Podcast Listening Assignment

I listened to the Mohammed Ali and Tony Hawk podcasts. Mohammed Ali talked about his neighborhood community, schools, local shops, Olympic community, boxing community, and his family. Tony Hawk talked about his skater community, his schools and his family. I found in both podcasts that these men knew from a young age what they wanted to do. They both were determined to follow their dream and did not listen to anyone who told them they couldn’t. This listening experienced transitioned into insight when I realized that I sometimes have let society or specific people tell me that I can’t follow a dream of mine. I realized while listening that what is the point of having a dream if we are too scared to follow it. Mohammed Ali shared that from a young age he ran around his town telling everyone he would one day be the heavyweight champion and an Olympic gold medalist, but people laughed at him. Tony Hawk went pro at age 14 and was lectured in front of his entire class that he was wasting his time and would never succeed. Both succeeded and both never even thought about failure. They use these rhetorical strategies of appealing to an audience through the examples of the school teachers who told them they could never achieve their dreams. The rhetorical purpose is to draw the reader in and explain both the amazing parts of their stories, but also the rough parts.