Reading, Writing and Rhetoric, the Lost Art - John Bowe

This week on the Corner, Steve Martorano invites communication coach and mentor, John Bowe, to the stage. They delve into the art of persuasion, exploring today's "crisis of disconnection." Discover the lost treasure of rhetoric and gain insights into bridging the gap between words and understanding in our noisy world. Join us for a deep dive into the profound impact of language on our lives.

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Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the Corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, everybody, welcome again to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano presiding over the whole, we'd like to tell each week that the Behavioral Corner is a podcast about everything because everything affects our behavioral health Simple as that. So it's made possible by our underwriting partners Retreat Behavioral Health to learn more about them down the road, our guest is John Bowe, I'm going to characterize what John does as a coach and a mentor in the field of communications, he helps people stand on their two feet, and make a case. And that's a simple way of putting what John does together. But we'll get deeper into that. John wrote an article for The New York Times that grabbed my attention a couple of days ago. And it had to do with what he calls a crisis of disconnection. And we're gonna get very deeply into that, as well. John, thanks for joining us on the Behavioral Corner.

John Bowe 
Thanks for having me, Steve.

Steve Martorano 
We're going to discuss something today, John, that I you know, that many of us, MIT, probably all of us are going to confront, sooner or later and perhaps every day of your life. And that is the inability to express oneself in a fashion so that they may be understood. I'm thinking specifically of the Eric Burden and the Animal song from back in the day, where the plaintive cry in the chorus is, "Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood." It can be a very damaging thing when you are trying to make a case and cannot make it. You claim that we are in a crisis of that problem right now. And you trace it back to the lost art of rhetoric. Am I getting that? Right?

John Bowe 
Yeah, you are. I mean, okay. So when they invented democracy back in ancient Greece, they five minutes later, they had to invent the art of public speaking, and how to train people to do that. Because suddenly, you went from a world where nobody spoke in public. It was kind of prohibited for most people, in a world where if you were among the citizens, you were required to do it. And of course, people were just as bad at it back then, as they are now. And back then, if you sucked at it, you know, there would be a forum, to debate whether to invade Sparta or whatever. And if you were a bad public speaker, everyone laughed at you and didn't want to do business with you or marry you. And so it immediately became the way to get social prestige. And I think it's kind of stayed that way ever since. So how did they teach it, they approached it in a way that was so different than we do now. Now, we think about it in terms of confidence, or anxiety. So I wouldn't be Martin Luther King, except I have all this anxiety, and it's inhibiting my ability to express myself. Or if I were confident, and I just took a beta blocker, or Xanax, then suddenly, I'd be Martin Luther King. And of course, when you I put it that way, on purpose, to point out how ridiculous that is. It's not about your confidence or anxiety. It's about knowing how language works and knowing how to put together your thoughts.

Steve Martorano 
Well, you're the first guy in your field, I mean, most people who do what you do you go into, you go into situations where people's perhaps economic livelihood depends upon being able to stand up in front of people and make the case. And they always almost invariably begin with that anxiety thing. I'm going to teach you tricks. You'll think of everyone as being naked in front of you. It's all nonsense. You're right about the language thing. You know, most people have a certain age recall hearing or reading about growing up as an educational theory that said, we teach the three R's, which were reading, writing, and arithmetic. And the odd thing is there is only one of those begins with an R., I wonder whether rhetoric shouldn't have been one of those R's? Well,

John Bowe 
Well, that's the thing. Once the Greeks got off and ran with this, they realized, Oh, this is the most important thing that educated people need to know how to do. And the Romans picked it up from them and carried it on. So until about two or 300 years ago, this art of teaching people how to speak, which also means how to listen, how to evaluate and sort of see through the BS of what other people are saying, how to respond in a way that won't turn them off, you know, a way that will be easier for them to understand easier. All of that was drilled into people and it was kind of at the forefront of education.

Steve Martorano 
And that you just described is in effect what we talk about when we talk about rhetoric.

John Bowe 
Yes. And rhetoric is just a fancy word for what it means? It meant different things, but it mostly just meant the art of seeing all the different ways of putting something.

Steve Martorano 
It's interesting, John, not only have we lost sight of that as a skill that can be taught, but the term if anybody even remembers what rhetoric is, is now a negative context. Right? politician will get up and say something, and then the commentator will come back. Well, that's the typical rhetoric dismissing it, right?

John Bowe 
Yeah, and it's a very, it's just an incorrect definition. Oh, that's just rhetoric. It's something you dismiss. Whereas rhetoric could mean 18 different ways of putting something some of which might be deceitful, some of which might be perfect and straight on and authentic, it has nothing, it doesn't have any value inside of it.

Steve Martorano 
And so the article you wrote for the Times, alerts people to this, which, as I said, wouldn't occur to most people, that what we're missing is a skill that is easily taught, did you refer to it as the soccer of education? What did you mean by that? Was that what you said, the soccer...

John Bowe 
The beautiful thing about soccer, right, is you travel around the world, you can go to the poorest meanest places, and they can pick up a soccer game anywhere on the street and a parking lot, a vacant lot. Rhetoric and public speaking can be taught just as easily without any materials, you know, you could print up a three-page primer, and that would be sufficient to get people going. A lot of good public speaking stuff happens when you get a circle of kids or grownups, and have them go around and do an exercise, do something simple to introduce themselves, or talk about something that they love or hate. And then you go around the room, and everyone talks about what they liked, or didn't like about it? Or how could this be more clear? And so by doing that, it doesn't take very long for people to understand, oh, oh, this is how I can explain myself. And be more clear, instead of cursing the world for not understanding me, I can do more stuff, to be better understood and make myself easier to understand.

Steve Martorano 
Is the role of instituting what you just described about the elemental nature of being able to teach this flies in the face? There are a lot of headwinds against this idea. And certainly, you know, when educational initiatives are talked about today, they're almost invariably talked about the terms of of science and technology, stem issues. And of course, right away, we need $100 million for board computers and all that stuff. None of that's necessary in what you're talking about. But it does face, some headwinds in the current moment we are in. So where does this process begin? When can you introduce a rhetoric course, to people, and students and have them benefit from them? How early?

John Bowe 
It's a good question. I think, you know, I think I think the earlier the better that some of the early Greek exercises that they used with school kids, were so simple that you couldn't fail them. And so now you might have parents intervening, or kids saying, Oh, I can't do this, I have anxiety. And the Greeks would kind of get in there before that thought could form. And they would give the kids a piece of paper or whatever they use back then, with three or four lines. And the kid would stand in front of his class and recite the lines, you know, not from memory, they would just read off the piece of paper. And then afterward, you can say, great, you did a good job. Now you're a public speaker. And then you, you skill up from there, you level up. Next, you might do you know, some poetry or you might tell a little story, they used Aesop's Fables, for example. And then you could talk about the fable, but the kid would be standing in front of his or her get back then it was his peers and just talking a little bit and learning how to talk in front of people and learning bit by bit how to explain yourself. So how old would a kid need to be to just read off a piece of paper 4, 5, 6, 7?

Steve Martorano 
Yep, yeah, it's interesting. Before we get a little deeper into the weeds, on that notion, what is the goal of being good at rhetorical skills to win an argument, or just make yourself clear?

John Bowe 
I interviewed a great Vice Principal at a school called the Browning School here in New York, and she dismissed debate, for example, she said, Oh, that's the weaponized version of rhetoric. And I agree, I don't think it's to win an argument. It's equally to see someone else's argument. You can see what they're struggling to articulate, that may be failing, you can see how they're trying to manipulate people, you can see a lot of things. So the goal, I think, in the end, is to be able to express yourself and not feel like you've left anything unsaid. I think the goal is to feel understood, but it's also maybe, ultimately to have better group conversations, outcomes, and meetings. You know, so much of our time is spent at work, having meetings and everyone hates them because they're so boring. And I think because they're so boring, especially corporate settings with a lot of jargon and blah, blah, blah. People leave the meeting understanding less than when they entered The meeting. So it's a question of happiness ultimately, but also efficiency.

Steve Martorano 
What's the role of listening to them in this whole process? I mean, we're talking about standing up and making a case. To what extent does that depend upon the ability to listen to the other person so that you can shape your thoughts cogently?

John Bowe 
Oh, it's huge. It's huge. If I'm listening to you, and you're coming to me with a problem, and maybe you can articulate your own problem well, and you're really looking to solve some personal or emotional problem that you're having, but it's in the context of a business problem. And maybe you don't know it, maybe I don't know it. But maybe that's what you're really doing. If I listen, well, I'm going to pick up on that. And then when I answer, I will speak back to that. Now, conversely, if my answers are always if I'm trying to always prove how smart I am, or how creative or finding or likable instead of just listening to, and responding precisely, and only to what you're saying, I'm gonna give you a much better answer than if I'm always jumping all over the place, showing off.

Steve Martorano 
John Bowe is our guest. He's the author of the book, I have something to say mastering the art of public speaking in the age of disconnection. And that's what's so brilliant about this, or I found so fascinating about your, your, your article in The New York Times where you're raising this alarm, that we're losing this, this ability to, we're disconnecting. In other words, and the great irony of that is that we're in the middle of a technological revolution that said, we will be connected. How did that happen?

John Bowe 
Well, okay, I studied...I looked through so many hundreds of scientific studies trying to prove this or that, and one of the things I had a bias against, I wanted to prove that technology and the internet are bad. And they're making us disconnected. And I never really found any great proof of that. The thing that I found over and over again, from sort of more serious and nuanced researchers was that people who want to connect will use the Internet to connect, and people who want to disconnect will use the Internet as a way of staying away from other people. So, if you look at a lot of the larger societal and political trends that are really scary, and in this country, and really around the world, a lot of it began with TV. And we all want to blame the internet, I want to blame the internet. But uh, so much of it started with TV, when you ever hear of that book, Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. Sure. So he traces all this stuff of just Americans used to have so many civic organizations and religious and political organizations where we met up in person, we hung out with each other, we argued, we got to know people who were different than us. And it really moderated our behavior and made us less partisan and less intolerant. And that sort of started to retreat in the 60s and 70s, as we all became TV watchers, watching several hours of TV a day. And then the internet just exacerbated a lot of that stuff. So I think, for me, the idea that at the root of that, like, we've atrophied so much, in terms of our ability to deal with neighbors and deal with people at the grocery store and deal with people in traffic, you know, and the fact that the Greeks and Romans had kind of anticipated a lot of this stuff and that they taught for that they're corrected for that, to correct it for my inability to get along with people my own. Everyone has a tendency to see everything through their own point of view. And so if education would teach me how to at least think about other people's points of view, before I open my Yap, and start telling everyone how smart I am, that was a really societally and psychologically helpful thing to do.

Steve Martorano 
Well, one of the things if you think about it, that's the real, will seem to be characteristic important in an intelligent person, is just the ability to keep two thoughts in your head, at the same time, not choosing one over the other, but acknowledging that there are more ways than one to see something. You know, you bring up the Greeks who invented everything. They didn't have technology, per se, waiting in the wings to disrupt things, would you? I mean, the printing press must have disturbed that onward process enormously, since most of the communication that was won prior to the printing press was overwhelmingly oral. And then suddenly, well, you could read about this stuff. You didn't have to wait for someone to come to town to tell you about it. Well, it's a very enlightening thing and everybody becomes literate, but it sort of stops the forward momentum of rhetoric, right?

John Bowe 
I've said before that rhetoric and speech training were the number one subject in education for a really long time for about 2000 years. But if I had to take a stab at what made rhetoric become uncool and fall out of favor, it was a few things. One was the rise of science and the scientific method. So all of these speech skills and interpersonal skills seemed like soft skills, they weren't as important or valuable. And then another one was the printing press. Because rhetoric, really does apply to print it, you know, the printed word as much as the spoken word. It's the same stuff. It's all about communication. But for some reason, we look at the printed word differently. If I'm speaking to you, you're very alert to the possibilities of manipulation, and charisma and how I might be spinning stuff. But if I send you a written version of what I'm saying, it seems more sober, pure, and less manipulative. And so I think that just sent people off on a different track. Okay, when people talk, there's a lot of BS, but when they write, and especially if it's science, then it's objective truth. And the Greeks would have said, way back, there's no such thing, even the most objective seeming truth. It's never objective, it's always coming from a human source. And there's always some kind of bias inside of it that you need to unpack.

Steve Martorano  
You mentioned the thing that really caught my eye in the article in the Times was the relationship that researchers and yourself included, I guess, are noticing about the connection between the ability to communicate effectively and students, particularly mental health. Can you speak a little bit about that?

John Bowe 
Oh, the very first time I taught a group of students something tumbled out of my mouth. And I've stayed with it ever since then, which is if you grow up and you're able to explain yourself competently, you know, you don't have to be beautiful and great at everything you say. But just to get it out there and say it to people, you know, people will know you and understand you. So you won't be sitting there glowering and angry because no one understands you won't become a misanthrope, you won't become so alienated. So it correlates with everything. I've seen people who can explain themselves well, have better careers, they make more money, they get fired less often, they suffer much better mental health, their relationships are better. That's a lot of stuff to get from just a few hours of public speaking training.

Steve Martorano 
You know, just occurs to me is that why even as as sophisticated as educational systems are today that either be the last person to know what a PhD dissertation is about? That's done orally, isn't it?

John Bowe 
That's done orally. But I'll say again, the stuff that you learn about how oral communication works, applies just the same to your writing. I think a lot of the stuff that I talk about probably does get snuck into freshman composition classes. But I don't think it gets taught in this broad, old school, hyper-simple way that I talk about, yeah.

Steve Martorano 
I'm old enough to remember when you would do a book report in as early as middle school. Maybe you would deliver it as a written product. But very often, you have to stand up in front of the class. Describe the book and what you got out of it. Do we do enough of that? nowadays?

John Bowe 
I don't think we do enough of that. And if we do, do it, we don't teach people these old school. Here's speech theory, here are the basics of how public speaking works. So my high school was pretty good. We had a class called Communications where we had to do a speech, but I did not retain anything from that class. So all we had to do was go through the humiliating exercise of getting up in front of the school and doing a 15-minute speech. But they didn't prepare you. Again, with this Greek stuff of like, here's what speech is, here are the steps you need to take to prepare for any kind of meeting, presentation, or speech.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, what were the Toastmasters? Are they still around and explain who they were? And are they around?

John Bowe 
Toastmasters is still today, the world's largest organization devoted to teaching the art of public speaking, and they were invented. I think it's 1924 by a guy who had been with the YMCA. It was fascinating because, at that time, all the people were moving to cities from the farm towns because farm work was getting mechanized. So I think at one time, something like 95% of Americans worked on the farm, and then it now it's 1.2, or 1.8%. So all those people by the millions were moving into towns, and they tended to be shy and not know how to speak. And life in a city really depended on being able to communicate well and get to know a new community. So if you couldn't say who you were, or work in a modern conglomerate, or corporation, and kind of relay information, you were sidelined. And so he was really worried about that. And you realize, wow, somebody needs to teach these people how to speak. And he picked up with a lot of the same Greek and Roman stuff that I find fascinating. and turned it into this kind of self-help Club, where people could go in and talk about whatever they wanted to, and then get critiqued by their fellow club members. And it's nonprofit. It's almost free. I swear by them and people accused me of being a professional shill for them. Because I am unbiased.

Steve Martorano 
I gotta tell you, I mean, I certainly know the phrase, you know, Toastmaster General was forget who they used to refer to. But I, you know, it was a hell of a hearty guy who was usually at the Kiwanis Club. As the emcee. I mean, I was surprised to find out that they still exist. You are, you're a big proponent of them.

John Bowe 
Oh, my book, you know, they gave me sort of unfettered access to anything about their organization. And I visited a bunch of different clubs around the US and I joined a club in Minnesota where I'm from, and went through the whole introductory package of 10 different speeches. And everything I said about them was positive, I hated the experience. And it was embarrassing, and I whined about it a lot. And I could put it down because it's whatever it's it's not always the coolest thing in the world, there's something very picky about can

Steve Martorano 
Yes, very old, very old-fashioned notion about that, John, just this one point. But to backtrack a little bit, you know, we said this at the beginning, but it's, it's worth repeating. Now, the Greeks didn't deal with the anxiety associated with standing up, because in fact, anxiety was not even a factor in their mind stand up, we all talk, here's how it works. We don't live in that age, we live in the golden age of anxiety. So all of this information is certainly valuable, and probably all accurate. But when you confront somebody with you do this all the time, we're going to learn some things about how to communicate, but they are crippled, to some extent, by the thought of standing up in front of people and saying something, that's the age we live in, correct?

John Bowe 
That is correct. You're right, you said a while ago that almost everyone else you've ever heard of who teaches this stuff, the very first thing they're talking about is anxiety or confidence. And the very first thing I tell people to do, and this comes right from Aristotle, is to think about your audience. And so I'll get people to make a list of attributes about who they're talking to. So are you talking to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce? Okay, great. Who are they? How many people? What time of day? Did they just have an earthquake? Is it raining there? What is their boss telling them to do, you just write down anything you can think of. And by the time you're done doing that you know a lot about who you're talking to, and you stop thinking about yourself for a few minutes. Right there, you're already off and running. And I could go into a lot of complicated neuroscience babble about what this does to your cognitive blah, blah, blah. And someone asked me, Do you think this is just a kind of replacement theory or replacement therapy, or displacement therapy, or whatever, you know, where you're scared of such and such? And so your therapist will get you to think of something else.

Steve Martorano 
You think of people in the audience being nude.

John Bowe 
I think that's a lame fix, but at least it gets you thinking about something else, right? So my thing could very well be operating on the same level, you think about your audience and who they are what they're thinking about, and what their priorities are. And I think that does two things. One, it gets you to stop thinking about your anxiety and yourself, and what they'll think of you, and then it starts training your attention towards what they need to hear. So you might be a brilliant person who knows 10 million things. Well, that audience wants to hear 15 of them, of which 15 are going to be helpful for them.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, we could talk much longer than the time we have a lot of now, but I appreciate this a lot. Finally, do you have four or five people that you you present to your clients, as folks, they should model themselves or at least watch who are and have been, in your view, really solid communicators.

John Bowe 
This is hard because it's different for everyone. And also, because so many modern people are bad at it. It's hard to find modern examples, and I feel dumb. going back and saying well pay attention to Lincoln. Lincoln was really good at this stuff. I think Oprah is great. I think Dave Chappelle is great. These are people who can get really complex ideas without being pointy-headed. And using a lot of jargon. They make it come alive. There's a great speech by the CEO from Wegmans a few years ago, where he's rallying a bunch of workers who were pissed off. Wegmans is a grocery store. Yep. I think the speech was in Massachusetts, but you could find that online. There's a great speech. No one thinks about it that much anymore. But Richardson, the former governor of Texas, there's a great speech he gives at the Democratic National Convention, and I don't know what 82...

Steve Martorano 
Is that the poor Georgia speech?

John Bowe 
Yes, yes. And the beginning of that speech, when I looked at it, it was so weird to me because I kept thinking, where's the content? Where's the content? Because what she does is she rallies the different constituencies in her audience and she's just saying, like, women, and then hundreds of 1000s of people are going wrong. And then she says, you know, Hispanics, and everyone goes wrong. And at first, I was like, lady, you're an empty shell. What are you saying? And I realized, it's like every rock band that's touring. And they go to Akron and they say, Accra, and we love you, and the crowd roars. I hate to say it because it's so dumb, but that's public speaking. You're making a connection with people.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, there's nothing dumb about what you've been telling us. John Bowe, his book is called I Have Something to say. Mastering the Art of public speaking in an age of disconnection, John has a website where you can schedule appointments with is a...

John Bowe 
John-F-Bowe.com.

Steve Martorano 
Okay. And the book is available everywhere. I'm sure. John, thanks so much. We appreciate it. love to have you back sometime.

John Bowe 
Thank you, Steve. Anytime. It's great talking to you.

Steve Martorano 
Thank you guys for your time as well. Don't forget to like us, and follow us. critique us whatever you like. We're here all the time. The Behavioral Corner catch you next time. Bye bye.

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