Like a Roman arena, conflicting speakers - Peter Mandelson, Irvine Welsh, Naomi Klein, Michael O'Leary and Sebastian Barry have already rowed in - are thrown to the pit to try to convince the largely attentive audience of their beliefs.

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"Yau knows how to sell, " says Peter Li, a math professor at UC, Irvine.

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"You're a little doctor with a practice somewhere--it's very intimidating, " says Peter McDonnell, chair of the ophthalmology department at the University of California at Irvine.

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