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Chapter 1: What is the secret off-campus class at Stanford University?
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Chapter 2: How did Theo Baker's journey at Stanford begin?
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Chapter 3: What unique opportunities does Stanford offer to select students?
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the class 'How to Rule the World'?
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Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Chapter 5: What challenges did Theo face during his freshman year?
I'm Oz Voloshin. Listeners have probably noticed that on this show, we have a deep fascination with the upcoming generation, striving to build, and in many cases, own the future. What inspires this under 25 cohort to drop out of school, plug into the mainframe of AI, and attempt to be the next Zuck or Sam Altman?
Today, we have someone who can take us deep into the world of young founders and the people who fund them, Theo Baker. As of this recording, Theo is still an undergrad at Stanford University.
He spent much of his freshman year reporting on research fraud committed by the school's president, which led to him becoming the youngest ever recipient of the George Polk Award for Investigative Journalism. And now, just ahead of graduation, Theo is publishing a book, How to Rule the World, An Education in Power at Stanford University.
The New York Times says, quote, in every age, there is some place that epitomizes how power works. Baker's Stanford is a strong candidate. Theo, welcome to Tech Stuff.
Chapter 6: How does the culture at Stanford influence students' ambitions?
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
So congratulations on being about to graduate, for surviving college, just about. I know there were some hairy moments, but why did you choose Stanford?
Well, I've now, I guess, been in love with Stanford for the greater part of my life. I was seven years old when I first had my heart set on Stanford.
And I remember, you know, just this image becoming embedded in my mind of these teenagers and their Stanford t-shirts and their flip flops lounging in the shade of a palm tree and leaning up against the self-driving car they had just helped to build. And I thought, this is the coolest place in the world. All of the most brilliant people are making the future out here.
And that part of Stanford, it exists.
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Chapter 7: What role does secrecy play in Stanford's elite circles?
That is true. There's just another side that the school is less than willing to talk about.
So when you were seven, this was like, what, 2010 or so? This would have been 2012. 2012. And I mean, that was already when, you know, huge fortunes were being made in Silicon Valley, obviously. Huge companies already gone public. Like, were you attracted to becoming a tech billionaire or more of an idealist? Or what was the motivation for you?
really into being a tech billionaire, but I definitely wanted to do something in tech.
Chapter 8: What are the broader implications of Stanford's influence on Silicon Valley?
By the time I got to high school, I was the kid who was coding machine learning in my models at night in my bedroom, and I thought that was a fun Friday night, which is very obviously nerdy. But there was just something so cool about the future is being remade at this institution, in this place where people are empowered to dream big and work on big problems.
And that was definitely the ethos that I anticipated Stanford having.
And when did the scales fall from your eyes? I mean, talk about, or did they fully fall from your eyes? Where are you on the aspiration you had versus the reality of what you encountered at Stanford?
Well, it didn't take very long at Stanford to realize that things didn't work the way that I thought that they might. There's this sort of Stanford inside Stanford, I learned. This sort of parallel reality for those who have been tapped on the shoulder and identified as the next trillion dollar startup founders. And for them, there are yacht parties and slush funds and
and something called pre-idea funding, which still boggles my mind. Pre-idea funding.
So before you even have the glimmer of an idea of what you're going to do for a company, you know, venture capitals will reach out if you are one of these special few and offer you hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than a million dollars sometimes, just because they're trying to network with the next generation of talent and they will go to some extraordinary lengths to do so.
Now, I remember in the Bush-Kerry election, there was the revelation that both men were former members of the Skull and Bones Secret Society at Yale, right? And this was like the big, big national news. So I guess these elite institutions have always had like clubs and insider groups and
insider groups who continue to exert influence and help each other, old boys network, whatever you want to call it, long after graduating college. But is there something different, A, at Stanford and B, in your generation because of the moment in technology?
You know, people are well aware of the privileges and the excesses of the Ivy League and the pipeline that has historically existed between those, you know, prestigious institutions and Wall Street and Washington. Stanford and Silicon Valley are just so much more entangled. Right.
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