You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Andravis Gontas. This is a podcast that explores the space

where science and society collide. We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters. It's hard to live adjacent to Silicon Valley and not think about how tech

culture has influenced society in general.

Tech has been around long enough to generate satirical television shows like Silicon Valley.

But who better to tell the story of a tech giant and a startup than a person who is trained

as a journalist, who is also a really great writer, and who served as Google's vice president of communications

on the management team for several years. Prior to that, Jessica Powell was the chief

marketing officer of a dating site called Badu. But I wanted to talk to her today about a novel

that she wrote called The Big Disruption, a totally fictional but essentially true Silicon Valley story.

It was the first novel ever published by Medium, a digital platform, and it's already been read

by over 200,000 readers. But not only that, Powell is donating the proceeds from the book to Yes We Code,

an organization dedicated to helping underrepresented groups access opportunities

and achieve success in the tech sector.

The book tells a story of an exiled prince, who's now working as a janitor in Silicon Valley,

but who finds himself in a product management position at a big tech company.

I almost said Google.

It's not Google, but it might as well be, just like in many big tech company. I almost said Google. It's not Google, but it might as well be. Just like in many

big tech companies, the sales guys are fighting with the engineers, the female employees are not

being treated as humanely as they could be, and the yoga-loving sex-obsessed CEO is planning a moon colony.

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