Michael: The best way to win an argument is to refuse to have one. That sounds like a paradox, right? But it’s the key to dismantling even the most stubborn, wrong-headed opinions in a world that feels like it’s gone completely off the rails. Kevin: Refuse to have one? My first thought is that sounds like giving up. How on earth does that help you 'be right'? If you walk away, the other person just thinks they've won. Michael: Ah, but you don't walk away. You stay, and you deploy a kind of conversational jujitsu. This is the central idea in the fantastic book we're diving into today, How To Be Right… in a world gone wrong by James O’Brien. Kevin: James O’Brien. I know that name. He’s a big deal in British media, right? Michael: Exactly. And O'Brien is in a unique position to write this. He’s a British radio host who has spent nearly two decades taking live, unscripted calls from the public on his LBC show. He’s essentially turned his daily job into a real-time laboratory for public opinion, testing these ideas day in, day out. Kevin: So this isn't just some academic in an ivory tower. This is someone who has been in the trenches of public debate for years. Michael: Precisely. And his core discovery is that the most powerful tool you have isn't a better fact or a louder voice. It's a simple, quiet question. He argues that you don't need to prove your own rightness; you just need to gently ask the other person to explain theirs. And that, Kevin, is usually where the entire argument beautifully, and sometimes tragically, falls apart.

Kevin: Okay, I'm intrigued by this 'conversational jujitsu' idea. It sounds good in theory, but I need a concrete example. How does this actually play out with someone who's genuinely angry and completely convinced they're right? We've all been in those conversations. Michael: O'Brien provides so many, and they are just riveting. His method is to never counter-claim. He just keeps asking these very simple, non-confrontational questions. Questions like, "Why do you think that?" or "Can you give me a specific example of how that's affected you personally?" Kevin: That sounds almost too simple. I feel like most people would just get defensive. Michael: You'd think so, but it’s all in the delivery. It’s not an interrogation; it’s an expression of genuine curiosity. And it works because most people, especially those with very strong, emotionally-charged opinions, have never actually been asked to build the logical bridge from their feeling to a fact. They just know they're angry. O'Brien tells this incredible story about a caller he calls 'Bob from Colchester'. Kevin: Alright, let's hear about Bob. Michael: So Bob calls in, and he is furious. He accuses O'Brien of being a typical, out-of-touch, middle-class liberal, insulated in his wealthy London bubble, completely oblivious to the real-world negative effects of immigration that people like him have to suffer. Kevin: Okay, a classic opening salvo. I can picture it. The instinct is to immediately defend yourself, right? To say, "No, I'm not!" Michael: That's the instinct. But O'Brien does the opposite. He agrees with part of the premise. He says, "You might be right, Bob. So help me understand. Tell me, how has immigration negatively affected your life specifically?" Kevin: Ah, I see. He's not fighting. He's inviting. Michael: Exactly. And Bob is a bit thrown. He starts with the usual talking points. "Well, the schools are full! The hospitals are at a breaking point!" O'Brien just gently asks, "Okay, but have you, Bob, personally had trouble getting your child into a local school?" Bob admits, well, no, his kids are grown up. "Okay," O'Brien continues, "Have you personally had a long wait at the hospital or couldn't get a doctor's appointment?" Again, Bob concedes that, no, he hasn't really had that experience himself. Kevin: You can feel the ground starting to crumble under him. He has all this conviction, but it's not connected to his own life. So where does he go from there? Michael: This is the best part. O'Brien keeps pressing, very calmly, "So just give me one example, Bob. One way your own, personal, day-to-day life has been made worse by immigration." There's a long pause on the line. And then Bob, with complete sincerity, says he can't get to the tills at his local supermarket. Kevin: He can't get to the tills? As in, the checkout counter? That's his definitive proof of national decline? Michael: That's his proof. O'Brien, still calm, asks why. And Bob says, "Because of all the immigrants." The conversation just hangs there. Bob's grand political grievance, the source of all his anger, boils down to the fact that his local shop is a bit busy. Kevin: Wow. That is both hilarious and deeply sad. It perfectly illustrates your point. His opinion wasn't built on experience at all. It was built on... what? Headlines? What he heard from a friend in the pub? Michael: It's built on a narrative sold to him. O'Brien's genius is showing that the conviction is 100% real, but the factual foundation is 0%. The person has simply never been asked to connect the two. And when they are, with a simple, non-judgmental question, the whole edifice collapses into absurdity. It reveals that the anger is real, but the target is imagined.

Kevin: That story about Bob is so telling. And it leads directly to the bigger question: if Bob's anger isn't based on his own life, where is it coming from? You said it was a narrative sold to him. I want to know who the salesman is. Michael: And that's the second, and maybe more profound, part of O'Brien's book. He pulls back the curtain on the machinery that manufactures these bad opinions. He argues they aren't just random personal failings; they are products, created and distributed for profit and political gain. And he gives this absolutely jaw-dropping example from his own past as a journalist. Kevin: Okay, I'm ready. Let's see behind the curtain. Michael: O'Brien used to work at the Daily Express, a major British newspaper. For years, the paper, under its proprietor Richard Desmond, relentlessly pushed the narrative that immigration was driving down the wages of ordinary British workers. It was their bread and butter. Headline after headline, column after column, all hammering this one point. Kevin: A familiar story. Blame the outsider for economic problems. It's a tale as old as time. Michael: But here is the twist. O'Brien reveals that while the newspaper was propagating this myth, the very journalists writing the articles, the ones typing out the words "immigrants are suppressing your pay," had their own pay frozen by the company. For nearly nine years, from 2008 to 2017, they received a pay rise of precisely zero. Kevin: Hold on, let me get this straight. The people writing 'immigrants are taking your money' were, in reality, having their money taken by their own billionaire boss? Michael: That's it. During that same period, the company was reporting pre-tax profits in the hundreds of millions of pounds. The proprietor was enriching himself while telling his employees to blame foreigners for their stagnant wages. It is hypocrisy on a scale that is almost breathtaking. Kevin: That's not just hypocrisy, that's a business model. It's a masterclass in misdirection. You create a scapegoat to distract your workforce from the fact that you are the one exploiting them. It's diabolical. Michael: It's the perfect scapegoat! And O'Brien points out it's often a one-two punch. At the same time these papers demonize immigrants, they also demonize trade unions. So, you persuade people that their problems are caused by foreigners, and you also persuade them that the primary tool for improving their own working conditions—collective bargaining—is dangerous and unpatriotic. Kevin: So when O'Brien is on the radio talking to a caller like Bob from Colchester, he's not just talking to one man with a strange idea about supermarkets. He's talking to the end-product of this entire, cynical, and very profitable machine of misinformation. Michael: Exactly. He's talking to someone who has been conned. And that's why his method is so important. He's not trying to defeat an enemy; he's trying to liberate a hostage. He's trying to help them see the bars of the cage they've been put in.

Kevin: You know, that completely reframes the whole book for me. It’s titled How To Be Right, which sounds a bit arrogant on the surface. It's one of the things critics sometimes point out, that O'Brien can come across as condescending. But listening to this, the title feels almost ironic. Michael: It is. The book isn't a manual for being a smug know-it-all. It's a guide to understanding that many of the 'wrong' opinions we encounter aren't born from malice or stupidity. They are the logical endpoint of a deliberate, well-funded, and often profitable campaign of misinformation. Kevin: So the 'how to be right' part is actually about helping someone else see the architecture of their own wrongness. It’s less about being a debater and more about being a... a demolition expert, but one who just gently taps on the walls with a question until the person inside sees for themselves that the house is empty. Michael: A demolition expert with a question mark instead of a sledgehammer. I love that analogy. And O'Brien is the first to admit it doesn't always work. The book is filled with successes, but he's also honest about the times he fails, the people who are unreachable, who just hang up or resort to abuse. Kevin: Which is realistic. Some people don't want to be liberated from their anger. It gives them a sense of purpose. Michael: True. But his core argument is that empathy and logic are not opposites. You can use gentle, logical questioning to guide someone back to a reality that's based on their own life, not a headline. It's about restoring a person's connection to their own experience. Kevin: That leaves me with a really powerful question to reflect on. The next time I'm in one of those frustrating conversations, whether it's online or at a family dinner, is my goal to win? Or is it to genuinely understand why the other person believes what they do? Just that simple shift in intent changes everything. It moves you from combat to curiosity. Michael: A perfect takeaway. And a challenge for all of us. The next time you're faced with an opinion that makes your blood boil, try to resist the urge to state your own case. Just ask "why?" and see what happens. You might be surprised. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.