Guests like Lynne are expected to have clear opinions on each topic but Wright attacks each subject from multiple angles; he's either an even-handed host or a mischievous contrarian.
The spark was the University of Western Australia's decision to back out of a deal to host a research centre fronted by climate science contrarian Bjørn Lomborg and paid for with $4m of taxpayer cash.
Sometimes it's relatively innocuous (like asking contrarian questions just to start an argument) or juvenile (like making fun of my weight or my intelligence), but – particularly when the subject is a young woman – it frequently crosses the line into bona fide, dangerous stalking and harassment.
When Danish climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg was rejected by a leading Australian university, there were screams from conservatives that it was both an attack on "freedom of speech" and an attack on "academic freedom" when the case was a demonstration of neither.
The presence of so many bearish bets is a classic contrarian signal that all the bad news may be in the price.Secondly, foreign-exchange markets are an "ugly contest" in which traders and investors have to pick the least-worst currency.
That proved a useful contrarian signal as a massive rally took place.
This contrarian bent is refreshing and sometimes rewarding.
At first, amid talk of a triple-dip recession, our contrarian view looked ill-judged.
Through all this, Marcin Krupa, a director at Poland's pensions watchdog, UNFE, is a contrarian.
Even in a crash, Mr Swensen might remain a contrarian.
Now annual spending exceeds $60 billion, but the number of new drugs has still to grow.Mr Harris, the contrarian HSBC analyst, maintains that the situation is not so bad if one measures output in terms of the total profitability of new drugs.
