August - How to Rule the World by Theo Baker

What happens when a 17-year-old freshman starts asking questions powerful people would rather he leave alone? Theo Baker arrived at Stanford as a tech-obsessed teenage coder. Within months, anonymous letters, stakeouts, confidential sources, high-powered lawyers, and a university investigation had pulled him into a story that would shake Stanford and bring down its president. The remarkable part: Baker was still a teenager. Now he turns that experience into How to Rule the World—an explosive, sharply funny account of Stanford’s hidden training ground for power, where venture capitalists court undergraduates, founders become campus celebrities, and a select few are groomed for extraordinary influence. A very local story with global stakes. ☕ 1:30–1:45 PM — Settle in, grab a drink 📖 1:45–4:00 PM — Moderated group discussion We’ll dig into: • The Stanford Within Stanford — Is this extraordinary talent cultivation, or an elite pipeline into power? • Innovation vs. Integrity — Do the incentives that produce breakthroughs also reward shortcuts, hype, and fraud? • “The Plucked” — What happens when investors decide which teenagers look like future rulers? • One Student vs. an Institution — How was student journalism able to challenge one of America’s most powerful universities? • What Is College For? — Education, exploration, credentialing, startup incubation—or status? • The Bay Area Mirror — Is Stanford an outlier, or simply a concentrated version of the culture surrounding us? 🛠 How Our Book Club Works • Read the book—or try the audiobook, interviews, excerpts, or reporting below. • Didn’t finish? Come anyway! Curiosity matters more than completeness. • First-timers welcome. Bring a friend. 💳 Why $10? Hardcover is capped at 10 so the conversation can stay intimate and everyone can participate. Your $10 Community Seat reserves one of those real places and helps cover the room and recurring event costs. The book and any food or drinks are separate. If cost would keep you from joining, message the host—we hold one community-access seat each month. 🎬 Haven’t started the book? Start here: • PBS NewsHour interview and transcript: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-to-rule-the-world-exposes-stanfords-complex-relationship-with-silicon-valley-power • Carnegie Endowment podcast and transcript, “Is Silicon Valley Corrupting Stanford?”: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/is-silicon-valley-corrupting-stanford • Baker’s original Stanford Daily investigation: https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-research-under-investigation-for-scientific-misconduct-university-admits-mistakes/ • Full Booknotes+ conversation with Theo Baker: • Book, ebook, sample, and author-narrated audiobook: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760317/how-to-rule-the-world-by-theo-baker/