The Stanford Review

How, how is it that you ended up making a magazine out of getting a geophysics degree?

Um, well, you know, I was involved with The Stanford Review when I was at Stanford.

Okay.

Really?

Dude, that, that's exactly it.

Yeah.

And I l- like, I, I love how you guys highlight that, but my question to you is anyone who's the editor of, like, The Stanford Review, it's kind of like, okay, you can do literally anything on Earth now.

Like, that is such a tremendous, uh, accomplishment.

Had I become any stronger, there would have been some massive trade-offs with success in other domains in life." Now, while all of this was going on, Stanford was in the middle of this huge culture war over race, gender, and what students should actually be taught.

I mean, nothing much has changed, has it? And it was in response to all of this that Thiel co-founded a conservative student newspaper called the Stanford Review in 1987.

This turns out to be very important because it's through this newspaper that Thiel builds a network of people who remain part of his world for decades.

Now, after finishing his philosophy degree, Thiel went on to Stanford Law School and graduated in 1992.

It's part hedge fund and part venture capital firm.

And he hires Ken Howery as his first employee.

Howie had also written for the Stanford Review, while Luke Nosek, who pitched a web-based calendar idea, becomes the first entrepreneur Thiel invests in.

And these two guys, Howie and Nosek, they tell us a lot about the kind of person who is drawn to Thiel and also who Thiel is drawn to.

Review.

In 1987, Thiel co-founded the Stanford Review, a conservative and libertarian student newspaper at Stanford University.

Ongoing support, Thiel has maintained a relationship with the paper for over 35 years, providing financial donations and acting as a mentor to staff.

And Peter Thiel is not unique in this.

Dinesh D'Souza and Laura Ingraham were both editors there.

The Stanford Review is sort of named after it and kind of, you know, going to be a copy of that.

There's an entire world of... reactionary campus conservatives, very kind of trolly, very opposed to affirmative action, and, you know, campus leftism.

But Thiel's ideology, I think it's fair to say, like, goes past that, right? It's not just standard kind of reactionary views that might fit within, you know...

Yeah.

I want to go back a bit to September 1988, because I believe this is when you've received the second edition of the Stanford Review, and the guy delivering the newspaper to your dorm room was Peter

Thiel.

This random guy named Peter Thiel.

Conspiracy, her words, not mine, to change balloting laws so you would have 70% of people not voting on election day who could not be audited.

But the Stanford Review was talking about the incipient, just the beginning of that.

And this left-wing neo-socialist review was criticizing it because they said, "This is full of so many holes and can't be verified that the right will use it." See what I mean? They-- [laughs] And I thought when I read it, I said, "No, you're right about it can't be verified, but it's your guys who did it and your guys know how to cheat a lot better than our guys do." And that was what was so weird about it.

Yeah.

He, he quotes Marx at people, which sounds like a great way to be cool and make friends, and not come off as weird or annoying, is to walk around quoting Marx at people.

But this makes an impression for some reason on the also not-at-all annoying guy who's running the Stanford Review, uh, Peter Thiel.

And then, yeah.

Then we...