News

The Stanford freshmen who want to rule the world . . . will probably read this book and try even harder

Published

2 months ago

April 26, 2026

Preport

Theo Baker is graduating from Stanford this spring with something most seniors don’t have: a book deal, a George Polk Award that he received for his investigative reporting as a student journalist, and a front-row account of one of the most romanticized institutions in the world.

His forthcoming How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was excerpted Friday in The Atlantic and based on that alone, I can’t wait to see the rest. The only question worth asking is the same one Baker himself might be too close to answer, which is: Can a book like this actually change anything? Or does the spotlight, as it always seems to, send more students racing to the place?

The parallel that keeps coming to my mind is “The Social Network.” Aaron Sorkin wrote a film that was an indictment in many ways of the particular sociopathy that Silicon Valley tends to reward. What it seemingly did was make a generation of young people want to be Mark Zuckerberg. The cautionary tale became a recruitment video. The story of the guy who — in the movie, at least — steamrolled his best friend on his way to billions didn’t discourage ambition; it further glamorized it.

Judging by the excerpt, Baker’s portrait of Stanford is far more granular. He talks with hundreds of people to roundly describe the “Stanford inside Stanford.” “You sort of join it freshman year or you don’t,” one student tells Baker. It’s an invite-only world where venture capitalists wine and dine 18-year-olds, where “pre-idea funding” worth hundreds of thousands of dollars gets handed to students before they’ve had an original idea, and where the boundary between mentorship and predation is nearly impossible to discern. (The shame of chasing teenage founders, if it ever existed, is gone; not chasing them is no longer an option for most VCs.) Steve Blank, who teaches the school’s legendary startup course, tells Baker that “Stanford is an incubator with dorms,” which is not meant as a compliment.

What’s new isn’t that this pressure exists but that it has been fully internalized. There was a time, maybe 10, maybe 15 years ago, when Stanford students felt the weight of Silicon Valley expectation pressing down on them from outside. Now, many of them arrive on campus already expecting, as a matter of course, to launch a startup, to raise money, to become rich.

I think about a friend — I’ll call him D — who dropped out of Stanford a few years ago, partway through his first two years, to launch a startup. He was barely past his teens. The words “I’m thinking of take a leave of absence” had just escaped his mouth before the university, by his own account, gave him its cheerful blessing to dive full bore into the startup. Stanford doesn’t fight this anymore, if it ever did. Departures like his are an expected outcome.

D is now in his mid-twenties. His company has raised what would register in any normal context as an astonishing amount of money. He almost certainly knows more about cap tables, venture dynamics, and product-market fit than most people learn in a decade of conventional careers. By every metric the Valley uses, he’s a success story. But he also doesn’t see his family (no time), has barely dated (no time), and the company, which keeps growing, doesn’t seem inclined to provide him with that kind of balance anytime soon. He is already, in some meaningful sense, behind on his own life.

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This is the part that Baker’s excerpt hints at without fully landing on, maybe because he’s still inside it himself. The costs of this system aren’t just distributed in the form of fraud — though Baker is direct about this, describing it as pervasive and largely consequence-free. The costs are also more personal: the relationships not formed, the ordinary milestones of early adulthood traded away in exchange for a billion-dollar vision that, statistically, almost certainly won’t materialize. “100% of entrepreneurs think they’re visionaries,” Blank tells Baker. “The data say 99% aren’t.”

What happens to the 99% at age 30? At age 40? These aren’t questions Silicon Valley is set up to answer, and they’re certainly not questions Stanford is about to start asking.

Baker also surfaces something that Sam Altman articulates best. Altman — OpenAI CEO, former Y Combinator head, precisely the kind of person these students aspire to become — tells Baker that the VC dinner circuit has become an “anti-signal” to the people who actually know what talent looks like. The students doing the rounds, performing founder-ness for rooms full of investors, tend not to be the real builders. The real builders, presumably, are somewhere else, building things. The performance of ambition and the thing itself are increasingly hard to tell apart, and the system that was ostensibly designed to find genius has gotten very good at finding people who are good at seeming like geniuses.

How to Rule the World sounds like exactly the right book for this moment in time. But there’s a certain irony in the strong likelihood that this critically minded book about Stanford’s relationship to power and money will be celebrated by the same class of people it critiques, and — if it does well (it has already been optioned for a movie) — used as further evidence that Stanford produces not just founders and fraudsters but important writers and journalists, too.

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Health

PT Health Watch: Menopause increases risk of bone loss, fractures, says expert

Published

2 minutes ago

June 13, 2026

Preport

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Menopause, the natural stage marking the end of a woman’s reproductive years, can significantly affect bone health and increase the risk of osteoporosis and fractures due to declining oestrogen levels, a medical expert has said.

Although menopause has important health implications, it remains a frequently overlooked issue within Nigeria’s sexual and reproductive health and rights framework.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), menopause occurs when a woman’s menstrual periods stop permanently because of declining levels of oestrogen and the loss of ovarian follicular function. As a result, the ovaries stop releasing eggs for fertilisation, making natural conception no longer possible.

Common symptoms associated with menopause include hot flushes, night sweats, irregular menstrual flow, vaginal dryness, pain during sexual intercourse, urinary incontinence, sleep disturbances, mood changes, anxiety and depression.

Perimenopause refers to the transition period leading to menopause and extends until one year after the final menstrual period, while postmenopause begins after a woman has gone 12 consecutive months without menstruation.

In Nigeria, women generally attain menopause around the age of 48 and above as part of the natural ageing process.

Menopause and bone health

Speaking with PT Health Watch, Qudus Lawal, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, said menopause disrupts hormonal balance, leading to increased bone breakdown and reduced bone formation.

According to him, while nearly all women experience some degree of bone loss after menopause because of declining oestrogen levels, not all will develop osteoporosis or sustain fractures.

He explained that bone density before menopause plays a major role in determining a woman’s risk of osteoporosis later in life.

Using a financial analogy, Mr Lawal described bone health as a balance between deposits and withdrawals.

“The stronger the bone density a woman builds before menopause, the better protected she is against the accelerated loss that occurs afterwards,” he said.

Why bone loss increases after menopause

Mr Lawal explained that oestrogen normally suppresses osteoclasts, the cells responsible for breaking down bone tissue.

However, when oestrogen levels fall after menopause, these cells become more active, while osteoblasts, the cells responsible for building new bone, are unable to replace bone at the same rate.

This imbalance gradually weakens bones and increases the risk of osteoporosis and fractures.

Maintaining healthy bones after menopause

Mr Lawal recommended a combination of proper nutrition, regular exercise and preventive healthcare measures to maintain bone health after menopause.

He advised women to consume balanced diets rich in calcium and vitamin D, engage in weight-bearing and muscle-strengthening exercises, and take steps to prevent falls.

“When you take foods and supplements that are rich in those essential nutrients, it helps build the bone,” he said.

He stressed the importance of early intervention, noting that bone density loss is often silent and may not produce symptoms until complications occur.

“One of the ways people present is that they grow shorter. Normally, once you get to a certain age after puberty, you are not supposed to grow shorter.

“But many of our mothers begin to lose height over time, which may result from age-related spinal degeneration and bone loss,” he said.

According to him, many women only become aware of significant bone loss after suffering fractures.

“The fracture can be due to a fall, sometimes a little push that you normally have without having symptoms. Just a little trip in the bathroom could lead to a major fracture,” he added.

READ ALSO: Women demand fertility, menopause coverage in workplace health insurance – Report

Mr Lawal noted that in some countries, bone density screening forms part of routine wellness checks for postmenopausal women, helping identify individuals at high risk and allowing for early intervention.

He urged women to adopt healthy lifestyles and prioritise bone health long before menopause.

According to him, the goal is to ensure women build and maintain strong bone density before menopause to minimise the impact of hormonal changes later in life.

News

Kwankwaso reveals details of closed door meeting with Peter Obi

Published

18 minutes ago

June 13, 2026

Preport

Former Kano State Governor and vice presidential candidate of the Nigerian Democratic Congress, NDC, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso on Friday met with the presidential candidate of the NDC, Mr Peter Obi, at his Abuja residence.

Kwankwaso disclosed this in a post via his X handle on Saturday, stating that the meeting was focused on productive discussions on key partisan and national issues.

He said“Yesterday, I had the honour of hosting my brother and partner, His Excellency Peter Obi, at my residence in Abuja.

“I warmly welcomed him back from his highly productive international trip, and we engaged in frank and productive discussions on key partisan and national issues.

“Our party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), remains united. As leaders, we must continue to demonstrate maturity by making the necessary sacrifices and tolerating our differences in pursuit of our shared goal.

“We are resolute in this mission, and together, we shall ensure that Nigeria is OK.”