How to Debate... Yourself.

Open to Debate

Education, Society & Culture, News, Government, Politics

4.5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2017

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Think about your most strongly held political belief. How did you arrive at your position? What experiences, information, or opinions influenced you? In the final installment of our summer podcast series on the state of political discourse today, we dive into an increasingly important skill: the ability to debate yourself. Our host John Donvan sits down with Yale Law professor Peter Schuck to discuss his new book, One Nation Undecided: Clear Thinking About Five Hard Issues That Divide Us, which takes on five hot-button topics — poverty, immigration, campaign finance, affirmative action, and religion in public life — and shows us why there’s a legitimate case to be made for differing opinions. After all, thinking about hard issues shouldn't be easy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Maltesers salute the mother lovers. They can be your boss, your partner, your friend or, you know,
0:06.6	yourself. One thing we know is that every mum deserves a mother lover. Find helpful tips for
0:12.9	mums and mother lovers at mortises.co.uk. Maltesers, less light in the load for working mums.
0:20.8	Hey there everybody, this is John Don Van and welcome to the latest take in our series that focuses
0:25.8	on the quality of discourse where what we try to get at is the question of how we're doing a
0:31.6	talking with each other or not. And frankly it's the not that is making this interesting, these
0:38.5	times that we're living in when people hold views that are so polarized that they don't even want
0:43.2	to look at each other much less here what each other has to say. And of course that's what
0:47.6	intelligence-squared US is all about. By setting up a framework known as, well Oxford style debate
0:54.0	with its own rules and an obligation of civility and the requirement that our debaters work to
1:00.0	prove that they're right, not just to cert their ideas but actually make an argument for them.
1:05.2	We do see opposing viewpoints in the people who hold them actually talking to each other and
1:10.8	interacting and maybe even learning from each other across some fairly complex and contentious
1:16.4	issues. Well today I'm going to be talking to an author and thinker who has given a lot of attention
1:22.0	to the question of how all of us can try to think clearly on these hard issues. Sort of how to
1:28.8	debate with yourself on the way to figuring out what position you want to take on issues like
1:33.1	immigration or poverty or affirmative action. Before we get to that though I wanted to tell you
1:38.1	about September 13th that is the start date for our fall season. I will be hosting that debate
1:44.4	in New York City but we will be live streaming in case you can't get there. It's a night that's
1:48.8	going to be headlined by a conversation about America's best global strategy in a world of threats.
1:55.6	It will feature general David Patreus in conversation with my good friend the military historian Max
2:02.8	Boote and right after that we are going to go straight to a debate zeroing in on China and the question
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