Speaking Tips

 

Next Mountain

For Olympics fans, the unthinkable happened. The alpine racer, Mikaela Shiffrin fell in both of her first two races, the Giant Slalom and Super G. Both times she posted a DNF or did not finish.Mountain conditions are precarious, where a wind shift, cloud shadow, or...

Sounds Like

Joel Cohen directed Denzel Washington in the recent film The Tragedy of Macbeth. He harped on Washington to harden his R’s. Cohen wanted Macbeth to project power and knew that precise speech would deliver that quality. And without a regional accent, Washington’s Macbeth could be from...

Speak Up

David recently recorded an audio version of the book The End of Burnout by Jonathan Malesic. The author is on to something. Last year, over 38 million workers left their jobs in the U.S. This poses a huge problem for businesses that need to continuously...

The Ritchie Boys

We were inspired by a recent CBS 60 Minutes piece featuring The Ritchie Boys. They were a World War II German-Austrian unit, many of them Jewish, who had immigrated to the U.S. prior to WWII. Because of their knowledge of European languages and German culture,...

Faster, Higher, Stronger

At the risk of sounding like The Sports Channel, we are breathlessly awaiting the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics. For us, there is no greater thrill than watching elite athletes compete on the world’s largest and oldest stage. The first Olympics took place in...

Love of the Game

John Madden was a Hall of Fame NFL Coach who led the Oakland Raiders to 8 playoffs and their Super Bowl win in 1976. On December 28th he passed away.After he quit coaching, Madden was an unlikely choice for a sportscaster. He would frenetically gesture...

All We Have

One thing the space missions of 2021 have reaffirmed is that anyone who travels beyond our planet and looks back is changed. They express wonder at the earth’s spectacular beauty and fragility. May we all appreciate the brief moment of time we have on this...

Gift of Gratitude

During this difficult year, two things have become startlingly clear—life is precious and evanescent. There is much to fear: COVID variants, politics, climate instability and more. Great challenges focus the mind, so why not direct your attention to what you have to be grateful for?...

Zoom Tight

This past week, David recorded a new book for Audible.* He noticed that his voice was tightening up, especially during longer, more expressive passages. Even with vocal exercises and warm tea, reading aloud for six hours is a sure recipe for wearing out the voice.David’s...

Permission

Glossophobia, or the fear of public speaking, is real and pervasive. At least 80% suffer from this fear, so it’s natural to experience stress about being observed and judged when presenting in front of an audience.Speaking virtually exacerbates this condition. After all, Homo Sapiens historically observed others because...