Whether you are making a presentation at work or debating current political issues with a friend, Mehdi Hasan will teach you how to sharpen your speaking skills to make the winning case. Human beings don’t just accept facts blindly. They don’t just accept truth blindly. You have to be able to deploy it. When the questioner had spoken, the audience had clapped rousingly. They seemed to want Abu Qatada gone! I knew that if I simply cited reports from Amnesty International or the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, I would lose this crowd. Instead, I had to adapt my usual liberal arguments and appeal to what I knew that particular audience would value and cherish—namely, British tradition, British history. Despite that pressure, Diodotus began slowly, his calmness a stark contrast to Cleon’s rage: “I do not blame the persons who have reopened the case of the Mytileneans,” he said, “nor do I approve the protests which we have heard against important questions being frequently debated”—a dig at Cleon’s scorched earth tirade. Diodotus instead built his argument around the importance of free and open debate, warning his audience how “haste and passion” were the two biggest obstacles to “good counsel.” 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.

It was a profound aha moment. It was like, yes, human beings are irrational! That affected my politics. I’m on the liberal left. I’ve been a critic of the way the Labour Party in the U.K. and the Democratic Party in America conduct their messaging. They message on the basis that a member of the public is some rational political animal. More recently, in the 20th century, there was the young Winston Churchill who froze mid-sentence in the middle of a memorized speech to the House of Commons, unable to complete his thought. He was completely, utterly, and publicly humiliated that day. But Churchill never let it happen again. He practiced aloud while walking in the street; he practiced in private while sitting in his bathtub. He began keeping copious typewritten notes in front of him whenever he spoke in public or debated in Parliament. Nothing wrong with using notes! That can be a key part of the preparation and delivery process. 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. I've seen Mehdi win every argument he’s entered since we were at school. This is a masterclass from one of the most formidable debaters and interviewers of our time.”Facts matter, but feelings matter more. If you win their hearts…you win their heads. 2. Play the ball…and the man. The longer answer is: yes, if you have the right teacher and are willing to listen, learn, and put in the hours. You cite a lot of behavioral science through the book. Is there anything you’ve learned that made you think you should approach the art of persuasion differently? Arguments help us solve problems, uncover new ideas we might not have considered, and nudge our disagreements toward mutual understanding. A good argument, made in good faith, has intrinsic value – and can also simply be fun. 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.

Arguments are everywhere--and everyone wants to win. In fact, every single person on the face of the planet has, at some point in their lives, 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. We cannot escape the human urge, need, and desire to argue. 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. I was always interested in story, but I don’t think I quite comprehended how important it was until I started researching this book 18 months ago. I’ve leaned much more into that. If you want to say what I’ve taken away from my own book, it’s reminding myself that when I speak, when I do interviews like this, when I start my show, I lean much more into story. I always knew it was important, but I didn’t realize how important. I didn’t realize how much science there was about it. 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 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.”Win Every Argument is hugely entertaining, deeply knowledgeable, and filled with illuminating tips and stories from Mehdi Hasan’s life of debating, interviewing and advocating for his beliefs. Read this book to find your own voice while learning both the art and history of persuasion.” In Win Every Argument, award-winning British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan shows you how to argue, debate and master public speaking.No one ever goes into an argument intending to lose. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that every single person on the face of the planet &11 every man, woman and child &11 has, at some moment or another, tried to win an argument. Because arguments are everywhere. Whether it is in the com The point of this book is to show you all the tools and tactics that Diodotus, and all the world’s greatest speakers and debaters, employed. So you, too, can win every argument. Even when thousands of lives aren’t riding on it.

Pity poor Diodotus. This leader of a more moderate Athenian political faction was tasked with making the case for clemency, and he had to speak right after Cleon’s rant. Thousands of lives hung in the balance—and time was not on his side. The trireme was already on its way to Lesbos. For that matter, Diodotus was now defending the soul of Athenian democracy, in the face of the vengeful anger of his opponents. Can you imagine the pressure he was under? You could say my father is a living, breathing embodiment of the dictum outlined by John Stuart Mill in his classic philosophical treatise On Liberty: Arguments are everywhere – and, especially given the fierce debates we’re all embroiled in today, everyone wants to win. In this riveting guide to the art of argument, Mehdi Hasan shows you how to communicate with confidence, rise above the tit for tats on social media, and triumph in a successful and productive debate in the real world. 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. It was a cold, wintry evening in rural southwest England in February 2012. I had been invited to join BBC Radio 4’s flagship political panel show, Any Questions? The show is broadcast in front of a live audience that is allowed to ask questions of the panelists, who tend to be a mix of politicians and pundits.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.

We often feel, rather than think or deduce, our way toward a particular viewpoint. Scientists say that some of our biggest and best decisions involve a jolt of emotion. Human beings, to quote Professor Antonio Damasio, the acclaimed neuroscientist, are basically “feeling machines that think.” To get people off the fence and on your side, you have to make an emotional appeal. You have to focus on what Aristotle called pathos.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.” 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. You cannot afford to forget or ignore the rule of three. As people have pointed out for years, it covers it all: from birth, life, and death, to past, present, and future. Once you master it, the rule of three will have you winning arguments left, right, and center. 5. Be prepared.