In March 2013 Andrew Klavan delivered a talk at a David Horowitz Wednesday Morning Club meeting in Los Angeles.

Klavan is the author of A Killer in the Wind. I came across him in one of his Revolting Truth videos while searching for interesting speakers.  Good writers often fail to make good speakers, as the techniques are subtly different.

For the purposes of this blog I was torn between two speeches. I settled on the one below, though this one is interesting too.

“I want to talk about sex and German philosophy.” Delivered at 0:45 this gives every appearance of Klavan laying out his stall. The audience falls about laughing, as he intended, but actually he does talk about sex and German philosophy.

Klavan has everything going for him as a speaker. He has a very good, wonderfully resonant, voice which he uses well. He has plenty to say because he is passionate about his message. He is not only articulate but coherent to a fault. He uses humour skilfully, inserting it fairly sparingly into the proceedings but delivering it well enough to harvest some very good laughs. Do you sense the probable advent of a “but”?

But…

He is oblivious to a glaring fault. In my experience the world at large is oblivious (consciously at least) to this fault whenever it occurs – even though it is ubiquitous. I’ve mentioned it often in this blog before, but I will continue till audiences demand its elimination.

He pops. There: I’ve just ruined your enjoyment of this speech. He pops relentlessly. Now that you are conscious of it you will hear little else.

How big is that auditorium? I ask because it is possible that he is not amplified to the room, but the microphone is there only to provide a feed for this video. That being the case he is unable to hear the popping: the fault belongs to the sound engineer. That’s no excuse: if you aspire to being a competent speaker you should never let your mouth and the microphone point at each other. Never speak at a microphone, speak across it. Point the mic at your throat, your eyes, anywhere but at your mouth.

The world is full of ignorant bozos, masquerading as technicians, who are likely to point the microphone at your mouth (it happened to me only last week). Don’t put up with it! Reset the microphone. If the ignorant bozo argues (it happened to me only last week) educate him. Explain that when you utter a percussive consonant a fast-moving column of air is generated which, if it hits the diaphragm of the microphone head-on, will cause a ghastly popping sound. Don’t give way.

You may protest that if audiences don’t notice it doesn’t matter, so if only Brian would shut the … would be quiet about it everything would be OK.

They do notice: just not consciously. If Klavan’s mic were tipped just five degrees upwards he would make an infinitely cleaner and sweeter sound, and the audience would be happier. They might not know why, but they’d be happier.

Spread the word!