In the Somerset countryside, a new festival of ideas is attempting something rare: not merely to inspire, but to prove inspiration happened. The Big Brue, gathering in Bruton next weekend, has built its programme around deliberate disagreement — pairing speakers of opposing views and measuring, through neuroscientific testing, whether genuine intellectual encounter can make people more open, more empathetic, more willing to sit with difference. It is, at its heart, a wager on the oldest democratic hope — that minds can change, and that changing them together might matter.