We Live in a New Golden Age of Orality

The ancient is modern again

Humans lived without writing for the longest time.  

Then, someone in Sumeria (or Egypt) figured out that you could represent language symbolically with writing.

For millennia, the technology was clunky and hard, and reserved for royal scribes and record keepers.

The Greeks discovered writing, simplified it, and gave birth to the West's first entrepreneurs of the written word: poets and sophists (a.k.a. philosophers).  Still, most culture, entertainment, and decision making stayed in the realm of the spoken word.

Fast forward to the mid 19th century, when most serious long distance communication happened through the written word.

But in the late 19th and 20th century, technology enabled Radio and Television.  The Spoken word had a revival. World War 2 has been called a great battle of oratory - Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill rose to power through different forms of embodied eloquence.

But until the 21st century, both mass print and mass audio/visual communication were tightly controlled by gatekeepers with access to capital, such as big media corporations and government.

Now, because of innovations in technology and media, we have re-entered an era where normal people can use the spoken word to address huge and consequential audiences like never before.

Your spoken words reflect your character, and now determine your success like never before. Classical thinkers like Plato, Isocrates, and Cicero, taught that you could improve your soul - and therefore your entire life - by improving the words you speak.

They dedicated their entire careers to mastering this process.

How can we incorporate, for our own new oral culture, the hard won lessons of these men and other classic masters of the spoken word?

We can begin by studying their lives and learning their stories.

For this, the Cost of Glory is at your service.

Marcus Licinius Crassus was not just the Richest Man in Rome - he was a conscientious verbal performer and trained laboriously to get better at speaking.  Listen to his story in Part 1 of the Life of Crassus on the Cost of Glory Podcast.