New York University Stern School of Business

And truly, does he need any introduction? He is perhaps best known as the New York Times bestselling author of The Anxious Generation, how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.

John is a social psychologist at NYU's Stern School of Business.

He runs the After Babel Substack, has done multiple TED Talks, has written more than 100 academic articles and many other books as well, including a new release, which we can talk about.

John, welcome.

I thought I understood my students.

They were Gen X when I first started, but really millennials the whole way through.

And then I moved to New York University to the Stern School of Business in 2011.

And I was again teaching millennials, MBA students and undergrads.

But as long as you've got a company that is in one of these 120 industries, The equity premium model is just really easy to do.

And that's why one of the reasons this whole thing right here, this table that's done by the Stern School at New York University, I mean, they publish this and if they're even a couple of days late with this, they've got those professors that are getting yelled at by CFOs, the financial officer, where's the table? Where's the table for this year? Because it really is, I mean, just bang, you've got the equity premium model that you can use to get your cost of retained earnings.

Now, if you can get through this and know how to do it on here, I will not make any fancy, weird wording on a quiz or a test about this.

It'll be very clear.

We are the kind who gather information that is usable.

Now at the Stern School at New York University, there are these jockeys who are constantly pulling data together for the purpose of companies looking at it and making decisions and conclusions based on that data.

What you're seeing here is literally the weighted average cost of capital.

It is the pieces of the formula and then they calculate it.

Its weighted average cost of capital is 9.22%.

And that's provided, like I said, by, I think this is from the Stern School at New York University.

This is what the industry's average is among all the companies in the industry.

And in this case, how many? They do 54 companies.

Prior to working at NYU, he worked in the undergraduate admissions offices at two liberal arts colleges, Wagner College and Franklin and Marshall College, which is also his alma mater.

In addition to that degree in public health, he has also completed an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business in business analytics and leadership and change management.

Welcome.

Hello.

So I concentrated in finance and minored in cinema and history.

And so I was able to take classes at NYU Stern, but I had an interest in the arts as well as other areas of interest.

So we did, you know, Islamic art, all kinds of different things that I got to And my view at the time was I wanted a more well-rounded education and, you know, be able to hold a conversation beyond just simply the numbers and the math, which are obviously super important.

But so much of what we do in insurance and reinsurance and now my role today is, you know, having those interpersonal skills, Kyle, and they be able to discuss and talk about other things than simply the numbers and, you know, develop those deep relationships.

At the center of many of these questions is the issue of AI sovereignty.

I'm joined today on the podcast by Arun Sundararajan, who's a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business.

Together, we have our first in a series of conversations on this issue of AI sovereignty, the consequences, the downstream effects of the acceleration and the integration of artificial intelligence into geopolitics today.

I hope you enjoyed the conversation.