IQ2US marks the launch of Oxford-style debating -- one motion, one moderator, three advocates for the motion, three against -- in New York City. Each evening begins at 6:00P with a complimentary cocktail period. As you enter the theater before the debate starts at 6:45P, you cast your vote for or against the evening's motion. Those results are displayed midway through the debate as each side makes its statements. After all six panelists speak, the audience has a chance to ask the speakers questions and vote again. The debate finishes with brief summations from the panelists, the votes are tallied and a winning side is declared.


The Program:

A series of ten provocative and informative live debates, five in the fall, five in the spring, on the hot-button concerns of the day. Produced for radio by WNYC, New York Public Radio®, and distributed nationally by NPR®, National Public Radio®, the programs reach a wide audience and attract as speakers the top experts, specialists and passionate advocates for both sides of each issue.

The Goal:

To raise the level of public discourse on our most challenging issues. To provide a new forum for intelligent discussion, grounded in facts and informed by reasoned analysis. To transcend the toxically emotional and the reflexively ideological. To encourage recognition that the opposing side has intellectually respectable views.

The Approach:

To take the traditional “grammar” of Oxford-style debate seriously, with one side proposing and the other side opposing a sharply-framed motion. Three speakers, leading thinkers and authorities on the issues, argue on each side of the motion. After the formal arguments, the debate is thrown open to the floor for questions, triggering a lively interchange among the speakers and audience members. A well-known moderator keeps the proceedings orderly. Each side attempts to persuade the audience to vote their way. This adversarial context is electric, adding drama and excitement. The live audience will vote on the motion both before and after hearing the arguments, so there is a clear measure of how far people have actually been swayed.

And if the debate audience had been a jury, they might have returned a guilty verdict as well. Before the two sides sparred, 57 percent were against the motion—and therefore agreed that global warming is a crisis—while nearly 30 percent were in favor and 13 percent were undecided. After the debate, a 46 percent plurality favored the motion, 42 percent remained opposed, and 12 percent were undecided. The outcome was a stunning 16-point shift against the global warming conventional wisdom and a possible explanation of why defenders seem so eager to avoid debates—though maybe they should just try to get better at participating in them.