886: Blackout

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Hannah Jaffe-Walt, sitting in for Ira Glass. When Sherin Jafari moved to the U.S. as a young adult, there were a lot of promises made to her family back home. We'll be in touch all the time. Call you every week, almost like we're in the same town, which is the kind of thing you say. But Sherin actually pulled this off for the last 20 years. We are a close family. We message several times a day. We send each other reels, like normal stuff. I mean, I don't want to lose those details, those small details of their lives because I am so far away from them. And they really get into the details, this family. Who ate what? How far was the walk? What's the latest with the dental work? On the phone, by text, random thoughts tossed out at any hour. Have you seen this pumpkin dessert? Unsolicited suggestions. I would send them videos of exercises they can do at home. Like you worrying about them getting enough movement. I would love them to. Yeah, I would love. Yes, yes, I have been trying to get my mom to do more yoga and my dad to not sit all day. How's that going? Not great. So just like a constant ongoing conversation with them. Totally. The kind of thing that you would be asking them if you were actually in the same space and close. Then in February, the United States and Israel attacked Iran, where her parents live. And on that very same day, the first day of the war, the Iranian authorities shut the internet down, just put the whole country into an internet blackout, a shockingly effective blackout. The call wouldn't go through. It would just disconnect. I didn't hear anything. It would just disconnect. Did you do it over and over again? Yes, of course. I tried so many times. I wouldn't be able to get through. Calling through cell phone was impossible. It just became useless. The cell phone became useless for us. The only way I was able to communicate with them was them calling on a landline to my cell phone. That was the only way they could reach me. Text message, email, nothing else was working. After that point, no. They called me on the landline. And it's funny, when I think of it, there were so many times when I visit them and I would tell them, who needs a landline? Maybe you guys should get rid of this. In this day and age, who needs a landline? Inside Iran, what was happening was, as soon as the war started, cell phones were only working to call people inside the country. No internet. Communication with the outside world became so difficult, it was like going from breathing regularly out in the open to being underwater and breathing through a straw. Workarounds like VPNs are expensive or janky. Some are flat-out scams. And they're banned. A private satellite service like Starlink? Illegal. And people have been arrested for using it. So the landline, that was the only way Shirin's parents could reach her. But when bombing got too intense in Tehran, they fled the city, leaving behind the landline. And Shirin was left going for days, sometimes weeks, without hearing from them. Were they okay? Were they safe? She'd go on social media, scouring every platform, looking for anyone she knew in Iran who had found some brief internet workaround to ask them if they'd heard from her parents. So sometimes I would stay up at like 3 or 4 a.m. looking for any information that I can get from any relative or friend or somebody who knows my parents that could be online. I would just send messages to everybody, be like, hey, let me know if you are online. Let me know the next time you're connected. Can you give me an update? Just message me as soon as you see this message. I've heard a lot in the last few months during this war about deals and negotiations. I've heard about bombings by the U.S. and Israel and by Iran. Also lots about oil prices and the stock market and the Strait of Hormuz. But I haven't heard much at all from Iranians inside Iran. What are they seeing and thinking and doing and talking about? For the last few weeks, we've been working with two journalists in the United States, Fatima Jamalpour and Roxana Saberi, to collect voice memos from inside Iran. So many people sent messages, even though it was difficult and dangerous for them to get these messages out. But people wanted to be heard. I have not heard anything like these from inside Iran. I guess that's part of the point of an internet blackout. So that's what I want to share with you. Today's show, we hear from people inside Iran where war is only part of what's going on for them. That's coming up. Stay with us. It's This American Life. Today's episode, Blackout. Other places have had their internet cut off during a war. Iran is not the first. But this isn't something that's being imposed on the country from the outside. It's being done by the leadership of the country to its own citizens while they're being attacked, in this case by us, the United States and Israel. Listening to these messages that people sent us, you really get the feeling for how total a blackout is. I had the thought listening over and over that every part of what they're saying is not supposed to be heard. Even basic things like what are people doing every day? A blackout is not a censorship that goes line by line. It is wholesale redaction of people's lives and sometimes deaths. Here's what it took for people to get these messages out of Iran. They had to borrow or pay for a VPN or satellite connection, wait for it to actually work. Starlink connections in Iran keep getting shut down. They had to not get caught. Iranians have been imprisoned for speaking with foreign media. It sometimes took days to get these voice memos out of the country to us, often short messages, a minute at a time so the files were small enough to get through. The messages came from a whole range of people from different parts of Iran, different ages, professions, political views, and also different experiences. Every time I got one of these messages, I stopped what I was doing to listen all the way through. So I want to play them for you the way I heard them, one person after another. We have edited them, but tried to leave them at a length where you can really hear what people have to say as they go about their day. I'm going to play the messages in four sections. We could call them acts. So here we go. Act one, both and. In these first few messages, people talk about the dual experience of living both in a war and at the same time in an internet blackout, both dragging on and on, 63 days and counting as I record this now. First voice memo, Negin. She's in her early 40s and lives in Tehran with her boyfriend Amin. After breakfast, I got ready to go to work, got into my car and drove onto the highway. Then suddenly Amin called and said, Negin, they're bombing Tehran. That was pretty much my last call. All internet lines were suddenly cut off. This message and all the messages you're going to hear in the show is being read by an actor. To protect everyone's identity in this show, we've changed people's names and we've asked Iranian and Iranian-American actors outside of Iran to listen to the messages and then record what people said and how they said it onto their phones as voice memos. Some of the original messages were recorded in English. Most were translated from Persian. Once or twice, we've changed a small phrase for clarity. Okay, back to Negin. And then they started hitting the east of Tehran with these strange, terrifying sounds. We were really not prepared for suddenly being in the middle of the highway and hearing sounds like that. Some people, they just parked their cars and they got out and they were staring at the smoke. They didn't know what to do. Two, three people had gone and hidden in the bushes. It was really strange. Then this delivery guy on a motorcycle passed by me. He had this Kurdish accent. My window was down and I was completely terrified. He passed my car and said, Bibi finally came. And I was like, my God, like nobody even knows how this war is going to end. Who cares about Bibi? I finally made it to sort of Agri Street to go towards my mom's place. And I saw that they had closed all the schools and they had called all the families to come pick up their children. Some of the mothers were clearly regular office workers. They were wearing their uniform of mantos and trousers. And they were running on foot towards the schools because the streets were blocked. And everyone at the school was crying, begging for their children to come out faster. And I went a little farther and I got to this girl's high school. And I saw these girls come out and they took off their headscarves and messed up their hair into the air. And they were chanting that, yes, now we are finally becoming free. Then a bomb hit somewhere nearby and the sound was unbelievable. And at once people just poured into the streets. And some people, clearly, they were gathering their things to leave Tehran. Hello, hope you're doing well. First, I apologize because unfortunately I've caught a cold these days. My voice is hoarse. This is Pouya. He's in his mid-30s. He owns a pizza shop in Tehran. But cutting the internet is a disaster. Our phones are constantly ringing. So-and-so, be careful. Such-and-such a place is being bombed. We worry about each other. We wake up, try to have a normal day, which Okay, now I want to play a different group of messages for you. Act 2, the blackout before this one. From an American perspective, we went to war with Iran. That's what's happening there. That's where the story begins. But this war for Iranians landed in the middle of an ongoing story about what's been happening inside the country. And these next two people who sent voice memos, they had a role in that story. There have been regular, large protests against the Iranian regime for years in Iran. And right before the war, massive demonstrations erupted around the entire country. People took to the streets demanding the end of the regime, which has been in power in Iran for almost 50 years. And then Iranian authorities put the country into a full communications blackout. It started on January 8th. Over the next few days, during the blackout, security forces massacred people all across the country. They killed thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of their own citizens. They did this at a moment when there was no way for people to tell anyone, to post photos or videos, or to warn their friends, or call international reporters, or even reach family outside of the country. We still don't know the scale of the killing. Human rights groups have been trying to document as many deaths as they can. In a blackout, you can die without being counted. The two reporters who collected voice memos for today's show, Roxana Saberi and Fatima Jamalpour, also managed to get messages out during the last blackout. Dozens of people inside Iran found ways to send them rare firsthand accounts, images, videos, medical records, that suggested that the IRGC and other security forces shot protesters at close range, targeting their heads and chests, their eyes. The protests and killings in January haunted some of the voice memos we got, even as people try to continue living, going about their normal routines. Amin is in his 20s. He's a professional bodybuilder in Tehran. He joined the protests. One of his friends was shot and killed while protesting, Mehdi Zadparvar. He was a well-known champion bodybuilder. I've been on a special diet since January. I wanted to compete back then, but I didn't. I canceled it out of respect for those who were killed, out of respect for Mr. Zadparvar. After that, competitions were canceled altogether, and gradually I just kept my diet because I saw I had nothing else to do. I usually wake up at 4:45 and I do my cardio from 5 to 6. I get by with seven or eight meals a day, even though prices have skyrocketed and my savings are completely gone, but I am still keeping at it anyway. I generally don't follow the news anymore, neither Iranian nor foreign news. Iran International says one thing and Iran state TV says another, so I simply don't get my mind involved with the news anymore. Unless, for example, Trump tweets. Whatever he posts, we basically assume the opposite because he either does exactly what he says or the exact opposite. Right in front of me is a checkpoint and I am passing through it. The IRGC is completely controlling everything with its own full supervision. Recently, I've been recording videos as motivation for those who think they just need to sit at home during the war. I really want to try to convince them through exercise they can live in a way that at least keeps their vibes high. Anushirvan is a doctor in the north of Iran. He's young, in his mid-20s. He spent January treating hundreds of wounded protesters, some of them shot with military-grade weapons, sometimes at close distance, sometimes in the head. And while he was treating people, plainclothes security agents roamed the hospital, so if someone needed an x-ray, Anushirvan and his colleagues would personally escort them to radiology so they wouldn't be detained. They showed people how to leave out the back door of the hospital. As he worked, Anushirvan began saving X-rays and photographs and notes in a panic that the regime, through its blackout, would succeed in hiding what it had done. In a lot of ways, it has. And now, in another blackout, an endless blackout, Anushirvan is just still doing his job, getting through each day. After eating a very sad excuse for breakfast, I fed my cats, which I had adopted after the events of January due to my friend's recommendation to have a companion in those times. I believe it helped. Very interesting creatures, cats are. I dressed up and called for a, you could say, an Iranian version of an Uber to the hospital. Went downstairs and looking at the car, it was barely functioning and being held together. And the driver had a very, say, stereotypical type of beard. And my suspicions were confirmed when I sat in the car and saw two stickers of Soleimani and Khamenei on the dashboard of his car. Not exactly the two faces I want to see that early in the day, but you know. So he drove me to the hospital and saw a white lab coat in my bag and asked if I was a doctor. And then he said, may God give you strength, doctor. Of course, had the situation been a lot different, him or at least the men of his type would have beaten me to death. But you know, I thanked him properly still. I'm not saying anyone who believes in the regime would kill you in the streets for protesting them, but it could be an unignited dynamite. So I reached the hospital and it was a fairly nice shift. Not a lot of critical patients, fortunately. So I could spend some time in the pavilion watching my new favorite show, The Walking Dead. It's my favorite show because basically I cannot tolerate anything else because at least in The Walking Dead, the things are objectively worse for the people there than it is for Iranians right now. That is the only thing I can tolerate. I really like the show. Daryl is my favorite character. I sure hope nothing bad happens to him and well, let's see how poorly this ages. One of my patients was an 11-year-old girl coming in with a chief complaint of extreme headache in front of her head. It was nothing too serious. I asked if she's undergone any stress recently. Kind of an obvious question these days, but you know, she was a child. I asked the parents if she had any access to any of the news of the war, and they confirmed it, which sounds like very poor parenting to me. So after making sure the hospital was stabilized, me and two of my friends went to the park near the hospital to smoke cigarettes. I had never smoked any cigarettes up until like two months ago. My very first cigarettes was upon hearing the news, the confirmation of Khamenei being killed. And I'm really glad I waited that long because now every time I do it, I'm reminded of that night as it was one of the best nights of my life. Anushirvan spent more than half of his monthly salary on a VPN. Then he got online, finally, and was devastated. He saw some of what was being said about Iran in the wider world. By far the most difficult moments for me during the blackouts were times like this where I could barely connect with the VPNs, only to see people on social media falling for the regime propaganda. And I'm not talking about Iranians. These are people living in free countries. And that is incredibly depressing to see. I've seen charlatans actually denying the January massacre in which dozens of thousands of people were killed and whitewashing the Islamic Republic all the way through just because they disagree with this war or Trump or the U.S. foreign policy as a whole, outright denying the January massacre and saying there is no evidence for that, the massacre which I saw happen and the evidence I collected. There is no excuse in that. They have zero right to do that. And for the first time ever, I truly understand why, for example, Holocaust denial is and should always be a crime as you can't imagine the pain of seeing such privileged people denying your suffering. Coming up, more from inside Iran, including that day President Trump said a whole civilization will die tonight. What was that like? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Hannah Jaffe-Waltz sitting in for Ira Glass. Today's show, we hear from people inside Iran, people who are living through a war and an internet blackout that the U.N. Human Rights Office has said is, quote, one of the longest and most severe shutdowns ever recorded globally. We're hearing what that's like from Iranians who managed to get voice memos out of the country in spite of it being difficult and dangerous to send them. Act 3, neighbors, friends and lovers. Iran is a big country. It had deep divisions before the war. There were massive protests against the Islamic Republic and a brutal crackdown just over a month before America and Israel attacked. And in the messages we got, responses to the war were all over the map. All the people are happy. I'm telling you. Say thanks, President Trump. Thanks, Netanyahu. They pray to God that Bibi and daddy, I mean Donald Trump, they make help because many people as a joke and they say daddy to him. Bahid owns a small business. He's in his mid 40s, lives on the outskirts of a big city in northern Iran. He despises the Islamic regime, wants a secular democracy in Iran. The protests and massacres in January convinced Bahid that change will never happen without outside help. Everyone is preparing themselves for the moment that President Trump and Bibi declare that the situation is such that people can come out. They will flood to regime to take them over. And they all expect to have a new life after this regime. The internet is not stable. The moment you send me a message until now, it Lot of the country, regime supporters have been gathering in squares to chant in support of the Islamic Republic and wave flags. Uh, near our office, there is a street running north to south that's uphill. I mean, it's quite uphill. I see a lady whose husband is in a wheelchair, and she's around 45, maybe 50 years old. And this lady and her husband come this way every night. They go to the second square of Tehran Pars and chant. And I sometimes come to the window to smoke a cigarette, and I've seen them. They go by at 8:30 or a quarter to 9, and then they return around like 10:30, 11. And this poor woman sometimes has a hard time on the way back alone because the man is a bit heavy. And sometimes I've seen people go up an alley to help them get home. The fact that a group of people are so patriotic and so dedicated that every night, every night, whether it's raining, it's cold, it's hot, they get up and come to the city squares, participate in gatherings, chant, and so on. That's really heartwarming and it's very fascinating. I really wish you were here to see it up close. There have been every night protests from the government supporters for almost one month. Whenever I'm out at almost 9 p.m., I see them. Oh my goodness, not again. Maru is in her 30s, lives outside Tehran. She works as an English tutor online, but there's not a lot of that work these days, so she's been taking on extra hours at her dad's pharmacy. She's there till nighttime. She sees the rallies on her way home. The men chant repeated slogans in favor of the regime. They declare that they're ready to be martyrs of Islam and the Islamic Republic. Once I even saw a few of them wearing shrouds to prove they're ready to die for their cause. When I go to bed, I think about Reza. I immediately burst into tears. Reza's the guy I've been in love with lately who turned out to be a religious fanatic. I knew he wasn't my match, but I couldn't help but to love him. Reza and I met at my dad's pharmacy. He's a pharmacist. We used to work different shifts. All I knew about him at first was through my brother, my brother's high opinion of him. I remember a winter evening that I went to the pharmacy to give my brother something. Being in my 30s, I'm mature enough not to believe in love at first sight, but at the very first moment I saw him, he captured my attention. Gradually, I tried to change my work shift for two days of the week in order to meet him more. He was always well-groomed and obviously picky in the way he dressed. He looked so mild-mannered, kind, always ready to help the people around him. We started texting each other. At first, it was only about work, but we gradually switched to other personal issues. At first, he was so cautious because he was our employee, but little by little, he stepped forward. To be honest with you, I already knew that he was a religious guy, at least more than me, but I didn't expect him to be a religious fanatic with rigid opinions about Islam and the regime. The first time that I was shocked at his perspectives was during the 12-day war with Israel around nine months ago. He believed that Iran should not reach an agreement or stop the war because doing so will make us lose our dignity. I was like, what are you talking about? Iranian people are being killed. To me, dignity was an abstract concept. People's lives was something that mattered to me. Since then, I chose not to talk about politics with him. Honestly, I knew that trying to be dismissive of politics and religion was not the solution, but unfortunately, I was deeply involved with him. A few days before the war, he left our pharmacy because he was about to establish his own. Since then, we've met a couple of times. The last time we met almost 20 days ago, he mentioned that he agreed with the idea of digital blackout for now because in this way, the government can be in control of the enemy's propaganda against the Islamic Republic. I was like, how dare you say so? People are losing their jobs because of this blackout and you're talking about your idea of propaganda? I think this war made me far more realistic about Reza and my love for him. This war was an accelerator. It made our relationship go downhill faster. Every time I hear President Trump declare what Iranians want or what they should do or what he thinks should come next, and every time he tosses off a threat, I want to know, what is it like for Iranians to hear that? Are they hearing that? Another thing the blackout has erased or stifled, for instance, what was it like for Iranians on the day that happened only a few weeks ago when President Trump posted on Truth Social about Iran, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. We got several voice memos about that day. I'm going to play one from the doctor, Anushirvan, who treated patients during the January massacre, then Sarah in Tehran, the woman who'd been blow drying her hair in case U.S. strikes knocked out Iranian power plants. Trump had set a deadline for Iran that day to open the Strait of Hormuz. The deadline was evening in the U.S., 3.30 in the morning in Iran. Part of me didn't really want to take Trump seriously, but he is the president of the most powerful country in the world. So there is that. In Iran's time, it would be around 3.30 AM, if I'm not mistaken. I had charged my phone, my laptop, my portable power bank, not that they were going to last too long anyway, and had my essentials ready to go in case of emergency or if I decided to move back to my hometown, since being so high up in my current apartment, no electricity would also mean no water pump, not to mention no elevator. I took a shower and I think it was around 2 AM when I decided to leave it up to fate and sleep and wake up to either the unthinkable or to a war-torn country. And yes, by unthinkable, I mean the ceasefire, as I had no idea what it would look like. I woke up automatically around 5 AM, grabbed my phone and saw my dad's text notification that there was a ceasefire. I stared into the message a good couple of minutes, stone-faced, before going back to sleep. To make all the damages caused by the war worth it, we would have to have a regime change, but now it looks like we just got the shorter stick on both ends. It brought nothing but more death and misery, not to mention it further entrenched the regime. This was one of the dumbest wars in history, to be honest. Last night I was awake until maybe 12:30 or so, and there's a hallway in our house that has no windows around it, no glass. So that's where we sleep at night when they bomb. We go there to take shelter. And I was trying to sleep, but I was constantly checking the internet to see what was happening, like where they're saying what. And I just had a feeling that there was going to be a ceasefire, so I couldn't sleep, but I finally did fall asleep. And then the next morning, my partner told me that there had been a ceasefire. And to be honest, my feeling when I read that news was just very, very, very full of rage, especially the things that I read. And I mean, I honestly don't know how much of it is propaganda and how much of it is reality, but the things I read that Iran is even earning money from the Strait of Hormuz during the ceasefire, because we, the people of Iran, know that that money earned from there is not going to be spent on us. So we're just thinking that, well, we're just going to have a richer IRGC and they're going to commit crimes even more easily. And I'm really, really afraid for the kids who are in prison, the kids who received death sentences, because I know they're going to be persecuted terribly, executions are going to increase. I think we're going to have even more severe crackdowns. Probably any kind of social movement, if any form, which I honestly find unlikely after the January massacres, but they'll face an even greater massacre. I feel like we're the main losers of this war, the people of Iran, because practically nothing has changed. One voice memo was short and to the point from Khabat, a carpenter. He's Kurdish, an ethnic minority in Iran living in the western part of the country. People are really frustrated with Trump. Wasn't he supposed to keep the pressure on until the regime surrendered? Why is he going to negotiate now? He was supposed to finish them off, not talk to them. One last person, Arta. He runs a tech company in Esfahan. Arta's voice memos came in last. I listened after hearing all of the others, and it helped me understand something I hadn't before about where things might be headed in Iran. Arta was deeply unsettled by people around him who were furious that President Trump did not follow through on his threats, especially a promise Trump made on social media to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. You might not believe it, but the morning the ceasefire was announced, I actually called a friend and he picked up the phone saying, what is this? What a mess. Why did they just let it go? I mean, believe it or not, there is a segment of society who, in my opinion Our program was produced today by Diane Wu and edited by Nancy Updike. Roxana Saberi and Fatima Jamalpour collected the voice memos for us. They're both journalists and authors. Fatima's book for The Sun After Long Nights. You can find a link to Roxana and Fatima's excellent reporting on what happened in January in Iran at our website. The people who put together today's show include Thea Bannon, Zoe Chase, Dana Chivis, Aviva DeKornfeld, Emmanuel Jochi, Cassie Howley, Valerie Kipnis, Adrian Lilly, Seth Lind, Tobin Lowe, Stone Nelson, Molly Marcello, Catherine Raimondo, Nadia Raymond, Ryan Romaree, Alyssa Ship, Ike Sriskanjaraja, Lily Sullivan, and Christopher Switala. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman, senior editor David Kestenbaum, and our executive editor is Emmanuel Barry. The actors who performed the voice memos for us, Bahor Behaghi, Tara Grammy, Jerry Habibi, Darius Homayoun, Ava Lalisarzada, Abraham McConey, Aryan Moyaed, Naveed Negobon, Babak Tafti, Pej Vahdat, Sheila Vann, and Selina Zahednia. Our wonderful casting director, Sabrina Hyman. Special thanks today to everyone in Iran who sent us voice memos for this story. And also special thanks to Sardar Peshahi, Kaveh Destouri, Hossein Hafezian, Dury Buskaran, Amir Rashidi, Nargis Bajoli, Ahmad Ahmadian, and Mahsa Alimardani. Shirin Jafari, who you heard at the start of the show, is a reporter on the public radio show The World. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Please consider supporting the show as a This American Life partner. You will get regular exclusive bonus episodes. You can listen ad-free and more. Join at thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. I'm Chana Jaffe-Walt. We'll be back next week with more stories of this American life. Hey, everybody, we have one more thing for you today, and that is a free sample of our newest bonus episode that we made for our This American Life partners. That bonus episode starts like this. 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 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 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, and there are some really great ones out there, it's usually somebody, 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. 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. 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 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 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 that I remember I was not sure I should include in the speech, but I did. 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. Graduates, 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. 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? 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. 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 Goucher is my grandma Frida, my dad's mom. Frida Freelander, Goucher class of 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 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 opposed 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. 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. She, however, was used to transcending boundaries. 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 LifePartners. If you want to hear the whole thing and support our show, go to thisamericanlife.org slash 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.