David Brooks

they're unconsciously asking themselves this question, is this guy gonna suck?

And if you can tell a bunch of jokes the first five minutes, yeah, then they can relax and they can say, okay, he's not gonna suck.

But then I watched Bryan Stevenson, who I hope everybody knows Bryan Stevenson, and he frees people from falsely accused death penalties.

I watched him give a speech and I learned it's impossible to put too many stories in a speech.

So it's story, point, story, point, story, point.

Parker Palmer as an educator said, my job is to find little stories that make big points.

And so the way I think of a speech, and I don't know if you think of a podcast this way, I hadn't thought about it this way, is like I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan.

So I model my speeches on Springsteen concerts.

When does he do a happy song?

When does he do a sad song?

When does he build to a crescendo?

A speech like a concert is a series of three to five minute emotional moments.

How you structure those emotional moments determines whether you're giving a good speech or a bad speech.

Now, a podcast is a little different because it's a conversation.

But I find one of the things great podcasters do is that they set an emotional tone.

That it's so powerful to do different people's podcasts because they totally different emotional tones.

And some people, it's a warm, some people in some podcasts were the students, were learning with each other.

And some were the arguers who were debating each other.

And some were just sharing each other's lives.

Yeah.