When We Disagree

Gloria Mark (attention expert, author of Attention Span and  The Future of Attention Substack) challenges the reigning cultural narrative that tech giants have completely hijacked our brains. Debating those she calls "techno-determinists," Mark pushes back against the viral idea that users are merely helpless pawns to the addictive algorithms of TikTok and YouTube. While she freely ackno...

Former Minnesota State Representative Sandra Feist , who led the state's Civility Caucus and practices as an immigration attorney, shares two contrasting stories of political conflict. She details how an out-of-context tweet by a Republican colleague was successfully defused through direct, personal communication and shared policy expertise, eventually leading to a meaningful piece of biparti...

Lauren Hall , author of The Medicalization of Birth and Death and T he Radical Moderate's Guide to Life Substack and the co-host of the We Made This Political podcast, breaks down why labeling half the country as unreachable is empirically incorrect, morally flawed, and strategically self-defeating for a liberal democracy. Backed by data tracking the shifting, diversifying realities of the Am...

Katherine Brodsky , host of the Forbidden Conversations podcast and author of No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in an Age of Outrage , was the target of a cancellation attempt. While managing an online professional network for women journalists, an Fox News job posting on the forum triggered a cascade of intense community outrage. Brodsky explores the severe consequences she faced when...

Attorney, certified mediator, and conflict resolution educator Catherine Wilhoit discusses how to bring problem-solving tools to young learners as early as possible. She explores how the philosophy of the "trained neutral," typically reserved for legal mediation, can be adapted into a teaching approach that empowers students to communicate effectively and resolve their own disagreements....

Annie Rappeport , who brings 15 years of dialogue design and facilitation experience at various universities, explores the professional friction between immediate productivity and deep, collaborative engagement. She has frequently navigated a specific disagreement : critics argue that a new leader should focus on rapid execution and desk-based visibility, while Rappeport insists that the initial p...

Frances Lee  (professor of political science at Princeton , author of Insecure Majorities , co-author of In Covid's Wake ) challenges the common narrative that the United States Congress is a hopelessly dysfunctional institution. While popular opinion often benchmarks the current legislature against a "golden age" of the legislatively productive past, Lee presents a data-driven &quo...

Steven Olikara (founding CEO of Bridge Entertainment Labs , former U.S. Senate candidate in Wisconsin, and one of the stars of the documentary The Reunited States ) pulls back the curtain on what he calls the "division industrial complex." This conversation shows how political operatives, traditional media, and social media algorithms purposefully manufacture outrage and blood sport for...

Is civic education a fundamental duty of higher education or a dangerous political risk? Alex Kappus of Carnegie Higher Education Consulting and the Democratic Knowledge Project to discuss the growing institutional fear of being labeled "partisan" for simply teaching the mechanics of democracy. Kappus shares a decade of firsthand accounts (blocked voter registration drives, administrativ...

Kent Lenci , an educator, founder of Middle Ground School Solutions, and author of Learning to Depolarize , dissects a depolarization story in three acts. What starts as a heated confrontation over a seemingly neutral photo of Donald Trump evolves into a masterclass in de-escalation across multiple media, from the rapid-fire tension of video calls to the deliberate, cooling pace of email and the i...

Jennifer Borda , professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire and the co-director of the Civil Discourse Lab , reflects on a family crisis that sparked a lasting insight into the nature of conflict. A painful confrontation with her father during her mother’s final days reveals how fear, grief, and loss of control often drive arguments more than the surface issue. The conversation...

Andrew Perrin , SNF-Agora professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University , reflects on leading a high-stakes effort to redesign general education at the University of North Carolina, revealing how institutional change sparks deep and often personal disagreements about what students really need to learn. What begins as a debate over course requirements becomes a broader argument about the purpo...

A firsthand witness to January 6 recounts a surreal argument at a casual gathering. Sherman Tylawsky , founder of the George Washington Institute and host of the Friends and Fellow Citizens podcast, reflects on the emotional weight of hearing the event dismissed as fictional, even as he recalls being locked down inside the Capitol. The conversation explores where disagreement breaks down: when peo...

Sarah Igo , the Andrew Jackson chair in American history at Vanderbilt University and the faculty director of Dialogue Vanderbilt , explores why some people rarely experience heated conflict and what that reveals about how we argue. Drawing on her research into privacy and public life, she makes a bold case: over time, reasoned arguments can actually reshape culture, even if the process is slow an...

In this episode of When We Disagree , host Michael Lee sits down with advocate Radia Baxter , a community advocate and political advisor in South Carolina, explores a powerful tension: our desire for economic growth without equal access to opportunity. Drawing from her experience as a teen mother who defied expectations, Baxter shares how personal adversity shaped her commitment to second chances...

What happens when a heated professional conflict comes back years later with unexpected consequences? In this episode, Bill Imada , Chairman and Chief Connectivity Officer at IW Group , shares a high-stakes agency clash that nearly burned a bridge only to reveal a deeper lesson about communication, trust, and second chances. Drawing on IW Group's research into national civility trends, he dis...

School choice sparks some of the most heated arguments in education, and Shaka Mitchell , senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and the founder of the Come Together Music Project , lives them firsthand. From tense legislative showdowns to personal confrontations, he explains why the issue cuts so deeply and what’s really at stake for families. Drawing on his own upbringing, Mitchel...

Wilk Wilkinson , host of the Derate the Hate podcast and a leader with Braver Angels , about what it really takes to bridge deep divides. During the pandemic, Wilk worked at a job where he was forced to enforce a mask mandate he disagreed with. The tension between his personal belief and professional responsibility was powerful, and that moment sparked a personal and professional transformation in...

Steve Cody , veteran public relations and strategic communications strategist and founder of Peppercomm , shares the story of a dramatic “business divorce” with his longtime partner that nearly destroyed the company they built together. Just as a major acquisition was about to close, a last-minute disagreement over the future of the firm blew everything apart. The fallout compelled Cody to rebuild...

John Inazu , the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis , reflects on a painful argument with his father and what it taught him about humility, boundaries, and repairing relationships. Inazu, author of Liberty's Refuge , Confident Pluralism , and his newest book, Learning to Disagree , shares why our hardest conflicts often happen w...

Veteran lobbyist and community mediator Michael Covington shares lessons from a career spent navigating conflict in South Carolina politics and public life. From tense racial disputes over highway construction to behind-the-scenes statehouse negotiations, he explains why confronting problems directly, as well as listening carefully, can unlock progress. Covington argues that persuasion starts with...

What happens when people with deeply opposing views actually listen to each other? Doug Sprei of the College Debates and Discourse Alliance shares stories from more than 300 campus debates designed to help students disagree without dehumanizing one another. In one unforgettable moment, two students with radically different perspectives speak back-to-back, and the entire room shifts from tension to...

After challenging a dominant academic framework about privilege, a graduate student received the worst grade of his life. Curious, he reran the experiment — submitting basically the same paper with the opposite conclusion — and saw it praised. That moment set Nafees Alam on a mission to champion viewpoint diversity, constructive disagreement, and open inquiry in higher education. In this episode,...

What happens when a college dedicated to civil dialogue goes on Tucker Carlson Tonight? In this episode, Phelosha Collaros of St. John's College, famous for its " Great Books " program, recounts the social media firestorm that erupted after her president appeared on Tucker Carlson. Outrage came from both the left and the right. The backlash forced a hard question: Is conversation co...

After a magical day of food, wine, and instant connection with a new friend, Tina Singleton made one political comment that shattered it all. In this candid conversation, the founder of Transformation Table reflects on how a single rant cost her a budding friendship and what it taught her about ego, humility, and the fragility of connection. Inspired by a call from Bernice King after the tragedy a...