Wilk Wilkinson a volunteer leadership with Braver Angels, inspires others to embrace a cross-partisan organization dedicated to political depolarization in America.”
In this enlightening episode, Mike Gallagher sits down with Wilk Wilkinson, the voice behind Derate the Hate podcast, to explore the unsettling waves of polarization that grip our nation. Delving deep into Wilkinson’s personal evolution and how he became intertwined with Braver Angels, the largest grassroots cross-partisan organization in America, listeners are invited to join a journey of depolarization and mutual understanding. As Wilk recounts his transformative experience and the reasons behind adopting a more inclusive dialogue, the conversation unfolds into an examination of ideological binaries and the quest for common ground.
00:00:05 Introduction to Polarization and Braver Angels
00:01:26 Wilk Wilkinson’s Journey with Braver Angels
I think it’s fair to agree that our country is more divided than ever. There’s a lot of anger. There’s a lot of anxiety. And look, all of us who have platforms have a role to play. And I’ve been sort of fixated this week, as you may have noticed, on trying to… See if there’s any chance for common ground. See if there’s any way to try to lower the temperature a little bit. And I say that as a guy with a big mouth, you know, a talk show host for decades. And then I heard about Braver Angels, which is an organization described as America’s largest grassroots cross-partisan organization that is dedicated to depolarizing people. our polarized times. And I thought, boy, I want to spend some time learning about the group. And it seems like a very noble effort. And we said to these folks, can we talk to somebody who kind of represents the spirit and the intent of Braver Angels? And they introduced us to Wilk Wilkinson. He’s a conservative, a Christian. He hosts a podcast called Derate the Hate. And he, you know, is described as somebody who is inspiring others to embrace growth and navigate challenges with grace. Wilk, it’s great to have you on the Mike Gallagher Show. Welcome aboard. How are you?
SPEAKER 02 :
I’m fantastic, Mike, and it’s just a great honor to be here. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, the honors are all ours, and we’re excited to chat with you about Braver Angels because I read about your sort of journey with Dr. Francis Collins. And let’s face it, the pandemic has left a lot of anguished, angry people forever. It changed our country. It changed the world. The way we responded to it, of course, really, really has left people angry. frustrated and alarmed about our ability to just submit, submit to a lot of power. Before we get to that journey that you were on with Dr. Francis Collins, formerly of the NIH, tell us a little bit about your association with Braver Angels. Because I was drawn to this group, try to learn about them, what it’s all about. Look, you and I both have one political worldview and an ideological perspective that, of course, the left doesn’t agree with. But why? Just explain to us how you came to be connected or associated with Braver Angels.
SPEAKER 02 :
So, Mike, back in 2020, beginning of the pandemic. I was I myself was a probably a much more toxically polarized kind of person, but I had been on this personal journey to kind of depolarize myself, to detoxify myself from a lot of the anger and animus that I had. And in doing so, I started the Derate the Hate podcast and. Uh, within, I don’t know how many months of me starting the D rate, the hate podcast, a couple of local ambassadors here in the state of Minnesota, the state in which I live reached out to me and asked if they could come talk to me about this thing called braver angels that, that I had never heard of, but it was right in my wheelhouse for the kind of things that I was trying to do better in the world, one attitude at a time. And, uh, So and then my own personal journey, I thought, hey, this is fantastic. You know, one of the things that I suffer from is this toxic polarization thing. So they came on the podcast. I talked to them and I signed up that day as a as a member. Mike, I was just so it was just it seemed to me such a powerful thing. For our country, I consider myself a patriot. I consider myself somebody who loves our country but understands that this polarization thing is just something that’s got to be addressed. And so I signed up as a member that day. Now, ironically, there is a bit of an imbalance in our membership because we lack conservative representation. And so that being the case, I started doing a lot more with them because they’d reach out to me as a conservative guy and say, hey, we do not have enough voices saying the things that you’re saying, doing the things that you’re doing. voices that believe the things that you believe. Can you participate in this? Can you do that? We need your voice here. And that was going on five years ago now, I believe. And it’s been an incredible ride. I’ve learned so much being a part of that organization. I’ve helped others learn about people like you and I, Mike, who are from the conservative side of that organization. political spectrum. So that’s how I got into it. And it’s been one of the greatest honors of my life, just being a part of this organization.
SPEAKER 01 :
Was there a tipping point or an event or a reason that you said, I’ve got to be maybe less I don’t know if the word is bombastic or over the top or, you know, sharp elbow. Those are kind of the ways that I’ve sort of described myself over the years. And let me start before you answer that by sharing with you what my sort of journey has been. Look, I’ve got friends in my life who are absolutely terrified right now. They are worried. They think they think Trump is the devil. They think that Elon Musk is Satan’s spawn. They believe that the country is going to go up in flames, that everybody’s rights are being stripped from them, and it’s just a horrific Armageddon. And their fear… is real. I mean, it’s not performative. And in one particular case, a family friend of mine who is just really, really over the top, really gone, and I started thinking, Instead of ignoring them or making fun of them or mocking them or marginalizing them, why don’t more of us try to say, let’s at least try to have a dialogue. Let’s try to explain why we feel the way we feel. But with that, also ask you why you feel the way you feel. I mean, just these tariffs this week, I’m like, why are people rooting against America? You know, people are rooting against the country because they don’t like Trump so much. I want to kind of get to some clarity from their point. Was there an event like that in your life, a friend or a family member or somebody that kind of sparked you to make that sort of decision to embrace a cross-partisan organization like Braver Angels?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it was a combination of things, Mike. I think back to that period of time and I had started a horribly failed t-shirt company called Failed Understanding Apparel and the letters F-U was the whole concept behind it, right? And I was participating in a lot of that online social media toxicity and And started losing friends because of it, because of the way that I talk about the sharp elbows and bombastic way of saying things. And just that hyperbolic toxicity that so many people participate in. Now, I started losing friends. And when you start losing friends, when you don’t consider a lot of people to be friends, and you start losing the ones that you have, you start to… or at least I started to say, okay, what’s the common denominator here? What’s going on? And being somebody who preaches a lot about personal accountability, I started taking it back to myself. And then I started looking at the results of what I was putting out there. And I’m like, am I changing anybody’s mind by saying the things that I’m saying? Am I opening anybody’s mind by saying the things that I’m saying? And the answer for me kept on coming back to no. It just wasn’t happening. So instead of doing so much talking or talking at people, I began to speak with people. And instead of being so certain in my own stance on things, I opened my mind to the curiosity that I might be wrong. I still found myself to be what I consider right most of the time. Maybe not most of the time, a lot of the time. But that genuine curiosity, entering into a conversation with somebody with genuine curiosity, I found. That not only did that help me, but it also helped them because now they were actually listening. Whereas before, if you come at somebody with this aggressive, sharp elbow stance, you’re A lot of times their ears just slam shut, Mike. They aren’t listening to anything after that. If they are listening, they’re only listening with the intent to respond to what you’ve just said, not listening to the content of what you just said or not actually absorbing in a curious way what you just said. So I found that in order to actually have a meaningful conversation and learn from the person I’m having a conversation with, I also had to open my ears and come in with a genuine sense of curiosity as to what they were saying. The world has opened up. to me in that way. I’m still as conservative as I was, you know, five years ago. Uh, but I understand those on the other side of the spectrum a lot better than I ever did before. And I also understand that these rigid binaries, you know, uh, black, white, uh, red, blue, uh, these, these are not real rigid binaries. There’s a whole spectrum of opinions out there. And we got to remember that none of, uh, especially in politics, but in any of these classifications, there’s no rigid binaries. There’s no solid monolithic group. You have to open your ears with genuine curiosity to find out those things and just broaden your horizons. So now I don’t try to change minds. I just try to open them. And it’s open mind. And it’s made for a much, much… And I like to say that there’s nothing that means more to me than my personal sanity. And that’s opened up a whole different kind of peace of mind for me, a whole different kind of sanity for me, a serenity that is just far better.
SPEAKER 01 :
We’re visiting with Wilk Wilkinson. He’s a host of the Derate the Hate podcast. I want to talk about your podcast. I want to talk some more about your work with Braver Angels. I also want to talk a little bit about your journey with Dr. Francis Collins. Now, you know, the pandemic. You talk about black and white and red and blue. It was, in many cases, our side against their side. To this day, when I see somebody wearing three masks, driving a car by themselves with the windows up, I know who they probably voted for. It’s fascinating, the political divide that paralleled our response to this worldwide pandemic, the coronavirus chapter. Tell us a little bit about your experience with Dr. Francis Collins, who frankly has been, to many on our side, or my side at least, identified as one of the boogeymen, one of the overlords of the pandemic. Yet you you sort of had a very different experience with him, I guess. And then that led to another friendship. Just walk us through all of that. How did a how did a husband, a father, a Christian conservative and the host of of a podcast called Derate the Hate podcast start hanging out with Dr. Francis Collins of the NIH?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it’s kind of a wild story, right? I mean, nobody would expect a truck driver, a former truck driver from the state of Minnesota, rural Minnesota, to end up in a personal friendship with Dr. Francis Collins. But back in… early 2022, Dr. Francis Collins came to the organization Braver Angels at the prompting of his friend David Brooks, as some people know from the New York Times, the Brookings Institute and things like that. But David Brooks had told Francis Collins about the organization Braver Angels. One of the things that we say at Braver Angels a lot is, you know, we all have our blind spots, but not one of us is not worth talking to. Dr. Francis Collins realized he had a very large blind spot for a lot of the things that had happened during the pandemic, especially with regard to people in rural America, rural middle America, right? A lot of what Francis Collins was doing centered around that Beltway bubble, that DC Beltway bubble, and the same as many people in our, I guess, elite institutions, right? So he asked if there was somebody within the Braver Angels organization that he could speak with to kind of reveal or help him work through some of those blind spots that he had. They came to me and asked me, knowing that I had been speaking out against the government’s response to the pandemic since early 2020. I put out a video early on, didn’t get a lot of views, but it was basically the idea of… Hey, this one size fits all thing is not the best thing for America. You know, as a truck driver, nobody’s really going to listen. But but that was my opinion. Right. We can’t do this one size fits all thing and expect it to work. And. We have to have a more targeted response and we aren’t listened to out here and things like that. And then also about the freedom shaming. I talked about freedom shaming at the time and how anytime somebody would try to speak up, we were being castigated and just demonized online and in the media and things like that. So. So they asked Francis Collins to come speak with me. And it started off very, I mean, it was very interesting, right? They asked me if I would speak with the former head of the NIH. And I’m like, I’ll speak with anybody. Let’s make this happen. And so we had several hours worth of conversations just across Zoom, just getting to know one another and finding out about each other’s families and, you know, building that organic friendship. And before we started really diving into all of those things that separated us, because we were a long ways, we’re still a long ways away from each other in terms of how we feel about the government’s response to the pandemic, the pandemic itself, things like that. Right. So we started having these conversations and then we started doing some like fishbowl exercises where we’d bring in other people that would watch us speak with each other and do these things. But over the course of the past few years, we’ve developed and built a pretty decent friendship. And somebody I consider a dear friend, somebody I disagree with vehemently on many things with regard to the pandemic response, but somebody I consider a dear friend and I’m able to have great conversations with.
SPEAKER 01 :
You know, I’m very mindful, and I’ve done this for a long time. My first talk show was in 1978, so I’m an old man. I’ve probably got socks older than you, Wilk. But I will say that we tend, in my world, to vilify the other side. Everybody’s the enemy. Everybody’s the bad guy. And we forget about the lives that a lot of people live that are maybe our political opposition. Maybe we don’t agree with anything ideologically. But we kind of lose our humanity, don’t we? I mean, we sort of forget. That somebody might not vote the way we want them to vote or I don’t vote the way they want me to vote. But, you know, we’re humans. And I know this sounds a little bit like a kumbaya moment here, but it’s true. And we forget. I had a caller yesterday on the show say every Democrat is a demon. And I thought, no, not ever. That’s not true. You can’t. And but we we get caught up in this. Now, you know, the pushback, though, and I got it when I when I called the guy out and I disagreed with him and said not every Democrat is a demon. Right away, I got accused by some in the audience of going soft. Mike, you’re going soft. Mike Gallagher is becoming squishy and you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re a moderate now. You’re in the middle. Have you faced that kind of pushback from people in your world as well, this whole effort to try to find some common ground and forge friendships with people who disagree with you? Do you hear that criticism that, oh, Wilkinson, you’re no conservative. You’re trying to, you know, try to have it both ways.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It never ceases to amaze me, Mike, how when you try to be that connection point between the us versus them, how you start to get attacked by both the us and the them. Uh, it’s, it’s interesting how, how that, how that happens. But one thing I, I try to keep in the back of my mind in this thing is, is again, I know that I’m a, uh, a steadfast Christian conservative guy. I, my, my values have not changed. And what I do is, in trying to bring together both sides for a non-contentious conversation about contentious issues, I think that is so vitally important. And when people from either side decide that they are going to attack me for being some squishy moderate or not a true conservative or… It… I don’t allow those things to bother me anymore because I know where I stand. I know who I am. And I also know that my mission, I’m a very mission driven guy. My mission is to make this country and this world a better place for my children. I know that we don’t get there by staying as polarized as we are right now. So those who would like to see us remain divided are typically the ones that are attacking me. So while I think their opinion definitely deserves… you know, the merit that it’s worth, I guess. I don’t allow that to bother me anymore. But yeah, I do get that quite often where people will attack me. You know, I mean, I’m probably one of the only human beings on the planet that’s good friends with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Francis Collins. I get attacked by both sides. And so do they, which is very weird.
SPEAKER 01 :
The whole thing is weird. I mean, I remember back in the day I was a Fox News contributor and I appeared frequently with Alan Combs on Fox News. And Alan, who has since passed away, Alan, though, was one of the most lovely people you’d ever meet. Just kind and a great guy, you know, dedicated Democrat. And I remember how he got it from both sides. He, you know, conservatives got mad at him because of his point of view. And then liberals got mad at him because he was appearing regularly on Fox News. Fox News Channel. It was like the guy couldn’t win, and again, was an absolute great guy. Wilk Wilkinson is our guest. Let’s close by talking a little bit about your podcast. What does derate the hate mean? I think I have an idea, but why don’t you explain the mission and purpose of your very popular podcast, Wilk?
SPEAKER 02 :
So thanks a lot, Mike. I greatly appreciate that. So derate the hate for people who may not know. So there’s a couple of things, a couple of ways you could take the derate thing. And in the trucking industry or the trucking and transportation industry, which I’ve spent decades. the last 26 years in, when you derate a truck, you basically, it’s the truck’s self-defense mechanism. It’s turning the ability for that engine down so that it doesn’t destroy itself. It inhibits the truck’s ability to continue to operate at that level so that whatever’s going wrong doesn’t destroy the whole powertrain system.
SPEAKER 1 :
Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
Also in whether it be podcasting or radio or whatever, if you derate something, you turn something down. So if we want to tame down the toxicity, if we want to turn down the hate in this country, we need to derate that. And so I just came up with that idea one day. Derate the hate. Sounded good. Started a podcast with the mission statement of bettering the world one attitude at a time. I, like I said earlier in the show here, Mike, I spent a lot of my life angry. I was a I was a loud guy. I was angry about a lot of things, had a lot of animosity for a lot of things that have happened in my life. And I came to the realization that it was really up to me to fix them. I was the common denominator in so many of my problems. So gratitude, personal accountability, these things helped me on my journey to tame down my own toxicity. And I wanted to bring that to other people. So I started the D-Rate Day podcast to try and make the world a better place, bettering the world one attitude at a time. And now I’ve had some of the most incredible guests in the world, some of the greatest minds in the world have joined me on the D-Rate Day podcast. to talk about all kinds of different things. You know, we talk about mindset, gratitude, forgiveness, redemption, past discretion, gratitude. Grace, we talk about all of these different things that are really about making the world a better place. And I spend a lot of my time in that depolarization space because I think that’s one of the most important things out there is realizing that we cannot continue as a country. We cannot continue as a human race. As a population of this planet, we got one rock to live on. And if we don’t tame down the toxicity and tame down that toxic polarity that seems to be so prevalent today, we don’t get to live the lives that we should live. So I think we should all just try to make the world a better place by it starts with the conversation.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hope everybody finds your podcast, Derate the Hate. You can follow your podcast on X at Derate the Hate. And also go to BraverAngels.org to learn a little bit about what this great organization is doing. I really believe in the mission, and we ought to do more of what you all are doing. So BraverAngels.org. Wilk Wilkinson, I appreciate you taking time out of your day to join us here on the Mike Gallagher Show. Keep fighting the good fight.
