DON'T PAY FULL PRICE": A UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT'S HONEST ADVICE

Epic Ride And Book Research

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back to Relentlessly That Girl. Today we have a very exciting guest, and I do have a question for you. Um, what is a very exciting moment you've like faced in your career? I just love to hear about that.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

I went on a seven-day horseback ride across uh Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Armenia. And we were riding all night one night, and then in the morning we woke up just as the sun came up, and Mount Adorat, which is rumored to be the site of Noah's Ark, popped out from behind the clouds. Our horses ran to the top of a cliff, and looking down from the cliff, we saw this giant rock that almost looked like Noah's Ark. And I felt like I was transported in time.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Wait, why did you go on this trip in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

I was writing a book. Uh, the book is called Book of Queens, which is about the American uh and Iranian and Afghan women who came together to fight the war on terror uh in Afghanistan and the Middle East. It's the true story of my grandmother, who was a sharpshooter on horseback. Sharpshooter on horseback? Yeah, it turns out. Yes. So it's um the book, Book of Queens, actually is about um the relationship between women and horses and this absolute bond between women and horses that I discovered through learning about my grandmother's story. Um, my grandmother and many members of my family were big fans of Caspian horses, which are the oldest breed of horses on the planet. And I fell in love with horses at a young age. I didn't even know why. Um, and then I learned that my grandmother had been breeding these horses and actually riding with women from Iran to Afghanistan on horses. They would get the horses drunk on homemade whiskey as they crossed into the border to Afghanistan. Now you might ask why they were drunk on homemade whiskey. It's because they were more relaxed when they crossed the border so they wouldn't step on landmines. Oh those women formed an all-female army that then, many, many, many years later, helped fight the war on terror against the Taliban. That is something you don't hear about in history at all. No, it's like Hirstry, right? Because, you know, people talk about wars and they usually talk about it from the male perspective. But these women trained the horses that the men used to fight the Taliban right after 9-11.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

That's amazing. Wait, do you have any horses?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

I do. I have two horses. One of them lives in Montana. I miss him. His name's JB. He's a Tennessee walker. And then I have a Missouri foxtrotter and he lives out in California. So I miss my horses terribly.

unknown 2:38

So sad.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

I know. It's too hot here.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Okay, so you have written nine books as just like a reporter. I know you've done a lot to kind of get the content in those books. I'd love to hear about some of that, actually.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Absolutely. So my very first book came out of initially a journalistic assignment. So I was a journalist for the Los Angeles Times magazine.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

How did you become a journalist in the first place, too? What I you've gone so many different places in your career. So it's kind of hard to keep track. Yeah. So how did where did that passion come from? How did you decide that's what you wanted to do?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Um, I have always been extremely curious about the world around me. I've always wondered why people do what they do. And I love interviewing people. It sounds like you do too. Um, and I love getting the story of a place and a people and a culture or a subculture from the words of the people themselves. So not necessarily just reading a study, but I'm like, I want to go there. I want to immerse myself in it. Uh, and so when I was in undergrad, I was initially studying diplomacy. Um, and I went to New York, I worked for the United Nations, which was great, but it seemed like such a high level. People would like talk about countries, like they're like, well, you know, China thinks or Iran thinks. I'm like, you're talking about like millions of people, you just not like one country. And I'm like, no, I want to understand Iran or India from the people themselves. Yeah. So uh when I came back from my junior year, uh, I've been working at the UN first in New York, then in Geneva. When I came back, uh, I heard about an internship opening at the Los Angeles Times magazine. And I I went to school, I went to college at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Um, and someone said, Yeah, there's this internship, they only take one person, but you should apply. And I'm like, and I'm the kind of person, I think you are too, that's like, oh, it's a challenge. If they only take one person, I'm gonna get it. Right. So yeah, I applied and I and I got it. And then my editors were amazing. They were like, if you want to go out and start writing stories on your own, do it. And like, I literally remember this. My very first story was about um manhole covers, like those little round covers on the street. My very first story was a story about why do all the manhole covers on the streets say made in Mexico. I'm like, if we have like, why are they like these big heavy things coming from Mexico?

SPEAKER_02 5:10

So I've never noticed that.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

I know. See, I noticed that and I was like, why is that the case? So then I wrote a story. That was my very first solo story. I'm still very proud of it.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Wait, why do they come from Mexico actually?

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Well, actually, it turns out that because the manufacturing process over there, they actually have a whole infrastructure. And I kept wondering, how do they get it to the US? Because these are like really, really heavy things. But they had designed a very intricate like shipping and logistics program, which I'm gonna tell you like when I was doing this, I was 20 years old. I'm like, what is a logistics program? So they had a very involved like logistics program where they would literally roll these things into the city and then they would just click right into the streets. And I was like, this is genius. So yeah, it's because it's it's very economically affordable. It's actually cheaper to make them there and literally roll them into the US than to make them here. It blew my mind.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Something you don't think about.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Okay. Hey,

Becoming A Journalist Through Curiosity

SPEAKER_01 6:08

so you went from a reporter to a teacher. Wait, so well, no. First, I went from a reporter to an anthropologist. To an anthropologist, okay. Yeah. So I was a journalist, right? And then I went to Iran. Um, I convinced the people at the LA Times magazine to let me go as a stringer to write about the Iran, Iranian women's movement. I'm Iranian American. And I had always wanted to go back to my home country. My parents came here during the revolution. I was born and raised here. Iran was like very active in my imagination. So I'm like, I want to go and I want to see what the women are doing because I had heard about this powerful women's movement. So I convinced my editors to let me go. And then I told my parents I had to do this for school and my internship, um, because I was determined to go. And then I got to Iran, and much to my surprise, it wasn't the women's movement that everyone my age was talking about, but a movement called the Sexual Revolution, which was about young people, my age again, organizing to speak back to the government. Um, so I started writing stories about that. And I came back to the US, and by then I was accepted to Columbia to go to graduate school. And I initially was going to get a master's in international affairs because I thought, well, I had majored in diplomacy, that's the next step. But it turns out that like I kind of hated it. Like Loki hated that master's program because it was like everything I hated about the UN. People kept talking about like it wasn't about people. It wasn't about people. Yeah. Exactly. And I stumbled into an anthropology class. Literally, it was like by accident, you know, like imagine like you're trying to get into this one class, you can't get in, and you're like, okay, well, what else is at 10 a.m.? You know, Tuesdays and Thursdays, because you're like, I don't want an 8 a.m. class. You don't want to get up early, right? Yeah. So I was like, what's at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays? And it was like medical anthropology. And the class was gender, sexuality, health, and human rights. I'm like, I've never heard of medical anthropology, but I love all those words: gender, sexuality, human rights, like, sign me up. So I went into this class, and absolutely everything that came out of the professor's mouth inspired me to my core. Yeah. Like, I couldn't wait. I like look, I've always loved school, but this class, I could not wait. I wished it was like five days a week. I would just read and read and read. And I went to the professor, I was like, can you give me more readings, more readings? And then I wrote my final paper on what I'd seen in Iran. And she's like, I hate to break it to you. You're not an international affairs person. You're an anthropologist. So at the end of that semester, she's like, apply for your PhD. Yeah. I will work with you. And I did. And that's why I say to people, I'm an accidental anthropologist. It was purely by accident that I discovered a field I fell in love with.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

Wait, yeah,

Discovering Medical Anthropology By Accident

SPEAKER_02 9:03

really quick, I'm just curious, what's the difference between medical anthropology and regular anthropology?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Great question. So anthropology itself is a really big field. Yeah. So when I tell people medical anthropology, they're like, oh, like skulls and like Indiana Jones. And I'm like, no, no. That's like archaeology. Um, anthropology is the study of culture, of people and culture. Yeah. Medical anthropology takes a focus on how people view and make decisions about their body, like body, mind, and soul.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

So it's, you know, people specialize in different fields. Some people study linguistic anthropology, which is studying a culture by how people talk. Some people do um forensic anthropology, which is studying a culture by like the tissues and the kind of what's left over. Um, sociocultural anthropology is the most common, which is studying a culture by like what people wear, you know, yeah. What's the slang, what's the music. Medical anthropology just takes it a step further and says, yeah, but how do people like feel about their bodies? And how do people experience the world um kind of in different ways through that sort of mind-body connection? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Wait, what is it that you specialize in?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Medical anthro. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I ended up because I wanted to study sexuality and gender. Yeah. And back then, to do that, medical anthropology was your closest bet. There were no gender studies. Okay, so there was, but there wasn't a PhD in it at the time. Okay. Number one. Number two, I come from a family of like a lot of doctors, and uh, I'm Iranian, so it's like doctor, lawyer, engineer, you know. So you wanted to sound all pretty. So I was like, yeah, I'm like, I didn't want to like go and be like, so I'm at Columbia, I'm finishing that master's in international affairs, but I'm doing a PhD. And they were like, in what? And I'm and I was like, I was not gonna be able to say gender studies. I mean, even if it had existed, which it didn't. I was like, well, it's medical anthropology emphasis on medical.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Um, you know, because I'm like, take me seriously. That sounds good. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so how did you go from an anthropologist to a teacher then? What inspired you to go from studying humans to teaching about it?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah. Yeah. Well, to me, the best way to learn anything is to teach it.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

So um, and I was so passionate about this discipline. And I was like, everybody should be studying this because when I did start to study anthropology, I found like it was so useful in every aspect of my life. Yeah. Right. I found like I could predict, you know, even like why do people shop the way they do? Like, why do people, you know, use social media now? Like that, like anthropologists have been able to predict those trends for a really long time. Like they predicted TikTok, you know, they predicted the Twitter revolution. So it's actually a really useful skill to be able to um first talk to people. I feel like everybody, you know, I I read a study recently that said when you look at 2026 as compared to 2023, people speak 500 fewer words a day. Which I'm like, oh my God, people are like talking to each other less.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Do you think it's because of like the internet and because of all of that or like COVID? I it's probably all of that.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

And it sounds like people are just chatting to their chat bots like with their phones instead of chatting to each other. I don't really know. But it like it made me sad, right? Because I'm like, this is a like learning how to be together and learning how to be in friendship and support each other. This is like the most vital skill, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:44

That's like that's what's me, that's what makes humans human. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

And so I'm like, oh I think this is an incredible discipline because it helps me understand me. It helps me understand you, it helps me understand the world that we live in. And I just thought, I want to teach this. I want everyone to know this. Do you think it's really this just popped in my head? Do you think it's really different from like something like psychology? It is really different from psychology because psychology really enters this conversation through almost like a disease, right? It's like, well, what's your psychosis? Right. Like, what's your psychology? Right? It comes at it from a very diagnostic.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Anthropology comes at it from a from a culture, like a culture and society.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

It's like, well, what are we wearing? What's the slang we're using? What are we listening to? Like who's popular? Like it's and and where is society going? I can think of no question more important, especially right now, as we sit here in 2026. There's no question more existential or important than what the heck is going on. Right. Yeah. It's all over the place. It's like, what's going on? And honestly, I feel so blessed that I chose a discipline that actually helps me make sense of exactly what's going on right now, which is great. I have a 16-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son and 11-year-old son, and I work with 16 to 24-year-olds. And I feel really blessed that I get to, when they're like, what's going on? I get to be like, This is what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Interesting. Uh, but you don't teach anymore. So

Teaching Then Moving Into Leadership

SPEAKER_02 14:16

how did you go from, well, first of all, we'll get to that later. How did you go from a teacher to a, was it dean? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah. So I kind of rose the administrative ranks again, kind of accidentally.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Okay. Yeah. So what made you decide to go from a teacher to a leader?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah, leader. That was less intentional. Okay. The teacher was intentional. The anthropology was like accidental but intentional. Um, I became department chair. I was made department chair. And um, and then, and I'm like, okay, I guess they they told me, well, this is service. Like, you have to do this for the department. And I was like, um, okay, I guess. And I was the only woman in the whole department, and I was the most junior member of the whole department.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

How'd that feel?

SPEAKER_01 15:02

It was felt monumentally uh unfair because I was being asked to do all this service that my male colleagues weren't, number one. Number two, they were all senior to me. And so I almost felt like trapped because like I was I was told I was chair, and I was told, like, hey, you have to get these people to, you know, kind of have this. And that was a very difficult thing to do. It was a very, very difficult position to be in. And so I think I've always had this like justice thing in my head. So when these dean positions opened, um, some of my female friends who were also department chairs and having a tough time like me, they're like, You should be a dean, because then you can help women like us who are having a hard time with the senior males. And I was like, Oh, but then I have to be a dean, you know? And they're like, Yeah, but this is like great, you know, and and and you could really change things, you could change the culture of academia.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Did you have to stop teaching to be a dean?

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Initially, no, but eventually, yes, because it's being dean is like a full-time job. Yeah. Um, so but initially I was dean of women, which was a great gig. I loved it. Loved that job. Women specific, why not just it was a role that had been created at Pomona College years and years and years ago. Um, and it was a leftover vestige, which actually it was a great role for me because I got to bring the two sides of the house, student affairs and academic affairs together, which was fun. So it's like all your extracurriculars and your classes, like I got to bring it together. It was fun. Um, then I became dean at the University of Denver, and that's when I had to stop teaching because that became a full-time job, right? That was like you gotta grow programs, and then it became all about spreadsheets and fundraising. And I was like, this is the opposite of fun. You weren't with people anymore. No, and I and the worst part was is that I wasn't teaching. Yeah. I missed the students. So uh when I got recruited to come here, I got recruited to be a dean at ASU, which I was expecting to be. I thought you became a provost. Nope, provost was after. That's the step, that's the next step, right? So you're kind of going up the ranks. Um, so I was kept department chair, then dean of women, then dean. Then I was like a dean over a bunch of colleges here at ASU.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Um, which was great because at ASU the deans teach, which I love.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Are there dean are there deans for each like individual different uh department? Uh is that how that works?

SPEAKER_01 17:27

No, no. So ASU's particular, most places are not this way, but they have like schools. So there's like the School of Um Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and school. But I had 11 schools under me.

unknown 17:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Um, some deans have just there's like a dean for just the business school, there's a dean for just the law school, but I had 11 schools. Um, which again, you know, there's like, oh great, we'll go with the most challenging thing we can do here. Um, and and I I did, I did really like it. Um, but was it more like human focused or was it still more like spreadsheets and like spreadsheets? Yeah. And you know, I feel like when, you know, it's like when you look back, you're like, maybe you should have stepped out then, you know, gone back to teaching. But once you're on that treadmill, it's not easy to get off. It's really not. People, especially if you're like a woman, there's this expectation that you'll just keep going up because there's this thought that if you step down, that you're kind of disappointing all the other women who are trying to go up. Yeah, you know, and that's that's a tough thing.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Do you think there's more pressure on women to like perform than it is for men?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

I do. I definitely do. I think women are always held to higher standards. Yeah. I think that's just been a thing forever and ever. Um, I think that now it's changing, you know. I feel like the generations have a better relationship. I feel like your generation and my, you know, I think there's a better relationship. Gen Alpha is super, super interesting to me. Gen Alpha and Gen Z, I think these two generations are like definitely breaking the mold, which I really love.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Well,

Generations Facing AI And Quantum Change

SPEAKER_02 19:07

I all the stuff online scares me on another note. But tell me what you're scared of.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

That's a whole other thing. Generationally, what are you worried about?

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Oh my gosh, just all the stuff you see online about like the boys falling into like the manosphere and stuff and people not dating anymore because the girls are getting more feminist and the guys are getting more conservative. Oh, really? Did you see that statistic about like 33% of young men um like think women should like stay at home and like are conservative now? Really? Like they're they're like really switching over. Wow. I had not seen that. That's a little bit. No, that's a new thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

It's really scary. I mean, look, it just means you're fighting the same battles we were, but maybe it's all online. Who knows?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

You don't really know.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah. I mean, I right now I do I coach young people. I coach people 16 to 24, yeah, help them figure out if college is right for them, what their path, passion, and purpose is. So I work with a lot of people in this age group, and the young men I work with are fantastic. They they really blow me away. I should say. Yeah. And the young women too. I mean, this generation, this generation, and I've been working with this age group for 25 years, whether I was teaching them, whether I was dean. When I was at Pomona and I was Dean of Women, I lived in the dorms. So I've been working with the this age group a long time. Your generation gives me the most hope I've had in a very, very long time.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

That's surprising. Wait, why?

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Because you're so uh introspective, you're so self-aware.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Um, you're so curious, you ask the questions. You don't assume that you know everything. It's really refreshing. No, no, really. You like you all you all ask questions. You do. And and that's probably the healthiest thing you could be doing at your age. Yeah. Is asking questions and you ask them in an authentic way, not in like a gotcha or sarcastic way. I mean, I'm super, I've I've been super inspired by the authenticity and genuineness of people your age. It gives me hope for the future.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

There is a lot of people that say that we're just too like kind of what is it? We come on too strong.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

I mean, if people aren't ready for intensity, like I don't think you realize what 2026 is about. You know, like I think there needs to be a level of intensity right now, given the velocity at which the world is changing. I mean, yeah, the world is changing at a faster pace than any of us have ever seen before. Why do you think so? Well, I think between AI and that's a huge shift. You've got quantum coming, you've got AI that is fundamentally changed.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Wait, what's quantum?

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Quantum is the next step after AI. So quantum, it's like I didn't even think AI was already where it was.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Oh no. I mean, we are in the J curve for AI, but quantum is starting the J curve. As well.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Oh, yeah. Wait, what is that?

SPEAKER_01 22:02

I have no clue what that is. Quantum computing. Yeah. Quantum. Uh, it basically like an Uber enhanced AI, meaning it can analyze data on like, I don't know, seven different dimensions all at once. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. So, what's the world gonna look like when quantum computing takes hold? I have no idea. But it takes the intensity of your generation to shepherd us through this. You know, I always say, like my generation, I feel I feel really blessed to be Gen X because I'm young enough to have been, excuse me, I'm old enough to have ushered in the internet revolution, right? I'm I'm old enough for the internet revolution, but I'm still young enough to watch the AI and quantum. I feel like we got a sweet spot here because we, you know, and and and with that comes responsibility, right? Yeah. I think our generation, our role is to say, here were some of the guardrails that maybe we wish we had used with the internet revolution, so that, you know, we I mean, there is a lot of scary stuff about AI, like the environmental, the like the how it can mess with like your mind. With your cognition.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Yeah, because these studies that like the more you use AI, the less you can actually do things yourself.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Right. The less you can actually think creatively.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

So it's like, where do you where's the line?

SPEAKER_01 23:20

And those were the questions that we started asking ourselves with the internet, and we should have kept going, but we didn't. Yeah. So again, I'm old enough to remember that. Like my generation is old enough to remember that. So we can take some of those lessons learned, and we can take some of the lessons we learned globally from what we saw with the internet revolution and bring that right now to say, like, just look, think about the internet revolution. Like, I know this is hard to imagine, but we didn't used to have Google.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

I was born the year the iPhone came out, actually.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Which is which is which is awesome, actually, right? Because you have a level of fluency with the technoscape that we don't have. Yeah. What we have though is that perspective of okay, when we got the internet, here were all the awesome things that happened, but here were some of the things that were less awesome that happened. And how do we then start to put those puzzle pieces together for the whole AI piece?

Scams And Where Trust Moves

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Yeah. Well, um, kind of on another note, um, me and my brothers, we do like a finance thing and we were talking about scams because it's also kind of for young people. We're talking about scams. Young people actually fall for scams more often than old people do. Really? Which I thought was really interesting. Yeah. Wow, wow. Because you'd think you'd think we're more tech savvy. We wouldn't fall for this stuff, but we do. Because like you're trusting, maybe. Well, yeah, but also we're not warned about it like old people are because people think, oh, we're young. We know, we know how to work the internet. We're not gonna fall for the scams, but we do at a higher rate than the old people do. Older people do. Really?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah. I didn't know that. Thank you for teaching it. And that's shocking to me. Yeah. But I guess I can see it, right? You all trust. See, I I'm writing a book about right now, I'm writing a book about um the migration of trust.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

I think we are really, I think a lot of people think that like things won't happen to them. I think I I think a lot of people my age, especially, that nothing bad is gonna happen to them. I thought, I thought that until something bad did happen to me. It's like you don't really realize how it is when you're as sheltered as we are. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

I I could see that. You're trusting still, but I our generation is like, um, a lot of bad things have happened. I mean, but we don't trust the official story anymore. We've watched the official story fall apart. Like my I will say this our generation, we watched the story of health fall apart. Like the official story was go if you're sick, you go to a hospital, you see a doctor, you get better. But the real story for us is you get sick, you go to a hospital, you wait a really, really, really long time. Yeah, you get a lot poorer because the bills are really high. You maybe see a doctor who maybe gives you some medication and you maybe get better. I'm studying the education piece, right? Yeah. The official story was go to college, get a degree, get a job. What we're seeing today, though, is you go to college, you get poorer, right? You go into massive debt, $1.8 trillion of student debt as we sit here. You get poorer. Um, maybe you graduate, maybe you don't. As we sit here today, 43 million Americans are college dropouts. That's a pretty staggering number. So maybe you get a degree, maybe you don't. Now, let's say you get a degree. Is that degree gonna get you a job? Uh you don't know.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

So that's what I'm saying. The official story is falling apart.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Yeah, it probably takes a lot of takes a lot of oh, sorry, takes a lot of like experience to get there, probably.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Yeah. Like we haven't lived that yet.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

That's right. So maybe we can pass that on to you.

College Strategy With Certificates And Negotiation

SPEAKER_02 26:48

Yeah. Well, what is some like advice you have for younger people looking to go to college? Because that's kind of what this is about. We want to hear how you got where you are. Like, what do you think is kind of the best path?

SPEAKER_01 26:59

I think, first of all, I think doing the sort of self-excavation work that a lot of your generation is doing, asking yourself the hard questions and asking people around yourself the hard questions is really, really important so that you can start to. I always tell people, own your narrative, own your story. Don't go to college just because everyone tells you to and you're expected to. Go because you have a passion for something, right? And go because you're passionate. I I still think ever, you know, I still think college is an incredible and a very valuable experience. I think today people have to be a lot more intentional when choosing where they go to college, what they study. You know, I always recommend people get stackable credentials. So don't just get a bachelor's, get stackable certificates. Like double major. No, they're they're like certificates that you stack towards a bachelor's. No, because what we're seeing now is employers are very, very interested in what's called credentials of value. So, like let's say you're gonna go to UCLA or USC or wherever, you don't just just get a BA, you take certificates that stack. So that's one thing that you want to do because then if you do drop out in the middle, at least you have your certificate. Oh, which can be a good one.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Sorry, I'm so so you mean like you get like your associates and then you get a bachelor's?

SPEAKER_01 28:17

No, you actually would just get a certificate now that like you could get a you could get like a certificate in like paralegal studies, you could get a certificate in World War II studies, you could get a certificate, like and then you stack a few of you could get a certificate in restauratorship, a certificate in economics, and then you can stack those.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Is that like if you do enough courses in one thing, you can get a certificate in it?

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Well, you you when you go to the call that college, you say, I want to get a certificate that I can take with me, which most colleges have. But I always tell people, I'd love to work for that. I've never heard about that. So that's one piece of advice I would give. The other thing I tell young people the sticker price is never the price. Always negotiate your tuition. So when they tell you the tuition, because you have a podcast on finance, yeah. Let me tell you something. I can save you thousands and thousands of dollars a year by just explaining to you how to negotiate with college. When you see the tuition price, that is not the sticker price, it is not your tuition price. You can always negotiate it.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

Well, how do you go about negotiating?

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Well, you look and you see the different kinds of fellowships, and then you play colleges off against each other. You always should do that.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

You say, Well, this college is offering me this scholarship.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Correct. Interesting. Correct. And now there's a whole new initiative that so President Trump announced it in July of 2025. It went into effect July of this year called Workforce Pell, which entitles every American to $7,583, regardless of your income, for any of those stackable certificates that are towards workforce. That's money that's there. Like, go grab that money. Yeah, because $7,583, grab it. I've never heard about it for the taken.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

I've never heard about people just getting a certificate.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Yeah. So do you don't so you don't have to get an actual degree, you can just get a certificate in something and employers still see that as like so that's what we're seeing now more and more is employers saying, hey, we're looking for certificates. Because here's like let's think about this. If you're in college right now, if you're a freshman, you just started your freshman year. Yeah. Let's say you're studying, I don't know, interior design. I hate to break it to you, but in four years, like there why do I need to hire an interior designer?

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Like, even right now, I'll go on, I'll go on Chat GPT.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Chat GPT does my whole work. 100%, right? Yeah. So if you're right now majoring in that, like, not your best bet, right? Or imagine you're like a freshman, you're studying computer science, like you're in four years, like all those people who studied coding, I'm like, oh bummer. Is that Claude is coding for us right now? You know? So because things are moving so quickly, a four-year degree in a lot of these.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Well, this is a scary time because you don't know what AI is gonna take over and what it's not gonna take over. So you have to like, you have to really look at something that's not gonna get taken over and be like certain about that. Because everything's at kind of at risk.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Well, or you can look at it this way: you're gonna school is gonna be a lifelong thing, meaning you just keep coming back and upskilling. So let's say you are you have a particular job right now. Let's say you are an interior designer, yeah, and a year from now there's no more interior design jobs. You can go back, you don't go back for a degree, you go back for a certificate in, I don't know, let's say quantum.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Because now that's the thing. Then you do that for 10 years and then that flips. Well, then you go and get a certificate in, I don't know, basket weaving. Now we need more. It's it used to be a joke. Like when I was your age, people were like, you can't get a degree in basket weaving. I'm like, turns out we might need more basket weavers than we need lawyers because the AI can do the law thing, but it can't weave a basket for us. So you're right, we don't know, which is why these rapid credentials and the constant returning back to upskill is gonna be, I think, a lifelong thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

That's really interesting. In um my other um like thing with my brothers, um one thing we were talking about is how companies kind of um cycle in and out. Kind of how um we were talking about how like think about like um ice blocks or something. They're replaced by refrigerators, like what what else? Um like those chips and movies and stuff, they're not needed anymore. Everything gets cycled out and they have to the whole company has to figure out a new thing to go for or else it's gonna become irrelevant.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Right. And that's kind of what we're facing right now. You know, like if you were a chip maker and then that chip isn't needed, well, now you gotta go make something else. But that's why I think we are gonna have to think about college really differently. I think it used to be the case that you could do what I did, which was, oh, I'm gonna go for four years and I'm gonna study this and then I'm gonna get out. I think that that's that time is rapidly in the rearview mirror. Um, I think we have to now think about no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna upscale, I'm gonna learn to do something else as the market shifts.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Yeah, well, you were a college at a president. I would love to

Higher Education Fails And Trust Shifts

SPEAKER_02 33:16

hear about how that has like affected your opinion on that.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah, I mean, I will say, yeah, I so I, you know, I went like all the way to the top, I guess. Uh, became a college president. Um, and uh, you know, I think for me, one of the things that became clear is that society is changing so quickly. And so um, and it wasn't just during my presidency, I'd say all through kind of my climb up, you know, the administrative ladder. There were two audiences that were very, very loud in my ear. One was the students, and the students were like, our needs are not being met. We don't have the classes we want, you don't have the degrees that we want, we're going into debt. I mean, throughout my career, I have seen countless students sleeping in their cars, can't keep the food pantry stocked because the cost is so, so, so high, right? That's tough. On the other side, you had workforce. So I would meet employers and the employers are like, hey, so the students who are graduating, they're not ready to do the job. Yeah. And so I asked myself, like, who are we serving here? If the students are saying we're not serving them and the workforce is saying we're not serving them, who are we serving? Which is kind of what compelled me to, you know, say, wait a second, I think I need to put my anthropological hat back on and take a step back and take a step out of this system so that I can actually diagnose what's really going on.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

And so you're opening your own university, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Yeah. So we have a um, well, it's it's a yeah, it's an it's an accredited workforce credentialing platform. Um and, you know, that really is focused on upskilling people, right? So people who are maybe in the informal economy offering skills that, you know, certificates and skills that employers can see. Um so so we are doing that. But I I think probably the biggest move of my career since I stepped down is the book that I'm writing about what's actually going on. Um, because you know, we're in a moment where we're watching institutions fail. Like we're in a moment of institutional failure. And because Can we have some examples of that? Yeah. So I'd say the hospitals is one, right? Where people are like, it's too expensive and I don't get better.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Well, your parents were doctors, so you probably have a really interesting perspective on that. Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Very up close view of that. Um, and then, and we're seeing people migrate. We're seeing people like, for instance, we're seeing a lot of people shift from, you know, going to traditional Western medicine to like going to see a shaman, you know, in Peru. Like you're seeing a lot more of that now, right? Or like going to breath work and meditation, which is great, but it it it shows that the trust in the medical system is is going down. Education, the trust in the education system is going down, right? Oh, yeah. It's the first time in American history that, you know, two-thirds of Americans believe college is not a good use of time. So the trust is going down there.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

I mean, there is kind of a basis for that because I'm pretty sure there's um some statistic out there that's like our generation is getting dumber and dumber. Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Because education is failing. So that's another example. Education, health, some people would argue media, some people would say governments failing. These are the big, big institutions, and the institutions are failing. And what I've observed from being an anthropologist when I studied Iran is that when institutions fail, trust doesn't die, it migrates. Yeah. And where it migrates, it goes to the machines and it goes to the margins. And that's where we have to go if we want to think about rebuilding our society. So, some examples here are the fact that, you know, people are two times more likely to turn with a health question to Chat GPT than they are to a Harvard MD. People are more likely to go to YouTube TV to get like economic information than to go to a Harvard business school.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

But do you think that's just because it's more accessible?

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Well, it's also trust, right? People are like the access part is a part and parcel of all of this. I observed this in Iran when people, the young people there, just stopped trusting the government. Yeah. Right. And so they went underground and they started organizing. Even the trafficking work I did, people stopped trusting the job market and the government to get them jobs and they started relying on unscrupulous middlemen recruiters. When the institution fails and the trust moves underground, that can be a place of great promise, but it can also be a very dangerous place too. So when trust migrates to the margins and the machines, it's on all of us, like me as an anthropologist, to start to say, hey, hey, hey, let's take a look at this. Because we are in a moment where we are literally rebuilding our culture, but it takes somebody to be able to say, the institutions are failing and the trust is moving. Let's figure out where we're gonna harvest the gems from the underground to rebuild our new society.

Building Community Underground Using The Internet

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Well, in a time like this, where do you think young people should really be looking? Or is there a way to have an opinion on that?

SPEAKER_01 38:12

You know, if you look at what's happen, what happened in the Middle East, what young people did is they began organizing their own communities. Yeah. They began organizing their own, like so a lot, for instance, uh uh there's a book called Reading Lolita and Tehran. It's a great book. It was a bestseller. It just became a movie this summer.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 38:27

And um, it's basically about how because the universities weren't teaching what the young people in Iran needed them to teach, they just organized these underground classes so that they could learn what they really needed to learn. And we've seen we saw that all across the Middle East. It's the same with the health system. You know, you there's a there's another movie with Matthew McConaughey called the Dallas Buyers Club. When people can't get what they need from the formal, they go to the informal, they organize communities. And then what ends up happening is slowly but surely there is a shift. The mainstream starts to shift when an entire generation starts to organize underground.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

Does the underground kind of turn A? They all become the underground, yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Yeah, that's what my book is about.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Oh, well, that'll be really interesting to read when it comes out. When is it coming out?

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Uh, hopefully it'll be out next year. I'm very excited. Yes, I'll send you the cover as it's being designed right now. I'm very excited.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Yeah, the book is called Public Secrets.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

Wait, okay, so and it's about the underground basically.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Yeah, so it's called Public Secret, where trust goes when institutions fail.

unknown 39:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

And where it goes is the underground and the machines. And it looks at this interplay because in in Iran, it went to the underground, but Twitter and like the internet, but this is like 20 years ago. Twitter and the internet like is what helped the underground take shape and keep going.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

And now Oh, do you think people can like kind of organize online nowadays because it's so accessible?

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

But we have to be intentional about it. So rather than you know, people in Iran letting the internet be something that keeps them apart, they used it as something that brought them together. And I think we're in this moment where AI could keep us apart. There's a lot of like shame around it.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

And there's a lot, well, there's a lot of shame around like anything online too, like phones, even. Right. I think in schools in the UK, they've like completely banned phones. Yeah. Like you can't even use phones anymore because they're like, well, it's messing with your education, but what do you do when they're constantly around? Do you try to ban them or do you try to like accept them?

SPEAKER_01 40:30

I mean, I explain it like a calculator, right? Like, you know, I'm sure we know mathematicians were like, oh my gosh, calculator means no one's gonna be able to do math. And then they're like, no, let's teach with the calculator. Like, let's bring it in and work with it.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

And I think that's what young Iranians did during the sexual revolution that I wrote about. And they did it really effectively. And so what I think is gonna happen is your generation is gonna figure out that how to use the technoscape to your advantage before my generation is.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

Well, I think that'll be interesting to see. I think it'll be cool. Yes. Okay.

Where To Find Pardis Madhavi

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Well, thank you so much for being here. It was so interesting hearing about all of this. Um, I've loved the advice you had for us because that's something we haven't really seen before on here. And are there, is there anything you want to plug right now? Your book, your socials, anything?

SPEAKER_01 41:16

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you can find me. I'm very easy to find uh www.pardeismadhavi.com. Um, the book will be unveiled there at my website. You can also follow my Instagram at MadhaviPardis. Uh, and yeah, this will be book number 10, Public Secret. So would love people to buy the book.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Yes. Yeah. Well, they will. It's very interesting. Thank you.