Car Talk: Our Relationship with MIT
Glenn M: I would assume because of your interest in cars, that you would both be mechanical engineers, is that right?
Tom: Chemical engineer here.
Ray: I started off as a mechanical engineer and I quickly abandoned it. I could see myself designing windshield wiper linkages. In fact, I took an entire course designing windshield wiper linkages, and I decided that that wasn't for me. I ended up majoring in humanities and science. MIT has a fabulous humanities department.
Tom: Well, if you ever want to get out of MIT whole, you have to do something like that. Ray's got a T-shirt, and it says, MIT Class of '70. Scratched out. Class of '71, scratched out. Class of '72 …
Glenn M.: By the way, this is your 50th college reunion year, you know.
Tom: Yes, it is -
Glenn M.: - I just wanted to remind you. -
Tom: I'm going there today.
Glenn M.: Today? Congratulations. Fifty years.
(Applause)
Ray: Is Professor Tisza going to be there, the one who flunked you in that physics course?
Tom: I'll kill him if he's there!
Glenn M.: By the way, you gave the commencement address at MIT in '99?
Tom: Ohhh, yeah.
Glenn M.: How did that come about?
Ray: We were first on the list, actually.
Tom: No, not that list. They don't choose persons from that list.
Ray: It wasn't my idea. Tom decided it would be a nice thing if a couple of alums gave a commencement address. Basically, one of our staunchest listeners had been Charles Vest, who was then President of MIT. His was a real nice guy until he made this mistake. We basically goaded him into inviting us to give the commencement address.
Tom: On the air, every once in a while whenever he would announce who the new person was this year, we'd always say, "Well, what about us?"
Ray: Yeah, we're right here.
Tom: Who the hell is this Kofi Annan? Who knows him?
Ray: So we made this big deal:
“Look, you don't have to fly us in; we can walk over.
You don't have to put us up in a hotel; we're right here.”
We gave him all kinds of reasons. He wrote back a very funny letter and said, “Well, we would do this, and we would be happy to have you as commencement speakers, but you don't have a flag.”
Tom: Kofi Annan brought his own flag.
Ray: So we had come up with our own flag ...
Tom: ... of course.
Ray: On our flag, it said in Latin, Non impediti ratione cogitatonis which translates into our motto: "Not Encumbered by the Thought Process."
Tom: But, it was perfect Latin.
Ray: So, we showed up with our flag, and of course, we were allowed to give the address.
Tom: You can't skip over a very interesting part of the story. Before we did this, the march, everyone marches out to the Great Court and all this, and my brother is walking along next to … a guy.
Ray: Oh, I know who the guy was.
Tom: The guy’s name was Howard Johnson. He was the President of MIT at some point. So Howard turns around and says to my brother,
"Are you nervous?"
My brother says, "About what?"
He said, "Well, you're going to do the address, and people are going to hear you. You should be nervous."
My brother says, "Not yet."
The guy says, "How come you're not nervous? I'm always nervous before they do this."
My brother says, "You know, when you go to a graduation, I'll bet there isn't one person in a thousand who can remember who gave the graduation speech. Who the hell remembers who this guy is. They're probably talking about nonsensical, stupid, irrelevant things."
And the guy says, "Do you remember who spoke at your graduation?"
Tom says, "I have no idea."
Ray: And I said, "I'm sure whoever it was ...
Tom: ... was boring. Howard Johnson turns to him at says, "I gave the address." How perfect can that be?
Ray: Now, if ever there was a case of being sandbagged, that was it. And of course, I had to defend myself, "Hadah, hadah, hadah … how do you know you gave the commencement address? Maybe it wasn't my year. You were President for a bunch of years and maybe someone else gave it." He said, (serious tone) "Back then, only the President delivered the commencement address." I gave up. And I was nervous from that point on.
