“Is America Too Damn Religious?” (A Debate)

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes  Feed  Web Site), a new series of NPR broad­casts, has a rather unique
for­mat. It brings Oxford-style debates to Amer­i­ca, and it fea­tures lead­ing thinkers tak­ing dif­fer­ent posi­tions on hot-but­ton issues of our day. (You can get more pre­cise infor­ma­tion on the for­mat here.) There will be eight debates in total, all record­ed live, and each one revolves around three pan­elists argu­ing for, and three against, a “motion,” such as “We must tol­er­ate a nuclear Iran,” “Free­dom of expres­sion must include the license to offend,” and “A demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Hamas is still a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.” And then there is the provoca­tive top­ic of the most recent debate, “Is Amer­i­ca Too Damn Reli­gious?” This debate (see bios of par­tic­i­pants) was held at the Asia Soci­ety in New York City in Feb­ru­ary, and you can catch the full debate here (Real Play­er) or a con­densed ver­sion here (mp3).

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)