Theo Baker Cracks Open Stanford’s Faustian Bargain With Silicon Valley

Summary

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Podcast Summary: “Theo Baker Cracks Open Stanford’s Faustian Bargain With Silicon Valley”

Podcast: On with Kara Swisher
Host: Kara Swisher
Guest: Theo Baker – journalist, Stanford senior, youngest-ever George Polk Award winner
Date: June 4, 2026
Episode Focus:
A candid, investigative conversation on power, ethics, and the cultural underbelly of Stanford University and its entanglement with Silicon Valley. Theo Baker discusses his George Polk-winning reporting that led to the resignation of Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, and broader themes from his new book How to Rule: An Education in Power at Stanford University.

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Main Theme & Background

Kara Swisher and Theo Baker explore Stanford University’s transformation from an elite academic institution to a “juggernaut” with immense influence over Silicon Valley and, by extension, the global tech industry. Baker details how Stanford’s tight relationship with wealthy tech oligarchs has bred excess, ethical lapses, and accountability crises, all amplified by a cultural obsession with image and perfection. The episode blends personal narrative, institutional critique, and high-impact investigative journalism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Theo Baker’s Personal Story

• Background:
  From a “techie kid” coding machine learning models in high school to Stanford undergrad envisioning a career in tech (04:50–06:45).
• Initial Attraction to Stanford:
  “I remember seeing this image of these teenagers...lounging in the shade of a palm tree, right up against the self-driving car they just helped to build. And I just thought this is the coolest place on earth...” — Baker (08:45)

2. Stanford’s Deep Ties with Silicon Valley

• Evolution:
  The university intentionally transitioned to an “alliance without boundaries” with the tech industry, commercializing campus life and research (07:17–08:23).
• Vast Influence:
  Stanford’s budget now exceeds that of many countries; its leadership sits on major tech boards (07:47–08:23).

3. The ‘Stanford Inside Stanford’ – Secret Elite Pipeline

• Secret Society:
  Baker exposes “How to Rule the World,” an invitation-only, uncredited class where select undergrads are groomed for tech power (10:45–12:06).
  • “You had to be, in the words...‘rule-adjacent’ just to know it existed.” — Baker (11:13)
• Talent Scouting:
  VCs overtly “mine” the Stanford student body, seeking the next unicorn founder before they have an idea: “It’s a little like recruiting basketball stars in seventh grade.” (13:17–14:09)

4. The Exploitation & Dark Side of the Pipeline

• Predation and Power:
  Baker recounts a surreal recruiting brunch with a unicorn CEO feeding his baby caviar, confessing to a contract with Gaddafi, and explaining:
  “My job is running a company, but my secret job is working with interesting people. And the truth is, anything can be monetized in Silicon Valley if you know how to scout it.” (15:20)
• Exploitation Layer:
  “It’s paradise for a talented teenager...but it’s also deeply exploitative in a way that incentivizes and encourages bad behavior.” — Baker (15:59–16:40)

5. Uncovering Scientific Misconduct: The Stanford President Investigation

• The Reporting:
  Baker describes discovering unaddressed evidence of falsified data in high-profile research led by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, leading to resignations and retractions (20:15–22:18).
• Institutional Evasion:
  He found repeated failures to correct the record and describes how the university responded with an “internal” investigation riddled with conflicts of interest and lack of transparency (22:48–24:15).
• Pushback & Intimidation:
  “Shortly after my 18th birthday, [their lawyer] began sending us letters accusing us of all of these things and denying even aspects of the story that seemed fairly cut and dried.” (27:18)
  Tessier-Lavigne never responded directly to Theo’s questions, instead hiring multiple PR and law firms to try to quash the reporting (26:06–26:36).
• Aftermath:
  Within months of resigning, Tessier-Lavigne raised the largest seed round in biotech history for a new startup, illustrating the resilience of powerful figures within the system (28:49–29:05).

6. The Culture of Perfection and Lack of Accountability

• Faustian Bargain Thesis:
  Stanford’s meteoric rise is attributed to a trade-off: perfection and wealth at the cost of pervasive ethical lapses and normalization of corporate interests (31:45–34:38).
• Institutional Response:
  “Mistakes were made.” Swisher and Baker discuss how the university routinely distances itself from fraudsters unless there’s direct financial impact.
• Faculty Misconduct Ignored:
  Baker tells how even well-known professors caught in ethical lapses are largely ignored by the university so long as their research brings in money (34:38–35:01).

7. Competing Ethical Paradigms at Stanford

• Value Extraction vs. Value Creation:
  Baker contrasts professors who teach to “extract value from people” with those who stress providing value (35:55–37:45).
  “We’ve lost the moral compass for what we invest into. [Stanford] has become an incubator with dorms.” — Steve Blank, Stanford professor (35:55)
• Normalizing Fakery:
  Baker shares examples of “playing the game”:
  “One of my friends ends up faking a launch demo and gets feted by all of Silicon Valley and put up in a mansion and being celebrated for technology she doesn’t have and didn’t create.” (37:45)

8. Technology, AI, & the New Student Reality

• Cheating & Incentives:
  ChatGPT’s debut catalyzed widespread academic dishonesty as students increasingly view education as merely a credential for wealth-oriented jobs (46:10–48:51).
• AI as Divider:
  While top talent can amass wealth rapidly (“all you have to do is put a wrap around ChatGPT and tell a VC you want some money...”), for most, AI is destructive and destabilizing (47:01–48:51).
• Stanford’s Computer Science enrollment fell for the first time in decades post-AI (47:01–47:56).

9. The Ethics Vacuum & Responsibility for Change

• Swisher’s Proposal:
  Kara once proposed ethics courses for tech students and was met with derision (45:00–45:40).
• Stanford’s Mythmaking:
  The cultural myth that anyone can become a billionaire encourages risky and sometimes unethical behavior (45:56).

10. Institutional Identity Crisis

• Universities as Hedge Funds, Startups, Hospitals:
  Baker notes universities’ competing roles (52:33–52:53), leading to a confused mission:
  “Is Stanford a place to get an education or a place to get rich?” (52:33)
• What’s Needed:
  “The answer starts with transparency...you can’t have a conversation about these things where it’s only just about how great things are up and to the right.” — Baker (52:38)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you become skilled enough at programming, you can translate the ideas you have into something working... Here was the way to create something that maybe then could solve a problem in my life.” — Theo Baker (05:59)
• “Stanford was once this regional institution... and then it becomes this institutional juggernaut... it still thinks of itself as this underdog.” — Theo Baker (08:06)
• “There’s this secret class, there are 12 students a year... it’s like a skull and bones for the aspiring tech elite.” — Theo Baker (11:13)
• “This is paradise for a talented teenager... but it’s also deeply exploitative in a way that incentivizes and encourages bad behavior.” — Theo Baker (15:59)
• “No reporting has ever indicated that Marc Tessier-Lavigne himself falsified data... the oversight thing is the main thing. That’s what the trustees end up faulting him for, mostly.” — Baker (24:42)
• “It was this incredibly stressful moment. I was very lucky that the Stanford Daily, we had been independent... and so there was a volunteer team of advisors and lawyers who helped...” — Baker (27:18)
• “Marc Tessier-Lavigne... ousted unanimously by his own board. This is not a voluntary resignation.” — Baker (27:18)
• “Stanford has made a Faustian bargain with Silicon Valley, one that has enabled its meteoric ascent and allowed for its corruption.” — Theo Baker (31:45)
• “At Stanford we have a culture of overclaiming the big results. We blow them up bigger than they would be elsewhere... and we sweep the bad stuff beneath the rug.” — Baker (37:52)
• “Why are kids coming here? They’re coming here because they can become billionaires... at least that’s the chosen image the university has put forward.” — Baker (45:56)
• “Is Stanford a place to get an education or a place to get rich?” — Baker (52:33)
• “You can’t have a conversation about these things where it’s only just about how great things are up and to the right.” — Baker (52:38)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Theo’s motivation and pivot from tech to journalism – 04:50–06:45
• Stanford’s intentional tech ties and transformation – 07:17–08:23
• Secret elite class and VC scouting – 10:45–14:09
• Student exploitation and recruitment stories – 15:06–16:40
• Baker’s investigation into Marc Tessier-Lavigne – 20:15–24:15
• Stanford’s conflicted and defensive response – 26:06–27:18
• Aftermath: ex-president quickly re-enters startup world – 28:49–29:05
• Stanford’s culture of perfection, lack of accountability – 31:45–34:38
• Normalizing fakery among students – 37:45–38:37
• Impact of AI and changing student incentives – 46:10–48:51
• Stanford’s institutional identity crisis – 52:33–52:53

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Expert Question & Baker’s Advice

Ryan Mack, NYT tech reporter & Stanford alum, asks: “Should a student still go to Stanford?” (41:14–44:22)

• Baker’s Answer: Stanford is still a world-class institution with great professors and opportunities, but the tech-centric “whirlpool” and normalization of unethical business practices mean students should enter with eyes wide open and a strong internal compass.
  • “If you love an institution, you want it to be better.” — Baker (44:46)

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Final Reflection

Baker and Swisher close by noting the parallel identity crises in journalism and academia, both struggling with the demands of new technology and shifting audience values. Baker expresses a commitment to accountability journalism as a lasting good, even as he acknowledges the “ticking time bomb” of young people tuning out from traditional news.

Kara Swisher’s closing advice:
“Focus on the reporting. That never goes away. That absolutely 100% cannot be displaced, it cannot be disrupted. And asking questions is the only way forward.” (57:12)

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For listeners (or non-listeners):
This episode is a masterclass in how cultural incentives, unchecked ambition, and financial interests converge at elite institutions, shaping—not always for the better—the next generation of tech power. Baker’s reporting and insights offer both salutary lessons and a warning: Perfection and progress don’t excuse ethical failure, and it’s up to both insiders and critics to hold powerful institutions to account.

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Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

I call it the mistakes were Made. Ah, well, Kara, I had a similar thing where someone I took down some idiot entrepreneur, and then when I was looking for money, I didn't take any venture money, but one of them took me to lunch and offered me money. And I said, I'd rather poke my hat with a dry stick than take money from you. But no.

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It's on.

[Kara Swisher]

Hi, everyone. From New York magazine and the Vox Media podcast network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Theo Baker, a journalist who's graduating from Stanford University next week and the youngest ever recipient of the George Polk Award, which he won for his investigative reporting at the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily. Over the course of his freshman year, Theo wrote a series of articles investigating the university's former president, Mark Tessier Levine, a wealthy and influential neuroscientist and biotech executive. By the summer, Tessier Levine resigned over allegations of research misconduct in his labs. Now Theo's written a book about his work and his college experience called how to Rule the An Education in Power at Stanford University. It probes the veneer of perfection at one of the most elite universities and uncovers the world of excess and absurd wealth that's intertwined with the powerful tech oligarchs of Silicon Valley. What bad could happen with that? A lot. I've been privy to watching that over the many years, and Theo really does encapsulate the real problems. It started sort of at the dawn of the Internet age. Silicon Valley has always been affiliated with Stanford, but it really got going in the 1990s, the early 2000s. I'm really interested in this topic and how these people got this way. And if you wonder why our current tech leadership is a little mutated in a way that's pretty ugly. You'll get a sense of what happened here. Our expert question today comes from Ryan Mack, a tech reporter for the New York Times and a Stanford University University alum. So stick around. Thanks again to Odoo for supporting this show. Odoo wants to be your ultimate all in one, fully integrated platform to handle everything. Seriously, everything. Inventory, CRM, accounting, hr, and much more. No more shopping around or settling for expensive services that can only handle a fraction of your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you try Odoo for [e-mail] that's o d o o.com.

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IT is on.

[Kara Swisher]

Theo, thank you for coming on on.

[Theo Baker]

Thank you for having me.

[Kara Swisher]

You need to tell the story beginning of when we met, how we met. I do know your parents. Not well, but I know of them and I've gone to parties and stuff in Washington with them. They're both well known Washington reporters. But tell me how you and I met.

[Theo Baker]

Well, I asked you for advice. I reached out to, you know, for help in thinking through this reporting challenge I was working on, which turned into the book that we're now here talking about. So thank you to you.

[Kara Swisher]

No, no, no. What stupid thing did I tell you? Did I tell you anything dumb or not?

[Theo Baker]

I don't remember you saying anything stupid, to be clear. Look, I think you and I have a somewhat similar perspective in that I come at this from the idea that like tech is good or tech is awesome and fraud is bad. Right? That you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater to understand that something has gone deeply off the rails here.

[Kara Swisher]

Off the rails in terms of. And not just fraud, just in general, the behaviors and everything else, which I think. But we're gonna start talking a little bit about Stanford, but I'd love a little bit of your background so people understand that you are a techie from. When I went to your book party, several of your teachers from school were there and they were all computer technology professors. Talk about that really briefly.

[Theo Baker]

Well, so I was one of those 17 year old kids who shows up at Stanford and thinks that computer science is the world. I was the kind of kid who would code a machine learning model from scratch in my bedroom in high school and called it a fun Friday night and I showed up at Stanford.

[Kara Swisher]

That is not a fun Friday night, but go ahead.

[Theo Baker]

It can be a fun Friday night.

[Kara Swisher]

All right. Okay, I'm teasing.

[Theo Baker]

I fully embrace my unfortunately nerdy side.

[Kara Swisher]

But no, I have a techie son and he used to build things and solder all the time. He's a mechanical engineer. But go ahead.

[Theo Baker]

It's such an amazing thing to learn that as a teenager that the things you do can directly translate from words on a screen into something new, something that actually does something. I found that so fun and enjoyable. And I showed up at Stanford and I think this is life.

[Kara Swisher]

Can I ask you what was fun about it for you? Explain to people, because I think people are quite passionate about a lot of the original technologists start off that way, either coding or. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with social issues. It has to do with. They love it. They happen to love it.

[Theo Baker]

Yeah, no, I mean, I think there's just something really engaging, you know, when you're like a teenager or kid or something and you learn that if you become skilled enough at programming. Right. That you can translate the ideas you have into something working that. You know, I've never been great with paint. You know, I'm not a great artist. But here was the way to create something that maybe then could solve a problem in my life. You know, if I was trying to do something that, or do some research that I found interesting, that was, you know, something I really enjoyed doing. Working on natural, natural language processing stuff was really interesting to me. And so when I showed up at Stanford, this was what I thought my life was gonna look like. And very quickly I realized that things didn't work out here exactly as I thought they might.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. Exactly. When you go, you fly to California from Washington. You grew up in Washington, D.C. stanford, for people who don't know, everybody knows, is an elite institution. Extremely low admissions rate of 3.6%. They're proud of it for some reason. But the school exerts an outsized influence on Silicon Valley. As a result, the rest of the world, the Google guys were there. Every lot and lot of people were there at Stanford. It has a connection every which way to everyone in Silicon Valley. So I want you to talk about how it's developed into what you call a no boundaries relationship.

[Theo Baker]

Well, Stanford has done this really intentionally. Right. That Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without this university. You know, it grows out of the Stanford Research park and efforts made by then Provost Fred Terman to encourage this no boundaries relationship with industry. You know, between 2000 and 2015, Stanford, under the leadership of then president John Hennessy, goes on this extraordinary run. They build over 70 new buildings on campus. They become the first school in the nation to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I believe Hennessy was on the board of Google.

[Theo Baker]

Is the chair of the board of Alphabet. Yeah, exactly. And it's so fascinating, right, that Stanford was once this regional institution. It's literally called the Farm because this used to be a horse farm where Leland Stanford Sr. Had his horses. You know, he was the robber baron who started this university in the name of his son.

[Kara Swisher]

It's very quaint.

[Theo Baker]

And then it becomes. It becomes this institutional juggernaut, right? Well, no, and that's exactly right. It still thinks of itself as this underdog, right? Where the outsider renegades are building for the sake of it. And this is not an underdog. This is a place with a budget higher than 116 countries.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, but you fell in love with Stanford. You wanted to go there. Not every east coast kid goes there. My brother went to Stanford and he also went to Stanford Med school. I did not get in, just I'm 3.7%. So why did you fall in love with Stanford? Was it because of that?

[Theo Baker]

Well, I fell in love with Stanford when I was seven. And so I have loved this place for the greater part of my life.

[Kara Swisher]

For what? What happened? Did you see a pine tree? What?

[Theo Baker]

I remember seeing this image of these teenagers, you know, in their Stanford T shirts and their flip flops, lounging in the shade of a palm tree, right up against the self driving car they just helped to build. And I just thought this is the coolest place on earth where all of the new things are happening and the most brilliant teenagers are going about their lives. And it's so cool. And it's Northern California and it's. Stanford still has parts of that. Right. That image isn't false. It's just that this school works so hard to maintain its sterling reputation that a lot of other stories get swept under the rug that might belie, you know, such an idyllic and paradisal view.

[Kara Swisher]

So as I said, your parents are Peter Baker, the New York Times chief. I'm gonna only mention them once, just so you know. Chief White House correspondent and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser. Cause you're your own person. But the reason I'm asking is you said that journalism is the only career you ever ruled out. Why is that? And you mentioned that at the book party. Why was that?

[Theo Baker]

Well, I mean exactly that. Right. My parents have already done it. You know, they're political journalists, which is obviously not the same thing. But you know, they are really good at what they do. And I always wanted to stake my own identity and I did love technology very genuinely and passionately. And it also seemed like a good idea to go 3,000 miles from home and make my own reputation. I joined the student paper, you know, mostly on a lark, but also especially to feel when I was a freshman, I showed up, I joined the student paper right away, even though I didn't expect this to be an all consuming part of my life. But my grandfather had just passed away a few weeks before I arrived at Stanford and he wasn't a journalist, but he talked more about his time on his own college paper than anyone I've ever met in my entire life. And so he used to sit me down on his.

[Kara Swisher]

Where'd he go? Let me guess, where did you.

[Theo Baker]

You went to Colgate.

[Kara Swisher]

Colgate.

[Theo Baker]

Oh, okay.

[Kara Swisher]

I was thinking Crimson, and then I'd have to hit you.

[Theo Baker]

No, no, no, not an Ivy League man. And so I joined the paper. I thought I would feel connected to him and things spiraled pretty quickly.

[Kara Swisher]

Now there's what you call the Stanford inside Stanford. That's exemplified by an unofficial secret class called how to Rule the World. Justin, the so called professor tells his students that success in the Valley is all about, quote, extracting value from people. Which seems. Sounds familiar. You interviewed for a seat, so why did you interview for the seat and talk a little bit about why you wanted to do the class? What are some of the lessons that students are supposed to take away from it?

[Theo Baker]

Well, so this book, right, is titled how to Rule the World. And that's not a metaphor. There's this secret class, there are 12 students a year. You have to be tapped on the shoulder by someone already in it before you can go through the cloak and dagger admissions process with the Silicon Valley CEO who has styled himself as a professor because it's not like you're getting course credit for it. It's more like, you know, a skull and bones for the aspiring tech elite. It's like a secret society where the most insider kids congregate. And when I arrived here, even knowing that this existed was like a status signifier among the most inside of the inside crowd, right? That you had to be in the words. This was sort of a delicious phrase that was used by someone in there that you were quote, unquote, rule adjacent just to know that it existed. Because that signified that you were part of this Stanford inside Stanford, where you know, the kids who have been identified as future trillion dollar startup founders congregate to learn the secrets.

[Kara Swisher]

How are you rule adjacent?

[Theo Baker]

So my entry point into this world was through helping to run the campus hackathon Treehacks. Right, and Treehacks is Modest in its ostensible mission. Right. This is a place for hackers to come and spend, you know, 36 hours working on their projects. In reality, it's sort of like a feeder into this sort of Silicon Valley pipeline. Because the idea is, you know, so many people come to Stanford thinking they can be the next Snapchat founder or doordash founder, that investors have to quote unquote, rule out the wantrepreneurs. As one of them put it to me, the wantrepreneurs as opposed to the quote unquote builders. And the idea was that the Treehacks team, you know, was an example of those builders. And so VCs would take us out and wine and dine us.

[Kara Swisher]

And in the book you paint a picture of VCs scouting for talent on campus, meeting with students at Copa Cafe and inviting them to lavish dinners and yacht parties. What are they looking for among these so called plucked and high agency teenagers? All these phrases, wantrepreneur builders, plucked. Talk about why they're so willing to offer Stanford student this pre idea funding. It's a little like recruiting basketball stars in seventh grade or something like that.

[Theo Baker]

Yeah, except the earnings potentials come with a B not an M. Right. That these kids could potentially be starting billion dollar or trillion dollar startups in their dor, which is not unheard of at Stanford. I took my first class at Stanford in the Jensen Huang Auditorium, named after the founder of the most valuable company in the world, edging out the second most valuable company in the world, also started by Stanford students. And this place has such a fascinating relationship with the Valley. That makes sense when you understand, I guess really the context of the last few decades that Silicon Valley has been the greatest concentration and creation of wealth potentially in human history. And so if this is a gold rush, right, you know, by that same token the talent is the thing to mine. Like that is the resource that people are trying to find. And the earlier you find it, you have made your own career by identifying it at 18.

[Kara Swisher]

And why not? Why not troll the campus essentially? So give me an example of, you know, coffee is one thing and that makes sense to me, but these dinners, yacht parties, et cetera, what's the goal? I mean they're trying to make you starry eyed and like oh no money or what?

[Theo Baker]

Well, it's amazing because so much of it seems so nebulous. I remember this one CEO of a unicorn company reaches out to me freshman year and I have no idea who this guy is or why he's cold emailing me. And he takes me out for brunch at the Rosewood Hotel, which markets itself as the modern clubhouse for Silicon Valley, which is, I think, a great tagline. And he's sitting there and he's spoon feeding his eight month old caviar as he confesses that his first ever contract was for the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. And in that moment, I'm just sitting there and I'm thinking, what the hell is happening? You know, like, I'm just this barely legal teenager, you know, why am I here? But he explains it to me this way.

[Kara Swisher]

He says, I like barely legal there, but I like how you started that. But go ahead.

[Theo Baker]

You know, I always gotta emphasize that,

[Kara Swisher]

yeah, I like it. It's a hotel, it has a reputation

[Theo Baker]

called the holes are a.

[Kara Swisher]

There's a bunch of prostitutes. And anyway, go ahead, move along.

[Theo Baker]

Yeah, yeah, they have the Cougar nights. Cougar Knights with some regularity, I'm aware. And so this guy explains it like this. He says, okay, my job is running a company, but my secret job is working with interesting people. And the truth is, anything can be monetized in Silicon Valley if you know how to scout it. If you are this rule breaker who has accrued a vast amount of capital and you have decided that you have dominion over all things, therefore you can figure out how to shepherd these teenagers into something that will benefit your bottom line, right?

[Kara Swisher]

So you found out you were dinner, you just suddenly realized there you were the prey, essentially. Correct?

[Theo Baker]

Well, it's, you know, I don't want to give this guy too hard a time because, like, you know, as far as the exploitative scale goes, like, he has never asked anything of me. Whereas there are people in Silicon Valley who have much, much shoddier reputations for how they treat students, including when it comes to like, you know, sexual mis, like incredibly predatory behavior. And that's the thing, right, is that as much as this is like paradise for a talented teenager where you can walk in the door of any venture capitalist and raise millions of dollars for your startup, it's also deeply exploitative in a way that incentivizes and encourages bad behavior.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be back in a minute.

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[Kara Swisher]

You moved into journalism like you moved very quickly and your investigation into the university's president at the time, Marc Tessier Levine. He's a prominent neuroscientist, researcher and biotech executive, very well known. You joined the school newspaper, as you said, as a hobby, but you found yourself sucked into it. You were thinking of going this tech route, wining and dining with caviar, feeding baby entrepreneurs. But you published your first story on him in November of 2022. Talk about the investigation began. And for people don't know this story, maybe don't remember it any more than the broad outlines. Give us a summary of what you found.

[Theo Baker]

So what my reporting eventually uncovered over months of investigating was several instances at different labs that had been overseen at different institutions by Marc Tessier Levine, who was the superstar neuroscientist, really at the very top of his field, won the Gruber Prize for neuroscience, which is probably the most prestigious or second most prestigious award for neuroscientists. He had made a fortune, hundreds of millions of dollars in his time as a biotech executive. And what I discovered were these instances where researchers that he oversaw had falsified data in papers that he co authored and that at various points, when presented with opportunities to correct the scientific record, he did not avail himself of those when it came to various different papers and studies. And ultimately one of the most important stories that I think I reported was about a paper, a famous study that came out in 2009 that had claimed to identify the cause of Alzheimer's disease.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. It was very exciting in Silicon Valley at the time because there were several issues. There was a lot of investments by Silicon Valley people in the area, including hiring big researchers and putting them in place in lots of hospitals at the time. I recall it very, very much. But what puts you onto it and, and how did you come to this?

[Theo Baker]

Well, here's something I find really interesting that anyone could have started where I started in 2022, back in 2015. So I started, I began, I saw these anonymous comments on a forum called PubPeer, where usually scientists scrutinize published research papers. And these had been there for seven years without follow up. The papers hadn't been corrected or attracted by the journals, you know, that this hadn't been reported by any newspaper. And Marc Tessay Levine, in the interceding time in 2016, so the year after some of these concerns were first broached, that's when he becomes the Stanford president. So he'd gone through the vetting process for the presidency, all while this had gone unreported.

[Kara Swisher]

So your reporting resulted in nearly a dozen studies receiving post publication notices. Now Tessier Levine was forced to retract four influential papers from which he was the senior author and he pledged to correct a fifth. And by the summer of 2020, 23, he resigned. But an independent investigation conducted by an outside Panel of scientists refuted the most serious claims in your reporting. Talk about the panel review. How do you respond to that? Did he not know it or sometimes well known people put their names on things. Explain that for people how that works.

[Theo Baker]

Yeah, well that's called gift authorship. When a senior author puts their name on a paper, often because it'll help it get published, when they have very little to do with the results and that can allow them to take responsibility for something if it's successful and disclaim responsibility should something else arise. But no. So the Stanford investigation was a fascinating story too, right? Because it was announced in a statement that praised Marc Tessier Levine's quote, integrity and honor. And that's when they said they would be investigating his scientific integrity. I discovered within days that one of the first people appointed to the five person board, the five person committee to investigate him, had an $18 million investment in his company, right, Denali Therapeutics that he had co founded. Ultimately what the panel found was that Marc Tasse Levine oversaw labs with a, quote, unusual frequency of manipulation of research data and or substandard scientific practices, end quote. And that he had, quote, failed to decisively and forthrightly correct the scientific record on multiple occasions when presented with the opportunity. And so certainly, you know, many of the things that I reported and most of the things that I reported were confirmed by this investigation. However, this Stanford investigation wasn't offering anonymity to people who were saying that they had potential disclosures to share with them. And that was a non starter for people at Genentech who'd signed non disclosure agreements to talk about the things that had happened in Marc Tesse Levine's labs. So there were some notable gaps there in the investigation too.

[Kara Swisher]

So was he just not paying attention from your perspective? I've had a lot of people come up to me and they're like, well, he just wasn't paying attention. I said, that's just as bad as. I just, I don't know why you're trying to let him off in that regard. I've had arguments with people about it. I'm like, he had his name on them and therefore should have run them even if he himself didn't change. They seem to be fixated on, well, he didn't change the, he didn't do the shoddy science essentially. And then I was like, to be

[Theo Baker]

clear, yeah, no, I don't care.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, go ahead.

[Theo Baker]

No reporting has ever indicated that Mark Tessier Levine himself falsified data or ordered anyone to do so. And so that's important to note. The oversight thing is the main thing. Right? And that's what the trustees end up faulting him for, mostly. But this Alzheimer's paper is a good example to some degree, right? So in 2009, this study comes out to massive fanfare. Every single publication is covering it. Because finally, it seems like we have a new theory for how Alzheimer's works. After decades of failing to convert, this amyloid hypothesis is the reigning hypothesis. Failing to convert that into a real treatment. What I discovered in my reporting was that even before the paper was published in 2009, Genentech had conducted internal experiments that showed that its central finding was at best, unreliable. And that two years after this paper comes out, there's an internal review at the company. An internal review that results in Marc Tesse Levine being encouraged to retract the paper, which he declines to do. So. Now, seven people who had knowledge of that review at the time told me that the paper was based on fabricated data. Marc Tessie Levine denies that allegation, but he was encouraged to retract the paper at that point after its central data could not be reproduced, both internally and externally. And when I went to Marc Tesse Levine about this story, by the way, in 2023, his reaction was to send the lawyers after us to try to stop it coming out.

[Kara Swisher]

Talk about that. How has he responded publicly?

[Theo Baker]

Marc Tessevine, while he was president, never once responded directly to a single one of my comment requests. He has never sat for an interview about this and has declined to answer the vast majority of the more than 150 questions he's received in the course of this reporting. Instead, he hired a law firm and a PR firm and then another PR firm and another PR firm and another law firm to try to stop this reporting from coming out and issuing at various points, by the way, statements which have later been shown to be false, with evidence that has emerged into the public record.

[Kara Swisher]

So you're a young student, and, you know, obviously the investigator required sophisticated reporting. You developed a lot of sources, some of them off the record, and work with experts to interpret highly technical research. So there was this law firm which happened. It happened to John Cariou, around Theranos, obviously. But one of the things they claimed was that your reporting was breathtakingly outrageous and replete with flagrant, seemingly deliberate distortions. That's a lot for an experienced reporter to deal with, let alone a freshman on a school newspaper. How did you deal with this? Talk about the resources required to do this level of investigation, because he did resign Right. He did resign, which to me was like, well, if you were so outrageous, why resign?

[Theo Baker]

Well, and actually, as I report for the first time in this book, he was ousted unanimously by his own board. Right. This is not a voluntary resignation. And one of the things that the trustees faulted him for was his highly aggressive public posture and the stance that his lawyers took in regard to my reporting. You know, they hired Steve Neal, who was the chair emeritus of Cooley. And so this is one of the most influential lawyers in the country. He's served as the chair of the Meta Oversight Board, served as the chair of the Hewlett foundation, is on the board of Nvidia, you know, and this guy mentioning Elizabeth Holmes. Yeah, he had previously represented Elizabeth Holmes. He had previously represented Charles Keating Jr. That's how he made his fame in the 1990s. And this guy, shortly after my 18th birthday, began sending us letters accusing us of all of these things and denying even aspects of the story that seemed fairly cut and dried. You know, that he would say, this paper has been fully validated when no one has been able to replicate it. And so it was this incredibly stressful moment. I was very lucky that at the Stanford Daily, we had been independent from the school at that point for exactly 50 years when I arrived. And so there was a volunteer team of advisors and lawyers who helped the Daily on occasion and really stepped up, you know, to help me and my editor, Sam, as we were going through all of this.

[Kara Swisher]

Less than a year after he resigned, he co founded though an AI drug discovery startup and raised a billion dollars. It's one of the largest seed rounds in biotech history. What does that tell you about how power works in Stanford and Silicon Valley?

[Theo Baker]

The largest.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, the largest.

[Theo Baker]

The largest seed round in biotech history. Six months after he was ousted by his own board. You know, I think it's a fascinating kicker to the story, but I think the most.

[Kara Swisher]

And they all get refunded. They all get refunded. Travis Kalanick got all of them. All of them.

[Theo Baker]

Well, and by the way, two of the VCs who invested in Mark Tesla Levine's new company were ones I had gotten to know over the course of freshman year in my other life as this teenager glimpsing the view of Silicon Valley from the world of coding. And both of them continued to be friendly even after funding Marc Tassey Levine. And one of them offered to fund a company from me too, if I wanted to start one. So they've just funded Marc Tesse Levine, and they say, oh, we'll fund you too. And that to me says a lot about Silicon Valley, right? Where talent is everything. If you can figure out how to monetize it, it doesn't matter who it is or what it is, but it also is about how. Right. Marc Tesley Levine is not an isolated story. As the figurehead of the institution, he is necessarily a representative of some of its values. And the story that we saw there and the fight for accountability with papers, by the way, that should have been scrutinized years earlier and weren't a lot of that same behavior that I was writing about I began seeing with peers, you know, that I arrived with as a freshman undergoing their training. Yes, exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

The mistakes were made thing. I call it. The mistakes were made. Ah, well, Kara, I had a similar thing where someone I took down some idiot entrepreneur and then when I was looking for money, I didn't take any venture money, but one of them took me to lunch and offered me money and I said, I'd rather poke my with a dry stick than take money from you. But no, but it was sort of like, why not? And I'm like, you're terrible. Like, you know, it was really interesting, which made me laugh. I'm like, okay, well, I see it was very. Ethics were very shifty, as they say, if ethics were there at all. So let's take a step back and talk to some of the bigger themes you wrote, including the obsession with perfection, or at least the appearance of perfection. In the book, you highlight some of the recent fraudsters associated with Stanford, including Theranos founder we just mentioned Elizabeth Holmes and crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon talk about how the university does or doesn't take accountability for its failures and frauds in its orbit. Because I think that's really at the heart of it. They would call it mistakes were made, eggs are broken, blah, blah, blah. You know, I've heard every excuse for just terrible behavior. You write that Stanford, quote, has made a Faustian bargain with Silicon Valley, one that has enabled its meteoric ascent and allowed for its corruption. And then they commercialize and corporatize differently from other elite universities like Yale, MIT and Harvard. So talk a little bit about these two things, this accountability and then. And they making some bank off of it, obviously.

[Theo Baker]

Well, look, it's not an accident that the Stanford inside Stanford exists at Stanford, right? This is a place that made its fortune because of Silicon Valley. This is a place the guy on the faculty who was known by the moniker professor billionaire because he made $20 billion by investing in his Students, companies. This is a place that has its own VC fund run by the university to see students, new companies. And if you literally, literally just take the cumulative value of the companies that have offices on campus somewhere north of $6 trillion, right? So much ink has been spilled about the privileges of the Ivy League and the pipeline to Washington and Wall Street. Stanford is completely entangled in an even more pronounced way. That was an intentional strategy, right? That was intentional because that no boundaries relationship is what allows Stanford to profit. And as to how they address it, Stan Cohen actually is a good way to talk about this, right? Stan Cohen, living legend in genetics. He was the first geneticist to transplant genes from one living organism to another. So he's on the Stanford faculty. And his patent on recombinant DNA technology is what instigates the university to come up with its new patent licensing strategy, allowing them to profit off of basic discoveries made by the faculty. So by the last year, that's actually. It is 62% of the school's total patent revenue, right? So he has made them hundreds of millions of dollars. I write about during my freshman year, the other side of the story, which is this court case in which he was levied with $29 million judgment because he told investors he had this promising new drug, target for Huntington's disease that the company said internally that it would be cure, not just a treatment. And he neglected to inform the investors that this drug had been permanently banned by the FDA in 1977 because it could kill people. So he loses this court case.

[Kara Swisher]

Mistakes were made.

[Theo Baker]

Mistakes were made. Which he admits eventually, after giving false testimony on the stand, by the way. And so I report this story freshman year, and I go to the university and I say, hey, here's an active faculty member. Here's his court case. You know, like, is he gonna face any repercussions? Is there any investigation at the school? You know, like, what is your reaction to this? And they say, say, we had nothing to do with this. We've never heard of this. We can't say anything. Right? And that was untrue. Stanford owned the IP at issue. They were subpoenaed in the court case. They fought the subpoena, and they ultimately provided documents and witnesses. Not only had he eventually admitted to potential ethics violations and how he ran the company, but he also admitted to potential violations of Stanford policies. He was cheating on his wife as she lay dying of cancer. And he appointed his paramour to both lucrative positions in his Stanford lab and at the company without disclosure, right? And so to this day, Stanford cites Stan Cohen's research as an example of why the university's research apparatus is so valuable and important. And you can't have it both ways.

[Kara Swisher]

No, you can't. Their interests are aligned. And that's the problem, is that there's no accountability within when there are problems or they gloss them over, as you noted. Now, interestingly, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Director of Stanford's Hoover Institution, told you that dealing with risk and so called bad actors are essentially trade offs that come with having university with research enterprise and a big commercialization arm. Sounds like Condoleezza, I have to say.

[Theo Baker]

Well, she brought up. Actually, the metaphor she brought up was from her own time as National Security Advisor.

[Kara Swisher]

Sure, I get it with Dixie, she

[Theo Baker]

said sometimes you have to drone strike a village knowing that civilians will die because you have to kill a terrorist cell or people are gonna die. And then she says she applies at

[Kara Swisher]

the Stanford, that's patented Condoleezza, I've heard her say coming out of her mouth herself, and I'm like, ah, like, okay. And I get it in statecraft a little bit, just vaguely sort of, not really. But those are the choices different people decide to make. But when it comes to university, it's interesting that she extends that particular tragic metaphor, really. But is it possible for a university to be ethical while still being, quote, an incubator with dorms, as serial entrepreneur and Stanford professor Stephen Blank described to you? And is Stanford's response really any different than other powerful institutions protecting their own interests? Make a comparison.

[Theo Baker]

Well, Steve Blank is a great character, so he is a creator and teacher of Lean Launchpad, the most famous entrepreneurship class at Stanford, probably the most famous entrepreneurship class in the world. And what he tells me is that we've lost the moral compass for what we invest into. Is what he says that Stanford has become an incubator with dorms. And I think there's some interesting contrast between Justin, who teaches how to rule the world, which is known by the students in it, by the way, as rule. So to be in it, you call it rule. And what Justin teaches is to extract value from people. And what Steve Blank teaches is to provide value to people. And so these are sort of two sides of the same coin. Both are theoretically offering a path to Silicon Valley success. And yet there's sort of an inverted message there. I find that fascinating, especially when I come to think about, you know, much of what Justin says isn't bad per se, right? Learning to exceed the limits of your conceivable ambition that's not a bad thing. Big, big ideas and big, big challenges are what have driven, you know, great things in Silicon Valley. And yet when it is coupled to a culture that lacks accountability, that's how the problems emerge, right? I watched these kids I arrived with, many of whom were my friends, who were brilliant and idealistic and I do believe, genuinely committed to technology. I watched them learn, in their words, to play the game, as one tells me, to misrepresent herself to VCs to raise money, as one of my friends ends up doing, is faking a launch demo and gets feted by all of Silicon Valley and put up in a mansion and being celebrated for technology she doesn't have and didn't create. And so if you want to understand how the next Elizabeth Holmes or Sam Bankman Fried's come to be, the egregious fraud starts with how people are being treated.

[Kara Swisher]

These are young people, these are not unsophisticated people, but they're young, curious. What made it repugnant to you?

[Theo Baker]

I think the thing is that Stanford has gone beyond a few bad apples, right? The problem is this institutionalized and cultural insistence on perfection, right? It leads to the sort of inevitable and repeated fudging of the boundaries that, as one professor put it to me in the book, at Stanford we have a culture of over claiming the big results. We blow them up bigger than they would be elsewhere, and we take the bad stuff and we sweep it beneath the rug. And so that's what I'm asking Stanford to reckon with, right? I'm not saying that the good stuff is wrong. I'm saying that it's this. And there's also another side of it that the same incentives that reward this innovation have also been set up to reward, you know, self presentation bordering on and frequently becoming fraud, which is why

[Kara Swisher]

they're like this as adults, which is really, you know, it does have, it's a through line. It's an absolute through line. How has Stanford responded to your book so far?

[Theo Baker]

Silence. But I should say, and I'm grateful that both President Levin and Provost Martinez took the time to be interviewed and face some tough questions over the course of the book. You know, what John Levin would say is that, you know, he, he is the first, by the way, president of Stanford in over a century to have been an undergrad here before becoming president. And he says that the amount of pressure being placed on students to think about career from the second they step on campus is a problem. The question, of course, is what you do with that. And at one point, in response to a question, he says, well, should we have a rule barring all VCs from campus? No, of course not. And you understand the position that he's in. And yet, and yet these problems continue to persist.

[Kara Swisher]

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[Theo Baker]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Kara Swisher]

so every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here's yours.

[Ryan Mack]

Hey Kara. Hey Theo. This is Ryan Mack, a technology reporter at the New York Times. Theo, congratulations on finishing your book how to Rule the World. I've been getting through it and it's reminded me a lot about my own time at Stanford, which I attended a few years before you did. And I want to stress a few and so I have a question for you, which is looking back at my time there, I attribute it with making me who I am today. I wouldn't be a journalist necessarily. I got my start in journalism at the Stanford Daily. Like yourself. I met a lot of my friends there. I made a lot of connections as well that helped me to this day professionally and I've also grappled with at the time when I was going there, I grappled with with the Amount of power that was at the university, the amount of wealth I saw, friends that chase iPhone, apps and startups and all the things that you describe in your book probably, which have accelerated more so to this day. And so knowing what you know about the university and how it treats students and the amount of power that's amassed there, my question is, if someone were to come to, to this day and ask you, hey, should I go to Stanford University, should I commit four years there, what would you tell them? Thanks.

[Kara Swisher]

Great question.

[Theo Baker]

Yeah. Well, it's great to get a question from Ryan. He knows this ecosystem very well. He actually was the. I mentioned professor billionaire earlier in passing. Ryan was the first person to report on professor billionaire way back in the day, not that long ago. I shouldn't, you know, maybe 2011.

[Kara Swisher]

Ryan, you're really old, but I'm older, so go ahead.

[Theo Baker]

It's a really interesting and tricky but important question. Right. I have a very complicated relationship with Stanford and yet I'm gonna graduate two weeks from today that we're recording this, and I'm gonna rock across that stage and be just as happy and grateful as anyone else. Right. In many ways, this is still a fabulous institution. It's doing world class research, it has amazing professors. A lot of students here really will change the world for the better. It's just that it's a lot more fraught than it likes to let on. That if you're not careful, you quickly fall into what students call the tech whirlpool. That if you learn how to play the game in the way that it's been set up, frequently that leads to sort of deceptive business practices and to getting ahead at any cost. And what Ryan mentions. Right. That you see everyone else doing it and it's sort of hard to resist. Like, that's a huge thing. You know, the guy who taught me how to shotgun a beer freshman year dropped out. And six months after he started his AI company, it was valued at over a billion dollars. Right. And that's $80 million per head because there are so few employees and it's weird to be surrounded by all of that and also, you know, make your own decisions and figure out why you're getting into it.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. And resist it. So fakery is encouraged in many ways.

[Theo Baker]

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true.

[Kara Swisher]

What would you tell, what would you say?

[Theo Baker]

I think it depends on the student. But for many people, I still do think that Stanford is a great institution. I also think that it's important to have some tough conversations. Right. And frequently asked like why I do this, you know, that like aren't you biting the hand that feeds you or tearing down? And I really don't see it that way. That I think it's because you love it. That's why if you love an institution, you want it to be better.

[Kara Swisher]

Right?

[Theo Baker]

Right. And you know, I think it's important for our community to understand how it's really operating and that the Stanford inside Stanford is sort of the ultimate manifestation of what has come home to roost at the university in recent years.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. And why we have what we have today in a lot of ways the same attitude. The, you know, you could initially put it as the devil may care, but it's not caring at all. And one of the things that I think is very misjudging about this book or stuff I write was I love it and I hate what you're doing to it. I hate what you're doing it. And I recall writing a column for the New York Times about how they should have an ethics course at Stanford and other places just for tech people just to have ethics and history and stuff like that. And as if I told them, I would like you to drink a bottle of Ebola or something like that. It's just an ethics course to be aware on some small level. It was interesting.

[Theo Baker]

Then there's how students take it. I remember in my freshman year a guy telling me that he was taking a business ethics course and he said quite a. Well, we were all there to learn how they got caught.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. Well, you can't raise kids. Let me say that starts with the parents in many ways, but it also

[Theo Baker]

starts with the mythology that Stanford has cultivated. Why are kids coming here? They're coming here because they can become billionaires. Right. In many senses. Or at least that's sort of the chosen image that the university has put forward.

[Kara Swisher]

That's a fair point. Although I do think it goes back to. I think the way you are is cause a little bit of your parents. Same thing with my kids wouldn't do this. Cause it just wouldn't do this. Something that they were raised with. We'd like it to be fantastic, but not like this. So let's end talking about tech AI and its impact on education. ChatGPT arrived on campus at the start of your freshman year in November of 2022. In your recent New York Times op ed, which I like very much, you wrote that cheating has become omnipresent. And at the same time many students view AI as a job threat. This is in line obviously with More widespread concerns over how AI will affect job market and potentially drive down wages. You have, of course, since you're graduating, anyone who says Yay AI, from Eric Schmidt to that late gets booed down and Ronny Chang gets cheered at Harvard. It's kind of weird to watch, but what do you make of the anti tech sentiment among young people broadly?

[Theo Baker]

Yeah, well, AI is this great accelerant, right? It takes all these trends that have already been brimming beneath the surface and it supercharges them. And so at universities, one of the ways to understand why everyone is cheating now isn't just that the technology has enabled it, but it's that students have now been made to feel as if the education part of their education is actually secondary to the outcome. Whether or not you're going to come out of this with a high paying job or a stable career or, you know, at Stanford, potentially significantly more riches than that. AI has also significantly increased the sort of stratification that we see that the most valuable researchers are more valuable than ever before. Right. But the entry level positions are being drawn up up ahead of people that Stanford last year for the first time in over two decades saw its computer science enrollment go down, go down. Which is so fascinating, right? Because for some people astronomical wealth is just around the corner. And all you have to do is put a wrap around ChatGPT and tell a VC you want some money. If you have been tapped on the shoulder and you have this reputation as one of the people in the Stanford Inside Stanford worth funding. And yet for most people, AI has been destructive to their education. We're in this really fascinating interregnum where the technology has just suddenly leapfrogged from where it was. And yet higher education really has not gotten the memo yet to some degree that I keep hearing professors saying a variation of the same thing which I just find so fascinating where they say, oh, AI in classrooms is really bad. I'm so lucky that none of my students use it and their students are using it. Yes, absolutely. And I see some of them say that publicly too, by the way, Stanford professors who think that students are not cheating in their classrooms. And I'm here to say that unfortunately they are.

[Kara Swisher]

So Google CEO, Interestingly, Sundar Pichai is your commencement speaker. If you were interviewing for the Stanford Daily, what would you ask him and what shouldn't he say?

[Theo Baker]

Well, I mean, if I were interviewing him for the Daily, I would ask him about politics, right? All of these Silicon Valley billionaires have, have tried to make a new home for themselves in the current administration. I would love to know a lot more about that and their approach there. But look, it's going to be interesting to hear what he says. Sundar Pichai is a classic Silicon Valley Stanford success story who made it big. He is operating in the vein of Larry and Sergey and his predecessor, Eric Schmidt, who just got booed down for talking about AI. We'll see if he makes the save choice in his own commencement speech, I'm sure has been reviewed by many dozens of lawyers and PR professionals. But this also, I think, says a little bit of something about the school. Right. That 10 years ago today Ken Burns gave the commencement speech or not today, 10 years ago next week, Ken Burns gave the commencement speech and he gave, you know, a call to action about Donald Trump and he was booed by some of the parents and then they were drowned out by cheers from the audience. In my four years at Stanford, the commencement speakers have been John McEnroe, Katie Ledecky, Melinda Gates, and now Sundar Pichai. That the school used to have a rule against athletes and used to try to avoid doing the billionaire CEO thing too frequently and now seems to have chosen explicitly people who will stick to the company line.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, right, right. Sundar at least appears cheapish. Sometimes not in sheepish enough in my estimation. I'll be interested to see how he manages because I wouldn't say he's the most stellar of speakers, but we'll see. You said that amid the many crises impacting higher education the past few years, universities have lost a sense of identity. That's what you're talking about here. Are you Ken Burns or are you. Where's the money? Right. Essentially, as you mentioned earlier, you interviewed a few of Stanford's past presidents. Its current one, Jonathan Levin. How do you view Stanford's identity? And if you were running it, what would you do to change it? It.

[Theo Baker]

Yeah. So it's been such a funny four years to be on college or campuses. Right. The first year was ChatGPT. That came out. That changed everything. The second year was post October 7th. Those protests are the most divisive in decades on college campuses. Our third year was an unprecedented federal assault on universities and research funding. And now our last year, we're graduating into a very uncertain job market.

[Kara Swisher]

Who knows? And high school was Covid. Yay.

[Theo Baker]

Yeah, well, exactly, exactly. Been an interesting four years. And so all of these might seem like sort of unconnected things that are all striking at the same time. And it's all sort of coincidental. Right. But all of These issues strike at the same central problem, which is that what do universities actually value? And can they articulate that? Right, because the modern university has become a hedge fund controlling billions of dollars, you know, many times a giant hospital system, a research apparatus that is spinning out companies constantly and producing vacc, a repository of historical thought and knowledge. You know, a giant experiment for teenagers going about their coming of age. It's a professional sports league. It's a huge merchandising opportunity. It is all of those things. And even at the best of times, right, those coexist somewhat uneasily now, right. That we're seeing these pressures facing universities, I think that tension has come to a head. How do universities really define themselves? Is this Stanford a place to get an education or a place to get rich? Right.

[Kara Swisher]

And answer that conflict, President Baker, what would you do?

[Theo Baker]

Well, I don't know, but I do think that the answer starts with transparency, right? It starts with honestly reckoning with these issues. You can't have a conversation about these things where it's only just about how great things are up and to the right. I think.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, up until.

[Theo Baker]

And I think this is something about Silicon Valley that I find frustrating, that people are very quick to cast every issue in terms of vice or virtue, as if Stanford and Silicon Valley are either all perfect and all great in these innovative, transformative places that nothing like it has existed in the history of the universe or everything that produces anything technology related is completely rotten and should be thrown out.

[Kara Swisher]

I mean, their heroes are like that. Marc Andreessen, you're either with us or against. Peter Thiel, you're the Antichrist if you don't. What? How do we get to Antichrist? When you have normal criticisms about AI, they are the most delicate of flowers, including.

[Theo Baker]

The Pope, by the way, has said concerns. But this is the thing, right?

[Kara Swisher]

In his thing, cause he's an adult, he said there's some great things, right?

[Theo Baker]

Exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

He did not binary the thing, which I thought was lost on them.

[Theo Baker]

Well, and this is the thing, right? We see a lot of issues emerging from Silicon Valley, right? And now in different fields, in different sectors. But a lot of that comes from malice. Sure, There are real psychopaths in Silicon Valley and you have chronicled many of them. And there is an absurd texture to that there. And part of that is in the book. But there's also this extraordinary silliness, right, that what happens when you give teenagers too much money to burn, that actually it can be people who are, quote unquote, well intentioned, who end up doing the worst things. And so I want people to understand that texture. And I hope this view of Silicon Valley's training ground affords something of view of that.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah. They're broken people. There's a lot of broken people with a lot of money. And that's always a prescription for something not good. You've won the Poke Award, written the book, sold the film rights to producer Amy Pascagli. You're doing pretty good for just graduating college. Kudos to your parents and yourself. When you look at the journalism industry, also in a lot of pain, but at the same time, a lot of innovations happening in journalism. By the way, if you had the choice between working, I'm not going to say the New York Times, the New Yorker, but ProPublica or the Wall Street Journal, run by two great people, or let's just say Anthropic working for Anthropic or slash one, that's a relatively acceptable tech company, perhaps. What would you do?

[Theo Baker]

What do you want to do? I know this is not the most fashionable sentiment at the moment, but I really fell in love with journalism over the course of that freshman year. And I hope this book in part serves as sort of a love letter to it, that you could be this 17 and 18 year old kid and just by pursuing questions you want an answer to and pulling on the loose thread that's dangling there, hopefully provide some value to your community and report things that should be known. I never expected to be a journalist and I don't know exactly what the future holds. I'm trying to get to graduation first, but I have to imagine that I'll continue to in some way work in journalism.

[Kara Swisher]

If you were looking at journalism today, what do you think the greatest thing about it and the most problematic, besides the business plan?

[Theo Baker]

Yeah. Well, the greatest thing is still the reporting, right? Actually, for all of the noise, the reporting is the thing that matters most. And there's amazing reporting being done every single day by the press corps. The American accountability journalism tradition we take for granted. But it's a unique thing that it grows from the post Sullivan tradition out of the Pentagon Papers in the post Watergate era. That tradition of investigative accountability journalism is amazing to me. I'd say that one of the biggest challenges that I think newsroom leaders have been slow to adapt to is really people like me, people my age, that our news intake is incredibly decentralized and scattered, that we're not taking in text media in the same way. And it's this sort of ticking time bomb that our distribution methods are not reaching young people effectively with high quality nonpartisan news. I think that's a huge problem that needs to be worked on and it's a distribution problem.

[Kara Swisher]

Yep. You're 100. You sound just like my son. I just had a discussion with him about it. But he's a heavy. He loves substantive news, both of them, which is really, that's, I think, the lie that people have to make stupid and short. I was like, no, you don't. You just have to make it where they are. And in a way, it's not that different if you create compelling content. Anyway, whatever you do, I think you're gonna do a great job. Theo, I love this book. I think it's great. I think my piece of advice was just focus on the reporting. I believe that's probably what I said because that never goes away. That absolutely 100% cannot be displaced, it cannot be disrupted. And asking questions is the only way forward. Anyway, terrific job. How to Rule the World by Theo Baker. I think perhaps maybe you will at some point. I hope. And thank you so much.

[Theo Baker]

Thank you so much for having me and for everything you do.

[Kara Swisher]

Today's show was produced by Christian Castroiselle, Michelle Aloy, Kathryn Catherine Milsop, Madeline LaPlante, Dubie and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Ruella Ruf and Rosemary Ho. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're a high agency person who deserves pre idea funding. If not, you're less of a builder and more of a wantrepreneur. Go wherever you listen to podcasts or search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

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