Vonnegut began by observing that the 'snapper' of a college education — what's saved for the very end — is the answer to what life is all about and what graduates should do with it. 'No responsible, truth-loving teacher can answer those questions in class,' he said. 'No respecter of evidence has ever found the least clue as to what life is all about.' Having disclaimed all certainty, he then offered his 'ancestral guess' — and it wasn't about career or achievement or even meaning. It was about loneliness. He told the story of the Loud family, subjects of a 1973 television documentary who had 'everything but a religion in which they could believe' and were 'dying before our eyes.' He told Sargent Shriver that 'the number one American killer wasn't cardio-vascular disease, but loneliness' and proposed the slogan 'Lonesome no more!' His prescription: return to extended families, because 'we thought we could do without tribes and clans. Well, we can't.'