The transformative power of words knows no bounds. Or so we are told. But if words are that great, then why is the world in the state it’s in? Led by team captains Annabel Crabb and David Marr and under the merciless adjudication of Jan Fran, some of our brightest writers and thinkers – including Osman Faruqi, Alex Lee and Robert Dessaix – will debate one brutal proposition: Words don’t change minds. As society grapples with intransigent positions, trying to work out which facts, data and empirical evidence produce meaningful action, our two teams of skilled wordsmiths try to summon the right combination of nouns, adjectives, verbs and fiddly bits to triumph in our rhetorical arena.

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