WEBVTT - TechStuff Redux: The Secret Stanford Off-Campus Class for Tech’s Next Titans 0:00:11.410 --> 0:00:12.090 Hey, it's Oz here. 0:00:12.470 --> 0:00:14.290 Tech Stuff is taking a week off, but we'll be 0:00:14.350 --> 0:00:17.689 back on September 3rd with new episodes. In the meantime, 0:00:17.930 --> 0:00:19.890 I wanted to share an episode from earlier this year 0:00:20.410 --> 0:00:22.680 to celebrate the start of the school year. 0:00:23.100 --> 0:00:30.920 Hope you enjoy. Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Oz Foloshin. 0:00:31.700 --> 0:00:34.300 Listeners have probably noticed that on this show, we have 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:38.280 a deep fascination with the upcoming generation, striving to build, 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:42.150 and in many cases, own the future. What inspires this 0:00:42.330 --> 0:00:45.690 under-25 cohort to drop out of school, plug into the 0:00:45.729 --> 0:00:48.470 mainframe of AI, and attempt to be the next Zuck 0:00:48.590 --> 0:00:51.970 or Sam Altman? Today, we have someone who can take 0:00:52.050 --> 0:00:55.160 us deep into the world of young founders and the 0:00:55.170 --> 0:00:58.890 people who fund them, Theo Baker. As of this recording, 0:00:59.090 --> 0:01:02.470 Theo is still an undergrad at Stanford University. He spent 0:01:02.510 --> 0:01:05.150 much of his freshman year reporting on research fraud committed 0:01:05.190 --> 0:01:07.690 by the school's president, which led to him becoming the 0:01:07.730 --> 0:01:11.530 youngest ever recipient of the George Polk Award for Investigative Journalism. 0:01:12.130 --> 0:01:15.010 And now, just ahead of graduation, Theo is publishing a book, 0:01:15.650 --> 0:01:18.800 How to Rule the World, An Education in Power at 0:01:18.830 --> 0:01:22.679 Stanford University. The New York Times says, quote, in every age, 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:27.560 there is some place that epitomizes how power works. Baker's 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.260 Stanford is a strong candidate. Theo, welcome to Tech Stuff. 0:01:31.580 --> 0:01:33.520 Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. 0:01:34.020 --> 0:01:37.880 So congratulations on being about to graduate for surviving college, 0:01:38.530 --> 0:01:41.030 just about. I know there were some hairy moments, but 0:01:41.790 --> 0:01:42.830 why did you choose Stanford? 0:01:43.150 --> 0:01:45.790 Well, I've now, I guess, been in love with Stanford 0:01:45.830 --> 0:01:47.990 for the greater part of my life. I was seven 0:01:48.010 --> 0:01:51.310 years old when I first had my heart set on Stanford. 0:01:51.390 --> 0:01:54.370 And I remember, you know, just this image becoming embedded 0:01:54.430 --> 0:01:57.490 in my mind of these teenagers and and their Stanford 0:01:57.530 --> 0:02:00.860 T-shirts and their flip-flops lounging in the shade of a 0:02:00.890 --> 0:02:03.960 palm tree and leaning up against the self-driving car they 0:02:03.980 --> 0:02:07.060 had just helped to build. And I thought, this is 0:02:07.100 --> 0:02:09.660 the coolest place in the world, you know, that all 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:11.720 of the most brilliant people are doing, you know, are 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:13.020 making the future out here. 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.529 And that part of Stanford, you know, it exists. That 0:02:16.590 --> 0:02:16.989 is true. 0:02:17.190 --> 0:02:20.550 There's just another side that the school is less than 0:02:20.590 --> 0:02:21.350 willing to talk about. 0:02:21.570 --> 0:02:23.950 So when you were seven, this was like, what, 2010 0:02:23.950 --> 0:02:24.269 or so? 0:02:24.630 --> 0:02:26.660 This would have been 2012. 2012. 0:02:26.660 --> 0:02:30.950 And I mean, that was already when huge fortunes were 0:02:30.970 --> 0:02:32.570 being made in Silicon Valley, obviously. 0:02:32.889 --> 0:02:34.210 Huge companies had already gone public. 0:02:34.370 --> 0:02:38.329 Were you attracted to becoming a tech billionaire or more 0:02:38.350 --> 0:02:39.070 of an idealist? 0:02:39.090 --> 0:02:41.850 Or what was the motivation for you? 0:02:41.870 --> 0:02:44.520 I was never really into being a tech billionaire, but 0:02:44.540 --> 0:02:47.280 I definitely wanted to do something in tech. By the 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:48.940 time I got to high school, I was the kid 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.299 who was coding machine learning in my models at night 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:53.940 in my bedroom. And I thought that was a fun 0:02:53.980 --> 0:02:59.160 Friday night. which is very obviously nerdy. But there was 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.179 just something so cool about the future is being remade 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:06.300 at this institution, in this place where people are empowered 0:03:06.380 --> 0:03:09.960 to dream big and work on big problems. And that 0:03:09.980 --> 0:03:14.239 was definitely the ethos that I anticipated Stanford having. 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:17.500 And when did the scales fall from your eyes? I mean, 0:03:17.870 --> 0:03:20.429 talk about, or did they fully fall from your eyes? 0:03:20.870 --> 0:03:22.930 Where are you on the aspiration you had versus the 0:03:22.950 --> 0:03:24.510 reality of what you encountered at Stanford? 0:03:25.660 --> 0:03:28.060 Well, it didn't take very long at Stanford to realize 0:03:28.100 --> 0:03:30.740 that things didn't work the way that I thought that 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:34.380 they might. You know, there's this sort of Stanford inside Stanford, 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.500 I learned. You know, this sort of parallel reality for 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:40.279 those who have been tapped on the shoulder and identified 0:03:40.340 --> 0:03:43.280 as the next trillion dollar startup founders. And for them, 0:03:43.340 --> 0:03:46.410 there are yacht parties and slush funds and something called 0:03:46.450 --> 0:03:49.110 pre-idea funding, which still boggles my mind. 0:03:49.470 --> 0:03:50.410 Pre-idea funding. 0:03:50.450 --> 0:03:52.970 So before you even have the glimmer of an idea 0:03:53.010 --> 0:03:54.890 of what you're going to do for a company, you know, 0:03:54.950 --> 0:03:56.990 venture capitals will reach out if you are one of 0:03:57.030 --> 0:04:00.330 these special few and offer you hundreds of thousands of dollars, 0:04:00.410 --> 0:04:03.180 more than a million dollars sometimes, just because they're trying 0:04:03.190 --> 0:04:05.780 to network with the next generation of talent and they 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.500 will go to some extraordinary lengths to do so. 0:04:08.700 --> 0:04:12.040 Now, I remember in the Bush-Kerry election, you know, there 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:15.150 was the the revelation that both men were former members 0:04:15.210 --> 0:04:18.550 of the Skull and Bones Secret Society at Yale, right? 0:04:18.589 --> 0:04:21.570 And this was like the big, big national news. So 0:04:21.610 --> 0:04:24.610 I guess these elite institutions have always had like clubs 0:04:24.670 --> 0:04:28.729 and insider groups and insider groups who continue to exert 0:04:28.770 --> 0:04:31.570 influence and help each other, old boys network, whatever you 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:34.900 want to call it, long after graduating college. But is 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:38.180 there something different, A, at Stanford and B, in your 0:04:38.220 --> 0:04:41.560 generation because of the moment in technology? 0:04:42.350 --> 0:04:44.810 You know, people are well aware of the privileges and 0:04:44.830 --> 0:04:47.830 the excesses of the Ivy League and the pipeline that 0:04:47.860 --> 0:04:52.040 has historically existed between those, you know, prestigious institutions and 0:04:52.460 --> 0:04:53.539 Wall Street and Washington. 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:57.260 Stanford and Silicon Valley are just so much more entangled. 0:04:57.900 --> 0:04:58.020 Right. 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.220 If you just take the cumulative value. 0:04:59.940 --> 0:05:02.860 Of the companies that have offices on the Stanford campus, 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.100 it's somewhere north of six trillion dollars. You know, that 0:05:06.140 --> 0:05:08.730 this is a place that that literally its own venture 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.790 capital fund. The school has its own VC fund to 0:05:11.910 --> 0:05:13.370 seed students as new companies. 0:05:14.050 --> 0:05:14.190 Right. 0:05:14.230 --> 0:05:17.089 And so it's just, you know, Silicon Valley couldn't exist 0:05:17.130 --> 0:05:19.700 without Stanford. It was created at the Stanford Research Park. 0:05:20.339 --> 0:05:22.220 They grew out of this university. You know, the early 0:05:22.260 --> 0:05:26.200 tech giant Sun Microsystems was literally named for Stanford University Network. 0:05:26.700 --> 0:05:26.900 Right. 0:05:26.940 --> 0:05:27.400 I didn't know that. 0:05:28.290 --> 0:05:31.130 And so, you know, the book is subtitled An Education 0:05:31.180 --> 0:05:34.680 in Power, right? That power operates in similar ways, you know, 0:05:34.740 --> 0:05:35.260 wherever it. 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:35.979 Exists, I guess. 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:38.599 But this is the hub of power at the moment 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.920 that Silicon Valley, you know, controls the technology that controls 0:05:41.980 --> 0:05:45.340 our lives. And these kids are being groomed, you know, 0:05:45.380 --> 0:05:49.110 to inherit their rightful place among the ruling elite. And 0:05:49.130 --> 0:05:51.890 so you mentioned Skull and Bones, the equivalent to Skull 0:05:51.910 --> 0:05:53.810 and Bones, I guess, what I think of as sort 0:05:53.830 --> 0:05:55.570 of a Skull and Bones for the aspiring tech elite 0:05:55.990 --> 0:05:58.510 is where this book gets its title. the secret class 0:05:58.570 --> 0:06:00.630 at Stanford called How to Rule the World. 0:06:00.980 --> 0:06:02.510 It's literally called How to Rule the World. 0:06:02.940 --> 0:06:04.540 It's literally called How to Rule the World. 0:06:04.580 --> 0:06:08.299 The Silicon Valley CEO teaches 12 Stanford students a year 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.060 the secrets to becoming the billionaires they aspire to be. 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.380 There's this whole cloak and dagger admissions process. And the 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:16.560 end result is that people are taught how to, quote, 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:20.500 extract value from others. That is the central lesson here. 0:06:21.190 --> 0:06:23.230 And that seems to be what Silicon Valley is teaching 0:06:23.270 --> 0:06:25.370 a lot of people at the moment, extracting value. 0:06:25.910 --> 0:06:28.550 That's very different from the images. 0:06:28.250 --> 0:06:31.970 Of Stanford of people in flip-flops building motorized couches and 0:06:32.150 --> 0:06:34.930 all the kind of things I imagine captured your imagination 0:06:34.970 --> 0:06:37.770 as a seven-year-old. And what was, when you arrived on campus, 0:06:37.790 --> 0:06:40.349 your first days, your first weeks, what was the split 0:06:40.430 --> 0:06:42.620 in the student base between those who were there to 0:06:43.060 --> 0:06:44.780 learn how to rule the world and those who were 0:06:44.820 --> 0:06:47.900 there to express their creative dreams through technology? 0:06:48.339 --> 0:06:49.140 Yeah, yeah. 0:06:49.339 --> 0:06:53.159 Well, the sort of Stanford inside Stanford for those chosen 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:58.360 few is necessarily different small and cloistered and kept, you know, 0:06:58.420 --> 0:07:01.669 obscured from, from everyone else, even at this institution. Like 0:07:01.730 --> 0:07:04.549 most people who go to Stanford go to a very good, 0:07:04.630 --> 0:07:07.750 but you know, normal quote unquote, normal college where there 0:07:07.770 --> 0:07:10.550 are lots of opportunities and you study for your exams 0:07:10.590 --> 0:07:12.090 and you go to coffee shops and you fall in 0:07:12.130 --> 0:07:14.430 love and you, you know, try to get an internship. 0:07:15.070 --> 0:07:17.670 And then the Stanford inside Stanford is sort of like 0:07:18.450 --> 0:07:22.640 the supercharged manifestation of the attitude that Stanford has been 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.120 inculcating for the last several decades. This is an institution 0:07:26.140 --> 0:07:29.160 with a guy who's known by the moniker Professor Billionaire 0:07:29.180 --> 0:07:32.360 because he made $ 20 billion by investing in his students' companies. 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:35.110 The smartest kids in the world, they're not so creative 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:37.530 with the names, Professor Billionaire and How to Rule the World. 0:07:37.590 --> 0:07:39.850 I guess it's good to have the clue and the name, 0:07:39.870 --> 0:07:41.030 but these seem a little on the nose. 0:07:42.510 --> 0:07:44.030 It is a little on the nose, but there's a 0:07:44.070 --> 0:07:45.570 lot of stuff that's on the nose here. 0:07:45.590 --> 0:07:49.450 I mean, this place has a very funny relationship to irony. 0:07:49.500 --> 0:07:49.880 I remember. 0:07:53.390 --> 0:07:55.390 There's just one interaction that has stuck with me. 0:07:55.410 --> 0:07:58.900 I'm meeting this woman for the first time at this 0:07:58.940 --> 0:08:03.400 like secret society, you know, and it's this totally bizarre scene. 0:08:03.980 --> 0:08:07.360 And she's telling me, she spends her very first interaction 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:11.510 complaining about living on a private island. She says, living 0:08:11.550 --> 0:08:14.610 on a private island is so difficult. And here's the 0:08:14.650 --> 0:08:17.290 reason she gets. She says, well, this is a direct quote. 0:08:17.490 --> 0:08:19.830 We were rolling around in bed making love one day 0:08:19.850 --> 0:08:23.280 and I realized I wanted French toast. And she couldn't 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.680 get French toast on the private island. And why did 0:08:26.700 --> 0:08:29.760 they stay, she said? Well, it's a tax dodge. I mean, 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.580 this place has a very, there's something of an irony 0:08:32.620 --> 0:08:37.700 freeze that is quite remarkable. That once you're in, you know, 0:08:37.740 --> 0:08:40.660 the sort of inner circle, people feel completely empowered to 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.590 say whatever it is they want to say. And also 0:08:43.620 --> 0:08:48.870 to admit to a large amount of very casually expressed wrongdoings. 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:51.460 I want to ask you about that. 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:53.359 And I want to ask about going to Stanford at 0:08:53.420 --> 0:08:56.420 a time when Sam Bankman Freed was in the midst 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.179 of his house arrest and also when Chachi Putee was 0:08:59.220 --> 0:09:01.410 being released. I mean, a lot of interesting stuff happening 0:09:01.429 --> 0:09:03.650 at the same time. Before we get there, though, I 0:09:03.730 --> 0:09:06.950 actually spent a year doing study abroad at Yale when 0:09:07.010 --> 0:09:09.890 I was 20, I think, and wrote for the Yale 0:09:09.910 --> 0:09:13.179 Daily News. I didn't win a Polk Award, unfortunately, or 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:16.840 get the university president dismissed. But nonetheless, it was a 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:19.310 satisfying experience. One of the things I was very struck 0:09:19.330 --> 0:09:22.780 by was the secret societies at Yale, because they were 0:09:22.820 --> 0:09:25.559 almost the opposite of secret. They were called tombs, like 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:27.320 Skull and Bones had a tomb, and there were these 0:09:27.380 --> 0:09:32.809 enormous buildings that were totally impossible to miss dotted throughout 0:09:32.850 --> 0:09:34.829 the campus. There were probably 12 or 14 of them, 0:09:35.190 --> 0:09:39.650 which had no windows. It was this strange, almost perverse 0:09:39.690 --> 0:09:42.340 psychological phenomenon, which was like, look at me. 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:46.199 But don't look within me. But it's like, if it 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:47.760 was truly secret, it wouldn't be fun. 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:49.800 The fun, the thrill was the fact it was like 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:54.030 ostentatiously hiding in plain sight. So I'm curious, like where 0:09:54.050 --> 0:09:57.689 does the, how to rule the world club fit into 0:09:57.730 --> 0:10:01.079 the sort of, is it like a true desire to 0:10:01.100 --> 0:10:03.240 be secret or a desire to be known for secrecy? 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.429 No, I mean, this was genuinely secret, that when I 0:10:07.470 --> 0:10:10.110 arrived on campus, even knowing that it existed was something 0:10:10.130 --> 0:10:13.229 of a status signifier among the most insider of the 0:10:13.309 --> 0:10:16.640 insider group. You were in the sort of delicious phrase 0:10:16.660 --> 0:10:19.800 of someone there, quote unquote, rule adjacent, just to know 0:10:19.860 --> 0:10:24.559 that it existed. I mean, I guess you can understand why. 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:28.250 It is a sort of amazing thing that this exists, right? 0:10:28.290 --> 0:10:31.820 That you know, these students, you know, in their own words, 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:34.640 they think it's something of a scam, right? That this 0:10:34.700 --> 0:10:37.540 guy doesn't actually know how to rule the world. What 0:10:37.590 --> 0:10:40.890 he's doing is networking with teenagers that he thinks will 0:10:40.910 --> 0:10:43.569 be useful to him in the future. Only by creating 0:10:43.590 --> 0:10:46.530 this class, he has this sort of brilliant way of 0:10:46.590 --> 0:10:49.990 making them come to him because he's positioning himself as 0:10:50.030 --> 0:10:53.830 this sort of, you know, like mysterious figure who possesses secrets. 0:10:53.850 --> 0:10:55.450 Like a guru. Yes, exactly. 0:10:55.500 --> 0:10:57.310 And some of these kids, look, the kids who are 0:10:57.330 --> 0:11:00.330 in the class are genuinely very smart and high achieving. And, 0:11:00.650 --> 0:11:02.870 you know, some of them are already well known. One 0:11:02.890 --> 0:11:04.589 of them is Phoebe Gates, who is the daughter of 0:11:04.630 --> 0:11:07.689 Bill and Melinda Gates, which I thought was an interesting detail, 0:11:08.630 --> 0:11:11.350 you know, who has gone on to create her own startup. 0:11:11.870 --> 0:11:14.709 And it's, you know, I think it's sort of the 0:11:14.850 --> 0:11:19.520 ultimate manifestation of this no boundaries relationship that Stanford has 0:11:19.620 --> 0:11:24.370 very intentionally cultivated. you know, that Stanford has made this 0:11:24.390 --> 0:11:27.610 sort of Faustian bargain with Silicon Valley that has enabled 0:11:27.690 --> 0:11:29.430 its meteoric. 0:11:28.790 --> 0:11:29.830 Ascent, right? 0:11:29.850 --> 0:11:32.240 Like no other institution of higher education in the last 0:11:32.250 --> 0:11:35.240 few decades and has also allowed for something that's corruption. 0:11:35.860 --> 0:11:40.140 So the institution knows that this character who's called Justin 0:11:40.179 --> 0:11:42.800 in the book is coming to campus, creating his own 0:11:42.940 --> 0:11:45.980 parallel class and connecting with all these students. I mean, 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:48.809 are they turning a blind eye? Are they actively aware 0:11:48.830 --> 0:11:51.370 of it? I would think if I was a college administrator... 0:11:51.390 --> 0:11:54.070 I might be a little concerned if somebody was trying 0:11:54.090 --> 0:11:59.459 to sort of create some cult-like sort of proxy organization 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:02.160 in recruiting my students. 0:12:02.420 --> 0:12:05.400 No, I mean, it's fascinating, right, just how much selling 0:12:05.540 --> 0:12:08.140 access to students has become the business model. You know, 0:12:08.179 --> 0:12:10.670 there are venture capitalists who teach classes at Stanford just 0:12:10.690 --> 0:12:13.170 so they can have access to students, right? That's actually 0:12:13.570 --> 0:12:17.420 fairly frequently a thing that happens. you know, there's this whole, 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.459 this thing that some students call the Coupa circuit, right? 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.340 These investors who literally spend all day, seemingly every day 0:12:24.820 --> 0:12:28.450 at the small little Coupa cafe, this outdoor cafe on campus, 0:12:28.710 --> 0:12:32.589 where they are literally from dawn till dusk, you know, 0:12:32.730 --> 0:12:35.550 networking with teenagers and seeming to spend more time with 0:12:35.590 --> 0:12:36.630 them than their own families. 0:12:36.990 --> 0:12:38.349 These venture capital. 0:12:37.990 --> 0:12:41.530 Firms employ talent scouts, many of whom are literally Stanford 0:12:41.590 --> 0:12:44.750 upperclassmen to identify freshmen the second they step on campus. 0:12:45.330 --> 0:12:48.050 And once you're in the Stanford inside Stanford, everyone is 0:12:48.090 --> 0:12:50.950 texting the same handful of billionaires for advice or. 0:12:50.870 --> 0:12:54.600 Going to meet them on the weekends. It's profoundly odd. 0:12:54.940 --> 0:12:58.540 But not only is it this sort of weird ecosystem, 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.320 that's one part of it, but it's that the incentive structures, 0:13:02.980 --> 0:13:06.920 the way that they are set up, encourage and enable 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:11.920 deceit that the logical end result too many times is 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:15.160 the sort of cut corners mentality that breeds the larger 0:13:15.220 --> 0:13:17.990 frauds like Sam Bateman Freed or Elizabeth Holmes. 0:13:19.730 --> 0:13:22.670 You mentioned this phrase, the Cooper Circuit. You have a 0:13:22.690 --> 0:13:26.130 kind of glossary in the front of your book of terms. 0:13:26.170 --> 0:13:31.689 That's one of them. You've also got builders, entrepreneurs, and NGMI's. 0:13:31.730 --> 0:13:33.270 Can you talk about those three cohorts? 0:13:34.650 --> 0:13:37.270 Yeah, well, in the words of one of the investors 0:13:37.309 --> 0:13:39.810 I was talking to in the book, his job, he says, 0:13:39.970 --> 0:13:42.490 is to separate out the quote-unquote. 0:13:42.030 --> 0:13:43.949 Entrepreneurs from the quote-unquote builders. 0:13:44.429 --> 0:13:49.250 That people come to Stanford now understanding this idealized, mythologized 0:13:49.290 --> 0:13:52.130 version of it, believing that they can be the next 0:13:52.250 --> 0:13:56.099 billion-dollar dropouts. And the job of the investors is to 0:13:56.179 --> 0:13:58.260 figure out, are you doing it just because you want 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.260 to be rich and you want all the associated perks, 0:14:00.340 --> 0:14:02.699 or are you one of those pure and sort of 0:14:02.780 --> 0:14:05.690 fetishized builders who are doing it just for the sake 0:14:05.730 --> 0:14:09.290 of it. The NGMI's, on the other hand, are the 0:14:09.370 --> 0:14:11.569 not going to make it, those who don't have the hustle. 0:14:11.590 --> 0:14:13.110 They're even worse than entrepreneurs. 0:14:14.170 --> 0:14:14.569 Somehow. 0:14:14.590 --> 0:14:15.969 Not going to make it. I mean, that's a pretty 0:14:15.990 --> 0:14:17.429 dehumanizing term, by the way. 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.520 Oh, completely. And this is another one, right? Technical, right? 0:14:21.620 --> 0:14:25.000 Technical or non-technical, that is a judgment on your value 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:28.360 as a person. Are you technical or are you non-technical? 0:14:28.380 --> 0:14:32.370 Your entire worth can be summarized you know, very, very succinctly. 0:14:32.890 --> 0:14:35.400 And one of the reasons I did the glossary of terms, one, 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:37.700 I just find it fun. It's sort of like, you know, 0:14:37.820 --> 0:14:42.060 cultural anthropology embedded here in this fun ecosystem. But the 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.300 whole book, right, is about self-presentation. That if you learn 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:47.370 how to say the right words and you learn how 0:14:47.380 --> 0:14:51.830 to exist in this closed off ecosystem, the rewards are fabulous. 0:14:52.370 --> 0:14:54.210 And so I wanted to sort of expose people to 0:14:54.250 --> 0:14:57.250 some of the lingo and see that they've created this 0:14:57.370 --> 0:15:00.360 very sort of closed off world in which everyone says 0:15:00.380 --> 0:15:02.660 the same things to each other back and forth. 0:15:02.980 --> 0:15:05.580 I mean, the New York Times book review said, in 0:15:05.660 --> 0:15:08.440 coming of age as a young man, he, i.e. you, Theo, 0:15:08.820 --> 0:15:11.720 travels to the heart of a dehumanizing age, which I 0:15:11.740 --> 0:15:14.870 thought was a good quote. But there's also, I mean, 0:15:14.930 --> 0:15:17.470 there's something interesting here, which is like, there is a 0:15:17.570 --> 0:15:21.930 Bildungsroman quality to your book, like a Pilgrim's Progress, right? 0:15:21.970 --> 0:15:24.110 Like you go there with one set of ideals, you 0:15:24.150 --> 0:15:28.380 experience all of these things, you almost die, you expose corruption, 0:15:28.460 --> 0:15:30.110 and then you get to the end But the end 0:15:30.150 --> 0:15:33.070 is kind of the beginning because you haven't even graduated yet. 0:15:33.430 --> 0:15:36.930 But you're a sort of observer participant and you can't 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:40.260 help presumably be swept up by this culture that you're 0:15:40.300 --> 0:15:42.540 part of at the same time as you're critiquing it. 0:15:42.940 --> 0:15:46.780 Talk about what has been the challenge personally to both 0:15:46.820 --> 0:15:48.860 be part of this world and exposing it. 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:49.560 Yeah. 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:52.480 This book takes place over the course of freshman year. 0:15:53.170 --> 0:15:55.230 And freshman year in college, I think, is a formative 0:15:55.250 --> 0:15:57.820 time for anyone, right? One thing I really wanted to 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:01.990 embrace with this book is the coexistence of very normal, 0:16:02.070 --> 0:16:08.270 banal things with utterly absurd context. The guy who, 30 0:16:08.270 --> 0:16:11.150 minutes after I met him, is offering to get me 0:16:11.210 --> 0:16:13.830 drugs because he's like, oh, well, you should try these drugs. 0:16:14.410 --> 0:16:16.120 And I look him up later and he's already raised 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:19.580 $ 20 million for a software company. It's like normal college 0:16:19.620 --> 0:16:23.220 things with very abnormal context. And so, yeah, I mean, 0:16:23.260 --> 0:16:26.479 I have over the course of freshman year, I come 0:16:26.540 --> 0:16:28.360 in thinking I'm a techie and. 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:29.880 I still love technology, but. 0:16:30.490 --> 0:16:33.350 I very much got swept up into journalism and discovered 0:16:33.410 --> 0:16:36.940 that that was something that I, I is so powerful 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.000 and special to me as to like my own positioning. 0:16:40.140 --> 0:16:42.260 You're right. That, that like I'm here in the mix 0:16:42.300 --> 0:16:43.300 and I'm seeing this too. 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:45.660 And, and, and I'm trying to show what the seduction 0:16:45.710 --> 0:16:48.040 looks like because I want people to understand that this, 0:16:48.210 --> 0:16:51.340 this doesn't work unless people are drawn into it. You know, I, 0:16:51.570 --> 0:16:54.490 I never got like much further than kid with potential, right? 0:16:54.510 --> 0:16:56.710 Like I was just close enough to see, uh, but 0:16:56.750 --> 0:16:59.770 I obviously like I never took venture capital money or, or, um, 0:16:59.990 --> 0:17:01.450 I never made any money off of this. 0:17:01.510 --> 0:17:03.810 Like I was just close enough to see it exist. 0:17:03.850 --> 0:17:04.270 Not yet. 0:17:04.369 --> 0:17:08.290 I mean, I think I've sort of made my choice 0:17:08.310 --> 0:17:11.030 with journalism at this point. But what I hope that 0:17:11.150 --> 0:17:14.490 this book is able to show is what this looks 0:17:14.530 --> 0:17:17.869 like at every stage, right? In the fight for accountability 0:17:18.470 --> 0:17:20.580 with the president and these papers that had not been 0:17:20.619 --> 0:17:24.659 scrutinized for years and the sort of extraordinary apparatus of 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.720 power protecting itself that I come up against, as well 0:17:27.780 --> 0:17:31.600 as these bright-eyed freshman wannabes that I arrived with who 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.669 are shown that the way to play the game in 0:17:34.690 --> 0:17:39.130 their own words, the way to get ahead is appearance 0:17:39.230 --> 0:17:43.169 at all costs, is cutting corners because winning is the 0:17:43.250 --> 0:17:45.429 only thing that matters. Yeah. 0:17:45.450 --> 0:17:49.690 I mean, let's talk about your journey to being a journalist. 0:17:49.750 --> 0:17:52.689 Both of your parents are famous journalists. I used to 0:17:53.190 --> 0:17:55.780 have quite a lot of contact with your father, Peter Baker, 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:59.580 back in the day when I was a television news producer. 0:17:59.940 --> 0:18:04.020 But like most children of journalists, you had the very 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.220 wise reaction perhaps of not wanting to be a journalist. 0:18:07.940 --> 0:18:10.830 Uh, no, so yeah, I mean, I, I really never 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:12.790 wanted to be a journalist, uh, which is part of 0:18:12.830 --> 0:18:15.310 why all of this has been so strange. I was like, 0:18:15.369 --> 0:18:17.189 I'm going to go 3000 miles away from home. I'm 0:18:17.210 --> 0:18:20.290 going to study computer science, do the exact opposite. But 0:18:20.790 --> 0:18:25.359 you know, my, my maternal grandfather, my Gramps, um, he 0:18:25.380 --> 0:18:29.280 and I were very close and he passed away, um, 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:33.060 just a few weeks before I started at Stanford. And 0:18:33.980 --> 0:18:37.460 he wasn't a journalist by profession, but dispositionally, I think 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.500 he was. And I've never in my entire life heard 0:18:40.540 --> 0:18:43.220 someone talk more about a college newspaper than he did. 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:45.669 He used to sit me down on his knee and 0:18:45.830 --> 0:18:48.970 tell me tales of his own campus newsroom. So I 0:18:49.010 --> 0:18:50.990 showed up and I thought this would be something I 0:18:51.050 --> 0:18:55.570 did to feel connected to my grandfather. And things spiraled 0:18:55.590 --> 0:18:56.540 pretty quickly, I guess. 0:18:58.400 --> 0:18:59.620 Emotional talk about your grandfather. 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:03.020 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing, that this 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:09.500 year was, this was, like all freshman years, many things, 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:12.510 you know. Both of my grandfathers passed away that year, 0:19:12.660 --> 0:19:15.929 as did a very close family friend. You know, the 0:19:16.050 --> 0:19:21.230 ordinary rhythms of freshman life, you know, losing a long-distance relationship, 0:19:21.290 --> 0:19:24.850 going through the travails of Weider courses, you know, that 0:19:24.930 --> 0:19:28.129 all of these things were coexisting with the investigation that 0:19:28.150 --> 0:19:31.159 would see the president of Stanford, you know, sending his 0:19:31.180 --> 0:19:33.440 high-powered attorneys after us and whatnot. 0:19:34.220 --> 0:19:40.189 It's destabilizing and stressful enough to go to college and 0:19:40.250 --> 0:19:43.270 be in your first year as an undergrad, a freshman. 0:19:45.010 --> 0:19:50.350 Doing that, doing student journalism that brings down the president 0:19:50.369 --> 0:19:54.810 of the college, winning a Polk Award, and essentially calling 0:19:54.910 --> 0:19:59.050 out the culture that all of your peers are striving towards. 0:19:59.190 --> 0:20:01.990 I mean, that's tremendous psychological pressure. 0:20:02.010 --> 0:20:06.810 Look, it was at many times an uncomfortable year, and 0:20:07.050 --> 0:20:11.510 I'm not, interested in stories where the edges are sanded off. 0:20:12.230 --> 0:20:14.830 And so you will definitely see in the book that 0:20:14.850 --> 0:20:20.090 there are places where, you know, I'm clearly making very imperfect. 0:20:19.670 --> 0:20:22.969 Decisions about my personal life. And, you know, I. 0:20:23.010 --> 0:20:26.390 Am this blundering 17 and 18 year old kid, you know, 0:20:26.470 --> 0:20:28.740 at the same time as I'm also doing this reporting 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:30.160 and everything else is happening. 0:20:30.180 --> 0:20:33.020