Dear graduates, congrats on making it here.

But I have some tough news. Your future? It's not guaranteed. I know that's not the usual

go chase your dreams spiel that you usually hear at a commencement. But I'm not here to fluff

reality. I'm here to give it to you straight.

And the straight truth involves clay pots. Clay pots. And what someone found inside of those clay pots?

Picture this. It's 1947, Judean desert near the Dead Sea, dusty spot called Kumran,

a bored goat herder, takes a rock and chucks it into a cave, expecting an echo. Instead, crack, pottery shatters. So he climbs in and he finds clay pots,

stuffed with linen-wrapped scrolls, and not just any scrolls, the oldest surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible from 300 BC.

We now call them the Dead Sea Scrolls. But think about this. For centuries, the Jewish people faced invasions and atrocities, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Nazis, you name it, scattered

worldwide, and what kept them going? Faith in their God and their texts. Then, in 1947,

right after the Holocaust, and just before Israel's rebirth, the scroll surface, proving their story wasn't myth.

All because someone, over 2,000 years ago, hid those pots in a cave.

That hits me hard.

History isn't just there.

It has to be kept. Physical stuff, scrolls, letters, objects. It grounds us in what's real. Take George Washington, crossing the Delaware.

It's a defining American moment, right? But imagine if some skeptic says, nah, never happened.

How do you push back?

Well, paintings, diaries, eyewitness accounts, stuff preserved from the time.

Here's the catch.

We assume history is safe.

I did, too, 20 years ago, but not anymore. It is under attack.

George Orwell nailed it in 1984. Who controls the past, controls the future. Look at the 1619 project.

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