GOOD ARGUMENTS: Adam Grant and Champion Debater Bo Seo on the Craft of Persuasion

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Bo Seo was 8 years old, his family moved from Korea to Australia. He did not speak a world of English. At school, to deflect attention from his inarticulacy, he became an agreeable wallflower. But that all changed when Bo’s fifth-grade teacher introduced him to competitive debate. Bo was hooked, and in the years to come, he’d not only win two debate world championships but also go on to coach the Australian national team as well as the Debating Union at Harvard, where he earned his undergraduate degree and is currently a law student. Earlier this year, Bo published his first book, “Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard,” which was chosen by our curators as one of the year’s eight best works of non-fiction. In today’s episode, Bo sits down with one of those curators, Adam Grant, to share time-honored techniques for getting your point across, changing minds without hurting feelings, dealing with bullies, and knowing when to shut up. --- Download the Next Big Idea app today by visiting nextbigideaclub.com/app

Transcript

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0:00.0	The LinkedIn Podcast Network is brought to you by the Progress Report,
0:03.3	a podcast created by Kendral, your partner for continuous technology and ovation.
0:08.0	Listen to the Progress Report wherever you get your podcasts.
0:13.4	LinkedIn presents
0:19.2	I'm Rufus Griskem and this is the next big idea.
0:25.4	Today, would you like to have better arguments?
0:28.8	A two-time world champion debater is here to help.
0:44.2	Thanksgiving is around the corner. A holiday that, at the British Broadcaster,
0:49.2	Alistair Cook once put it, sets millions of Americans in a turmoil of transit,
0:54.0	criss-crossing thousands of miles to join long-separated families at a feast of turkey,
0:59.6	cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin. And what will we do between bites?
1:05.2	Well, in all likelihood, we'll argue about stuff. It's the turkey dry.
1:10.3	Is canned, gelatin, cranberry sauce, a delicious novelty, or an affront to good taste?
1:15.6	Is President Biden too old to seek a second term? Is crypto the next technological breakthrough
1:21.4	or a big fat fraud? After 55 years, I've fought in enough Thanksgiving table skirmishes to know
1:28.7	that they rarely end well. And yet, like a buttery dollop of mashed potatoes,
1:34.4	they are irresistible. Why is that? I think it may have something to do with an idea I've
1:40.8	kicked around with a few guests recently. This notion that we are storytelling animals hard
1:46.5	wired to understand our lives as narratives, movies in which we're the stars. And what is a good
1:52.8	story without some peppery conflict? The problem is that while our lives may feel like movies,
1:58.6	they most certainly are not. They're baggy, aggressive, repetitive, and oftentimes pretty unheroic.
2:06.2	In films, conflicts are resolved by triumphant climaxes, the music swells, the credits roll,
	...

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