Biography

Mehdi Raza Hasan was born in Swindon, England, in 1979 to Shia Muslim parents from Hyderabad, India, and grew up in Harrow, in outer North West London. He read PPE at Christ Church, Oxford, and built a career in British broadcasting before moving to the United States.

He hosted UpFront and Head to Head for Al Jazeera English, wrote for the Huffington Post and The Intercept, and in October 2020 launched The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock, which moved to MSNBC in February 2021. The show was cancelled in November 2023 for reasons the network never clearly explained, at a moment when Hasan was among the most prominent broadcast voices criticizing Israel's conduct in Gaza. He left the network shortly afterward.

In February 2024 he announced Zeteo — from the ancient Greek for seeking out — and launched it that April. It has since grown to more than 450,000 newsletter subscribers, over 50,000 paying members, and a YouTube channel approaching two million subscribers, with an estimated $3.9 million in annual revenue as of 2025. He continues to write a column for The Guardian and to host Head to Head.

Hasan is the best-selling author of Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking (2023) and is widely regarded as one of the most formidable interviewers working in English-language broadcast — a reputation built on adversarial, meticulously researched questioning of politicians in both parties.

Zeteo & Independent Media

Zeteo is one of the clearest proofs of concept for subscriber-funded independent media on the left. Built from scratch after a corporate cancellation, it now employs nine editors and fourteen contributors and reaches an audience that rivals cable programs — without advertisers or a parent network able to pull the plug.

Its flagship programs — Mehdi Unfiltered, We're Not Kidding, and Mehdi & Friends — publish several times a week. Hasan has used the platform to press on Gaza, on U.S. foreign policy, and on the failures of legacy media, and to host long-form conversations with figures including The Lever's David Sirota on corporate capture of American politics.

'Zeteo is here to stay, I am here to stay, and the truth — whether it's about genocide abroad or fascism at home — will not be silenced,' he said in a widely shared 2025 speech in Washington.

Independent media
Gaza & foreign policy
Accountability
Adversarial interviews
Anti-imperialism
Media literacy

In the press