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From KQED. Welcome to a forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today from Mina Kim. Stanford University

accepts a tiny, tiny fraction of the students that apply each year, something around 3%. And getting in

was Theo Baker's dream since early, early childhood. He planned to chase the next big idea,

maybe become a founder someday,

and along the way, write a few articles for the student newspaper. But then he got a tip about

possible research misconduct involving Stanford's president, a very renowned neuroscientist.

And reporting out that story really took over Theo Baker's life, and it became the

book that we're going to discuss today, How to Rule the World. Welcome, Theo. Thanks so much for

having me. So it was pretty clear to you from day one that campus life at Stanford was much

different, I think, than you had imagined. You write, I learned that

teenagers like me were a commodity. What did you mean? What did you see? Well, in the modern

landscape, a university, especially like Stanford, is much more of a business than it is an educational

institution. This is a place with a budget higher than 116 countries.

It's a place that is a sprawling enterprise

where companies are being spun out left and right

and where students are monetizable

...