2debate
Dirk Primbs and Sebastian Trzcinski-Clément
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Top 10 2debate Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best 2debate episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to 2debate for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite 2debate episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
01/30/17 • 17 min
Important: Neither Dirk nor Sebastian are trained medical professionals. Please do not take our debate as advice on the matter. If you don’t feel well, go and see a doctor!
Homeopathy – debating the impossible?
When Sebastian and I brainstormed about this show we agreed from the onset that it’s most interesting moments will likely be whenever we’re forced into a position contrary to our own on a subject where we formed a strong opinion already. This theory sounded great and we put it to the test in the current debate on homeopathy.
Sebastian and I both think of homeopathy as basically “a known scam” (watch this short video if you wonder why) and so this debate was not about the scientific value or the general ideas behind this form of treatment. Instead we debated if it has its place even if we disagree with its core assumptions. After all – there are plenty of other treatments that we generally accept (acupuncture, chiropractics, osteopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, ...) – why should homeopathy be any different?
More resources for 2d07
- Article: The Guardian – There is no scientific case for homeopathy...
- Article: Homeopathy effective for 0 out of 68 illnesses, study finds
- Article: Homeopathy ‘could be blacklisted’
- Article: Homeopathy isn’t unethical, it’s just controversial
- Podcast: Sciencepie – The power of ten to the power of sixty
Visiting Past Episodes
Our debates stick with us. So this section will likely become a standing segment in our newsletter as we keep stumbling into interesting articles or podcasts that somehow relate to one of our past debates. Hope you’ll enjoy these as much as we do!
2d06 – Let’s ban election polls!
- We live in a sea of data and obviously data keeps also shaping our political decisions. If you’re interested in US politics, there is a great analytical website. FiveThirtyEight combines political analysis and data and they do have their own podcast as well.
- Related to 2d06 I especially recommend to listen to this episode of the FiveThirtyEight podcast because it explains some of the polling quirks that we touched on as well.
What else happened? Plenty. We changed the website layout (did you notice?). Episodes are now presented as a list and not as tiles anymore. And we activated comments in the blog (yes, we really like to hear from you!). Finally we added Pinterest and reddit to the list of our social media outlets. Especially Pinterest is interesting as we will keep curating additional materials there.
Also we finally (drumroll!) fixed the annoying bug that some of you kept seeing in our voting system.
And then we were really proud about this recent feedback on iTunes:
Wow! Thank you so much, Cole!
And to all of you, dear listeners: Please keep your feedback coming! Recommend us to your friends, write us or help us getting up the iTunes food chain by leaving a review there. It really helps and means a lot to us.
Cheers!
Dirk & Sebastian
Image Source: CC0, Pixabay
Episode Transcript
Dirk – Welcome, dear listeners, this is Dirk, one of your hosts to 2debate.net. Before we start with our real debate, allow me a little disclaimer upfront. Neither Sebastian nor I are trained medical professionals. Neither Seb...
02/14/18 • 24 min
At the time we recorded this debate stock markets approached record highs and most leading economies were roaring. Can we trust this or is the next bubble about to burst?
Picture: CC0, Pixabay
12/15/16 • 17 min
Do we need managers? Dirk believes so, Sebastian doubts it...
Picture credit: CC0, Pixabay, link.
Episode Transcript
Sebastian – Hello everyone! Welcome to our latest edition of 2debate.net, our podcast of debates. I am Sebastian, my co-host here is Dirk. Hi Dirk!
Dirk – Hey Sebastian, how are you doing over there in Europe?
Sebastian – I’m doing fantastic, I hear that you just arrived in the US so you’re completely jetlagged, aren’t you?
Dirk – No, it’s a good time for me right now. All my body feels like being in the middle of the day, it’s dark outside so I’m ready for you.
Sebastian – Okay, let’s get this started then. Today, we will debate on the following motion: “successful organisations need managers”. But before we get into the debate, let’s explain how it will run. There will be three parts of this debate. Each side will have two minutes to deliver a speech presenting their arguments in favour or against the motion. Then, each side will have another three minutes to respond to the other side’s initial speech and possibly add further arguments to defend their case. And finally, we’ll have one minute each for closing remarks. So before this recording, we have decided with the flip of the coin who will be in favor or against the motion. So, Dirk, if i’m not mistaken, you will be in favor of the motion which is “successful organizations need managers” and I will be against that motion. Now let’s flip the coin to see who will start with their speech. Dirk, you’re heads, I’m tails. I’m going to flip the coin right now and it’s tails so for once I am going to start with two minutes of arguments against the motion, the motion being again: “successful organizations need manages”.
Dirk – All right I got the clock running, no not running, ready for you! Just tell me when you’re ready to start.
Sebastian – OK, let’s get started. Let me ask you that question: you in the audience and you to you Dirk. How many good managers have you had in your career? Really? Come on, how many? Right, okay, you know the answer: not that many, wass your organization successful regardless? Yeah pretty much so, right? Overall, you know, the profits are rolling in and, plus or minus the economic crisis, things are working out fine. So do you really need managers? I’m not so sure. Secondly: how do you define “success”? We say successful organizations. Is it profits, as I said or implied maybe, or is it employee morale. You could actually look into different angles, it’s not necessarily just about profits, in this case we should define what success means. Finally, or maybe not finally but another argument is, do we need managers or leaders? Do you need people who are going to drive and be able to coordinate and inspire fellow employees and colleagues? Or do you need people who are just bureaucratic, hierarchical blockers against things moving along? Additionally, if you look at some of the results that have happened over the past decades, and I was surprised when I was preparing for this debate how numerous examples of self-management i.e. without a formal manager actually have been successful across industries, whether it’s the car industry with Volvo with Fedex where they have reduced the number of defects, they’ve cut service errors by as much as ninety percent at Volvo in a plant in 1987 with pure self- management. The latest example is Zappos, this company which was acquired by Amazon, which has introduced “holacracy”, which is this completely flat structure, which does not mean not having some structure. it’s just that leadership in this case is contextual: it’s not tied to a person, it is tied to a role. You become a leader, you organize this unit. There are my arguments against the motion. Your turn, Dirk.
Dirk – Thank you, Sebastian! Those are truly strong arguments but they count only one way. And so I’m arguing for managers. I have three points that I think make a strong case. Number one: managers are a fairly new thing. We introduce them in when organization sizes achieved a certain level and Peter Drucker – he’s a famous thinker of management theory – said that the main contribution of management and the reason why managers have been introduced to the workforce was that they help people learn and adapt faster. So before managers were introduced to organizations, organizations were doing mainly one thing in a structured way. And they can do that self-servicing, they can do that self-organizing. But if you are in a modern environment where learning and adapting and moving fast in these two things is a key factor for your ...
100!
2debate
01/01/21 • 43 min
This episode is different. Instead of debating Sebastian and Dirk decided to look back on 99 debates and 5 special episodes and speak about what’s next for 2debate...
03/27/19 • 32 min
Playing hours on end... is that really what we should do with out time?
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11/24/17 • 16 min
When Great Britain voted for leaving the EU, all other member states stared at the vote in disbelief. Can they do that? It turns out that the EU has been designed in a way that allows for a divorce. The question then is – should the EU try to make an example of UK in order to avoid other states following the example or is it in our interest to ensure an as friendly exit as possible?
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10/04/18 • 25 min
Executives sometimes make an obscene amount of money and without doubt at least some are not worth as much investment nor does it feel fair to employees that struggle with significant lower salaries. But does that mean we should put a cap to it?
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03/22/19 • 21 min
There will be blood
At first glance, it may sound ridiculous to compare the cost, human or else, of armed conflicts versus trade wars. But there’s actually more to it. History has thus proven that both world wars can in part be attributed to conflicts over trade. Did you for instance know that starting from 1913, the world began to stop pegging their currencies to gold which meant they devalued their currencies to compete for export markets? As soon as the First World War was over, the currency war started across Europe throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Inevitably these kind of wars stoke the nationalistic sentiment within their countries (“Make X Great Again” anyone?) – and trigger weaponised wars.
But does history repeat itself? The world has significantly changed since the world wars: trade has become increasingly globalised, and “real” wars kill far fewer people than they used to. If anything, nuclear weapons have acted as the intended deterrent (hence the “Cold” war until the end of the Soviet Union). So it would appear that trade wars have increasingly become more harmful while armed conflicts appear to have followed the opposite course.
But not so fast, young Padawan. New weapons have sprung up – biological weapons, among other ones, which states are not shying away from using: remember the Salisbury attacks or the assassination of Kim’s half brother? Those happened in the past 2 years only. What if they happened at scale? Chilling thought, but not completely impossible. It’s not as if heads of state were all sane of mind, are they? Likewise, it’s become increasingly difficult to engage in a one-sided tariff war that would only affect the target country, naively believing it would not backfire.
The flip of a coin has ruled that Dirk will defend the motion that trade wars are indeed more harmful than military wars, while Sebastian will claim this is a heresy. Tune in to listen to our latest episode – and more as we, as usual, continued the discussion beyond our allocated time for the debate!
Rest assured that whatever happens and however fiercely critical we can be when we debate, we do come in peace – said the one still bloodily reeling from Dirk’s punches, kicks and cunning audio-editing :).
Sebastian (as innocent as a lamb) & Dirk (a.k.a. Hannibal L.)
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07/11/18 • 27 min
Often people claim that our society turns into the kind of world that has been described in George Orwell’s famous book 1984. But is that truly the case?
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10/11/18 • 30 min
Supreme court judges are among the most powerful figures in each democracy and need to be independent from political parties and other influences. But does that mean that they need to be appointed for life-long terms? Is it maybe even counterproductive?
Picture: CC0, Pixabay
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FAQ
How many episodes does 2debate have?
2debate currently has 113 episodes available.
What topics does 2debate cover?
The podcast is about Society & Culture and Podcasts.
What is the most popular episode on 2debate?
The episode title 'Olympics, Photography, and Equality' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on 2debate?
The average episode length on 2debate is 28 minutes.
How often are episodes of 2debate released?
Episodes of 2debate are typically released every 10 days, 10 hours.
When was the first episode of 2debate?
The first episode of 2debate was released on Dec 1, 2016.
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