The mission of the organization is to "address the extreme polarization of our nation and our politics" and "restore critical thinking, facts, reason, and civility to American public discourse".

[3] Open to Debate episodes have been broadcast on NPR since 2007,[4] in addition to Bloomberg Television,[5][6] BBC,[7] PBS,[8] Newsy,[9] C-SPAN,[10] and education streaming platform Wondrium.

The petition called on Americans to support an initiative to change the format of the Presidential debates, and garnered more than 60,000 signatures and millions of engagements on YouTube and across social media.

[3] More than 5,000 arguments were submitted online from around the world across the three topics, which were then analyzed and distilled into key points that were highlighted on the show and discussed by human debaters.

[45] Past guests and their corresponding debates include: Dan Abrams, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Stewart Baker, Peter Beinart, Jared Bernstein, Max Boot, Jamelle Bouie, Stewart Brand, Ian Bremmer, David Brooks, Meredith Broussard, Gloria Browne-Marshall, Nicholas Burns, David Carr, Julian Castro, Ze'ev Chafets, Liz Cheney, Michael Chertoff, Derek Chollet, Deepak Chopra, George Church, Wesley Clark, Roger Clegg, Chuck Close, Eliot A. Cohen, Jonathan Cohn, Steve Coll, Tyler Cowen, Michael Crichton, Clive Crook,[46] Howard Dean, Alan Dershowitz, Suzanne DiMaggio, Tim Draper, Esther Dyson, Elizabeth Economy, Zeke Emmanuel, Noah Feldman, Niall Ferguson, Helen Fisher, Jeff Flake, Michele Flournoy, Franklin Foer, David French, David Frum, Jason Furman, Peter Galbraith, Robert P. George, Nick Gillespie, Malcolm Gladwell, Victor Davis Hanson, Melissa Harris-Perry, Michael Hayden, Christopher Hitchens, John Hockenberry, Matthew Hoh, Margaret Hoover, Arianna Huffington, Jeff Jarvis, Karine Jean-Pierre, Simon Johnson, Van Jones, Andrew Keen, Zeba Khan, Parag Khanna, Kris Kobach, Bernard Kouchner, William Kristol, Paul Krugman, Arthur Laffer, Lawrence Lessig, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Bjørn Lomborg, Rich Lowry, John Mackey, Katherine Mangu-Ward, HR McMaster, Roger McNamee, John H McWhorter, John J. Mearsheimer, Yascha Mounk, Dambisa Moyo, Lawrence O'Donnell, P. J. O'Rourke, David Petraeus, Steven Rattner, Kenneth Rogoff, Jeffrey Rosen, Nouriel Roubini, Karl Rove, Jennifer Rubin, Jerry Saltz, David Sanger, Marietje Schaake, Kori Schake, Orville Schell, Peter Schiff, Bobby Shriver, Kristen Silverberg, Eliot Spitzer, Bret Stephens, Harry Stern, Andrew Stern, John Stossel, Nadine Strossen, Gillian Tett, Peter Thiel, Laura Tyson, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Randi Weingarten, Jacob Weisberg, Einat Wilf, Richard Wolff, David Wolpe, Fareed Zakaria, Mark Zandi, Jonathan Zittrain, Manoush Zomorodi, Mort Zuckerman, and hundreds more.