It is almost as natural for me to speak as it is to breathe. I have always had a way with words, for as long as i can remember. Yet it took me a long time to understand how pivotal language is to being human. Not only because we need it to communicate well enough to have become this planet's dominant species.

Also because talking and thinking have become inseparable. When we learn to read, we read out-loud, which clearly suggests that thinking is internalised speech. To think clearly is to be able to speak clearly. To speak clearly is to be thinking clearly. 

​Yet this simple correlation is not only overlooked, but destructively distorted by confused ideologies of the relative significance of speech and silence. Yet it is clear to me that sound is not not silence, and that the sounds that we make as human beings are at the heart of our social nature and needs. Speaking clearly is both a courtesy and a gift to others.

These transcribed talks have been edited for greater fluency.