The Exchanges

Q So, you know, we started the American Optimist to push back on the pessimism and division in our country. What areas of healthcare are you most optimistic about, and what are some of the exciting frontiers that we're tapping into right now?

A You know, there's a lot of talk about behavioral health in this country as of late, and I think, you know, rightly so. It's something that, um, that has, has potentially been under discussed, potentially been stigmatized in the past. Um, and we're seeing a lot of venture investment in this area on the back of it. Folks who are providing talk therapy over telemedicine, um, all well and good. Um, but one of the things I'm most excited about is an entirely different paradigm. For treating behavioral health, uh, psychedelic medicine. So, um, thinking about things like ketamine assisted psychotherapy for treatment resistant depression, thinking about things like MDMA for PTSD, thinking about psilocybin. Um, early clinical trial results for many of these different compounds are really positive, really strong, both for the basic sort of common disease like depression, anxiety, but also for things that are quite a bit more challenging to treat. Substance use, eating disorders, OCD. Um, I think we're on the cusp of both cultural acceptance, but also a whole trove of data being released about the effectiveness of these drugs and these types of therapies.

AI assessment note: “one of the things I'm most excited about is... psychedelic medicine.”

Q And so, so you joined Palantir right out of, after a year of med school, and you started learning more about healthcare there. What'd you, what'd you learn at Palantir?

A Well, I think that there's actually, you know, uh, there's a lot of specific things to how healthcare businesses work and how the industry works, but I think that the biggest learning from Palantir is, is this sort of like, um, uh, broader sort of observation on how businesses can be the best tools to solving certain problems in the world. I think that, again, coming out of a place like Yale, you have certain mental models about, you know, problems that policy can solve. Uh, problems that nonprofits can solve. And what I saw at Palantir was a scaled business actually doing a lot of really important work. And I think that that's not necessarily the mental model that a lot of students at top schools have.

AI assessment note: “the biggest learning from Palantir is, is this sort of like, um, uh, broader sort”