The picture that illustrates this episode shows what happens when you move your arms instead of being rigid, while talking. It's from the audio recording of a one-to-one session I did with David H.

In this first group Zoom call, we looked at Invention - the business of finding out what you want to achieve by speaking.

We considered the "five Ws and one H" (who, what, when, where, how and why).

We looked at the spectrum of communication, from controlled (but impersonal) to risky (but warm).

Hi, I'm John-Paul Flintoff. 

This mini-series podcast will appear every 48 hours (or so) over November 2020. It is an attempt to demonstrate, in real time, what it's like to do public speaking, and to enable participation by people who can't attend all/some of the live Zoom calls.

In this episode you will hear me:

By the end of the month, I hope that this podcast mini-series will feature much less of my voice, and much more of yours. 

So please send me an audio comment using the link provided. And if you haven't already, please help me out by completing that survey!

Till next time.

JP

For World Mental Health Day, I showed drawings to large numbers of people I couldn't even see, in a webinar. This episode contains some of the questions I was asked, and some answers. I hope you like the noises I chose at the start and the finish.

In which I read the first part of a story I wrote (anonymously) for the Financial Times, describing the experience of admitting myself to hospital; explain my surprise, looking back, because I was really not very strong at the time I wrote this, and state (probably not for the first time) that I feel deeply ambivalent about sharing these experiences. If you do listen, please leave me a message: it really will help me to feel a bit less exposed. Thank you. JP 

In which I contemplate making my struggles public, and hope that a podcast will feel liberating.