Speakola

On July 1st last year, a traditional day of celebration and protest in Hong Kong, pro democracy activists stormed the Legislative Council complex (Leg Co) and broke into the legislative chamber. One protestor, Brian Leung Kai-ping, seized the moment and stood on a desk to deliver a memorable speech calling for solidarity in the protest movement, and for the wider citizenry of Hong Kong to join them in the occupy. It was a speech of such passion and eloquence, the bravest speech we added to Speakola last year. To increase the stakes, Leung removed the mask he had been wearing to reveal his identity to the assembled media, to the Chinese authorities and to the world.

In this episode, Tony chats at length to Brain Leung who talks about the movement, the night of the occupy, the speech, and what has happened since. He also talks to author Antony Dapiran, who released City On Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong this year and who is fantastic at explaining a basic political background,  If you're well schooled in Hong Kong politics and want to skip Ant's introduction, Brian Leung starts at 30.00mins.

After the interviews, we play Leung's speech, first in Cantonese, and then with an English overdub. It's the first foreign language speech we've featured on the podcast, and thanks to Melbourne journalist Wing Huang who voiced the English version.

Here is Brian speech with transcript.

Tony's books are available online and at his website. Send an email to swap details for signed copies.

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados at https://greenskinavocados.com.au/

Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Do You Hear the Hong Kong People Sing? 問誰未發聲

Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg
Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer

試問誰還未發聲
都捨我其誰衛我城
天生有權還有心可作主
誰要認命噤聲

試問誰能未覺醒
聽真那自由在奏鳴
激起再難違背的那份良知和應

為何美夢仍是個夢
還想等恩賜泡影
為這黑與白這非與是 真與偽來做證
為這世代有未來 要及時擦亮眼睛

試問誰還未發聲
都捨我其誰衛我城
天生有權還有心可作主
誰要認命噤聲
試問誰能未覺醒
聽真那自由在奏鳴
激起再難違背的那份良知和應

無人有權沉默 看著萬家燈火變了色
問我心再用我手 去為選我命途力拼
人既是人 有責任有自由決定遠景

 

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As a New York Times columnist, Anna Quindlen won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1992. She later 'took the leap' and quit her Times column to write bestselling novels and non fiction books. She is one of the most sought after commencement speakers in the USA, and has delivered more than a dozen since her famous offering for Villanova, which became the text for her bestselling small book, 'A Short Guide to a Happy Life'.

In this episode Anna talks a little about that speech, but also about the commencement form generally, the courage she has shown in her own life, the state of her country, and in particular a speech she delivered at Washington University in St Louis in 2017.

In this episode she mentions Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural, Hillary Rodham's speech at Wellesley in 1969, Mario Cuomo's Tale of Two Cities speech, Oswald Mosley in 1930s England, and Joseph McCarthy's 'Enemies from Within' speech. 

They are all on Speakola, with transcript.

Visit Anna Quindlen's website.

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Tony's books are available online and at his website. Send an email to swap details for signed copies.

Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados at https://greenskinavocados.com.au/

Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode features award winning Australian journalist Stan Grant's stirring speech in an IQ2 debate at the Ethics Centre on the topic 'That racism is destroying the Australian Dream'. The speech went viral after it was broadcast in early 2016, and sits as one of the most articulate and challenging speeches ever delivered on the subject of racism.

The IQ2 speech is on Speakola, as is Grant's powerful UNSW address in the aftermath of Four Corners revelations of brutality in Northern Territory youth detention centres. The episode opens with a snippet of James Baldwin speaking on a similar topic at the Cambridge Union in 1965.

Stan Grant's books are available through Harper Collins, and his 'Tell it to the World' memoir is on Amazon.

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Tony's books available online and at his website. Send an email to swap details for a signed copy. The video of Tony reading Jack 'The Cow Tripped Over the Moon' is here. 

Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados.

Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds.

 

 

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Writer, comedian, satirist John Clarke was a legend in his native New Zealand and his adopted Australia. He came to prominence with his character Fred Dagg, but was also the creator of farnarkling, 'The Games', and the Clarke and Dawe satirical political interviews.

John Clarke died on 9 April 2017 while hiking in the Grampians. On 2 July that year, there was 'A Celebration of John Clarke' at the Melbourne Town Hall, hosted by The Wheeler Centre and the Clarke family. There were numerous speakers, and the full audio of the event is online and outstanding.

One of the speakers was Andrew Denton, a friend of Clarke's and a legend of Australian television himself, as the host of Enough Rope.

This episode features Andrew Denton's eulogy on that amazing night, as well as a funny, emotional interview with Denton on the impact Clarke had one his life and career. Denton talks about the wisdom of his mentor and friend, particularly with respect to 'the art of living a life'.

To read a transcript of Andrew speech, visit Speakola. 

To listen to the speech, listen to the podcast or visit the Wheeler Centre site.

You can Andrew Denton's end of life law reform movement, Go Gentle Australia here. The National Press Club speech referred to in the episode is this one.

The Clarke family were incredibly supportive with respect to this episode. My sincere thanks to Helen, Lorin and Lucia, and you can support John's chosen charity Trust for Nature here. You can also buy his recording and books at his website, including the clips used with permission in the episode. 

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Tony's '1989 The Great Grand Final' is available online or directly from Tony, signed as a Fathers Day gift. His other books are available too if you felt like supporting him in lockdown.

Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados at http://lovemyavocados.com.au. 

Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds.

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At 22 years of age, Kokoberra woman Tania Major delivered an amazing speech to conservative Prime Minister John Howard when he visited Cape York in August 2003. She began with the words 'Here I am' and then preceded to describe the situation in her community, using the prism of her 15 classmates, and what has unfolded for them. In this episode, Tania talks about how she came to deliver the speech, and its core policy heart, which related to education, and how more children in remote communities can have a decent chance in life. Tania was named Young Australian of the Year in 2007, was Generation One ambassador in 2010, and is such an accomplished pubic speaker. Her TEDx talk in Melbourne is also part of this episode.

You can contact Tania Major to employ her as a speaker, or for information on her consulting services with TMC, relating to cross cultural understanding and indigenous Australia.

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados at http://lovemyavocados.com.au. 

Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Tony Wilson's author website is here. He's on twitter @byTonyWilson.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kate Mulvany studied theatre at scriptwriting at Perth's Curtin University, and graduated to a career in which she has won national awards in both categories. She won a Helpmann Award for her season as Richard III at the Sydney Opera House. She won a Phillip Parsons playwriting award for her debut play, The Seed, which drew on her real life experiences as a childhood cancer survivor resulting from her conscripted father's exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. When she was asked to return to deliver a commencement to humanities students in 2017, she wrote a beautiful tribute to the humanities, in all their broad, life-affirming glory, binding the various disciplines together using a bridge called 'imagination'.

It's this episode Kate tells the story of the speech, how it was written, what she was hoping to achieve, as well as fleshing out the autobiographical detail that make this commencement such a delight. At the speech's conclusion, Kate quotes Albert Einstein, 'For all of us here, no matter who you are, "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will get you everywhere."

This speech is a love letter to imagination, to the humanities, and to 'humans doing'.

Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados at http://lovemyavocados.com.au. 

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

To purchase a signed copy of Tony's sports book, 1989: The Great Grand Final visit his website. It's also available widely online.

To purchase Humpty Dumpty Sat on the Slide and Tony's three other nursery rhyme backstories for A$80 + postage (The Cow Tripped Over the Moon, Hickory Dickory Dash, Baa Baa Blue Sheep), email via website.

Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Tony Wilson's author website is here. He's on twitter @byTonyWilson.

Kate Mulvany stars in the series Hunters opposite Al Pacino, which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Historian Ramachandra Guha is perhaps the leading Gandhi authority in the world today. He has written two major biographies, Gandhi Before India (Vintage 2013) dealing with his time as a lawyer and activist in South Africa, and Gandhi 1914-1948 The Years That Changed the World (Vintage 2018).

Ram Guha speaks to Tony about five speeches. Four relate to the struggle for independence.  They are the Banaras University speech of 1916, the Statement at the Great Trial of 1922, The Eve of Salt March Speech of 1931 and the Quit India speech of 1942. For our speech of the week, Ram reads a fragment of this last speech.

The fifth and final speech is speech of the week, and is a spiritual statement Gandhi made at Kingsley Hall in Oxford during a summit he attended in England in 1931.

Guha expertly weaves information about these critical speeches into the broader narrative of Indian independence, and even has things to say about partition, Gandhi's assassination the cult of Godse, and current day tensions between an ascendant Hindu nationalist movement under Prime Minister Modi and various minorities. Ramchandra Guha was himself arrested in his home city of Bengaluru protesting against a  discriminatory citizenship law. He was carrying a poster of Gandhi at the time of arrest.

Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados at http://lovemyavocados.com.au. 

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Also for sporting artworks, gifts and home wares, check out Sporting Nation. Ram's cricket book is A Corner of a Foreign Field and is a classic of sportswriting.

To purchase a signed copy of Tony's sports book, 1989: The Great Grand Final visit his website. It's also available widely online.

Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Tony Wilson's author website is here. He's on twitter @byTonyWilson.

Ramachandra Guha is @Ram_Guha and he has 2.2 million followers.

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In May 2008, Margaret Edson delivered a brilliant commencement at Smith College  dedicated to the glory of classroom teaching.

She is a teacher herself, for many years teaching kindergarten (prep grade) in Washington DC and Atlanta, and now teaching sixth grade social studies at Inman Middle School.

She's also a Pulitzer Prize winner. Her play, 'Wit', written in 1991, debuted in theatres in 1995, had a run in Connecticut and then off-Broadway in 1997-8, and then ran for 545 performances at the Union Square Theatre between December 1998 and April 2000. Wit won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1999, and the New York Critics' Circle Prize for Best New Play the same year. In 2001, it was made into an Emmy award winning HBO telemovie starring Emma Thompson, and when it re-ran on Broadway in 2012 it won two Tony Awards. 

Throughout it all Margaret Edson remained Maggie Edson, classroom teacher. She still is, although she plans to retire in two years.

I discovered this speech on a site called The Eloquent Woman, and I think of it as one of the truly great commencement speeches. Structure, delivery, emotion, love, and originality.  The most beautiful tribute to the classroom teacher ever delivered.

"This day is a day of love. It’s not a day of achievement, really.  It’s a day of your family’s love for you, your love for each other and your teachers, and your teachers’ love for you."

Send it on to a teacher you love.

Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados at http://lovemyavocados.com.au. 

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Tony Wilson's author website is here.

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Allan Jeans is a great of Australian Rules football

He was coach of powerhouse Hawthorn during it's most successful era, from 1980-90, which included seven consecutive VFL grand finals and three premierships. He might have had four but he suffered a brain aneurysm at the end of 1987 and missed the 1988 flag that was secured by caretaker Alan Joyce.

This is the story of Jeans' famous speech on Grand Final Day, 1989.

it is told by players who heard the Pay the Price speech ─ the allegory of the boy, his mother and the shoes.

Speakers include Dermott Brereton, Robert Dipierdomenico, Gary Ayres, Chris Wittman, Chris Langford, Dean Anderson, John Kennedy Jr and Peter Schwab.

The interviews were originally recorded for Tony Wilson's '1989: The Great Grand Final' (Hardie Grant, 2020), available online at major retailers. To purchase a personalised, signed book, visit Tony's website or email tony@tonywilson,com.au. 

Episode sponsored by GreenSkin and PurpleSkin avocados at http://lovemyavocados.com.au. 

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Please continue to subscribe to newsletter, suggest speeches, and visit Speakola.

The two Allan Jeans audio speeches featured are this 'Crossroads' reenactment and this Richmond guernsey presentation night speech, both on Speakola.

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Melbourne comedian Damian Callinan talks about the two eulogies he wrote, in very different circumstances, for his parents' funerals.

How did he balance his natural inclination towards comedy, with the need to pay proper tribute?

What’s the right balance between laughter and tears?

Should you read a eulogy or try to memorise?

What are some tips for connecting with both your loved one's story, and the congregation?

Speech of the week is Damian's loquat jam speech at The Wheeler Centre at Tony Wilson's 'Show and Tell for Grown Ups.

Damian's hilarious podcast about life in isolation in the already isolated Bodgy Creek is The Bodgy Creek Community Podcast .  He has plays, merch, and comedy downloads on his website.

Visit Speakola to browse our huge collection of speeches. Read Damian's eulogy to his mother Kathleen, and watch & read his eulogy to his father Adrian. For a regular feed of great speeches you can follow Speakola on facebook and Twitter.

The story of how Speakola started is on this week's 'Conversations' podcast with Richard Fidler.

If you'd like to donate to support Speakola in both its website and podcast form, Tony would appreciate any help in these covid times! 

Tony's new book is '1989 The Great Grand Final'.

Send him an email or a DM on Twitter and he'll sell you a signed copy.

The show sponsor for episode one is 'Mr Yum', the pick up and home delivery service for Melbourne restaurants Hotel Jesus and Mamasita.

If you'd like to sponsor the podcast, get in touch with Tony.

 

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