Ira (Reluctantly) Gives a Graduation Speech

Ira Glass· Host0:00

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. Hey, everybody. Ira here. I went to a high school, uh, graduation last year around this time, and, [laughs] 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 been 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. 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 [laughs] that you can kinda predict how it's gonna 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