Wednesday, September 2, 2026

The Father and Daughter Who Created "The Enemies Project"– DTH Episode 331 with Larry and Sadie R...

Send Wilk a text with your feedback! (incoming msgs only - I can't reply) (https://www.buzzsprout.com/969574/fan_mail/new) Larry Rosen built a career as a mediator, working through disputes between people who already knew each other and had a reason to want to get along — business partners, divorcing couples, families untangling an inheritance. He started wondering whether that same process could work between total strangers who disagreed about nothing more personal than politics. He didn't know if the motivation would even be there. He built the Enemies Project to test it, with one structural addition borrowed from television rather than mediation: let people argue first, then guide them toward seeing each other as human beings before ever touching the actual dispute. His daughter Sadie came on originally to help launch the project on social media. She ended up embedded in nearly every part of it — recruiting and screening guests, producing episodes, and, this past summer alone, having conversations with roughly a hundred people trying to find the right voices for the show. Key Themes ●       Stoke the flames, then build the bridge.  Larry's early instinct in mediation was to defuse conflict immediately. For the show, he learned to do the opposite — let people argue first — and found that the more heat there was at the start, the deeper and more surprising the resolution turned out to be. ●       The bridging space may be aiming at the wrong audience.  Larry argues that people already interested in “depolarization” and “cross-partisan dialogue” are a narrow, self-selecting group. The much larger audience is people who've simply tuned politics out because it's exhausting — people who just want their own relationships to work better. ●       Numbers versus individual impact.  Larry and Sadie both describe the strange experience of watching follower counts climb into the hundreds of thousands while the moments that actually stick with them are single messages — a viewer who says a conversation with an estranged parent finally happened again. ●       Two skills a mediator needs.  Larry breaks down the two core abilities he believes this work requires: deep empathy, and the more analytical skill of mapping a conversation's structure in real time. Few people, he says, naturally have both. ●       Built at the family dinner table.  Sadie traces her own instinct for seeing things from someone else's perspective back to childhood car rides, where her dad's oft-repeated advice eventually became a running family joke — “no dad lessons today” — that, as she got older, turned out to have worked anyway. Takeaways ●       Structured conversation can transform a relationship even between two people who've never met and have no built-in reason to want to get along. ●       The Enemies Project has grown into one of the most-watched shows in the bridge-building space — closing in on 200,000 Instagram followers and nearly 100,000 on YouTube — but Larry and Sadie both point to individual stories, not the numbers, as what actually keeps them doing the work. ●       Learn more, watch episodes, or connect with the Enemies Project at enemiesproject.org. Learn more about and connect with Larry and Sadie in the full show notes for this episode at www.DerateTheHate.com (https://www.DerateTheHate.com) .  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 (https://www.facebook.com/DerateTheHate) , Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/derate_the_hate/) , Twitter(X) (https://twitter.com/deratethehate) ,  YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@DerateTheHate) ,  Substack  (https://wilkwilkinson.substack.com/) 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 (https://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 (https://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.