Tim Minchin University of Western Australia Address (2013)

Speaking at the University of Western Australia in 2013, Australian composer and performer Tim Minchin offered a delightfully irreverent yet deeply philosophical counterpoint to graduation pieties. Minchin packages his counsel into nine sharp, practical principles, warning against obsessive grand plans in favor of being passionately 'micro-ambitious' about whatever task sits before you. He urges listeners to be ruthless with their own opinions, champion teachers, treat those with less authority with unswerving dignity, and define themselves by what they love rather than what they despise. It is an uncommonly lucid defense of humanist ethics, scientific curiosity, and intellectual humility, delivered with effortless humor.