an ADEQUATE podcast

an ADEQUATE podcast

By John-Paul FlintoffArts
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an ADEQUATE podcast episodes

  • 21. "When I'm On My Deathbed, I'll Remember This."

    This episode covers so much, in one interview. Dr Nic Hooper talks to me about what it's like to prepare to publish his first book; about mental health (good and bad, his own, mine, other people's); about how illustrations can complement words, without being cheap; about the physiological effect of watching Tom Cruise hanging off a skyscraper with one glove; what Nic will remember when he's dying; whether to keep video recordings to put on a website he doesn't even have (yet), and why I needed to trim this interview.

    Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to the wonderful bit of cello that ends the show, a gift from my gifted friend Julia van Beuningen; and to add (in light of the previous episode) that there's a rhetorical term for what I just did, using both gift and gifted in a single sentence. 

    Nic's (new!) website is here: https://www.nichooper.co.uk

    32 min
  • 17. My First Wedding Speech: blow by blow, by Rebecca Twomey
    Rebecca Twomey is good with words. As a journalist, she knows a lot about dating, having written about it for several years. As an interviewer, she’s used to being recorded. But until recently she had never given a wedding speech – and felt all the pressure that comes with  it.
    In this interview, recorded as research when I was writing A Modest  Book About How To Make An Adequate Speech, Rebecca remembers in detail how she approached it, what worked (and what didn’t), and explains how she came to be giving what was, in effect, the “father of the bride” speech.
    Also in this episode, you can hear the voice of Lorna Milburn, a photographer who - as well as shooting for newspapers and magazines - has covered a lot of weddings. I asked Lorna to tell me what she has noticed, particularly, about wedding speeches. 
    You can find Rebecca and Lorna on my website, here: 
    https://flintoff.org/my-first-wedding-speech-blow-by-blow-by-rebecca-twomey
    29 min
  • 16. A Guide To Being A Coachy Friendy Agenty Kind Of Person
    Steve Chapman was working with somebody a bit wooden, who wanted to be more natural. But how? You can't just say, "Be more natural". What Steve did was utterly unexpected (it involved dandelions). 
    The interview with Steve in this episode was recorded as part of the research for my book, back in the days when you could meet a friend and sit in the park together, beneath noisy planes and near laughing children, without wearing a mask.
    As you listen to Steve, please notice that his interaction with his client involved a lovely dance between gentle requests and firm demands - a combination that may possibly be necessary in any attempt to engineer an interaction.
    18 min
  • 15. How To Talk About Something Delicate: a few suggestions

    If you're talking about something delicate, it's important to set up expectations from the start. 

    This episode contains the beginning of a workshop I delivered to an audience of speakers and would-be speakers, courtesy of a charity, Illuminate, which helps people to overcome their mental health problems, then talk publicly about their experiences. 

    In other words, what you're going to hear is me giving a talk about giving a talk. So apologies in advance that it's a bit self-referential. Some members of the audience had already delivered talks of their own, others hadn't. In this recording we considered how to set up a kind of "working relationship" with each audience, from the start.

    The session as a whole lasted just under an hour, but I'm sharing only the beginning, to keep this episode relatively short.

    Thank you to participants, and to Cambridgeshire-based Illuminate for organising this session.

    31 min
  • 14. "It's A Sin To Bore For Jesus" + A lesson from impro

    Ron Boyd-MacMillan wrote a remarkably useful and entertaining book, Explosive Preaching, which I picked up while researching my own book. His insights, intended to aid religious preachers, are useful to anybody who intends to make a speech, whether at a wedding or for work.

    In this interview, Ron tells me why the great early preacher St Augustine used to improvise;  says he's been disappointed that churches, in Covid, have sounded like bureaucrats interested only in health and safety; and tells stories about his work training preachers across the world and in many denominations. In particular, he explains how he prepared Chinese "house church" preachers to memorise dozens of hours of sermons all at once. 

    Whatever your interest in communication, you'll learn from Ron how to think about your purpose, your audience, the arrangement of your material, the style you adopt, how to memorise your material, and how best to deliver it. 

    PLUS: Whatever kind of creative work you are doing, you will want to stop occasionally and assess it. That applies to public speaking, writing a book, and making a podcast. In this episode, I perform a quick assessment of my own progress with this podcast, and note that I would never have started if I had hoped to know all this at the beginning - a reminder to all creative types to get started.

    44 min

About an ADEQUATE podcast

From the publisher's feed

A podcast about speaking and performance. It's ADEQUATE, because I can't do perfect.