How to Win an Argument

Towards the end of last year, I was approached by a company called Listenable that produces audio courses built around ten or so podcast-like lectures, each of which are around 5-10 minutes in length.  While most of the teaching I’ve done on this subject had a little more room to breathe, this format is comparable in length to teaching I’ve done with high-school students and some adult learners, so I decided to pick up the gauntlet and give it a try. 

The results are in – or “on” as in “online” – with this week’s release of How to Win an Argument on the Listenable platform.  The course includes 13 lessons (the first of which you can listen to for free) and covers topics ranging from logic, argumentation, modes of persuasion, rhetoric and controlling for bias – all of the skills I’ve taught in the past, in a single set of efficient audio recordings.

Giving Listenable a Try

Listenable has hundreds of courses, many of them focusing on areas of self-improvement (and what better way is there to improve oneself than learning to think clearly?).  While it’s a new venue for someone who has focused most of his work within academia, it’s become clear that the mission to improve critical-thinking skills – especially in adults who may not benefit if projects like high-leverage critical-thinking teaching practices catch on in K-12 or higher education – needs to expand to venues where adults interested in learning and self-improvement are looking for answers.

Now I’ll fess up and let you know that Listenable is a paying proposition, one in which I earn a share of quarterly revenues based on minutes listened to by subscribers.  The program is subscription-based, and if you sign up using this link, I’ll also make a few cents based on an affiliate marketing program they asked me to join. 

This may seem like a departure, given that most of the work I’ve shared with people over the years (except for published books with a price tag) has been free, but I prefer this mechanism to raising funds for my general mission to improve critical-thinking for all, rather than adding a donation button to my sites or going the crowdfunding route (at least until I’ve got a concrete project to fundraise around).

So if you’d like to support this work, and learn something important while you do, sign up for a Listenable account (again, through this affiliate link) and please send me feedback on whether you think the concept works (and forward it to friends if you think it does).