You know, this is what Cicero is, he's afraid of quite often.

There's this great line, I use it as a chapter, title of my chapters,

from one of his mentors, talking about how he feels when he's about to get up and address the role in public.

And this is, you have to picture this guy as the most experienced, most successful or a service time.

He's really, you know, he's seen everything and done everything.

He says, when I get up to speak, I still tremble with my whole heart and in every limb.

He describes himself kind of shaking, and it's not just stage fright, it's the idea that

you are exposing yourself to shame every time you get up.

Hi, and we're talking with Rob Goodman, the author of Words on Fire eloquence and its conditions.

Rob Goodman is an assistant professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson University and a former US House and Senate speech writer.

We talk so much on this program about speech, especially lately.

Didn't talk about it much when I started the podcast, just talked about it a little.

Now it's become problematic.

So it may be interesting to know that it was also problematic for the ancients and the American framers, the Constitution and people I've run that time as well.

That it's that our problems are similar and they had some struggles as well for now what to do with people speaking and maybe as a result of that acquiring political power and should there be rules around that.

And that's why I found this book Words on Fire. We're happy to have him on the program. Rob, thanks for joining us.

Well, thanks so much for having me on. It's great to be here.

The subject is eloquence and a sense and maybe it's best that we define it or at least what say Cicero was trying to get at with the term like eloquence.

Yeah, for sure. And as you mentioned, Cicero is a big focus on the book.

We can talk a little bit about why I thought he's the person you really need to focus on if you want to think about speech.

So he's really the person through whose eyes I look at a lot of these questions, but I start out in the very beginning of the book.

And I say, well, I don't want to define eloquence in a really kind of robust or complicated way because everyone's going to have different sorts of tastes and everyone's going to have different kind of opinions on who's their model speaker and so on.

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