Latest / Normally / Normally Podcast: Commencement Chaos, Free Speech Fights & the AI Debate on Campus

Transcript

Normally Podcast: Commencement Chaos, Free Speech Fights & the AI Debate on Campus · Normally

0:06
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, we are back on normally the show with
0:09
Speaker 1: normal it takes for when the news gets weird.
0:11
Speaker 2: I am Mary cassin Ham, I'm Carol Markowitz. You know
0:14
Speaker 2: it's college commencement season because that's sort of a thing
0:18
Speaker 2: right now again.
0:19
Speaker 1: Well, and it's a newly right because the college students
0:25
Speaker 1: can't often handle having speakers come in that they haven't
0:31
Speaker 1: completely mind melded with in every single opinion they have
0:35
Speaker 1: on every single occasion. So the school body will rise up,
0:40
Speaker 1: at least in small loud numbers, not usually the majority,
0:43
Speaker 1: and insist that someone should not be the speaker. That
0:48
Speaker 1: has happened. Surprisingly, ooh shocker at NYU yes here.
0:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they seem to be ground zero for that
0:56
Speaker 2: kind of bad idea. But let me ask you before
0:58
Speaker 2: we get into this, who is your commenced and speaker?
1:01
Speaker 1: You know what, I didn't actually go to my big
1:03
Speaker 1: commencement speech, and it was a It was a prominent
1:07
Speaker 1: lawyer from Georgia, and now I can't remember exactly who.
1:10
Speaker 1: Hold on one second, I'll find it for you.
1:13
Speaker 2: Well yeah, okay, hol on.
1:15
Speaker 1: I was not blown away. And if that gives you
1:18
Speaker 1: a clue.
1:19
Speaker 2: Right, well, my whole thing is I have no idea
1:22
Speaker 2: who my commencement speaker was in the same boat. Oh
1:25
Speaker 2: my gosh, I just looked it up and it was
1:27
Speaker 2: Julian Bond.
1:29
Speaker 1: Oh great, so so mine was Larry Thompson I believe,
1:38
Speaker 1: I'm not positive.
1:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean sill Miller.
1:42
Speaker 1: I think was like the year after I graduated.
1:46
Speaker 2: Julian Bond had nothing to I went to Northeastern University
1:49
Speaker 2: and I cannot find anything that had anything to do
1:52
Speaker 2: with He had nothing to do with Northeastern or Boston
1:55
Speaker 2: or anything. He was just a you know, activist, and
2:00
Speaker 2: I'm looking for any connection whatsoever or any reason why
2:04
Speaker 2: he should have been the guy. But you know, he
2:07
Speaker 2: was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center,
2:09
Speaker 2: which is really quite the accomplishment, you know, fighting the hate,
2:16
Speaker 2: Mary Catherine, fighting all the hate.
2:18
Speaker 1: Well, like a lot of students get way too in
2:21
Speaker 1: their heads about their commencement speaker, unlike you and I
2:24
Speaker 1: clearly like.
2:28
Speaker 2: Even was that guy?
2:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happened that day at NYU. Jonathan Height was
2:34
Speaker 1: offered the spot, and I must say New York University
2:38
Speaker 1: did not back down in the face of some opposition
2:40
Speaker 1: to him, and he spoke anyway, but it's actually pretty remarkable,
2:46
Speaker 1: as I believe this is in New York magnas as
2:49
Speaker 1: New York Universities. Jonathan Hight checks a number of boxes
2:52
Speaker 1: for an in house commencement speaker. He's a best selling author,
2:55
Speaker 1: public intellectual, high profile profile campus figure, a social psychologist
2:59
Speaker 1: who teaches in this fool of business. He wrote The
3:01
Speaker 1: Coddling of the American Mind and the Anxious Generation, which
3:04
Speaker 1: show up on airport bookshelves and the Obama End of
3:07
Speaker 1: yearlift list. He's kind of like a fixture of centrist
3:13
Speaker 1: ideas that can exist in both ecosystems, and does so.
3:18
Speaker 2: Quite politically, but actually don't.
3:21
Speaker 1: But actually, even though he's been on all the pod
3:24
Speaker 1: Bros And all the liberal podcasts, it's like, oh, he's
3:28
Speaker 1: too right coded for speak.
3:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, the free speech thing is right coded, which you know,
3:34
Speaker 2: I think should alarm Democrats, but for some reason doesn't.
3:39
Speaker 2: The fact that he wrote a book called The Coddling
3:41
Speaker 2: of the American Mind and then with such a controversy
3:44
Speaker 2: about being a commencement speaker, it's sort of delicious.
3:47
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
3:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's he really is so middle of the road,
3:54
Speaker 2: and you know, I bet he's actually a liberal, like,
3:57
Speaker 2: I don't know.
3:57
Speaker 1: What that would be.
3:58
Speaker 2: My political views are right. But because he opposes canceled,
4:04
Speaker 2: canceling people for their speech, it becomes he's a right winger.
4:08
Speaker 1: This is a graduating a graduating senior with a degree
4:12
Speaker 1: in comparative global politics in an op ed in the
4:15
Speaker 1: student newspapers that it feels like Jonathan Height is meant
4:17
Speaker 1: to scold the student body and belittle them. He was
4:22
Speaker 1: also he also called him an anti woke author who
4:24
Speaker 1: has consistently patronized student activists. Well, look, if you feel
4:30
Speaker 1: the need to really go after Jonathan Height and or
4:34
Speaker 1: boycott his speech, some people walked out. As long as
4:37
Speaker 1: you walk out peacefully, that's fine. But like, it's such
4:39
Speaker 1: baby behavior. If that's your if that's your bar, then
4:43
Speaker 1: your mind has been coddled.
4:45
Speaker 2: Right, you're graduating college, Like, enjoy the moment. You're there
4:49
Speaker 2: to throw your cap in the air and be excited
4:52
Speaker 2: for your new future. You're really upset about this guy
4:56
Speaker 2: not having the exact same opinions as you, which he
4:59
Speaker 2: probably does other than let people speak.
5:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, by the way, there are plenty of right leaning
5:05
Speaker 1: students who sit through Nancy Pelosi at Notre Dame.
5:08
Speaker 2: Julian Nunn, Hello me, didn't even know who he was.
5:11
Speaker 1: Jamie Raskin at American University, James Tallarico and all of
5:15
Speaker 1: those are sort of given a pass as look as
5:19
Speaker 1: you should, like you just sit there and you listen
5:20
Speaker 1: to the speech and you have basically good behavior. That's
5:23
Speaker 1: one of the things too, is it's so infantile to
5:26
Speaker 1: be booing somebody who is giving your commencement address. And
5:30
Speaker 1: there was some of that, a little bit of smattering
5:33
Speaker 1: in the crowd. This is like not a new phenomenon.
5:38
Speaker 1: I actually looked up in a certain book from twenty
5:41
Speaker 1: fifteen It's End the Discussion. I have it on my
5:45
Speaker 1: bookshelf that in fact, like this stuff has been going
5:49
Speaker 1: on forever, and in twenty fifteen when we wrote about
5:52
Speaker 1: it Fire which is now the Foundation for Individual Rights
5:56
Speaker 1: and in Expression. In the twenty one years leading up town,
6:00
Speaker 1: there were twenty one incidents of an invited guest not
6:02
Speaker 1: speaking because of protest in the past five and a
6:05
Speaker 1: half years at that time, soy ten to twenty fifteen, yep,
6:09
Speaker 1: there have been thirty nine cancelations and it just has
6:13
Speaker 1: become this continuous problem. People canceled back then, by the way,
6:18
Speaker 1: where Condolieza Rice. You know who would want to hear
6:21
Speaker 1: from her, Christine Lagarde, who's like an international monetary fund
6:27
Speaker 1: of French economists. Like, what's the problem, guys, she can't
6:32
Speaker 1: speak at Smith College, Carol?
6:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know that anybody could speak at
6:36
Speaker 2: Smith College, right, Like, I'm pretty sure Barack Obama would
6:40
Speaker 2: be shouted down at Smith.
6:43
Speaker 1: Most powerful women in the world, boom yeah.
6:46
Speaker 2: On the free speech front, I don't know. This was
6:49
Speaker 2: a few weeks ago in the Free Press, but I'm
6:51
Speaker 2: so impressed with what's going on at Dartmouth. I mean,
6:54
Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't a tenth grader. I'm just
6:56
Speaker 2: totally planting in her ear that she should consider Dartmouth
7:00
Speaker 2: because there they've been so good on free speech. And
7:03
Speaker 2: of course the college president is getting all kinds of
7:05
Speaker 2: attacks for this, but she wants things like ideological diversity
7:09
Speaker 2: and she rails against group thing. It's it's such a
7:11
Speaker 2: good piece in the Free Press. If you haven't read it,
7:13
Speaker 2: I highly recommended. She talks about university presidents losing their mission.
7:18
Speaker 2: Just great. I'm sure I'm going to butcher her name,
7:22
Speaker 2: but it's Sion Baylock is her is the president of Dartmouth,
7:25
Speaker 2: and she's just fantastic and I hope other people follow
7:29
Speaker 2: their lead.
7:29
Speaker 1: We love that University of Chicago has pushed back the
7:33
Speaker 1: past on this as well, and truly, uh, the entire
7:37
Speaker 1: SEC has become a place that is advertised correctly to
7:44
Speaker 1: anyone as a place where you can come and like
7:47
Speaker 1: have what used to be a normal college education. Like
7:51
Speaker 1: you can do some dorm room debates, you can encounter
7:54
Speaker 1: people who might disagree with you or might agree with you.
7:56
Speaker 1: That's what we do here, and there won't be an
7:58
Speaker 1: encampment on your ruining all your stuff unless it's a
8:02
Speaker 1: tailgate Saturday. Yeah.
8:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be good to go back to that.
8:06
Speaker 2: I mean, look, were schools lefty in the nineties. I'm
8:10
Speaker 2: trying to write something about that whole time period right now,
8:13
Speaker 2: But of course they were. You just didn't think it
8:15
Speaker 2: would like destroy your life to argue back with your
8:19
Speaker 2: lefty teachers or your classmates. It was just like you'd
8:23
Speaker 2: be the funky conservative and that would be okay. And
8:26
Speaker 2: now it's like, no, it's not okay. It's not okay
8:28
Speaker 2: to be different or to think different or any of that.
8:31
Speaker 2: You must fall into line, and you know.
8:35
Speaker 1: Well, and when they succeed in canceling, as they did
8:37
Speaker 1: I believe in twenty fourteen, like Michigan State George Will,
8:42
Speaker 1: then it sends the signal that anyone right of center,
8:46
Speaker 1: anyone right even a Washington Post columnist who is like
8:50
Speaker 1: thoroughly about not at the time but now like anti Trump,
8:54
Speaker 1: Trump was not on the scene at the time, if
8:57
Speaker 1: you can successfully cancel him, then no university is going
9:02
Speaker 1: to invite right of center people. And you've gotten the
9:04
Speaker 1: Heckler's veto for all time. And so I appreciate that
9:08
Speaker 1: with Height, who is like again, totally a mainstream, acceptable
9:14
Speaker 1: figure and in fact teaches at the damn School, and
9:19
Speaker 1: like the thing is, he's not. He's middle of the
9:21
Speaker 1: road and acceptable, but also not anadyne. He's an interesting
9:25
Speaker 1: person who has done interesting work. And in fact, I
9:28
Speaker 1: think his message was pretty good. We don't have video
9:31
Speaker 1: of that one yet, but his closing was he did
9:34
Speaker 1: a whole thing about your attention and how everyone's vuying
9:37
Speaker 1: for your attention, and your attention is very valuable to
9:40
Speaker 1: a company like metow which packages it and re sells it.
9:43
Speaker 1: And he says, he quotes from a Mary Oliver quote
9:46
Speaker 1: poem pay Attention, be astonished, tell about it. He says,
9:50
Speaker 1: if you treasure your attention and then use it to
9:52
Speaker 1: do hard things with other people in real life, then
9:55
Speaker 1: and trust me on this as a social psychologist, your
9:58
Speaker 1: life is going to be amazing.
10:00
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
10:00
Speaker 1: And like asking students to do hard things and live
10:04
Speaker 1: real life should not be threatening. In fact, it's really
10:08
Speaker 1: good advice.
10:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like at one point in that did this people
10:12
Speaker 2: walk out? Like what part were they? Like?
10:14
Speaker 1: I've had enough, Like very early I watched the tape
10:17
Speaker 1: and it was like we're out of here in our
10:19
Speaker 1: purfect gowns, and it's like, okay, man I again, as
10:23
Speaker 1: long as you're quiet, it's of course speech that is
10:26
Speaker 1: perfectly allowable. I would say that booing and being a
10:30
Speaker 1: jerk and ruining everyone else's graduation is not advisable, and
10:34
Speaker 1: we do seem to have had like a step down
10:36
Speaker 1: in that. Of course. I believe someone was canceled at
10:40
Speaker 1: Georgetown this year for being too supportive.
10:44
Speaker 2: Of Israel, right right, right right?
10:46
Speaker 1: That that one didn't work out?
10:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, matter of course, of course, Yep, the school should
10:52
Speaker 2: be embarrassed when they cancel somebody honestly right, Like if
10:57
Speaker 2: you can't let somebody speak on your campus, if you
10:59
Speaker 2: can and protect that right, what are you even doing here?
11:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the whole It's supposed to be the whole
11:05
Speaker 1: point of college, and colleges have become the opposite of
11:10
Speaker 1: it unfortunately, and students really miss out, Like when you
11:15
Speaker 1: when you live your life not confronting any other ideas,
11:20
Speaker 1: or when you live your life too scared to admit
11:22
Speaker 1: that you have other ideas, it's very unsatisfying and you're
11:27
Speaker 1: not getting the opportunity to learn that you might be
11:30
Speaker 1: wrong about some things, which should be the point of
11:34
Speaker 1: it all. In fact, Greg Lukyanov, who's the head of
11:37
Speaker 1: Fire that organization, often says that certainty is like the
11:41
Speaker 1: real issue with these kids. They're just like morally certain
11:44
Speaker 1: that everything they believe is correct. A big dose of
11:48
Speaker 1: I could be wrong would be helpful, really would.
11:51
Speaker 2: And the whole thing with like hiding what you really believe,
11:55
Speaker 2: Like it used to be a liberal concept to be
11:58
Speaker 2: yourself no matter what, to stand up for your own opinions,
12:02
Speaker 2: no matter what I mean. I always say, like I
12:04
Speaker 2: learned to be an open conservative by reading the super
12:07
Speaker 2: liberal leftist even teen magazine Sassy, Like every month that
12:11
Speaker 2: magazine would be like, you be who you want to be.
12:14
Speaker 2: You don't care what anybody thinks. I'd be like, yeah,
12:15
Speaker 2: I don't care what anybody thinks. I don't think they
12:18
Speaker 2: meant me. But see'st you.
12:21
Speaker 1: You and I and Kennedy read Sassy and became us
12:25
Speaker 1: and they're like, ew, no, thank you.
12:27
Speaker 2: I mean I think there were others because I I
12:30
Speaker 2: I've heard that people on the mast head were right
12:34
Speaker 2: of center and like came out later because it seemed
12:37
Speaker 2: like the be yourself they were. They were literally telling
12:41
Speaker 2: you that all options applied. And you know it's a
12:45
Speaker 2: few years later you couldn't really do that. Yep.
12:48
Speaker 1: It's it's uh and it's unfortunately getting worse in some places.
12:53
Speaker 1: So thank you to those who do stand up. And
12:55
Speaker 1: I appreciate Height fighting the good fight and going there
12:58
Speaker 1: and giving his perfectly lovely speech to some somewhat colored students.
13:05
Speaker 2: I want to add last point about Height. I saw
13:08
Speaker 2: an NYU student complaining that he wasn't famous enough to
13:12
Speaker 2: be giving the NYU speech. She was like, she was like,
13:15
Speaker 2: we paid for all the school for four years, and
13:18
Speaker 2: like this is who we get like other people get
13:20
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift and they get you know, like she was
13:23
Speaker 2: like naming famous people who had spoken at commencements and
13:25
Speaker 2: she did not feel like he lived up to the hype. Again,
13:29
Speaker 2: when did we ever expect that we would have somebody
13:32
Speaker 2: like super famous come speak to our class like well, and.
13:35
Speaker 1: That necessarily the super famous have more to offer than right.
13:41
Speaker 1: Social psychologists who's been doing very interesting work on the
13:45
Speaker 1: I don't know central conflict of our time, which is
13:47
Speaker 1: how to regulate your mind and social media really really
13:52
Speaker 1: useful information for people who cry and storm out of
13:56
Speaker 1: a commencement speech.
13:57
Speaker 2: That's right, all right, We're going to take short break
14:00
Speaker 2: and be right back with another segment of commencement Mania
14:05
Speaker 2: on Normally.
14:09
Speaker 1: All right, guys, we're back on Normally, a special graduation
14:14
Speaker 1: edition where we're going over some commencement speech highlights and
14:17
Speaker 1: low lights. Eric Schmidt of Google spoke to Arizona University
14:24
Speaker 1: and he was met with some pretty notable booze whenever
14:30
Speaker 1: he got into the conversation about artificial intelligence. So we're
14:35
Speaker 1: gonna play, and we're gonna let this breathe a little bit.
14:37
Speaker 1: Because commencement addresses are meant to be a little longer
14:39
Speaker 1: and more thoughtful. So we're giving give give him a
14:41
Speaker 1: few minutes to talk about this, and you can listen
14:44
Speaker 1: to the students as well, because they feature here.
14:47
Speaker 3: So today we stand on this edge of another technological transformation,
14:53
Speaker 3: one that will be larger, faster, and more consequential than
14:57
Speaker 3: what came before. It will touch every profession, every classroom,
15:03
Speaker 3: every hospital, every laboratory, every person, and every relationship you have.
15:09
Speaker 3: I know what many of you are feeling about that
15:12
Speaker 3: I can hear you. There is a fear. There is
15:20
Speaker 3: a fear in your generation that the future has already
15:26
Speaker 3: been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs
15:30
Speaker 3: are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured,
15:35
Speaker 3: and that you are inheriting a mess that you did
15:38
Speaker 3: not create. And I understand that fear. It's rational, and
15:45
Speaker 3: it's amplified every day by social media platforms with algorithm
15:50
Speaker 3: that have learned with great precision that fear earns clicks
15:55
Speaker 3: and that anxiety drives engagement. But I want to say
16:00
Speaker 3: something to you this evening, as clearly as I can
16:03
Speaker 3: to speak of the future as though it has already
16:07
Speaker 3: been decided. Is to surrender the one thing that actually matters.
16:11
Speaker 3: You are surrendering your agency. The future does not simply arrive.
16:18
Speaker 3: It gets built in laboratories, in dormitories, in startups, in classrooms,
16:25
Speaker 3: in legislators, and the people building it will be you
16:29
Speaker 3: and people like you. The question is not whether AI
16:33
Speaker 3: will shape the world.
16:34
Speaker 1: It will.
16:35
Speaker 3: The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.
16:40
Speaker 2: We do not know.
16:42
Speaker 3: We do not know the precise contours of what this
16:47
Speaker 3: transformation will look like. But what we do know is
16:51
Speaker 3: it will require each of us to adapt in ways
16:54
Speaker 3: that we cannot yet anticipate. My hope is that you
16:59
Speaker 3: will choose to engage anyway that you choose to be
17:02
Speaker 3: in the room where these decisions take place and to
17:06
Speaker 3: have a voice in how they're made. When you are
17:09
Speaker 3: in that room, bring something with you, Bring the values
17:14
Speaker 3: that make us human in the first place. The technology
17:18
Speaker 3: on its own is just a tool. It will optimize
17:22
Speaker 3: for what we tell it to optimize for. But somebody
17:26
Speaker 3: has to decide, and in your lifetime that somebody is
17:31
Speaker 3: going to be you.
17:32
Speaker 1: It's a tough room.
17:34
Speaker 2: I mean, what did he say that was really wild
17:36
Speaker 2: and controversial there. I'm not a huge fan of Google.
17:40
Speaker 2: I could definitely oppose something that you know, a higher
17:43
Speaker 2: up at Google believes, but nothing there sounded crazy at all.
17:48
Speaker 1: Well, I think there's room to be like, Okay, you,
17:52
Speaker 1: mister tech guy, who's made is this fortune off of
17:57
Speaker 1: commodifying all of this right to tell us right what
18:02
Speaker 1: we're supposed to believe here. Okay, so there should be
18:04
Speaker 1: some there could be some issues with hypocrisy here, but
18:07
Speaker 1: aims is just bad behavior, really impolite, not cool to
18:11
Speaker 1: do in this setting too. I'd like to erase the
18:14
Speaker 1: booze of anyone who uses AI for their schoolwork, and
18:18
Speaker 1: that's all of them, so there's zero booze. So just
18:23
Speaker 1: there's some hypocrisy on that side as well. But I
18:27
Speaker 1: went in this into this sort of like you being
18:30
Speaker 1: prepared to not love what he's saying, and then when
18:33
Speaker 1: he gets to the part about agency and says the
18:36
Speaker 1: future gets built, I thought, yes, that's what people need
18:41
Speaker 1: to hear. And it doesn't make all your problems disappear,
18:45
Speaker 1: But to in the face of AI, or in the
18:47
Speaker 1: face of the economy or any challenge that you have
18:50
Speaker 1: to simply say, oh, well, that's not what college is
18:54
Speaker 1: supposed to prepare you to do. It. I thought the
18:56
Speaker 1: message was quite.
18:57
Speaker 2: Good, right, is it just an overall anti AI thing?
19:02
Speaker 2: Like did you the recent Reese Witherspoon got in trouble
19:05
Speaker 2: because she told women that they should learn how to
19:08
Speaker 2: use AI. Why is that bad? I don't understand. I
19:12
Speaker 2: get the we're all concerned AI is coming for our jobs,
19:15
Speaker 2: like AI podcasters like the first thing they rolled out,
19:19
Speaker 2: they were like, they're like, here's a job that's really
19:21
Speaker 2: easy for us to.
19:22
Speaker 1: Do well, and then writing is second.
19:26
Speaker 2: Right, So like right, I mean, we're just as screwed
19:29
Speaker 2: as anyone.
19:30
Speaker 1: We have our own concerns. But I do think it
19:32
Speaker 1: is it is a silly not to engage a little bit.
19:37
Speaker 1: I didn't tell my students at Hillsdale when I spoke
19:41
Speaker 1: there to make themselves a code of ethics for using AI,
19:45
Speaker 1: because when it's three in the morning and you have
19:47
Speaker 1: a paper to write and you don't feel like doing it,
19:48
Speaker 1: if you don't have something inside you that you've already formulated,
19:52
Speaker 1: these are going to go bad quickly. However, just because
19:55
Speaker 1: it can be used badly doesn't mean that you shouldn't
19:58
Speaker 1: engage with it at all. Because I do think both
20:01
Speaker 1: globally US versus China and in your daily life. It
20:06
Speaker 1: simply will be a part of life. And I would
20:09
Speaker 1: like us to do it well, and I would like
20:11
Speaker 1: America to do it the best, and that protects us
20:15
Speaker 1: from a lot of other bad stuff. But I it's
20:17
Speaker 1: just a very immature response to a fairly normal thing.
20:22
Speaker 2: Yeah we have a theme here, Yeah, yeah, that's the theme.
20:25
Speaker 2: A professor on ex Robert Parham, he said that, you know,
20:30
Speaker 2: he wrote about teaching in the age of like Ai basically,
20:33
Speaker 2: and he said he failed for students for the first
20:35
Speaker 2: time ever. Looks sounds like cheating, cheating with AI. But
20:39
Speaker 2: he also gave more a pluses than ever before because
20:43
Speaker 2: a lot of students have figured out a way to
20:45
Speaker 2: like study with AI, use AI to improve the skills
20:49
Speaker 2: they already have. I don't know, I'm I'm I guess
20:53
Speaker 2: I tip optimistic on AI, but I don't understand the
20:58
Speaker 2: boo AI like, yeah, it's coming, it's here, it's happening,
21:02
Speaker 2: Like I was.
21:03
Speaker 1: I was surprised by the Reese Witherspoon reaction because she is, uh,
21:08
Speaker 1: she is just sort of universally loved in general, and
21:13
Speaker 1: I think her her public persona is very friendly and
21:18
Speaker 1: interesting and optimistic and the I do that are telling
21:22
Speaker 1: women to engage with AI would be weird or off.
21:26
Speaker 1: I mean, there are certainly dangers with it that you know.
21:29
Speaker 1: I've spoken before about people wanting to interact with AI
21:33
Speaker 1: versions of dead loved ones like very very That's.
21:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like any of that. There's a relationships
21:39
Speaker 2: on the other end of that, right.
21:40
Speaker 1: But there's also Hey, I'm trying to figure out where's
21:44
Speaker 1: a half day camp within a fifty fifteen minute radius
21:48
Speaker 1: of my house for kids this age? Can you help me?
21:52
Speaker 2: And as a mom, it's amazing.
21:54
Speaker 1: That's nice to have, right, whose job is that taking?
21:57
Speaker 1: Like Google?
21:58
Speaker 2: Going back to letting Eric, let's go back around to
22:03
Speaker 2: the commencement speaker.
22:04
Speaker 1: By the way, I should correct, he is the ex
22:06
Speaker 1: CEO of Google. I'm not sure exactly what his gig
22:08
Speaker 1: is now, but he's the former CEO of Google.
22:11
Speaker 2: All right, We're going to take a short break and
22:13
Speaker 2: be right back with one more commencement speaker segment on Normally.
22:20
Speaker 1: All right, we are back on Normally with a really
22:24
Speaker 1: lovely commencement speech given by Eric Church, a country star
22:27
Speaker 1: in North Carolinian and at you and c this weekend
22:30
Speaker 1: and He did it with guitar in hand, because the
22:32
Speaker 1: thesis of the speech is that you have six strings
22:36
Speaker 1: in your life, which, if tuned correctly, we'll make a
22:40
Speaker 1: beautiful song. He of course ended with a song. I'm
22:43
Speaker 1: going to give you a couple of minutes of the
22:44
Speaker 1: very end of the speech, but it is worth listening
22:46
Speaker 1: to the whole thing. It's about sixteen seventeen minutes long.
22:50
Speaker 1: It's really beautiful, and I think sneakily a little based,
22:54
Speaker 1: But here's.
22:55
Speaker 4: The very end of it, que wonderfully, distinctly. There's a
23:00
Speaker 4: sound only you can make, a voice that has never
23:03
Speaker 4: existed before you and will never exist again, a contribution
23:08
Speaker 4: only you can bring a way of seeing that belongs
23:11
Speaker 4: to only you. The world does not need another cover song.
23:16
Speaker 4: It needs an original. Six strings, six strings of life,
23:29
Speaker 4: and willingness to keep them in tune, six principles, six pillars.
23:33
Speaker 4: When all six are in tune with each other, the
23:35
Speaker 4: cord your life makes is full and resonant and truth.
23:40
Speaker 4: All six will drift, not one or two, all six
23:44
Speaker 4: and their own time and their own season. Your faith
23:48
Speaker 4: will go quiet when you need it loud. Your family
23:50
Speaker 4: will get complicated in a way only the people who
23:53
Speaker 4: love you most can complicate things. You will go through
23:57
Speaker 4: hard seasons with your spouse will hollow out, and your
24:01
Speaker 4: resilience will wear thin. Your community will start to feel
24:04
Speaker 4: like an obligation, and your world will try to sand
24:08
Speaker 4: down the edges of exactly who you are. This is
24:11
Speaker 4: not failure, this is not weakness. It's the inevitable universal
24:16
Speaker 4: experience of living in an imperfect world that doesn't stop
24:20
Speaker 4: to let us tune up, and the difference between a
24:23
Speaker 4: life that sounds like music and a life that sounds
24:26
Speaker 4: like noise. It's whether you stop and listen, whether you're
24:31
Speaker 4: honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune,
24:34
Speaker 4: and humble enough to make the adjustment instead of just
24:37
Speaker 4: turning up the volume and hoping nobody notices. Because you
24:41
Speaker 4: will notice. The part of you that knows what the
24:44
Speaker 4: chord should sound like will always notice. It will not
24:49
Speaker 4: let you go. Life won't be right until it is tuned.
24:53
Speaker 4: Trust what your heart hears and is telling you about
24:56
Speaker 4: your song. So, graduates, now, I encourage you to take
25:01
Speaker 4: your six strings, make it something worth hearing, and play
25:05
Speaker 4: your song as I leave you with.
25:07
Speaker 1: Mine, crying, guy, I killed you.
25:17
Speaker 2: In my arm.
25:20
Speaker 4: Your memory comes over me like the DNA, like a
25:26
Speaker 4: phone call from my faver saying honey, I miss you,
25:32
Speaker 4: lie praezer, you kind of like.
25:37
Speaker 1: It sound of this siren song. Oh chall a line
25:45
Speaker 1: to keep calling me? Who I call on me home
25:53
Speaker 1: on home? Yeah, so good, so good. And by the way,
25:59
Speaker 1: I says sneakily, because the six strings, I should really
26:02
Speaker 1: say normy, but normy is kind of based. The six
26:05
Speaker 1: strings are number one, the most fundamental faith, two family.
26:11
Speaker 1: Three picking your partner or spouse as a compliment to
26:15
Speaker 1: you for the idea of ambition and resilience on one string,
26:21
Speaker 1: where he says, shoot for things that are too high
26:24
Speaker 1: and when you fail, become better like great stuff. And
26:28
Speaker 1: the last one is just like you have something original
26:31
Speaker 1: to offer the world, don't let everybody's criticism bring you down,
26:35
Speaker 1: or maybe don't be so orthodox in all of your views.
26:40
Speaker 1: And I think it's also a great clinic in public
26:43
Speaker 1: speaking to have a mechanism that's so simple and beautiful
26:46
Speaker 1: like that, really really well done. I think it will
26:48
Speaker 1: go probably in a pantheon of exceptional commencement addresses.
26:53
Speaker 2: It really was perfect. And you know what I really
26:56
Speaker 2: liked about it was the reaction of the students. You
26:58
Speaker 2: know you mentioned those kid crying. They had their arms
27:02
Speaker 2: around each other. They were like rocking together. And my
27:05
Speaker 2: overwhelming thought was I want my kids to go to
27:08
Speaker 2: school like this, where this is the reaction and not
27:11
Speaker 2: like a You know, when you're hearing advice, especially as
27:17
Speaker 2: a twenty early twenty something after graduating college, you could
27:21
Speaker 2: be definitely a little cynical, a little cool, not enjoying
27:26
Speaker 2: the moment. These kids were super into it, and I
27:28
Speaker 2: was like, I want my kids to be around kids
27:30
Speaker 2: like this.
27:31
Speaker 1: Well, and as you were watching it, it illustrated the
27:34
Speaker 1: strength of these simple and like traditional ideas to evoke
27:40
Speaker 1: this and then also just a simple guitar to do
27:42
Speaker 1: the same. I was nearly in tears and homesick, even
27:46
Speaker 1: though I, by the way, have an abiding dislike of
27:48
Speaker 1: U and C as a Durham towny, but the idea
27:53
Speaker 1: of Carolina and watching everybody get emotional was really nice.
27:58
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you, mister Church, well done, well done.
28:02
Speaker 1: What about you, Carol? If you were giving convincement addresses.
28:06
Speaker 2: You know, the best advice really is that simple. It's
28:11
Speaker 2: get married, have a family, be yourself, pursue your faith
28:16
Speaker 2: like those are the bedrocks of what make a person
28:20
Speaker 2: have a happy life. And when we move away from
28:23
Speaker 2: those things, I think that's where you get into trouble.
28:26
Speaker 2: When you're told you could do anything, you could be anything,
28:29
Speaker 2: you could you know you have this whole wide world,
28:32
Speaker 2: and you don't need to stick with the things that
28:34
Speaker 2: have always worked. I think that's where the problems begin.
28:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am one of those. It is sort of
28:40
Speaker 1: anodyne to say work hard and be nice, but in fact,
28:44
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who look granted, there
28:46
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who get ahead being jerks
28:48
Speaker 1: and just extracting things from people. But I have found
28:52
Speaker 1: in my career that being kind to people when you
28:55
Speaker 1: don't need anything can lead to great opportunities in the future.
29:00
Speaker 1: I also always tell people do not turn your nose
29:04
Speaker 1: up at work in your early years. You want to
29:07
Speaker 1: be respected, but you're new in this game, and if
29:10
Speaker 1: someone gives you a job that's outside your technical purview
29:14
Speaker 1: in your gig, you say I would love to do
29:18
Speaker 1: that and do it well, and that will earn you
29:21
Speaker 1: so much cred. One of my first column is Gig
29:24
Speaker 1: in DC came because I was doing a job that
29:27
Speaker 1: was kind of grunt work but required going to a
29:29
Speaker 1: meeting that was very long and covering it once a
29:32
Speaker 1: week and then writing up the notes. And because the
29:34
Speaker 1: notes were kind of funny, someone was like, she seems
29:36
Speaker 1: like she could write a column.
29:37
Speaker 2: And amazing Tata.
29:40
Speaker 1: But yes, I think you're right, Carol, the sticking to
29:42
Speaker 1: the deeper things than your career. Yeah, because as you
29:47
Speaker 1: and I note all the time, and as Dana Prino,
29:52
Speaker 1: one of the themes of her new novel Purple State,
29:55
Speaker 1: is that choosing to be loved is not a career limitation.
29:58
Speaker 1: And I think that you and I I have lived
30:00
Speaker 1: that story as well. That building a family does not
30:03
Speaker 1: need to say, you know, cut you off in your path.
30:07
Speaker 1: It's just you're just diverting to a slightly different path
30:09
Speaker 1: and you get different opportunities there that are really beautiful.
30:12
Speaker 2: It'll be a better path, I would say, and it
30:15
Speaker 2: could lead to a lot more opportunity. I always say,
30:17
Speaker 2: my career took off after I had kids. That's just
30:20
Speaker 2: a reality.
30:22
Speaker 1: Well, someday, I'm sure we'll be called upon to give
30:24
Speaker 1: our wisdom and then maybe we'll get canceled.
30:25
Speaker 2: Too, right, Maybe the AI versions of us.
30:30
Speaker 1: Well, let her get booned then.
30:32
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on normally. Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays,
30:36
Speaker 2: and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcast. It's
30:38
Speaker 2: get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
30:42
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally