Mehdi Hasan’s book is a masterpiece of rhetorical argument and effective persuasion! From Demosthenes to Churchill, Cicero to Martin Luther King, Hasan lays bare the essential elements of how to delight, instruct, and move an audience. His erudition is as impressive as his wit. And his moral passion is as authentic as his love of words and life.” Dave Nussbaum: The book is titled Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. One of the questions I had on a very basic level is why “the art” and not “the art and science” of doing so, because you include a lot of science in the book? Mehdi Hasan is one of the most formidable debaters and interviewers of our times, famous on both sides of the Atlantic for the hard-hitting exchanges he conducts with politicians on his MSNBC television show. And in March 2023 he came to the Intelligence Squared stage in London to reveal his tips and techniques of persuasion, which he sets out in his new book Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. I did economics A levels, which is, in the U.K., the exam you take between 16 and 18 years old. Then I did economics in university for a year, and I dropped because I hated it. As a student, a 17-year-old, I remember vividly the economics teacher saying, “Assume perfect competition, assume free information, assume rational consumer.” I remember saying, “But why? Why should I assume any of that?” “Be quiet. That’s how you do it.” I remember being slapped down. Mehdi is a generationally talented interviewer. He has mastered his craft, and in this book, he generously spills his secrets.”

You also discuss Jennifer Aaker’s work on the science of humor, and I wanted you to say a little bit more about that, because there seems to be an art to using the science. How do you deploy something like humor in a way that’s effective, rather than counterproductive? Punish them as they deserve,” Cleon argued, “and teach your other allies by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion is death.” I didn’t realize that there are neuroscientists, like Uri Hasson at Princeton, who are saying that there’s this thing called brain-to-brain coupling, whereby when I’m telling the story, and you’re listening to the story, the same regions of both our brains are going off in the same way at the same time, and we’re syncing up in that way. That kind of stuff I didn’t know until I started diving deep into the science behind rhetoric and storytelling. I’ve definitely leaned into that. The longer answer is: yes, if you have the right teacher and are willing to listen, learn, and put in the hours.Win Every Argument shows how anyone can communicate with confidence, rise above the tit for tats on social media, and triumph in a successful and productive debate in the real world. To do that you have to use language that engages with their emotions; you have to be willing to show your own emotions, your passion for the argument; and, above all else, you have to be able to tell stories. As Plato is said to have remarked: “Those who tell stories rule society.” We, humans, love a great narrative. The human brain is hardwired, say experts, not for long lists of facts, but for storytelling. Make sure you have three main points, and make sure you have a beginning, middle, and end—because three also gives you what Cowan calls a “stable structure.” It helps organize your arguments in a way that people find easy to absorb, remember and, ideally, agree with. So this book is intended as a practical guide—for trial lawyers who want to triumph in the courtroom; for corporate executives who want to dominate in the boardroom; for political candidates who want to run for office and win their TV debates; for teachers and lecturers who want to succeed in getting their point across; for students who want to excel in speech and debate tournaments or at Model UN; for spouses who … well, you know the rest. I’m not saying you should win every argument. I’m saying, here’s what you do if you want to win an argument or, more importantly, if you need to win an argument.

We live in a country where democracy is on the line. With climate change deniers or election deniers, yes, you want to win, and you want them to lose. I wrote this book for many reasons, but one of them was because we cannot have a functioning democracy, we cannot have a functioning free press, if people are not willing to have good-faith arguments, and if people in possession of the facts and the truth are unable to win the argument rhetorically. Human beings don’t just accept facts blindly. They don’t just accept truth blindly. You have to be able to deploy it.Mehdi was one of the toughest interviews I did in the White House. In this book, he takes us on a journey through his own experience over years as a journalist and through compelling examples from history to capture the thrill of winning arguments. His book includes the kind of specific advice and applicable tactics that will make readers want to finish the book and immediately go find a sparring partner.” So that’s reason number one: I’ve had to learn every debating technique in this book to be able to step in front of the camera and challenge leaders from around the globe. We forget that there are people in multiple walks of life who have to win arguments. If I’m a presidential candidate going into a debate, I’m not there to listen and I’m not there to try and persuade my opponent to change his or her mind. I am there to win. Otherwise, what the hell am I doing there? I’m there to win an election. A political candidate for office needs to win a debate, and I’m saying here are the skills. A lot of people think you don’t need any of that, or you can wing that, or that you can’t build that. Some people believe, Oh, I can never be confident, or, I can never be a good researcher. All of those things, I believe, are teachable.

It was a disaster for the Mytileneans. Athens wasn’t as distracted as the oligarchs had hoped. The Athenian forces besieged Mytilene from all sides, before the city was even ready for battle. And it crushed Mytilene’s nascent insurrection. The Mytilenean leaders were forced to surrender to Athenian general Paches, but the general didn’t take it upon himself to decide how to punish the rebels. Athens was still a democracy, after all. He allowed the defeated city to send a delegation of a thousand men to Athens to beg for mercy.I think it was Ben Shapiro, the conservative pundit, who popularized the phrase “facts don’t care about your feelings.” But what about the reverse? What if our feelings don’t care about the facts? Author Dale Carnegie famously described human beings not as “creatures of logic” but as “creatures of emotion.” It’s interesting to understand how it works. But sometimes our intuitions are misguided, right? We have ideas about what should work and sometimes it doesn’t, or not nearly as well as you think it might.