This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. As remarkable as it is that my guest Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize when she was 17. There are remarkable ways she's been living her life since then. Let's start with a famous part of her story. She was born in 1997 and grew up in a remote region of Pakistan-Swatt Valley near the Afghanistan border. In 2008, after the Taliban

invaded her town, terrorizing the people, they banned girls' education. She publicly spoke out for her

right and the right of all girls to go to school. As payback in 2012 when she was 15, she was shot in the head by a Taliban

gunman. She was flown to a hospital in England where she continues to live. Her recovery was

miraculous. It's when I read her recent memoir, finding my way, that I learned how the bullet

changed the course of her life, thrusting her into a new culture,

and changing her in ways that didn't quite fit her public image as an inspirational hero and

top student, and sometimes even challenged her own self-image. When she was admitted to Oxford

University, a dream come true, she wanted to live the life of a teenager and find time

to make friends, have fun, have adventures, including jumping from her dorm roof to the campus

bell tower. She defied some of her culture's traditions and her parents' expectations from how

she dressed to who she married. At the same time, she was experiencing PTSD and panic

attacks for the first time, recovering from her multiple surgeries and continuing to raise

money for the foundation she co-founded with her father to advocate and raise money for girls' education

in places where that is banned. All this took time from her college

studies, and she felt like a fraud, a symbol of female education who was barely passing some of

her classes. Another thing I learned from her book and from hearing her speak is that she's very

self-aware, introspective, and funny. I spoke with her last Tuesday evening in front of an audience at W. HYY,

where she was given this year's Lifelong Learning Award.

Malala, it is such an honor to have you here tonight.

I'm so excited to have the opportunity to talk with you.

It's so nice to be here.

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