https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-y2ehg-1bae438
“53% of Americans view their fellow compatriots as bad.” That was the finding in a Pew Research Center survey of 24 countries, and the U.S. was the only one to cross the 50% mark. Even if this month’s election signals a shift, the contempt between left and right won’t clear up overnight.
Dennis talks with Wilk Wilkinson, Director of Media Systems and Operations at Braver Angels, host of the Derate the Hate podcast, husband, father, and steadfast Christian conservative. Wilk spent about a decade and a half as a truck driver and then moved into operations management in trucking and transportation. He left that career for what he calls “a true calling to try and help heal a country and fix a world that I didn’t break.”
The conversation moves from Wilk’s own story to the larger question of how we live with neighbors who see the world differently. Wilk describes his path from anger and animus to a mission of bridge-building. Along the way, they talk about faith, tribalism, the forces that profit from our division, and the practical skills that make real conversation across the aisle possible.
In this episode
- How a poor kid who was bullied for being on “the wrong side of the tracks” embraced the label “dirtball,” and how that anger eventually gave way to something else
- Wilk’s early faith, his years of believing God hated him, and the realization that “a lot of that hate was me hating me”
- The short-lived t-shirt business built on snark, and why it was “a case study in everything that you shouldn’t do”
- Why Wilk joined Braver Angels the day he first heard about it, and what he learned by sitting down with people across the aisle
- Why “people fear social death more than they do fear physical death,” and how media, politicians, and algorithms reward outrage and contempt
- Fear, outrage, and grievance, the subject of Wilk’s forthcoming book, Clearing the Fog
- Why courage comes first, and what “courageous citizenship” asks of us
- Why we should ask “why” before assuming we know how someone voted, and “listening with intention”
- Where Wilk sees hope, from David Brooks’s “weavers” to the mustard seed
Links and resources
- Braver Angels: braverangels.org
- Wilk Wilkinson’s podcast and Substack: deratethehate.com
- The Washington Post article on the Pew Research Center survey
- Earlier Episode on that survey with Michael Baharaeen
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