The Odd Podcast with Joe Parisi
Jun 9, 2026 · 27 min · 12 segments
What if the most memorable graduation speech of all time was never actually a graduation speech? On this episode of *The Odd Podcast with Joe Parisi*, we take a deep dive into "Everybody's Free (To…
You would get some funny little thing, like a meme, sent to you via email, and you would see that your mom or your grandma or your coworker sent it to you and 50 other people.
Okay? So it's the late 1990s, and this speech is getting sent around all over the world through chain emails.
People are reading it and so touched by it, and they're sharing it with all their friends via email.
And the speech is being credited to the American writer and humorist Kurt Vonnegut, and they are specifically saying this is from a commencement address that Kurt Vonnegut just gave to the graduating class of 1997 at MIT.
This sounds totally feasible, right? The only problem is Kurt Vonnegut did not give the commencement address at MIT in 1997.
He gave tons of commencement addresses over the course of his life, but he did not give one in 1997 at MIT.
You would get some funny little thing, like a meme, sent to you via email, and you would see that your mom or your grandma or your coworker sent it to you and 50 other people.
Okay? So it's the late 1990s, and this speech is getting sent around all over the world through chain emails.
People are reading it and so touched by it, and they're sharing it with all their friends via email.
And the speech is being credited to the American writer and humorist Kurt Vonnegut, and they are specifically saying this is from a commencement address that Kurt Vonnegut just gave to the graduating class of 1997 at MIT.
This sounds totally feasible, right? The only problem is Kurt Vonnegut did not give the commencement address at MIT in 1997.
He gave tons of commencement addresses over the course of his life, but he did not give one in 1997 at MIT.
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