The Trash-Talking Rivalry Between the World’s Fastest Talkers

On the flight from Heathrow, Steve Woodmore started to really feel afraid. A Londoner via and thru, he had by no means been to America. In his hand was the science fiction novel Stranger in a Unusual Land by Robert A. Heinlein. When the airplane touched down at John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport on Aug. 7, 1990, the enormity of the event hit dwelling. “I used to be very a lot alone,” he says. “I used to be completely terrified.” Woodmore was in New York to attempt to develop into, as soon as and for all, the world’s quickest talker.

Because it first appeared in The Guinness E book of Data in 1962, the class of world’s quickest talker has been bedeviled by disagreement and scandal. It’s troublesome to adjudicate, for a begin. Do all phrases depend the identical? How intelligible does somebody should be? How lengthy ought to they discuss for? Since 2015 Guinness have stipulated that fast-talking candidates recite Hamlet’s “To be or to not be” soliloquy. Within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, Canadian Sean Shannon recited the 260-word speech sooner than anybody else, in 23.8 seconds – 655 phrases a minute.

However to different quick talkers, it’s not that straightforward.