Why don’t we have good orators in today’s time?

Short answer
Technology

Long answer
I recently did a podcast with Dhanashree Lele (A Marathi Sanskrit Scholar) and she shared a brilliant insight which resonated with my observations. Here is what she said…

Earlier (before internet) when a people spoke publicly, they had to prepare a lot by reading and sourcing material from various sources. For eg. If you had to speak to Tagore, you had to read at least dozen of books to create material for your talk. While doing this, those people not only found content relevant to their talk but also got enriched with other stuff they consumed.

Today, a small wikipedia excerpt is enough to give basic information about the topic you are going to speak, so the depth in your content goes missing.

The biggest insight which she delivered is that “you can speak meaningfully on a certain topic only if you are consumed all possible knowledge about that subject, assimilated, digested and then refined to share it with others, not with basic reading (which happens today).”