A home
for civilized
debate.
Serious disagreement used to have a home. For four centuries it was a room in someone's house. In Urbino in 1507, a duchess's circle gave four evenings to one question while Emilia Pia kept the rules of the game. In Paris, the marquise de Rambouillet received her guests in a blue room where wit was welcome and pedantry was not. At the baron d'Holbach's table, abbés and atheists dined together twice a week for decades. They disagreed, and they came back.
Then argument moved outdoors. It happens in front of an audience now, under a count, at the speed of a feed. Everyone speaks and nobody is answered. The other side is only ever seen at its worst, and every quarrel pays someone, because attention is what is being sold.
We think disagreement deserves a room again. So we are opening rooms.
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A host
Every room has a host, who chooses the circle and answers for it. Nobody wanders in. Whoever is invited is a guest, and guests argue differently from crowds.
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One question
A room works on one question, stated in a sentence before the evening begins. Not a topic: a question that reasonable people answer differently, and that can be answered.
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The same regulars, every week
A room meets on the same evening every week, and its regulars come back. People argue differently with someone they will see again next week. They listen. They concede a point. They come back with a better one.
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The rules stay in the room
Restate the other side before you answer it. Argue with the position, not the person. Speak when your name is called, and stop when the time ends. These are not manners for their own sake. They are what lets a disagreement go somewhere.
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By voice
Members speak in their own voice and nothing else. There are no faces to perform for, and listeners never speak. What is left is the argument.
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The conductor
The host presides. The conductor keeps the room: it calls speakers by name, keeps time, names the crux and warns whoever breaks a rule. It never argues, never scores anyone, and never raises its voice.
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The podcast
Most rooms are closed, and nobody in a room plays to the people outside it. What leaves the room is the podcast. Each evening becomes an episode: what the circle concluded, what moved and the argument that moved it, the crux, the dissent, and what would change the circle's mind, in the voices that argued it, introduced by the host. The conclusion leaves the room so that others can take it further.
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What civilized means
Civilized does not mean polite, and it does not mean agreeing. It means each side can state the other's case, the crux is named, and everyone leaves knowing why they moved, or exactly why they did not.
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Who pays
Members pay nothing. Hosts and patrons pay for the rooms, so nobody profits from a quarrel. There is nothing to pay for, and nothing to keep you watching.
Listeners, never an audience. No video. No scores. No feed. No paywall.
A host, a circle of regulars, one question an evening, every week.