Derate The Hate

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Shaka Mitchell is a lawyer and education policy veteran who built something unusual out of a pandemic-era habit: getting friends together once a month, picking songs tied to a theme, and talking about why. That casual ritual became the Come Together Music Project, now a podcast and live event series Shaka's run with...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Maryam Mehrtash spent nearly two decades building narratives for Marvel, Disney, Paramount, and some of the biggest brands in entertainment. Before that, she was a refugee kid learning English from cartoons, carrying forward the storytelling legacy of a grandmother who was imprisoned in Iran for the same gift. In this co...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Julia Minson has spent 25 years studying disagreement—not how to win arguments, but how people actually engage with views that conflict with their own. She’s a Harvard professor, a behavioral scientist, and the author of How to Disagree Better . This conversation gets into the heart of her research. One of the most usefu...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Diego Sanchez grew up undocumented in the United States. Jim Robb spent nearly thirty years fighting for immigration restrictions. They sat down at the same table, and discovered something neither of them fully expected: they could trust each other. This bonus episode drops ahead of the 2026 Braver Angels National Conven...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) What if the problem isn't the people on the other side — what if the problem is just hard? Martin Carcasson has spent 20 years building deliberative processes in Northern Colorado that help communities move from argument to action. The Center for Public Deliberation he founded at CSU has run over 600 community meeti...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Jan Jekielek spent years as a human rights worker before becoming a journalist — and the story he couldn't stop following eventually became Killed to Order, a New York Times bestselling investigation into China's forced organ harvesting industry. In this conversation, Jan and Wilk focus on a question at the cen...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Kevin Dolan and Peter Calfee met at a Veterans Day luncheon in 2022 and spent three years writing Hijacked: Our Republic — a book built around one essential question: what does it take to keep what the founders built? In this conversation, Kevin and Peter walk through the six foundational pillars they believe hold a repu...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Brian Vogt spent 20-plus years strengthening democracy around the world. Then he came home—and started listening. His Democracy Listening Tour of Red America is a qualitative research project with a simple but radical premise: before you can reform anything, you have to understand what people actually believe and why. In...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Michael Lee is a professor of communication and the director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. He came to civility work through competitive debate—and found that debate, at its best, is deeply connective and dialogic. In this conversation, Michael and Wilk explore what’s really going on when people...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) What happens when a gun violence prevention researcher walks into a gun shop, sits down with the owner, and actually listens? For Dr. Michael Siegel, it changed everything. In this episode, Wilk sits down with Dr. Mike Siegel to talk about his Bridging the Divide on Firearm Policy project — a three-year effort that broug...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Many Americans now feeling we’re too divided to agree on anything. Rich Harwood disagrees — and he has the stories to back it up. In this episode, Rich returns to DTH to talk about the new moral vision he sees emerging across the country: a shared yearning for decency, dignity, and the belief that we can still come toget...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Corey Nathan, host of "Talkin' Politics and Religion Without Killin' Each Other" joins Wilk for a conversation about what it actually takes to bridge divides, starting with one of the hardest conversations a person can have: telling your Orthodox Jewish father you've become a Christian. They dig...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Spike Cohen — 2020 Libertarian VP candidate, founder of You Are The Power — sits down with Wilk to talk about what happens when families are torn apart by a system that never had to answer to anyone. Until now. You Are The Power is a nonprofit that steps in when local government oversteps. They research cases, amplify st...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Most people have spent their entire lives being measured — by achievement, status, approval, income, influence. It feels normal because it's constant. But Regi Wilson, founder of Equal Universe and creator of the Value Identity framework, argues that this is exactly the problem. We've been running on a broken d...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Doug Teschner and Beth Malow return to Derate the Hate for a catch-up conversation following the release of their book, Beyond the Politics of Contempt: Practical Steps to Build Positive Relationships in Divided Times. The book has sold over a thousand copies, earned a Literary Titan Award, and is drawing audiences from...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Monica Harris returns to Derate the Hate — this time in person — to talk about FAIR's newly renamed curriculum, Many Stories, One Nation. It's a high school social studies elective that takes a different approach to teaching American history: broad, honest, chronological, and built around civil discourse. Monic...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) You've heard the Golden Rule your whole life. Jennifer Furlong says it's a great start — but it's not enough. In this episode, Wilk welcomes back communications strategist and coach Jennifer Furlong (Communication TwentyFourSeven) for a conversation that's equal parts practical and eye-opening. They d...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) What do you do when the world stares at you everywhere you go? Brandon Farbstein was born with metatropic dysplasia — one of only 84 documented cases in human history. Growing up at 3’9" in a world that pointed, stared, and laughed, he reached a breaking point at 11 years old where he just wanted to disappear. Then...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) What does it take to walk away from an ideology you were raised inside of — and then spend your career pulling others out of the same darkness? Allizandra Herberhold grew up in a racially segregated community where white supremacist ideology was woven into the fabric of everyday life. She didn't choose it. It was ha...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) Can a divided nation actually agree on what children need? That's the question at the heart of this conversation. Wilk sits down with Lauren Farrow — former public school teacher, founder of SchoolingAmerica.org, and education reform advocate — for an honest, nonpartisan look at what's really happening inside t...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) In Episode 304 of Derate The Hate, Wilk sits down with Mubin Shaikh — a former extremist who deradicalized after 9/11 and went on to work undercover against terrorism. Born and raised in Toronto, Mubin experienced an identity crisis that led him toward violent Islamist extremism as a young man. But marriage, fatherhood,...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) In Episode 303 of Derate The Hate , Wilk Wilkinson sits down with poet and author April Ossmann to explore how poetry can become a powerful tool for bridging America’s political divide. April is the author of We: Poems (Red Hen Press, 2025), a collection devoted to healing polarization through empathy, metaphor, and shar...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) In this episode of Derate The Hate , Wilk Wilkinson sits down with award-winning filmmaker Michael Premo to discuss Homegrown , his powerful documentary exploring the motivations behind individuals drawn into the Proud Boys movement in the years leading up to January 6. Rather than reducing people to stereotypes, Homegro...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) In this episode of Derate The Hate , Wilk sits down with Bill Woodson , founder of Conversations Across The Aisle , to explore what local bridge building looks like in a deeply polarized moment. Bill shares the story behind launching the CATA Project , a community-based effort focused on respectful dialogue, shared human...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) In this milestone 300th episode of Derate The Hate , Wilk Wilkinson is joined by Maury Giles , CEO of Braver Angels , for a wide-ranging conversation on toxic polarization, trust, and the responsibility of citizens in a divided America. Maury shares his journey from a 35-year corporate career into full-time civic engagem...