Advertise on podcast: Straight To It

In this episode, I interview Emily Greenhouse. Emily is the editor of The New York Review of Books. After working as an editorial assistant to legendary NYRB founding editor Robert Silvers and New Yorker editor David Remnick, Emily became the managing editor of The New Yorker. She returned to the NYRB in 2019 and became its sole editor in 2021. We discuss what goes into creating an issue of the Review, the value of literature & history, Emily’s most common edits, and the importance of making complex topics accessible to a curious general reader.

In this episode, I interview Dawn Hammatt. Dawn is the Director of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, TX. Dawn also served as director of two other presidential libraries: the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon libraries. We discuss her love of public history, the responsibilities of a presidential library director, and the three presidencies she has helped preserve.

Missy is the CEO of Crankstart, a San Francisco-based foundation. Crankstart has awarded over $1.6 billion in grants focused on economic mobility, education, democracy, housing, the environment, and more, mainly in San Francisco. Missy had a successful business career, including roles at TPG and Boston Consulting Group, before joining Crankstart in 2021. During her tenure, Crankstart has launched initiatives such as subsidizing grocery stores in underresourced areas and the Boundless SF competition, which will award $150m to the best ideas to improve the city. We discuss Missy's journey, San Francisco's resurgence and the innovative ideas Crankstart funds to improve the city.

In this episode, I interview Tommy Rosenkranz. Tommy is the Chief Product Officer at Constrafor, building an AI-native platform for construction subcontractors' back-office work. Constrafor lets companies use AI to handle the grunt work, like the time-consuming process of organizing and tracking invoices. Before working at Constrafor, Tommy graduated from Yale University and served as a product manager at LinkedIn. Using the construction business as a case study, we explore how AI will change the U.S. economy, where it will be used, whether it will have positive or negative effects, and how listeners should think about it in their own lives.

In this episode, I interview Neeru Khosla. Neeru is the co-founder of CK-12, an educational nonprofit that provides learning materials and AI support to millions of students worldwide.  More recently, Neeru became the controlling owner of the Seattle Seahawks. We discuss the evolution of CK-12, Neeru’s vision for the future of education, and leading the Seahawks.

In this episode, I interview Jonathan Weber at KALW's studio in San Francisco. Straight to It was recently featured on Bay Made, KALW's series highlighting local podcasts. I was lucky to be joined by such an incredible guest, Jonathan Weber. Jonathan Weber is the author of City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco.  In 1990, Jonathan was named the first-ever Silicon Valley reporter for the Los Angeles Times. During the height of the dot-com boom, Jonathan ran one of the seminal publications of the time, The Industry Standard. Later, he oversaw West Coast news and global technology coverage for Reuters. Weber co-founded The San Francisco Standard and served as its Editor-in-Chief. Listen for a exciting episode, recorded live -- covering over three decades of San Francisco history, many fascinating stories, and much more.

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In this episode, I interview ProPublica Climate Reporter Alex Cuadros. Alex recently published a major investigation into Hilcorp, a company owned by oil billionaire Jeffrey Hildebrand, and its relationship with the U.S. government. Alex has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. Alex is also the author of Brazillionaires and When We Sold God's Eye. We discuss making progress on climate change in the Trump era, his long career as a journalist, and calling the president.

In this episode, I interview Andy Nettell. Andy, with his wife Marcee, founded Stellar Books & Ephemera in 2022. Based out of Sequim, Washington, Andy and his wife focus on selling rare Americana. This past February, I visited their wonderful booth at the International Antiquarian Book Fair, which came to San Francisco. I met Andy and purchased a collection of presidential campaign pins. I really enjoyed learning about how Andy finds these amazing items, his journey, and his book recommendations for all of us.

In this episode, I interview Dr. Alice Siu of Stanford University’s deliberative democracy lab. The lab is devoted to research on democracy and public opinion using Deliberative Polling. It is a process that includes convening a representative sample of the group, educating the group on the issue, hearing from experts, and debating it. Consistently, the lab has found that this process makes participants' viewpoints less extreme and more likely to empathize with others' perspectives.  Dr. Siu earned her Ph.D. from Stanford's Department of Communication, specializing in political communication, deliberative democracy, and public opinion. Dr. Siu also holds bachelor's degrees in economics and Public Policy, as well as a master's degree in political science, all from Stanford University. We discuss the surprising statistic that nearly one in five Americans prefer authoritarianism to democracy, and what a survey on a made-up issue reveals to Dr. Siu about democracy.

In this episode, I interview Lara Hall. Lara is the Museum Curator of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. Lara worked as an archivist, organizing the over 45 million documents housed at the library, for about a decade before becoming the curator. She creates exhibits predominantly focused on the life, times, and legacy of President Johnson.  We discuss the challenge of communicating LBJ’s complicated legacy (with his civil rights and social triumphs, juxtaposed with the disastrous Vietnam War). Lara also tells us about how she curates the museum. Finally, Lara shares with us some of the more colorful stories from LBJ’s Presidency.

In this episode, I interview Dan Kurtz-Phelan. Since 2021, Dan has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Affairs, which for the past 100 years has been one of the leading publications covering foreign policy. Before his tenure as editor, Dan worked in the State Department during the Obama Administration. He went on to work for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a speechwriter and for the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff—focusing on long-term strategy.  Given the rapid and chaotic state of U.S. Foreign Policy, I ask Dan about whether he thinks the Trump administration has a coherent long-term strategy for global affairs.  We also discuss Dan’s time in the State Department, what Dan thinks politicians miss about foreign policy, and how history enables Dan to make better sense of the current state of global affairs.

In this episode, I interview Professor Ray Madoff of Boston College. Ray focuses on philanthropic policy, the rights of the dead (including the dead's ability to control their bodies, reputation, and property), estate taxes, comparative inheritance law, and wealth inequality and taxes. Recently, I became acquainted with Ray’s work through her award-winning book, The Second Estate. The book reveals the inadequacies of the U.S. tax code and its fascinating history. The book was selected as a The New Yorker’s Best Book of 2025.  We discuss the Gilded Age origins of the tax code, how the wealthy exploit the system today, and what we ought to do to fix it in the future.

In this episode, I interview Peter Wicks. Peter is a scholar-in-residence at the Elm Institute whose research focuses on the contemporary applications of Aristotle’s ethical and political thought, the history and philosophy of higher education, and the psychology and ethics of argument and persuasion. Recently, Peter co-edited Alasdair MacIntyre on Practical Philosophy: Essential Works, which was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2026. Peter is a faculty affiliate of the Yale Program for Biomedical Ethics and a fellow of Davenport College.  We discuss his course at Yale on the psychology and ethics of persuasion, the philosophy of one of the century's most important thinkers (Alasdair MacIntyre), and more! Enjoy the interview!

In this episode, I interview Tony Haile. Currently, Tony is the CEO of Filament, a company that aims to revolutionize professional networking through smaller, private spaces for connection.  Previously, Tony was on Twitter's Global Leadership Team, the Founding CEO of Scroll (which Twitter acquired), and the Founding CEO of Chartbeat. Tony got his education at St. Andrews and spent a semester studying at a Palestinian university in the West Bank. He is also an accomplished adventurer; Tony has done Arctic expeditions and a sailing race around the world. We discuss his experience living in the West Bank, his adventures, and what eventually led him to technology entrepreneurship. Finally, he shares his vision for Filament with us. Enjoy the interview!