Open to Debate - Podcast Rankings and reviews

I listen to a lot of podcasts on politics, technology, finance and science. The formats are almost always interviews with experts. I learn a lot but have always wished to hear experts with differing views debate so that I could understand how each defends and elaborates their position when challenged by another expert. This podcast does that!

I appreciate the structured format and the role of the host in shaping which topics the guests are to address.

There is hope for the world yet. A show that actually has two sides (!) and asks important, tough questions. Love John Donvan. He should moderate my family dinners and the presidential debates.

Loved Nayeema Raza's moderation on the debate on the American dream! She was excellent. Refreshing to hear some thought provoking debate instead of the echo chambers we've gotten used to.

I do appreciate the purpose of this show. It models the seemingly lost art of disagreeing without demonizing or demeaning. I especially enjoyed listening to the debate about color blindness between Jamelle Bouie and Coleman Hughes. Thank you so much for this work.

The pre-2020 episodes with 4 debaters and a live audience are stellar and absolutely worth listening to, but the show took a BIG downturn after COVID hit. The zoom-meeting episodes are hard on the ears, and even when they DO get back to a live audience setting, the debates are lacking in quality. For example, the latest episode (“Is America too obsessed with race?”) quickly turned into a messy verbal slap fight that lost track of the original premise.

Update: many months later, this stands true. Interruptions and multiple people shouting over each other are now the norm on this podcast. It’s painful. What used to be a respectful debate show is now a sloppy shouting match.

The problem with this show is the selection of debaters. Instead of modeling civil discourse between two very different points of view (say right v. Left) they consistently choose debaters who are left vs. far left. A great example is the gender pay gap episode. Instead of having the hard debate about whether it exists (which many don’t think it does), they choose two who agree that it exists but disagree on policy.

Get more intellectuals from the right on here and I’ll start listening again.