Margaret O'Mara

The industrial tycoons of the Gilded Age bankrolled cultural institutions like the Met, Carnegie Hall, as a way to soften the public image.

The historian Margaret O'Mara referred to it as reputation laundering.

By comparison, Dr. O'Mara told us many of today's rich tycoons are more capricious.

Witness the way Mark Zuckerberg and his wife funded a free tuition school through the Foundation for Low-Income Children in the poorest area of Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley has long sought to burnish its prestige by recruiting people who want to change the world, not just get rich.

And AI firms are eager to signal that they are less about money and more about the science, said Margaret O'Mara, a historian at the University of Washington and the author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.

After all, these for-profit companies call themselves labs.

The staff title, Dr. O'Mara added, isn't like CTO or these other titles that are businessy rather than having to do with actual research or the technology itself.

Silicon Valley has long sought to burnish its prestige by recruiting people who want to change the world, not just get rich.

And AI firms are eager to signal that they are less about money and more about the science, said Margaret O'Mara, a historian at the University of Washington and the author of The Code, Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.

After all, these for-profit companies call themselves labs.

The staff title, Dr. Omara added, isn't like CTO or these other titles that are business-y rather than having to do with actual research or the technology itself.

Um, and we've, in earlier, um, episodes of this podcast, we've talked to, uh, other historians who have, who have takes on this.

Um, you know, for example, that, you know, we, we talked to, uh, Margaret O'Mara who had, who worked for the Clinton campaign, uh, in, in 1992 as well and, you know, m- made a comment i- in, in response to something that Joe brought up.

Uh, you know, Joe said something around, along the lines of, you know, he kinda, he wasn't really in the '90s kinda big on Clinton's vision of what it meant to be a liberal.

And, and, and Margaret says, "Well, you would've really loved like 1978 Bill Clinton, um-

So should we go deep on Clinton for a little bit? I mean, there's this question that's kind of embedded, Lily, in a lot of what we've been talking about, about if we accept that Bill Clinton, the human, is a sort of central figure in the New Democrats, and he was deeply involved and a leader in the Democratic Leadership Council in the 80s before he became a national candidate, there's this kind of fascinating historiographical question about How do you understand him as as a leader and what he does to the Democratic Party? And we've in earlier episodes of this podcast, we've talked to other historians who have who have takes on this.

You know, for example, that, you know, we talked to Margaret O'Mara, who had who worked for the Clinton campaign in 1992 as well.

And, you know.

made a comment in response to something that Joe brought up.

So should we go deep on Clinton for a little bit? I mean, there's this question that's kind of embedded, Lily, in a lot of what we've been talking about, about if we accept that Bill Clinton, the human, is a sort of central figure in the New Democrats, and he was deeply involved and a leader in the Democratic Leadership Council in the 80s before he became a national candidate, there's this kind of fascinating historiographical question about How do you understand him as as a leader and what he does to the Democratic Party? And we've in earlier episodes of this podcast, we've talked to other historians who have who have takes on this.

You know, for example, that, you know, we talked to Margaret O'Mara, who had who worked for the Clinton campaign in 1992 as well.

And, you know.

made a comment in response to something that Joe brought up.

So should we go deep on Clinton for a little bit? I mean, there's this question that's kind of embedded, Lily, in a lot of what we've been talking about, about, you know, if we accept that Bill Clinton, the human, is a sort of central figure in the New Democrats, and he was, you know, he was deeply involved and a leader in the Democratic Leadership Council in the 80s before he became a national candidate, you know, there's this kind of fascinating historiographical question about How do you understand him as as a leader and what he does to the Democratic Party? And we've in earlier episodes of this podcast, we've talked to other historians who have who have takes on this.

You know, for example, that, you know, we talked to Margaret O'Mara, who had who worked for the Clinton campaign in 1992 as well.

And, you know.

made a comment in response to something that Joe brought up.