Ira (Reluctantly) Gives a Graduation Speech

Ira always hated commencement speeches. Then he felt like he had to give this one. thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes-bonus

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ira Glass?

  Hey, it's Ira Glass. Here's a free sample of the newest bonus episode that we made for our This American Life partners. It starts this way.

• 0:11Ira Glass?

  Hey, everybody. Ira here. I went to a high school graduation last year around this time. And can I say, ChatGPT 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 what 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, you know, just sound the same.

• 0:56Ira Glass?

  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. 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

• 1:36Ira Glass?

  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.

• 2:01Ira Glass?

  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 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 Dateline.

• 2:44Ira Glass?

  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 an 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 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 that I remember I was not sure I should include in the speech, but I did.

• 3:29Ira Glass?

  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. OK, here's the speech.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Graduate parents, faculty, guests, President Unger. 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, cloying 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.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  You guys have been in school your entire lives and you have completed something difficult that took persistence and willfulness. Probably you questioned yourselves again and again and now you're off to face the world and do everything you have been dreaming. What can words add to that except delay the moment you get your diploma?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  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 worked closely with at NPR 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.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Wish 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 Goucher is my grandma Frida, who's my dad's mom. Frida Freeland, Goucher class of 31. A very defiantly proud Goucher grad. Are there members of Phi Beta Kappa here? Can I hear Phi Beta Kappa?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  You are my grandma's sister in that organization. I'm wearing her Phi Beta Kappa key. Grandma Frida wore 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 makes 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 loved her enough that although I oppose the form of graduation speech, I am 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 at all.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  And this week, my wife and some friends insisted that you graduates would 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-girls school. The Goucher senior who did this was very much-- she made this happen. I was not the instigator. I had some good qualities at that age, but I was kind of immature and scared.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  She, however, was used to transcending boundaries.

• 7:47Ira Glass?

  OK, 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 thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. That'll unlock the full bonus episode, and then you get dozens more. You can also sign up right in the Apple Podcast app.