An adjudicator facilitates each debate and decides the winning team.
Asked how he feels about Cosmos' growth, John, who has just turned 17, displays a nonchalance only teenagers can. "It's pretty exciting."
He enjoys the idea of how things work and the mechanisms behind people. He has an extensive vocabulary and polished delivery executed at pace; you are still considering the first idea when John is on to his third.
John says teens loving arguing. Have a chat with almost any teen and you will see they enjoy arguing and enjoy even more winning arguments, he says.
Unfortunately, there is an impression debating is just for academics and smart kids who love spending their weekends in their basements doing research.
He developed Cosmos during last year's lockdown when he was just 15 after deciding he'd spent too much time watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Debating is an awesome way to get a grasp of English for those whose first language isn't English, he says. It's not language acquisition through looking at a textbook but applying it in context.
Debating is also a great way to increase global understanding, John says. Debaters begin to understand how a person's culture affects how they see the world and why they make the choices they do.
New Zealanders, living in the corner of the globe, often don't get the opportunity to look at the world outside our backyard. Engaging with people from a diverse background provides an opportunity to see the world through a completely different lens, he says.
Debaters might hear an argument they don't agree with it but it's important to understand it and consider why people support the idea to avoid polarisation.
John says he is inspired by the team behind Cosmos, who include young entrepreneurs who started companies at 14, students from Harvard, Columbia and Duke in the United States, and a student who founded a publishing organisation. The motivation and passion of these national and international-level debaters is inspirational.
Asked how he fits everything in, John says he enjoys what he does and loves being able to push forward to support action towards bringing productive arguing to more people.
As founder and chief executive of Cosmos, he's made sacrifices in other areas, cutting down on recreation and gone from sleeping eight to 10 hours a night to six hours.
"Cosmos is something that I absolutely love doing."
John was born in Palmerston North, his mother is from Russia, his father "half Kiwi, half Polish".
He is also a competitive open water swimmer; in March he competed in the New Zealand Secondary Schools Open Water 3.5km Champs at Blue Lake in Rotorua. He is the student rep on Boys' High's board of trustees and is on Palmerston North Youth Council.
John is a firm believer in utilising opportunities people aged 15-25 receive.
He gained NCEA level 3 last year and this year will sit scholarship exams. He is also taking first-year papers in philosophy, economics and statistics through the University of Waikato.
Next year John hopes to study at an Ivy League university in the United States, with a focus on economics and business.
