"Mini" Decoding of Konstantin Kisin's Oxford Union speech
Decoding the Gurus
Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne
4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2023
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recently the Oxford Union (based in Oxford but distinct from the university) hosted a debate on "whether woke culture has gone too far". A very fresh question, and it's been good to see people finally discussing this important issue. Former guest, comedian, and host of the Triggernometry podcast Konstantin Kisin argued for the proposition, and his 10 minute speech has gone viral, garnering over 20 million views (and counting). Kisin has received lavish praise for his compelling talk from across the interwebs for what has been broadly described as a masterful demolition of woke culture, leading to broadcast television appearances with Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson.
Well, a video of the speech crossed our path on Twitter, and it seemed to us to be an interesting case-study on the effective use of rhetoric, so here is our decoding. As is our want, we are slightly more critical in our assessment than Piers Morgan Tucker Carlson, but we are able to identify points of concordance as well.
Enjoy!
Links
The original speech
Konstantin Kisin | This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far - 7/8 | Oxford Union
Coverage
Konstantin Kisin’s Important Message LIVE on Tucker Carlson
Konstantin Kisin and Piers Morgan Discuss The Problems With Woke Culture
Background
Global Concern about Climate Change, Broad Support for Limiting Emissions
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Okay. Oh, Hello and welcome to the coding the gurus the podcast where an anthropologist |
| 0:32.3 | and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the podcast we're an anthropologist and a psychologist |
| 0:33.2 | listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what |
| 0:36.8 | they're talking about. I'm Matt Brown with me is Chris Kavanaugh. |
| 0:40.5 | So Chris, what's your pussycat? How's your afternoon going? |
| 0:45.6 | Yeah, it's going okay. Your introduction today was relatively upbeat. So that's nice. |
| 0:53.0 | That's always a good sign. |
| 0:55.9 | I've been on holiday for the best part of a month, |
| 0:58.1 | so I should be filling upbeat. |
| 1:00.1 | No excuse. |
| 1:01.7 | Yeah. So we're here today not for a standard guru decoding episode. |
| 1:10.0 | We're going to look at a short piece of content, one that is just around nine minutes long and is currently kind of the talk of the internet time to some extent in some sectors and why we are going to look at this content |
| 1:29.7 | is that when we started the podcast one of the goals that we had was to look at |
| 1:37.6 | rhetorical techniques right not just to focus on things that we disagree with, but hopefully stuff that we might be more sympathetic to also look and highlight rhetorical techniques and whatnot. |
| 1:53.0 | And you have seen previously when we looked at some content |
| 1:58.0 | that Sam Harris produced about the value of introspection, |
| 2:02.0 | that actually, |
| 2:03.7 | Nyl or Matt or I are hostile to emphasizing the value of introspection, |
| 2:09.5 | but we thought that that video had a bunch of rhetorical content in it and in the same respect the video that we're going to talk about today is Constantine Kissons speech and which he gave recently at the Oxford Union the Bake Club. |
| 2:26.0 | In favor of the motion, this house believes work culture has gone too far. |
| 2:30.5 | So there's a bunch of speakers and they have like a short amount of time to give arguments in fever or against given proposition. |
| 2:39.4 | Yeah, and it's fair to say that that speech was very well received. It was a hit definitely received a huge round of applause at the Oxford Club where this debate was happening and widely shared around the internet. |
... |
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