← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Normally Podcast: Commencement Chaos, Free Speech Fights & the AI Debate on Campus
00:30:47
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Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of ST bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's Public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures.
- [02:30]
D
Hey guys, we are back on Normally the show with normalish takes for when the news gets I'm Mary Kathryn Hume.
- [02:35]
E
I'm Carol Markowitz. You know it's college commencement season because that's sort of a thing right now again.
- [02:43]
D
Well, and it's frequently right because the college students can't often handle having speakers come in that they haven't completely mind melded with in every single opinion they have on every single occasion. So the school body will rise up, at least in small loud numbers, not usually the majority, and insist that someone should not be the speaker. That has happened, surprisingly. Ooh, shocker. At NYU this year.
- [03:16]
E
Yeah, well, they seem to be ground zero for that kind of bad idea. But let me ask you before we get into this, who was your commencement speaker?
- [03:25]
D
You know what, I didn't actually go to my big commencement speech and it was a, it was a prominent lawyer from Georgia and now I can't remember exactly who. Hold on one second, I'll find it for you.
- [03:36]
E
Well, yeah, okay, hold on.
- [03:39]
D
I was not blown away if that gives you a clue.
- [03:42]
E
Right. Well, my whole thing is I have no idea who my commencement speaker was.
- [03:47]
D
Well, okay, same boat.
- [03:48]
E
Oh my gosh. I just looked it up and it was Julian Bond. Oh great.
- [03:56]
D
So mine was Larry Thompson, I believe. I'm not positive. Yeah, I mean Zell Miller I think was like the year after I graduated,
- [04:09]
E
Julian Bond had nothing to. I went to Northeastern University and I cannot find anything that had anything to do with. He had nothing to do with Northeastern or Boston or anything. He was just a, you know, activist. And I, I'm looking for any connection whatsoever or any reason why he should have been the guy. But you know, he was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law center, which is really quite, quite the accomplishment. Fighting, you know, fighting the hate, Mary Katherine, fighting all the hate.
- [04:41]
D
Well, like a lot of students get way too in their heads about their commencement speaker, unlike you and I clearly
- [04:49]
E
like who even was that guy.
- [04:53]
D
Yeah. What happened that day at nyu? Jonathan Haidt was offered the spot and I must say New York University did not back down in the face of some opposition to him and he spoke anyway. But it's actually pretty remarkable as, as I believe this is in New York Mag was as New York University's Jonathan Haidt checks a number of boxes for an in house commencement speaker. He's a bestselling author, public intellectual, high profile, profile campus figure, a social psych psychologist who teaches in the school of Business. He wrote the Coddling of the American Mind and the Anxious Generation which show up on airport bookshelves and the Obama end of year list. He's Kind of like a fixture of centrist.
- [05:35]
E
Yeah.
- [05:36]
D
Ideas that can exist in both ecosystems and does so quite prolifically. But.
- [05:44]
E
But actually don't.
- [05:45]
D
But. But actually even though he's been on all the pod Bros and all the liberal podcasts, it's like, oh, he's too right coded. Too right coded.
- [05:55]
E
Yeah. The free speech thing is right coded. Which you know, I think should alarm Democrats but for some reason doesn't. The fact that he wrote a book called the Coddling of the American Mind and then with such a controversy about being a commencement speaker is sort of delicious.
- [06:11]
D
It's amazing. Yeah, it's.
- [06:13]
E
He really is so middle of the road. And I bet he's actually a liberal. I don't know what he's.
- [06:21]
D
That would be my guess.
- [06:22]
E
Political views are right. But because he opposes canceling people for their speech, it becomes he's a right winger.
- [06:31]
D
This is a graduating senior with a degree in comparative global politics. In an op ed in the student newspaper said it feels like Jonathan Haidt is meant to scold the student body and belittle them. He was also. He also called him an anti woke author who has consistently patronized student activists. Well, look, if you, if you feel the need to really go after Jonathan Haidt and or boycott his speech, some people walked out. As long as you walk out peacefully, that's fine. But like it's such baby behavior. If that's your. If that's your bar, then your mind has been coddled. Right.
- [07:09]
E
You're graduating college. Like enjoy the moment. You're there to throw your cap in the air and be excited for your new future. You're really upset about this guy not having the exact same opinions as you, which he probably does. Other than let people speak.
- [07:26]
D
Yeah. By the way, there are plenty of right leaning students who sit through. Nancy Pelosi at Notre Dame.
- [07:32]
E
Julian Bond. Hello me. Didn't even know who he was.
- [07:35]
D
Jamie Raskin at American University. James Talarico. And all of those are sort of given a pass as look as you should. Like you just sit there and you listen to the speech and you have basically good behavior. That's one of the things too is it's so infantile to be booing somebody who is giving your commencement address. And there was some of that a little bit of smattering in the crowd. This is like not a new phenomenon. I actually looked up in a certain book from 2015.
- [08:06]
E
It's end of discussion. I have it on my bookshelf. Yep.
- [08:10]
D
That in fact like this stuff has been going on forever. And in 2015, when we wrote about it, fire, which is now the foundation for individual rights and in expression. In the 21 years leading up to 2009, there were 21 incidents of an invited guest not speaking because of protest in the past five and a half years at that time. So 2010 to 2015.
- [08:32]
E
Yep.
- [08:33]
D
There have been 39 cancellations, and it just has become this continuous problem. People canceled back then, by the way, were Condoleezza Rice. You know, who would want to hear from her, right? Christine Lagarde, who's like, an International Monetary Fund French economist. Like, what's the problem, guys? She can't speak at Smith College. Carol.
- [08:57]
E
Yep, yep. I don't know that anybody could speak at Smith College.
- [09:01]
D
Right.
- [09:02]
E
Like, I'm pretty sure Barack Obama would be shouted down at Smith, one of
- [09:06]
D
the most powerful women in the world.
- [09:08]
F
Boo.
- [09:09]
E
Yeah. On the free speech front, I don't know. This was a few weeks ago in the Free Press, but I'm so impressed with what's going on at Dartmouth. I mean, I don't know. I have a 10th grader. I'm just totally planting in her ear that she should consider Dartmouth because they've been so good on free speech. And of course, the college president is getting all kinds of attacks for this, but she wants things like ideological diversity, and she rails against groupthink. It's such a good piece in the Free Press. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. She talks about university presidents losing their mission. Just great. I'm sure I'm gonna butcher her name, but it's. Sian Baylock is her. Is the president of Dartmouth, and she's just fantastic. And I hope other people follow their lead.
- [09:53]
D
We love that University of Chicago has pushed back podcast on this as well. And truly, the entire SEC has become. Has become a place that. That is advertised correctly to anyone as a place where you can come and, like, have what used to be a normal college education. Like, you can do some dorm room debates. You can encounter people who might disagree with you or might agree with you. That's what we do here. And there won't be an encampment on your quad ruining all your stuff. Unless it's a tailgate Saturday.
- [10:27]
E
Yeah, yeah, that would be good to go back to that. I mean, look, were schools Lefty in the 90s? I'm trying to write something about that whole time period right now, but of course they were. You just didn't think it would, like, destroy your life to argue back with your lefty teachers or. Or Your classmates. It was just like, you'd be the funky conservative and that would be okay. And now it's like, no, it's not okay. It's not okay to be different or to think different or any of that. You must fall into line and you know, well.
- [10:58]
D
And when they, when they succeed in canceling as they did, I believe in 2014 at like Michigan State, George Will, then it sends the signal that anyone right of center, anyone right. Even a Washington Post columnist who is like, thoroughly not at the time, but now, like, anti Trump. Trump was not on the scene at the time. If you can successfully cancel him, then no university is going to invite right of center people and you've gotten the heckler's veto for all time. And so I appreciate that with Haidt, who is like, again, totally a mainstream acceptable figure and in fact teaches at the damn school. And like, the thing is, he's not. He's middle of the road and acceptable, but also not anodyne. He's an interesting person who has done interesting work and in fact, I think his message was pretty good. We don't have video of that one one yet, but his closing was, he did a whole thing about your attention and how everyone's vying for your attention. And your attention is very valuable to a company like Meta, which packages it and resells it. And he says, he quotes from a Mary Oliver quote poem, pay attention, be astonished, tell about it. He says, if you treasure your attention and then use it to do hard things with other people in real life, then, and trust me on this, as a social psychologist, your life is going to be amazing. And like, asking students to do hard things and live real life should not be threatening. In fact, it's really good advice.
- [12:33]
E
Yeah. Like, at what point in that did this people walk out? Like, what. What part were they like, I've had enough.
- [12:39]
D
Very early. I watched the tape and it was like, we're out of here in our purple gowns. It's like, okay, man, I again, as long as you're quiet. It's of course, speech that is perfectly allowable. I would say that booing and being a jerk and ruining everyone else's graduation is not advisable. And we do seem to have had like a step down in that. Of course. I believe someone was canceled at Georgetown this year for being too supportive of Israel.
- [13:08]
E
Of course. Right, right, right.
- [13:09]
D
That happened. That one didn't work out.
- [13:11]
E
Yeah. Matter, of course. Of course.
- [13:14]
D
Yep.
- [13:14]
E
These schools should be embarrassed when they cancel somebody, honestly. Right. Like, if you can't let somebody speak on your campus if you can't protect that right, what are you even doing here?
- [13:26]
D
Yeah, that's the whole. It's supposed to be the whole point of college. And colleges have become the opposite of it, unfortunately. And students really miss out. Like, when you live your life not confronting any other ideas, or when you live your life too scared to admit that you have other ideas, it's very unsatisfying. You're not getting the opportunity to learn that you might be wrong about some things, which should be the point of it all. In fact, Greg Lukianoff, who's the head of Fire that organization, often says that certainty is, like, the real issue with these kids. They're just, like, morally certain that everything they currently believe is correct. And a big dose of I could be wrong would be helpful.
- [14:14]
E
Really would. And the whole thing with, like, hiding what you really believe, like, it used to be a liberal concept to be yourself no matter what, to stand up for your own opinions no matter what. I mean, I always say, like, I learned to be an open conservative by reading the super liberal leftist, even teen magazine Sassy. Like, every month, that magazine would be like, you be who you want to be. You don't care what anybody thinks. I'd be like, yeah, I don't care what anybody thinks. I don't think they meant me. But see, that's the fact.
- [14:44]
D
You. You and I and Kennedy read Sassy and became us. And they're like, ew, no, thank you. We didn't mean like that.
- [14:52]
E
I think there were others because I've heard that people on the masthead were right of center and, like, came out later because it seemed like the be yourself. They were literally telling you that all options applied. And, you know, just a few years later, you couldn't really do that. Nope.
- [15:12]
D
And it's unfortunately getting worse in some places. So thank you to those who do stand up. And I appreciate Height fighting the good fight and going there and giving his perfectly lovely speech to some somewhat college
- [15:28]
E
students, I want to add last point about height. I saw an NYU student complaining that he wasn't famous enough to be giving the NYU speech. And she was like. She was like, we paid for all this school for four years. And like, this is. We get, like, other people get Taylor Swift and they get, you know, like, she was like, naming famous people who had spoken at commencements. And she did not feel like he lived up to the hype. Again. When did we ever expect that we would have somebody, like, super famous come speak to our class?
- [15:57]
D
Like, well, and that necessarily the super famous have more to offer than a social psychologist who's been doing very interesting work on the, I don't know, central conflict of our time, which is how to regulate your mind and social media. Really, really useful information for people who cry and storm out of a commencement speech.
- [16:21]
E
That's right. All right, we're going to take a short break and be right back with another segment of commencement mania on normally.
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- [17:02]
C
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com Disclosures
- [18:03]
B
hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay, the Audible and Iheart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary, Massive Sci Fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
- [18:27]
H
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo. Is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too.
- [18:59]
B
Listen to Irsay the Audible and I Heart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:09]
I
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- [19:39]
D
All right, guys, we are back on normally a special graduation edition where we're going over some commencement speech highlights and lowlights. Eric Schmidt of Google spoke to Arizona University and he was met with some pretty notable boos whenever he got into the conversation about artificial intelligence. So we're going to play and we're going to let this breathe a little bit because commencement addresses are meant to be a little longer and more thoughtful. So we're give him a few minutes to talk about this and you can listen to the students as well because they feature here.
- [20:16]
F
So today we stand on this edge of another technological transformation, one that will be larger, faster and more consequential than what came before. It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have. I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you. There is a fear. There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create. And I understand that fear. It's rational. And it's amplified every day by social media platforms with algorithm that have learned with great precision that fear earns clicks and that anxiety drives engagement. But I want to say something to you this evening as clearly as I can, to speak of the future, as though it has already been decided, is to surrender the one thing that actually matters. You are surrendering your agency. The future does not simply arrive. It gets built. In laboratories, in dormitories, in startups, in classrooms, in legislators. And the people building it will be you and people like you. The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence. We do not know. We do not know the precise contours of what this transformation will look like. But what we do know is it will require each of us to adapt in ways that we cannot yet anticipate. My hope is that you will choose to engage anyway, that you'll choose to be in the room where these decisions take place and to have a voice in how they're made. When you are in that room, bring something with you. Bring the values that make us human in the first place. The technology on its own is just a tool. It will optimize for what we tell it to optimize for. But somebody has to decide, and in your lifetime, that somebody is going to be you.
- [23:02]
D
It's a tough room.
- [23:03]
E
I mean, what did he say? That was really wild and controversial there. I'm not a huge fan of Google. I could definitely oppose something that, you know, a higher up at Google believes, but nothing there sounded crazy at all.
- [23:18]
D
Well, I, I think there's room to be like, okay, you, Mr. Tech guy who's made his. This fortune off of commodifying all of this. Right. You're gonna tell us, right, what we're supposed to believe here. Okay. So there should be some, there could be some issues with hypocrisy here, but a, this is just bad behavior, really impolite, not cool to do in this setting. Two, I'd like to erase the booze of anyone who uses AI for their schoolwork. Right.
- [23:48]
E
And that's all of them.
- [23:49]
D
So there'd be. There'd be zero boos. So just. There's some hypocrisy on that side as well. But I went into this sort of like you being prepared to not love what he's saying.
- [24:01]
E
Yeah.
- [24:02]
D
And then when he gets to the part about agency and says, the future gets built, I thought, yes, that's what people need to hear. And it doesn't make all your problems disappear. But to, in the face of AI or in the face of the economy or any challenge that you have to simply say, oh, well, that's not what college is supposed to prepare you to do. And I thought the message was quite Good, right?
- [24:28]
E
Is it just an overall anti AI thing? Like, did you. The recent Reese Witherspoon got in trouble because she told women that they should learn how to use AI. Why is that bad? I don't understand. I get the. We're all concerned AI is coming for our jobs. Like, AI podcasters were like the first thing they rolled out. They were like, they're like, here's a job that's really easy for us to do
- [24:54]
A
well.
- [24:54]
D
And then writing is second.
- [24:55]
B
Right.
- [24:56]
D
So, like. Right.
- [24:57]
E
I mean, we're just as screwed as anyone.
- [25:00]
D
We have our own concerns. But I do think it is. It is a silly not to engage a little bit. I did tell my students at Hillsdale when I spoke there to make themselves a code of ethics for using AI, because when it's three in the morning and you have a paper to write and you don't feel like doing it, if you don't have something inside you that you've already formulated, things are going to go bad quickly. However, just because it can be used badly doesn't mean that you shouldn't engage with it at all. Because I do think both globally, US versus China and in your daily life, it simply will be a part of life. And I would like us to do it well and I would like America to do it the best. And that protects us from a lot of other bad stuff. But I. It's just a very immature response to a fairly normal thing. Yeah, we have a theme here.
- [25:53]
E
Yeah, yeah, that's the theme. A professor on X, Robert Parham, he said that, you know, he wrote about teaching in the age of like, AI, basically, and he said he failed four students for the first time ever. Look, sounds like cheating with AI. But he also gave more A pluses than ever before because a. A lot of students have figured out a way to like, study with AI, use AI to improve the skills they already have. I don't know. I'm, I'm. I guess I, I tip. Optimistic on AI, but I, I don't understand the Boo AI. Like, yeah, it's coming, it's here, it's happening.
- [26:32]
D
Like, I was, I was surprised by the Reese Witherspoon reaction because she is, she is just sort of universally loved and I think her, her public Persona is very friendly and interesting and optimistic. And the, the idea that moderate. Yeah, telling women to engage with AI would be weird or off. I mean, there are certainly dangers with it that. You know, I've spoken before about people wanting to interact with AI versions of dead loved ones.
- [27:04]
E
Like very, very that's yeah, don't like any of that. There's the don't like AI relationships, but
- [27:10]
D
there's also hey, I'm trying to figure out where's a half day camp within a 50 a 15 minute radius of my house for kids this age. Can you help me? And as a mom, it's amazing. That's nice to have, right?
- [27:25]
E
Whose job is that taking like Google? Are we back to like Eric Schmitzel
- [27:30]
F
should be the angry one.
- [27:31]
E
Let's go back around to the commencement speaker.
- [27:34]
D
By the way, I should correct he is the ex CEO of Google. I'm not sure exactly what his gig is now, but he's the former CEO of Google.
- [27:41]
E
All right, we're going to take a short break and be right back with one more commencement speaker segment on Normally
- [27:49]
C
support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com Disclosures
- [28:51]
B
hey everyone, it's Kal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay the Audible and Iheart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project, Hail Mary Massive Sci Fi Adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
- [29:14]
H
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo yo yo. Is this indulgent And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too.
- [29:46]
B
Listen to Irsay, the Audible and I Heart Audio Book Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:55]
I
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- [31:02]
D
All right, we are back on normally with a really lovely commencement speech given by Eric Church, a country star in North Carolinian at UNC this weekend. And he did it with guitar in hand because the thesis of the speech is that you have six strings in your life which if tuned correctly, will make a beautiful song. He, of course, ended with a song. I'm gonna give you the a couple minutes of the very end of the speech, but it is worth listening to the whole thing. It's about 16, 17 minutes long. It's really beautiful and I think sneakily, a little based. But here's the very end of it.
- [31:38]
J
We're made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly. There's a sound only you can make. A voice that has never existed before you and will never exist again. A contribution only you can bring. A way of seeing that belongs to only you. The world does not need another cover song. It needs an original. Six strings. Six strings of life and Willingness to keep them in tune. Six principles, six pillars. When all six are in tune with each other, the cord your life makes is full and resonant. In truth, all six will drift. Not one or two, all six in their own time, in their own season. Your faith will go quiet when you need it loud. Your family will get complicated in a way only the people who love you most can complicate things. You will go through hard seasons with your spouse. Your ambition will hollow out, and your resilience will wear thin. Your community will start to feel like an obligation, and your world will try to sand down the edges of exactly who you are. This is not failure. This is not weakness. It's the inevitable universal experience of living in an imperfect world that doesn't stop to let us tune up. And the difference between a life that sounds like music and a life that sounds like noise is whether you stop and listen, whether you're honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune and humble enough to make the adjustment instead of just turning up the volume and hoping nobody notices. Because you will notice. The part of you that knows what the chords should sound like will always notice. It will not let you go. Life won't be right until it is tuned. Trust what your heart hears and is telling you about. Your song so graduates. Now I encourage you to take your six strings, make it something worth hearing, and play your song. As I leave you with my.
- [33:55]
F
Crying guy, I carry you in my heart.
- [34:02]
B
Your memory comes over me like the
- [34:06]
D
dark and like a phone call from
- [34:09]
B
my baby
- [34:13]
J
Saying, honey, I miss your life.
- [34:15]
B
Crazy.
- [34:18]
F
Yeah, kind of like it.
- [34:20]
J
Sound of this siren song.
- [34:23]
D
Oh, care of you.
- [34:28]
F
Keep calling me home. Call me home.
- [34:37]
E
Yeah.
- [34:37]
D
So good, so good. And by the way, I say sneakily based, because the six strings, I should really say Normie, but Normie is kind of based. The six strings are, number one, the most fundamental faith. Two, family. Three, picking your partner or spouse as a compliment to you. Four, the idea of ambition and resilience on one string where he says, shoot for things that are too high, and when you fail, become better. Like, great stuff. And the last one is just like, you have something original to offer the world. Don't let everybody's criticism bring you down, or maybe don't be so orthodox in all of your views. And I think it's also a great clinic in public speaking to have a mechanism that's so simple and beautiful like that. Really, really well done. I think it will go probably in a pantheon of exceptional commencement addresses.
- [35:35]
E
It really was perfect. And you know what I really liked about it was the reaction of the students you mentioned. There was a kid crying. They had their arms around each. They were like rocking together. And my overwhelming thought was, I want my kids to go to school like this. Where this is the reaction and not like a. You know, when you're hearing advice, especially as a 20, you know, early 20 something after graduating college, you could be definitely a little cynical, a little cool, not enjoying the moment. These kids were super into it. And I was like, I want my kids to be around kids like this.
- [36:13]
D
Well, and it's. As you were watching it, it illustrated the strength of these simple and, like, traditional ideas to evoke this and then also just a simple guitar to do the same. I was nearly in tears and homesick, even though I, by the way, have an abiding dislike of UNC as a Durham townie. So. But the idea of Carolina and watching everybody get emotional was really nice. Um, so I appreciate you, Mr. Church. Well done. Well done. What about you, Carol? If you were giving commencement addresses, you
- [36:49]
E
know, the best advice really is that simple. It's get married, have a family, be yourself, pursue your faith. Like those are the bedrocks of what make a person have a happy life. And when we move away from those things, I think that's where you get into trouble.
- [37:08]
B
Where you're.
- [37:08]
E
Where you're. When you're told you could do anything, you could be anything, you could. You know, you have this whole wide world and you don't need to stick with the things that have always worked. I think that's where the problems begin.
- [37:19]
D
Yeah, I. I am one of those. It is sort of anodyne to say, work hard and be nice, but in fact, there are a lot of people who. Look, granted, there are a lot of people who get ahead being jerks and just extracting things from people. But I have found in my career that being kind to people when you don't need anything can lead to great opportunities in the future. I also always tell people, do not turn your nose up at work in your early years. You want to be respected, but you're new in this game, and if someone gives you a job that's outside your technical purview, sure, in your gig, you say, I would love to do that and do it well, and that will earn you so much cred. One of my. My first columnist gig in D.C. came because I was a job that was kind of grunt work, but required going to a meeting that was very long and covering it once a week and then writing up the notes. And because the notes were kind of funny, someone was like, she seems like she could write a column.
- [38:20]
E
Amazing.
- [38:20]
D
Ta da. But yes, I think you're right, Carol. Sticking to the deeper things than your career.
- [38:27]
E
Yeah.
- [38:28]
D
Because as you and I note all the time. And as Dana Perino, one of the themes of her new novel Purple State, is that choosing to be loved is not a career limitation. And I think that you and I have lived that story as well. That building a family does not need to say, you know, cut you off in your path. It's just you're just diverting to a slightly different path and you get different opportunities there that are really beautiful.
- [38:54]
E
It'll be a better path, I would say, and it could lead to a lot more opportunity. I always say my career took off after I had kids. That's just the reality.
- [39:04]
D
Well, someday I'm sure we'll be called upon to give our wisdom and then maybe we'll get canceled too, right?
- [39:08]
E
Or maybe the AI versions of us.
- [39:11]
D
Well, let her get booed then, right?
- [39:14]
E
Thanks for joining us on Normally Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. Get in touch with us@ normallythepodmail.com thanks for listening and when things get weird, act normally
- [39:29]
A
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