[Kamq]

A lot of people have family that can't handle discussions adjacent to politics without moving into politics.

The point of the list is not to generate interesting discussion. It is to generate interesting enough discussion while minimizing the chance of the discussion blowing up at a family gathering.

[MarkPNeyer]

Any disagreement, if you pursue it long enough, reveals one of two things. :

If participants are skilled communicators and can stay calm and listen to each other, what gets revealed is a different set of lives experiences. This is rare and exremwlr valuable.

If participants are not skilled and do not stay calm (as is most often the case when talking about things we care deeply about, cannot experience directly, and cannot control, ie most of the world), what gets revealed is a bunch of anger and hurt feelings.