communities need more of the latter, and Martin’s work helps build them.
Local as the laboratory: Martin’s long-term theory of change is bottom-up. The more communities learn to engage productively at the local level, the less political traction divisive national tactics will have. When people experience a better way of working through hard problems together, they start rejecting the alternative.

Takeaways

Deliberation isn’t just a better version of debate. It’s a different thing entirely — and it’s the one that actually leads to community action.
Wicked problems require wicked collaboration. When the issue is genuinely complicated, you need more perspectives at the table, not fewer.
You don’t need Washington to make progress on the things that matter most in your community. The tools Martin’s built have worked for 20 years at the local level, and they’re replicable.
Martin is co-chair of Braver Angels’ Civic Scholars Council, a group connecting research to on-the-ground practice in communities nationwide. To learn more about the Center for Public Deliberation, visit cpd.colostate.edu.

Learn More & Connect with Martin Carcasson

Martin Carcasson, Ph.D. is a professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University and the founder/director of the Center for Public Deliberation. His work focuses on helping communities move beyond polarization and engage complex public issues through deliberation, collaborative problem-solving, and constructive civic engagement.

Connect with Martin

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martincarcasson/
• Center for Public Deliberation staff: https://cpd.colostate.edu/about-us/staff/

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wickedproblemsmindset/

Learn More About the Center for Public Deliberation

The Center for Public Deliberation serves as an impartial resource dedicated to improving local democracy by fostering more productive public dialogue and helping communities work through difficult issues together.

• Website: https://cpd.colostate.edu/

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If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with a friend, colleague, or community leader who cares about strengthening civic culture and improving the way we discuss difficult issues. Thoughtful dialogue starts with people willing to engage.

The world is a better place if we are better people. That begins with each of us as individuals. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

Please follow The Derate The Hate podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

Full transcript for this episode available at www.DerateTheHate.com

Killed to Order: The Road from Dehumanization to Expendable

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:27:09 GMT

Jan Jekielek didn’t start as a journalist. He started as a human rights worker, helping Chinese prisoners of conscience navigate an underground railroad through Southeast Asia toward safety. He heard the earliest rumors of forced organ harvesting during that work — and like most people, he found them almost impossible to absorb.

Two decades later, after more than 1,300 long-form interviews as host of American Thought Leaders and years of investigative work at The Epoch Times, he’s written Killed to Order — a meticulously documented account of how the Chinese Communist Party built an organ harvesting industry on the backs of its own people. The book became a New York Times bestseller.

This episode isn’t primarily about China policy. It’s about something closer to the core of what Derate the Hate covers every week: what happens to human beings — and to whole societies — when dehumanization is allowed to proceed without limit. Jan and Wilk trace that question from the CCP’s earliest “black class” campaigns through the present day, where Christians are now the newest group in the regime’s crosshairs.

Key Themes

Dehumanization is a system, not an accident. Jan explains how the CCP has spent decades perfecting a machinery of propaganda and mass messaging that strips targeted groups of their humanity in the public mind — making it possible for neighbors, colleagues, and even surgeons to participate in atrocity. The Falun Gong, landowners, intellectuals, Uyghurs: each group was “black classed” using the same playbook.
The organ harvesting system is a feature, not a bug. Jan makes the case that forced organ harvesting isn’t a policy failure or a rogue element — it’s the logical output of a utilitarian regime that views human beings as raw material. He dubs the mechanism “extractive repression”: destroy a group while monetizing them as much as possible. By rough estimates, it’s a $9 billion annual industry.
The evidence is voluminous. Jan walks through the range of documentation — from phone call recordings to hospitals confirming two-week transplant wait times using Falun Gong organs, to a landmark paper in the American Journal of Transplantation identifying 71 published studies in which the dead donor rule was violated. The problem, as one researcher put it, isn’t too little evidence. It’s too much.
The West has not been a bystander. Jan details how Western medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and governments have been entangled in this system — sometimes knowingly, often not. Hundreds of Chinese transplant surgeons trained at major American institutions. Most of China’s organ preservation techniques and immunosuppressive drugs come from the West.
Dehumanization is not a Chinese problem. Jan and Wilk close the conversation noting that the same rhetorical machinery — the process of making a group feel like less than human — is present in every polarized information environment. The extreme end of that road is what this book documents. The early signs of it are everywhere.

Takeaways

When a regime controls all information and eliminates counter-narrative, it can reshape what ordinary people believe about their neighbors in a matter of years. That’s not a uniquely Chinese vulnerability.
The Falun Gong’s resistance to being “black classed” — simply refusing to agree that they were evil — is what drove the mass incarceration that made the organ harvesting industry possible. Compliance would have ended it. Their refusal to comply is why it scaled.
Jan’s book isn’t just about China. It’s about what happens at the end of a process most of us recognize in its early stages and dismiss as rhetoric. Awareness is the starting point.

Learn More & Connect with Jan Jekielek

Jan Jekielek is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, bestselling author, Senior Editor at The Epoch Times, and host of the long-form interview series American Thought Leaders, where he has conducted hundreds of in-depth conversations on culture, politics, human rights, and public affairs. He is also the author of Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary.

📖 Get the book:
Killed to Order — Available at KilledToOrder.com

🎙️ Watch American Thought Leaders:
The Epoch Times – American Thought Leaders

🌐 Official Website:
JanJekielek.com

🔗 Connect with Jan:

If you’re interested in long-form conversations that challenge assumptions, explore complex issues, and feature some of today’s most influential thinkers, Jan’s work is well worth following.

Please follow The Derate The Hate podcast on:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube

Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

We Were Given a Republic – But Can We Keep It?

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:29:01 GMT

Kevin Dolan and Peter Calfee didn’t know each other before November 2022. Kevin showed up to a Veterans Day luncheon with years of unconnected notes — dots he hadn’t yet figured out how to link. Peter sat down next to him. Three years later, no arguments, a lot of back-and-forth, and one book.

Hijacked: Our Republic | Unless We Can Save It is structured around six pillars — the foundational elements Kevin and Peter argue are necessary for a republic to function: critical thinking, education, faith and values, history, political systems, and economics. The book’s core argument is that each pillar has been compromised, and that until we address those root causes, we’ll keep playing whack-a-mole with symptoms.

Their reference point is Thomas Paine. Common Sense reached one in four colonists. It didn’t tell them what to think — it modeled how to think. That’s the template Kevin and Peter are working from.

Key Themes

Republic vs. democracy isn’t a semantic debate. It’s a structural one. Kevin breaks down why the Electoral College, the Senate, and the House exist as a system — and why collapsing them into simple majority rule would undermine exactly the representation the founders were trying to protect.
Teaching how to think vs. what to think. Kevin’s distinction cuts through a lot of the education debate. Safe spaces, rote memorization, teaching to the test — he frames all of it as symptoms of the same underlying failure: an educational culture that produces compliance instead of reasoning.
Identity politics as a vacuum filler. Peter’s argument is one of the more direct takes in the conversation: when people lack a grounding value system, they construct an identity instead. And when that identity is challenged, they leave the conversation — because they’ve been attacked, not disagreed with.
The social contract has two sides. Rousseau’s concept runs through the whole conversation: individuals accept the rules of society; society owes individuals the freedom to pursue happiness. When that balance tilts too far in either direction, the water starts sloshing over the edge.
Optimism is not optional. Both Kevin and Peter are clear-eyed about how bad things have gotten — and equally clear that this country has survived worse. The book ends with a framework for what genuine leadership looks like, because solutions require people who can actually lead.

Takeaways

Two people can agree on all the same facts and still reach different conclusions. That’s not a problem to solve — that’s what free people do. The problem is when we stop being interested in understanding how someone got there.
Solving symptoms instead of root causes isn’t just ineffective — it’s how we got here. The six pillars exist to name the actual causes.
Good policy is self-motivating. If you have to police something constantly, the policy probably isn’t working. Kevin’s litmus tests — consistency, sustainability, root-cause focus — are worth applying to any public debate you’re watching right now.
Find the book and learn more at hijackedourrepublic.com.

Please follow The Derate The Hate podcast on:

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Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

*Full transcript for this episode available at www.DerateTheHate.com

Before You Reform Anything, You Have To Start Listening

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:49:01 GMT

Brian Vogt has a résumé most democracy reformers would envy: election observation with the Carter Center, senior roles at USAID and the National Security Council, a $424 million democratic renewal initiative. But when USAID was shut down and Brian turned his attention to democracy here at home, he didn’t write a white paper or launch a think tank. He hit the road.

The Democracy Listening Tour of Red America is exactly what it sounds like—a face-to-face listening initiative focused specifically on Trump voters and conservative communities that the democracy reform world has largely failed to engage. Brian’s thesis is straightforward: if you want reform that lasts, you need buy-in from all sides. And you can’t get buy-in from people you’ve never actually listened to.

Key Themes

The word “democracy” has become politically charged—and that’s a problem for anyone trying to reform it. Brian and Wilk unpack why the term triggers different reactions on each side of the aisle, and why the first step in any real conversation is agreeing on what you mean.
Polarization isn’t just a cultural problem—it’s a business model. Brian explains why the pushback against depolarization efforts isn’t random; there are real interests that benefit from division staying high.
Listening takes courage. Wilk makes the case—and Brian reinforces it—that going into a conversation with someone you expect to disagree with, and genuinely staying open, is one of the harder things a citizen can do.
Personal stories are where the real work happens. Brian shares what he heard from a Kentucky veteran who defines democracy as equality—and how a single workplace incident reshaped that man’s relationship to the concept entirely.

Takeaways

You don’t have to change your mind to benefit from a conversation across difference. But you do have to show up.
Reform without listening is just imposition. The democracy reform community has largely been talking past the voters it most needs to reach.
If you want to participate in or learn from Brian’s work, you can connect with him directly at democracylisteningtour.org. In-person interviews are preferred—but he’ll work with you.

About Brian Vogt

Brian Vogt has spent more than 20 years strengthening democracy around the world — observing elections with the Carter Center in Indonesia, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, leading programs at the National Democratic Institute, and serving at both USAID and the National Security Council. At USAID, he led the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, a $424 million portfolio focused on election integrity, media freedom, and democratic reform.

When USAID was shuttered, Brian brought those lessons home. He founded the Democracy Listening Tour of Red America — a qualitative research initiative built on a simple premise: if you want lasting reform, you have to start by listening to the people you’ve been missing.

Connect with Brian Vogt

🌐 democracylisteningtour.org

🔗 linkedin.com/in/brian-vogt-b5b5571

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*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

Conversation Does Not Equal Complicity

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:52:13 GMT

What does it mean to disagree well? That question sits at the center of Michael Lee’s work. As director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston and host of the podcast When We Disagree, Michael has spent decades studying how individuals and communities navigate conflict—and how to do it better.

In this episode of Derate the Hate, Wilk and Michael have a wide-ranging conversation about the skills, the mindset, and the nervous system work required to engage across difference. They talk about why the bridging space gets mischaracterized, what’s really behind conflict avoidance, and why apathy may be the biggest enemy of genuine connection.

Key Themes

Debate as a bridge-building tool: Michael traces his path from high school debate to civility work, arguing that debate—done well—is inherently dialogic and connective.
Nervous system and conflict: Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn aren’t just trauma responses. They show up every time we face disagreement, and recognizing them is step one to healthier conflict.
Conversation vs. complicity: A recurring cultural confusion—the idea that engaging with someone means endorsing their views—shuts down dialogue before it starts. Michael offers specific tools to move past it.
Stress as growth: A “de-stress for success” sign on a college campus bothered Michael for a reason. His counterpoint: we go to the gym to stress our muscles. Disagreement works the same way.
The perception gap: We consistently underestimate how much we have in common with people we disagree with. Starting from shared humanity changes the whole dynamic.

Practical Takeaways

Ask yourself: what’s my relational goal? Before engaging, knowing whether you’re trying to deepen a relationship or just protect yourself changes everything about how you show up.

Try calling in before calling out. A gentle “I wonder if you’re open to hearing how that lands for me” can quickly reveal whether a conversation is worth continuing.
Use reciprocity deliberately. Lead with curiosity, make concessions about your own uncertainty, and watch how the tone of a conversation shifts.
Start with sameness. Rather than cataloguing differences first, find the shared ground—shared humanity, shared values, shared experience—and build from there.

About the Guest

Michael J. Lee is a professor of communication and the director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. His research focuses on political identity in American politics. His first book, Creating Conservatism: Postwar Words that Made an American Movement, won five national book awards. His latest book is We Are Not One People: Separatism and Secession in American Politics Since 1776. He is also the host of When We Disagree, a podcast about the disagreements we can’t let go of.

Connect with Michael Lee

Organization: College of Charleston

Website: Civility Initiative

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michael-lee-35258814

Instagram: @whenwedisagree

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*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

*For a full transcript of this conversation, visit www.DerateTheHate.com.

Gun Rights & Gun Safety Don't Have to Be Enemies

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 13 May 2026 11:37:51 GMT

Dr. Michael Siegel has spent 15 years researching gun violence. But about five years ago, a visit to a local gun shop — and a conversation with its owner — cracked something open for him. He walked in expecting to understand assault weapon bans. He walked out questioning the assumptions he had built his career on.

What followed was a three-year project that brought together 23 gun owners and non-gun owners — hunters, attorneys, physicians, advocates, law enforcement, gun dealers — in a facilitated dialogue aimed at finding real, workable common ground on firearm policy. Facilitated by Essential Partners and grounded in mutual respect, the project produced something rare: a comprehensive, 67-page gun policy that both sides helped build and both sides signed off on.

What We Cover

The moment at a gun shop that reframed Dr. Siegel’s entire approach to gun policy research
Why gun owner support for specific policies can range from 20% to 80% — depending entirely on the details
How the Bridging the Divide panel was assembled and why relationship-building came before policy discussion
The gun range trip in Denver that changed the dynamic between gun rights advocates and gun violence prevention leaders
Surprising policy agreements: violent misdemeanors, nonviolent felonies, and why marijuana use shouldn’t prohibit gun ownership
What makes this policy different — and how states can use it

Key Takeaways

Understanding precedes agreement. The panel didn’t talk policy first — they talked about themselves. Who they were, why they cared, what they feared. That foundation made everything else possible.

Details matter more than positions. Dr. Siegel’s research showed that on nearly every gun policy issue, support among gun owners shifts dramatically based on the specifics. The divide isn’t as fixed as it looks.

Synergy beats compromise. The goal wasn’t for each side to give something up. It was to find policies that serve both safety and rights — and they found them.

The policy is real and ready. The Bridging the Divide framework is written as actual legislation. It’s available at bridgethedividenow.org and can be taken directly to state lawmakers.

Website

Bridge the Divide on Firearms Policy - https://bridgethedividenow.org

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*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

*Full Transcript for this episode can be found at www.DeratetheHate.com.

America Has a Crisis of Belief - The Answer is a New Moral Vision

Wilk Wilkinson — Wed, 06 May 2026 12:48:40 GMT

Rich Harwood, founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, returns to Derate the Hate for a wide-ranging conversation about what he’s seeing on the ground in communities across America. Drawing from his recent article in The Fulcrum and his ongoing Campaign for the New Civic Path, Rich lays out a case that the division we feel is real — but it’s not the whole story. Beneath the noise, there’s a deep and growing yearning for something better. The question is whether we’ll tap into it.

Key Themes

The New Moral Vision: Rich describes a civic moral vision emerging organically from communities across the country — one centered on decency, belonging, and dignity. It doesn’t ask people to abandon their beliefs; it asks them to find common ground in what they already share.
Why Politics Can’t Save Us: Politics can shift power, but it can’t create community, meaning, or belief. Rich makes the case that the things we most need right now — trust, connection, a sense of shared purpose — have to be built by people, not politicians.
The Crisis of Belief: Americans have stopped believing — in institutions, in leaders, and increasingly in each other. Rich argues that restoring that belief starts at the individual level and builds outward through local communities.
Small Actions, Real Change: From Reading, PA to Alamance County, NC to Jim Jordan’s congressional district in Ohio, Rich’s work shows that transformative community change always starts small — no big platform, no comprehensive plan, no major funding required.
The Perception Gap: We think we have less in common than we do. Rich and Wilk discuss how breaking out of the political frame — and focusing instead on what matters to people in their daily lives — reveals far more shared ground than the headlines suggest.
Filling the Civic Vacuum: When people of good faith retreat from public life, divisive voices fill the space. Rich’s call is simple: the exhausted middle needs to check back in.

Key Takeaways

A new moral vision is already emerging across the country — not invented from the top down, but rising from the ground up.
Real change doesn’t need a big platform — it needs people willing to show up and start small.
Community should guide our politics — not the other way around.
The path back in exists. People are ready. The question is whether we’ll walk it.

About Rich Harwood

Rich Harwood is the President and Founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation. He is the author of nine books, including The New Civic Path: Restoring Our Belief in One Another and Our Nation. His work and writing appear regularly in major outlets including NPR, PBS NewsHour, the Washington Post, and The New York Times. Learn more at theharwoodinstitute.org.

✅ Connect with Rich Harwood

🌐 Website:

https://theharwoodinstitute.org

📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richharwood

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rich__harwood

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardcharwood/

𝕏 X / Twitter: https://x.com/richharwood

If today’s conversation resonated with you, take a deeper dive into Rich’s work, his writing, and his vision for rebuilding the civic culture we all share.

Please follow The Derate The Hate podcast on:

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Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!

*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.

*Full transcript for this conversation available at www.Deratethehate.com