In this Special Edition of Math and Magic, Bob sifts through his favorite graduation speeches from Commencement: The Podcast, to share lessons for aspiring leaders. Learn why Google X's Astro Teller thinks you need to embrace your inner “weirdo” to solve the world's biggest problems, what Abby Wambach thinks you need to know about teamwork, and why Tim Cook thinks reading Lincoln might be the perfect inspiration for these times. Plus, advice from Sienna Miller, Guy Raz and David Chang!
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic, Stories from
the frontiers and marketing. There's no question the coronavirus has
disrupted our natural way of life. This weekend, as high
school and college graduates around the country missed their traditional
(00:24):
end of view celebrations, we at I Heart wanted to
do something to mark the occasion. So we gathered some friends,
important leaders, creators, athletes and thinkers, and we asked them
to give a personalized graduation address. Then we took those
speeches and put them out as a podcast called Commencement,
and we broadcast the speeches on the radio as well.
(00:45):
It was a small gesture, but it felt good as
a company to unite behind it. Hearing from people like
Abby Wambach, David Chang, Bill Gates, Mary J. Blige, Eli Manning,
and Katie Corey Well, it was inspiring. The words are
meaningful not just to graduates, but to anyone taking on
the world. So for today's episode, I thought I'd pick
(01:05):
up you inspiring lessons I heard in Commencement life lessons
that can be applied to marketing and business. Starting with
some advice from X Alphabet's Moonshot Factory, and it comes
from the Captain and Moonshot's himself astro teller. For as
long as I can remember, I've wanted to create an
(01:26):
invention machine, not an actual physical machine, but a place
where groups of passionate, talented people can throw themselves, unleashed
and unfiltered at the problems they care about most and
emerge with radical solutions that are ten times better than
anything that's been possible before. I've always imagined such a
(01:48):
place at the love child of nineteen sixties NASA and
Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. I've been trying various iterations of
this since I was in my twenties, and I'm now
in years into building a Moonshot Factory, a place where
we bring the audacity and optimism embodied by the Space
race to inventing and launching technologies that could help solve
(02:12):
the world's most pressing problems, problems like food scarcity, internet connectivity,
and clean energy. Born Google X now just X, we've
created things like self driving cars, delivery drones, and verily,
the healthcare arm of Alphabet. What bothers me is that
(02:33):
X shouldn't be the only moonshot factory. We need more,
many more, not just big formal moonshot factories. We need
millions more people waking up every day, more creative, more brave,
more urgent to find ten x solutions to the world's
biggest problems. I know there's lots of intelligence, desire, and
(02:58):
resources being invested. All no one gets up Monday morning
saying this week, I'm going to make incremental progress. And
yet that is almost exclusively what happens, and it doesn't
need to be that way. We are all superheroes. The
ability and aspiration is there, even if it's buried deep
(03:21):
in some of us. What's holding us back as individuals
and organizations is the strong gravitational pull towards conventional ways
of thinking and behaving. Most of us have been conditioned
by the environment around us not to fail, not to
take risks, not to make anyone uncomfortable, especially if that
(03:43):
person is your boss. So most of us end up
being too cautious, too afraid to rock the status quo
or mess something up. And the irony is it works
the other way around. The most powerful and painful epiphany
of my life was to stop hiding my inner weirdo.
(04:04):
You don't get joy, power, money, a sense of purpose,
whatever you crave. By protecting yourself, you get those things,
and you protect yourself best by unleashing yourself. Everyone thinks
that's someone else's job to come up with the weird
(04:25):
new ideas and take the big risks. Big companies think
radical thinking is for startups. Startups say it's the big
guys who have all the resources. Universities do great research
but aren't set up to build real world solutions. Governments
get mired in short term problems, and there you have it.
Suddenly it's no one's job, even when it should be
(04:47):
everyone's job to help solve the problems of our time.
I'm forty nine. I've had to create a special brand
for myself. Is a useful crazy person because I'm supposed
to know better, and so I need air cover for
saying things that aren't normal. Your ideas are unfettered, your
perspectives are fresh, and you're being young. Gives you air
(05:11):
cover for throwing out crazy ideas, So go for it.
Let them rip. You have another big advantage. You don't
already know the answers, and unlike the experts, you know
you don't know the answers. There are still lots of
jobs in which experience saves a ton of time and hassle.
But when the answers to current problems are far over
(05:34):
the horizon and all the rules have suddenly changed, like
we've just seen, the experts belief they know the solution
and just have to implement it is why they will fail. Experimenting, iterating,
and learning is the only way forward, and doing that
is a lot easier. With your advantage, you can admit
(05:56):
ahead of time you don't have the solution upfront. For
extremely complex problems like the world is facing today, there
are no answers. There is no playbook. I love that
Astro says about embracing your inner weirdo. Its advice. We've
heard on this program a lot, whether it was Shaggy
(06:17):
talking about tackling music in a new way, for Scott
Haggadorn talking about new ways and looking at data, or
even David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, talking about
embracing his hobby as a DJ and his free time.
Speaking of David, in his commencement speech, he shared a
lesson about time a commodity you can't make more of
Here's how he learned to make the most of it.
(06:39):
I've worked on Wall Street for over three decades, and
our work involves, at times an array of valuable commodities
stock spots, gold, silver, oil, you name it. But even
a banker will tell you the most precious commodity of
all it's time. No matter how smart creative you may be,
you cannot create more time, and once you've spent did,
(07:00):
there's no way to get it back. One of the
great lessons my father taught me was the value of time,
and more important, how to be a good steward of
this finite commodity. I was a teenager frustrated that I
couldn't fit into my schedule everything that I needed and
wanted to get done academic, sports, friends, the rest of
(07:21):
high school life. So my father had me go through
an exercise I'll never forget. With a simple printed calendar,
he had me rite in each day's box what I
needed to get done, including eating and sleeping, and how
long I thought I needed to do it. I protested,
of course, but when I was done, I realized that
I still hadn't filled my day. There was more time
(07:44):
if I spent it wisely. Gradually I learned to be
very intentional with my time, how I spent it what
I wasn't willing to give up. I budgeted my time
a lot tighter, and in the process discovered more of it,
more time to get things done, to explore new of things,
to do what really mattered to me. To this day,
I make sure that, even with the jam pack schedule
(08:06):
of a CEO, I make time outside my day to
day to be with people from different industries and with
different backgrounds. Time spent fostering relationships with diverse people who
enrich my thinking and challenge my assumptions makes life a
whole lot more interesting. It also makes me a better
person and in turn a better CEO. I hope you'll
(08:28):
be a good steward of the gift of time invested
wisely in yourself and others with people who think differently
than you do, people you love, people who love you,
some who challenge you, and more than a few who
believe in you. As we looked on social media for
themes to cover, confidence is one thing that always comes up.
(08:50):
How do you build it for yourself, but also how
do you infuse it in your team's culture? Abbywa has
some thoughts on that. As two time Olympic gold medalist
and FIFA Women's World Cup champion, she describes the moment
she helps secure the World Cup championship and why believing
yourself is just as important as believing in the greatness
of your team. I see my teammates running towards me
(09:14):
from every direction on the field and from the bench.
They're screaming and laughing and hugging, high fiving, chest bumping,
and as they rushed towards me, each of their amazed
faces asking did we just do this? Did we just
save our World Cup life in the last second? What
the hell just happened? What happened is that we believed.
(09:40):
What happened is that we never stopped believing. There's a chance.
That the national team's loyal fan club, the American Outlaws,
cheer from the stands. It has become the lifeblood pumping
through our national team's veins. It goes like this, I
(10:02):
I believe. I believe that we I believe that we
will win. I believe that we will win. I believe
that we will win. Graduates, as you step out into
an uncertain world, I want to tell you why this
chance should become the lifeblood pumping through your veins too.
(10:25):
I I believe you must believe in the eye, You
must believe in yourself. That World Cup play doesn't happen
if each player doesn't step up and claim her specific
power and skill to deliver the impossible. Christie Krieger, Carly Pino.
(10:48):
Each had to believe she was good enough and ready
to execute her part within the broader play. None of
those women could alone control the ultimate outcome of the game,
but each was hell bent on controlling what she could control,
her part, her moment, her belief. Collective success is determined
(11:11):
by individual accountability. The greatest teams are made up of
individual players who each relentlessly believe in their own. Greatness
graduates in this moment. As you step out into the world,
you don't know what fields you'll be on, how high
the stakes maybe, but you can know this for sure,
(11:34):
there's a part out there that only you can play.
When the ball comes to you, and it will, you
will have to decide that you're good enough. No one
else can decide that for you. Be bold, be audacious,
believe in yourself, especially when no one else does, and
(11:57):
when the ball does come to you, when it's your
turn to make a difference, show up like our collective
future depends on you, because it does. I I believe.
I believe that we you must believe in the wei.
(12:20):
Speaking of teams, chef David Chang has been a star
in the restaurant scene for a while now. He cut
his teeth with a legendary Momofuku, and he's now an
author and TV personality as well. But in his speech
to young graduates, he made it clear that one of
the biggest lessons he learned along the way is it
isn't always about you. Here's how he learned to take
(12:40):
the focus of himself and think about his team's happiness.
Because I'm a chef. Now, you might think that things
clicked when I wound up in cooking school at twenty two,
but that would be incorrect. I did have a good
feeling about cooking, but I was so mediocre. In fact,
I was just bad that one of my classmates actually
quit the program because of my lack of talent. I'm
(13:02):
not kidding. They told her that I was going to
be a partner for one semester and that she couldn't switch,
so she decided to drop out. Then be my partner.
I stayed at cooking school mostly because I had exhausted
all other options. It's crazy to think, but by my
mid twenties I had worked so many jobs and tried
so many things. I'd seen a good chunk of the
(13:22):
world too, Yet I was convinced that it was all
a waste. I looked at my friends that could not
believe how far ahead of me they were. Maybe some
of you know that feeling, and if you don't, I'll
tell you the same thing. Life begins right about where
you are right now. Conventional wisdom says that college is
the time's experiment, but now is when you can truly
(13:43):
accumulate data to your advantage. This is the moment in
your lives to be selfish, so use it and be
smart about it. Welcome all the heartache, disorientation. Enjoy that
you can, most of all, lean into situations that might
lead to mistakes. You have to taste failure so much
and so early, so you know how to deal with
(14:05):
it later on when the stakes are higher. On some days,
it may feel like it's just too damn hard, like
it's not worth climbing back up that mountain again. But
you have to keep going. It's as simple as this.
Honor your time here. But just as I urged you
to look inward to find yourself, your voice, and your purpose,
I want to tell you that conviction can also be dangerous,
(14:27):
or at least it was for me. Five or so
years into Momofuku, the company had gone from being an
army of one into employing over one people. Now we
have several hundred, and they were all unhappy. The problem
was me. I was miserable to work for in my
fanatical quest, I was blind to those around me and
(14:48):
their needs. In my little world, all that matter what
was good for me. This somehow had an immediately affected
the quality of our work. But that luck didn't last forever.
Not only did our magic spark dim. I was more
alone than when I graduated college. So I want to
leave you with the greatest piece of knowledge I've gained
so far, an idea we should all remind ourselves in
(15:08):
times like these. It's not about you. You're going to
be happiest, in my opinion, when you try to be selfless.
I love how David evolved to think about his employees,
but his theme of perseverance and grit struck a chord
with me too, and it's a theme I heard in
Chris Broussard's speech as well. We'll hear more from him,
(15:30):
Tim Cook, and more after this break. Welcome back to
Math and Magic, where we're highlighting some of the best
and most inspiring speeches from this week's commencement podcast. Chris
Broussard is a successful sports broadcaster on Fox Sports One
(15:50):
and Fox Sports Radio, but that wasn't always the case.
He advanced his career through sheer, determination, grit, and long hours.
He attributes his success to never having a sense of
entitled one, even if that map taking unpaid jobs. Take
a listen, do not have a sense of entitlement. This
(16:11):
business doesn't owe you anything. I don't care what school
you went to. I don't care what your grade point
average was. I don't care how highly you think of yourself.
It doesn't owe you anything. Your mentality has got to
be that I got to earn every single promotion or
advancement that I get. I'll share with you when I
(16:33):
first started doing national television. Now, I've been in the
New York Ares right for the New York Times and
done some local TV, but ESPN was starting a new
television show called Cold Pizza. Now it's called First Take, uh.
And the show was at seven am Eastern time, and
they were asking local writers in the New York area
(16:54):
to come into their studio early in the morning to
do hits for the show. They weren't paying a thing,
and they weren't putting you in a hotel overnight, so
they would pick you up early in the morning and
then you would do your do the show. I even
went so far as to when I was on the
(17:14):
West Coast covering Kobe Bryant and the Santa against the
San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals two thousand four,
that I would be on Cold Pizza at four am
Pacific time. So I'm getting up at two thirty in
the morning to go do this show for free, no money.
(17:34):
And I had other writers in the New York area say,
I can't believe you're doing that. How desperate are you
to be on television. They're not paying you anything and
you're going on at four am. I had guys say,
I told him, you better get me a hotel room,
or I'm not doing your show. You better pay me
some money, or I'm not doing it. Well, now I
(17:57):
do national television and radio for a career, and some
of these guys aren't as far as they like to
be in their careers. I didn't have a sense of entitlement.
I figured this could help advance my career. I can
do it, I will do it. And now I get
paid great amounts of money to do television and radio,
(18:19):
whereas then I wasn't getting anything. Don't think that you're
entitled to a darn thing in this business, or in
any business for that matter, whatever field of endeavor you
choose to go into. Chris, like so many of our
other commencement speakers, acknowledge the importance of putting in the work.
(18:39):
But there's another factor the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook,
wanted us to consider. As he's been reading about Lincoln,
He's been thinking about how important it is to race
into uncertainty. Here he is talking about the courage you'll
need in this time and the success that can result
from it. Not being able to leave the house leads
(18:59):
you the lot of odd gaps of time to fill.
I've been trying to use them to read, and I
keep coming back to Abraham Lincoln. I'd recommend it to
anyone who wants to put these times into perspective, you'll
be shocked at how clever and funny and alive is
thinking still is how this reserved and humble man managed
(19:21):
in noisy times to call others to hope. It's also
hard to imagine someone more defined by their circumstances. Lincoln
found his country on fire and chose to run into
the flames, and he gave everything he had to bring
his people, chaotic and squabbling, fundamentally flawed yet fundamentally good,
(19:44):
along with him. The dogmas of the quiet past are
inadequate to the stormy present, he said. The occasion is
piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think a
new and act a new We must disenthrall ourselves, and
(20:06):
then we shall save our country. Graduates, your case is
new for you. The old dogmas had never been an option.
You don't have the luxury of being enthralled. You enter
a world of difficulty with open eyes, tasks with writing
a story that is not necessarily of your choosing, but
(20:27):
is still entirely yours. You weren't promised this day. Many
of you had to fight hard to earn it. Now
it's yours. Think a new act, a new build, a
better future than the one you thought was certain, and
in a fearful time, call us once again to hope.
(20:51):
Courage is also something I heard in Sienna Miller's speech
to Sienna never went to college, but that didn't stop
her from becoming a successful actor, designer, and producer. And
her speech, she talks about the importance of pushing away
feelings of inferiority. She also talks about standing up for
what you believe in and creating a culture that advances
your standards, not the world, and her case that men
(21:14):
having the conviction to walk away from a role she
was passionate about. My industry is an inspiring one, but
it has not always been a place where women are
respected equity with their male counterparts. This is a global issue.
We still live in a rampantly patriarchal society. It is
essential that as women, we cultivate the sense of worth
(21:36):
that we deserve to feel. I know it's hard, and
although the world is beginning to shift, there are deep
rioted prejudices that exists around gender. Women represent over half
the population. It is essential that the places you work
in resemble that statistic. Be great leaders, Be the generation
(21:57):
to really fight for equality. If you feel superior, get
yourself in check. Respect the differences between men and women,
people of color, the LGBTQ community, and value the contribution
of everyone to a workspace. If you start a company,
let that company reflect the world as it is. We
(22:18):
need leaders, especially in this moment, who do not marginalize,
who listen, who care. Be those leaders. A while ago,
I turned down a project that I was passionate about
when I learned that my male co star was going
to be paid more than double the salary I had
been offered. I was forced to make a concession between
my dignity and self worth and a role I loved.
(22:40):
I was being pressured to accept a value of myself
which I knew was wrong, and, albeit with real difficulty,
self judgment and even shame, I walked away from that part,
and that changed something in me. It turned out to
be a pivotal moment in my life, not because I
took the part, but because I didn't, And at that moment,
(23:01):
my worth was exactly the value I placed in myself.
I guess what I'm saying is stand up for yourself,
Stand up for others. Stand up for what you know
deep down is fair. So much success comes down to
a sense of self worth. Cultivate that strength as best
you can. Don't value yourself based upon the responses you
(23:24):
get from other people or some imagined perception of who
you might be. And don't give yourself away to others.
Hold on tight. This is your life and your experience.
You might know Guy Rosa's voice from How I Built
This or the Ted Radio Hour. I like the speech
wasn't about blind optimism, but rather it was about looking
(23:45):
for opportunities in this time. As difficult as things are
right now, the world is full of opportunities, things just
waiting to be changed. And after hearing a speech, I
think you might agree. Now I'm gonna tell you something
that may sound counterintuitive. Smile, open your eyes, look out,
(24:05):
and understand this. You are leaping into what might be
the greatest moment of possibility in modern human history. Now,
before I get too deep into this, I want to
explain what I mean by possibility. Possibility isn't wild eyed
optimism or a belief that history is an inevitable march
(24:25):
towards progress. That's rubbish. Possibility allows for a whole range
of outcomes massive failure, regression, loss, But possibility also allows
for growth and resilience and recovery, and most importantly, the
possibility to dream and then to realize a better way.
(24:47):
Possibility in may is an opportunity to reimagine and then
to remake the world. And to do this, you're going
to have to take big swings, swings for the fences.
Wings that will occasionally be home runs, but most of
the time will be strikeouts. But if you take those
swings right now, not in five years or ten years,
(25:10):
but right now, you will start to remake our very,
very challenging world. As some of you may know, I've
interviewed thousands of some of the most inspiring people on
the planet, and some of them are swinging for the fences,
but they need you to join them. Pat Brown he
was a biochemistry professor Stanford. He understood that livestock production
(25:31):
accounts for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions, so
he started Impossible Foods with the goal of figuring out
how to make meat, real meat that bleeds and sizzles
from plant proteins. He's already succeeding, and if he finishes
the job, it could cut carbon and methane emissions by
twenty to pat Brown didn't wait for others to make
(25:54):
a change. He did. Jimmy Wales wanted everyone on Earth
to have the same access to knowledge that he did,
so he created Wikipedia as an open source online encyclopedia
that functions as a nonprofit, available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
He never really made any money off Wikipedia, even though
it's one of the most visited websites on the planet.
(26:18):
Jimmy Wales didn't wait for others to make a change.
He did. Alice Waters started a farm to table restaurant
called Chaponnese in the early nineteen seventies in Berkeley, but
she soon started to see how industrial farming and agriculture
were polluting rivers and damaging the environment. So Alice started
a movement called the Edible Schoolyard, and today thousands of
(26:41):
schools across America are growing their vegetables in harmony with nature. Now,
it's not going to change the entire world today, but
it's a start. Alice Waters didn't wait for others to
make a change, She did it herself. Alicia Garza opal Tometti,
Patrice Colors. They lived and breathe injustice. They didn't wait
(27:02):
for permission. They inspired Black Lives Matter Toronto. Burke knew
intimately about the silence of sexual assault victims. She didn't
wait for permission. She wrote two words that changed the world.
Me too. Greta Tunberg and Vanessa NaKaT Still Kids ignited
a movement of thousands of young people demanding climate justice.
(27:26):
They didn't wait, They didn't ask for permission. Now, if
you walk around San Francisco today, you'll see ads for
startups that will deliver cannabis to your home through a
sophisticated app. You'll see ads for better work productivity software.
One startup even raised almost four hundred million dollars to
(27:46):
build robots to make pizzas. We now have another new
media company, this one that raised more than a billion dollars,
all with the goal of creating ten minute video clips
to keep you glued to your I phone while you
wait in line at the grocery store. And look, people
will make money off of these ideas, and that's fine.
(28:07):
But if you really want to take advantage of this
incredible moment in history, no this you can make it
happen by deciding to be more like Pat Brown or
Alice Waters or Toronto Burke or Greta Tunberg. Don't wait.
Everything and anything is possible coming out of this crisis.
Can you use your energy, your youth, your boldness to
(28:29):
take a big swing for the fences to answer these questions?
I think you know the answer. So we need you
to spend this summer building a plan. You are the
Jedies we have been waiting for. We need you to
take this mission on. There may never be an opportunity
like this one again in your lifetime. And it's okay
(28:50):
to feel scared. This is a hard time, but I
promise you have been given a gift now, right now,
it's your time to run the world. Here the keys
and don't look back. And one more thing, May the
Force be with you. That's it for this week's Math
and Magic. The speeches I drew from barely skimmed the service.
(29:13):
From General Stanley but Crystal to Katie Coury, Ryan Seacrest
to Hillary Clinton, Halsey to Bill and Melinda Gates. We've
got fifty plus inspiring commencement speeches waiting for you on
the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast.
Go check them out. That's commencement speeches for the class
of Until next time, I'm Bob Pittman and thanks for listening.
(29:39):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio.
The show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to
Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling are wonderful talent, which
is no small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research bill plaques,
and Michael Asar for their recording help. Our editor, Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gayl ra Well, Eric Angel, Noel Mango
(30:02):
and everyone who helped bring this show to your ears.
Until next time, H
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic, Stories from
the frontiers and marketing. There's no question the coronavirus has
disrupted our natural way of life. This weekend, as high
school and college graduates around the country missed their traditional
(00:24):
end of view celebrations, we at I Heart wanted to
do something to mark the occasion. So we gathered some friends,
important leaders, creators, athletes and thinkers, and we asked them
to give a personalized graduation address. Then we took those
speeches and put them out as a podcast called Commencement,
and we broadcast the speeches on the radio as well.
(00:45):
It was a small gesture, but it felt good as
a company to unite behind it. Hearing from people like
Abby Wambach, David Chang, Bill Gates, Mary J. Blige, Eli Manning,
and Katie Corey Well, it was inspiring. The words are
meaningful not just to graduates, but to anyone taking on
the world. So for today's episode, I thought I'd pick
(01:05):
up you inspiring lessons I heard in Commencement life lessons
that can be applied to marketing and business. Starting with
some advice from X Alphabet's Moonshot Factory, and it comes
from the Captain and Moonshot's himself astro teller. For as
long as I can remember, I've wanted to create an
(01:26):
invention machine, not an actual physical machine, but a place
where groups of passionate, talented people can throw themselves, unleashed
and unfiltered at the problems they care about most and
emerge with radical solutions that are ten times better than
anything that's been possible before. I've always imagined such a
(01:48):
place at the love child of nineteen sixties NASA and
Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. I've been trying various iterations of
this since I was in my twenties, and I'm now
in years into building a Moonshot Factory, a place where
we bring the audacity and optimism embodied by the Space
race to inventing and launching technologies that could help solve
(02:12):
the world's most pressing problems, problems like food scarcity, internet connectivity,
and clean energy. Born Google X now just X, we've
created things like self driving cars, delivery drones, and verily,
the healthcare arm of Alphabet. What bothers me is that
(02:33):
X shouldn't be the only moonshot factory. We need more,
many more, not just big formal moonshot factories. We need
millions more people waking up every day, more creative, more brave,
more urgent to find ten x solutions to the world's
biggest problems. I know there's lots of intelligence, desire, and
(02:58):
resources being invested. All no one gets up Monday morning
saying this week, I'm going to make incremental progress. And
yet that is almost exclusively what happens, and it doesn't
need to be that way. We are all superheroes. The
ability and aspiration is there, even if it's buried deep
(03:21):
in some of us. What's holding us back as individuals
and organizations is the strong gravitational pull towards conventional ways
of thinking and behaving. Most of us have been conditioned
by the environment around us not to fail, not to
take risks, not to make anyone uncomfortable, especially if that
(03:43):
person is your boss. So most of us end up
being too cautious, too afraid to rock the status quo
or mess something up. And the irony is it works
the other way around. The most powerful and painful epiphany
of my life was to stop hiding my inner weirdo.
(04:04):
You don't get joy, power, money, a sense of purpose,
whatever you crave. By protecting yourself, you get those things,
and you protect yourself best by unleashing yourself. Everyone thinks
that's someone else's job to come up with the weird
(04:25):
new ideas and take the big risks. Big companies think
radical thinking is for startups. Startups say it's the big
guys who have all the resources. Universities do great research
but aren't set up to build real world solutions. Governments
get mired in short term problems, and there you have it.
Suddenly it's no one's job, even when it should be
(04:47):
everyone's job to help solve the problems of our time.
I'm forty nine. I've had to create a special brand
for myself. Is a useful crazy person because I'm supposed
to know better, and so I need air cover for
saying things that aren't normal. Your ideas are unfettered, your
perspectives are fresh, and you're being young. Gives you air
(05:11):
cover for throwing out crazy ideas, So go for it.
Let them rip. You have another big advantage. You don't
already know the answers, and unlike the experts, you know
you don't know the answers. There are still lots of
jobs in which experience saves a ton of time and hassle.
But when the answers to current problems are far over
(05:34):
the horizon and all the rules have suddenly changed, like
we've just seen, the experts belief they know the solution
and just have to implement it is why they will fail. Experimenting, iterating,
and learning is the only way forward, and doing that
is a lot easier. With your advantage, you can admit
(05:56):
ahead of time you don't have the solution upfront. For
extremely complex problems like the world is facing today, there
are no answers. There is no playbook. I love that
Astro says about embracing your inner weirdo. Its advice. We've
heard on this program a lot, whether it was Shaggy
(06:17):
talking about tackling music in a new way, for Scott
Haggadorn talking about new ways and looking at data, or
even David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, talking about
embracing his hobby as a DJ and his free time.
Speaking of David, in his commencement speech, he shared a
lesson about time a commodity you can't make more of
Here's how he learned to make the most of it.
(06:39):
I've worked on Wall Street for over three decades, and
our work involves, at times an array of valuable commodities
stock spots, gold, silver, oil, you name it. But even
a banker will tell you the most precious commodity of
all it's time. No matter how smart creative you may be,
you cannot create more time, and once you've spent did,
(07:00):
there's no way to get it back. One of the
great lessons my father taught me was the value of time,
and more important, how to be a good steward of
this finite commodity. I was a teenager frustrated that I
couldn't fit into my schedule everything that I needed and
wanted to get done academic, sports, friends, the rest of
(07:21):
high school life. So my father had me go through
an exercise I'll never forget. With a simple printed calendar,
he had me rite in each day's box what I
needed to get done, including eating and sleeping, and how
long I thought I needed to do it. I protested,
of course, but when I was done, I realized that
I still hadn't filled my day. There was more time
(07:44):
if I spent it wisely. Gradually I learned to be
very intentional with my time, how I spent it what
I wasn't willing to give up. I budgeted my time
a lot tighter, and in the process discovered more of it,
more time to get things done, to explore new of things,
to do what really mattered to me. To this day,
I make sure that, even with the jam pack schedule
(08:06):
of a CEO, I make time outside my day to
day to be with people from different industries and with
different backgrounds. Time spent fostering relationships with diverse people who
enrich my thinking and challenge my assumptions makes life a
whole lot more interesting. It also makes me a better
person and in turn a better CEO. I hope you'll
(08:28):
be a good steward of the gift of time invested
wisely in yourself and others with people who think differently
than you do, people you love, people who love you,
some who challenge you, and more than a few who
believe in you. As we looked on social media for
themes to cover, confidence is one thing that always comes up.
(08:50):
How do you build it for yourself, but also how
do you infuse it in your team's culture? Abbywa has
some thoughts on that. As two time Olympic gold medalist
and FIFA Women's World Cup champion, she describes the moment
she helps secure the World Cup championship and why believing
yourself is just as important as believing in the greatness
of your team. I see my teammates running towards me
(09:14):
from every direction on the field and from the bench.
They're screaming and laughing and hugging, high fiving, chest bumping,
and as they rushed towards me, each of their amazed
faces asking did we just do this? Did we just
save our World Cup life in the last second? What
the hell just happened? What happened is that we believed.
(09:40):
What happened is that we never stopped believing. There's a chance.
That the national team's loyal fan club, the American Outlaws,
cheer from the stands. It has become the lifeblood pumping
through our national team's veins. It goes like this, I
(10:02):
I believe. I believe that we I believe that we
will win. I believe that we will win. I believe
that we will win. Graduates, as you step out into
an uncertain world, I want to tell you why this
chance should become the lifeblood pumping through your veins too.
(10:25):
I I believe you must believe in the eye, You
must believe in yourself. That World Cup play doesn't happen
if each player doesn't step up and claim her specific
power and skill to deliver the impossible. Christie Krieger, Carly Pino.
(10:48):
Each had to believe she was good enough and ready
to execute her part within the broader play. None of
those women could alone control the ultimate outcome of the game,
but each was hell bent on controlling what she could control,
her part, her moment, her belief. Collective success is determined
(11:11):
by individual accountability. The greatest teams are made up of
individual players who each relentlessly believe in their own. Greatness
graduates in this moment. As you step out into the world,
you don't know what fields you'll be on, how high
the stakes maybe, but you can know this for sure,
(11:34):
there's a part out there that only you can play.
When the ball comes to you, and it will, you
will have to decide that you're good enough. No one
else can decide that for you. Be bold, be audacious,
believe in yourself, especially when no one else does, and
(11:57):
when the ball does come to you, when it's your
turn to make a difference, show up like our collective
future depends on you, because it does. I I believe.
I believe that we you must believe in the wei.
(12:20):
Speaking of teams, chef David Chang has been a star
in the restaurant scene for a while now. He cut
his teeth with a legendary Momofuku, and he's now an
author and TV personality as well. But in his speech
to young graduates, he made it clear that one of
the biggest lessons he learned along the way is it
isn't always about you. Here's how he learned to take
(12:40):
the focus of himself and think about his team's happiness.
Because I'm a chef. Now, you might think that things
clicked when I wound up in cooking school at twenty two,
but that would be incorrect. I did have a good
feeling about cooking, but I was so mediocre. In fact,
I was just bad that one of my classmates actually
quit the program because of my lack of talent. I'm
(13:02):
not kidding. They told her that I was going to
be a partner for one semester and that she couldn't switch,
so she decided to drop out. Then be my partner.
I stayed at cooking school mostly because I had exhausted
all other options. It's crazy to think, but by my
mid twenties I had worked so many jobs and tried
so many things. I'd seen a good chunk of the
(13:22):
world too, Yet I was convinced that it was all
a waste. I looked at my friends that could not
believe how far ahead of me they were. Maybe some
of you know that feeling, and if you don't, I'll
tell you the same thing. Life begins right about where
you are right now. Conventional wisdom says that college is
the time's experiment, but now is when you can truly
(13:43):
accumulate data to your advantage. This is the moment in
your lives to be selfish, so use it and be
smart about it. Welcome all the heartache, disorientation. Enjoy that
you can, most of all, lean into situations that might
lead to mistakes. You have to taste failure so much
and so early, so you know how to deal with
(14:05):
it later on when the stakes are higher. On some days,
it may feel like it's just too damn hard, like
it's not worth climbing back up that mountain again. But
you have to keep going. It's as simple as this.
Honor your time here. But just as I urged you
to look inward to find yourself, your voice, and your purpose,
I want to tell you that conviction can also be dangerous,
(14:27):
or at least it was for me. Five or so
years into Momofuku, the company had gone from being an
army of one into employing over one people. Now we
have several hundred, and they were all unhappy. The problem
was me. I was miserable to work for in my
fanatical quest, I was blind to those around me and
(14:48):
their needs. In my little world, all that matter what
was good for me. This somehow had an immediately affected
the quality of our work. But that luck didn't last forever.
Not only did our magic spark dim. I was more
alone than when I graduated college. So I want to
leave you with the greatest piece of knowledge I've gained
so far, an idea we should all remind ourselves in
(15:08):
times like these. It's not about you. You're going to
be happiest, in my opinion, when you try to be selfless.
I love how David evolved to think about his employees,
but his theme of perseverance and grit struck a chord
with me too, and it's a theme I heard in
Chris Broussard's speech as well. We'll hear more from him,
(15:30):
Tim Cook, and more after this break. Welcome back to
Math and Magic, where we're highlighting some of the best
and most inspiring speeches from this week's commencement podcast. Chris
Broussard is a successful sports broadcaster on Fox Sports One
(15:50):
and Fox Sports Radio, but that wasn't always the case.
He advanced his career through sheer, determination, grit, and long hours.
He attributes his success to never having a sense of
entitled one, even if that map taking unpaid jobs. Take
a listen, do not have a sense of entitlement. This
(16:11):
business doesn't owe you anything. I don't care what school
you went to. I don't care what your grade point
average was. I don't care how highly you think of yourself.
It doesn't owe you anything. Your mentality has got to
be that I got to earn every single promotion or
advancement that I get. I'll share with you when I
(16:33):
first started doing national television. Now, I've been in the
New York Ares right for the New York Times and
done some local TV, but ESPN was starting a new
television show called Cold Pizza. Now it's called First Take, uh.
And the show was at seven am Eastern time, and
they were asking local writers in the New York area
(16:54):
to come into their studio early in the morning to
do hits for the show. They weren't paying a thing,
and they weren't putting you in a hotel overnight, so
they would pick you up early in the morning and
then you would do your do the show. I even
went so far as to when I was on the
(17:14):
West Coast covering Kobe Bryant and the Santa against the
San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals two thousand four,
that I would be on Cold Pizza at four am
Pacific time. So I'm getting up at two thirty in
the morning to go do this show for free, no money.
(17:34):
And I had other writers in the New York area say,
I can't believe you're doing that. How desperate are you
to be on television. They're not paying you anything and
you're going on at four am. I had guys say,
I told him, you better get me a hotel room,
or I'm not doing your show. You better pay me
some money, or I'm not doing it. Well, now I
(17:57):
do national television and radio for a career, and some
of these guys aren't as far as they like to
be in their careers. I didn't have a sense of entitlement.
I figured this could help advance my career. I can
do it, I will do it. And now I get
paid great amounts of money to do television and radio,
(18:19):
whereas then I wasn't getting anything. Don't think that you're
entitled to a darn thing in this business, or in
any business for that matter, whatever field of endeavor you
choose to go into. Chris, like so many of our
other commencement speakers, acknowledge the importance of putting in the work.
(18:39):
But there's another factor the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook,
wanted us to consider. As he's been reading about Lincoln,
He's been thinking about how important it is to race
into uncertainty. Here he is talking about the courage you'll
need in this time and the success that can result
from it. Not being able to leave the house leads
(18:59):
you the lot of odd gaps of time to fill.
I've been trying to use them to read, and I
keep coming back to Abraham Lincoln. I'd recommend it to
anyone who wants to put these times into perspective, you'll
be shocked at how clever and funny and alive is
thinking still is how this reserved and humble man managed
(19:21):
in noisy times to call others to hope. It's also
hard to imagine someone more defined by their circumstances. Lincoln
found his country on fire and chose to run into
the flames, and he gave everything he had to bring
his people, chaotic and squabbling, fundamentally flawed yet fundamentally good,
(19:44):
along with him. The dogmas of the quiet past are
inadequate to the stormy present, he said. The occasion is
piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think a
new and act a new We must disenthrall ourselves, and
(20:06):
then we shall save our country. Graduates, your case is
new for you. The old dogmas had never been an option.
You don't have the luxury of being enthralled. You enter
a world of difficulty with open eyes, tasks with writing
a story that is not necessarily of your choosing, but
(20:27):
is still entirely yours. You weren't promised this day. Many
of you had to fight hard to earn it. Now
it's yours. Think a new act, a new build, a
better future than the one you thought was certain, and
in a fearful time, call us once again to hope.
(20:51):
Courage is also something I heard in Sienna Miller's speech
to Sienna never went to college, but that didn't stop
her from becoming a successful actor, designer, and producer. And
her speech, she talks about the importance of pushing away
feelings of inferiority. She also talks about standing up for
what you believe in and creating a culture that advances
your standards, not the world, and her case that men
(21:14):
having the conviction to walk away from a role she
was passionate about. My industry is an inspiring one, but
it has not always been a place where women are
respected equity with their male counterparts. This is a global issue.
We still live in a rampantly patriarchal society. It is
essential that as women, we cultivate the sense of worth
(21:36):
that we deserve to feel. I know it's hard, and
although the world is beginning to shift, there are deep
rioted prejudices that exists around gender. Women represent over half
the population. It is essential that the places you work
in resemble that statistic. Be great leaders, Be the generation
(21:57):
to really fight for equality. If you feel superior, get
yourself in check. Respect the differences between men and women,
people of color, the LGBTQ community, and value the contribution
of everyone to a workspace. If you start a company,
let that company reflect the world as it is. We
(22:18):
need leaders, especially in this moment, who do not marginalize,
who listen, who care. Be those leaders. A while ago,
I turned down a project that I was passionate about
when I learned that my male co star was going
to be paid more than double the salary I had
been offered. I was forced to make a concession between
my dignity and self worth and a role I loved.
(22:40):
I was being pressured to accept a value of myself
which I knew was wrong, and, albeit with real difficulty,
self judgment and even shame, I walked away from that part,
and that changed something in me. It turned out to
be a pivotal moment in my life, not because I
took the part, but because I didn't, And at that moment,
(23:01):
my worth was exactly the value I placed in myself.
I guess what I'm saying is stand up for yourself,
Stand up for others. Stand up for what you know
deep down is fair. So much success comes down to
a sense of self worth. Cultivate that strength as best
you can. Don't value yourself based upon the responses you
(23:24):
get from other people or some imagined perception of who
you might be. And don't give yourself away to others.
Hold on tight. This is your life and your experience.
You might know Guy Rosa's voice from How I Built
This or the Ted Radio Hour. I like the speech
wasn't about blind optimism, but rather it was about looking
(23:45):
for opportunities in this time. As difficult as things are
right now, the world is full of opportunities, things just
waiting to be changed. And after hearing a speech, I
think you might agree. Now I'm gonna tell you something
that may sound counterintuitive. Smile, open your eyes, look out,
(24:05):
and understand this. You are leaping into what might be
the greatest moment of possibility in modern human history. Now,
before I get too deep into this, I want to
explain what I mean by possibility. Possibility isn't wild eyed
optimism or a belief that history is an inevitable march
(24:25):
towards progress. That's rubbish. Possibility allows for a whole range
of outcomes massive failure, regression, loss, But possibility also allows
for growth and resilience and recovery, and most importantly, the
possibility to dream and then to realize a better way.
(24:47):
Possibility in may is an opportunity to reimagine and then
to remake the world. And to do this, you're going
to have to take big swings, swings for the fences.
Wings that will occasionally be home runs, but most of
the time will be strikeouts. But if you take those
swings right now, not in five years or ten years,
(25:10):
but right now, you will start to remake our very,
very challenging world. As some of you may know, I've
interviewed thousands of some of the most inspiring people on
the planet, and some of them are swinging for the fences,
but they need you to join them. Pat Brown he
was a biochemistry professor Stanford. He understood that livestock production
(25:31):
accounts for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions, so
he started Impossible Foods with the goal of figuring out
how to make meat, real meat that bleeds and sizzles
from plant proteins. He's already succeeding, and if he finishes
the job, it could cut carbon and methane emissions by
twenty to pat Brown didn't wait for others to make
(25:54):
a change. He did. Jimmy Wales wanted everyone on Earth
to have the same access to knowledge that he did,
so he created Wikipedia as an open source online encyclopedia
that functions as a nonprofit, available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
He never really made any money off Wikipedia, even though
it's one of the most visited websites on the planet.
(26:18):
Jimmy Wales didn't wait for others to make a change.
He did. Alice Waters started a farm to table restaurant
called Chaponnese in the early nineteen seventies in Berkeley, but
she soon started to see how industrial farming and agriculture
were polluting rivers and damaging the environment. So Alice started
a movement called the Edible Schoolyard, and today thousands of
(26:41):
schools across America are growing their vegetables in harmony with nature. Now,
it's not going to change the entire world today, but
it's a start. Alice Waters didn't wait for others to
make a change, She did it herself. Alicia Garza opal Tometti,
Patrice Colors. They lived and breathe injustice. They didn't wait
(27:02):
for permission. They inspired Black Lives Matter Toronto. Burke knew
intimately about the silence of sexual assault victims. She didn't
wait for permission. She wrote two words that changed the world.
Me too. Greta Tunberg and Vanessa NaKaT Still Kids ignited
a movement of thousands of young people demanding climate justice.
(27:26):
They didn't wait, They didn't ask for permission. Now, if
you walk around San Francisco today, you'll see ads for
startups that will deliver cannabis to your home through a
sophisticated app. You'll see ads for better work productivity software.
One startup even raised almost four hundred million dollars to
(27:46):
build robots to make pizzas. We now have another new
media company, this one that raised more than a billion dollars,
all with the goal of creating ten minute video clips
to keep you glued to your I phone while you
wait in line at the grocery store. And look, people
will make money off of these ideas, and that's fine.
(28:07):
But if you really want to take advantage of this
incredible moment in history, no this you can make it
happen by deciding to be more like Pat Brown or
Alice Waters or Toronto Burke or Greta Tunberg. Don't wait.
Everything and anything is possible coming out of this crisis.
Can you use your energy, your youth, your boldness to
(28:29):
take a big swing for the fences to answer these questions?
I think you know the answer. So we need you
to spend this summer building a plan. You are the
Jedies we have been waiting for. We need you to
take this mission on. There may never be an opportunity
like this one again in your lifetime. And it's okay
(28:50):
to feel scared. This is a hard time, but I
promise you have been given a gift now, right now,
it's your time to run the world. Here the keys
and don't look back. And one more thing, May the
Force be with you. That's it for this week's Math
and Magic. The speeches I drew from barely skimmed the service.
(29:13):
From General Stanley but Crystal to Katie Coury, Ryan Seacrest
to Hillary Clinton, Halsey to Bill and Melinda Gates. We've
got fifty plus inspiring commencement speeches waiting for you on
the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast.
Go check them out. That's commencement speeches for the class
of Until next time, I'm Bob Pittman and thanks for listening.
(29:39):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio.
The show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to
Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling are wonderful talent, which
is no small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research bill plaques,
and Michael Asar for their recording help. Our editor, Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gayl ra Well, Eric Angel, Noel Mango
(30:02):
and everyone who helped bring this show to your ears.
Until next time, H
Host
Bob Pittman
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