Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

A quick reminder that we have a live show coming up on September 13th in Boston, so if you want to join us, please come on out and say hello.

The tickets are available right now on our website this day pod.com, but today's topic, this day, September 1st,

1901, new Vice President Theodore Roosevelt is giving remarks at the Minnesota State Fair

and includes this line. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old

proverb, speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far. As best we can tell he had used that

phrase for the first time a year earlier as governor of New York in a letter to a political ally,

but now he was trotting it out to a larger audience.

And then four days after that speech, President McKinley was shot by an assassin soon after

it died and Teddy Roosevelt became president of the United States and that catch phase

would come to be really associated with him and in part because it did seem to really capture his

approach to diplomacy especially foreign diplomacy so let's talk about the

origins of that speak softly and carry a big stick line,

how Teddy Roosevelt embodied it,

what it really means, and maybe we can get

into a few other political cliches

or famous presidential quotes as well.

So here, as always to discuss

Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley,

who will not be speaking softly on this podcast, because that's bad radio, right?

We do both have big sticks for some reason. I don't know if we're like worried about wolves or something but

...