I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection

John Bowe

2020-08 · Penguin Random House Audio · Skaito Mark Feuerstein

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A veteran journalist discovers an ancient system of speech techniques for overcoming the fear of public speaking—and reveals how they can profoundly change our lives.

In 2010, award-winning journalist John Bowe learned that his cousin Bill, a longtime extreme recluse living in his parents’ basement, had, at the age of fifty-nine, overcome a lifetime of shyness and isolation—and gotten happily married. Bill credited his turnaround to Toastmasters, the world's largest organization devoted to teaching the art of public speaking.

Fascinated by the possibility that speech training could foster the kind of psychological well-being more commonly sought through psychiatric treatment, and intrigued by the notion that words can serve as medicine, Bowe set out to discover the origins of speech training—and to learn for himself how to speak better in public.

From the birth of democracy in Ancient Greece until two centuries ago, education meant, in addition to reading and writing, years of learning specific, easily taught language techniques for interacting with others. Nowadays, absent such education, the average American speaks 16,000 to 20,000 words every day, but 74 percent of us suffer from speech anxiety. As he joins Toastmasters and learns, step-by-step, to successfully overcome his own speech anxiety, Bowe muses upon our record levels of loneliness, social isolation, and political divisiveness. What would it mean for Americans to learn once again the simple art of talking to one another?

Bowe shows that learning to speak in public means more than giving a decent speech without nervousness (or a total meltdown). Learning to connect with others bestows upon us an enhanced sense of freedom, power, and belonging.

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John Bowe has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The American Prospect, NPR's This American Life, McSweeney's, and more. He is the author of Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy and the co-editor of Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs. In 2004, he received the J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award, the Hillman Prize, and the Richard J. Margolis Award. Bowe is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and has a master's in film from Columbia University.