A philosopher's patient toolkit for thinking in divided times.
Kevin deLaplante spent two decades as an academic philosopher and now uses The Argument Ninja Podcast to explain how beliefs form, harden and drive people apart. Recent episodes cover theories of social polarization and how to reason about conspiracy theories, and one gives an unusually frank account of living with a stutter.
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The Argument Ninja Podcast rests on a simple conviction: reasoning well is a skill, and skills can be trained. Its host, Kevin deLaplante, spent 20 years as an academic philosopher before leaving a tenured job to make resources that help people think more critically and independently. He describes a 21st-century media environment that has grown hostile to that kind of thinking. The show works as his counterweight. Much of the recent material circles polarization. Why do cultural and political groups mistrust each other so deeply, and why does it seem to be getting worse? A multi-part series takes those questions slowly, one theory at a time. One installment looks at All Sides and its argument that narrowly filtered news, social media and search results leave people less informed and less tolerant. Another turns to Stenner, and the lesson there is as much about vocabulary as about politics. In her usage, 'authoritarian' names a personality disposition, measured with survey questions much like the Big Five traits, rather than a type of government. deLaplante argues that a complex-systems view predicts exactly this crowd of competing causal stories. Conspiracy theories get the same even-handed method. In archive audio from the Critical Thinker podcast, an earlier show of his from 2010 and 2011, he grants what is plausible about the moon hoax theory, including the Cold War pressure on NASA. Then he asks what else would have to be true for faked landings to stay secret for more than 40 years. Interviews break up the lecturing. In one, a four-way video conversation with the hosts of a street epistemology show, the talk turns to his fondness for simple diagrams, and he calls himself a frustrated cartoonist who once weighed illustration against science. Another, recorded for someone else's interview show, covers tribalism, emotional intelligence and why someone who changes their view after seeing more of a story can draw backlash from both sides. The most striking episode is the least academic. deLaplante talks candidly about stuttering: names are hard because they cannot be substituted, he could say hamburger but not quarter pounder at a teenage McDonald's job, and physics terms like kinetic energy were out of reach in class. He is just as open about promising things in public and failing to deliver, including long gaps between episodes. Some episodes also carry announcements about the Argument Ninja Dojo, which he invites people to sign up for. For the method, start with the polarization episodes. For the person behind it, start with the stutter episode.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes careful, lecture-style explanation and wants practical tools for reasoning about polarized debates, conspiracy claims and their own beliefs.
What sets it apart: It pairs a trained philosopher's habit of defining terms before arguing with unusual personal candor, so a close reading of polarization research sits comfortably beside a frank account of living with a stutter.
The Argument Ninja podcast is dedicated to helping you improve your skills at rational persuasion. Let philosopher Kevin deLaplante introduce you to a unique approach to critical thinking, inspired by martial arts training principles, that combines logic and argumentation with the latest research on the psychology of persuasion and belief.
Socratic questioning gives your confident opinion an argument matrix, including branches you hoped to ignore.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A thoughtful interview on why changing your mind can look suspicious in a tribal culture.
Tribal loyalty becomes a measure of emotional intelligence in this reflective Argument Ninja Podcast interview with Kevin DeLaPlante, first recorded by Brittany Nicole Conner-Savarta for Living and Leading with Emotional Intelligence.
A candid return turns a seven-month pause into a grounded reflection on stuttering and public promises.
After seven months away from the podcast, Kevin de la Plante returns with a candid account of what stalled the show and what he has been testing in his business.
A careful primer on how personality traits can clarify patterns in social polarization.
Episode 36 of The Argument Ninja Podcast treats social polarization as a question of interpretation: what does it mean to understand a complex social pattern shaped by animosity and mistrust between cultural and political groups?
A street epistemology discussion on persuasion, academic respect, and keeping thought independent under tribal pressure.
Kevin DeLamont builds the episode around a roughly one-hour conversation with the hosts of a street epistemology podcast, treating critical thinking less as a private virtue than as a social skill bound up with persuasion, identity, and academic life.
A measured look at how All Sides connects polarization to filter bubbles and one-sided media habits.
Episode 34 of The Argument Ninja Podcast gives polarization a measured opening frame, with Kevin Dulla-Plante separating evolved tribal psychology from polarization itself.
Keeping your own mind sharp in the age of ChatGPT.
Héctor and Beto dissect Mexican grammar, slang, and news in native-speed Spanish conversations.
Small habit changes meet hands-on AI experiments.
Kevin de la Plante says most of the knowledge people use is outside their heads, carried by books, the internet, other people, and culture.
The Argument Ninja Podcast episode 37 returns after a seven-month gap, and Kevin de la Plante says the last episode aired at the end of August 2019.
Episode 36 of The Argument Ninja Podcast treats social polarization as a critical-thinking problem about a multi-factorial, multi-scalar phenomenon.
Kevin DeLaplante opens episode 35 of The Argument Ninja Podcast by defining rational persuasion as the bridge between good reasoning and social influence.
Kevin Dulla-Plante uses episode 34 of the Argument Ninja Podcast to argue that depolarization work should start with diagnosis, not treatment.
Kevin DeLaPlante revisits three Critical Thinker podcast episodes from 2010-2011 about when conspiracy theories should be preferred over official accounts.
Kevin de la Plante’s “When Tribalism Becomes Pathological” examines how affect bias, cultural cognition, availability bias, the mere exposure effect, and the focusing illusion shape polarized political judgment.
Kevin Delapointe explains why The Argument Ninja Podcast returned after September, citing more than 100 cartoon drawings, a keynote talk for Houston Community College, and consulting work through Lenker Consulting.
Kevin De La Plante of The Argument Ninja Podcast answers parents’ questions about helping children such as Michelle’s 13-year-old daughter and Asher, a 12-and-a-half-year-old karate student, become better critical thinkers.
Kevin de la Plante and Bob Frelick define tribalism as meaningful group identification that creates “us” and “them” judgments across politics, religion, hobbies, and culture.
Kevin de la Plante explains how a $25,000 Canadian tax bill, three simultaneous audits, and a consumer proposal changed his finances after leaving Iowa State University.
Kevin de la Plante examines Jordan Peterson’s criticism of feminism, Marxism, postmodernism, and Canadian Bill C-16 through his 35 years of university experience.
Kevin de La Plante’s The Argument Ninja Podcast episode “Why Tribal Literacy?” connects critical thinking to tribal psychology, polarization, and collective intelligence.
Kevin DeLaPlante explains why the Argument Ninja Academy treats critical thinking as a literal martial art rather than merely borrowing martial-arts language.
The Argument Ninja Podcast episode 022 republishes Kevin de la Plante’s interview on Thinking Clearly with hosts Bob Freilich and Julia Minton.
Kevin DeLapont examines Sam Harris’s interview with Scott Adams about Donald Trump, contrasting Harris’s emphasis on evidence and intellectual virtues with Adams’s persuasion-based interpretations.
Kevin de la Plante recounts a June visit from Ottawa to Shidian University in Xi’an, where Dr.
Kevin Dilloplont compares dual-process models from Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, and Joshua Greene, emphasizing that they are related theories rather than one universal account of cognition.
Kevin de la Plante tells Jason Vidari how studying physics led him to philosophy and how 16 years teaching in academia preceded his work as an independent educator.
Kevin de la Plante’s “The Tao of Socrates” covers the third and fourth White Belt modules in Argument Ninja: Socratic Knowledge and Socratic Persuasion.
Kevin de la Plante outlines the four modules of the Argument Ninja white belt curriculum and focuses on the first two: program orientation and argument analysis.
Kevin de la Plante uses the white-belt experience in martial arts to design the Argument Ninja training program for rational persuasion.
Kevin de La Plante argues that curiosity-driven learning builds an interconnected knowledge web that is more durable and usable than rote memorization, which can produce test scores 30% lower after only three days.
Kevin de la Plante explains why the Critical Thinker Academy currently functions as a multimedia textbook rather than a teacher-student environment with practice, evaluation, and feedback.
Kevin de la Plante examines Scott Adams’s claim that Donald Trump won through masterful persuasion techniques resembling Ericksonian hypnosis.
Kevin Dillapant explains how the Argument Ninja Podcast grew from his earlier Critical Thinker podcast and a six-year shift toward studying unconscious reasoning, persuasion, literacy, and real-world critical thinking.
Kevin de la Plante explains how to build an argument matrix by reconstructing arguments, objections, and replies across a debate.
Kevin de la Plante’s Argument Ninja Podcast episode 9 introduces the Argument Matrix, a model for judging whether background knowledge is sufficiently argumentative in depth and breadth.