Comedian Ronny Chieng, well-known as a correspondent for the “Daily Show,” gave a speech on May 27, 2026, for the Harvard Class of 2026 commencement ceremony. An excerpt starting at 13:09 from his roughly 21-minute speech shows three rhetorical tools we can learn from him:

The Action

Chieng asks the graduates to look to their left and to their right. He tells them to memorize the faces of the people sitting next to them. In seconds, hundreds of passive listeners are transformed into active participants. This small call to action increases attention for what comes next.

The Provocation

As soon as their eyes have wandered around the room, Chieng delivers the punchline: some of the people they just looked at would become “evil” people who are only after money. At an elite university full of pride and hope for the future, this is a bold claim that deliberately goes against the grain—and that is exactly why it works.

Humor

Chieng claims that making money in America is easy. He provides three examples that take this statement to the point of absurdity: you can talk nonsense on TV (a jab at his own profession as a comedian), you can run a crypto scam (an allusion to the numerous crypto scandals of recent years), or you can storm the Capitol and get a payout from the government (an allusion to the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the pardons or compensation for those involved discussed since then—the sharpest and most political of the three punchlines). From harmless self-deprecation to sociopolitical barbs: this escalation makes uncomfortable criticism entertainingly digestible.

Watch the excerpt starting at 13:09 and pay attention to these three techniques. There is a lot we can learn from Ronny Chieng for our own presentations.

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Image source: YouTube