Our guest this week is Christian Picciolini. Christian is an activist, author and speaker who is a former white supremacist but is doing the hard work of reconciliation and helping other people leave hate groups through his nonprofit The Free Radicals Project. His newest book Breaking Hate: Confronting the Culture of Extremism is now available.

Praise For Breaking Hate: Confronting The New Culture Of Extremism…

“This riveting narrative portrays on an intensely personal level the impacts of extremism. Encouragingly, it also identifies a method for recovery. Picciolini’s experience and practice reinforce the truism that hate is a learned behavior, and it can be unlearned. Breaking Hate should be required reading for all citizens who care about dangerous behavior, want to understand it, and are committed to reducing it.”—James Clapper, former US Director of National Intelligence

“Riveting, horrifying, and hopeful, Breaking Hate provides a careful and detailed account of how to stop society’s death spiral into extremism, and when we need it most urgently.”—S.E. Cupp, nationally syndicated columnist and CNN host, author of Losing Our Religion

“With piercing insight and unrivaled compassion, Breaking Hate tells the tragic story of how extremism has torn our communities asunder and how every American can work together to end the epidemic of violence that has taken so many of our loved ones. In a country where more than 96 percent of mass shootings are perpetrated by men, we need to find ways of helping our boys grow into healthy young men who not only reject hate but also feel they have paths forward in today’s economy.”—Andrew Yang, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate

“Gripping and timely…Written with authority and first-hand experience…Breaking Hate is filled with rare insights that put today’s rise of white supremacy into perspective — and shows us how to stop it.”—Ali Soufan, former FBI special agent and New York Times bestselling author of Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State

“Breaking Hate is a groundbreaking book. It reveals the depths of the modern white-power extremist movement and illustrates how easily the children of good-hearted, proud Americans can become transformed and corrupted…A sorrowfully necessary book for the dark period America has found itself in.”—Malcolm Nance, counter-terrorism analyst for NBC News and New York Times bestselling author of The Plot to Betray America, from the foreword