This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Friday, June 16th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

Competitive debate as practiced in high schools and universities is supposed to center on presentations of evidence and

arguments, and for young people it's a tremendous exercise in thinking clearly and convincingly

articulating a point of view. But debate has changed and not for the better. That from James Fishback, the founder of Incubate debate.

He argues that young people are facing more problems than merely getting their facts

straight. We spoke last week. I didn't do debate in high school. I did forensics but

mostly it was like storytelling and humorous interpretation and that sort of thing.

And I would see debaters

pulling in their home-assembled

filing cabinets into rooms to sit and study

and try to prepare certain arguments for a debate.

What is a round of debate?

What does it look like for debaters?

Usually it's students coming together on a Saturday morning, goes all day,

there's a topic that's been given to them beforehand, and they get assigned a side in some events,

they choose their own side in some events, they choose their own side in other events.

And they have a competition of ideas

on which side of the debate ought to win.

They bring an evidence, bring an expert analysis,

bring in powerful rhetoric, cross-examination, they scrutinize each other's ideas.

That's the debate. It's not all too dissimilar to storytelling in the sense that you have a story that you're trying to tell about a particular topic,

...