It Stands to Reason

“Because I said so,” may be an excellent way to settle an argument between you and a four-year-old, and it’s the perfect capper to a comedy act. Hey, it might even work on the O’Reilly Factor, if you happen to be O’Reilly. But if you’re trying to build a case to convince an adult of your point of view, you might need to build a slightly stronger case for yourself.

LSAT Logic in Everyday Life will help.

I tried to take a logic class once—it involved a lot of hypothetical pizzas in boxes that may have been cheese or they may not have been cheese. Only Schrödinger knew.

There were many equations and every single one was dull, because I could see no way that I would ever care so much about a pizza, cheese or not.

Thankfully, this is not the case with LSAT Logic. It’s a podcast that anyone can appreciate, even without an impending test.

The host, Andrew Brody, skillfully parses the arguments made on each side of a single topical issue—video games and violent behavior, religion in politics, same-sex marriage. Correlation≠causation might be just one more bullet on a professor’s Powerpoint, but when it’s applied to the news story about Georgia’s governor praying for rain on the Capitol steps during a devastating drought, it becomes remarkably compelling, no matter how you feel about the topic.

Don’t plan on bringing your partisan politics to the table, because you’ll be disappointed every time. He’s like a surgeon, deftly excising good logic from bad, pointing out imperfect arguments and poorly drawn conclusions on all sides of the debate. Thankfully, he’s also brief: he exposes flawed logic in common arguments in ten minutes or less. Amazingly, he does it all without seeming like an ass. (Although the podcast that dissects the logic employed by beauty pageant contestants seems like an awfully easy target.)

LSAT Logic might be just the thing you need to help you build an argument for a promotion you’ve been angling for, or it might just help you parry successfully with your crazy uncle Louie at Thanksgiving dinner. And if you ask me, both of those are pretty valuable.