Hi, everybody. I'm John Donvan, host and moderator in chief at Open to Debate,

and today we're sharing a special conversation from our friends at the Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg podcast.

This episode of Spencer's show features our founder, Robert Rosencrantz.

And in it, Robert shares the story behind Open to Debate and why he founded it and why he still believes very much,

more than ever, that nuanced civil discourse

is so important, more so today than ever before. We think you're going to find this discussion

insightful. We think you're going to find it actually inspiring, and it's a reminder of why debate

still matters. Please enjoy. Robert, welcome. Spencer, pleasure to be here. Why do you think debate is so important?

Well, I think it embodies a lot of the stoic values that I talk about in the book. It's the

idea of open-mindedness. It's the idea of critical thinking. It's the idea of certain amount

of humility about one's own views. It's a way of

bringing into the public square, what I call it, contempt-free zone, where people can appreciate

the nuances of complex issues. They can hear the other side with respect.

They can privilege facts over emotions.

They can privilege logic over ideology.

So it seems to me to be a very important way of bringing something to the public square

that's sorely missing right now.

Do you think there's been a decline in debate?

Well, there's certainly been a decline in the level of public discourse. I think our political

culture has gone in the wrong direction in a world in which almost everything else has gone

in the right direction. It's fascinating to read essays by politicians and think, wow, you could never imagine the politicians

of today writing these. No, it's true. One of the books that I cite in Stoic Capitalist is

...