Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading and Public Speaking

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I learned this lesson early on. I was raised in, one might say, a disputatious household. To put it plainly: we Hasans love to argue! My father would challenge and provoke my sister and me at the dinner table, on long car journeys, on foreign holidays. He never shied away from an argument over the merits or demerits of a particular issue. It was he who taught me to question everything, to be both curious and skeptical, to take nothing on blind faith, and to relish every challenge and objection. Every single person on the face of the planet—every man, woman, and child—has, at some moment or another, tried to win an argument. Whether it is in the comments section on Facebook, or in the marble hallways of Congress, or at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Whether they’ve trounced their opponent or walked away sullen, everyone might then imagine all the things they could and should have said. We’ve all been there. We cannot escape the human urge, need, and—yes—desire to argue. 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.”

The problem is, as Aristotle explained more than two thousand years ago, that audiences place a great deal of value on the “ethos” of a speaker: their personal character and credibility. Their standing, their expertise, their qualifications, that stuff makes a difference when it comes to whether or not people are willing to be convinced, so you have to be willing to question or undermine your opponent’s credibility. Inside our digital echo chambers, it is far too easy to forgo persuasion in favor of performance. Yet Hasan reminds us that we will never change the world unless we change people’s minds. An indispensable handbook for our high-stakes and polarized times.” I’ve always been interested in narrative and story. I talk a great deal in the book about emotions and connecting with the audience emotionally. In the chapter on connecting with your audience, I talk about the importance of starting a story. And I talked also about the importance of repetition. Don’t cut corners. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree,” that great orator, President Abraham Lincoln, is said to have once remarked, “and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Spend all the time it takes to sharpen your axe, to sharpen your arguments. And make sure you hone your delivery—the way you look, the way you sound, the way you stand —until it’s as sharp as can be. It all counts, and you can never ever be too prepared.

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This program is read by and contains archival audio of the author from MSNBC, BBC Question Time, Oxford Union, and other sources. Below, Mehdi shares five key insights from his new book, Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. Listen to the audio version—read by Mehdi himself—in the Next Big Idea App. https://cdn.nextbigideaclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/29000810/BB_Mehdi-Hasan_MIX.mp3 1. Feel your way to victory. I was curious to speak to Hasan to learn more about how he brings a scientific grounding to the art of persuasion. In particular, Hasan emphasizes that logic is only one element of an effective strategy, and that one ignores the importance of emotion at one’s own peril. 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. For Diodotus, the case against a mass execution didn’t rest on the guilt or innocence of the Mytileneans. He conceded that they had indeed revolted against Athens—but he argued only for the oligarchical ringleaders to be punished. His was an argument of expediency, of realpolitik: killing all the Mytilenean men would not be in the “interests” of the Athenians. It would be a “blunder,” he said, to exclude rebels in other revolting cities “from the hope of repentance and an early atonement of their error.” Nor, he added, was there any evidence that a mass execution would act as a deterrent to future insurrections.

The longer answer is: yes, if you have the right teacher and are willing to listen, learn, and put in the hours.

Mehdi Hasan is an award-winning journalist and the host of The Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC. He has argued with presidents and prime ministers, celebrities and activists, from across the globe. No matter how odious and nasty Abu Qatada may be, the whole point of human rights is that it is the nasty and odious people who need human rights the most, and need the protection of the law the most, because if we don’t extend it to them, there’s no point [in having them].

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.”

There are millions of people across America, and the world, who want to learn how to win an argument, who are keen to improve their debating techniques, as well as master the art of public speaking in general—but who need a push. 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. 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. You may recognize Mehdi Hasan from one of his interviews with controversial political figures on his show on MSNBC (and previously, Al Jazeera English), such as John Bolton or Michael Flynn, many of which became viral sensations. What stands out in these interviews is Hasan’s ability to hold powerful people to account, not letting them obfuscate the truth with evasive answers—he’s impeccably well-prepared to challenge omissions and half-truths, and always “brings the receipts.” Impeccably timed, speaking to a moment when many people find themselves drawn into arguments but also fearful of saying something that will hurt someone or (and) get the person saying it into trouble...An entertaining primer on rhetorical techniques.”I wanted to close on the idea of winning, which is essential to the book’s title. But there are times when winning an argument isn’t the only or even the primary goal, aren’t there? 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.” 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. In our conversation below, we discuss how to use storytelling and humor to your advantage, while keeping in mind that usually less is more, and why you might not necessarily want to win every argument, but how to be equipped to come out on top when you do. And I remember the financial crash comes along in 2008, after I’ve graduated from university. I’m working in the media, and everyone starts saying, “Well, economists got it wrong.” I started reading about behavioral economics, which was fascinating. I was like, Hold on, as a 17-year-old, was I ahead of my time?