# Reduce the Rancor Bus Tour: Braver Angels Melinda Voss and Scott Schluter Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-do-we-fix-it-667/reduce-the-rancor-bus-tour-braver-angels-melinda-voss-and-scott-schluter Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-do-we-fix-it-667/reduce-the-rancor-bus-tour-braver-angels-melinda-voss-and-scott-schluter.md Podcast: [How Do We Fix It?](https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-do-we-fix-it-667) Published: 2025-06-27T09:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/howdowefixit/episodes/reduce-the-rancor-bus-tour-braver-angels-melinda-voss-and-sc Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/acast/s/howdowefixit/e/685d9e427cd58072a5ffa415/media.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/how-do-we-fix-it-667/episodes/reduce-the-rancor-bus-tour-braver-angels-melinda-voss-and-scott-schluter Duration seconds: 1492 ## Resource Political speech in America is all too often dominated by hyperbole. We don’t just disagree, we find those on the other side to be offensive or even worse. All too often the language of curiosity, nuance and humility is missing from our dialog. In this episode we look at a novel way to reach across the divide. During the spring,  Minnesota Braver Angels  leaders who live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region decided to visit six small towns in rural parts of the state. Our guests are Melinda Voss, who leans blue, and Scott Schluter who leans red.  We find out what they learned while on their nine-day  "Reduce the Rancor" bus tour . Melinda, Scott and other volunteers organized a series of events, including red-blue workshops, meetings with local community leaders, and conversations with people in six towns. They also did a lot of listening. “To be a Braver Angel requires a bit of humility," Melinda told us. "Your side might not have all the answers, and you might be wrong, and you might have something to contribute that would be valuable.” Getting both sides together to talk instead of yelling across the partisan divide has taken on a new sense of urgency. Nowhere more so than in Minnesota, after recent  politically-motivated murders  of a Democratic state politician and her husband, and the shootings of another Democrat and his wife. The violence was  especially alarming in a state traditionally known for being “Minnesota Nice”, a term used to describe its courteous, mild-mannered, polite citizens.  Here at How Do We Fix It? we look at ways to disagree better. Rece… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/how-do-we-fix-it-667/episodes/reduce-the-rancor-bus-tour-braver-angels-melinda-voss-and-scott-schluter/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-do-we-fix-it-667/reduce-the-rancor-bus-tour-braver-angels-melinda-voss-and-scott-schluter.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.