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Martin Carcasson didn't set out to fix American democracy. He set out to fix a debate class he inherited at Colorado State University — one that reliably ended with students talking past each other after an entire semester of research. That frustration led to an insight that changed the direction of his career: the format of a conversation shapes everything about where it ends up.
Twenty years later, the Center for Public Deliberation at CSU has become a living laboratory for a different kind of civic engagement. Martin, the CPD staff, and their students have run over 600 community meetings — commissioned by city governments, school boards, senior centers, and nonprofits — using a deliberative process designed to bring people together around shared problems instead of dividing them over competing positions.
The core of his work is a reframe: stop treating complex community issues as debates to be won, and start treating them as wicked problems to be navigated. That shift — from looking for someone to blame to looking for something that might work — changes not just the tone of a conversation but its entire architecture.
Martin Carcasson, Ph.D. is a professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University and the founder/director of the Center for Public Deliberation. His work focuses on helping communities move beyond polarization and engage complex public issues through deliberation, collaborative problem-solving, and constructive civic engagement.
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martincarcasson/
• Center for Public Deliberation staff: https://cpd.colostate.edu/about-us/staff/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wickedproblemsmindset/
The Center for Public Deliberation serves as an impartial resource dedicated to improving local democracy by fostering more productive public dialogue and helping communities work through difficult issues together.
• Website: https://cpd.colostate.edu/
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[00:00:00:00] Wilk Wilkinson: Most of our political fights aren't actually about wicked people. They're about wicked problems. Problems with no simple fix, where the things we care about are in genuine tension with each other. My guest today has spent 20 years building a different kind of conversation, one that stops looking at the yes no for against binaries, or for someone to blame, and starts looking for something that might actually work. Martin Carcasson has some answers. Stick with me. Welcome back, my friend, to the Derate the Hate podcast. I'm your host, Wilk Wilkinson, your blue collar sage calming outrage and helping to navigate a world divided by fog and those who would spread that fear, outrage and grievance. The Derate the Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels, America's largest grassroots cross partisan organization working toward civic renewal, this podcast amplifies the mission that we share to foster a more respectful and united America where civic friendship thrives even when we disagree. Each week, through the power of story, conversation, and connection with incredible guests, we work to build bridges instead of barriers, not to change minds on the issues, but to change how we see one another when we differ. Because friends, it really is about bettering the world one attitude at a time. We did not create the hate, but together we can Derate the Hate. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast, share it with a friend and visit Braver Angels to learn how you can get involved in the movement to bridge the partisan divide. Friends, I am so incredibly grateful that you have joined me for another powerful Derate the Hate episode. So let's get to it. Martin Carcasson is a professor of communication studies at Colorado State University, and the founder and director of the CSU center for Public Deliberation, an organization that just turned 20. But here's what makes his work different. He doesn't just study how people talk about hard problems. He trains his students to go out into their communities and actually run a better kind of conversation. Over 600 meetings working with city governments, school boards, senior centers and community organizations, real issues, real people, and a process designed specifically to tap into the best of human nature rather than the worst. Martin also co-chairs the newly revamped Civic Scholars Council at Braver Angels, a group of academics and public thinkers working to connect research to what's actually happening on the ground in local communities all across the country. He's developed what he calls the Wicked Problems mindset, a framework that reframes how we think about the issues dividing us, not as battles between good people and bad people, but as genuinely complicated challenges that require more than one side prospective to solve. Let's get into it with my friend Martin Carcasson. Here we go. Professor Martin Carcasson welcome to the Derate the Hate podcast. My friend, so good to see you again.
[00:03:50:13] Martin Carcasson: Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it.
[00:03:53:11] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, I, I we got to spend a little time together not so many weeks ago out in Seattle, part of the Civic Collaboratory for Citizens University. Eric Lu and and his crew out there. And that was fantastic. And then I did a little bit of Braver Angels stuff while we were out there in Seattle, which was great. So got a number of things to talk about today. But the important thing is I wanted to bring bring you and your work to the Derate the Hate listeners, because I think what you're doing is, is incredibly important. we will get into a little bit of your backstory and, see how that all goes. So, Martin, let's let's start with. Just the, the the way you got into this work. I mean, I know you've been a professor now for for several years. Colorado State University, the center for Public Deliberation out there. But what was it that really drove you into this deliberation and dialog type of work?
[00:04:55:05] Martin Carcasson: Yeah. You know, my my early research, I was trained as a rhetorical critic My early research focus, actually on American presidents on kind of national politics. I was really interested in how we talked about complex issues. I've always been really interested in kind of the the tension between expertise and democracy and how we need that to be kind of an active tension. If either side dominates too much, where we get in trouble. So a lot of my early research, my dissertation focused on how presidents talked about complex issues like race, the environment, poverty, and I grew more and more frustrated because most of my papers, I was doing well, I was getting published, but most of my papers were just talking about how badly they talked about those issues. Right. How the, you know, the political incentives encouraged them to kind of talk more to their side and focus on winning elections and staying popular versus actually having the tough, nuanced conversations. We need to address those issues more productively. So I got my PhD. I got the job at CSU about 20, 24, 25 years ago now, and I decided to shift my work from national to local and shift from being a critic, kind of commenting on other people's communication to become much more of a practitioner. And it was in my in my classes, I could spark ways of engaging issues that were much more productive, much more interesting coming together across perspectives. But we just didn't see that out in the real world very much. Right. So the CBD became this experiment, which will turn 20 this August. Okay. Can we take these concepts from dialog and deliberation, from conflict management, from, you know, from the business world of collaborative problem solving, and actually see if they can apply to our political world, particularly kind of local. And it's worked pretty well, right? We're showing kind of more and more if we change the way we talk, we spark very different conversations. We come up with better actions to address these shared problems more productively.
[00:06:50:05] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. And I think that's that's a lot of what's missing right now in the equation, Martin is is so often the the conversation breaks down before any real action takes place and nothing seems to get done. And and this is, this is one of the things that, that I've really loved from learning about your work. And and I want to I want to definitely hear more about it and bring that to the to the DTH listeners. Because when you start talking about, you know, local action and how things get done and, and I know you've used you've done so many different things in terms of, of, setting up these examples of real things happening with your students, you know, at, at CSU. So let's, let's, let's just dive into that a little bit deeper and then, and then we can, you know, kind of work our way towards, what Braver Angels are doing. And I know you're on the Civic Scholars Council. You're one of the co-chairs of the the Civic Scholars Council. But and then also, helping with the citizen led solutions and, and things like that. So we're going to tie all these things together. But, but talk about how this, this thing at CSU and, and taking the students and providing them with, with a real problem and then working their way through that in a, in a deliberative dialog style, And then and then also I want to hear about this wicked problems mindset. You and I talked a little bit about that and I think it's a lot to cover there. But but but let's start with the students and how how you've you've taken like real life examples, local local style issues and worked through that with the students and use those deliberative dialog methods.
[00:08:54:13] Martin Carcasson: Yeah, yeah. Where it started. So when I got the job at CSU, part of the job description was to take over what was the argumentation and debate class, which is one of the required courses for all our majors. And lots of universities have this class. It's a basic debate class where, you know, student teams of four get created, two are affirmative, two are negative. They pick a yes no issue. And they spent all semester long researching that issue, creating a brief, doing a lot of, you know, digging into the library and so forth. And then they have a debate in class, and then they actually switch sides and have the debate again. And that's a class I took over, and I grew more and more frustrated with that class because, you know, framing it as a yes no issue. They kind of talk past each other at the end of the. I would require them to pick a really tough, controversial issue. And at the end of the semester, there wasn't more clarity, right? There was just kind of, you know, because each side was focusing on a pure yes or no answer to a complex issue. No one was looking for compromise. No one was looking to how might we reframe this in a more productive way? So then at the same time, I was getting connected with National Coalition of Dialog and Deliberation and this kind of broader world of deliberation and kind of experimenting with that. So the first thing I did is I changed that class from a focus on debate to to a focus on deliberation and what the students do still teams of four, but they would pick an issue. I try to get them to pick a local issue, but or at least that had kind of local connections and they would ask the question of, hey, what should we do about X? This issue in the we was purposely broad, right? It might be the local community and might be more regional or state or potentially national or global, but it was brought in terms of we of like we want them to think about the community addressing this issue and yes, government being one particularly important tool for for a community. But we also want to tap into nonprofits and individual and private businesses. How do we broadly do this? And instead of picking a side, their job was to be more of a facilitator, to be an analyst that looks at all different perspectives. So the ultimate project was to create a discussion guide using this nationalist use forum model that I'm pretty involved in that asks the what should we do about X, and then provides at least three approaches to addressing it. Each approach has pros and cons. Each approach taps into certain values, and then maybe not as much other values. There's no magic bullets. There's no right answer. The discussion guide is created to help people have a deeper, more nuanced conversation. But at activating these students, not as advocates. Don't pick a side and argue for it, but as a facilitator, as stepping back and saying, hey, my job is to help other people have a really good conversation about this. We're creating something that's really necessary. And this, you know, information overload world, this polarized world. You know, we're focused on really kind of tapping into something differently. So then that was the class. And then the CBD became, can we take this model of a different way of talking and apply to the local community? And what happened pretty early on? You know, I cold called the city and the school district and the local paper kind of explaining what we're doing. They started asking us to help things. Right. So I developed a second class. We're actually train students as to and 20 years later we've run over about 600 meetings. We actually now get hired by the city, by the county, by the school district, by community organizations to design and run these innovative meetings, 100 people show up in a set of hundred people listening to experts on the stage, or 100 people walking up to a microphone one at a time, which is horrible process design for a complex issue. We can put them at 15 different tables where I have my students at every single table train, generally in deliberation and conflict management. Train specifically on that topic to walk people through this very different conversation that helps us understand each other, depolarize and humanize in less different ways, and then actually tap into the best of human nature, which is our creativity, to figure out better ways of addressing issues. Yeah. So yeah, we tried to kind of expand that model across other universities.
[00:12:56:22] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. And that's fantastic because I think, well, I think a lot gets lost. I don't even know about loss, but I think a lot gets missed in in your standard debate process. Right? I mean now Braver Angels I think has has got a really cool debate program. And the way that they do things is a little bit different than, than your standard like rigid binary debate process. But when we start to think about the difference between deliberation and debate, dive into that a little bit more in terms of what the desired outcomes and what the differences are in those outcomes. When it comes to deliberation through dialog and like that rigid binary debate.
[00:13:45:19] Martin Carcasson: Yeah, yeah, I've had this long relationship with this because I think initially I was never on a debate team, but I always taught debate classes and argumentation classes, kind of curriculum models. And as I said, I kind of started getting frustrated with with the binary, with the yes no, knowing that we need to get creative and find different ways. I'm certainly a critic of the two party system, which I think that incentivizes pretty bad thinking a lot of times. So I became somewhat anti debate for a year for a while there. But then I started getting convinced. I kind of realized that, that I was kind of comparing the best of deliberation to the worst of debate, which ironically is rather un-deliberative. Right, right. So now, particularly lately, I've been working on this paper for a while, trying to make distinctions between debate, dialog, and deliberation, and seeing that each of those has kind of a strong version, a weak version, and kind of a problematic kind of pseudo version in a way. So with the Braver Angels, debates with other kind of models, having lots of conversations with debate, people of like, okay, how do we design better debates so we get the best out of it, right? So to your question, my distinction between debate and deliberation debate is talk primarily about trying to elevate good arguments and expose bad arguments. And this is pretty important to the kind of information chaos, information disorder, misinformation, disinformation that, you know, we're just overloaded with information now, our ability to create and share information as just exploded, our ability to make sense of information and make distinctions between good information and bad information has really not only not kept up, has kind of fallen back. Right? So a really well-designed debate can help us with that, can kind of help separate the wheat from the chaff and elevate. Sure. When done well. Right. The problem is most debate I think is more focused on spectacle. It's more focused on getting the zinger right, you know, getting the nice thing that's going to go viral, like presidential debates or crap. Right? You know, it's just a dual press conference, you know? So how do we kind of experiment more and get at that to bring out the best in the bait? Easiest way for me to think about that is a really good debate, provides insight, helps us understand the issue better. Right. Helps us kind of come together. Deliberation takes it a step further. Deliberation is talk about action. Deliberation is answering the question, what should we do? So we need good information if we're making decisions together. But we also kind of need those connections. And so deliberation is about how do we kind of move forward. It makes a stronger connection between kind of talk and action. It's talk about action going through, you know, so we don't want to be limited to a yes no question. Right. We want to have a full slate of possible actions from multiple stakeholders, multiple actors to address those issues better.
[00:16:33:11] Wilk Wilkinson: And I think that's fantastic. Like like I said, one of the things that I talk about a lot, I mean, I talk a lot about a lot of different things, but but when I think about, you know, some of the bigger problems that we face as a society today is, there's not enough action because the conversation doesn't happen and the conversation not happening in the right way prevents people from really knowing, you know, what the root cause problem is to the, the, the problem that, that we're all trying to solve for the information doesn't get out there to the right people. People start to make up their own information and then try to determine what action needs to happen with partial information, and it just becomes a mess. So I love the idea of of deliberation and then and then talk to me about some of the, the, the problems. You said that that you've actually gone to different communities and municipalities and, and found some of the problems that they were having and then brought that deliberation process back to your students to try and help find, you know, viable solutions to those problems.
[00:17:50:23] Martin Carcasson: Yeah. So we want, you know, our expertise is in process. And then we over the years, we've done all kinds of topics. Right. So partner quite a bit with the City of Fort Collins. So we've done a lot of stuff on environmental issues. We've done a lot of stuff on housing issues. We've done a lot. We work a lot with local schools as well. So we've done stuff on bullying and substance abuse. And so it kind of runs the gamut. Probably one of my favorite stories of the CBD, working with our local senior center and the senior advisory board, taking on something that horrible metaphor. Some people call this the silver tsunami, which is just our aging population, right? The percentage of our population over 65. I think the stat we use ten, 12 years ago when we started this project, we were using those the the population over 65 was going to increase by 130% over the next 15, 20 years. So more than double the population over 80 was going to like Quinn triple. So we just kind of asked this question of like what kind of community we want for our older residents. And it kind of started this process and thinking through and from that, like questions about transportation kind of rose up and about health care and about housing and just the culture of aging, you know, things like elder abuse and how do we talk? So we're able to kind of use these tools to spark a very different conversation and kind of bring people together and, and kind of turn that around in a way that led to an actual new organization called the partnership for Age Friendly Communities, which is a nonprofit. I just wrote an article lately about kind of the how to create these bridging institutions. We need organizations that bring people together more. On the problem side, we have lots of organizations that come together. On the solutions side, they've picked a side, right? And they you know, there are bonding organization that bring like minded people together that are fighting for gun rights or fighting for gun control or, you know, and they're normally pretty limited, right? They're bringing like minded people together. They think they've already got the solution. So they see the other side as an enemy or as an opponent. Right. And then that creates all these bad incentives to try to win the fight versus solve the problem. But when you create an organization like the Partnership For Age Friendly Communities, and we've done this with some other issues, I call it a bridging advocacy group. It's a group that's really passionate about an issue but pretty open minded about solutions. They want to be creative. They want to tap into humility. They want to cut across perspectives. So all of a sudden now you have a group that hopefully has a mix of conservative and progressives and makes lots of different mixes that's coming together to say, how do we come together to address this issue kind of more productively? That's right. That's where a lot of my work relies on or builds off social psychology and brain science and how we're wired, and unfortunate reality, which I know a lot of your work. You know, we are much more wired for outrage and polarization than we are for the collaboration and deliberation. We need to address our problems better. But through process design, we can figure out ways of avoiding triggering all that bad stuff and actually get into good stuff. And the best of humans are really good creative problem solvers when put in a good situation to do that. So that's what we're trying to do more and more.
[00:20:58:01] Wilk Wilkinson: Well, and this is this is what I, you know, when I, when I hear you saying this, Martin, I think about, a lot of times the, and I don't think politics is going to solve a lot of our problems. I think I think politics, unfortunately, politics and politicians spend a lot of time fiddling around with problems that they created. And and I think that's problematic. But I, I also want to acknowledge those that actually do come together and say, okay, we may not agree on how we're going to get to the solution, but if we can decide what the problem is that we're trying to solve for and decide what solution we want to get to, you know, we can start to work through, in a deliberative process, everything in between. Yeah, right. I mean, if we acknowledge what the problem is to find what the problem is, agree on what that definition is, and then we can agree on what the solution to that problem should be or what that what that should somehow look like. There's going to be a lot of different pathways to get there, you know, and there's going to be through lines sometimes. But if we're not willing to or able to, you know, I, you know, when you said and this is what resonates the most is when you said, you know, there's a lot of these groups out there that they define what, you know, what they, they see the, the problem is or the issue is and, and then everybody that doesn't agree with that becomes the enemy or whatever, you know, that that that is what I see a lot in, in the, in the problems that we have today and then the political environment that we live in, it's, it's it then becomes this kind of thing where, well, the other side is not going to help us with it. So we're going to go ahead and work on it anyway. And governance in a way that's kind of dismissive to the other side. And that just creates a lot more animus.
[00:23:01:13] Martin Carcasson: Yeah, yeah. We're not we're not going to solve these big problems that we have with just one side of the aisle. Right. That's right. But we have a political system, particularly nationally, that that incentivizes very different things, just like you're saying, like for for a lot of these issues, they want the problem. Right. The problem is helpful to get elected or to get people to donate money and so forth. Right? So we're we're we have so many incentives that are not pointing to actually addressing the problems kind of more productively. So that's what we're trying to figure out. You know, and obviously my work is local, but a lot of my work is my long term theory of changes. The more and more you get individual communities that change the way they engage and learn how to engage more productively. Favorite thing of my meetings is at the end, I stand by the door just thinking people for their time, you know, and they're often exhausted, right? We've made their brains work in ways they're not used to working, but they also recognize they just did something important. Right? Yeah. And the CBD grew like crazy because every time we ran a meeting, I had 5 or 6 people come up to me afterwards saying, we need to do this with this issue, right? Right. And we gave them an alternative, and they saw the importance of that. And they wanted more, and they grew more and more frustrated with what they're getting in the national level. Right. I like to think at a CPD meeting, if someone shows up with a really simple solution to a complex problem, they look silly, right? People? That's not what we're doing here. Right, right. So the more and more we get individual cities, you know? So I work with other universities and colleges. I work with Braver Angel alliances now. I work with community foundations, with libraries. With the more and more we build this individual capacity, these civic hubs that both Braver Angels better Together American other organizations are trying to kind of create. The more we start giving people an alternative, they start rejecting the strategies for the national level, which then hopefully that means they stop relying on those strategies. So that's right. If polarization doesn't work politically, they'll have to find other ways, right? We've got a system now that incentivizes the opposite kind of processes that we need. Right. Yeah.
[00:25:02:23] Wilk Wilkinson: That's why I love this so much. Is is because, you know, many of the listeners know and I think you and I have even talked about it a little bit before, but the concept of subsidiarity, you know, try to deal with a problem at the level closest to the genesis of that problem is possible. And then what that ends up doing it also, you know, promotes personal agency and then work within the community. And once people just like you just said there, Martin is, once people realize that not everything has to be this federal issue, there are a lot of things that we can take care of, within our personal sphere of influence or within our community, sphere of influence, that kind of thing. And then we're not completely dependent on a faraway power that seems to turn everything into, this crazy crisis. That's my words, not yours. But but the the idea that that there's a lot that can be done a lot closer to home than than everything is made out to be. I mean, I'm, you know, we we can remember there used to be a time where, where there was a phrase that was pretty commonplace, where it said, don't make a federal issue out of everything you know or don't make a federal case out of it. And and I miss those times. Right? I miss the times when, when we could actually work together within a community. Which brings me to the, you know, citizen led solutions thing. And I'm glad you brought up the idea of these, these civic hubs and working with the Braver Angels alliances and and things like that, because, there are a lot of problems that can be dealt with a lot closer to home. And so tie that in a little bit to, to your wicked problems framework and what that wicked problems thing is and how you're kind of working that into your, you know, the Civic hub model of, of solving problems closer to home.
[00:27:03:04] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:04:11] Martin Carcasson: So wicked problems. You know, there's the concept was created about 50 years ago or so. It was actually civil engineers that that, you know, got a job working for a local municipality. And the way they kind of explained the stories, they realized pretty quickly that the kind of problems they were trained to solve and the kind of problems they were asked to solve were very distinct. Right? So as engineers, they were trained, at least back then, to solve these technical problems. Right. There is a right answer. Find the right answer. But in you know, they're dealing with issues like housing or, you know, all these kind of complex issues. And they found out pretty quickly is like the problems inherently involve multiple underlining values. And then different people that they're trying to serve prioritize those values differently. So there was no like, magic bullet. There was no way of like, hey, I'm going to solve this problem. And and we don't have to deal with the problem anymore. So that shift of wicked problems for me really taps in. Well to the research and social social psychology and brain science and like how we're thinking because our brains want to think the problems are caused by wicked people, right? Bad people that have the wrong values. Right? So if that's the problem, well then you just have to vanquish evil. We just have to, you know, get rid of those people or dominate those people, or win elections and get rid of those people. So we just kind of have this kind of back and forth. And when we assume the other side's wicked, when we assume they're the enemy, that brings out all the worst in human nature and kind of puts these blinders on. So when we shift from that easy assumption that problems are caused by wicked people, by assuming the problems are wicked, the problems are complicated because they involve lots of things that we care about, even just basic American values. Right? We care about freedom and we care about equality, and we care about justice, and we care about security. Those things don't fit together very well. Right? So the art of doing democracy well is all about finding the better way to navigate between these inherent tensions, between these things that we care about and find better ways of trying to balance those things, or sometimes recalibrating, kind of shifting around, hopefully, you know, getting innovative and finding ways of transcending these tensions and creating something new. But our brains don't want to think that hard, right? We like to think fast versus thinking slow. Using the title of a famous book that got a Nobel Prize right. And and too often, our political system, you win elections by attacking the other side by leaning into the problem is then the problem is, is the wicked people. So that's a lot of how we reframe issues and bring people together is to shift that and to, to, to to use this wicked problems mindset of like, hey, the best way is come together across multiple perspectives and try to find better ways of balancing these things. And that sparks a very different kind of conversation. And then we're typically getting.
[00:29:52:07] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, I think it absolutely does. You know, I think it's and that again, this is this is one of those things that I think a lot of people need to, to focus on. They need to recognize that, that when we start to classify the the person as wicked instead of the problem as wicked, it becomes a huge problem in actually getting anything done well. Defining people as as being. People, as being the wicked ones. And, there's a whole lot I mean, a whole nother thing that comes along with that is, you know, when we when we classify somebody as wicked or evil or whatever, it becomes easy to demonize them and that that can lead to all kinds of other problems, violence and, and things. But what ends up getting missed is the solutions that the people need to these problems, that that are themselves far more complicated and wicked than, than, than people end up even realizing because they start to focus on the personality, they focus on the person. They they stop recognizing the humanity. So then talk to me about as we wrap up our time here. Martin, you are on the Civic Scholars Council for Braver Angels, and a lot of people don't know about that. It's a fairly new thing, but but you're you're one of the co-chairs of the Civic Scholars Council. Now for Braver Angels. Talk to me a little bit about that Civic Scholars Council and, and the kind of things that you guys are doing. I just had a conversation the other day with a good friend of ours, Harry Boyte who's just an incredible human being as well. Another one on the on the Civic Scholars Council. Well, let's let's tell the listeners a little bit as we round out our time here about that, that Scholars Council.
[00:31:41:08] Martin Carcasson: Yeah. So I mean, Braver Angels had a Scholars Council for a while and I was on it wasn't all that active. And I think just this year basically they're kind of revamping it. It's going to be a smaller group with a little bit more expectations of kind of engaging. We'll kind of have a coming out party a little bit at the at the conference in Philadelphia. So we got a symposium kind of before a pre-conference, basically the all day on the 25th on the before it starts at night. I think I got the date right. We did a call for papers. So we got, I think, almost 50 papers from, from a lot of different people to engage on issues. So the symposium will focus on that. But overall, the way I see the council is a lot of academics, some kind of more, you know, people that are doing writing that are scholars, that are kind of thinking public intellectuals in a way. And when I'm hoping it becomes, at least from my perspective, is, you know, people that have a lot of time to to do a lot of research, to do a lot of reading, have a lot of conversations and kind of dig into questions. So I hope it sets up, you know, a relationship kind of back and forth hearing from from the Braver Angels volunteers out there, the ones you know, there in the local communities. We're going to be asking them, what are the big questions you want us to kind of dig into? And then we'll be doing webinars. We'll be doing papers to try to kind of tap into kind of what we know is what working and not working to really support this community of practice. Right. Certainly, my research have already mentioned I want every single community, every single city in town, you know, to kind of have these civic hubs, to have organizations that are really focused on helping bring people together across perspectives, to get things done, to address their shared problems more productively. So the Civic Scholars Council is hopefully going to be a resource to Braver Angels, to kind of help us constantly bounce back and forth between theory and practice. So to learn what's happening and what's working and what's not working at the local communities, and then bring back kind of better ideas and highlight those ideas as much as possible.
[00:33:38:15] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. I love that the idea of bringing, you know, principles to practice and a lot of, you know, finding out the research, you know, not just the what, but the why and how how these things actually work in practice.
[00:33:54:13] Martin Carcasson: Well.
[00:33:55:07] Wilk Wilkinson: Martin Carcasson, this has been a fantastic conversation. I do appreciate it very much, a lot here for the listeners to take away. And the people of Braver Angels are lucky to have you on the Civic Scholars Council. We are, and I'm certainly looking forward to to connecting again here at the the Braver Angels National Convention, Philadelphia. By the time this comes out, this this episode comes out, it'll be just a matter of days before we before we're there in Philadelphia. But I look forward to seeing you there, my friend.
[00:34:28:04] Martin Carcasson: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me on. And thanks for all the work that you're doing with this.
[00:34:31:03] Wilk Wilkinson: So.. All right, everybody can find more about you. I want to make sure we get this in there too. More about you, the website, and for the center for Public Deliberation will be on the in the show notes here. They can find you on LinkedIn YouTube x all the all the places. Those links will also be in the show notes.
[00:34:55:03] Martin Carcasson: Yeah, I'm the only Martin Carcasson in the world as far as I know. So pretty easy to find me. So I'm the only world in the world.
[00:35:02:02] Wilk Wilkinson: I think, I think so I think there was a smuggler named Wilk Wilkinson at one time. I've seen something about that, but I think I'm the only one right now, so that's very good. And we'll make it easier for them to find you as well, because it'll be in the show notes. And I look forward to seeing you again soon, my friend.
[00:35:18:09] Speaker 3: Thank you Wilk
[00:35:19:11] Wilk Wilkinson: Friends, I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if there's anything in this episode that provided exceptional value to you, please make sure to hit that share button. If you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to get the Derate The Hate podcast sent to your email inbox every week. We really are better together. So please take a moment to visit Braver Angels and consider joining the movement towards civic renewal and bridging our political divide. This is Wilk wrapping up for the week saying get out there. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you've got. And remember, it's up to you to make every day the day that you want it to be. With that, my friend. I'm going to back on out of here and we will catch you next week. Take care.
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