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Fresh Air

Malala Yousafzai On Breaking Rules & Finding Her Way

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

šŸ—“ļø 21 October 2025

ā±ļø 49 minutes

šŸ§¾ļø Download transcript

Summary

After surviving theĀ Taliban's 2012 attemptedĀ assassination, activist Malala Yousafzai didn't back down. She continued to advocate for girls' education across the globe.Ā In 2014, Yousafzai became the youngest person to win a Nobel Prize, an honor that weighed on her when she went off to college. In Finding My Way, she writes about her life at Oxford and beyond. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about reliving childhood, PTSD, and her decision to get married.

Ā Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new Apple TV+ docuseries Mr. Scorsese.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org.

0:14.9

This is fresh air. I'm Tanya Mosley. College is often a time to figure out who we are. To fall in love for the first time, to experiment, to fail, to question what we believe. But for Malala Yusuf Sai, it was different. She spent her college years experiencing all of these things under scrutiny and 24-hour security. When she was 15, Malala survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban,

0:41.0

a gunshot to the head while riding home on a school bus. But long before that, she'd been standing

0:47.1

up to them, demanding the right for girls to go to school in her hometown of Mingora and Pakistan's

0:52.8

Swat Valley.

0:59.6

The Taliban had taken control, closing schools, banning women from public life, and brutally punishing anyone who resisted.

1:02.3

After the shooting, Malala's life changed overnight.

1:05.9

She became a symbol of resistance, praised, politicized, and picked apart.

1:13.1

While the world saw an unshakable young woman with a message, Malala was also a teenager, undergoing surgeries to reconstruct what was

1:19.3

destroyed by the Taliban, experiencing post-traumatic stress, and navigating others' expectations

1:25.6

of who she should be.

1:32.4

Her new memoir, Finding My Way, reveals the person beyond the symbol.

1:37.5

It's the story of a young Malala, learning the bounds of what it means to be a free woman,

1:42.4

trying on jeans for the first time, falling in love, failing exams,

1:48.1

and confronting the trauma of a shooting that for a long time she had no memory of.

1:57.3

Malala Yusuf Saai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her efforts to combat the suppression of children and advocate for their education.

2:02.4

She's written several books, including I am Malala and we are displaced,

2:10.0

true stories of refugee lives. The 2015 documentary, He Named Me Malala, chronicles her family's activism. Malala Yusuf Sae, welcome to fresh air. Thank you. This memoir, in a way, in many ways, picks up where your first

2:21.4

memoir left off. Just to like put ourselves in this place, I mean, such a dichotomy here

2:27.1

because, and how remarkable this is, because here you are entering college. I mean, you won the

2:32.3

Nobel Prize at 17. So it's an unbelievable honor that I know you take entering college. I mean, you won the Nobel Prize at 17. So it's an unbelievable

2:36.1

honor that I know you take great pride in, but it also comes, as you say, with this tremendous

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