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.
“They're honestly like most graduation speeches were pretty bad before AI, right? Like I don't know,”
that's where 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. Unless something very unusual and dramatic happened that year in school with that particular class, those stories are kind of just sound the same.
Then it's a section acknowledging and thinking teachers and parents and there should be a section like that. 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, there are some really great ones out there. It's usually some of the, you know, like Steve Jobs were 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 gun named Sanford Anger asked me to give the graduation speech at Goucher College in Baltimore. I knew Sanford Anger, Sandy had been my boss when I was in my early 20s at MPR,
or a daily news show called MPR Dayline. And Sandy was the host. I was his tape cutter.
“There's a tiny staff. It was like, I think 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 close together. And I always
really liked him. He was a smart guy with immense self-confidence, which he wore lightly, 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 Dayline. And when Dayline 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 is bigger 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. It turns out it was the right move. And then I also got to tell them about the day. My grandma freed a met eight off 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. Graduate parents, faculty, guests, president and younger. I'm honored to be asked to be your commencement speaker. I still oppose on principle the idea of any commencement speech.
“I believe that it is a doomed form, calling and impossible. Commenceance 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 yourself 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 for assistance and willfulness.
you're off the face of the world and do everything you have been dreaming. What can words add to that
“except delay the moment you get your diploma. I oppose the form of the commencement speech and”
I continue to oppose it even as I do one now. And I said yes only because of my personal connections to this school. One is your president, Sandy Unger, who I work closely with at
MPR years ago, who as many of you know has a special gift for convincing people to do things they
do not necessarily want to do. Which worked out great in this case because I have a special gift for saying yes to people like that. As was said, another personal connection I have to voucher is my grandma. My dad's mom. Free to free lander. Goucher class is 31. A very defiantly proud
“goucher grad. Are there members of Phi Beta Kappa here? Can I hear Phi Beta Kappa?”
You are my grandma's sister in that organization. I'm wearing her Phi Beta Kappa. Key. Grandma, free to work her key to any special dinner or occasion until she died and was not shy about talking about being a member of Phi Beta Kappa with anyone who would listen which make her seem like some wacky, crank, grandma, old lady. But she was actually anything but she was smart and funny and awake to the world. And I've turned up that although I oppose the form
of graduation speech, I'm standing here in front of you because I know it would please her a great deal.
My third connection to Goucher I really was not going to talk about it all and this week my wife and
some friends insisted that you graduate to find it relevant. And that is that I lost my virginity in one of the dorms here. Not recently. I was 20. It was still an all-girl school. The Goucher senior who did this was very much she made this happen. I was not the insigator. I had some good quality to the stage but I was kind of immature and scared. She however was used to transcending boundaries. Okay so that is obviously just the beginning of that speech. This is just a sample
“of the bonus episode that we made for our life partners. If you want to hear the whole thing”
and support our show, go to this americanlife.org/lifepartners that unlock the full bonus episode and then you get dozens more. You can also sign up right in the Apple Podcast app.
