The Extemper's BibleSteven Levitsky (a professor of government at Harvard University who focuses on comparative government) and Daniel Ziblatt (an American political scientist who specializes in the study of historical economies) remark that democracies have stopped going out with a bang, but rather a whimper. In this article, Akshita Krishnan explores these “whimpers” noted in the book, How Democracies Die.
Over the past weekend, the very first tournament for the National Points Race commenced. The University of Kentucky’s National Speech and Debate Season Opener was held virtually (for extemp) this year, which explains the variety in competition—the tournament drew in over 40 entries from across the world, and after 4 prelim rounds, a semifinals, and […]
The Extemper’s Bible will again host a Nationals Points Race for the fourth year in a row. This point system will determine the country’s most consistent competitor across a series of nationally-recognized events. Following the model of the Extemp Central National Points Race, we will be using different tiers to determine the comparative difficulty of […]
The Extemper’s Bible’s 2022-2023 National Points Race has come to a close! Below are the champions and high placers. Congratulations to Mckinley Paltzik of the Phoenix Country Day School (AZ), on being the second ever extemper to break 5 digits on the NPR, garnering an even 10,000 points. She is also the second ever extemper […]
To serve as a starting point for many IX’ers, Akshita Krishnan embarks on a “Country Roundup,” beginning with a topic analysis on China, specifically narrowing into the post Zero-Covid economy.
The debt ceiling, a primary cause of debate for partisan politics, was reached over the past week. In this topic analysis, Akshita Krishnan talks about what this means for the economy and American politics.
In the final part to a series on using Interp to build Extemp, Akshita Krishnan discusses body language.
In the third installment in a series of using Interp to build Extemp skills, Akshita Krishnan is back to talk about humor in terms of both of these events.
Akshita Krishnan is back to discuss the technicalities of using interp to improve your extemping. In the second part to this series, she talks specifically about the emotional aspect of a speech, and how interp helps to develop passion.
Letting your personality shine in a speech is often what sets you apart from other speakers in a round, allowing you to establish your abilities as a speaker to the judge. In this multi-part series, Akshita Krishnan discusses using Interp as a way to build your speaking style.