Bo Seo, GOOD ARGUMENTS: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard

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[1:01]ZI BBY MAG the literary lifestyle destination with essays book news a lit lifestyle feature and

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[1:13]Boseo is the author of good arguments how debate teaches us to listen and be heard

[1:18]Bose is a two-time world champion debater and a former coach of the Australian national debating team and the Harvard college

[1:24]debating union one of the most recognized figures in the global debate community

[1:28]He has won both the world schools debating championship and the world universities debating championship

[1:33]Bo has written for the New York Times the Atlantic CNN and many other publications

[1:37]He has worked as a national reporter for the Australian financial review and has been a regular panelist on the prime time

[1:43]Australian debate program the drum

[1:45]Bo graduated from Harvard University and received a master's degree in public policy from Chinghua University

[1:51]He is currently a juris doctor candidate at Harvard Law School

[1:54]All right, welcome Bo. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss good

[1:59]Arguments how debate teaches us to listen and be heard

[2:03]Thanks so much sibby. It's a huge honor to be here

[2:06]So I have to I have to say to you I wrote a big chunk of this book during the pandemic and every afternoon

[2:12]I've gone a walk near the park out in front of my house and it would be about a 30-minute walk

[2:18]And this was around the time when you started

[2:21]Producing every day and I would listen to the programs on the walk

[2:26]So it feels like I've been walking with you forever. Oh my gosh

[2:32]So thrilled to hear that that makes me so happy. Wow. That's really awesome

[2:37]I hear every so often from people who you know

[2:40]Had incorporated this at that time in their lives and it really means so much to me knowing that we kind of went through that

[2:46]Period of craziness together and that it was in some way helpful. So awesome

[2:52]Thank you. Well, I am particularly delighted to hear that

[2:56]Having delved into your book and learned more about you and when I got the pitch for this book

[3:03]I was like, you know what? That sounds so interesting. I know I'm gonna learn a lot from this book and

[3:08]I was just like totally intrigued like what does it mean to be a two-time debating world champion and what can we learn because of course

[3:17]We all fight

[3:19]Are you it's such a waste of time. It's like crazy and I loved how you woven your own story and how you became this way

[3:29]There's so much personal narrative in here in addition to some of the advice and how you broke down arguments

[3:35]Everything so why don't you why don't you tell listeners a little about how this became a book and and the whole process of writing it

[3:43]Sure, so the story starts when I was eight years old

[3:47]I moved from South Korea to Australia and I didn't speak English at the time

[3:52]and I quickly learned that the hardest part of

[3:56]crossing language lines is adjusting to

[3:59]real-life conversation

[4:01]and the hardest

[4:02]Real-life conversations to adjust to a disagreement

[4:06]You know, that's when people start to interrupt and the rhythms of everyday speech tend to break down

[4:12]and

[4:13]that made me

[4:15]resolve at that young age to

[4:17]not disagree very much to keep most of my thoughts to myself and to smile and just be a very agreeable person

[4:25]and the thing that broke me out of that was in the fifth grade my elementary school teacher

[4:32]promising me really that

[4:34]in debate when one person speaks no one else does and

[4:38]to someone who had been spoken over and spun out of conversation and and interrupted that felt like a kind of salvation and

[4:49]So I you know ended up pursuing it and it ended up being really the pursuit of you know my

[4:55]relatively young life so far and

[4:58]I ended up winning the world championships in January 2016 and

[5:03]and

[5:05]you know this was a kind of a real highlight and you know this was the part where if it was a sports

[5:11]narrative or something

[5:13]very sedentary one this is when

[5:16]you know the music would start playing and it was the height of it and you remember what happened next was

[5:22]those incredibly divisive presidential election campaign here

[5:26]where the debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton became

[5:32]not only a symbol of polarization but also a tool by which those dynamics worsened

[5:38]and afterwards I was on the shortsman scholarship actually been Beijing

[5:43]were you really I really I really was you were a shortsman scholar

[5:48]yeah I was in the second group

[5:50]stop that's amazing that's my dad right

[5:53]I know that I know that I love the book did you see that no stop it that's true let's see that

[6:01]oh my god I could have let my it's not in my advanced copy and I don't know we saved you we

[6:07]saved you the surprise that is so funny wow okay blown away here so I didn't even know that

[6:17]all right so I made it over there and it was a program started at the kind of height of optimism

[6:23]about cross-cultural exchange and between East and West, U.S and China and that was when the trade

[6:29]war set in yeah and you know all of these things kind of created a condition where it was very

[6:37]hard to think about disagreement as anything other than poisonous and harmful and painful

[6:43]and it made me think all over again that maybe disagreeing is not worth it

[6:48]and I started thinking back in the search for something a bit more positive

[6:54]to what had broken me out of that spell of conflict aversion in the first instance and

[6:58]that was debate and it was the activity that showed me that disagreement could be something more

[7:06]that it could be a source of joy and revelation and intimacy and all of those things and

[7:12]I wanted to make to make the case for it and the reason why it's so

[7:16]personal is because I wanted to be honest about where I was coming from but also frankly as an author

[7:22]I found it hard to ride across the distance of my knowing something about debate the reader

[7:28]usually coming to a fresh and if I was a better writer I think I might have been able to just do

[7:33]the third personal thing but I had to think about someone who didn't know a whole lot about

[7:41]debate and that was me when I was young and I thought by taking readers on that journey

[7:47]I'd be able to walk them through and to do it a bit by bit and bring it to more or less where

[7:55]I am now so it's a book that gets people from coming new to a subject as I did and then

[8:02]ending up with the totality of all that I know on the subject. Wow that is so amazing

[8:09]well I'm so glad you chose to to write it I don't think it's a function of not being a good writer

[8:16]the best way to tell a story is to connect with somebody right and to to teach through storytelling

[8:21]right this is so effective so instead of just learning about scrolling and debate we get to hear

[8:28]your story about like being you know uncertain in that one context and being like well wait what

[8:34]if we do it this way they didn't say this about drugs and you know what if we go what if we say this

[8:39]and and so now I know what it means right and now I'm not going to forget how it's like finding

[8:45]the loophole right so anyway I think the way it's like show down tell right and that's just like

[8:49]the age-old advice and writing so I think so I mean you know it does take a little bit of a

[8:54]bit of a mental jump to consider yourself worthy enough to use the first person quite this much but

[9:02]you know I think the thing that helped me do that is just the knowledge you know I think when

[9:08]you're writing a book you sometimes think it'll be the last word on the subject and one thing I

[9:13]found rewarding is that you're putting forward putting on the table all that you know but really

[9:18]you're inviting people to a conversation and the best part of seeing it go out into the world is

[9:24]the way in which it adapts and morphs and gets translated into different contexts and the

[9:32]conversations people are having in their homes and workplaces and so on and and so yeah just knowing

[9:37]that it's the beginning and it's a contribution to that ongoing conversation help with that.

[9:43]Wow I particularly liked when you taught us how to identify what we're even arguing about

[9:50]and how so often we bring in like 8,000 other things that are not always related to what we're

[9:57]talking about. I am totally guilty of this constantly.

[10:00]I start on one thing and then next thing you know I'm talking about like you know that trip

[10:04]we didn't take two weeks ago or whatever it is it's like I just bring it all into this big

[10:08]mishmash and your advice here and the way you spell it out in terms of even just every day

[10:14]conversation the way you did with your parents it's like how do you wait wait what are we even

[10:19]arguing about first let's identify the argument and then let's take it apart so tell me about how

[10:25]that tool of debate really can be translated to the home and it and it does begin the

[10:32]in the home and I think the reason for that is we do something very special with our loved ones

[10:38]which is we decide to share our lives together and there's obviously lots of wonderful things

[10:44]about that overlap but one problem that arises is you could be disagreeing about a thousand

[10:51]things at any given time right because there is so much that you share and there is so much

[10:58]friction that comes with sharing so much time with people and knowing them in that way

[11:03]and I think there are you know there's a particular kind of carelessness we have in those

[11:07]intimate relationships where we have this assumption they should get us without us even having

[11:13]said anything or that they're going to end up agreeing with us by the time this is over

[11:20]which is an assumption we wouldn't dare make about a stranger so I do think it it does really

[11:26]begin in the home and what debate says and it is a bit of a theme throughout the book is that we

[11:31]have to be very deliberate about our disagreements and that every disagreement should start with

[11:39]some agreement and that's agreement about as you say what it is that we're actually discussing

[11:46]and once you're able to name the dispute and say we are talking today about the dirty dishes

[11:54]and not about what you did to me last month or how you looked at the other day and so on

[12:01]that brings a kind of a focus and prevents it from getting out of hand in this way and one of the

[12:07]things that I discussed in the book is you know if we're having a disagreement for example about

[12:13]sending the kids to the local public school that seems like a pretty straightforward

[12:18]disagreement about what we should do and where we should send the kids to school but embedded in

[12:23]that might be all kinds of other disagreements disagreements factual disagreements about

[12:29]what we think the local school is like it might be a sort of a philosophical disagreement about

[12:35]what we think our role as community members and neighbors might be to the local public school

[12:41]system and then ultimately the disagreement about what we should do about it whether we send the

[12:46]kids or not and so before we launch into a disagreement I think there needs to be this mini discussion

[12:55]a kind of a negotiating period of what it is that we're actually talking about and how we're

[13:00]going to go about having this dispute to make sure it doesn't get out of hand very useful

[13:06]yes one argument at a time yeah exactly exactly and and maybe you know I think our conversations

[13:14]tend to buckle under the weight of expectation that we place on them sometimes you know and

[13:21]and I do want this book to be a toolkit that helps people have better conversations to be able

[13:28]to make their point to be heard but it's better conversations and and I think a part of that is

[13:37]acknowledging that we're going to have to do it a bit at a time and as long as we're disagreeing

[13:41]in such a way that keeps the conversation going there's some hope interesting you know your path

[13:48]to becoming a debater it was almost lucky right you're like well this sounds interesting

[13:54]and then you got more and more into it you realized you were good at it there was you know

[13:59]even that preparation it sounded like you loved it right you get your affirmative whatever

[14:04]anyway you like run into the back and then go to work and you know you could just feel how

[14:10]excited you are in all this scenarios how do you know like who is good at debate like and I know

[14:17]we have applications of it in our homes and in every area of our lives but in terms of actually

[14:24]being a debater like what do you could my kids be great debaters like tell me about this

[14:31]like how do you know what makes a great debater and how can you identify that in someone else

[14:35]I think kids are often very good debaters and there is that you know you see it in friends of mine

[14:45]with really young kids you see in their impulse to question but more than that to kind of needle

[14:52]you a bit yes just to see how they're received and how far they can push it and so that kind of

[14:59]makes me think we do have this argumentative impulse and I think there is something really

[15:06]and there is something accidental about how I got into it but I think there is a

[15:11]deep attraction to putting forward an idea having it received having to come back at it and that

[15:19]process of evolution and being in that kind of really candid vulnerable relationship with

[15:26]another I think is so it's such a special thing and and it is something that I think we naturally

[15:31]gravitate towards but there are a lot of things in the world that can beat that impulse out of

[15:37]somewhere and that could be the bullies on the playground it could be often an adult not taking

[15:44]the view seriously right or telling them to go away or be quiet they could there are so many

[15:49]societal pressures to conform obviously and so I tend to think of it less as instilling in children

[15:58]in particular you know the desire to debate because I think that's already there I think it's

[16:04]about cultivating it and giving it a structure and a set of skills that allows it to express

[16:10]or at least that's what I found and then just the last little bit I'll say is one surprising

[16:16]thing that I've noticed about people who tend to be very good debaters is they tend to be slightly

[16:23]marginal figures and if you you might remember from high school the debaters are kind of wall

[16:31]flies and slight oddballs and I think the reason is those people who are a little bit peripheral who

[16:40]outsiders they know to listen before they speak and they know to read a room before making their

[16:47]intervention and I felt that obviously as you know culturally living was typically moving to a new

[16:53]place but I think this feeling of being an outsider or being marginal is something we all feel

[16:59]right whenever we go to a new space or a place where we're not fully comfortable and

[17:04]that I've found over the years is not antithetical to being a good debater we can often be the

[17:11]start of it because debating and you know any conversation where you have a hope of persuading someone

[17:19]does have to start with listening well I also feel like those oddball tendencies that can also

[17:25]draw you to writing I mean all that observation it's the same skill set right listening to language

[17:31]listening to conversation having to analyze when to join when not to like all of that I went through

[17:37]this whole period of my life I was very shy and so I was like always analyzing conversation patterns

[17:42]and and just watching how people jumped in and jumped out and the ease with which they could speak

[17:48]and anyway I feel like writing is a good tool for that as well I love that I love that and you know

[17:55]I think we were living at a time where people say quite carelessly that what we say doesn't matter

[18:02]or we can't change people's minds through the use of language and I think maybe it was that

[18:09]English was a language I didn't have I had to learn in one word at a time that that instilled in me

[18:15]the sense what we say and how we say it matters and I saw that as a debater I was a newspaper

[18:21]reporter I saw that when I was reporting and and you're right that writers have that impulse to

[18:27]observe a whole lot before they put it down wait so Bo so first of all Schwartzman scholars I you know

[18:37]for those of people who listening who might not know what it is some my dad started this program

[18:41]in China where he took a cohort of students each year you go you meet each other there's a whole

[18:48]campus I got to go for the first years I did I was there it was so neat and each year there's

[18:55]a class and I have to say I have been sent like lots of resumes and things like that and I you

[19:01]look at the I look at the class and I'm like I cannot believe people have done all these things it's

[19:06]such a young I also couldn't even possible that these kids can be so accomplished so in addition to

[19:13]being the debate champion of the world and everything tell me more about you and what you did before

[19:21]and after being a Schwartzman scholar and and where you're going from here they are unbelievably

[19:28]impressive people and the thing that helps you get used to it is just seeing them in their

[19:32]pajamas I grew up in Australia and I went to college and Harvard and debate was a big part of it

[19:41]I always had an idea of of wanting to go into public service to work on human rights issues

[19:47]and I mean I couldn't resist the invitation to go because it seemed like it seemed like such a unique

[19:54]opportunity and such a unique time I went in 2018 where there was this

[20:00]where there was some enthusiasm from both China and the United States, I think, for a kind of an exchange and a way of

[20:10]finding some relationship that's going to be sustainable.

[20:13]And this was before a lot of the tensions that Hubble had arisen.

[20:19]And so the, you know, this program you all kind of live in one house, like one college.

[20:25]And it seemed to me then and it seems to me now a kind of an edifice for an edifice that advances a faith in the power of what we can do and we try to talk across

[20:39]and in some ways it can feel anachronistic at a time when there's so much geopolitical tension and and and where conflict and nationalism and and splitting off into our different camps seems to be the order of the day, but it still feels to me like an edifice towards a future that I hope we can

[21:01]continue to work towards that our differences can be more than a source of division and a source of weakness. And I saw that in debate primarily, but I saw it in that time too.

[21:16]And so there and probably the, the bit about the pajama thing is real because I think the thing that made the program work at its best was when we weren't dealing with each other as, oh, you're the person from America or you're the person from China, but we saw each other in the particulars.

[21:33]And we started having particular conversations with particular people and those are the parts that I remember afterwards I newspaper reporter in Australia and covered politics and business.

[21:45]And then I'm now at the law school at Harvard and I think I'm still, you know, in all of these things, whether through storytelling or through writing or now in the law still circling around the same theme that that brought me to

[22:00]to Beijing and and and all of these different roles, which is what do we do with the fact that we're all different, but we have to find ways to live together.

[22:10]So are you going to run for office?

[22:13]You know that I had thought about that for a very long time and these days I'm less sort. Yeah, seems a bit unsavory.

[22:24]Yeah, wow. I'm so impressed. So from the book side, what did you learn having accomplished this feat like what would what do you wish you'd known at the outset?

[22:37]Well, the first is that whatever work you don't do as an author, the reader is going to have to do.

[22:46]So there was so much time after I had gotten the basic outline done and had written a rough a rough draft of it where we just spend a long time polishing.

[22:59]So the book is biographical in parts. There are stories of historical incidents where a lot of the great movements throughout history kind of crystallize in these encounters between people, those are debates.

[23:11]And so there are stories to do with that.

[23:13]But then the third part is there are teaching bits where I'm coaching people to learn the basics of debate and there are drills and acronyms and exercises people can can use in their day to day life.

[23:26]And with that in particular, I just wanted it to be as polished as I possibly can so that people will be able to integrate it into their daily lives.

[23:36]So I think that was one thing. And another was where we started the conversation, which is I think especially as a first time author and as a first time author sometimes you think, do I deserve this?

[23:47]I think I sometimes there's a certain safety from adopting the voice of God, third person raining down truths from on high.

[23:58]And now I read those books that I think will help you know that.

[24:02]But so there was a fear about putting myself in the book because I thought it would make it too limiting or it would make it that I'm not worthy in some ways of the themes that I'm writing towards.

[24:16]But I think realizing that it's through individual experiences that we can get at great truths that that can feel that you can feel unworthy or small relative to what you're writing.

[24:29]It's I think it may be the only way to get at those truths that helped me overcome that. So I wish I've done that too.

[24:36]Wow. Amazing. Bo, this has been so fun. I can't wait to call my dad and tell him, I can't believe I didn't know this. I feel like a moron. So I'm sorry, but I should have gotten the heart. I should have gotten the final copy.

[24:51]Congratulations on your book. Congratulations on everything. I can't wait to follow your journey going forward. And I'm just so thrilled that this all worked out like this.

[25:00]Thanks so much. It was a real honor and actually a dream. So I'm really thankful for your time.

[25:06]I guess. Thank you. All right. Take care. Bye bye.

[25:11]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

[25:15]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibioens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

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[25:27]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.

[25:31]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.