Hi, everyone.

John Donovan here with another in our series of podcasts where we, the producers and proponents

of intelligence squared US debates, like to step back and talk about and think about

and comment on the quality of discourse in our culture, just how good are we at talking

to each other or how bad are we at it.

And then there's always the thing we like to talk about, which is the ability to change

people's minds, which regular fans of intelligence squared US know is a very, very important part

of our process.

But before we get to that, I do want to share with you that our upcoming fall season is

shaping up beautifully.

We start in September and we are going to have some spectacularly star quality people

on our stage, people like writer David Brooks, French critic Bernard Armilovie, general

David Patreas, philosopher Robbie George, and that's just getting started in a few weeks

we'll be releasing the dates and also the debate topics.

And now onto the topic at hand, changing people's minds, regulars of intelligence squared

US know that's critical to how our debates work.

We have two teams come in, one argues for the motion, one argues against the motion, the

audience votes at the end and we give victory to the team that has changed the most minds

in the course of the debate.

And it's an amazing thing that every time substantial numbers of people actually do that.

Last year we did give undocumented citizens a path to citizenship.

That was the motion, 45% of the audience changed its mind.

...