It is free for all Friday here on the Council of Trent podcast. And today I want to share with you

an interview that I had a little while ago with biblical bookworm. She has an awesome channel.

She puts a lot of effort into her content to talk about Catholicism, Christianity,

the faith. Highly recommend it. And she invited me on to talk about how to debate people without

losing your cool. And we were

reviewing a Protestant book that I read back in the day that really helped me to learn how to do

this called Tactics by Greg Kokel. One day I want to write the Catholic version of tactics at some

point. So we talked about that and I hope our conversation conversation identifies you. So check it out.

So maybe we could start with something that the book doesn't really talk about, and that's

the question, how to prepare for a debate? What could you say, what's necessary to do for people

who maybe have studied theology and some people who maybe don't know that much?

Sure. So being able to do well in a debate on theology or philosophy, let's say you're

debating an atheist on the existence of God or a Protestant on the nature of the papacy, what's

key there is both knowledge and skill set. So you want to know your position extremely well, and you also

want to know all of the possible objections to your position. You also want to know your opponent's

position very well, because they'll usually be arguing for or against something. You want to know

their position well, and the most powerful

objections against it. So there's a knowledge aspect that you want to be very well prepared,

just that the arguments aren't unfamiliar to you, that you're familiar, you've gone through them all.

And also there is a skill set that you have to develop, which is the ability to speak clearly and in a way

that is pleasant for people to hear and to understand what you're saying. So I've gotten advice

before for my friend Jimmy Aiken to put smile in your voice. So you want to be able to communicate

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