Buster Benson — The Art of Productive Disagreement | Ideamarket Podcast Ep 6

Ideamarket Podcast

After leadership roles at Twitter, Slack, and Patreon, Buster Benson wrote Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement. In this interview, he shares his strategies for having difficult, truth-seeking conversations within both families and companies, and predicts how society might evolve past unproductive contentiousness. Toward the end, we venture into the bittersweet rewards of contemplating death. We really enjoyed this conversation, and thank Buster for going deep with us.

In this episode:

(00:00) — Episode starts

(00:36) — Buster's background

(01:50) — A Buster Benson bootcamp

(05:20) — "Disagreement is rarely about facts"

(07:16) — "Being uncomfortable is a good identity to have"

(10:08) — "What's the moose in the room?"

(13:01) — "Truth-seeking is pain-seeking"

(20:17) — How to have hard conversations about the COVID vaccine

(28:09) — Disagreement is not about persuasion

(34:00) — "Fiction has to change"

(50:08) — "Social media is ruining us"

(56:29) — The problem of community

(1:02:06) — The captive narrative of capitalism

(1:13:09) — "University is going away"

(1:30:24) — The pros and cons of social media

(1:35:53) — Meditations on death

EPISODE LINKS:

• Buster on Twitter
• Buster's website
• 750words

IDEAMARKET LINKS:

• Ideamarket
• Twitter
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Discord

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