The Art of Manliness - Toastmasters, Aristotle, and the Essential Art of Rhetoric

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.840 when john bow learned that his reclusive cousin who had lived for decades in his parents basement

00:00:15.560 had moved out and gotten married at the age of 59 john was extremely surprised what made him

00:00:21.040 equally surprised was how his cousin had finally launched his life it hadn't been meds or therapy

00:00:25.840 instead he joined his local toastmasters club duly intrigued john set off on his own toastmasters

00:00:32.380 journey as he details in his book i have something to say mastering the art of public speaking in an

00:00:37.600 age of disconnection today on the show john shares how he discovered that the ethos of this

00:00:41.900 non-profit organization parallels the tradition of rhetoric espoused by the ancient greeks

00:00:46.260 especially by aristotle and why the ability to speak whether in the context of giving a formal

00:00:51.100 speech or simply having a conversation continues to be such an essential skill in the modern age

00:00:55.920 in my favorite part of the show we discuss how our ideas of authentic speech can actually get in the

00:01:00.800 way of expressing our authentic selves we then turn into techniques for better speaking that john learned

00:01:05.520 from joining toastmasters and how toastmasters ultimately transformed his own life after show's

00:01:10.620 over check out our show notes at aom.is slash toastmasters all right john bow welcome to the show

00:01:33.200 thanks brett i'm very very excited to be here so uh you wrote a book called i have something to say

00:01:39.760 mastering the art of public speaking in an age of disconnection and this book is part memoir part

00:01:46.700 experiential journalism and also just showing research about public speaking and specifically

00:01:53.140 how toastmasters teaches the art of public speaking and you went through the whole process there i'm

00:01:59.820 curious what led you to joining a toastmasters group and doing a deep dive into the art of public

00:02:06.140 speaking i should preface anything i would say by saying that my whole life i hated public speaking

00:02:12.700 i hated the idea of anyone learning to do public speaking or anyone teaching me to do public speaking

00:02:18.240 i just thought it was the most artificial or phony or stinted kind of thing you could do

00:02:23.680 so what led me to discover the subject or find a different way into it was a total accident

00:02:30.860 in about 2009 i was doing an oral history about love and i interviewed a step cousin of mine who

00:02:39.520 was a recluse in rural iowa and he had lived in his parents basement until he was 59 and then he got

00:02:47.040 married and so everyone in my family would kind of snidely gossip about him and wonder what in the

00:02:53.080 world had happened so when i became a journalist and i was doing this oral history i asked him

00:02:59.940 dude how did you go from being a guy who plays with a model train set in your basement to someone who

00:03:05.980 could be married and i just assumed that he had gone to therapy or seen a shrink or gotten on meds or

00:03:12.380 something something psychiatric and instead he said i joined the toastmasters club i was told they're a

00:03:20.260 very nice place to meet people and somehow he had joined toastmasters and he wasn't even a great

00:03:27.520 toastmaster he gave six speeches or something and he somehow was transformed enough by that experience

00:03:34.540 to then begin talking to women or the woman who would eventually become his wife and i just thought

00:03:41.100 this guy converted from being totally offline socially to get back into the mainstream of public

00:03:47.980 life of social life without psychiatric intervention without psychiatric methods and it was purely this act of

00:03:54.660 joining a civic group and learning to speak that performed this miracle so i was really intrigued

00:04:01.480 i started thinking about his experience and toastmasters and i started researching toastmasters here and there

00:04:07.440 and i started realizing oh they have this whole way of teaching people to speak and this is a thing

00:04:13.740 and it goes back to this greek invention of speech training and i started becoming intrigued by the fact that

00:04:20.520 the greeks invented speech training about 10 minutes after they invented democracy and it tied into all

00:04:27.740 these things that i was really concerned about like you know the partisan war going on in america in general

00:04:34.460 alienation people being very disconnected socially these days and people being very divided and all these

00:04:41.600 trends like you know civic engagement declining people's trust in public institutions declining so i had this

00:04:48.520 aha moment where i realized god if you could tie all of these things together it's almost all connected

00:04:53.660 to our lack of speech training because when you learn how to speak you learn how to connect with people

00:05:00.620 and if you don't learn how to speak you kind of by default get disconnected from people

00:05:05.680 no so that's interesting i want to talk more about the consequences of us not teaching public speaking or

00:05:11.720 rhetoric but before we do let's talk about toastmasters in general i think a lot of people

00:05:15.380 have probably heard of toastmasters maybe they had a friend talk about toastmasters what is the

00:05:21.680 history of toastmasters like who formed it why do they form it and what's the state of the organization

00:05:25.960 today toastmasters was founded in 1924 by a guy named ralph c smedley who was a director at the ymca

00:05:34.300 director of adult education programs and in the 1920s you were seeing this huge migration of farm

00:05:41.420 people rural people moving into cities because farm work was becoming mechanized so at one time

00:05:47.980 something like 80 percent of americans were employed doing farm work or related work suddenly

00:05:52.740 all of those jobs went away so these people who lived in small communities where people knew each

00:05:58.260 other by reputation suddenly had to move to cities and have meetings in big large growing companies and

00:06:05.380 corporations and most of them sucked at it and were terrified by it so this smedley guy realized what

00:06:11.860 a big favor he could do to help people learn how to do it because it was stunting their personal life

00:06:18.860 and their work life and he played at it a couple times with versions of it that didn't work before he came

00:06:25.280 up with the iteration that finally became toastmasters but he envisioned it as a laboratory of free speech

00:06:32.280 where people could come and bring anything that they needed to work on in their work life or private life

00:06:38.240 you know wedding speeches funeral speeches and stuff and run them by their fellow fellow citizens so it was

00:06:45.640 from the very beginning a non-profit club where people could kind of go at their own speed and he really

00:06:53.240 emphasized this learn by doing approach it's not highly theoretical there's not a ton of reading you just keep

00:06:59.940 doing it and practicing these isolated technical components of speech and then you get evaluated by

00:07:06.320 your fellows oh and then what's the state of the organization today i mean i'm i imagine it was

00:07:11.360 probably really big middle of the 20th century has membership declined or has it held pretty steady

00:07:16.420 well membership worldwide is bigger than it's ever been the club grew in popularity i'm not sure if it

00:07:25.500 peaked or what's going on with us membership i think it's doing okay after a dip but globally it's there are more

00:07:32.380 members than there have ever been there are clubs in most countries around the world and you know again

00:07:39.240 there's a non-profit and it's pretty they meet in you know you guys met in a grocery store

00:07:44.220 lobby area they meet in libraries it's like salt of the earth civic from the ground up type of organization

00:07:52.160 i mean i wrote and i wrote and i had to take so much of it out of the book but i was fascinated by

00:07:58.440 the spaces where toastmasters meet because if you think about american life everything's become so

00:08:04.240 privatized and there's this whole underground network of spaces that are public or quasi public

00:08:10.760 where clubs like this are still meeting and there's still this kind of world going on that's very uncool

00:08:16.560 unhip and it's not featured in the media but we met in the community room of the byerly's grocery store

00:08:22.840 in st louis park minnesota and there are community rooms like this all over the country and i've seen

00:08:29.020 other toastmasters chapters meeting on air force bases and chamber of commerce offices places like that

00:08:36.940 that you kind of never think of yes this is a very like a toquevellian democratic self-improvement

00:08:43.100 society the officers aren't getting paid to do this they just everyone just shows up because they

00:08:48.080 really believe in this idea of helping people improve their public speaking and you talk about

00:08:52.480 how it seems like what the toastmasters are doing is they are carrying on the legacy of rhetoric or

00:08:58.660 rhetorical education that the ancient greeks and romans used you talk about how the greeks pretty

00:09:04.640 much invented rhetoric shortly after they invented democracy because rhetoric was what allowed you to

00:09:10.440 participate in democracy it's not like our sort of democracy where you know we just go vote and

00:09:16.940 that's pretty much it democracy in athens was very if you're going to participate you had to get up

00:09:21.820 there and talk and speech and persuade what was the rhetorical education like in ancient greece and

00:09:27.760 rome and then maybe we talk about why did we stop teaching that systematically in the west

00:09:33.640 so after they invented democracy it immediately became necessary for the people who were citizens

00:09:40.640 to speak in public so before the invention of democracy it was illegal it was prohibited activity

00:09:46.120 and suddenly it became required activity for a lot of people and even when you weren't required to do it 0.64

00:09:51.400 you still kind of had to do it because if you were bad at it people thought you were uncool and lame 0.93

00:09:56.380 and didn't want to do business with you and didn't want to marry you 0.96

00:09:59.060 and so really you had to go to these forums and talk about should we invade sparta or not

00:10:04.740 and if you were lame at it like that was it no one took you seriously another thing that happened

00:10:10.900 with the invention of democracy were trials the invention of a trial by a jury of your peers and

00:10:16.580 back then trials were like gladiatorial matches and there was no procedural process really you could

00:10:24.920 accuse anybody of anything and then suddenly you'd have to go to court and there would be anywhere from

00:10:29.480 200 to 1500 plebs and they'd be drunk and eating and laughing and jeering and so you and your accuser 0.94

00:10:37.280 would just sort of battle it out verbally and again if you lost or if you were bad at public speaking

00:10:43.460 which most people were just like now you could lose your house and your flock of sheep and whatever

00:10:49.020 property you had and so in the middle of all that this lawyer in sicily wrote like a short manual

00:10:57.820 teaching people how to conduct themselves during trials and it was just this basic thing saying here's

00:11:03.700 where you stand here's when you shut up here's how you should present your case and in a weird way

00:11:10.660 it was really the first time anybody had ever stepped back from the daily act of speaking

00:11:15.620 and apply theory to it and apply rules to it and realize oh you know when you look at people when

00:11:23.140 you talk they believe you more than if you don't or if you break your jokes or your stories into three

00:11:28.720 parts somehow they make more sense than if you don't why is that what are the rules for good

00:11:34.340 speech what are the things about speech that make it not work and so suddenly it was like splitting the

00:11:40.000 atom open or something this thing that no one had ever thought about suddenly became the source of

00:11:44.840 incredible power and schools spread it up all over athens with philosophers and teachers rushing in

00:11:50.140 to teach different angles of speech like how to do introductions or just logical ways to defend

00:11:57.920 yourself in an argument there are like eight or 12 different paths you can take or something

00:12:02.340 people exploited stuff like verb tense and there are these crazy little language hacks that you could

00:12:07.980 take advantage of and most of us know some of it but we've never been taught all of it and we've never

00:12:14.320 been taught just you know rigorously drilled at it so very quickly it became the most popular subject

00:12:21.040 everyone realized that in a world of democracy talking is the main weapon we use every day in

00:12:26.720 everyday life to get ahead and to get influence and so in the end it wasn't called communication

00:12:34.740 or public speaking it was called rhetoric and the definition of rhetoric was the study of all

00:12:40.240 available means of persuasion and so at some point there are you know dozens or hundreds of different

00:12:45.820 schools in athens and aristotle comes along and in a typical aristotelian way writes the one book

00:12:52.540 the one comprehensive systematic analysis of rhetoric and he's just you know aristotle is insane just

00:13:00.340 everything he does like this is it this is the one way that you can see this issue and he said this is

00:13:05.860 what rhetoric is this is what it's useful for this is why you need to know it and he kind of carved out

00:13:11.540 these rules and theories of what it is and ever since then those were the basis those were the core

00:13:17.120 of all western education for about 1800 years 2000 years but from the beginning of rhetoric there were 0.79

00:13:24.660 people who said why do we need to learn this this is kind of like the art of bullshit this is like the

00:13:30.260 art of spinning the truth why should anyone who speaks the truth need to spin it and plato for 0.86

00:13:38.440 example wrote two treatises against rhetoric saying this is a false art this is a black art and aristotle

00:13:45.620 had been plato's student and aristotle was the one who really refuted that and said look in a world of

00:13:51.820 crazy people and in a world where people are really irrational and don't pay attention to facts you need to

00:13:58.160 learn how to deal with that you need to learn how to be persuasive so that the good ideas can sort of

00:14:03.380 rise like cream to the top and he said something very daunting very challenging aristotle said that

00:14:10.240 ideas that are true and ideas that are good should be easier to prove than their opposites so if people

00:14:18.000 who have the bad ideas or people who are lying win and they prevail against the first group of people

00:14:25.080 then the first group of people have only themselves to blame they should have learned how to present

00:14:29.700 their case better and so if you think about anyone who ever worked in an office environment

00:14:34.480 where the loud person or the interrupter or the charismatic person always wins out over the smart

00:14:41.100 person you think about that you think well smart person you're supposed to learn how to be more

00:14:46.240 persuasive it's on you anyway so this argument about whether rhetoric is good or not persisted really

00:14:53.700 throughout its entire life and while it was hugely important for people to learn it always had its

00:14:59.840 detractors and about two or three hundred years ago there were a series of things that kind of chipped

00:15:05.280 away at it and i would say that number one was science and the scientific approach to everything where we

00:15:11.620 started prioritizing what i call hard knowledge or hard skills over rhetoric which is sort of the mother

00:15:18.320 of all soft skills and then yeah i mean you could see throughout the renaissance rhetoric was an

00:15:23.560 important part of a man's education but even you saw rhetoric as part of a college curriculum when you

00:15:30.000 became a freshman you had to take rhetoric at a lot of the colleges up until about you know the

00:15:35.920 early part of the 19th century and then you saw it kind of go away we stopped doing that and you make

00:15:43.180 the case that not only is this making us just bad at public speaking and people will be like well who cares

00:15:47.700 if i'm bad at public speaking if i sit at a computer and just type in data in a spreadsheet why does it be

00:15:52.820 good at public speaking but one of the bigger cases you're making in this book and you alluded to it earlier

00:15:57.620 is that you think that our lack of rhetorical education the the education of how to speak publicly with

00:16:05.940 others could be one of the causes of the disconnect we're seeing in our culture not only with the

00:16:11.240 political rancor but also just people feeling lonely alienated just all that stuff you hear about in

00:16:17.620 news articles all the time you think maybe the lack of public speaking education is contributing to

00:16:23.540 that how so i grew up with zero zero sense that public speaking is a thing and so as i grew older and

00:16:31.540 got weirder and more not introverted but just i read a lot i read a lot of religious books and

00:16:37.760 philosophy books and stuff like that and i felt like i couldn't connect with anyone and those ideas

00:16:43.560 for me were just sort of private i guess i got this idea as i grew older that these ideas were 0.94

00:16:49.560 inexpressible and people are too dumb to understand me or the flip side of that is i'm too dumb 0.82

00:16:56.220 to express myself and i just grew up kind of thinking well that's normal that's how life is 0.98

00:17:01.000 and if i had had this training i would have learned oh you can express anything you just have to

00:17:06.760 do the work like there's a skill set here and even though i'm a writer and i learned how to put that

00:17:11.860 stuff into writing i had a huge divide between what i could write and what i could say and i think

00:17:18.640 without wanting to stretch that too far i think most people grow up thinking i can't express myself

00:17:25.040 no one's listening if i bump into the slightest bit of conflict it's going to be horrible it's going

00:17:30.960 to blow up and turn into this big drama and what the greeks really intended was to prepare students

00:17:37.240 for the fact that life is combat like life is the hunger games and it's this verbal hunger games going

00:17:42.780 on in your family and at work and in the public square and that's good that's a good thing so it's

00:17:48.200 like free market capitalism if you like the ideas behind that or you believe that the market always kind

00:17:53.820 of goes the right way or something in the end if you like this idea of the same thing on ideas you know

00:17:59.840 the ideas that are best will eventually prevail as long as everyone is endowed with the skill

00:18:05.240 to be able to articulate them and so you know aristotle articulated this thing he said this

00:18:10.520 skill of rhetoric is the basis of civilization it's the basis of our homes it's the basis of our town

00:18:16.440 square this one thing is in the middle of everything it's the quintessential human skill it's what makes

00:18:23.380 culture and morality and everything else the law politics everything flows from this ability to argue

00:18:29.420 and he sort of saw human existence as this ongoing argument hey look at me hey what about my way

00:18:35.580 oh you like your way better oh well what's fair let's figure it out and so if you can't participate

00:18:40.760 in that you're kind of cut offline from the central activity of being human and i've seen these really

00:18:47.040 cool analogs to it like i was reading this thing by hannah arndt in a book called the human condition and

00:18:53.300 she talks about how in latin for example to die the verb to die meant to die socially to leave the

00:19:01.320 company of humans it wasn't your own individual physical body dying it was you leave the game you

00:19:07.700 leave the the race of everybody jostling and fighting and arguing and having fun doing it and so i think

00:19:14.260 really all of these things come together with speech education if you have kids growing up and staring at

00:19:19.000 their screens but they're too timid or unskilled to connect with their peers and have arguments about

00:19:25.740 anything without freaking out where do they go from there no and i think another thing as you were

00:19:31.420 talking that may have contributed i thought of this as you were talking that may have contributed to

00:19:35.840 the chipping away of public speaking education and particularly in america is we have this idea of

00:19:44.320 authenticity right like whatever's inside of you that's the real you and if you have to practice

00:19:50.740 at it and think about it then that's not authentic but there's been thinkers that you quote there's one

00:19:55.820 richard sinnet he wrote the fall of public man he makes this intriguing case that no actually this idea

00:20:01.020 of authenticity it's actually preventing us from being our real selves because you have this idea well if

00:20:07.660 i don't have to think about how to present my ideas inside of me then you're never able to do so

00:20:12.720 and as a consequence you can't become who you want to be and you can't connect with others

00:20:17.400 i think this is very shallow unexamined sense of what authenticity means i know for me i just thought

00:20:26.360 if i was ever nervous or something made me feel awkward that meant that i wasn't supposed to do it

00:20:31.860 so if it made me feel awkward to go do a book tour and talk about a book that i had worked on for years 0.76

00:20:37.440 that meant that public speaking was stupid i never could turn it around and look at myself 0.91

00:20:42.940 and ask the question well wait a minute this is your authentic self you spent years working on this 0.99

00:20:48.280 book you know about slavery or about this or that because i was really passionate about my subjects

00:20:53.280 so for me to not be able to speak well about the things i care about is actually much more

00:20:59.300 inauthentic than me feeling stupid or awkward about learning to make my points better and i think

00:21:06.800 you see that all around in different areas i just think if you have everybody trapped inside their

00:21:11.820 minds and they're unable to speak up they're unable to have conflict that can't be said to be

00:21:17.940 some big vision of authenticity i think authenticity means that people are really

00:21:24.240 skilled at articulating their their position in a public way for others to criticize and others to

00:21:31.260 moderate and i think there was this huge argument also from the beginnings of rhetoric and the greeks

00:21:38.300 does learning rhetoric learning to practice rhetoric make you a better person or not and there was this

00:21:44.980 one famous rhetorician more famous at the time than aristotle named issocrates and he said learning to

00:21:51.060 speak in public will basically make you a better person and improve your sense of discernment and

00:21:55.720 judgment and i think that's fascinating it's not always true but i think the point is if you learn

00:22:02.020 to get your points of view out into the world then people will tell you hey that's crazy or hey i like

00:22:08.180 what you're saying but that one part of it is crazy so people can push back on you and by not being

00:22:14.480 locked inside your own private little world chuckling to yourself about how authentic and great you are

00:22:19.400 you have to put yourself out there and people will push back and tell you when you're being wrong or 0.93

00:22:24.840 stupid and so you grow and you actually get more authentic in a kind of a group way by partaking in

00:22:31.620 that process yeah i think people when they think authentic communication what they end up doing is 1.00

00:22:36.480 they just throw like the firebombs hey there's this thing here's real talk and they just say something

00:22:41.500 that they didn't even really think about it they just said the first thing on their mind and it just blows

00:22:46.920 up and it's not good communication and i imagine if they would have thought about things more it would

00:22:51.940 have been more effective but we have this idea well you know it's authentic communication has to be

00:22:56.840 just whatever i think at the top of my head and that's whatever my emotions say that i'm just going

00:23:00.560 to say that and aristotle and these ancient greeks and even the toastmasters would say uh no that's not

00:23:06.660 authentic communication we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:23:10.800 and now back to the show okay so learning the art of public speaking not only will help you in your job i think

00:23:20.720 most people when they think about improving their public speaking they're thinking about how it can

00:23:23.680 improve their lives professionally they have to give a pitch or speech or something like that but

00:23:28.740 you're saying no it actually carries over just to your day-to-day everyday conversations it allows

00:23:33.820 you to connect better with other people communicate better with other people so let's dig into like

00:23:38.880 this toastmasters process how they're teaching the art of rhetoric and the 20th and 21st centuries

00:23:44.040 you mentioned that active participation is an important part of the toastmasters experience

00:23:49.180 you have to actually get up and i mean they don't force you to do this but they highly encourage

00:23:54.340 you to get up and give speeches to get better so tell us about your first time you show up at this

00:23:58.660 grocery store community room what was your first experience like giving a speech in front of these

00:24:03.980 toastmasters i have to say i was more terrified to give my first toastmasters speech than any other

00:24:11.340 public speaking occasion in my life i was once on the daily show with john stewart and that was

00:24:18.240 pretty terrifying but this toastmasters speech at the community room at the byerly's grocery store

00:24:24.620 in st louis park minnesota it was probably about three times more terrifying and it's precisely

00:24:29.680 because i was studying my own inability to connect with other people and i had signed up to write this

00:24:38.720 book about it and i was really bummed that i had to go to toastmasters and i knew i had to go through

00:24:44.780 it but every other time i'd spoken in public i just kind of erected all of my defensive barriers

00:24:50.260 and i kind of cruised through it with clenched fists and i would use humor and i don't know what

00:24:55.180 else i used to get through it but here i was supposed to make a much more earnest undefended

00:24:59.560 attempt and i sucked at it i completely whiffed i was so far off and i didn't know why i just felt

00:25:06.340 like i was you know walking on a floor covered with marbles or something i just you know they're the

00:25:12.400 most forgiving welcoming environment you could ever imagine in the world and so it wasn't them

00:25:17.000 it was just me overthinking everything to death and also trying to write about it at the same time and

00:25:22.320 look at myself and monitor myself while i was going through this process but i guess what i did wrong i

00:25:27.500 was trying to be cool in my first speech the instructions for the first speech were just to

00:25:32.780 try to connect with your fellow group members and without knowing it i was trying to impress them

00:25:39.600 or show them how weird and original i was and that's a very different purpose than trying to

00:25:46.020 connect with people or trying to share with people and so just from the get-go i was doing the wrong

00:25:51.060 thing in the wrong way without knowing it and it was excruciating i came home from that feeling like

00:25:57.340 i'd just been physically beaten up three times and what was your feedback like so after every toastmaster

00:26:02.840 speech there's a period of feedback so what was the feedback like on your first speech and as you said

00:26:07.520 these people it's like the most forgiving place you can be but i imagine some of it stung so what was

00:26:13.400 that process like i can't remember the feedback so much i know there was kind of a very polite

00:26:19.300 sort of like hey dude good try that first one's hard for all of us they're not gonna they're not

00:26:26.700 gonna say like whoa you have obvious psychological problems that were on full reveal i think for the

00:26:33.540 first speech they don't give you a lot of technical advice but after that it starts to get pretty

00:26:37.420 technical which is super helpful and really changes the way that you think about speech but for that

00:26:45.260 first one you're just kind of winging it and you just got to get it over with you got to get it out

00:26:49.020 of the way and it seemed like the first thing you struggled to overcome with your learning the art of

00:26:54.860 rhetoric at toastmasters was you can call this morbid self-consciousness you had right yes just

00:27:01.360 thinking about yourself and how you looked and how can i be cool and how can i be original

00:27:05.100 and what toastmasters does it hammers into you to the point this is goes all the way back to the

00:27:10.880 ancient greeks is when you are formulating a speech when you're trying to speak to somebody

00:27:15.580 instead of thinking about yourself you should always be thinking about your audience so how did

00:27:21.760 that experience the first time you gave a speech in toastmasters how did that help you start

00:27:26.420 thinking less about yourself and more about your audience i didn't realize this till later on and

00:27:32.840 i didn't quite realize this only through toastmasters i also got it by reading aristotle's book about

00:27:38.160 rhetoric 15 times and in that book he said something the audience is the beginning and the end of public

00:27:45.100 speaking and the first time you hear that it sounds like an observation and you just shrug and be like

00:27:50.300 okay that makes sense but what i didn't realize is all those things in public speaking training

00:27:55.320 that you come across that say you need to think about the audience they really mean you need to

00:28:00.720 think about the audience and so me typically and i think most people when we go into a presentation 0.94

00:28:06.580 we're thinking oh my god people are going to think i'm nuts people are going to know that i'm an idiot 0.80

00:28:10.480 whatever i'm not ready for this okay then i'm going to stop thinking about myself and think about my 0.96

00:28:15.200 material i've got to lay out these 15 slides and these 15 charts and graphs and whatever

00:28:20.460 and so aristotle's thing and really most speech training what they really want you to do is think

00:28:25.660 about where people are going to be sitting how old are they what time of the day is it how much do

00:28:30.680 they know about you or your subject and so just from the beginning you can bypass all this crap about

00:28:36.100 yourself and your material and focus on them that's what they call it public speaking and it's really

00:28:42.840 all about just getting rid of the 90 percent of your thoughts or whatever percent that aren't about

00:28:48.900 them and just thinking how can i help them how can i deliver the information they need to hear and

00:28:54.980 want to hear instead of getting lost in all of this stuff about my anxiety and blah blah blah my

00:29:00.840 millions of facts and data points and what's also interesting is that not only will that help you

00:29:05.760 overcome a lot of the stage fright a lot of times if you just start you shift the focus to the audience

00:29:10.240 to think about yourself it'll help you get over maybe some of that stage fright a lot of people have

00:29:13.560 about public speaking but this idea of just thinking about your audience this carries over to

00:29:18.180 day-to-day conversation like a lot of people who are shy we actually did a whole series about shyness

00:29:23.740 a lot of shyness is caused by this extreme self-consciousness and the solution that you know

00:29:29.320 if you go to a therapist i'm really shy they'll say well don't think about yourself so much it's like

00:29:33.460 think about the other person ask questions about them and be interested in them and that will help you

00:29:37.060 overcome your shyness and the same thing happens in public speaking the simplicity of this

00:29:42.980 aristotelian command to think about the audience first is it's really literal anyone can do it so

00:29:49.640 who am i talking to i'm talking to a 37 year old egyptian blah blah blah phd from montana you know

00:29:56.960 whatever you just it's not like you have to conjure up some kind of fake warmth or fake charisma you

00:30:04.060 really just start with this physical questioning of who am i talking to why are they here how can i help

00:30:10.800 them what do they want how can i explain my points in a way that fits into their kind of cognitive

00:30:16.380 universe or lexicon and i think that for me is the big breakthrough i don't even know if that's what

00:30:23.160 aristotle intended when he said his thing about the audience but that was what i got when i combined

00:30:28.820 toastmaster's approach and aristotle's approach and for me that was really the thing that allowed me to

00:30:35.320 stop being so anxious it's just realizing i don't have to do anything clever here i don't have to be

00:30:42.680 some magically non-anxious person i just have to think who are these people where are they sitting

00:30:49.580 how can i help them and this whole audience first this is going to pretty much shape everything you do

00:30:55.140 and how you organize your speech how you present yourself the words you use we're going to talk about

00:30:59.720 that so that's a nice segue this idea of organizing your speech and one of the exercises that toastmasters

00:31:05.520 has you work on is creating a speech and organizing in such a way that you get to the point as quickly

00:31:12.720 as you can and then make sure it's clearly understandable like what your main point is

00:31:16.360 was this hard for you to figure out when you first started doing this

00:31:19.320 that one was the so that the first toastmaster speech was just this general kind of do whatever

00:31:25.980 you want introduce yourself and try to connect with your crowd right second one was about

00:31:31.160 organization how do you organize a speech and they just wanted to get across the idea that you can't

00:31:38.140 just go up there and go blah blah blah blah blah blah blah from the beginning to the end it's much

00:31:42.000 much better if you say today i'm going to talk about blah blah blah i'm going to talk about it in

00:31:46.000 three parts and they had this kind of schema a set of schema you could use so you could say today i'm

00:31:52.560 going to talk about travel and i'm going to give examples in spain italy and russia or you could

00:31:58.700 say today i'm going to talk about travel i'm going to talk about travel for young people travel for

00:32:02.740 middle-aged people travel for old people they just gave you these different schema like problem

00:32:06.860 solution cause and effect and the point was at the beginning of a speech you need to give your

00:32:13.060 audience a roadmap for where you're going to go and then you follow the roadmap now let me kind of

00:32:17.500 combine that teaching with the next toastmasters exercise that i did because that in my mind

00:32:22.000 combined with this one they talked about forming your purpose before you talk to people every

00:32:28.140 speech that we do there's a social purpose to it and so i combine this notion of purpose and

00:32:33.580 organization so that my takeaway from this is when i give a speech i have to organize it into different

00:32:38.660 parts and i need to let you know how each of these parts of my speech are going to affect you or what

00:32:45.560 each of the parts of my speech is going to do for you so you have it very clear in your head i'm not

00:32:50.340 just up here on stage babbling i'm here to teach you something that i hope is useful for you and let

00:32:56.720 you know at every turn i'm not just babbling up here because i like myself or like my voice i'm

00:33:01.620 actually trying to give you something useful that you can use and did this carry over to you just

00:33:06.220 your everyday conversations beyond public speaking totally i shut up more i think i talk less than i used 0.50

00:33:13.440 to that's one good thing for the world you know i think a lot of times we all talk just to hear our

00:33:20.000 own voice and we like to be right i noticed how many times i tried to say things to be interesting

00:33:26.720 or original instead of just to help people you know if you read buddhism there's this very strict

00:33:32.080 commandment on right speech only say things that are true and only say things that are helpful

00:33:37.480 i think i'd read that many times before but now i live up to it much more often when i'm talking to

00:33:43.220 people i pay much more attention to my timing am i talking to them at a time when they're receptive

00:33:48.460 to what i'm saying because maybe i'm brilliant and maybe i'm saying something in a perfect way

00:33:53.300 but i'm catching someone at the exact wrong time that's a fail that's not going to get me a good result 0.96

00:33:58.660 if i am rushing and there's something in my tone that sounds makes me sound like a jerk

00:34:06.320 i can pause a little bit better than i used to be able to and weed that out i can avoid repetitions 0.87

00:34:12.540 i can avoid repeating the same thing as a way of bludgeoning people to get them to agree with me

00:34:17.400 i didn't do a lot of that in the past but now i definitely don't do it i think i can also narrow

00:34:22.820 down my answers when people ask me something i answer on point instead of letting my point drift

00:34:28.260 and i think people feel a lot better served when you do that because they really know oh you're

00:34:34.140 talking to me you're addressing me you're giving me your honest best thinking instead of just going

00:34:39.300 all over the place okay so toastmasters it gives you this it feels artificial at first of how to

00:34:43.520 organize your speech but if you follow it it's all about helping the other person person you're

00:34:48.240 speaking to understand what you're trying to say like you're trying to help them again this is all

00:34:52.860 about the audience first another thing that toastmasters helps you work on is reducing your

00:34:58.220 filler language and using more vivid and precise language what is that like and was that an issue

00:35:04.700 for you using the filler words and things like that toastmasters has a series of reports at the end of

00:35:10.460 every meeting so they have the grammarian and they have the ah counter and some others and the ah

00:35:16.880 counter goes around the room and tells the number of ahs and ums and likes and you knows that everybody

00:35:23.820 who participated used so during a few notice how i just said so during a few of my early meetings they

00:35:32.480 would go around the room and that person had three and that person had six and that person had two and

00:35:37.160 that person had four and then it got to me and i would have 17 and i could tell you that happened

00:35:43.800 twice and then it never happened again and of all the painful things about public speaking not just

00:35:50.240 when you're doing it but when you're listening to other people do it that filler word thing is it's so

00:35:55.180 painful when you're uh listening to uh someone go uh it's just agony and you realize they're taking up

00:36:02.620 20 of their speech time with this kind of lazy ungainly thing you know and as a speech coach that's one of

00:36:12.820 the easiest things i can train people out of because whether you're going to toastmasters and you have

00:36:18.880 some ah counter show you how badly you're doing or you learn by some other method it's one of the

00:36:24.960 easiest things to weed out you just learn how to be more intentional when you speak and you can actually

00:36:30.660 slow down and right now i'm giving an exaggerated version of that but you can do it without the

00:36:37.580 exaggerated version and skip the ahs and ums and so's and likes so imagine if you could get 20 percent

00:36:43.920 more potent in your speech just with one little trick for those who don't want to join toastmasters

00:36:50.600 to get the uh counter there's software out there now it's online it uses artificial intelligence you

00:36:56.060 speak into your computer and then it'll analyze your language and it'll tell you how many uhs and ums

00:37:01.800 and likes that you used and what percentage of that you've used it'll even tell you how fast you're

00:37:07.020 speaking i know a lot of people that's another issue with public speaking is speaking too fast because

00:37:12.540 you get nervous and you just want to get blah blah blah blah blah and toastmasters one of the

00:37:15.900 things they tell you is like you got to slow down because again audience first it will help your

00:37:21.040 audience understand you better it is one of the hardest things for people to learn that they

00:37:25.760 everyone thinks time is money and that they're doing their audience a favor by hurrying things up

00:37:31.420 but it doesn't really work that way i think the way you help people is by editing out all of the

00:37:36.680 lame parts of your speech or presentation and then you can afford to speak more slowly but everybody's

00:37:43.960 brain i think is so overcome by by messaging and data everyone is very very numb these days and if you

00:37:53.020 can actually speak in a way that reaches people and isn't hard to understand and you explain your

00:38:01.320 concepts really clearly using a voice that is clear and an organizational plan that is clear and

00:38:07.760 examples that are clear and you've already taken the trouble to contextualize them so that it's easy

00:38:13.020 for them to understand on their own terms they will appreciate you a lot more but also just understand what

00:38:19.180 you're saying people won't necessarily always agree with you but at least they'll understand what

00:38:24.400 you're saying and you'll walk away from every whether it's a personal encounter or a work

00:38:29.260 situation you'll at least feel like people got you and you did a good job of explaining yourself

00:38:34.900 and if that's the only outcome you get from speech training that's a great outcome you will no longer

00:38:40.440 feel so misunderstood you'll no longer feel like the world is dumb for not understanding you because

00:38:46.180 you will have explained yourself so another issue that toastmasters helps people address when they're

00:38:52.820 doing public speaking is body language what did you learn about the importance of body language and how to use

00:38:58.280 it when speaking at your toastmaster meeting the subject of body language gave me the heebie-jeebies

00:39:03.620 more than almost anything else because it felt creepy to me or cringy or uncomfortable to think i'm

00:39:08.680 supposed to move in a certain way and some of the instructions said you know put your shoulders back

00:39:13.700 and have your feet so many inches apart and i just put my foot down and i was like no way am i gonna do

00:39:19.880 that and then i kept reading the toastmaster stuff and also aristotle and they both said the same thing in

00:39:25.960 different ways they said anything you do that is distracting from your message is bad and anything

00:39:32.060 you do that enhances your message is good and once i saw it through that lens or that angle it became

00:39:39.460 much easier i don't know just to relax and think about my body language a little bit i'm probably never

00:39:44.740 going to be some big super emotive dramatic you know theatrical speaker i'm from the midwest we don't do

00:39:51.440 that but i do understand if you're clenching your fists together or you're you know your hands are

00:39:56.680 stuck in your back pockets or something like that you're hunched over or you're not making good eye

00:40:00.520 contact like it it's distracting to people so even if you're talking about some green solutions that's

00:40:05.320 going to save the world if you're on a stage people are going to be thinking wow this person looks

00:40:09.320 really uptight so you don't want to distract from your message and really that's as far as i usually

00:40:14.860 need to go with most people i just if i'm working with people i get them to understand what they look

00:40:22.420 like and how it's distracting and without needing to coach them on every little thing i think that

00:40:27.980 problem kind of takes care of itself does this go to aristotle's idea of ethos the body language aspect

00:40:33.440 totally i'll back up and say aristotle and his book about rhetoric talks about how everything we do

00:40:40.920 is an attempt to persuade people around us of something small or large it doesn't have to be

00:40:45.740 insidious or anything and when we do that we use facts and we use emotions and we use character which

00:40:52.240 he called ethos and so ethos is kind of like what you know about me from googling me or looking at my

00:40:59.440 resume or whatever but it's also just how well i explain my information and so if i'm staring at my

00:41:05.220 shoe the whole time i'm talking to you i'm destroying your ability to receive my information 0.84

00:41:11.380 because you're watching me freak out and stare at my shoe if i explain things in three really clear

00:41:17.020 parts which are designed to really tell my story and make my point in an interesting way you're going

00:41:24.080 to receive my information and remember it longer and be more likely to act on it and all of this comes

00:41:30.520 back to not just like the brilliance of my point or my data or my logic it's the brilliance with which i

00:41:36.520 express it to you and for you yeah i think for aristotle ethos was probably the most powerful

00:41:42.980 persuasive i would call it tool in rhetoric he's not to say that logos or facts are not important or that

00:41:51.460 emotions are not important but for him if you really want to be persuasive it all came down to ethos

00:41:56.680 aristotle said that of the three sort of channels or tools of persuasion ethos is by far the controlling

00:42:04.480 factor and i think that's where it runs totally counter to modern intelligence and modern education

00:42:10.200 because we've been so conditioned to think that facts are great data is great big data science that's

00:42:14.900 going to save the world and we're not learning public speaking and rhetoric in school and so you have

00:42:21.240 all of these smart people who are unable to make their point and i think this is really interesting

00:42:27.500 in aristotle's book about rhetoric he kind of admits that he hates rhetoric and that he wishes we lived in

00:42:33.880 a world where everything was like geometry and logic could win out but he said that's not the world we live

00:42:38.940 in and you know there are a lot of people who will just never respond to the most logical argument

00:42:43.200 you can make and so this thing about ethos and studying ethos and studying how it works and how do you

00:42:49.320 convince people was really designed to help smart people learn to get their points across you know

00:42:56.120 it's not about acting confident or losing your anxiety it's about just arranging your argument

00:43:00.860 in a way that people can actually understand yeah because when you organize your thoughts well

00:43:06.280 it goes to your ethos or character because people think well if you talk with clarity you're intelligent

00:43:12.300 you know you're a competent person and going to this idea of people emphasizing facts too much in our 0.99

00:43:17.700 i think our modern idea of information transmission you have a chapter it's called facts are stupid

00:43:23.760 things and that's the point you're making it's not that facts aren't important facts are important

00:43:29.120 logic is important you need to have a logically sound argument but i think oftentimes when people

00:43:34.660 talk in public what they immediately do is they just what are all the facts i'm just going to collect

00:43:39.500 as much data as i can and then i'm going to present it in a powerpoint presentation and just read it off

00:43:44.720 and i'm going to give them the truth and that'll be enough and aristotle and the toastmasters will say

00:43:50.940 no that's not you can have all the data and facts that are there but if you can't persuade people with

00:43:57.500 it then it's all for naught i think what we really really have lost sight of is the fact that public

00:44:02.500 speaking is about the public and it's a social interaction not a data transfer it's a great thing

00:44:08.960 from evolutionary psychology by jonathan hate where he's talking about how monkeys when they were

00:44:14.960 evolving the groups the larger groups of monkeys won out over the smaller groups of monkeys so your

00:44:20.700 ability to be in a big group of monkeys and know who's in your group and function within a group was

00:44:27.220 a more primary skill than your ability to read an excel spreadsheet for example or just you know to go

00:44:33.040 through the fine points of someone's logical argument you needed to know this tribal thing

00:44:37.540 and so for me public speaking what's really going on there's people just looking at you

00:44:42.640 eyeball to eyeball and thinking is brett a reasonable dude does brett make sense is brett crazy is brett

00:44:49.260 like this furtive guy staring at his shoe or does he seem like a guy i'm going to want to do business

00:44:54.960 with and so all of this stuff about ethos is really you could call it if you want to shift it into

00:45:02.100 the gear of sort of social cognition and neuroscience and all of that it's all about teaching you to

00:45:07.440 look at your audience and explain things in a way that let them know that you're a reasonable person

00:45:12.720 and you're able to focus on their needs for a few minutes instead of staring at your powerpoint

00:45:17.560 and what i see you know i work with a zillion clients now and a lot of them have these very data

00:45:23.120 heavy presentations they have to give and they'll turn their butt to their audience and point to their

00:45:27.620 deck and read on a screen the very information that their audience is reading so what does that 1.00

00:45:34.400 tell the audience it tells the audience i think you're dumb i think you're so dumb that you need 0.99

00:45:38.420 help reading it doesn't say i'm smart you should trust me it says i'm a bore i'm not tuned into your 0.99

00:45:47.000 needs you know and you have smart people all over the world doing this every day not knowing that it's

00:45:52.900 failing on some animal level what we want from one another and what we expect from one another

00:45:58.400 so i mean you went through this experience at toastmasters you learned a lot when you look

00:46:03.640 back on it how did it change your life going through this toastmasters at a community room at a grocery

00:46:09.260 store i am not kidding i know that this makes me sound silly but for me it was like a religious 0.95

00:46:16.760 conversion experience i just i went from being a guy who thinks public speaking is dumb 0.93

00:46:21.700 and learning about public speaking would be dumb and super uncool to realizing it's the most profound 0.86

00:46:28.060 training or experience you could ever have short of some kind of religious experience 0.98

00:46:33.160 and i'm not kidding it's to go from thinking that the world is dumb and no one understands me

00:46:39.660 to realizing oh i'm simply poor at expressing myself if i slow down and i learn some of these

00:46:46.680 techniques i can make myself understood wherever i go and people might disagree with me but at least

00:46:53.980 they'll know me and that's a big step up so that alienation that i grew up with and i was really

00:46:59.480 a bad boy and a rebel and a you know i was very very detached from the world for many years

00:47:05.420 so for me to find a way to reconnect to the world and then also help other people reconnect to the world

00:47:11.040 even without using any kind of religious or therapy kind of terminology or practice just

00:47:17.260 language training speech training it totally changed my life it totally changed the direction of my life

00:47:22.820 it changed what i do for a living it changed my optimism about the state of the world and would

00:47:28.620 you encourage other people to join toastmasters oh i would encourage people to do it like their life

00:47:34.240 depends upon it i think it's the shortest thing you know you you don't need to spend years of your

00:47:40.040 life doing you can spend a few hours and it will radically change the trajectory of your life and

00:47:44.860 the beauty of toastmasters said it's almost free the last time i checked it was 55 twice a year or

00:47:51.980 something so that's a lot cheaper than just about anything else out there yeah it's cheaper than therapy

00:47:56.940 it's a lot cheaper than therapy well john this has been a great conversation where can people go to

00:48:02.340 learn more about the book in your work i have a website which is johnfboe.com but also you know

00:48:10.600 you can look at my book on amazon or anything like that i've got a couple of articles that i've written

00:48:15.800 the thing about the book is it's kind of like the prequel to public speaking it's like why you should

00:48:20.940 learn to speak in public it doesn't really try to teach you how to do it but i wrote an article for

00:48:26.280 a magazine called psyche and the editor was great he beat it out of me in a way that was really helpful

00:48:31.940 that just lays out a straightforward way to start thinking about public speaking all right well john

00:48:38.360 boe thanks for your time it's been a pleasure well thank you brett yeah it's been a pleasure talking

00:48:42.500 to you too my guest name is john boe he's the author of the book i have something to say it's

00:48:47.140 available on amazon.com you can find more information about his work at his website johnfboe.com

00:48:52.260 and bow is spelled b-o-w-e also check out our show notes at aom.is slash toastmasters

00:48:57.060 we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:48:59.660 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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00:49:47.700 aom podcast and i'll see you next time it's brett mckay

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The Art of Manliness - April 24, 2023

Toastmasters, Aristotle, and the Essential Art of Rhetoric

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