# Martin Luther King, the Jewelry Genius, and the Art of Public Speaking (Classic)

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 19 Jan 2024, 37 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/16dd2b32-a396-48a7-a5a6-b0f30105dcff/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

One speechmaker inspired millions with his words, the other utterly destroyed his own multi-million-dollar business with just a few phrases. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr (played by Jeffrey Wright of American Fiction, Westworld and The Hunger Games) and jewelry store owner Gerald Ratner offer a stark contrast on when you should stick to the script - and when you should take a risk. We're taking a short rest on Cautionary Tales this January. We'll be back again in February, with a treasure chest of gripping, hair-raising tales for your ears. While you wait, we wanted to share some classic episodes from the Cautionary Vault - this is one of our favorites. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. This week was Martin Luther King Junior Day, which
[0:28] Speaker 1: reminded me that one of my favorite ever episodes of
[0:31] Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales was about Martin Luther King Junior's most famous
[0:35] Speaker 1: speech and about an infamous speech given by a very
[0:40] Speaker 1: different character, Gerald Ratner. A confession. I am a public
[0:45] Speaker 1: speaking nerd. I competed in international debate competitions at school
[0:50] Speaker 1: and once had a career plan to write books about
[0:53] Speaker 1: public speaking. I find the art of public speaking fascinating
[0:57] Speaker 1: and much misunderstood. And the more I looked into the
[1:01] Speaker 1: story of these two speeches, each of which defined a
[1:05] Speaker 1: man's career, the more I thought to myself, we're thinking
[1:09] Speaker 1: about this all wrong. We have a marvelous slate of
[1:13] Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales coming in twenty twenty four, but I hope
[1:16] Speaker 1: you'll forgive me if I and the Cautionary Tales team
[1:20] Speaker 1: take a short rest to recharge our batteries. We will
[1:24] Speaker 1: be back with new episodes in February. But until then,
[1:28] Speaker 1: here is another chance to hear the astonishing talents of
[1:32] Speaker 1: Jeffrey Wright in Martin Luther King Junior, the Jewelry Genius,
[1:38] Speaker 1: and the art of public speaking. One late summer day
[1:50] Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, thousands upon thousands of people gathered
[1:55] Speaker 1: on the Mall in Washington, d C. They had come
[1:59] Speaker 1: to America's capital for jobs and freedom, to show the
[2:03] Speaker 1: Kennedy administration that civil rights legislation must be pushed through Congress,
[2:09] Speaker 1: and to hear the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior speak.
[2:15] Speaker 1: The official program had been long and packed with speeches,
[2:18] Speaker 1: but a quarter of a million people defied the heat
[2:21] Speaker 1: as they waited. The crowd stretched back from the Lincoln Memorial,
[2:26] Speaker 1: packing the sides of the famous reflecting pool, swirling around
[2:30] Speaker 1: the base of the Washington Monument, and extending toward the
[2:34] Speaker 1: intransigent capital itself. The Mall usually dwarfs anything on a
[2:40] Speaker 1: human scale. Not that afternoon. The gospel singer Mahalia Jackson sang,
[2:47] Speaker 1: I've been butked and I've been scorned. Anticipation was building.
[2:52] Speaker 1: All three television networks switched to live coverage. Doctor King
[2:58] Speaker 1: stepped forward to speak to address not only the sweltering crowd,
[3:03] Speaker 1: but a national audience he had never had before and
[3:07] Speaker 1: might never have again. Doctor King had spent the night
[3:11] Speaker 1: laboring on his speech with a few trusted aids, weighing
[3:14] Speaker 1: every word of what he would say. For a few minutes,
[3:18] Speaker 1: the nation, even the world, would be focused on those
[3:22] Speaker 1: words from the Lincoln Memorial steps. Doctor King knew that
[3:26] Speaker 1: those words had to be perfect. But now let's leave
[3:32] Speaker 1: this iconic scene behind us and travel across time and
[3:36] Speaker 1: across the Atlantic. Twenty eight years later, a very different
[3:41] Speaker 1: man would give a very different speech in front of
[3:45] Speaker 1: a very different audience. This man's name was Gerald Ratner,
[3:51] Speaker 1: and he didn't have a dream. He had a nightmare.
[3:56] Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. Gerald
[4:23] Speaker 1: Ratner's speech, to be clear, wasn't about civil rights. It
[4:27] Speaker 1: was about selling cheap jewelry. It became iconic because it
[4:31] Speaker 1: didn't go well. And as you've probably figured out by now,
[4:36] Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by things that didn't go well. But I'll
[4:39] Speaker 1: let you into a secret. I'm also fascinated by the
[4:44] Speaker 1: art of public speaking. I love doing it and i
[4:47] Speaker 1: love studying it. Public speaking is such a strange thing,
[4:51] Speaker 1: as natural as talking and yet wrenchingly difficult. And how
[4:56] Speaker 1: it was approached by these two men, Gerald Ratner and
[4:59] Speaker 1: Martin Luther King, and what happened to them could teach
[5:03] Speaker 1: us a lot. Dr King and mister Ratner are a
[5:08] Speaker 1: study in con trusts. Martin Luther King took the high
[5:12] Speaker 1: road through education, earning a doctorate in theology. Gerald Ratner
[5:17] Speaker 1: took the low road. Ratner was born in London in
[5:21] Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine and expelled from school at the age
[5:24] Speaker 1: of thirteen. When he was fifteen, he joined the family business,
[5:28] Speaker 1: a group of six jewelry shops. Ratner worked behind the
[5:32] Speaker 1: counter for ten years, but noticed that he didn't have
[5:36] Speaker 1: many customers his age or younger. Those people had no
[5:39] Speaker 1: interest in gold and diamond rings. They were spending plenty
[5:43] Speaker 1: of money on clothes and music. Shopping malls were busy.
[5:47] Speaker 1: Jewelers were not. They were dusty and intimidating. Nothing had
[5:52] Speaker 1: a price tag. The doors would be locked behind you
[5:54] Speaker 1: when you entered. Young Gerald soon had a management role
[5:59] Speaker 1: and steered the family business towards more informal shops, selling
[6:04] Speaker 1: products that would appeal to young shoppers on a budget.
[6:07] Speaker 1: It was a canny move. By the age of thirty five,
[6:11] Speaker 1: Ratner was a millionaire. He began a series of ambitious takeovers.
[6:16] Speaker 1: By the age of forty, he was running fifteen hundred stores,
[6:20] Speaker 1: in the UK and a thousand in the US. His
[6:24] Speaker 1: brands included k Watches of Switzerland and Ratner's itself. Gerald
[6:29] Speaker 1: Ratner had built the largest jewelry group on the planet,
[6:34] Speaker 1: and then he destroyed it in a matter of seconds.
[6:44] Speaker 1: Gerald Ratner had been asked to address the Institute of Directors,
[6:48] Speaker 1: a prestigious audience of six thousand British business leaders. The
[6:52] Speaker 1: venue was the Royal Albert Hall, vast and trimmed with
[6:57] Speaker 1: gold and red velvet, perhaps the grandest auditorium in London. Understandably,
[7:04] Speaker 1: Ratner started his speech looking nervous. He was a self
[7:08] Speaker 1: made man, a school dropout who now stood in front
[7:12] Speaker 1: of business royalty, and in fact, there were actual royalty
[7:16] Speaker 1: in the audience too. Ratner was rich and successful, to
[7:21] Speaker 1: be sure, but did he fit in? Three minutes after
[7:25] Speaker 1: starting his speech, he finds his theme mocking his own products.
[7:31] Speaker 2: We've got this imitation book that you lay on your
[7:34] Speaker 2: coffee table. Pages don't actually open, but they're beautiful, curled
[7:39] Speaker 2: up corners with imitation antique. Dust I knows you might
[7:43] Speaker 2: say it's not in the best possible taste, but we
[7:47] Speaker 2: sold a quarter a million of them last year.
[7:50] Speaker 1: The audience love it, They laugh, They clap. Ratner looks braver.
[7:56] Speaker 2: We also do this nice sherry to canter. It's cut
[8:00] Speaker 2: glass and it comes complete with six glasses on a
[8:04] Speaker 2: silver plated tray that your butler could bring you in
[8:08] Speaker 2: he serve you drinks on.
[8:09] Speaker 1: Oh you're too funny, Gerald. Some other people in the
[8:12] Speaker 1: audience would have employed butler's, but Ratner's customers certainly couldn't
[8:16] Speaker 1: afford one any more than they could afford a genuine
[8:19] Speaker 1: antique book, a decanter in a silver tray for your butler.
[8:24] Speaker 1: Nice one, and.
[8:26] Speaker 2: It's really only cost four pounds ninety five pence.
[8:30] Speaker 1: That's about twelve dollars in today's money.
[8:33] Speaker 2: People say to me, how can you sell this for
[8:36] Speaker 2: such a low price? I say, because it's total craft.
[8:42] Speaker 1: Moll laughter, more applause. Ratner's killing it on stage. He's
[8:48] Speaker 1: also just killed his own business empire. He didn't realize
[8:52] Speaker 1: it at the time. The speech had gone down very
[8:54] Speaker 1: well with the audience in the Royal Albert Hall, but
[8:57] Speaker 1: the newspaper reporters in the room smelled a story. The
[9:02] Speaker 1: jokes that have played so brilliantly on the day did
[9:04] Speaker 1: not go down so well when served up cold on
[9:08] Speaker 1: the front page age of the morning papers. At the time,
[9:12] Speaker 1: the UK was in the middle of a recession. Ordinary
[9:15] Speaker 1: people didn't take kindly to a multi millionaire standing in
[9:19] Speaker 1: front of his fellow one percenters and mocking his own
[9:23] Speaker 1: customers for their crass taste. And who would buy an
[9:27] Speaker 1: engagement ring from a company whose own boss had declared
[9:30] Speaker 1: their products were crap sales ebbed Ratner's group shares fell
[9:37] Speaker 1: nearly ninety percent between the speech in April and Christmas.
[9:42] Speaker 1: Ratner was sacked from his own company. Inevitably, they changed
[9:47] Speaker 1: the company name. Ratner's was a toxic brand, forever tarnished
[9:56] Speaker 1: to this day. In the UK, doing a Ratner is
[10:00] Speaker 1: part of the language, universally understood as committing a humiliating
[10:05] Speaker 1: career ending gaff. Ratner's name became its own one word
[10:11] Speaker 1: cautionary tale. The lesson seems obvious enough if everyone's watching,
[10:19] Speaker 1: choose your words with care, don't wing it. But what
[10:24] Speaker 1: if that lesson has the story completely backwards in retrospect?
[10:38] Speaker 1: The Reverend Doctor King had been preparing his whole life
[10:42] Speaker 1: to give the speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
[10:45] Speaker 1: His memory had always been prodigious at the age of five,
[10:49] Speaker 1: he was learning Bible passages by heart. He told his
[10:52] Speaker 1: parents that when he grew up, he was going to
[10:55] Speaker 1: get some big words, so he did. Martin's father was
[11:00] Speaker 1: a preacher, and the boy took to the craft of
[11:03] Speaker 1: speechmaking early. At the age of fourteen, Martin traveled across
[11:07] Speaker 1: Georgia on a bus to compete in public speaking contest.
[11:11] Speaker 1: On the way home to Atlanta, things went sour, very sour.
[11:17] Speaker 1: King and his friend were sitting near the front of
[11:20] Speaker 1: the bus with their teacher, Sarah Grace Bradley. At a
[11:25] Speaker 1: busy stop, a rush of white passengers got on, and
[11:28] Speaker 1: the bus driver, also white, ordered King and his friend
[11:32] Speaker 1: to give up their seats.
[11:34] Speaker 3: You buys, move it, get yourself to the back.
[11:37] Speaker 4: Of the bus.
[11:38] Speaker 1: There was a pause. Dr King later said.
[11:42] Speaker 3: We didn't move quickly enough to suit him, so he
[11:45] Speaker 3: began cursing us.
[11:47] Speaker 1: The driver was now hurling every racist slur you can
[11:51] Speaker 1: imagine and threatening to call the police.
[11:54] Speaker 3: Harm Martin, Please do what he says. So we walked
[11:59] Speaker 3: to the back of the bus and I had to
[12:01] Speaker 3: stand all the way to Atlanta.
[12:03] Speaker 1: It was dark outside for ninety miles. There was nothing
[12:07] Speaker 1: to look at but the seat on the bus filled
[12:11] Speaker 1: with white people.
[12:13] Speaker 3: It was late at night, and I was tired, but
[12:15] Speaker 3: that wasn't the point. It was the humiliation.
[12:20] Speaker 1: Martin, remember, was just fourteen years old.
[12:24] Speaker 3: That night will never leave my memory. It was the
[12:27] Speaker 3: angriest I've ever been in my life. Suddenly I realized,
[12:31] Speaker 3: you don't count. You're nobody.
[12:36] Speaker 1: But Martin Luther King Junior wasn't destined to be nobody
[12:41] Speaker 1: for long. And the journey on the way to being
[12:45] Speaker 1: not just somebody, but somebody who made his mark on
[12:49] Speaker 1: history arguably began not with that unforgettable humiliation, but with
[12:56] Speaker 1: the triumphant day that had preceded it. The long and
[13:07] Speaker 1: infuriating bus journey of Martin Luther King Junior had been
[13:11] Speaker 1: on the way home from a public speaking competition. Martin
[13:15] Speaker 1: had won a prize at the contest, delivering his speech
[13:18] Speaker 1: titled The Negro and the Constitution entirely from memory. My
[13:24] Speaker 1: heart throbs anew in the hope that, inspired by the
[13:27] Speaker 1: example of Lincoln, imbued with the spirit of Christ, they
[13:31] Speaker 1: will cast down the last barrier to perfect freedom. That
[13:36] Speaker 1: speech showed off the teenage King's approach. He would research
[13:41] Speaker 1: draft redraft memorize, finally deliver with passion. King used the
[13:49] Speaker 1: same principles three years later, preaching for the first time
[13:53] Speaker 1: in a small meeting room at his father's church. He
[13:57] Speaker 1: was spectacular. The crowds kept coming until young Martin had
[14:01] Speaker 1: to move to the main auditorium. Martin won an oratory
[14:05] Speaker 1: prize in college. He used to practice imagined court testimony
[14:09] Speaker 1: in front of a mirror, dreaming of becoming a lawyer. Instead,
[14:14] Speaker 1: he applied for a job as a minister at a
[14:16] Speaker 1: Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. As part of his application,
[14:21] Speaker 1: he had to give a sermon, and of course, he
[14:24] Speaker 1: used something meticulously crafted, a sermon he had preached several
[14:29] Speaker 1: times before practice don't just make it up as you
[14:33] Speaker 1: go along. Once he secured that job, he stuck to
[14:37] Speaker 1: that winning formula. King's responsibilities as a minister had to
[14:42] Speaker 1: be fulfilled while he was still finishing his doctorate in theology,
[14:46] Speaker 1: so he rose at half past five each morning, made coffee,
[14:50] Speaker 1: shaved his stubborn bristles into a neat mustache, then worked
[14:54] Speaker 1: on his doctorate for three hours before his pregnant wife,
[14:57] Speaker 1: Coreta woke to join him for breakfast. All the while
[15:02] Speaker 1: King lavished enormous effort on his sermons. He would begin
[15:07] Speaker 1: drafting on Tuesday and continued to research and draft throughout
[15:11] Speaker 1: the week, drawing ideas from Plato Aquinas freud Gandy. As
[15:17] Speaker 1: Sunday approached, he would write it all out on yellow
[15:20] Speaker 1: lined paper and commit it to memory, just as he
[15:24] Speaker 1: had done at the age of fourteen. He would bring
[15:27] Speaker 1: the script to church with him, but as he ascended
[15:30] Speaker 1: to the pulpit, he would leave it in his chair
[15:33] Speaker 1: and speak without notes for half an hour or more.
[15:37] Speaker 1: He was fantastic, people said. The congregation adored him and
[15:42] Speaker 1: the way he spoke with style about matters of substance,
[15:46] Speaker 1: and to achieve this mastery, the young Reverend King spent
[15:51] Speaker 1: fifteen hours or more crafting each sermon. Martin Luther King
[15:57] Speaker 1: was one of the greatest speechmakers to grace the English language,
[16:01] Speaker 1: and at first it might seem obvious why, as well
[16:06] Speaker 1: as being educated and prodigiously talented, he ensured that every
[16:10] Speaker 1: syllable of his oratory was meticulously prepared. Gerald Ratner could
[16:16] Speaker 1: have learned from doctor King's example, couldn't he, Well, the
[16:21] Speaker 1: truth is way more interesting than that, So why would
[16:29] Speaker 1: a public speaker set aside the script or memorized remarks
[16:34] Speaker 1: and speak off the cuff. I asked Charles Limb. He's
[16:38] Speaker 1: a neuroscientist, a surgeon, a jazz saxophonist, and one of
[16:43] Speaker 1: very few people who's actually studied the improvising brain. Lim
[16:50] Speaker 1: researches people as they improvise inside brain scanners called fmur
[16:55] Speaker 1: eye machines. Imagine sliding on your back so that your
[16:59] Speaker 1: head is surrounded by a giant, white plastic doughnut with
[17:04] Speaker 1: the feel of a vintage iPod. The scanner is generating
[17:08] Speaker 1: powerful magnetic fields to illuminate the contrast between oxygen rich
[17:12] Speaker 1: blood flowing to different areas of your brain and the
[17:16] Speaker 1: oxygen depleted blood flowing away. Again, your head is held
[17:21] Speaker 1: perfectly still. If you're a hip hop artist, you then
[17:25] Speaker 1: have to spit some rhymes in response to random words.
[17:28] Speaker 1: If you're a jazz musician, you have to tap out
[17:31] Speaker 1: riffs on a plastic keyboard lying across your knees and
[17:34] Speaker 1: no metal, Otherwise the magnetic field would rip the keyboard
[17:38] Speaker 1: apart and pull the shrapnel into the scanner with your head.
[17:43] Speaker 1: It's a tough gig. Through these experiments, Limb and other
[17:49] Speaker 1: neuroscientists have been discovering hints of what goes on in
[17:53] Speaker 1: an improvising brain. There's a distinctive pattern in the prefrontal cortex,
[17:58] Speaker 1: which seems to be the seat of consciousness, memory, morality, humor,
[18:03] Speaker 1: and even the sense of self. But the pattern isn't
[18:07] Speaker 1: that the prefrontal cortex is lighting up during improvisation. On
[18:12] Speaker 1: the contrary, broad areas of it shutting down the dorso
[18:16] Speaker 1: lateral areas either side of the top of your forehead
[18:19] Speaker 1: and the lateral orbital areas behind your eyes. Improvisers are
[18:24] Speaker 1: escaping their internal restraints. They're letting go. Most of us
[18:29] Speaker 1: go through our days holding back our mental impulses to
[18:33] Speaker 1: swear or lash out. All this requires a degree of
[18:36] Speaker 1: self control, so that filtering is a good thing. That
[18:41] Speaker 1: you can have too much of a good thing, says
[18:44] Speaker 1: Charles Limb. Too much filtering can squash our creativity. Improvisers
[18:50] Speaker 1: shut down their inner critics and allow new ideas to
[18:54] Speaker 1: flow out. The improvising brain is disinhibited, although not so
[18:58] Speaker 1: crudely as the drunk brain. That is why improvisers can
[19:02] Speaker 1: produce flashes of pure brilliance. It's also why improvisation feels
[19:08] Speaker 1: so risk. A script can seem protective, like a bulletproof vest,
[19:19] Speaker 1: but sometimes it's more like a strait jacket. Improvising unleashes creativity.
[19:24] Speaker 1: It feels fresh and honest and personal. Above all, it
[19:27] Speaker 1: turns a monologue into a dialogue. Miles Davis, the legendary
[19:33] Speaker 1: jazz trumpeter, talked about improvisation as the freedom and space
[19:38] Speaker 1: to hear things. That's a fascinating turn of phrase. Not
[19:42] Speaker 1: the freedom and space to play things or to do things,
[19:46] Speaker 1: but to hear things, to be more open to the
[19:49] Speaker 1: sound of your own instrument, the sound of the group,
[19:53] Speaker 1: And that matters for more than just music or rhetoric,
[19:56] Speaker 1: because we're scared of improvising, and we're not just afraid
[20:01] Speaker 1: to improvise on stage, we're also becoming afraid to improvise
[20:05] Speaker 1: face to face. The sociologist Sherry Turkle has been interviewing
[20:11] Speaker 1: young people about their communications through smartphone apps. It wasn't
[20:15] Speaker 1: just because the apps were convenient or addictive, although they
[20:18] Speaker 1: could be both. Texting is attractive because traditional conversations feel scary.
[20:25] Speaker 3: I'll tell you what's wrong with conversation.
[20:27] Speaker 1: One high school senior told Sherry Turkele.
[20:30] Speaker 3: It takes place in real time, and you can't control
[20:33] Speaker 3: what you're going to say.
[20:35] Speaker 1: What you're going to say. This student is so used
[20:39] Speaker 1: to being able to proofread every message that he's become
[20:43] Speaker 1: scared of simply talking and seeing what happens. But then
[20:49] Speaker 1: perhaps he's right to be scared. We should ask Gerald Ratner.
[20:55] Speaker 1: Gerald Ratner learned to laugh at himself a long time ago,
[20:59] Speaker 1: but he rejects the idea that somehow his mistake all
[21:03] Speaker 1: worked out for the best. People ask me if I'm
[21:06] Speaker 1: glad I said what I said. They're ridiculous. How could
[21:09] Speaker 1: I be grateful? I lost everything? Ratner plunged into depression.
[21:15] Speaker 1: He has bounced back in some ways. He had some success,
[21:19] Speaker 1: setting up a chain of health clubs and even an
[21:21] Speaker 1: online jewelry business. But the truth is that there was
[21:25] Speaker 1: nothing he could do, no success that he could achieve
[21:29] Speaker 1: that would ever be as famous as his gaff. The
[21:33] Speaker 1: search for a good joke destroyed his business, and it
[21:37] Speaker 1: nearly destroyed him. Who would want to risk the fate
[21:41] Speaker 1: of Gerald Ratner when they could follow the meticulous example
[21:44] Speaker 1: of the young Martin Luther King. It seems obvious that
[21:47] Speaker 1: when speaking in public, we should prepare as diligently as
[21:51] Speaker 1: King did when he drafted and memorized his sermons. But
[21:55] Speaker 1: the truth about Gerald Dratner's impromptu remark about his products
[21:59] Speaker 1: being total crap is this. It wasn't impromptu. He chose
[22:07] Speaker 1: those words with care to circulating drafts of the speech
[22:11] Speaker 1: to get comments. He had used the total crap joke
[22:14] Speaker 1: before without running into problems, and as he prepared to
[22:18] Speaker 1: deliver the speech on a larger stage, he sought advice.
[22:22] Speaker 1: His wife told him to be careful that others, including
[22:25] Speaker 1: a friend who was one of the most influential figures
[22:28] Speaker 1: in the advertising industry, encouraged him to tell even more
[22:31] Speaker 1: daring jokes. They thought Ratna would sound self deprecating and
[22:36] Speaker 1: that his audience would love the gags, which was true.
[22:39] Speaker 1: Those in the hall that day did love it. But
[22:42] Speaker 1: in the newspapers the next morning, Ratner simply sounded like
[22:46] Speaker 1: a millionaire mocking his struggling customers. When I listened back
[22:55] Speaker 1: to Ratner's speech, I don't hear the mockery at all.
[22:59] Speaker 1: I hear something else. Immediately after saying his own products
[23:03] Speaker 1: were crap, Ratner says are.
[23:06] Speaker 2: Ratner's shots will never win any awards. Design they're not
[23:10] Speaker 2: in the best possible taste. I admit that. In fact,
[23:13] Speaker 2: some people say they can't even see the jewelry for
[23:16] Speaker 2: all the banners and posters smothering the shot windows.
[23:19] Speaker 1: There's a different tone. Suddenly, there's a note of defiance,
[23:24] Speaker 1: even anger.
[23:25] Speaker 2: So it's interesting that these shots that everyone has a
[23:29] Speaker 2: good laugh about take more money per square foot than
[23:33] Speaker 2: any other retailer in Europe.
[23:36] Speaker 1: The hall is hush, now, nobody's laughing.
[23:40] Speaker 2: Why, because we give the customer what they want.
[23:46] Speaker 1: Gerald Ratner wasn't laughing at his customers. He identified with them.
[23:52] Speaker 1: He thought the business royalty in the hall were laughing
[23:55] Speaker 1: at his customers and his business ideas and him. This
[24:01] Speaker 1: was his response, You laugh at us, he was saying,
[24:05] Speaker 1: but my customers are happy and I'm rich, So who's
[24:09] Speaker 1: laughing now. Ratner's downfall wasn't caused by a lack of preparation,
[24:15] Speaker 1: but by a lack of judgment. Ratner did exactly what
[24:19] Speaker 1: he planned to do. He had simply failed to foresee
[24:23] Speaker 1: the consequences. Improvisation was not to blame. Improvising does expose
[24:30] Speaker 1: us to new and different risks, but even careful preparation
[24:35] Speaker 1: cannot remove Risks entirely. In December nineteen fifty five, Rosa
[24:53] Speaker 1: Parks was arrested after refusing to give up her seat
[24:56] Speaker 1: on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white man.
[25:01] Speaker 1: As a local church leader with a reputation as an orator,
[25:05] Speaker 1: Martin Luther King was asked to organize a boycott of
[25:09] Speaker 1: Montgomery's buses. He hesitated. He was exhausted. His newborn baby daughter, Yoki,
[25:17] Speaker 1: wouldn't stop crying in the night. King asked for time
[25:21] Speaker 1: to mull over the idea of a bus boycott, but
[25:24] Speaker 1: an influential local activist, Edie Nixon, would have no delays.
[25:29] Speaker 1: You ain't got much time to think, said Nixon. You're
[25:32] Speaker 1: in the chair from now on. So it was that
[25:35] Speaker 1: King found himself bounced into leading the Montgomery Improvement Association.
[25:41] Speaker 1: He had to give an inaugural speech, and he had
[25:44] Speaker 1: to give it immediately. Rosa Parks was news. The bus
[25:47] Speaker 1: boycott was news. There wasn't time to spend days redrafting
[25:52] Speaker 1: or consulting the sayings of Plato or Gandhy. Doctor King
[25:56] Speaker 1: arrived home from the meeting with Edie Nixon and the
[25:59] Speaker 1: activists at half past six. He had to head to
[26:02] Speaker 1: the speech venue Holt Street Church at ten to seven.
[26:07] Speaker 3: I had only twenty minutes to prepare the most decisive
[26:10] Speaker 3: speech of my life. I became possessed by fear.
[26:15] Speaker 1: King knew that newspaper men would be there, perhaps even
[26:19] Speaker 1: television crews. And yet just as the stakes were highest,
[26:23] Speaker 1: the habit of meticulous preparation that had served him so
[26:26] Speaker 1: well all his life was useless. He couldn't research, draft, redraft,
[26:31] Speaker 1: and memorized. He had no time. King looked at his watch.
[26:36] Speaker 1: Already five minutes had ticked away while he fretted. Every
[26:40] Speaker 1: Sunday he delivered a sermon based on fifteen hours of
[26:43] Speaker 1: hard work. Now he was about to deliver the most
[26:46] Speaker 1: important speech of his life, and he had just fifteen minutes.
[26:51] Speaker 1: He sketched a couple of thoughts with his hand shaking,
[26:54] Speaker 1: pondering the delicate balance he had to strike between militancy
[26:58] Speaker 1: and moderation. Then he prayed that was all the preparation
[27:03] Speaker 1: he could spare before driving to the Holt Street Church.
[27:12] Speaker 1: Ten thousand people stood outside, unable to cram themselves in,
[27:16] Speaker 1: listening to the proceedings via a loud speaker on the roof.
[27:20] Speaker 1: The Montgomery police were their in force. So were the
[27:23] Speaker 1: television cameras pointing at the pulpit as King stepped up
[27:28] Speaker 1: and began to speak.
[27:30] Speaker 3: My friends, we're here this evening for serious business.
[27:34] Speaker 1: The speech is brilliantly described in Taylor Branch's biography of King.
[27:40] Speaker 1: Instead of the usual careful script, lovingly prepared and committed
[27:44] Speaker 1: to memory, King was groping his way towards the right words.
[27:49] Speaker 4: I think I speak with legal authority, not that I
[27:52] Speaker 4: have any legal authority, but I think I speak with
[27:55] Speaker 4: legal authority behind me. That the law, the ordinance, the
[27:58] Speaker 4: city ordinance, has never been totally clarified.
[28:02] Speaker 1: He had never in his life delivered a sermon with
[28:06] Speaker 1: a line as weak and confused as that one. Fifteen
[28:10] Speaker 1: hours of preparation always ironed out every wrinkle. But King
[28:15] Speaker 1: was finding something more valuable than time to prepare, in
[28:20] Speaker 1: Miles Davis's phrase, the freedom and space to hear things.
[28:25] Speaker 1: As he spoke, King listened to the crowd, feeling out
[28:29] Speaker 1: their response. Speaking in the moment. His early sentences were
[28:34] Speaker 1: experiments grasping for a theme, exploring how each sounded and
[28:39] Speaker 1: how the crowd responded. Each phrase shaped The phrase that
[28:43] Speaker 1: followed his speech was not a solo. It was a
[28:47] Speaker 1: duet with his audience. After a cautious opening, King talked
[28:53] Speaker 1: of Rosa Parks, of her character and Christian commitment, and.
[28:58] Speaker 3: Just because she refused to get up, she was arrested.
[29:03] Speaker 1: The crowd murmured their assent. After a pause for breath,
[29:07] Speaker 1: King changed irec you.
[29:10] Speaker 4: Know, my friends, there comes a time when people get
[29:13] Speaker 4: tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.
[29:18] Speaker 1: And suddenly the avalanche began. A few yells of support
[29:23] Speaker 1: became a roar of approval and anger. The spirit of
[29:27] Speaker 1: the crowd was self sustaining, a torrent of emotion and sound,
[29:31] Speaker 1: which grew stronger. Just when it seemed the soundless fade,
[29:35] Speaker 1: further waves crashed in from the thousands of voices outside.
[29:39] Speaker 1: The cheering was everywhere. Then King spoke up again. With
[29:44] Speaker 1: the help of the crowd, he found his theme.
[29:47] Speaker 4: There comes a time when people get tired of getting
[29:50] Speaker 4: pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and
[29:54] Speaker 4: left standing amidst the piercing chill of an alpine November.
[29:59] Speaker 1: Amid the sound of feet thundering on the church's wooden floorboards.
[30:04] Speaker 1: King was forced to pause as with any extemporaneous performance,
[30:10] Speaker 1: Kings was imperfect, with some meandering lines and a limp conclusion.
[30:15] Speaker 1: Despite all that, these improvised remarks were easily the finest
[30:20] Speaker 1: speech that King had yet given. People who had seen
[30:23] Speaker 1: him speak many times were astonished. He spoke with so
[30:27] Speaker 1: much force, Nobody, said one witness, nobody dreamed of Martin
[30:34] Speaker 1: Luther King being that sort of man under these conditions.
[30:39] Speaker 1: King himself, one suspects, had not truly understood what he
[30:43] Speaker 1: could unleash once he let himself go. He didn't want
[30:47] Speaker 1: to improvise the speech, preferred the script for when the
[30:50] Speaker 1: situation gave him no alternative. He came to understand what
[30:54] Speaker 1: older preachers had told.
[30:56] Speaker 3: Him, open your mouth and God will speak for you.
[31:03] Speaker 1: Seven and a half years later, in nineteen sixty three,
[31:07] Speaker 1: he found himself faced with see King to a quarter
[31:10] Speaker 1: of a million people who'd marched on Washington d C.
[31:13] Speaker 1: He knew he'd be live on every national television network.
[31:17] Speaker 1: This speech demanded the preparation of old It was too
[31:21] Speaker 1: important to be left to chance. Doctor King and his
[31:25] Speaker 1: aides had prepared a typewritten script, unpromisingly.
[31:29] Speaker 3: Titled almost Never Again.
[31:32] Speaker 1: King's team was trying to navigate complex waters with the
[31:36] Speaker 1: text of this address. King needed to reach out to
[31:39] Speaker 1: white allies, to rebut the hardline approach of Malcolm X
[31:43] Speaker 1: and others, and to respond to President Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill.
[31:47] Speaker 1: Was the bill to be criticized as inadequate or welcomed
[31:51] Speaker 1: as progress. There was much politicking behind the scenes, and
[31:55] Speaker 1: each speaker had been allotted only seven minutes. There was
[31:59] Speaker 1: no exception for Martin Luther King. All of these constraints
[32:04] Speaker 1: called for precise drafting. He knew that he would be
[32:08] Speaker 1: speaking King with a vast statue of Abraham Lincoln behind him,
[32:13] Speaker 1: one hundred years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had declared the
[32:18] Speaker 1: enslaved people of the United States to be free. So
[32:24] Speaker 1: King decided to open with an artful echo of Lincoln's
[32:28] Speaker 1: Great Gettysburg Address and referred to the Emancipation Proclamation as
[32:32] Speaker 1: a promisory note on which America had defaulted. As a
[32:38] Speaker 1: script normal scene never again was over formal and flawed.
[32:43] Speaker 1: Parts of it read like poetry. Others were clumsy legalese.
[32:49] Speaker 1: As King read out the speech, it did not stir
[32:53] Speaker 1: the soul, but then toward the end came a biblical flourish.
[32:58] Speaker 4: We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters,
[33:03] Speaker 4: and righteousness like a mighty stream.
[33:07] Speaker 1: And as King said those words, approving cheers rippled up
[33:12] Speaker 1: and down the mall. Then King looked down at his script.
[33:18] Speaker 1: The next line was pretentious and limp. He couldn't bring
[33:22] Speaker 1: himself to say the words, and so instead he started
[33:26] Speaker 1: to improvise, telling the crowd go.
[33:29] Speaker 3: Back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama.
[33:33] Speaker 1: Behind him stood his friends and colleagues. They knew that
[33:38] Speaker 1: King had stepped away from the script, and at the
[33:41] Speaker 1: moment of maximum danger and maximum opportunity, the climax of
[33:46] Speaker 1: his speech, he was looking for something to say, something
[33:51] Speaker 1: that would touch the people there at the mall and
[33:54] Speaker 1: watching across the country.
[33:56] Speaker 2: Tell him about the dream.
[33:58] Speaker 1: Mine, yelled the singer Mahalia Jackson. It was a reference
[34:02] Speaker 1: to something doctor King had been preaching of late to
[34:05] Speaker 1: church congregations, a dream of a brighter future in which
[34:09] Speaker 1: whites and blacks lived in harmony. And as he stood
[34:14] Speaker 1: facing the television cameras and the vast expectant crowd looking
[34:19] Speaker 1: for inspiration, Martin Luther King heard Mahalia Jackson, and he
[34:24] Speaker 1: began to create on the fly one of the most
[34:27] Speaker 1: famous speeches of the century about how he had a dream,
[34:32] Speaker 1: a dream that America would live up to the.
[34:34] Speaker 3: Words all Men are Created.
[34:37] Speaker 1: Equal, A dream of an oasis of freedom and justice.
[34:42] Speaker 1: A dream that little black boys and black girls would
[34:46] Speaker 1: be able to join hands with little white boys and
[34:49] Speaker 1: white girls as sisters and brothers. Normalcy never again was forgotten.
[35:02] Speaker 1: The conclusion to the speech that shook the twentieth century
[35:06] Speaker 1: wasn't in the script. The best things usually aren't. Key
[35:18] Speaker 1: sources for this episode include Taylor Branch's book Parting the Waters,
[35:24] Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior's autobiography, and my own book MESSI
[35:28] Speaker 1: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives. For a
[35:32] Speaker 1: full list of references, see Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales
[35:39] Speaker 1: is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's
[35:42] Speaker 1: produced by Ryan Dilly and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
[35:46] Speaker 1: and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Julia
[35:50] Speaker 1: Barton edited the scripts. Starring in this series of Cautionary
[35:55] Speaker 1: Tales Helena Bonham Carter, and Jeffrey Wright, alongside Nizzar Elderazi
[36:01] Speaker 1: Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, copenaholbrook Smith, Greg Lockett,
[36:07] Speaker 1: Messea Munroe, and Rufus Wright. This show wouldn't have been
[36:12] Speaker 1: possible without the work of Mea LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fine,
[36:17] Speaker 1: John Schnaz, Carlimgliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostick, Maggie Taylor, Aniela
[36:23] Speaker 1: La Khan, and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a production
[36:29] Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember
[36:33] Speaker 1: to rate, share, and review.

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