How the president-elect tapped into a powerful—and only recently studied—human emotion called "elevation." Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, studies the emotions of uplift, and he has tried everything from showing subjects vistas of the Grand Canyon to reading them poetry—with little success. But just this week one of his postdocs came in with a great idea: Hook up the subjects, play Barack Obama's victory speech, and record as their autonomic nervous systems go into a swoon....It was while looking through the letters of Thomas Jefferson that Haidt first found a description of elevation. Jefferson wrote of the physical sensation that comes from witnessing goodness in others: It is to "dilate [the] breast and elevate [the] sentiments … and privately covenant to copy the fair example." (via Geek Press) [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Dec 20, 2008 -
50 comments
Randy Pausch,
Barbara Kingsolver,
Barack Obama, and
J.K. Rowling inspired the hell out of Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Wesleyan, and Harvard graduates this year.
If you're a big fan of pomp and circumstance, you'll also want to check out these:
Chuck Norris at Liberty University,
Samantha Power at Pitzer College, and
Michelle Nijhuis at Reed College.
[more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea
on Jun 8, 2008 -
36 comments
Obama's Gettysburg Address. Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of "what is is"), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor. One of the most important speeches on race in decades if not longer. (
text)
[more inside]
posted by caddis
on Mar 18, 2008 -
1126 comments
Do you know your rhetoric? You can hear how it is used in the
top 100 American speeches of all time, 63 of which have the original audio recordings!
(prev.) The list has some odd omissions, such as the
Gettysburg Address (and here in convenient
presentation form) and non-American speakers like
Churchill, so this shorter
international list may be useful. While the slow decline in the quality of presidential addresses
is much lamented,
scriptwriters are stepping up, see for example,
top movie speeches of all time ("Smells like victory" beats "You can't handle the truth"). So, MeFiers, do any of these still inspire, or is rhetoric dead?
posted by blahblahblah
on May 24, 2005 -
31 comments
Arundhati Roy's call for action, on accepting the Sydney Peace Prize. (That's action from
us specifically). I often find Roy's speeches overblown, overcooked and one-sided, and if that kind of rhetoric bothers you then you might want to skip this link. But she does speak lyrically, and I find it hard to argue against what she says this time.
posted by iffley
on Nov 10, 2004 -
7 comments
Mad As Hell
First we had Al Gore letting loose with
both barrels at NYU, and now Bill Moyers drops the bomb on the
poverty gap in this country.
"The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else."
P.S: Earth to Kerry: mebbe you want to talk to one of these guys, they seem to be on to something. Have one of your speech writers give them a call...
posted by piedrasyluz
on Jun 18, 2004 -
47 comments
Bono's commencement address to U.Penn. "The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape.... That's what this degree of yours is, a blunt instrument. So go forth and build something with it."
[via Ed]
posted by rory
on Jun 2, 2004 -
46 comments
Senator Edward Kennedy gave two magnificent speeches last week, but only one received the attention it deserved. While his blistering attack on the Bush Administration for manipulating and distorting intelligence to justify attacking Iraq was noted in the Washington Post and other papers, the Senator's fiery progressive manifesto--delivered at a New York conference called Re-Imagining the Welfare State--went virtually unreported. "For them the law of the jungle is the best economic policy for America--not equal opportunity, not fairness, not the American dream. Their ideas will inevitably result in a lesser America, and have already meant a growing gulf between rich and poor." (From The Nation)
posted by n9
on Mar 12, 2004 -
45 comments
...we are all mortal Forty years ago today, the US President tentatively outlined the idea of coexistence with an intractable enemy. The famous, resonant lines about breathing the same air and cherishing our children's future feel oddly buried in the speech, between a "secondly" and a "thirdly". Cuba was still some months in the future when Kennedy gave this speech. Audio
here.
posted by gdav
on Jun 10, 2003 -
26 comments
The Mind of a Madman. PRESIDENT SADDAM HUSSEIN’S ADDRESS ON THE ELEVENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GRAND BATTLE "MOTHER OF ALL BATTLES" JANUARY 16-17, 1991. See also President Saddam Hussein's speech on the occasion of the 14th anniversary of the day of the great victory over Iran and
other funny stories. And now, for the rest of the story.
posted by Mack Twain
on Sep 14, 2002 -
10 comments
