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. 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. Human beings don’t just accept facts blindly. They don’t just accept truth blindly. You have to be able to deploy it. 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. 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, 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. 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. 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.” 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.” 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.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. 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? 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. 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. Sometimes you’re having an argument and they make a brilliant point. Perhaps something you hadn’t considered or anticipated. Perhaps something you have no response for. And yet rather than concede that point, you double down. You dig in. You refuse to budge.

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.

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. 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.