This content was created by Sally Koering Zimney. This content was uploaded by Sally Koering Zimney. This is a podcast episode titled "110: MMM - On Power and Stories and Orlando" (PODCAST) released June 22, 2016, featuring host Sally Koering Zimney. The excerpt is a spoken monologue/reflection by Sally in which she introduces the show, recounts personal memories from grad school and public speaking, and responds emotionally to contemporary events (the Brock Turner case and the Orlando shooting). She emphasizes feelings of powerlessness but argues for the power of storytelling and persuasive speech to humanize victims and drive change; she also references attending the National Speech and Debate Tournament and encourages listeners to use their voices. The episode is personal, topical, and intended to motivate and comfort the audience.
Chapters
With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking. Because a good talk can move the world. And it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful, that's not a small task. I love your giggle. Wow. Oh my gosh, just waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Hi, movers! I, like many of you, have been reeling a little bit thinking about Orlando and how to respond and what we can do And it took me a while. I spent a lot of time processing, and I kept being brought back to this moment I had in grad school. And so I did some writing about it, and luckily at the end of it, I came to something that I want to remind all of us, because whoever we are there is something that we can do. So I wanted to share that piece of writing with you. When I was in grad school, I was searching for a thread in my work that I couldn't figure out how to express. It was the— in the middle of the second George W. Bush election, and I was trying to figure out why people were moved by him and why some people were so immovable in their beliefs. I was being bounced around by so many ideas and thoughts, and I came to my advisor red-faced and quietly angry and speechlessly frustrated, and she said to me, "Don't talk to anyone for 24 hours. Just find some space and think. Read, write, and we'll talk again tomorrow." So off I went, trying to figure out what was going on, not just with me but with the world. It seems so silly now, George Bush, so small and petty and even harmless compared to what we seem to be dealing with now, but that's where the world was and what I was wrestling with. It took me 23 and a half hours to realize that I felt powerless. I felt powerless to change people's minds. That is a dark place to get to when your career, your belief system, your hope for the world depends on the belief that we can change and get better and find new ways of thinking and being, that we evolve, that we are transformational people, that the universe bends toward progress. But in finally finding the word that I'd been searching for— powerless— I felt some strange relief. Realizing I couldn't change everything helped me realize what I could change. I was brought back to that feeling when I read about Brock Turner and the injustice in his sentencing. It made me afraid for my daughters and anguished about raising a son, and it made me so angry that if this was a Black man, he would be in prison for years. And when I woke up on Sunday morning, I heard a little something about a shooting in Orlando on NPR. It wasn't said with any particular tone of sadness—that's public radio for you, I suppose—and how unbelievably sad is it when a shooting has become so commonplace it hardly made me pause? But then I heard it was targeted at gay people. It was during Pride. It was at a gay bar, what should be a bastion, a safe space where you can be free. And in that moment, I broke a little bit. Powerless. And I've been searching for the words to share my grief and express how aghast I am, and that in the aftermath there are people who are blaming Muslims as a whole and not blaming guns at all and not expressing grief because they were gay. And it just— Oh, it just— I feel so powerless to change it all. And we are powerless to change it all, but we are not powerless. We can tell stories. We can humanize this world by making each faceless, too-commonplace, generalized tragedy something real, with a story. The stories are the way back in to each other. We desperately need a way back in. This is how change happens. Keep sharing the stories. In solidarity and with so much love, Sally Koering Zimney. Last week I was at the National Speech and Debate Tournament. I was a high school speech kid myself. I loved it so much, and I was invited and so honored to speak and honor my coaches who have had tremendous success in the world of original oratory, which was my category. And if you're not a speech person, OO, which is what it's sometimes called, is persuasive speaking, which is my jam, as you know. And sitting there, I was reminded why. There was this fantastic video about the impact of speech and why it's so valuable and so important, and one of the students said something like, "We have to use our voice. The world needs us." And that is so, so true. And it's not just true for these young people who have grown up in such a different world than the one I did and who give me so much hope, but it's for all of us. It's a reminder that our words, our voices, our stories really can do something. Thanks for joining me on this journey to create more talks that move the world. It is more important now than ever.
