This episode is rated PG-13 for language and discussion of sexuality.

Anne Marie rejoins as guest host to discuss the good, true, and maybe not so universally accurate observations of women and men in Gloria's speech to lift Barbie out of the existential doldrums.

Thumbnail image comes from people.com/read-the-powerful-b…to-50-times-7565806

Merry Christmas from the Speech Guys! Talk, think, and laugh about your favorite holiday fare... fruitcakes, George and Mary Bailey, and the real life Hallmark tradition that took place each season at Johnson's Market.

Read the November 2019 article on Ross's family grocery business from the New York Times here:

www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/us/rur…-farm-market.html

Episode note: the nature of Santa Claus' existence is discussed.

In 1986, author and Holocaust-survivor, Elie Wiesel, was awarded for his humanitarian work on behalf of the Jewish community and other historically-oppressed groups. The Speech Guys discuss the legacy of those words, particularly in light of heightened tensions between Israel, Hamas, and Palestinians.

Special thanks to a listener who pointed out that the principal reason for Mr. Wiesel's receiving the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize was on account of his work in liberating Jews in the Soviet. You can learn about one Soviet Jew's experience here:

lithub.com/on-the-liberation-s…-soviet-refuseniks/

The thumbnail image of Mr. Wiesel is used from www.hmd.org.uk/resource/elie-wiesel-hmd-2017/.

The speech audio comes from youtu.be/tu-63eViNPo?si=YC8X0vA8b53enMxc.

Apollo Creed helped Balboa get his body ready for the Heavyweight title against Clubber Lang. But his wife and partner, Adrian (Talia Shire), had to retrain his heart. "I'm afraid alright! For the first time in my life, I'm afraid."

Bonus content: Matt's Brooklyn-styled Rocky impression

Who said AI was a new conversation we should be having? Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) and Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) were paving the way for the rest of us all of the way back in 1982.

Mike's the speech-picker. Matt and Landon tag along for a trip to the future in... 2019. Or would that be the past?

Thumbnail image comes from www.exrey.tv/blade-runner-1982/.

The Speech Guys try to imagine a world just before the dawn of their births as they step back into the 1980s with President Reagan's speech following the space shuttle Challenger explosion on January 28th, 1986 over Cape Canaveral.

Mike, Landon, Matt, and Ross finish out the Speeches By Prisoners series with Socrates' speech before his Athenian jury considering whether or not he ought to be executed for crimes of "corrupting the youth" and not properly worshiping the traditional gods of Athens.

The Speech Guys share a common collegiate origin along Illinois' Interstate 74. Here, Landon and Mike recall their coming together merely months before Mike's University of Illinois graduation in spring 2015. The moral of this episode? You never know what treasures are in store until your car is packed and ready to pull away from one of life's stages. So be a good friend all of the way through and don't exit through the garage.

In 1978, Russian exile, Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement address to Harvard graduates. Unlike most commencement speeches, it painted Western culture in macabre, depressing descriptions of its decline in courage, legalism, direction of freedom and the press, socialism, loss of will, thinking with only respect to what's 'fashionable', short-sightedness, pervasive secular humanism, and its doomed similarities to the communist government under which he'd been exiled.

So, don your cap and gown and let's listen and think about what he had to say to those Harvard graduates four decades ago.

The speech rendition can be accessed here:

youtu.be/QC_3xnVOBjk

The thumbnail image comes from here:

www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/timeline

It's the second episode of the Speeches By Prisoners series and the Speech Guys contemplate the stoicism and devotion to ordinary life Mandela seemed to demonstrate as a South African political prisoner from 1964 to 1990.

Listen to the full speech Mandela gave before his 1964 trial here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQvlxnWELHM

The SG spend a lot of time comparing and contrasting Mandela's decisions to Blessed Franz Jaagerstatter (1907 - 1943). His life was recently depicted in Terrence Malick's film, A Hidden Life. Watch that trailer here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJXmdY4lVR0

Thumbnail image is accessed from here:

www.npg.org.uk/collections/searc…41/Nelson-Mandela