Michal Lev-Ram: On the Intersecting Worlds of Tech, Culture, and Politics in Silicon Valley

(0:00) Intro (1:09) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel (1:56) Start of interview (2:39) Michal's origin story (5:05) Her start in journalism in Silicon Valley with Business 2.0. magazine and later at Fortune Magazine. (7:45) Her project Operation Firewall (audible original podcast involving cybersecurity) (11:40) The current state of tech, particularly AI, in Silicon Valley. "I tend to be cautiously optimistic" (14:59) On Mira Murati's Thinking Machine Labs founder control. *Michal's profile of Murati in Fortune (2023) (16:00) On AI companies' fiduciary duties "to humanity" (18:05) "For me, the jury is still out for OpenAI" *my reference to the episode with Tyler Shultz (E142) (21:27) Her take on Riyadh, based on a recent MPW Summit that they hosted for Fortune in Saudi Arabia. *Saudi 2030 Vision (29:10) On the her new podcast: What's Your Number? looking at the Israeli economy, but through a global lens. (33:38) On the politicization of the boardroom (and pushback to ESG and DEI). (38:05) Her profile of Bob Lee in Esquire "Sex, Drugs, and Murder in Tech Land" (Feb 2025) (42:33) The changing narrative of technology. "I think that creativity is missing" (44:03) Books that have greatly influenced her life:Hiroshima by John Hersey (1946)Old Testament (45:17) Her mentors:Adam Lushinsky Stephanie Mehta (46:23) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by: "Your happiness in life is directly proportional to the number of tough conversations you're willing to have."  (47:35) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves. (48:46) The living person she most admires. Michal Lev-Ram is a Silicon Valley-based journalist who writes about the intersecting (and sometimes colliding) worlds of tech, culture, and politics. You can follow Evan on social media at: X: @evanepstein LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/  Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/ __ To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/ __ Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License