The Speech Guys

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

Mike and Chris keep sippin' their whiskies after the other Speech Guys leave for an extended chat of related topics from the "Becoming Jesus" episode of the Speeches By Prisoners speech series.

The interview referenced in the episode of Denzel Washington can be accessed with the URL below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHvtjJY6IsQ

"Imagine if America came in a box. You take it off the shelf and you read the back. I want what's in it to match what's on the back."

--Chris

"You don't want that child to be more afraid of the dad than the consequences of that mistake."

--Mike

The thumbnail image for this episode was accessed on this website:

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie…vie-1195477/

The Speech Guys lace up their high tops and unpack the first aid kit to talk about wounds... father wounds, that is. Jake Shuttlesworth's speech to his son, Jesus Shuttlesworth, played by Ray Allen in the 1998 Spike Lee film, "He Got Game", serves as their conversational muse.

Chris guest hosts.

Episode Rating:

13+ for instances of language ("bulls***", "a**hole") at approximately 2 and 58 minutes, respectively

Wipe that melancholy off your face and think wistful thoughts one last time as Mike, Landon, Matt, and Ross tread one more time through Speeches By Losers... this time, Frederick Nietzsche's "Madman Speech" from his 1880 publication, "The Gay Science" or often retranslated as "Joyful Wisdom".

Landon hosts and the other three just try to keep up!

Thumbnail photo can be accessed here: www.facebook.com/216302041725688/…NvQltTc6dtI&_rdr

Text from the speech and a portion of "The Gay Science" here:

web.stanford.edu/~jsabol/existent…cience-hurry.pdf

Episode Rating:

13+ for a few instances of mild language and a few brief references to sex within the context of marriage

Welcome to episode #37 of the Speech Guys! (Yes, we keep our episode number secret because... just because.)

Matt's the speech picker and Dr. Lucy Kalinithi is the speech-giver in her June 2017 TED talk on navigating the experience of losing her husband, father to their child, Cady, and fellow medical professional, Paul, to lung cancer.

Mike contrasts Kalinithi's perspective on suffering as a mode for living with more traditional paths of avoiding pain or treating a cancer prognosis as strictly one of competition.

Matt discusses how practicing setting aside our egos could get us better at dying.

Landon shares his thoughts on the quality versus quantity of life question.

Each of the SGs get vulnerable and answer, "What would you do if you just got off work and learned you were going to die at midnight?", for the Final Bell question.

Listen to the full speech here:

youtu.be/U5-yBjKKicA

Thumbnail photo comes from paulkalinithi.com.

Fact check: The article URL posted below clarifies Paul's religious position.

www.foxnews.com/opinion/paul-kala…ave-up-on-atheism

Fact check: The gentleman who purportedly never slept is named, "Albert Herpin".