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When you take the stage with no notes, no net, and no place to hide, the audience feels your confidence the moment you strut out. When you exceed their high expectations because you truly did the work, the audience is left saying, “Wow! What a speech!” or “Wow! What a show!” or “Wow! What a sermon!” or “Wow! What a closing argument!”

However, the venue creates the context and structure that allows your piece to take flight.

Bill Maher is known for his weekly seven-minute editorial segment, “New Rules.” Last night he hit it out of the park, even though we all know he is tethered to the teleprompter. When Maher does stand-up, he works from notes. You will often see large monitors mounted on the front of the theater’s balcony. Without exception, his set list is bulleted out on large white index stock taped behind the footlights.

Because most of Maher’s stand-up is political comedy and satire, he is commenting on current headlines. He has a choice: work from notes or cancel the show. Why? Because there is no way he can own a live, one-hour performance from memory when the material has a shelf life of a month—or sometimes just a week. Whatever Maher talks about on stage this week will be replaced by an even more absurd situation next week, and it is literally his job to talk about it.

The question therefore arises: Is it still a speech? Of course. Is it a pure performance piece? Of course not.

Last night’s “New Rules” segment on the Overton Window was one of Maher’s best editorials in years. Let’s unpack the venue in detail.

Maher sits in a production studio at CBS in West Hollywood—the same studio where they produce The Price Is Right. His piece includes the occasional “over-the-shoulder” graphic. To make room for the graphic, the camera operator has to pan right. Once the graphic is no longer needed, the camera pans left until Maher is once again center-screen.

The camera operator is on a headset with the director and the technical director, who has the graphic standing by in a preview monitor. Someone is running the teleprompter. A couple of other people are responsible for ensuring we can hear Mr. Maher when he speaks. Another crew makes sure the lighting is right so we can see him.

Even if Maher had the fifteen extra hours required to fully “own” every verbal and non-verbal element of this seven-minute piece, the choice of venue makes it impossible. The individuals enumerated above need a copy of the script to do their jobs. That’s where they get their cues.

In these uncertain times, it is reassuring that in the face of a seven-minute political rant, for once, everybody is literally on the same page. Why? Because that is what the venue demands.

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BIO

Mark Whitney, is an entrepreneur, stand-up comic, master storyteller, and President of Toastmasters’ HiFi Speakers’ Communication & Leadership Academy in San Diego, CA (Carmel Valley, 92130). He is also the recipient of best solo performer prizes of the Boulder International Theatre Festival, the D.C. Theatre Festival, the Minnesota Theatre Festival, the Iowa Theatre Festival, and the San Francisco Comedy Convention for standup comedy. He has studied with Kurtis Matthews at the San Francisco Comedy College and Stephen Rosenfeld at the American Comedy Institute in New York. From 2015-2019, Mark created, wrote, hosted and produced Late Nite Last Week, the #1 political satire podcast in the world.

TRANSCRIPT

The title of my speech is inspired by the fact that in two weeks, we’re going to have a speaking contest—a competitive speaking contest—here in our club. And I’d like to encourage everybody here to strongly consider competing in this contest. Why?

The first answer to that is, I don’t know. Because having a competitive speaking contest, on its face, is really a stupid thing to do. Because there is no such thing as “best speaker.” If I’ve learned anything from doing theater festivals and being rated and reviewed by theatre critics and audience members alike, it is that every single member of the audience experiences what you say differently. They each experience it through their own life experience. They hear things as significant that are completely insignificant to you. When you step into this arena and bring your best five to seven minutes, you will feel something. The audience will feel something. And the thing you will feel—the thing anybody who does this will feel—is humility. You will be humbled. And the more you serve your audience, the more the audience will serve you. A speech is a transaction, but it’s also a relationship that lasts for a defined period of time.

So the title is “Competitive Speaking.” I talked about the speaking part, but I also want to talk about the word “competitive.” The root word of “competitive” is “compete.” Life is competitive. We are constantly in a battle to communicate clearly—in things small and large.

That is the universal reason to take advantage of this opportunity. At the beginning of the meeting, I asked you three questions: Who am I? Where am I? What do I want? Now, your answers are for you to know, but I’ll share mine. Who am I? I am the Joker. I had this suit made in Joker purple just for me. The collar is Joker green. On the inside, I have monogrammed my trademark slogan: “Keep banging.” I am the Joker—not a criminal, but definitely a gangster.

Where am I? I’m in mid-autumn. When I was 25, I was in the advertising business. I remember deciding that I had just finished the spring of my life, and that life comes in four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Summer starts at age 25 and goes to age 50. Fall starts at age 50 and goes to age 75. So I’m about halfway through fall. And at 75, winter starts—and we all hope for a long winter. What do I want? That answer is always the easiest for me. I want the same thing I need—and that’s an audience.

You can’t do this without an audience. And you can’t be effective with the audiences in your life—audiences large and small—unless you achieve some sort of mastery in communication, in human communication. Just think: everyone here has had college professors, right? Think about all the professors you had and the ones who fell short. I’d define the ones who fell short as the ones you’d never call “standing room only.” You’d never fight to get into that class. The great professors—the ones you’d never miss—had made it their lot in life to be such effective communicators that every time they took the podium, it was an event. And there was no way you were missing that. There are only a handful like that on any campus.

Think about all the speaker types who step behind lecterns—ministers, corporate leaders, politicians, trial lawyers, people pitching investors for a million dollars—and how many of them fall short. Why? Because they didn’t take advantage of the speech contest. That’s why they fall short.

I spent years taking advantage of every single speech contest. I joined multiple clubs so if I didn’t win in one, I could in another, and get to the next division. I did everything I could because the audiences were provided for me—and that’s the hardest part: finding an audience that’s provided, that you don’t have to work for. If you think of it that way, the speech part is easy.

We have a lot of literal founders in this club. I mean, Jonathan has talked about what he’s working on. Saori, Paris—all the new members—are working on things in addition to their careers. Le Ann is a founder. I am a founder. These are literal founders. When you create a speech, you are the founder of that speech. It is yours. And that audience is there for you to use.

The more you put that audience at the forefront, the more you will get back—the more you will learn, the more you will feel, the more you will grow—to the point that there is no room too large for you, no environment that intimidates you. You can walk into any setting, to any audience, with a minimum of preparation, and own that room. And there are just damn few people who can do that.

These are the reasons, directly and indirectly, to strongly consider giving your best five to seven minutes two weeks from now—not so you can win, but so that you can learn. Ricky.

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Let’s call it The Charlie Kirk Engagement System: Synthesizing the longstanding, analog tradition of travelling from campus-to-campus to peacefully engage college students, with 21st century on-demand, global distribution, as a model for any motivated philosopher, activist, comedian, entrepreneur, or public intellectual to follow.

Perhaps more than any other individual of late, Mr. Kirk proved two things:

1. People like to watch people mix it up with college students.

2. The persuasive power of travelling from campus-to-campus is a massively effective recruiting strategy.

As a politically homeless, intelligent citizen of the United States, who like Mr. Kirk, does not have a college education and has devoted himself to mastering the persuasive power of words spoken, I have long been impressed with the man’s accomplishments over the course of his brief but spectacular spoken-word career.

It would have been fun to one-day learn what 50 year-old Charlie Kirk thought of 30 year-old Charlie Kirk. Unfortunately, that will never happen.

Like Martin Luther King, William F. Buckley, and others, Mr. Kirk changed the culture. Like Mr. King, Mr. Kirk paid the ultimate price for sharing his feelings with others. The record of Mr. Kirk’s work will similarly be analyzed for decades.

The purpose of this post is to highlight the sport of debate featuring Mr. Kirk and the actual debate coach for the actual Cambridge University. That Mr. Kirk was invited to Cambridge is something of a singular accomplishment in and of itself. That said, Cambridge’s Tilly Middlehurst easily anticipates his pivots, forces concretes over abstractions (“material outcomes”), and uses reductio + humor to expose inconsistencies—while avoiding the gendered optics trap of overt humiliation.

Why does Tilly’s approach work?

1. Pre-write the opponent.
   She didn’t “over-research”; she mapped the likely sequence of Kirk’s pivots (feminism → “what is a woman” → happiness → religion → immigration) and packed ready counters. Prediction trumped volume.

2. Own the frame with a trap opener.
   Leading with “I’m a feminist” both disabused him of the idea she’s conservative and lured him into his favorite detour. She wanted the pivot to the definitional thicket.

3. Force concretes (“material outcomes”).
   Repeatedly drags abstractions to the ground: “What does your prescription look like day-to-day?” This strips pleasant rhetoric (“family,” “femininity”) to domestic submission, economic dependence, and rule-setting—less palatable to moderates.

4. Characterization > claims.
   Debate concept: paint the lived picture. Instead of “women weren’t happy in the 1950s,” she characterizes how discontent was suppressed (Valium, lobotomies). Vivid beats abstract.

5. Reductio with humor.
   She flips his premises to absurd or self-defeating conclusions (e.g., if happiness is your metric, why oppose gay people pursuing theirs?). It wins laughs without personal attack.

6. Pivot-following as control.
   Counterintuitive: she lets him steer topics—because she pre-modeled the path—and meets each pivot with a prepared refutation. He feels in control; she is.

7. Optics discipline (gendered audience).
   She avoids “owning” him overtly to sidestep the predictable “shrill/smug” backlash against women. Instead: dry quips (“smiles per capita”) and argument-level critiques.

8. Notes without “cheating.”
   Phone ≠ crutch; it’s a bookmark stack. She later mirrors his “put the phone down & engage” demand by switching to questions—neutralizing the delegitimization gambit.

Rhetorical toolkit (label and reuse)

• Frame-lock: Define the evaluative lens (“material benefits”) before substance.

• Bait-and-mirror: Invite the predictable pivot; then mirror the opponent’s instruction to expose asymmetry.

• Concrete forcing function: Ask “What does that look like at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday?”

• Audience split: Talk through the opponent to the mixed crowd (believers vs. seculars).

• Reductio + laugh line: Conclude their logic where they cannot go; let the audience connect dots.

• Credential judo: Distinguish “masquerading as academic” without ad hominem sneers; anchor to standards (you want surgeons trained).

• Prediction pathing: Pre-script the opponent’s sequence; prep one card per pivot.

Moments that move the room

• “Smiles per capita” aside: collapses the pseudo-data move in five words; audience alignment without bile.

• Religious ought-claim pressure: When the “is → ought” leap appears, she stops persuading him and persuades his audience that they’re smuggling theology into secular prescriptions.

• The happiness trap: She refuses the cherry-pick war, attacks the metric (self-report flaws) and the sincerity (he doesn’t apply “happiness” to gay people).

Vulnerabilities / things to tighten

• Phone-optic risk: Older audiences read phones as “internet lifeline.” Print a one-pager next time; same prep, zero optic penalty.

• January 6 detour (she wisely passed): Would’ve ceded topic control and activated his strongest grievance terrain. Good instincts—keep that filter.

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Small habits compound into remarkable results, much like compound interest. Improving 1% daily leads to a 37x improvement over a year. Conversely, small declines have the opposite effect. Thus, success comes not from radical transformation, but from consistent, small improvements.

Clear presents a four-stage framework for habit formation:

1. Noticing

• You can’t act on what you don’t notice.

• Strategy: Implementation intentions — plan specifically when, where, and how you’ll perform a habit.

• Example: Clear committed to publishing blog posts every Monday and Thursday starting November 12, 2012.

• Bonus Tool: Failure pre-mortem — anticipate and plan for obstacles in advance

2. Wanting

• Environment shapes desire more than motivation.

• Study: Harvard researchers altered a hospital cafeteria layout, leading to a 25% increase in water consumption simply by making it more accessible.

• Insight: We desire what’s visible and easy to access.

• Tip: Design your environment to make good habits obvious and bad habits hard. E.g., put your guitar in the middle of the room; leave fruit on the counter.

3. Doing

• Repetitions build skill—perfection comes later.

• Story: A photography professor found that students graded on quantity produced better photos than those focused on quality.

• Key Idea: Focus on getting reps in, not being perfect.

• Tool: Two-minute rule — make the habit so small it takes two minutes to start. Example: Twyla Tharp’s real habit was hailing a cab to the gym, not working out.

4. Liking

• We repeat behaviors we enjoy.

• Problem: Good habits often have delayed rewards (e.g., fitness), while bad habits have immediate ones (e.g., sugar).

• Solution: Add an immediate reward to good habits.

• Example: The Seinfeld Strategy — track your consistency by marking an “X” on a calendar for each successful day; the goal becomes “don’t break the chain.”

• Rule: Never miss twice.

Closing Insight: Identity Change Through Habits

• Clear ends with the Ship of Theseus metaphor—just as a ship can be entirely rebuilt one plank at a time and still be the same ship, we can become someone new through habit-by-habit transformation.

• True behavior change is identity change.

• Don’t aim to write a book—aim to be a writer.

• Don’t aim to run a marathon—aim to be a runner.

• Every habit is a vote for the type of person you want to become. You don’t need unanimous votes, just a consistent body of work.

Final Message:

• Habits are the path not only to external success, but to internal transformation. If you can change your habits, you can change your life.

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AI GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Speaker1:

[0:00] We'll move on to our last speech, which will be three to five minutes. So this one's a little shorter. And Ricky will be giving us a speech about the full circle. His story of the full circle. Not a half circle, but a full circle. Please have a whole thing. Please have a whole thing.

Speaker0:

[0:22] Before we begin a few requests, Timer, would you do me a favor? Um when i'm uh men and uh middle can you hold the things up because if you hold i i i totally, don't see things in here so if you don't go like this i won't see it um second there's um secondly for the um counter please uh count everything just don't click now let me go on the toast master mode here we go all right good afternoon everyone i am still ricky savage question have Have you ever let a bad day spill over onto somebody else? For example, might be rude to a lady and her dog. And if this has happened, have you ever been given the opportunity or gift to make amends of some sort and bring it full circle? This is exactly what happened to me on Monday. About a year and a half ago, I was lifting weights at a gym. This gym is a small, more athletic-based one, so there's a lot of the same people there. A lot of people bring their dogs. So when I was in there training one day, a lady or a dog walked in. The dog came over to me, kind of jumped up on me a little bit. Not aggressive, not at all. Very normal. I overreacted a little bit. And though I was able to calm myself down fairly quickly, the damage was done. After standing there for about four or five minutes, I decided to take my stuff and go home because I was embarrassed. And what else are you going to do?

Speaker0:

[1:44] As the months wore on, this bothered me because I didn't know who this person was. Plus, this is a sanctuary for athletes, so to speak. So I did two things. It was my fault, but also I let a situation affect somebody else that I didn't want to. And I violated this, the sanctuary of that athletic place, if you will.

Speaker0:

[2:03] And fortunately, about six weeks ago, the lady who I offended at that point came walking in with her dog. I thought it was her kind of evaluated for a little bit. I didn't want to make a mistake. Not, you know, I don't know who you are. This. So I finally decided to make the amends that I had been talking about doing. I walked up to her, asked her. I said, excuse me. I'm sorry to bother you. However, I was rude to you and your dog. And she said, yes, you were. Maybe not that aggressively, but it was direct. And I said, well, I apologize. Guys, I don't make excuses for bad behavior. I'm just not a great human sometimes. She was very gracious. She accepted my apology. In situations like that, though, I believe that not only should you make amends, but you should double down on it. Meaning, I wanted to make sure this person understood that I am not a moron and I do like dogs. Because I don't think that I am and I really do.

Speaker0:

[2:52] Monday, I was able to, I was in the same gym. She just trains at the same place. Started a conversation with her and we started talking about what i did for a living and then we went back to what she did for a living i asked her the conversation was something like this what do you do for a living i'm a retired professional ufc fighter i said really what's her name jessica jessica penny now if you're a ufc fan you know exactly who this is i know exactly who this is but unfortunately my facial recognition software is garbage so after i recognized her and stepped back. I remember my jaw dropping a little bit. I sat down at the bench next to her and said, you're a UFC fighter. And I was rude to you. And she said, yes, you were somewhat. Like she said before, she's a very funny person to talk to. So after a little bit of talking back and forth to me, realizing that not only was I rude, just the absolute wrong person you needed to, you should rarely ever be rude to. She handled it very well, but how interesting it is when somebody decides to forgive you and not hold things against you, because I have held things against people before. So I learned a lot of lessons just sitting there talking to her.

Speaker0:

[3:58] The moral of this entire story is this. If you're going to allow your emotions to get the best of you, maybe don't do it with a UFC fighter. And if you do, try to make amends as soon as you can. I purposefully talked to the gym owner about who this person was because I didn't know. Now, understand something. The entire time, I thought her name was Grace. I did not know this was Jessica Penny, UFC fighter. So I think I might I don't think I would have would have went about this any differently however after I found out who she was and what her capabilities were and how gracious she was there was a lot of lessons to be learning because I don't fight at her level but I do compete so when I see these other high high level world champions do things I try to emulate that thank you.

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AI Generated Transcript

Speaker1:

[0:00] We have one of our newest members, Paris, who will be giving a five to seven minute speech. Is that correct? Five to seven minute speech about when the model breaks down. I don't know if this is a human model or a mathematical model or both.

Speaker0:

[0:13] Yeah, it's her icebreaker.

Speaker1:

[0:15] It's her icebreaker. Yes. So, oh, great. So please help me in welcoming Paris with when the model breaks down.

Speaker0:

[0:27] Thank you, everyone. I usually begin my speeches with turning red, having a racing part and trembling feet. But today I'm going to collect all of my power to avoid those. Let's see how that will work. I was born and raised in Iran. My mom was a nurse. My dad was an accountant.

Speaker0:

[0:53] He also had a degree in Russian. Later he got an MBA. And long before computers were common, he taught himself programming on a Commodore 64.

Speaker0:

[1:08] And nowadays, his passion is learning about Persian epic poetry. So he's the kind of person who always is thirsty to learn and thinks of life as a never-ending school project. From an early age, he encouraged my sister and me to be scientists. At age 12, I tested into a gifted school, and I was placed among bright students and received a very good education. At 18, I ranked 40th among more than 150,000 participants in Iran's National and Trans-Example University. And I was placed in the top university in Iran in a very competitive major, electrical engineering. Again, I was among the best of the best. All those years, I received training on being a strong student, especially in science and math. But I missed on other important life skills. I remember my sister and I routinely skipped family parties to stay at home and study. I remember my dad once told me that people with high IQ have a hard time communicating with others. and I took that as a fact.

Speaker0:

[2:24] After college, I followed the path of my peers to apply abroad for graduate school.

Speaker0:

[2:30] I got an admission from Northeastern University in Boston. At age 22, I left my country, my family, and my first love, by the way, my classmate, to go to Boston. And.

Speaker0:

[2:48] Again, I was among very good, similar, like-minded nerds at college. After six years of being long, oh, by the way, my boyfriend, my love, got an admission from University of California in San Diego. So as you can imagine, we were placed in the opposite coasts in the U.S., practically with the maximum distance two people have in the country. I finished my education after six years of long-distance relationship with my boyfriend. I moved to San Diego with my Ph.D., and we got married, and I landed my first job as a data scientist. Finally, it felt like my dad's long wish was coming true. I was becoming a scientist. Um.

Speaker0:

[3:47] Soon after that, I landed my first job. Oh, I talked about my job. Seven years ago, right before the Memorial Day weekend, my, our first child was born. We hired a babysitter so I could push forward in my career. Um, and again, I worked with engineers like myself, many of them international. So I was still inside my comfort zone until the pandemic happened. Boom. I was suddenly thrown out of my comfort zone. It felt like all of the skills that I had worked all my life to gain no longer mattered. I lost my babysitter. I lost my housecleaning lady, all of my support system. And I tried to work harder to make things work. But I was on the edge of a burnout. Then another boom, September 2020, my little sister at age 33 was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, which was, by the way, the first one in our family history.

Speaker0:

[4:51] And that was my wake-up call. I realized that to survive, I had to pause and breathe.

Speaker0:

[5:04] I joined the great resignation wave. I quit my job at Qualcomm to become a stay-at-home mom. Ever since, I've been working on making more women friends. I started a hiking club. After we had our second child, I started a community for Iranian moms of newborns in San Diego. And today I'm practicing skills that I never learned as a child as a teen or even as a young adult and those are communication, making eye contact, active listening and giving a speech in front of an audience, that's why I'm here today.

Speaker1:

[5:49] Thank you way to do it. Awesome. Reward yourself after. Give yourself a little reward after the meeting. Seriously, reinforce that.

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Richard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory, one of the most praised novels of the decade. His writing absolutely explodes with life. But perhaps Richard’s most impressive skill is his character development. And we’re not talking about the stodgy character arc you learned in English class. Richard shares 40+ years and 14 novels worth of insight on how to write characters that readers can’t get out of their head. This episode is a deep dive into the psychoanalytical complexities of character: drama and tension, thinking and feeling, motivation and suspense. Plus, we dive into the three different types of character-driven drama: People against People, People against Themselves, and People against the Environment. In a nutshell, this episode is a storytelling masterclass that you don’t want to miss.

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