Not everyone fears public speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There occasionally is a silly claim that everyone fears public speaking. It assumes that everyone has the same fear as you do. That shows up on page 195 of a 2020 book by Ahmed Adamu titled You Are a Leader:

 

“Everyone has a fear of public speaking: think of good public speakers, they all have fear of public speaking, but they still make good public speeches.”

 

It is in an article by Dana Wilson at TroyMEDIA on May 24, 2022 titled Overcoming the fear of public speaking:

 

“Everyone has a fear of public speaking. No matter how famous, we all have been uncomfortable speaking at times.”

 

It also can be found in another September 19, 2022 article at Tony Yuile Coaching titled Public speaking anxiety:

 

“It’s said that everyone has a fear of public speaking (aka stage fright).”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But when you look at detailed results from surveys, like the Chapman Survey on American Fears, you will find that less than 70% fear speaking. Two bar charts shown above are from my June 1, 2025 blog post titled An article on stage fright by David Pennington claimed public speaking was the #1 fear in a Chapman Survey, but ignored their nine other surveys where it was ranked from #26 to #59.

 

 

A brief football story by coach Bill Belichick about an unintentional gesture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been skimming therough the 2025 book by Bill Belichick titled The Art of Winning: Lessons from my life in football. A great brief story from it is on page 129 (and in Google Books):

 

“Carl Banks was a player who prepared at an elite level. Honestly, I had trouble keeping up with both Carl and Tom – they were very detailed in their preparation. Carl had the best key I had ever seen. When I was defensive coordinator for the Giants he found a tip on John Spagnola, who played tight end for the Eagles in the mid-eighties. Carl studied the stance of Spagnola and discovered that, incredibly, Spagnola wiggled his fingers on running plays and did not wiggle them on passes. When Banks told me about this, I thought it was a joke. It was not. I looked at all the end zone film and the key held up. I couldn’t believe it. After the first series of each game against the Eagles, Carl would come off the field with a big smile, saying, ‘He’s still doing it.’ Carl had incredible recall and would come into our Tuesday meetings armed with information: stats from every game our opponent had played that year (not to mention previous years) or memory of a play from ten weeks ago that he wanted us to have a game plan for.”  

 

In poker that sort of gesture is called a Tell.

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

An often parodied, thirty-three-word, unpunctuated poem from nine decades ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in 1934 family physician and poet William Carlos Williams wrote a poem which I have shown above in a form that might have been taped to the door of an icebox. It even has a Wikipedia page.

 

Originally it was:

 

This is just to say

 

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

 

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

 

forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

 

It appeared on the wall of a building in The Hague. There is an 80-page 2012 book by Gail Carson Levine titled Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: false apology poems that describes how to do a parody on pages 22 and 23:

 

“Imagine his wife coming downstairs in the morning after dreaming about those plums all night and waking up tasting them. Possibly she opens the icebox door (no refrigerators then) and finds a poem in the neatly washed-and-dried plum bowl. Maybe she laughs or maybe she goes for a very long walk or maybe she seats his breakfast and then writes her own false apology poem-

 

Which you can do too. Many poets have written them, following the form invented by William Carlos Williams. But don’t even consider writing this kind of poem unless you can get yourself into a grouchy mood. You will be wasting your time.

 

If you do decide to write, your poems should be mean, or what’s the point? Mine are, and William Carlos Williams’s is too, in its subtle way. He’s glad he got to those plums first!

 

You don’t need a title because William Carlos Williams has given you one, which can be repeated endlessly until your reader is completely sick of it. You also don’t need a new ninth line, because that’s always the same too: Forgive me. Notice that there are three stanzas, which you may agree are quite enough, and each stanza is four lines long, which you may think are four too many. The first stanza states the horrible offense. The second stanza describes the effect of the offense. The last stanza begins with ‘Forgive me,’ and continues with the false apology, because the writer is not sorry at all. There is no punctuation (how nice), and the beginning words of only the first and ninth lines need to be capitalized. The line beginnings and endings substitute for capital letters and punctuation. Normally, capitals and punctuation help the reader understand, so be careful to end your lines in a way that is very clear, unless you want to confuse your reader, which might be the wisest course.

 

Also, think about the rhythm of the lines. After you’ve cleared everyone out of the house, read your stanzas aloud to help you decide where to end a line. Funny poems are still poems.

 

You don’t have to follow William Carlos Williams’s form exactly if you don’t want to. I haven’t. You can add or subtract lines and stanzas. Or you can abandon the form completely and write false apology poems in your own cruel way.

 

For those of you who lack an ounce of mean and are reading this book only for research into the psychology of unpleasant people, you can write a real apology poem. However, even this will not be possible if you are too angelic to have anything to apologize for.

 

Whatever way you do it, have fun and save your poems!”

 

An example of her parodies (from page 8) is:

 

This is just to say

 

My bulldozer

has flattened

the thorny

hedge

which

you mistakenly

expected to sleep behind

until the prince came

 

Forgive me

I’m charging tourists

ten dollars

to visit the castle

 

She also has versions based on stores for children like Jack and Jill (page 14), Jack and the Beanstalk (page 28), Red Riding Hood (page 55), Rapunzel (page 62), and Humpty Dumpty (page 66), etc.

 

There is another 48-page book from 2007 by Joyce Sidman titled This Is Just to Say: Poems of apology and forgiveness. She has apology poems written by a class of sixth graders and responses to them. One example from page 8 is:

 

This Is Just to Say  

 

I have stolen the jelly doughnuts that were in the teacher’s lounge

and which you were probably saving for teachers.

 

Forgive me. They were delicious, so sweet and so gloppy.

Too bad the powdered sugar spilled all over my shirt

and gave me away.

 

By Thomas

 

I got started on this topic by finding a blog post from David Murray at Writing Boots on August 22, 2025 titled Friday Happy Hour Poem (and a true story). His parody is:

 

 This Is Just to Say, by Eddie [the dog]

 

I have eaten the chicken shawarma (I think it was)

that was on the picnic blanket and which my owner

subsequently made me understand you were surely

eating for dinner with your young daughter,

when I ran over from playing with the other dogs

in the middle of Smith Park because I smelled something good, and ransacked before you and the little girl knew what hit you.

Forgive me. It was delicious, so moist, and so savory.  

 

 

Spouting Nonsense: a fifth Spoutly for Donald J. Trump based on his May 19, 2025 claim to have come up with the 420 years old word equalizing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Meredith Kile at People on May 21, 2025 titled Trump says he just invented a ‘new word,’ which is now the ‘best word.’ It’s been in use since the 1500s. She quoted:

 

“Basically, what we’re doing is equalizing. There’s a new word that I came up with, which is probably the best word,” he said.

“We’re gonna equalize, where we’re all gonna pay the same. We’re gonna pay what Europe’s gonna pay,” he continued.

When you look up the noun equalizing at the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find that it first was used back in 1605, which is 420 years ago. And the transitive verb equalize shows up in 1595, and also in 1590 spelled as equalise.

Back on October 1, 2023 I blogged about Spouting Nonsense: a fourth Spoutly for Donald J. Trump based on his recent interview for Meet the Press.

 

 

 

This blog had another gigantic spike in page views

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Occasionally this blog has a spike in page views. As shown above, the latest gigantic one with 32,316 page views occurred on August 21, 2025.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another chart for all time (really just for most time), shown above, reveals a peak of 110,170 page views for the month of June, shown as 6/30/25. Note that there has been a total of 2,929,093 million page views. There have been 2,940 posts, so the average is 996 views per post or roughly a thousand.

 

Back on December 23, 2024 I blogged about How should we present a huge number like the two billion dollars earned by the Taylor Swift Eras tour? In an December 28, 2024 update I noted a peak of 5,231 page views. And on September 1, 2023 I blogged about how On August 26, 2023 this blog had a gigantic spike in page views with 27.6 times the annual average. That day there were 12,295 page views.

 

I belong to the Pioneer Toastmasters club in Boise, Idaho which has 28 members. On August 21, 2025 over a thousand times the number of my club members viewed my blog.  

 

What happens when you misuse a scanning electron microscope (SEM)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can badly misinterpret what you see. I saw an article by Mick West at Metabunk on August 12, 2025 titled “Self-healing” Ceramic Material from Skinwalker Ranch – SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) Analysis. A YouTube video at the History Channel on August 14, 2025 titled High-Tech Materials Discovered Deep in Mesa (Season 6) | The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch shows what they thought they saw - that holes were changing (beginning at 4 minutes and 40 seconds). Mick’s article has an excellent discussion with a reply from Arnold Kruize.

 

What they saw actually is a well-known imaging defect: the charging of a nonconductive specimen. Charging is discussed in a reference book by Joseph I. Goldstein et al. titled Scanning Electron Microscopy and X-Ray Microanalysis (Fourth edition, 2018). The preview at Google Books shows the table of contents discusses charging starting on page 134, and coating the specimen with a conductive material to solve the problem is discussed on page 463.

 

I began using an SEM many decades ago, and continued to use it as a tool for failure analysis. Seeing one being badly misused was appalling.

 

An image showing an SEM came from Wikimedia Commons.  

 

 

Kidney beans just are the seeds from green beans

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can be surprised by something that we didn’t ever think about. I grew up in a city (Pittsburgh) and never considered if green beans and kidney beans were related. On the new books shelf at the Cole and Ustick branch of the Boise Public Library I found a 2024 book by Wendy Hutton titled Asian Vegetables: A Cook’s Bible. It contains the following description for green beans and kidney beans:

 

Green Beans [page 17]:

 

“Green Beans are probably the most widely eaten fresh beans in the world. Also known as haricot beans, French beans or in the U.S. as string beans, they are native to Mexico and Guatemala. Green beans are now eaten throughout Asia, although in some countries they are less popular than long beans. If left to mature, the almost negligible seeds inside the young green pods will swell to form legumes. When these are dried, they turn red and are known as kidney beans (see page 20).”

 

Kidney Beans [page 20]

 

“Kidney Beans are the mature seeds of the common green bean (see page 17). In India, where several types of kidney beans are grown, they are known as rajmah. Usually available dry, the beans are dark red in color when fully matured. Fresh kidney beans are sold already shelled in India and Indonesia.”

 

I have made Three Bean Salad from canned green beans, wax beans, and kidney beans.

 

Images of green beans and kidney beans (rajma) came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

The Cambridge Dictionary recently added over 6,000 new words including delulu, skibidi, and tradwife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Katie Phoenix at Cambridge News on August 18, 2025 is titled Cambridge Dictionary adds skibidi, delulu and tradwife among over 6,000 new words.

 

Delulu is a Gen-Z synonym for delusional. However, as shown above it just as well could be a girl’s name derived from Delia and Lulu. Boomers like me will note that it resembles desilu. Desilu Productions, Inc. was run by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball and made the I Love Lucy TV sitcom and both The Untouchables and Mission Impossible.

 

A traditional wife is a tradwife. 

 

But skibidi is basically meaningless. It was a song back in 2018, but in 2023 showed up as part of the title to Skibidi Toilet.

 

Broligarchy is:

 

“a blend of bro and oligarchy, means ‘a small group of men, especially men owning or involved in a technology business, who are extremely rich and powerful, and who have or want political influence’.”

 

The cartoon was adapted from one on page 41 of the 1923 Cartooning Made Easy book by Charles Lederer.  

 

 

Conversations are discussed in an excellent new book by Alison Wood Brooks titled Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

On August 16, 2025 I blogged about Fifty excellent Table Topics questions from the appendix to Alison Wood Brooks’s 2025 book Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves. She also has an article on pages 28 and 29 in the August 2025 issue of Toastmaster Magazine titled Ask More, Better Questions.

 

Starting on page 12 of her book Alison says:

 

“The potential reasons for conversational engagement are vast. I find it helps to visualize them plotted on what we’ll call the conversational compass (see the figure on page 13).[My color version is shown above].

 

The conversational compass organizes what we are trying to do in all the many conversations that make up our social worlds. The relational axis runs east-west and captures the extent to which we care about serving the collective versus ourselves. High-relational purposes seek to create value for everyone in the conversation (such as when you want to make your partner laugh, help them solve a problem, or teach them something new), while low-relational purposes seek to claim value for the self (such as when you want to vent, express your own views, or exit the conversation.

 

The informational axis runs north-south. It captures the extent to which we are aiming for accurate information exchange. Many people assume that information exchange is the main reason we talk to each other – sharing information is why humans learned to communicate, after all. But assuming or over-focusing on information exchange can be misguided. Think of how often you have wanted to guard information rather than share it, how often you have sought to avoid making a hard decision, or how often you have wanted a conversation to feel easy rather than informative. Those are low-informational purposes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each of the four quadrants of the compass contains appropriate, worthy, virtuous motives for different moments, which are reflected in the positive labels we give the quadrants: Connect, Savor, Protect, and Advance. We live- we do things with words – in all four quadrants.” [My color version is shown above]. Each chapter ends with a summary of three takeaways.

 

TAKEAWAYS FROM THE COORDINATION GAME: [Chapter 1, page 23]

“The idea of conversation has evolved over time and place. Today it helps to think of it as a coordination game.

Conversational goals can be plotted on the conversational compass along two dimensions: informational and relational.

The TALK maxims – Topics, Asking, Levity, Kindness – are reminders to help people achieve their goals, one conversation at a time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a three-level topic pyramid on page 43. My color version is shown above.

 

TAKEAWAYS FROM T IS FOR TOPICS: [Chapter 2, page 55]

“Topics are the building blocks of conversation.

Small talk isn’t the enemy. Getting stuck on any one topic for too long, especially topics at the base of the topic pyramid, is the enemy.

Topic prep is your best friend.”

 

TAKEAWAYS FROM A IS FOR ASKING: [Chapter 3, page 87]

“Aim to ask more questions. Asking even insincere questions is a form of caring, and asking too many questions is rare.

Use caution with boomerasking, gotcha questions, and repeated questions.

Do ask topic-switching questions to change topics and follow-up questions to learn more,"   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Chapter 4, L is for Levity on page 94 she says that:

 

“And when it comes to thinking deeply about feelings, scholars find it helpful to take the complex constellation of human emotions and plot them on two simple dimensions: arousal (high versus low physical signals of energy, like heart rate) and valence (pleasure versus displeasure. All emotions – whether experienced during conversation or outside it – can be plotted on this chart of emotions. Here’s where some common feelings fall.” [My color version is shown above.]

 

TAKEAWAYS FROM L IS FOR LEVITY: [Chapter 4, page 117]

“Find the fun, rather than trying to be funny.

Give compliments effusively.

Don’t just grunt – LAUGH!”

 

TAKEAWAYS FROM K IS FOR KINDNESS: [Chapter 5, page 148]

“Kindness takes work. Focus on your partner’s needs before your own.

Speak respectfully. Aim to make others feel seen and known, good to be with, and worthy of care.

Listen responsively. Put in the effort to listen, and show it with your words.”

 

TAKEAWAYS FROM MANY MINDS: [Chapter 6, page 178]

“Conversation in groups is categorically different from and even more complicated than conversation in dyads. (Don’t feel bad if it feels chaotic).

Be aware of the status hierarchy in a group, which can change, even from one topic to the next.

Foster a stewardship mindset.”

 

TAKEAWAYS FROM DIFFICULT MOMENTS: [Chapter 7, page 218]

“Differences – in words, emotions, motives, and identities – can all cause moments of difficulty in conversation.

Use the receptiveness recipe – acknowledge, affirm, validate, hedge, aim to learn -to engage with opposing viewpoints.

Use situation modification and reframing when emotions get hot.”

 

TAKEAWAYS FROM APOLOGIES: [Chapter 8, page 249]

“Apologies are remarkably powerful.

Apologize frequently and sincerely – don’t make it about yourself.

Promise to change, then do what you’ve promised.”

 

 

Fifty excellent Table Topics questions from the appendix to Alison Wood Brooks’s 2025 book Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table Topics is the impromptu speaking part of a Toastmasters club meeting. Members each are asked a question and then answer via a one-to-two minute off-the-cuff speech.  On May 15, 2024 I blogged about My workshop presentation at the 2024 District 15 Toastmasters Conference on May 18, 2024 about Creating or Finding Great Table Topics Questions. In that post I described how great questions often are found under other phrases than just ”Table Topics Questions.”

 

A section of the appendix in the 2025 book by Alison Wood Brooks titled Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves beginning on page 265 is titled Some Topics to Try.  On pages 267 to 269 she lists Fifty Topics That You Could Raise With Anyone:

 

[01] What do you do for work? What do you like about it?

[02] What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

[03] Did you do any sports or clubs in high school?

[04] Why do you participate in online studies?

[05] Do you have any plans for the weekend?

[06] What’s something random about you?

[07] Have you read anything interesting recently?

[08] Have you tried anything new recently that was particularly fun?

[09] Are you a religious person? Why?

[10] What games have you played in the past that are most memorable?

 

[11] What is your favorite kind of music?

[12] How do you most enjoy spending time with your family? 

[13] Do you have any fruit trees, plants, or a garden?

[14] What’s your favorite movie?

[15] Do you have any plans for the rest of the day?

[16] Do you like where you live or do you want to move?

[17] Do you travel much?

[18] What do you enjoy doing when the weather is beautiful?

[19] Do you have a favorite type of food?

[20] For what in your life are you most grateful? Why?

 

[21] What was an embarrassing moment in your life?

[22] What’s the strangest thing about where you grew up?

[23] Who is the luckiest person you know? Why?

[24] If you could teleport by blinking your eyes, where would you go right now?

[25] What is the last professional sports game or match you watched?

[26] What is the last concert you attended? Why?

[27] If you had to perform music in front of a crowd, what would you do?

[28] What TV show have you watched recently?

[29] What’s the cutest thing you’ve seen a baby or child do?

[30] Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

 

[31] Would you like to be famous? In what way?

[32] Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

[33] What would constitute a ‘perfect’ day for you?

[34] When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

[35] If you were able to live to age of ninety and retain either the mind or body of a thirty-year-old for the last sixty years of your life, which would you want?

[36] Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

[37] If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

[38] If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

[39] Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

[40] What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

 

[41] What do you value most in a friendship?

[42] If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you now are living? Why?

[43] What does friendship mean to you?

[44] How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?

[45] How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

[46] When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

[47] What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

[48] If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

[49] Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item, what would it be? Why?

[50] Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?  

 

Also, on page 270 she lists her Ten Go-To Topics to Raise with Strangers:

 

{01} What are you excited about lately?

{02} What is something you’re good at but don’t like doing?

{03} What’s something you’re bad at but love to do?

{04} Is there something you’d like to learn more about?

{05} Is there something you’d like to learn how to do?

{06} What can we celebrate about you?

{07} Has someone made you laugh recently? What happened?

{08} What is something cute your {kid/friend/pet/partner} has been doing recently?

{09} Did you grow up in a city?

{10} Have you fallen in love with any new {music/books/movies/shows} lately?

 

 

Become a success by stacking your talents or skills

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a post by Bo Campbell at the Davidson Blog in 2018 titled Talent stacking – the key to standing out from the crowd. Bo explained that:

 

“The term ‘talent stack’ was coined by cartoonist Scott Adams – best known as the creator of the Dilbert Cartoon series – to describe developing a variety of skills which combine to make someone a sought-after commodity. Adams describes his own talent stack [as shown above] in the following terms:

 

‘I am a famous syndicated cartoonist who doesn’t have much artistic talent, and I’ve never taken a college-level writing class. But few people are good at both drawing and writing. When you add in my ordinary business skills, my strong work ethic, my risk tolerance, and my reasonably good sense of humour, I’m fairly unique.’ ”

 

Success may not continue unabated. The Wikipedia page about Scott Adams notes that in 2023 he was dropped by both his book publisher and his comic strip syndicator.

 

There is an article by Darius Foroux on November 6, 2018 titled Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success. A second article by Thomas Oppong at The Ladders on January 15, 2020 is titled Skill stacking: Instead of mastering one skill, build a skill set. And there is a 2020 book by Steven West titled Skill Stacking: A practical approach to life, beat the competition and do what you love. And there is a post by Naressa Kahn at the Mindvalley Blog on February 16, 2025 titled How skill stacking can future-proof your career and make you indispensable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My stack of skills (shown above) includes writing magazine articles and reports, speaking in public, creating graphics for presentations, telling stories, and blogging. I had editing experience with reviewing magazine articles for both the materials science magazine Metallurgical Transactions and the corrosion engineering magazine Materials Performance.

 

There is a big difference between an anecdote and an antidote

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a post by Dr. John Livingston at the Gem State Patriot News blog on August 2, 2025 titled Factions and Bullies. His subject was the tenth Federalist Paper by James Madison, published in November 1787 and titled The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued). John began the seventh paragraph by claiming (my italics):

 

“Madison asserted and I must paraphrase that the anecdote for factional violence is a large Union with diverse life experiences and a common moral ethic.”

 

But there is a big difference between an antidote and an anecdote. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an anecdote is:

 

“A usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.”

 

And an antidote instead is:

 

“A remedy to counteract the effects of poison”

                                         or

“Something that relieves, prevents, or counteracts“

 

As usual, Dr. Livingston didn’t bother to proofread what he wrote. Perhaps he just dictated it.  Rather ironically on July 27, 2025 he blogged about What’s in a Word. I last blogged about another mixup in a post on July 25, 2025 titled There are haves and have nots; but there are just two halves, and no halve nots.

 

An image of a story book came from OpenClipArt, and an image of a medicine bottle was adapted from the Library of Congress.

 

 

Great advice reframing why your story is worth telling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

There is a useful book from 2024 by Jami Attenberg titled 1000 Words: a writer’s guide to staying creative, focused, and productive all year round. On page 35, there is an essay about reframing titled Your Story Is Worth Telling (which you can find in a preview at Google Books):

 

“I have written one memoir, and before I began I had to ask myself, truly, if my story was worth telling. We all wonder sometimes if our story is worth telling. If it’s worth writing these 1000 words, let alone seventy thousand of them. I can’t tell you what the reader will think of your story, but I can suggest a reframing of your narrative of the writing of it.

 

Stop thinking of it as the story of you and instead start thinking of it as the story you have to tell. How can you, in the writing of it, make it interesting? What will your approach be that will make it feel different or special? Will it be an innovative structure? Will it be in the most gorgeous breathtaking language? Will it be in the timing of it all, where you sink emotional moment after emotional moment. Will it be written in a hooky, addictive, page-turning style? Will it be rich with captivating cliff-hangers? How can you tell it in a way that has never been told before? How can you write a wholly unique story?

 

Life is a series of moments, some bigger, some smaller, and that’s it. You can hang them together like forgotten Christmas lights left up year-round; or like beloved memorabilia secured on a refrigerator, maybe a postcard from long ago or a photo booth strip; or like flyers tacked to a community board in a café, advertising services or looking for lost dogs; or like signs promoting opposing local candidates stuck side by side in competition on neighbors’ front lawns; or like drying clothes pinned to a line, flapping in the wind beneath the sunshine. Your job is to arrange these moments into a beautiful or captivating or intriguing display.

 

Stop thinking of it as your life. Start thinking of it as a story. Your story will be interesting because of how you tell it.”

 

The Publio de Tommasi painting came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Two very useful articles in the August 2025 issue of Toastmaster magazine on Five Tips for Depicting Data and Making Your Data Presentations Come to Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The August 2025 issue of Toastmaster magazine has two very useful articles. One by Florian Bay on pages 20 to 23 is titled 5 Tips for Depicting Data and subtitled How to use numbers and graphs to create a compelling story. His five headings are:

 

Be Clear on Your Purpose

Select the Right Visual

Remove the Clutter

Engage with Colors but Don’t Create Rainbows

Use Text to Guide Your Viewers

 

The first two line and column bar charts, at the bottom of Page 20 are missing a label for the vertical axis, which should be Number of UNESCO Sites. As shown above, I have added it in red.

 

Regarding pie charts, he says:

 

“Visualizing proportions? Then use a pie chart, but only if you’ve got two or three slices to share; any more than that and the proportions get hard to interpret. Stacked bar charts can also be useful.”

 

I don’t think pie charts ever are useful, as I discussed in a blog post on September 16, 2008 titled Pie charts do not speak clearly; they just mumble and one on July 29, 2022 titled Is there any excuse for using a pie chart?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And his example with Yearly Passengers in London Heathrow Airport 2005-2024 (shown above) has the numbers of years shown vertically rather than horizontally. My Excel version omits the bullseyes around the pandemic data and just shows numbers for all those data points. (On July 4, 2017 I blogged about Why is your audience tilting their heads sideways?)

 

The second article by Charlene Phua following on pages 24 and 25 is titled Make Your Data Presentations Come to Life and subtitled Avoid these 4 missteps to ensure your audience stays engaged. Her four headings are:

 

Including data that isn’t relevant to topic or audience

Having an inaccurate gauge of your audience’s understanding

Providing data with no context or comparison

Neglecting other aspects of your performance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the third she uses the example of annual global carbon dioxide emissions. She didn’t mention a number, but in 2022 they are 38,521,997,860 tons. We can ask What’s in it for me? The global Population is  8,021,407,192 people so it is 4.802 tons per capita, or 9605 pounds. Per day it is 26.3 pounds, and converting that to a cube of dry ice, it is one 7.75 inches on a side, as shown above.

 

On December 23, 2024 I blogged about How should we present a huge number like the two billion dollars earned by the Taylor Swift Eras tour? And on July 12, 2016 I blogged about How to make statistics understandable. Also, on August 17, 2011 I posted on How to make a large number incomprehensible or comprehensible and on July 15, 2011 I blogged on What can we say about a really big hole in the ground?