From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Another reason I wrote the book is to push the case for strong arguments, strong debates, and strong interviews. I talk a lot about that: What could the media be doing better? Because I genuinely believe unless you have tougher, more challenging conversations, we’re not going to be able to save democracy. We’re not going to be able to save our media. We’re not going to be able to save our public spaces.

That’s Mehdi Hasan. He’s a political journalist and host of The Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC. He has a reputation for being a tough but fair interviewer, often debating with guests across the political spectrum. Now he’s out with a new book, Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. I spoke with Hasan at a live event at The Strand Book Store in New York City on February 28th where we discussed his strategy for winning arguments, the art and science of debate, and what in the world is a Gish galloper. That’s coming up. Stay Tuned.

Before I get to your questions, there’s exciting news from CAFE. The new season of Up Against the Mob hosted by Elie Honig is here. You can listen to the first episode now. Just search for and follow Up Against the Mob in your listening app. Now onto your questions.

QUESTION AND ANSWER:

This question comes in an email from Sandra who asks, “Do you think the leaders of Silicon Valley Bank will face prosecution? Do you see any evidence of illegal behavior on their part?” That’s a good question. It’s very early. There has been reporting in the last few days that, as you might imagine, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an investigation of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. As I’m sure you know by now, Silicon Valley Bank, not a gigantic bank, about $200 billion in holdings, in deposits, collapsed about two weeks ago in the face of a bank run, a good old-fashioned bank run where people were seeking to get their deposits back, and the bank couldn’t keep up. The government shut it down, and it’s now dealing with the fallout.

As you might imagine as a general matter when some financial calamity strikes, whatever the nature of it, the DOJ generally opens up an investigation to make sure that they find out what the truth was, whether a crime was committed, and to assure themselves that a crime was not committed. Right now, the reporting is that the FBI in the Northern District of California field office is investigating the doings at Silicon Valley Bank, and the SEC is doing the same.

Now, it’s generally understood that the cause of the failure was, as I said, a good old-fashioned bank run. That may be due in part to bad investment decisions made by the bank in the face of rising interest rates and also, perhaps, some people have argued some regulatory rollback. The failure was also arguably aided by the fact that some well-known and influential depositors wanted to withdraw their money and perhaps set off a panic. None of that on its face, and I don’t know a lot and it’s early in the process so far, none of that on its face looks like criminal conduct.

What’s probably going on with the DOJ and SEC investigation is whether or not there was illicit activity taking place in the time right before the collapse on the part of people who had material non-public information. Were they doing things with the stock when they shouldn’t have been? That’s fertile ground for investigation. They’re also probably looking at, and some people have reported this, about what kinds of representations were made by leaders of the bank about the solvency of the bank and about the health of the investments the bank was making and the general stability of the bank. If you’re making false representations and putting them out publicly, well, that’s a problem, and it can lead to civil or criminal liability. It’s not a surprise that they’re investigating. It doesn’t mean that anyone will ever be charged. It doesn’t mean that there was necessarily any criminal activity either that caused the bank’s failure or that was done in the wake of the bank’s failure or in anticipation of the bank’s failure, but such investigations are the norm, and I expect we’ll know a lot at some point.

A lot of people are asking questions about what is going on and what will happen in the Manhattan DA’s Office. There has been swirling reporting that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, is on the verge of indicting Donald Trump with respect to the hush money payment to former porn star, Stormy Daniels. As you’ll remember, Michael Cohen made payments totaling $130,000 that he said was designed to keep her quiet. On the eve of the election in 2016, Donald Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, for that $130,000, and on the books and records of the Trump organization listed those as legal expenses when arguably they were in fact campaign expenses because they were related to helping Donald Trump win the election or at least not lose the election based on what Stormy Daniels might have said.

That’s the core of the controversy. Michael Cohen was charged for that among other things by the Southern District of New York in a federal crime. He has been prosecuted, he pled guilty, he has served his sentence, and he now has a podcast. In all that time, nothing has happened to Donald Trump, even though Michael Cohen has said that he undertook those activities at the direction and with the understanding of Donald Trump. In some ways, you might say this was a case for the Southern District to have brought because they indicted and convicted Michael Cohen as an initial matter, but they have clearly taken a pass.

Now, the question of whether or not this is a small thing to indict him over depends a little bit on what the indictment looks like and what the charges are. Falsification of books and records as a general matter in New York is just a misdemeanor. To go through all this effort and to create all this controversy and have people wonder about the political motivations of any prosecutor, whether it’s well founded or not, over a misdemeanor doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing that might be worthwhile. However, under New York law, although falsifying business records alone is a misdemeanor, meaning no longer than one year in prison, that activity, that criminal conduct amounts to a felony charge if prosecutors can show that the defendant had intent to defraud, including an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.

So the question is, beyond falsifying business records, what’s that second crime? If you can prove that second crime in a nexus to that second crime, then I don’t think it’s a small thing. I think any felony violation committed by someone, whether they’re a former president or not, is significant and is important if it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now, there are challenges. I don’t know what the evidence is, and I haven’t been in the grand jury. We understand that Michael Cohen, literally as I’m speaking and recording this, may be in the grand jury right now, and at least half a dozen other people have gone into the grand jury. But I think even from publicly available information, we know that there might be some challenges with respect to bringing this case.

Now, the second crime that would be combined with the falsifying business records that would cause this to be elevated to a felony might be a violation of New York State election law. It might be the violation of federal election law, which is in fact one of the things that was at the center of the charges against Michael Cohen. These are somewhat novel theories. They haven’t been fully tested in New York State court, and we wonder how it’ll be received. Those are among some of the challenges.

There’s also a factual challenge and a credibility challenge, which it seems that the Southern District of New York was concerned about, and that is, the viability of Michael Cohen as a witness. As we have said on this podcast many times before, and I don’t mean any disrespect to Michael Cohen, but it’s a matter of fact that he pled guilty to lying in an official proceeding. That’ll be cause for very robust cross-examination of him. I think no matter how you slice this case, whether it’s a misdemeanor or a felony, and no matter what other facts there are brought to bear and whatever corroboration there is, Michael Cohen is a central witness in any Manhattan DA’s prosecution of Donald Trump. So he needs to be believable, and he needs to be believed.

There are other challenges as well. One of those challenges is referenced in another question in a tweet from @SomeGuyFromVA, nice Twitter handle, who asks, “Can you explain how the statute of limitations applies to Trump in the Manhattan DA’s investigation of his hush money payments, and when must Bragg file charges if he has to do so?” That’s a great question, and there’s some controversy over that as well.

Generally speaking, the crimes that are being considered here have a statute of limitations of five years. It’s been more than five years since the last hush money payment was made. However, New York State law allows for the tolling of the statute of limitations, in other words, the pausing of the statute of limitations if the target or the defendant has been out of the state or unavailable in the state for periods of time. As you may recall, Donald Trump, happily for many New Yorkers including myself, spent precious little time in New York while he was president of the United States, opting to spend most of his time in the White House or in Florida, and in fact, in 2019 changed his permanent legal residence to Florida from New York. So there would be decent arguments on the part of the prosecution that that statute was tolled and maybe they have ample time. But that’s going to be something that’ll be litigated, argued about, and we’ll see how that gets resolved if a charge is brought.

I wonder also if there’s an argument on the part of prosecutors that because Donald Trump as president, as we know very clearly from the Mueller investigation, was not susceptible to criminal prosecution. Maybe that’s also an argument why the statute of limitations should have been tolled. Because even if the Manhattan DA’s Office had acted with promptness and alacrity and tried to prosecute him, indict him back in 2018 or ’19 or even 2020, that wouldn’t have been available under the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted. So maybe that’s an argument for why the stature of limitations also has not run.

Here’s a question that comes in a tweet from at @GolfandBum, a lot of good Twitter handles today. “Does Trump not meeting with the grand jury speed up charging decisions?” Well, that’s a reference to the fact that the Manhattan DA’s Office has invited Donald Trump to come testify. He will not testify under any circumstances. He will assert his Fifth Amendment privilege. We know that because he’s got legal jeopardy here. There are real facts that are problematic for him. We also know that, because not that long ago, he asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination with respect to an investigation being brought by the Attorney General of New York, Letitia James. So I don’t know if it speeds up the charging decision. All signs are that this is going to happen relatively soon, and so we’ll have to see. Obviously, this is a story we’ve been covering very closely for a long time as a lot of people have, and we’ll keep covering it.

We’ll be right back with my conversation with Mehdi Hasan.

THE INTERVIEW:

In 2023, there’s no doubt Americans could use some tips on how to debate, not just for the sake of arguing, but to persuade. Mehdi Hasan, host of The Mehdi Hasan Show, has been arguing with people across politics, journalism, and media since he was a student at Oxford. He joined me live at The Strand in New York City to discuss his new book, Win Every Argument.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a good crowd. You draw a lot of people.

I wish they were here for me and not you.

Are you starting an argument?

No.

Congratulations on the book.

Thank you very much.

It’s very important at this time. Let me see if I understand the premise here. It’s win every argument, not draw, not get close, not bring a good showing, but win. Am I right?

Yeah.

And not some arguments but every argument.

So let me caveat, what was a deliberately provoc… My publishers are here tonight. I want to say a big shout out to Tim Duggan and Marian at Henry Holt. We talked about this title, and it changed along the way. There’s been some snot from some folks saying, “Why would you want to win every argument? Who wants to win? That’s not productive.” The point of the book is to say, “I’m going to teach you how to win every argument that you want to win. Just because I’m teaching you how to win every argument doesn’t mean you have to try and win every argument.”

What if it’s an argument that you should not win because you have the crappier side of the argument?

No, no, no, I don’t agree with that because sometimes… A couple of things. Number one, I make very clear in the dedication at the front of the book that there’s certain people you shouldn’t argue with and you should accept that you get defeated by, and that is my wife. So I say you can win every argument, but you don’t have to. Choose which argument. But if you still want to win every argument, please read the book and we’ll give you some skills. But just to come back to your point, actually, there are some people in life… You know this better than me. You are a lawyer. You’re a former prosecutor. Sometimes you will fight a case where maybe you don’t have the best arguments, but your job depends on it. You might believe justice depends on it, and therefore, you want to win that argument. I can give you many examples where you may have a crappier side, but you still want to win, need to win, have to win.

Let me give you a hypothetical. Two people are about to have an argument or a debate. They’ve both read your book very carefully. Who’s winning that argument? What’s the differential?

People keep posting the Spider-Man meme that they bought the book and everyone’s got the book pointing at each other as [inaudible 00:13:23].

I guess that’s a way of asking, apart from internalizing the lessons of your book, what other qualities make for a good arguer or debater?

I would say that if you’ve internalized the lessons of the book, the most important lessons to internalize are the last third of the book. The book is divided into three sections. The first section is-

The power of threes-

The power of three, which is also a chapter.

… as you also say. I know.

It’s also a chapter in the book. You’ll see me doing a lot tonight. I say three for everything. It’s divided into three sections. The first section is the fundamentals. I want to try and teach you the basics that I’m not trying to take credit for, stuff that goes back to Aristotle, to Cicero. It goes back to ancient Rome and Greece, the basics. The middle section is the kind of fun section. It’s the kind of tricks, techniques, how to get yourself out of a hole, stuff that I’ve tried to do in the past. The secrets, you could call it. The third section is what you might call WBD. It’s worthy but dull, or people perceive it as worthy but dull, which is practice, preparation, delivery, confidence-building, how to stay calm. That is the most important part of the book in many ways because I genuinely believe that you cannot do anything that you do or I do or many people in this room do in public life in our roles without that stuff.

So to come back to your point about the two people in the hypothetical who have read the book, it’ll be the people who have absorbed those chapters the most and really worked on the preparation and delivery. Because one thing that really annoys me and one of the reasons I wrote the book is because people who think that what you do or what I do comes naturally. We just wing it. We were born this way. It’s just not the case. Or maybe for you it’s the case.

I wing it.

I’m modest enough to say it’s not the case.

I prepared for this.

Good.

I want to ask you the question that everyone asks, and I’m trying to avoid asking the question, why’d you write the book? So I’ll ask a different version of it because maybe this is part of the answer. Do you think that the art of debate and argument in this country and around the world in recent times is on the wane or not? And if so, why?

That is a great version of the question because it also takes on board what I do for a living, which is journalism, media, interviewing, and that is one of the reasons… I wrote the book for many reasons. One of the reasons definitely was because I saw a gap in the market, not in a kind of market sense, but a gap in what people are talking about. Nobody’s really talking about what’s happened to the degradation of our public debate and discussion. If they do, they don’t really have any solutions. If you want to bring the political angle into it, I saw what’s happening in politics, that one side is getting rhetorically beaten up, and I wanted to help with that.

Which side is that?

I couldn’t possibly imagine. I think liberals, progressives, leftists are losing a lot of arguments that they should be winning for many reasons, and I’m sure we’ll get into. Also, I wanted to talk about my career and what I do for a living. One of the things people say to me is they enjoy the stuff I do. I’ve been here eight years now. I work for NBC now, but people who’ve enjoyed my stuff going back to Al Jazeera English days like the fact that I do very combative, challenging interviews. The argument was, well, not enough people in the US media do that. Again, another reason I wrote the book is to push the case for strong arguments, strong debates, and strong interviews. I talk a lot about that: What could the media be doing better? Because I genuinely believe unless you have tougher, more challenging conversations, we’re not going to be able to save democracy. We’re not going to be able to save our media. We’re not going to be able to save our public spaces.

Just to pick up on that, the gap in the failing you saw was not in the inefficacy of arguments between spouses or in the workplace, but among journalists, people in your profession?

Journalists, politicians, public figures, activists, campaigners. The book is not just about arguing. It is about public speaking. It’s about doing interviews. It’s about campaigning. There’s a lot of walks of life where we could improve both the nature of our discourse and our ability to defend our positions. It frustrates me when people I agree with or like or think should win an argument lose not because of the substance or not even because they’ve been dealt a bad hand, but just because they weren’t equipped with the right skills, didn’t have the right tricks, hadn’t worked on their confidence or delivery. That pains me. As someone who loves this stuff and lives for this stuff, that kind of stuff gives me an ulcer when I see that on TV. I will literally throw stuff at the TV, and my wife knows that well.

This idea that I know you’ve been asked about, and the question is almost the demanded based on the premise of the title, there are people who say, Dale Carnegie I think is among them, that the point of discourse is not necessarily to engage in a debate and win a debate. That if you’re getting in a debate and you’re winning it, there’s a cost to that also because you maybe alienated this person who might otherwise become an ally. What do you think about that comment?

It’s a fair point. Everything in context. My response to Dale Carnegie, and I quote him in the book saying, “I would run from an argument,” and I say, “I would run towards an argument,” my response to that is, well, it depends what scenario you’re in. Again, to go back to your earlier point about, should everyone win an argument, etc.? In some walks of life, you can’t shy away from that. If you want to say right now that we should all just shy away from argument and debate and just keep our heads down and try and be friendly and kumbaya, good luck to you in the America of 2023, good luck to you saving the America of 2023 because there are people in this country who are happy to have the arguments, happy to do it in bad faith, happy to lie, gaslight, steamroll. I’m saying, you know what, if you believe in certain values, in justice, in equality, in democracy, in human rights, equip yourself in a way that you can, therefore, win those arguments. The idea that you can run away from arguments in the public space… I can’t remember when Dale Carnegie exactly lived, but where we’re living right now, was he living in an era of our cable news environment or our political environment or what’s going on with democracy?

It’s not just about politics. To be clear, I say, people in the boardroom, people in the courtroom, people who are activists. In every walk of life right now, there’s a lot of polarization and division. I’m saying, look, there’s a hundred other books you can read about how to not alienate the other person. That’s not what this book is about. Don’t buy that book if you’re looking to make friends. Do buy this book if you’re looking to win over audiences. What I say in the book is sometimes we get lost in trying to… We get so obsessed with the person we’re up against or in dialogue with or in debate with, we forget that they might not be the most relevant or important person. The most important, relevant people might be these people, the neutral audience, the people watching that you want to convince and persuade.

Certainly, that’s true, and I want to get to politics a little bit later. When you have to two… You have two candidates arguing. The audience is not the adversary. The audience is the decision maker. In politics, it may be the voters, and in a courtroom it may be the jury, and I want to come back to that and the audience in a moment. Talk a little bit about the circumstances in which friends or colleagues without an audience and without a camera and without a microphone are trying to talk about some issue, political issue, financial issue, what’s your advice in that particular context?

You need to have an emotional appeal. You need to identify with the other person. I talk a lot about the need not to just throw facts and figures and logic and studies and policy papers at the other person. I talk about the need to bond with the person, to share a personal story, share an anecdote. You want to win people over on a one-on-one basis? You’re not going to do it with a bunch of opinion polls. You’re not going to do it with a bunch of peer-reviewed papers. You’re going to do it because you find something in common with the other person. You’re going to do it because maybe you do flatter the other person individually. You’re going to do it because you’re going to tell a story that the other person thinks, “I understand that story.” The story sets off a light bulb. The story is something I can relate to. So that’s one point.

The other point I make is I do write a chapter about listening. People want to be heard. They want to be seen in a conversation. Too often, in discussions, debate, arguments, and I speak from personal experience, we are not listening to the other person. We are waiting for our turn to speak. That means that when it comes time to speak, the other person is not going to engage. So I talk a lot in the book about engagement, emotional appeals, empathy.

I’m sorry, I didn’t hear anything you said. It’s an obvious joke when we talk about listening. Are there any-

There’s a chapter on humor, Preet, as well.

We’re going to talk about that.

You’re doing well.

Is there a circumstance in which a man should ever argue with his mother-in-law?

Well, my wife is in the audience, so I don’t know what’s going to go back to my mother-in-law. But I would say I have argued with my mother-in-law in the past. It didn’t work out so well.

Did you listen?

It didn’t work out. I don’t know if I listened. But I would say that the circumstances, again, are one in which you need to use… If it’s your mother-in-law, you got to use… I talk about two types of listening, I’m sure you’re all aware of it, critical listening, empathetic listening. With your mother-in-law, it’s got to be empathetic listening. The only way you’re going to get through to someone like your mother or mother-in-law or even your spouse is going to be walk a mile in their shoes, put yourself in their position.

Social scientists call it perspective-taking. The studies show that if you spend 10 minutes at a doorstep doing what’s called deep canvassing, hearing people’s fears, prejudices out, talking it out, that can lead to a three-month “improvement” in their views or a change or a correction in their views. So I do think the literature is out there on that, on empathy, on perspective-taking. I’ll be honest, it’s not stuff I stress in the book because, again, I’m certainly not advising you to try and win an argument with your mother-in-law, but all the other scenarios I am.

There’s a category of debate that is apart from things that most people think you can persuade someone about. You can have an argument about what the speed limit should be with your neighbor on the street. It’s important, but it’s not the most momentous thing, and people, you might imagine, are not deeply, spiritually, religiously, or morally committed to a position on it.

When I was in college and learning about political science, which is what I studied, I got into a lot of friendly debates about intractable social issues. I had, and I’m sure many have, about abortion, when does life begin, the death penalty, all sorts of things. I have those debates less now, and tell me if I should or should not, because at a certain point there are groups of people who are just not persuadable. I’m giving you a cynical view. If you’re 54 years old like I am and you have thought for decades about the issue and you are pro-choice, because you’ve lived life and you’ve debated the issues and studied it, and another person in good faith is pro-life, what does that debate look like? What should that debate look like if everyone’s in good faith adhering to their positions based on their moral perspective or religious perspective?

It’s a good question. I guess it depends where you’re having the debate. Is it kind of a formal university style or Oxford Union style debate? Is it a high school debate for a competition? Is it a debate on cable news in the space of six minutes late night?

Let’s do cable news. You know something about that.

A little bit, still learning the ropes. I would say, again, it depends on the casting. One chapter I wish I’d written in this book, and if I write a sequel, I probably would include it, which is, when do you walk away from an argument? When do you walk away from doing it? Which is I think is what you’re kind of touching at. I’ve said very clearly, I do have my own kind of hygiene tests. I won’t have an election denier on the show. I won’t have a climate change denier on the show because it’s a pointless… I’m not going to have that argument. I’m not going to argue about whether up is down, black is white, hot is cold. I’m not going to argue reality.

Now abortion, it’s not that kind of debate. It’s something that’s happening. It’s a moral debate. People in good faith can hold different moral convictions based on the same set of facts, which is what makes it so interesting. I talk in the book about how you frame an argument. You can take the same facts about abortion and go in completely different directions in good faith.

I would say that, yes, we should have those discussions. But again, how you have those discussions depends on who it is. So if you are having a genuine, good faith debate with a bunch of “independent voters,” what politicians [inaudible 00:25:44], independents… I think the number of independents in this country is hugely exaggerated personally. Let’s say there’s a crowd of genuine neutrals, independents. Have that discussion in good faith. Bring your arguments, bring your evidence from the scientific literature, bring your moral claims.

But if it’s a Republican politician, let’s say, who’s notorious for using it as a wedge issue and just wants to accuse opponents of abortion of being baby killers, I would argue you argue in a different way. If you’re even going to have the argument, you do it in a much different way. Then you look at some of the spicier chapters in the book that I’ve written about how to take them down, about how to make them look foolish, about how to rhetorically beat them up, and about how, again, to appeal to the audience.

To come back to your point about persuadables, I agree with you. I’m somebody who thinks there’s a big chunk of this country that are lost, that are lost to rational argument, that have gone down a rabbit hole. I just did my show today, a big chunk on QAnon, and there are far more people who are down that QAnon rabbit hole, not just Republicans but across the political spectrum, than we would like to admit. There are a lot of people who aren’t persuadable, but there are still millions more who are.

Again, you have to think, who is my audience? When I talk about the election denialism on my show, which I do a lot, I’m not trying to convince hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool Trump voters that the election wasn’t stolen. They think stuff came on bamboo paper from Asia, or whatever it was, and Italian satellites and all the… I’m not trying to convince them. I am trying to convince my audience at home, number one, what the facts are because truth matters, and, number two, why it matters, why it should matter to them.

Sometimes as a politician, I’m not a politician, but politicians also want to rouse up their own base, Preet. Sometimes they don’t care about the other side. Sometimes it’s about communicating to your own base on an issue like abortion: why this matters, why you should turn up to the polls, why you should continue to care about a certain issue. That matters, too, in terms of messaging and debating.

I feel like implicit in your response is a critique of media. Other people talk about this. Adam Grant, who is also an author and has been on my podcast, has made this point in a variety of contexts but specifically about COVID, and I wonder if you have a further thought on this. The media spends a lot of time focusing on the extremes. The people who were the most anti-vax or the most anti-masking, even in the face of good medical evidence that the contrary was the better practice, are the ones that get all the attention, as opposed to a larger segment of the population that was just kind of skeptical and not sure and needed more information, was acting in good faith. So the debate gets channeled towards the most extreme on one side and the most extreme on the other. Is that a fair assessment of a lot of media?

I think it’s a fair assessment of a lot of media. But I would push back a little bit because people who follow me know that I’m very critical of certain media practices. Again, Preet, it depends. As I say in the book, define your terms. When you say extremes, what do you mean by extremes? Are you talking about extreme conspiracy theorists? What’s an extreme political view? Like Bernie Sanders, people say Bernie Sanders is the far left; Marjorie Taylor Greene is the far right. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes Nazis; Bernie Sanders wants universal health care.

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Not the color.

Not the color green. No, I wouldn’t debate with the color green, but I wouldn’t debate with Marjorie Taylor Greene either, I say, because it would be a pointless… She grifts and she gaslights. There’s no good faith argument to be had there. But I talk about her a lot, even though I don’t like it, because she’s an influential figure, because her extreme views are no longer that extreme and they’re actually mainstream in one of our two main political parties. So a lot of us journalists have had painstaking conversations about, how do you cover this person or this policy without also elevating that person and that policy? We saw that in 2016 with Trump, 2020 with Trump, and today with the Boeberts and MTGs and those attention-seekers.

To be fair to my colleagues in the media, and I’m often critical of my colleagues in the media, all of us are struggling with this. There is no easy answer as to how you deal with a bunch of gaslighting people because there are only two main political parties. I mentioned earlier, I won’t have an election denier on my show. I don’t know how long I can stick to that position. I’ll tell you why. Because we’re coming up to the 2024 presidential year. If I hold to that position and if the majority of Republicans are of that view, that means I’m basically saying, “I’m not going to have anyone from one major political party on my show.” That’s a hard choice to make even if you want to be a purist on the principle. I don’t know for how long I can sustain that position.

Going back to your question a second ago about what it means to be extreme, I think it depends on the context, as you’ve been saying. To use the abortion example that just popped into my head, I don’t mean to use a pejorative term like extreme, but on one end of the spectrum there might be a subset of the population who believes that at the moment of conception there is life and any action taken to harm what that person perceived as a life is untenable and should be illegal. At the other end of the spectrum, just to use this example, you might have someone who thinks that abortion on-demand up until the moment that birthing begins should be fully legal and common even. But there are a lot of people in the middle of that spectrum who think that there is a life there. They’re not exactly sure when it is.

I wonder if you have a view about picking your spots on a debate like that. Instead of moving towards one extreme or the other, trying to pick away at some reasonable people who might be in the middle who think, “Well, I tend to think of myself as pro-life, but it does bother me that there might be a law in my state that prevents abortion in cases of rape and incest.” Do you have a thought about that, about picking your spots?

I do think there are a lot of people in this country who don’t like the labels, who don’t want to be pigeonholed in one box or another. I talk about in the book, in the context of audiences, in terms of knowing where your audience is coming from, knowing roughly where they stand without pigeonholing them into one box or another. Because if you can know roughly where they stand, you can start tailoring your arguments to that person. A lot of arguments get shut down at the beginning because of the application of labels. I think you can have interesting discussions about the environment, about health care, about politics, about abortion, about all sorts of other controversial issues if we avoid labels from the outset and just stick to the issues.

But that goes back to the very start of our conversation, which is very few people want to debate the issues, which is what kills me. Most people do just want to do labels, do name calling, and turn everything into a wedge issue. This is the problem. Unfortunately, I’m not going to say it’s both sides. I’m going to say, unfortunately, it’s one side of the political spectrum that does it more than other, that turns every single bloody issue into a wedge issue. Whether it’s Dr. Seuss, or whatever it is becomes the latest culture wars issue of the day, it becomes very hard to have a debate in good faith.

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Mehdi Hasan after this.

You mentioned liberals a second time, and I think you said earlier that they’re losing arguments they should win. I wonder if one of the reasons for that is, and I hope you address it, sometimes it’s the case, it’s not always against the liberal/conservative divide, but sometimes the more complicated explanation, the more complicated basis for believing in something is the right one, and the easier slogan, bumper sticker argument that is more easily comprehended by folks who are not deeply knowledgeable is the more persuadable one. If you’re on the side of the more complicated issue, how do you go about that, particularly in the context of cable television when you only have a few minutes? Is that part of your diagnosis about liberals?

Oh, very much so. I share a lot of that diagnosis. I do think, and this is not just the US Democratic Party, this is the Labour Party in the UK where I’m originally from, the reputation for being technocratic, bureaucratic, managerial. What’s the line? Republicans bring a bazooka to a knife fight; Democrats bring a policy paper. You look at 2016, you talk about bumper slogans-

You ever had a paper cut?

Good luck to you up against a bazooka. Have you ever watched 1980s action films? I’ve watched many, and they’re in the book. Look, you made the point about slogans. In 2016, I think we can all remember that Donald Trump ran by saying he would build a wall, ban Muslims, and lock her up. I remember it now. I mean I can’t get it out of my head. I think a lot of us remember. It was very catchy. He knew what he was doing. He’s smarter than he looks or sounds, sadly. I think Hillary Clinton came along with a 17-point childcare plan. I’m sure it was a fantastic childcare plan that would’ve helped this country move forward. But I didn’t read it. I didn’t need to hear about it in the context of the presidential election.

I’ve made this point before. There’s been six presidential elections in the 21st century: three Democratic victories, three Democratic losses. It’s not a coincidence to me. I know correlation is not causation, but John Kerry, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton all lost; Joe Biden and Barack Obama won. I see that partly as a result of those three were very intelligent, many would say decent people in many ways, but they weren’t the most inspiring of orators. They weren’t the best at messaging. They weren’t the best at persuading or inspiring. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and very different, Joe Biden is not some soaring orator, but he’s authentic when he speaks. Whatever you think about him, whether you agree with him or not, he is not doing talking points. Barack Obama, of course, in a different league when it comes to speaking. So I do think that’s a problem. I do think Democrats, liberals, progressives think that, “If I can just deploy one more statistic, one more Pew poll, and I will have defeated, vanquished my opponent.” I think that’s not the case.

I talk in two chapters at length about how the human brain does not work in this way. You all know this from arguing with your spouse or your mother-in-law that it’s not facts or figures that work. With the members of your friends circle, your family, that the emotional appeal is what works, that identifying with people is what works, that telling stories is what works, that showing passion and anger, showing you’re not a robot is what works. It’s not just coming along with lots and lots of statistics. Facts matter. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not Kellyanne Conway. This is not kind of a post-fact, alternative fact world, and I talk about the importance of showing your receipts in the book. But it has to be married with, it has to be combined with an emotional approach, has to be a combined… If it’s facts versus feelings, feelings will win nine times out of ten, and I don’t think enough progressives have internalized that point.

By the way, just a small point on your bumper slogans, there are politicians who are good at bumper slogans. There are politicians who are good at one-liners. It’s not even a left/right thing. I made the point on TV yesterday. You take the Democratic Party, people like Eric Swalwell, who wouldn’t call himself a lefty, has done some really good campaign ads. I don’t know if you’ve seen them, very, very powerful, on 1/6 and the threat to democracy. On the other side, you’ve got Bernie Sanders who is very good at rousing people and very good at taking the same anger that the right takes and channels it towards transgender kids and Muslim migrants, but channels it towards the 0.1%, channels it towards the banks who are ripping you off or the big pharma. Elizabeth Warren, I talk in the book about Elizabeth, who I consider to be one of the great debaters of our times. No matter what Elizabeth Warren ever does between now and the day she meets her maker, we will all thank her for taking Michael Bloomberg off the board in one night in 60 seconds, right?

I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.

That was debating. That was just debating genius. I talk about throwing stuff at the TV. That was me kind of cheering and jigging in front of the TV watching that debate in Las Vegas. She did it in 60 seconds. So I think there are people who can do it, to go back to your point, but it is harder, agreed. It’s much easier to say-

Do you know who else who does that?

… blame the migrant, blame the transgender kid.

Donald Trump can do that.

Donald Trump can do what?

He eviscerated Jeb Bush-

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

… in how many seconds?

I have a chapter in the book called Play the Man Not the Ball. It’s about ad hominem arguments, and I make a case in favor of ad hominem arguments.

I was going to ask you about that.

Yeah, Donald Trump-

Make the case in favor of ad hominem arguments.

Let me give you three reasons. The first reason is it works. Donald Trump eviscerated 16 more qualified rivals for president in 2016, governors, senators, business leaders. He didn’t do it because he had a better policy paper on childcare. He did it because Low Energy Jeb really hit home. I still remember Lyin’ Ted, and I still laugh at Little Marco. We could all say, “Oh, it’s so below America,” but we all loved it, right? Sorry, we all loved it. Now, I don’t like the racist stuff he does, obviously. Again, sadly, he’s good at this horrible abuse, and it’s called the abusive ad hominem. It’s one of many ad hominems. It’s not one I push heavily in the book.

So there are good ad hominems and bad ad hominems.

Again, all depends on the context, Preet.

Right.

The three ad hominems I talk about in the book are abusive ad hominems, just name calling, going after someone saying, “You’re a liar.” I say there is a time and a place to call someone a liar. If someone has a history of lying and turns up next to you and starts telling the crowd things, factual things, it is your duty to point out to the crowd, “Don’t trust that person. They have a history of lying.” Now, that is technically an ad hominem argument because you’re not engaging with their arguments. You’re going after them. I say go after them. That’s abusive ad hominem.

There’s the circumstantial ad hominem, which is you point out conflicts of interest, which is, you as a lawyer, I as a journalist do very often. I’m sure you’ve done it on the witness stand. If you have been paid by the fossil fuel industry to say, “Hey, climate change, it’s all a bit of a hoax,” it’s worth pointing out, “The guy’s saying it’s a hoax. He kind of financially benefits from saying it’s a hoax.” That’s the circumstantial ad hominem.

Then the third ad hominem is the tu quoque, pointing out the hypocrisy, saying, “Hey, you’re pushing this argument. You want everyone to agree with you on this position. How come you don’t follow it? Oh, Mr. Republican Congressman, you’re anti-abortion. What about the mistress who’s abortion you paid for?” Now again, people say, “Ah, scurrilous [inaudible 00:40:06].”

Have you had that moment in an interview?

I’ve not had that particular moment, no.

Because I want to watch that one.

I’ve had other moments where… For example, I spoke to John Bolton on my show in 2020, and we talked about him giving speeches to the MEK. John Bolton is a hawk on Iran, as you know. He literally wrote a New York Times op-ed saying, “Bomb Iran.” It was literally in the headline. Thank you, New York Times. Bolton came on my show, and I asked him about his speeches to a group called the MEK, which is called the Mojahedin-e-Khalq. It’s a crazy, cultish, misogynistic Iranian opposition group. But because it’s anti-ayatollahs, a lot of Western politicians have bought some kind of Kool-Aid, that they’re the opposition group we should support, including Democrats. Bolton went and gave multiple paid speeches to this group. So I challenged him on that because, “I support democracy in Iran,” but you also get paid tens of thousands of dollars to support regime change in Iran, and he didn’t like that.

Nobody buys my opinion, and you can ignore that if you want. I’m very comfortable. I have never said anything other than what I believe. We are now, sir, 20 minutes into this interview, which you said was for 15.

“I believe it’s 15 minutes. I’ve got a timer going off in my ear.”

He started saying that time’s up. Interview’s got to go. Switch off the camera. So I have had moments like that, and I believe they’re justified. Just to go back to your original question, the main reason why ad hominem arguments work is because Aristotle told us 2,000 years ago that there’s three ways you win an argument, with the emotional appeal, pathos, with the rational appeal, logos, and with your own personal credibility, ethos. Your credibility matters hugely when you’re trying to convince someone. If you are a doctor, people trust you when you talk about COVID. If you’re a general giving advice on what the Ukrainian military strategies should be on cable, people say, “Listen to that general.” Your credibility, your qualifications, your expertise. As we saw in the pandemic, a lot of people coming along giving kind of quack science. Yes, you should question your opponent, your adversary, your interviewee’s qualifications, expertise. You should be upping your own credibility and expertise and diminishing your opponents. It’s madness. It’s malpractice not to do that if you’re trying to win an argument.

Now, you were speaking a few minutes ago about the importance of stories and emotion. The policy shift in this country that caused me to think about the attitude in America about same sex marriage, that shifted pretty quickly, if you think about the arc of the country. Did that shift happen because there were debates about statistics and data, or did that happen for the reasons that you’re describing, that people told stories about family members and heard about their family members and a general consensus developed that was very different from what even liberal orthodoxy was among so-called progressive politicians in the mid-2000s?

I don’t have the stats to hand, but there is a fascinating study and polling done of the impact of Modern Family, the TV show, Modern Family, on people’s attitudes, especially conservative Americans’ attitude to watch this show because it’s a show about families and family values and the American family, but of course, includes a very famous gay couple. There is polling or data, I can’t remember the exact study that was done, that shows exactly that. That having that story beamed into your front room, into your family room through the TV every night or every week had a massive effect.

I’ve talked about that in the context of… I’m a member of a minority. I’m a Muslim, a Muslim who grew up in the UK now living in the US, two countries where Islamophobia really took hold after the 9/11 attacks here and the 7/7 attacks in the UK. I’ve said for years to fellow Muslims of mine who do TV, who do media, you’re going to go on a right-wing outlet or you’re going to talk to a right-wing newspaper, you’re going to talk to a right-wing audience, just coming up and being like, “You know what? The data shows that far right terrorism has killed far more people than ISIS,” that’s not going to convince anyone.

Well, they shouldn’t use that voice.

Yeah, they definitely shouldn’t use that voice.

I would be against that voice.

That would work in the 1930s over-Pathé footage in black and white. Although Lawrence O’Donnell told me last night that I can win any argument because I have a British accent in America. I don’t know if that still counts. I made the point that-

It is an advantage.

I made the point that Piers Morgan poisoned the well for those of us who are British journalists and had to come and do a show here later. I can never say anything about guns anymore. But the point being, as a Muslim, I used to make a very clear argument, which is you are not… I did a debate on Islam at the Oxford Union, which went viral. I talk about a lot about in the book.

Yeah, you do.

A lot of Muslims know me for that debate. I get a lot of free meals in restaurants because of that debate.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let me just say this to you. Think about what the opposite of this motion is. If you vote no tonight, think about what you’re saying the opposite of this motion is, that Islam isn’t a religion of peace. It’s a religion of war, of violence, of terror, of aggression. That the people who follow Islam, me, my wife, my retired parents, my six-year-old child, that 1.8 million of your fellow British residents and citizens, the 1.6 billion people across the world, your fellow human beings are all followers, promoters, believers in a religion of violence. Do you really think that? Do you really believe that to be the case?”

One of the points I’m making out, I talk about me, my family, my parents, my children. If you say Islam is a violent religion, what are you saying about me and my kids? What are you saying about my elderly retired parents? My father’s been a British citizen for five decades, paid taxes, voted in elections, supported the Labour Party. You’ve got to tell those stories. You’re never going to convince people that Muslims, or whichever minority group you’re talking about, are a part of the fabric of this country, you’re never going to win people over, you’re never going to defeat bigotry by just throwing statistics or laws, even though statistics and laws are important, but it is by telling stories about who you are.

I tell the story in the book about how I’m sitting in a small rural town, Crewkerne, in England, tiny town in southern rural England in, I think, 2009, ’10 on a live BBC radio show. We’re in a hall like this, bigger, 300, 400 people. It’s an elderly, white, conservative, rural audience. Myself and David Lammy, who’s now the shadow foreign secretary in the UK, then he was just a backbench MP, we’re the only people who are people of color. We’re on the panel, and we’re the only people under the age of 40. I whispered to him, “What’s going on? We’re screwed tonight.” It’s a panel debate.

The first question is about whether a Jordanian Al-Qaeda supporter should be deported back to Jordan where he will be tortured. What argument do I make to this crowd who are Daily Mail readers, who applauded the question, made it very clear they wanted him out? If I come along and start saying, “Well, Amnesty…” I’ll do the voice, “Amnesty International in Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, universal dec…” none of that is going to work with this crowd. They don’t care about Amnesty International European Convention on Human Rights.

So what did I do? I told a story about being British and what it means to have the Magna Carta, what it means to have habeas corpus, why it’s part of my identity as someone who grew up in the UK as children of immigrants and why it doesn’t matter how repulsive that mullah or that, “sheikh” is, he deserves the protection of the same British liberties that we all have. And the crowd applauded, and I was like, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming.” You have to be able to talk in those terms if you’re going to, to go back to your point, persuade the unpersuadables. Now, did I change their minds? Who knows? But I certainly bonded with them, connected with them, engaged with them in that moment.

Part of the task, depending on what we’re talking about, I think you’re saying, despite the title of the book, you don’t have to win every argument in that moment the first time you have it. As we saw with same sex marriage and some other issues, building an understanding on the part of other people in your point of view over time can do a lot of things.

I want to talk about something that I mentioned to you that I really wanted to talk to you about in the green room. That is, as I picked up your book and began to read it, I was thinking to myself, there are some people you cannot have an argument with. There are some people you cannot debate. One of those people is Rudy Giuliani. I’ve seen him. I would sometimes follow him when I made appearances on cable news myself. He just makes up so many things, and he talks at such a brisk pace about things that weren’t asked about. He’s throwing facts at you. I really wanted to ask you about that phenomenon. Donald Trump does the same thing. Then, of course, I was very excited to see that there’s actually a term for that kind of debater. What’s the term for that kind of debater, and how do you deal with that kind of debater?

I wrote a chapter called Beware of the Gish Galloper.

Gish galloper.

The Gish gallop. There’s a man called Duane Gish, the late Duane Gish, passed away. He was a creationist, a Young Earth creationist, and he was the top creationist debater. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. If you go on YouTube, you can find many debates between evolutionists and creationists. It was a big thing for a while, especially in the ’90s on college campuses and big evangelical churches where a biochemist or evolutionary biologist would volunteer to debate with a creationist. He was the best on their team in vanquishing far more qualified, eminent scientists.

He didn’t do it because he had a greater grasp of science. He ran rings around them because he would basically overwhelm them with cherry-picked stats, out-of-context quotes, incomplete statements, misrepresented studies, but he would do it in such a way that he would throw a blizzard of these. He would deluge his opponent with these deflections, these distractions. The scientist, a) not being a great speaker, perhaps not being a professional debater, first of all, but number two, also just in the constraints of a formal debate with time limits and format could not rebut all the arguments, leading a “neutral audience” to be like, “Well, maybe the creationist has a point.” Because the scientist-

Because they’re not being responded to.

They didn’t rebut the 99 arguments he made.

Because it’s impossible.

It’s impossible.

It’s impossible, so what do you do in that circumstance? Is that a debate you walk away from?

It can be. It can be. There’s no silver bullet. Let’s be clear. There’s no silver bullet to deal with the Gish gallop. That’s why the Gish gallop is so scary and so effective and why Donald Trump used it to ride it all the way to the White House. Well, Eugenia Scott, who’s a scientist who coined the phrase Gish gallop, said don’t do formal debates with these people. Go on TV, radio where you get your say and there’s a moderator who can control it, but don’t do formal debates where they can just go uninterrupted. The point someone makes in the book, I can’t remember who I quote in the book, where somebody wrote about Duane Gish, who’s like, he would go from one town to another town and just repeat the same arguments that had been rebutted earlier because the new crowd wouldn’t know, especially in the pre-internet days.

So one option is choose the terms of your debate. What is the format? But even a moderator, I make the point in the book, how many of you saw the first presidential debate in 2020? Chris Wallace, who is a good interviewer, he is a good interviewer, he could not control Donald Trump in that.

He didn’t know about the Gish gallop.

He didn’t know. He wasn’t prepared for the Gish gallop. Donald Trump in two minutes, I think I say in the book, every nine seconds, Donald Trump threw a false statement or a falsehood or a nonsense statistic in a space of two minutes, dozens and dozens, and he couldn’t be controlled. What do you do in that scenario?

I say in the book, don’t give up all hope. There is a way to do it. There’s a three-step process, you’ll be shocked to hear, three parts. You’ll remember this because I’m saying three, trust me, you’re going to [inaudible 00:50:52] the three things that Mehdi said. The three-part structure is what you do when you’re faced with a Trump or a Giuliani or a Duane Gish is number one, you pick your battle. You cannot physically… The whole point is there’s no time. You cannot respond to 99 arguments. So pick the weakest, dumbest, most ludicrous argument that your opponent’s thrown at you and hone in on that and put all your energy into ridiculing that, mocking that, taking it apart so that the audience watching, again, remember, the aim is the audience watching, not the Gish galloper, can see that if that argument is so nonsensical and so easily rebutted, what does that say about the other arguments on offer? It’s called the weak point rebuttal. That’s one way of doing it. That’s just your first step.

Then the second step is don’t budge. This is a message to my colleagues in the US media, don’t budge when you’re doing an interview. Somebody throws out bunch of BS at you, Steve Bannon famously said, “Our opponents are not the Democratic Party. They’re the media, and the way you deal with the media is to flood the zone with shit.” That was his famous phrase. That’s what they’re doing. They’re flooding the zone with excrement. What do you do in that scenario? You don’t budge. They want you to move on to the next question. They want you to be overwhelmed by this blizzard of nonsense, not notice the nonsense, and move to your next topic. In a time-poor cable news environment with an ad break coming up, I say less is more. If you’re doing an interview, do three topics, not six topics, and focus on those three topics.

Or if the first topic is going poorly and a lot of stuff is being thrown out, skip the next two topics.

Skip it.

I’ve skipped many, many times.

So the example I-

That’s what lawyers do in the courtroom.

The example I give in the book is there’s a guy called Steve Rogers, not Captain America, sadly, who was a Trump advisor who I interviewed in 2018. It’s my pinned tweet for those of you want to watch the clip after this. It’s had, I think, 10 and a half million view, bizarrely. Because basically he was saying nonsense. He was echoing Trump’s nonsense.

My team and I, Al Jazeera English at the time, we decided to pick one issue that we really wanted to hone in. Trump had said at the time, as some of you remember, US Steel announced six new steel mills. Complete lie, all [inaudible 00:52:50] lie. US Steel said, “We didn’t announce any new steel mills.” The thing is Trump knows he’s going to get away because no one’s going to ask about it, what they do, whatever. So I asked him about it and he said, “Oh, well, there’ve been a lot of new steel…” “But have there been six new ones?” “Well, I don’t know. What he meant to say was…” “But six?” I wouldn’t budge. “Six. That’s a lie.” At one point he said to me, “Just move on,” because he just had never dealt with an interviewer who just wouldn’t move…. I said, no.

The president of the United States has been very responsive to the American people and the American people are doing well. Look, people-

That’s fine.

… could at me and say, “Steve Rogers lied.”

The American people can be doing well and the president can be a liar. There’s no contradiction between those two statements.

I am not going to say the President of the United States is a liar.

No, I know you’re not-

I’m not going to do that.

… but I’ve just put to you multiple lies and you’ve not been able to respond to any of them. Let me ask you this.

I did respond to them. What didn’t happen is you didn’t hear what you wanted to hear. That’s what didn’t happen.

What did I want to hear? I wanted to hear that there are no steel mills. You just made it them up.

You wanted to hear me say… No. Well, let’s go on.

I said, “You want me to move on because you know it’s a lie.” That’s the third part of the rebuttal, which is call it out. The best thing you can do when somebody is spreading bullshit is to step back and not engage with the bullshit. Point out to the people, “This is a strategy,” that what they’re doing is a Gish gallop. The Rand Corporation referring to Putin’s strategy calls it the firehose of falsehood. The Rand Corporation has this phrase, taking the metaphor to the extreme. When you’re faced with a firehose of falsehood, put raincoats on your audience, protect them. The way you do that is by pointing out, call it out.

Again, my friend, Jonathan Swan, now at the New York Times and of Axios, he did that brilliant Trump interview where he stood up to the Gish gallop. Trump wanted to just throw… Remember, Trump asks for pieces of paper. He was like, “Look at South Korea, look at Germany.” Most interviewers are going, “Okay, but I’ve got my next question.” Jonathan said, “Okay, let’s look at South Korea.” Trump’s like, shit. You can see on the shit, “I don’t know anything about South Korea.” Jonathan points out, “What are you talking about here?” Don’t budge. Call it out. Pick your battle. Those are three things you can do to beat the Gish gallop.

An example of that, and Jonathan Swan and I have had this conversation, and we teach this in cross-examination in court. Guy’s on the witness stand, you ask a simple question, “Did you drive your car to the park that morning?” He does the gallop and says all sorts of other stuff. Many questioners, lawyers, interviewers will rephrase the question. Don’t rephrase the question.

Yeah, yeah.

Wait till they’re done. You pause a beat. “Did you drive your car to the park that morning?” Again, they do all their nonsense. You ask it six times until they answer the question. I know you do that. Jonathan Swan does that. Not a lot of people do.

Jeremy Paxman, any of you who know the BBC, my kind of idol growing up was Jeremy Paxman, who was the host of Newsnight. If you go on YouTube tonight, he’s famous in British media history. He had Michael Howard, the home secretary, our attorney general in the UK, who had just fired a prison governor. It was a huge scandal in the mid ’90s. Paxman asked him the same question 14 times, “Did you fire [inaudible 00:55:46]?” and he went again and again. Here’s the funny part. It turns out after the years of plaudits, Jeremy Paxman, what a brilliant interview, years later, Paxman admits that basically the next guest had fallen through, and they just said, “Buy time.” He had the greatest interview of all time. He was just filling time on live TV.

Sometimes it’s not- Last question from me. How is it possible you didn’t go to law school? I mean, win every argument? You would’ve been a hell of a lawyer.

My wife is a lawyer. She’s often asked me that question. I mean, I considered it, I’ll be honest with you. No disrespect to you or my wife-

None taken in advance.

… but I remember thinking… If I did law, it would be criminal law. That’s the only law that would be… I’m not going to do corporate law, with respect to all the corporate lawyers in the room. I see one not far from me. If I did, it would be criminal law. And if I did criminal law, I’d have to either be a defense attorney and defend horrible people or be a prosecutor and prosecute innocent people. I don’t know. I had-

You don’t have to do the second thing.

Well, that may be a discussion for another night about the US criminal justice system. Look, my mother wishes I was a lawyer. You are Brown like me. You know that Brown mothers don’t recognize journalism as a proper career. My mother to this day would’ve rather I be an accountant or a doctor like her or a lawyer like you. She’s often said to me, “Why don’t you be a lawyer?” She’s asked me that question. I’ve had this question many a time. Even now I’m in my 40s, she still thinks journalism’s like an internship and I might grow out of it. So maybe law school, maybe I can go back to law school. Maybe if I get fired one day, I’ve got nothing else to do, I’ll-

It’s never too late.

… do the LSAT.

Now, as you folks know, I don’t usually venture into conversation about celebrities, but I want to end the show this week talking about something of a local celebrity in my hometown of New York. Maybe if you live in the area or pay attention to things like this, you’ve heard of who I’m talking about. He’s somewhat new on the scene and has certainly stirred up some drama in recent weeks.

I’m talking about Flaco, the owl. Flaco is no ordinary owl. He’s a Eurasian Eagle owl who was born and raised in captivity at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, that is, until February 2nd when his enclosure at the zoo was vandalized, and he was able to escape through the cut mesh. Off he went into the open skies of Central Park, an environment completely unfamiliar for the species. Once the zoo attendants noticed he was gone, a search began for the runaway bird of prey. They notified the New York City Police Department who actually responded to witnesses who saw him perched on Fifth Avenue. The NYPD couldn’t do anything, but they did tweet photos of Flaco with the caption, “Well, that was a hoot.”

The main concern of zoo staffers was that, because Flaco had spent most of his life in captivity, he wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild. Even in the Big Apple, he’d have to hunt for food and avoid dangers like predators and rat poison. His story spread throughout the city and beyond. People were concerned for this little guy’s safety and were anxious to see if he’d be able to cut it in a notoriously cutthroat city. But it turns out he was able to wing it. 10 days later, Flaco was already proving himself able to survive in the city wilderness. In a statement, zoo officials wrote, “We observed him successfully hunting, catching, and consuming prey. We have seen a rapid improvement in his flight skills and ability to confidently maneuver around the park.”

The zoo, under additional pressure from advocates, changed its stance from seeking to recapture Flaco to just monitoring him in the wild and mostly just being in awe of him. And there has been no shortage of people lining up to get a glimpse of the wide-eyed bird in the wild. Since he made his escape, crowds of dedicated bird watchers, tourists, and everyday New Yorkers have found themselves in Central Park watching Flaco protect his branch, or, if they’re lucky, enjoy an uptown dinner. The photos of him are beautiful. His multicolored feathers, orange eyes, and sharp ears stand out. He perches high up in the trees, round and regal.

As you can tell, his story is not only for bird enthusiasts. It struck the heart of so many people both in New York and elsewhere. Flaco’s is a story of freedom, of resilience, about someone who took a risk and figured it out along the way, like many New Yorkers. It’s a story about someone who’s just getting by in the big city, but works as hard as they can every day. And it’s about the zoo’s ability to let go, to see that even if they really wanted him home, he was ready to leave the nest. Godspeed, Flaco. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Mehdi Hasan. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara, with the #AskPreet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338, that’s 669-24-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shah, and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.