About the website
Speakola was created by Melbourne author and speaker Tony Wilson in August 2016. He’s since made it his love project to collect speeches of all types, famous and not famous, and built an online collection of 2000 plus speeches.
It’s now also a podcast with 40 plus interviews that’s had over 100,000 downloads.
There is no excellent speech that is not welcome on the site, and if there is no obvious category, we can find a home in the glorious wonderland of ‘other events’.
We build the collection through the help of friends and visitors who recommend great speeches we are missing, or send in personal, friend or family offerings via the submit button. We try for a transcript for every speech, so that a visit to Speakola feels easier and more fulfilling than a speeches trawl across YouTube.
For each speech, we attempt to include speaker name, event, location, date, a still photo for thumbnail, transcript, and if it exists, a video embed. If it doesn’t, we are happy with transcript and banner photo.
We’d love this to be an international library of great speeches, so every nationality is welcome. An English translation is required to help a predominantly anglophone audience.
So that’s the Speakola project. It’s going well. There were over 1.5 million visits in the last 12 months.
Copyright in the speech remains with the speaker.
Support Speakola
Hi speech lovers,
With costs of hosting website and podcast, this labour of love has become a difficult financial proposition in recent times. If you can afford a donation, it will help Speakola survive and prosper.
Best wishes,
Tony Wilson.
About Tony Wilson
My love for speeches began in my mid teens when I first heard Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech as Dad drove me to a football game. I’ll never forget the feeling – it was emotional, cathartic, something akin to the best and most beautiful piece of music, dragging me upward. It was a baptism in the power of speech, and on my first trip to the USA, in the pre-everything-on-the-internet year of 1994, I went to the Museum of Film and Radio in New York to hear it again.
I became a speaker. At first it was 21st birthdays and weddings, but when I was picked on a show called Race Aroud the World, my amateur love of the spoken word turned into a career in writing, media and the arts, which in turn sparked professional speaking gigs.
For more than twenty years I’ve been represented by the ICMI agency, and I’ve also received bookings through Speaking Out and Booked Out (author talks).
I’ve mainly been an MC, but also keynotes and motivational speeches. Another reason for starting Speakola is that I felt I’d enjoyed and delivered so many types of speeches. I’ve done groom, graduation, best man, 50ths, 70ths, instructionals and how-tos, hypotheticals and debates, mock trials and awards nights. When I delivered my best man’s eulogy, it hollowed me out and caused me to search online for a place where eulogies lived. There really wasn’t one, and it made me believe that there should be. One thing I’m told over and over is that Speakola helps people with writing their own speeches.
My most recent type of speech is the ‘Speakola’ speech. This is the one aimed at teaching better speaking. I’m now regularly visiting schools, university and workplaces to talk about the power of oratory, using examples from the website, and breaking a great speech into its component parts. What are icebreakers? How do you find a killer first line? What’s a good balance between personal anecdote and dictum? is there a phrase that works with repetition, almost a title phrase? What’s the music of spoken language? How do you finish? It’s teaching with examples, because the greatest orators of all time are collected here on Speakola, ready to show the way.
Contact me if you’re interested in hiring me as speaker. I’m also a speechwriter, who has done work for federal politicians and CEOs, particularly with the AFL.
I’ve written twenty books, including Harry Highpants, The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas, A Boy Called Bob and 1989 The Great Grand Final. Visit my website to check them out.
About Speakola podcast
A speeches project deserves a spoken word format. Every fortnight Tony chats to someone about a speech, to uncover the story of how it was written and delivered, as well as a few tips on how to speak better. Subscribe here.
Available on:
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify, or
just search for ‘‘Speakola” in your favourite podcast app. Episodes are also embedded on our podcast tab.
Twitter and Facebook
The best way to get a great speech in your daily feed is to follow us on Twitter or like our facebook page. There is also a newsletter you can sign up to on the homepage.
Speakola newsletter
Tony writes a newsletter featuring a speech or two with excerpts and analysis of what makes the speech work. Sign up below!
Speakola in the Media
Tony Wilson on Grandstanding, ABC Adelaide Local Radio, with Julian Schiller and Rod Jamieson, talking coaching addresses and sports speeches, 29 /7/17
Tony Wilson on ABC Adelaide Local Radio Drive, with Julian Schiller. For 77th anniversary of 'We Shall Fight Them On the Beaches', 4/6/17.
Jetstar in-flight magazine, Peter Barrett, February 2017
Tony Wilson interviewed by author Alex Miles on wedding website 'Sixty Secrets' about wedding speeches.
Tony Wilson on 6ix Perth breakfast with Tim Gossage, talking Muhammad Ali, 7/6/16
Tony Wilson on ABC Mornings with Wendy Harmer (Sydney 702), 11/2/16
Konrad Marshall profile of Speakola, 'Talking About the Art of Talking', The Age, 19/12/15
Tony Wilson on SEN Harf Time with Daniel Harford, 3/12/15
Tony Wilson on ABC Afternoons (Melbourne & Victoria) with Casey Bennetto, 2/11/15
Tony Wilson on Triple R Breakfasters about Speakola, 26/10/15
Tony Wilson on ABC NSW with Kelly Fuller, October 2015