Kai Ryssdal

For someone who spends most of his days in front of a microphone, whose voice on the radio is the soundtrack to five million people’s afternoon and whose line – “But first, lets do the numbers” – resonates with much of America, a keynote address at Emory’s Founders Week is probably a walk in the park.

Kai Ryssdal’s (’85C) seamless, comedic and heavily anecdotal Goodrich C. White Lecture on Tuesday evening made it seem as such.

Ryssdal – the host of National Public Radio’s “Marketplace” and an alumnus of Emory College – presented the topic “Repeat After Me: The Dow Jones Is Not the Economy – and Vice Versa” to a full hall in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.

“I’m assuming that you are all Marketplace listeners, right?” the Navy and U.S. Foreign Service veteran asked, as his audience laughed along. “If not, the exit is right over there.”

Ryssdal journeyed through prominent moments in his biography with specific details of his career, including the first time he anchored and all the pages of his script fell off his desk while he was live on air.

Throughout the stories, there was one underlying point Ryssdal wanted to drive home.

With no journalism background and a history degree from Emory, Ryssdal said “none of [his career] would have happened without the four years [he] spent at this institution.”

“[It was] the people, the experiences, the realization – and I apologize to those in the audience who are [academics] – that you are not in college to get A’s. You’re just not,” he emphasized.

“You’re here to find the time, the space to have a passion and interest for the thing that will drive you as you go on.”

Ryssdal emphasized the same message at a journalism class earlier in the day: Ryssdal’s liberal arts education allowed him to learn a new trade and enter the public radio world in his 30s.

During the question-and-answer session after Ryssdal’s speech, he answered almost every question with a story, resembling Marketplace’s uncanny ability to engage average folk in otherwise dry reporting through the art of storytelling.

“If my mom is going to turn off the radio, we’ve failed,” he said.

Ryssdal’s lecture came after a long day of class visits, group discussions and interviews.

Although Ryssdal receives plenty of speaking invitations, Founder’s Week was one of the rare ones he accepted.

College senior Natalie Duggan, one of the students who attended a classroom discussion with the radio host, listened to Marketplace every day  on her commute over the summer.

As graduation looms and her future remains uncertain, Duggan said Ryssdal’s story resonated with her.

“I was glad to hear Ryssdal attribute so much of his success to the strong foundation provided by a liberal arts degree,” she wrote in an email to the Wheel. “He also encouraged us to always say yes to new opportunities, and not to rule anything out at this point.”

College senior Adam Braun said he was humbled by Ryssdal’s presence and insight.

“Hearing his personality through his voice in his lecture was an unexpected but outrageously hilarious surprise,” he wrote in an email to Wheel.

“My impression of Kai [Ryssdal] was that he was a student like any other Emory student who let hard moments happen but never let them be forgotten. All of his advice came from a personal place.”

– By Karishma Mehrotra

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The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.

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