How do we keep talking to people we don’t agree with?

I spent the first half of my working life inside the oil and gas bubble. From the inside, it didn’t feel like a bubble — it felt like the world. It had its own logic, its own rhythm, its own sense of what was reasonable and what was naive.

It took years on the outside before I could see the shape of it. And even now, I can put the old hat back on. I can still feel what felt rational, what felt threatening, what made obvious sense from inside that room.

The first piece of useful work, I think, is noticing that you’re in one. Not as an accusation. Just as a fact. Almost everyone is. The dangerous bubbles are the ones we’ve forgotten we’re inside of — because then everyone outside starts to look like a problem to solve, instead of a person to listen to.

I came across an idea recently that reframed almost everything for me. It’s from a book by Adam Kahane called Collaborating with the Enemy. He distinguishes between conventional collaboration — everyone pulling in the same direction toward a shared plan — and what he calls stretch collaboration: moving forward together when you don’t agree, don’t fully trust each other, and don’t control the process.

The image I keep coming back to is a river in Norway called Sjoa, where people go white-water rafting. There are multiple rafts on the water. Some take the rapids aggressively, paddling hard. Some hang back. Some find the calmest line they can. Some love it. Some are terrified.

Everyone is moving downstream. But at completely different paces, in completely different ways, with different experience and different reasons for being there. The goal isn’t to get everyone in sync. The goal is enough understanding to stay in the same river without pushing each other out.

Curiosity isn’t infinite. Listening isn’t the same as agreeing. And not every “other side” deserves equal weight in the room.

When I expanded the podcast to talk about divides beyond the energy transition, I wrote down a boundary for myself, because I knew I’d need it. Stories for the Future is a space for curiosity, complexity, and open dialogue — but not at the cost of truth. There’s no place here for false balance, misinformation, or ideologies that dehumanise other people, even when they’re dressed up as “just another perspective.”

Hold onto the line between disagreement and harm. Disagreement is the whole point. Harm is where the conversation ends.