You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend

our disbelief.

In 2008, JK Rowling was invited to speak at Harvard's graduation ceremony to his charmingly

self-deprecating, as usual.

Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have

endured.

At the thought of giving this commencement address, have made me lose weight.

Now, all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners, and convince myself

that I am at the world's largest griffin door reunion.

I've been watching a lot of interviews with JK Rowling lately, and I've just been so

impressed by how humble she is.

And when we all know her backstory, she was a single mother and welfare before she became

the most successful writer in the world.

But that day, she talked about a very humbling experience she had in her 20s, working at Amnesty

International in London.

This was right around the time she started imagining Harry Potter and started brainstorming

how the story would play out.

And working with Amnesty, influenced her thinking about Voldemort and his minions and what

kind of oppressive system they wanted to implement.

Every day I saw more evidence about the evil's humankind would inflict on their fellow

humans to gain or maintain power.

I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and

...