Ira (Reluctantly) Gives a Graduation Speech
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here's a free sample of the newest bonus episode that we made for our this American life partners. It starts this way. Hey everybody, I were here. I went to a high school graduation last year around this time and can I say chat GBT has not been good for graduation speeches. Though honestly, like most graduation speeches were pretty bad before AI, right? Like, I don't know, that's when my experience going to graduations. Maybe it's been yours too. Though, I think graduation speeches are bad for reasons that are really built in and nobody's fault. When students give them, understandably, they feel like they have to say something about the experience that they just went through being in school. And unless something very unusual and dramatic happened that year in school with that particular class, those stories all kind of just sound the same. Then there's a section acknowledging and thanking teachers and parents, and there should be a section like that, like no question. Of course, there's a section like that, but that's another section that you can kind of predict how it's going to go from the moment it begins. And then there's a section always about the future and the promise of the journey that we're heading out on today, taking our first steps, the grand adventure the graduates are heading out on, which is really hard to do without falling into a lot of puffy platitudes. It's just a very difficult kind of speech to make interesting and alive and fun to hear. And when somebody does a good one, and there are some really great ones out there, it's usually some of the, you know, like Steve Jobs or Michael Lewis, people with surprising lives, telling surprising stories from their lives, and having surprising thoughts that go with those stories, it's hard to do well. And when we get to graduation season, like we are entering right now in May, I don't think I'm the only person who goes to those things dreading the speeches. In 2012, a guy named Sanford Unger asked me to give the graduation speech at Goucher College in Baltimore. I knew Sanford Unger. Sandy had been my boss when I was in my early 20s at NPR on a daily news show called NPR Dateline. And Sandy was the host. I was his tape cutter. It was a tiny staff. It was like, I think it was just like three or four or five people was the entire staff for this daily show. And Sandy and I worked very closely together. And I always really liked him. He was a smart guy with immense self confidence, which he were likely charmingly, I thought. He'd been a foreign correspondent. He'd been a reporter for The Washington Post. He'd been the host of all things considered, all before we did Dateline. And when Dateline was canceled, he went on to a series of very fancy sounding jobs. He was the dean of the School of Communication at American University. Then he was the head of Voice of America. Then he was president of Goucher College, which is how this call happened. I'm from Baltimore. I have some personal connections to Goucher College. But I did not want the job of graduation speaker for all the reasons that I've already told you. It just seemed like a hard assignment. But I decided to do it. For reasons that I ended up putting into the speech and telling the audience about, I also included in the speech one very personal story about me and Goucher College. I remember I was not sure I should include in the speech, but I did. And it got a response. Like it turns out it was the right move. And then I also got to tell them about the day. My grandma Frida met Adolf Hitler back in 1932. And so I'm saying all this because with graduation season upon us, I'm going to play the speech for you right now. And so just to set the scene, this was a sunny day in 2012. It's outdoors. The theme of the graduation that year was transcending boundaries. So that was a phrase that was being repeated now and then during the day. That's the kind of day this was. Okay, here's the speech. Graduates, parents, faculty, guests, President Unger. I'm on it B.S. to be your commencement speaker. I still oppose on principle the idea of any commencement speech. I believe that it is a doomed form, coin and impossible. Commencement speakers give stock advice, which is then promptly ignored. The central mission of the commencement speech is in itself ridiculous to inspire at a moment which needs no inspiration. Look at yourselves at this moment. Something incredible is happening to you right now. The whole world is opening to you. You guys have been in school your entire lives and you have completed something difficult that took persistence and wilfulness. Probably
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Ira always hated commencement speeches. Then he felt like he had to give this one.