Derate The Hate

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Roshan Bliss has spent his career working the space between people who disagree — first as a mediator, then as a public deliberation practitioner, and now as the architect of one of the more ambitious bridging projects out there: a reality TV show called A House Divided.

Roshan and Wilk dig into the idea of “many-to-many” conflict — why the tools that help two neighbors resolve a dispute fall short when it's millions of people who disagree — and why defining the problem has to come before anyone starts arguing about the solution.

Then they get into the show itself: three groups, one from the left, right, and center, locked in a house for seven days, working through a real cultural flashpoint from a real American community — think Big Brother meets jury duty, built entirely around deliberation instead of drama.

It's a conversation about taking the tools of dialogue and deliberation out of the conference room and putting them somewhere people will actually watch — and why that might be exactly what's needed to compete for attention in a media landscape built on outrage.

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply)

Kelsey Blahnik has spent her career as a social worker sitting across from people who don't see eye to eye—politically, personally, every which way—and she's found that peace was never about avoiding the hard conversation. It's about learning how to have it.

In this episode, Kelsey and Wilk dig into her book, The And Way: Assertive Peacemaking in a Divided World, and the real difference between being assertive and being aggressive. Kelsey uses an Instant Pot analogy that sticks: if you never let the steam out, you're eventually going to explode. Her work is about finding a better way to vent.

They also get into what Kelsey calls competing impulses—the idea that you're not just "a people pleaser" or "the difficult one," you're a whole human being capable of both, depending on the moment. That shift in self-perception, she says, is what makes it possible to extend the same grace to people you disagree with.

If you've ever avoided a conversation because you weren't sure how to have it without it blowing up, this one's for you.

Learn more about and connect with Kelsey Blahnik in the full show notes for this episode at www.DerateTheHate.com. 

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply)

Erez Levin spent nearly a decade inside Google's ad tech world before becoming one of the loudest internal voices warning that the industry was built to reward quantity over quality — and that those same broken incentives are what fuel outrage, fear, and grievance across the wider internet.

Now Erez writes at Holding the Line, where he makes the case for what he calls principled ostracism: real social consequences for people who cross clear moral lines, paired with a genuine path back for anyone willing to own it. He draws a hard line between that and cancel culture, which he says punishes disagreement instead of actual hatred.

Wilk and Erez dig into how norms actually change, why celebrating political violence deserves real cost, and how a single memo from a Wall Street investor got a group of Harvard students to retract a petition within three days. It's a conversation about where accountability ends and cruelty begins — and why courageous citizenship means holding a line without writing people off for good.

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply)

Paid protesting is one of the most divisive — and misunderstood — topics in American civic life. Adam Swart, founder of Crowds on Demand, has spent over a decade inside that world, organizing demonstrations across the political spectrum. In this conversation, he pulls back the curtain on how modern protests actually get funded, coordinated, and amplified — and why the reality is far more nuanced than the headlines suggest.

Adam and Wilk dig into the real distinctions between a protester, an agitator, and an activist, and why lumping them together does real damage to public trust. They talk through the three triggers that turn a peaceful demonstration into a confrontation, and the escalation cycle that follows once things go sideways.

The conversation also covers Adam's proposed Transparency in Political Demonstrations Act — legislation aimed at requiring funding disclosure for large-scale protests without restricting anyone's right to demonstrate. It's a conversation about accountability, not suppression.

If you've ever wondered who's really behind the protests you see on the news — or written off the whole idea of paid protesting without looking closer — this episode will change how you think about it.

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply)

Elizaveta Friesem has spent her career trying to understand why people who could be connected end up disconnected instead — and why so much of that disconnection gets explained away with blame. Her book, Media Is Us, starts from a simple but disruptive idea: media isn't some outside force manipulating us. It's just another form of human communication, shaped by the same flaws and limitations we all have.

Wilk and Elizaveta dig into what that means in practice — especially the part where blame requires us to assume things about other people's power and motives that we usually can't prove. From there, the conversation moves into her concept of micro and macro power: how power looks absolute in a single relationship, like a parent telling a child what to do, but dissolves into something far more complicated the moment you zoom out.

Her conclusion: nobody is ever completely powerless, and nobody is ever completely powerful. The conversation closes with her A-C-E model — awareness, compassion, and collaboration — a practical way to take real problems seriously without turning them into blame.

Learn more and connect with Elizaveta Friesem in the full show notes for this episode at www.DerateTheHate.com. 

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

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 friends, strangers, and colleagues across the political spectrum.

One story stands out. At a session with two judges who'd never met - one a conservative libertarian state Supreme Court justice, the other a newly appointed progressive appeals judge - the prompt was simple: name a song that reminds you of where you grew up. The justice picked a Billy Joel song about a town he'd never even lived in, got visibly emotional, and started talking about a working-class childhood that nobody who'd read his opinions would have guessed at. Forty seconds of music got further than years of case law ever could.

Shaka and Wilk dig into why this works - why asking someone what song reminds them of home lands so differently than asking who they voted for - and why Shaka insists on keeping the project upstream of politics rather than trying to resolve any actual policy fight. They also get into what's shifted in the relationship between music and politics since the Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum era, and why most musicians want nothing to do with the crossfire.

If you've ever wondered how to get past the labels people wear online and actually find out who someone is, this might be your blueprint.

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

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 conversation, Wilk and Maryam dig into what actually separates authentic storytelling from manipulation, why media and algorithms profit from keeping people in a constant state of reaction, and the practical questions Maryam asks herself before she ever responds to something that makes her angry online.

One thread runs through the whole episode: the difference between a pivot and a reinvention. Maryam has had to reinvent herself more than once, from refugee to theater kid to marketing executive to writer, and she makes the case that all of us are entering an era where that skill is no longer optional.

This one will change how you read your own feed. 

Learn more about and connect with Maryam Mehrtash in the full show notes for this episode at www.DerateTheHate.com. 

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

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 useful ideas in the episode: being receptive in your own head doesn’t count. Your counterpart can’t read your mind. If you want them to feel heard, you have to signal it out loud—with specific language, in real time. Julia’s HEAR framework (Hedging, Emphasizing agreement, Acknowledging, Reframing) gives you an actual tool to do that.

We also get into why asking “why do you believe that” changes a conversation more than almost anything else—and why so much of the enmity in our society isn’t really about what people believe, but about what we assume their beliefs say about them.

If you’ve ever walked away from a hard conversation feeling like the other person wasn’t really listening—or wondering if you were—this episode is worth your time. Julia’s book is How to Disagree Better, and you can find her at disagreeingbetter.com.

Learn more about and connect with Julia Minson in the full show notes for this episode at www.DeratetheHate.com. 

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

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 Convention in Philadelphia—where Diego and Jim are serving as co-chairs. The Citizens Commission on Immigration, which grew out of the 2024 Braver Angels convention, is the driving force behind their story. It's a first-of-its-kind effort: bringing together longtime adversaries from across the immigration debate to find areas of common ground serious enough to actually matter.

 The conversation covers how this commission came together, what changed when people who'd been shouting past each other finally started listening, and why "common ground" doesn't mean "mushy middle." Jim and Diego still disagree on plenty. But they've figured out how to disagree without writing each other off—and that shift is exactly what the commission is trying to scale.

 If you're heading to the Braver Angels National Convention this week, or if you've written off immigration as a topic too toxic to touch, this one's for you. Learn more at braverangels.org/citizens-commission-on-immigration.

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.

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 meetings, working with local governments, schools, and nonprofits on everything from housing to elder care.

In this conversation, Martin breaks down the critical difference between debate and deliberation — and why one of those leads to insight while the other leads to action. He also makes a distinction that cuts right to the heart of what makes our politics so dysfunctional: we've been treating wicked problems like they're caused by wicked people. They're not. And the moment you see that clearly, everything about how you approach a problem changes.

Martin also shares how he's built a model — using trained student facilitators — that could be replicated in communities across the country, and how his work connects to Braver Angels' citizen-led solutions initiative and the newly revamped Civic Scholars Council.

If you believe the solutions to our biggest problems are going to come from communities, not from Washington, this conversation is for you. 

Learn more and connect with Martin Carcasson in the full show notes for this episode at www.DerateTheHate.com.

📰 Allsides.com

We’re all worn out by the F.O.G. that comes with the daily news, but still want to stay informed. AllSides, a company on a mission to break people out of their filter bubbles, offers a daily newsletter called Balanced News Today. It shows top news stories from across the political spectrum so you can get the full picture and feel better about staying informed. Sign up at: allsides.com/dth-news  

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 

Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact

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.