Curated playlist
Stanford University alumni
- John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a produce market to survive. He later won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Ilya SutskeverIlya Sutskever, a computer scientist born in 1986, wrote a short message in 2022 that set off a public argument. It read: "it may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious." Few researchers could post a line like that…
- Mike KriegerMike Krieger once revived a crashed Instagram at 3:30 in the morning and had no memory of it.
- Margaret L. KingRenaissance scholar Margaret L. King became an assistant professor three years before her doctorate.
- Herbert HooverHerbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, once drew a remark from a Secret Service agent that few presidents have ever earned. The agent put it this way. "I've been traveling with Presidents since Roosevelt and never before…
- Caroline EllisonOn the 9th of November 2022, Caroline Ellison, chief executive of the trading firm Alameda Research, joined a video meeting with her employees. According to anonymous sources cited by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, she…
- Jennifer ConnellyJennifer Connelly was eleven years old when she walked into an audition for the director Sergio Leone and tried to pass as a ballerina. She had never taken a ballet lesson. She simply imitated what she imagined a dancer would do. Leone was…
- Ram Dass"I didn't have one whiff of God until I took psychedelics." That is how Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert, described his early self to a writer for Tufts Magazine in 2006. He said he had been inured to religion. This is a striking thing to…
- Carl WiemanAfter a Nobel Prize in physics, Carl Wieman turned to why students learn so little in science class.
- Eric Allin CornellIn 1995, Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman made the first Bose-Einstein condensate. It is a new state of matter.
- Sigourney WeaverSigourney Weaver once said she felt like "a giant spider" as a girl. By the age of 11, she reportedly stood 180 cm tall. She also recalled never having "the confidence to ever think she could act". Weaver, born on the 8th of October 1949,…
- Elizabeth HolmesElizabeth Holmes was twenty-nine years past her first day at Stanford when Forbes named her the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States. That was in 2015. The magazine based its judgment on a valuation of…
- Sally RideSally Ride quietly passed along the key clue to what caused the Challenger explosion.
- Do KwonDo Kwon named his daughter Luna weeks before his Luna cryptocurrency collapsed.
- Dario AmodeiOpenAI's board once asked Dario Amodei to replace Sam Altman as its chief executive. He turned it down.
- Jensen HuangJensen Huang founded Nvidia in a Denny's booth, where he once worked as a dishwasher. Three engineers pooled $600.
- Hans MoravecHans Moravec argued consciousness could move into a computer seven years before David Chalmers.
- Sam AltmanSam Altman was fired as OpenAI's CEO in November 2023. Most of the staff threatened to quit, and he returned.
- Richard D. WolffRichard D. Wolff's father was a lawyer in Cologne, but his degree was worthless in America.
- Victor Davis HansonAfter earning a Stanford PhD, Victor Davis Hanson went home and farmed. He grew orchards and vineyards for four years.
- Sharmeen Obaid-ChinoySharmeen Obaid-Chinoy became the first Pakistani to win an Academy Award, for Saving Face in 2012.