High on the entitlement that comes with a far-flung portfolio of tax-exempt assets, billionaires are going buck wild, buying up jets, Van Goghs, and NFTs, and building penis-shaped rockets that they ride to space. The optics from earth no longer seem to matter.
Read MoreA decade after entrepreneur-turned-VC Marc Andreessen declared in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal that software was “eating the world,” Silicon Valley is eating pop culture. In addition to WeCrashed on Apple TV+, on March 3, Hulu premiered The Dropout, which tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried), the disgraced, deep-voiced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos. Showtime’s Super Pumped, in which the adorably bedimpled actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Uber’s toxic bro founder Travis Kalanick, dropped on Feb. 27. While the specifics of all these tales may be different, the psychological profiles of the subjects at their center, specifically their voracious appetites for risk and their wanton disregard for others, will remain signatures of the fake-it-till-you-make-it era.
Read MoreSince the early 2000s, when Vladimir Putin came to power and transferred vast quantities of wealth into the hands of loyal Kremlin-linked oligarchs, beautiful women from Russia and former Soviet bloc countries have been branded with a strikingly similar fairy-tale narrative, a Cinderella story featuring capitalism as Prince Charming.
Read MoreFor actor Michael Stuhlbarg, who has played many real-life characters in his long career–including Apple’s Andy Hertzfeld in Steve Jobs and Arnold Rothstein in Boardwalk Empire–embodying a person who is not only still alive but extremely in the news was a unique experience. Under normal circumstances, Stuhlbarg embraces any opportunity to meet the person he’s about to portray on stage or screen. But in this case, meeting Richard Sackler wasn’t going to be an option: his lawyers went so far as to send Stuhlbarg’s attorneys a letter before filming began last year.
Read MoreThe star of the hit HBO series on power, privilege, and what's next for Shiv Roy in everyone's favorite one-percent family feud.
Read MoreThe wife of WeWork’s founder Adam Neumann carved out her own little space as a New Age exec—and the company’s downfall isn’t slowing her.
Read MoreWhen I read the news last week that Bill and Melinda Gates were divorcing after 27 years of marriage, my first reaction was empathy. The pandemic has been hard on all couples, I thought, even the ones who happened to have been quarantining in a 66,000-square-foot compound with 18.75 bathrooms called Xanadu 2.0. Melinda told The New York Times in October 2020 that being stuck working from home with her husband, after years of frenetic traveling, “was a piece that I think we hadn’t really individually prepared for quite as much.” This was somewhat relatable. No matter the size of your home, there is such a thing as too much togetherness.
But then there were questions. Foremost among them: Why now?
Read MoreJudge Barrett demonstrates her utter lack of courtesy and consideration by needlessly exposing various people—her own family among them—to a deadly virus at a party.
Read MoreThe coronavirus crisis could have been abated by a president with a modicum of competence. Here’s what I learned about politics, power, and the human spirit when my husband almost died of COVID-19.
Read MorePublicly identifying oneself as an aroused woman is having a moment. Call it the hornissance.
Read MoreJournalist and podcast host Leon Neyfakh has spent much of the last few years unpacking the last half century’s worth of American political scandal—starting in 2017 with Slate’s Slow Burn and since last year with Fiasco on the subscription-based network Luminary. During that time he’s observed that there seems to be a strange kismet unleashed each time one of his series drops. It’s almost as if the podcast itself is conjuring invisible historical forces, as past disgraces and present realities coincide with astonishing specificity.
Read More“Blood Ties” is the latest in a growing wave of fictional podcasts featuring top-tier talent and compelling, ripped-from-the-headlines narratives, arriving at a time when podcasting advertising revenues are poised to exceed $1 billion for the first time by 2021.
Read MoreAfter the first episode of “Chernobyl” aired on HBO in early May, “The Chernobyl Podcast” climbed to the No. 2 podcast across all categories on iTunes, shocking everyone involved. “I was like, wait a minute–this is Joe Rogan territory,” says showrunner Craig Mazin, referring to “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of the most popular and long-running podcasts. To date, “The Chernobyl Podcast” has generated more than 10 million plays across various platforms, including HBO Go and HBO Now.
Read MoreThere couldn’t be a more perfect moment to root for a dinosaur cull.
Read MoreAs podcasting has grown up over the past five years, a handful of stories like “The Clearing,” told by people who are part of the narratives they are spinning, have become breakout hits.
Read MoreLike a grown-up Veruca Salt with a security clearance, Ivanka Trump wants the world, and she wants it now.
Read MoreWhat happened in therapy used to stay in therapy. Now a wave of podcasts allows anybody with a Wi-Fi connection to be a fly on the couch as people bare their souls, sharing their deepest anxieties with thousands of people. It’s not exactly easy listening, but for those who don’t mind getting verklempt during their morning commute, there is an ever-expanding bounty of content available to download.
Read MoreIn the court of social media, if not actual court, the receipt has emerged as the ultimate power play, the secret spice in our unsavory clapback-culture stew. But the receipts, alas, have not delivered on their promise of truth, justice, and mutual understanding. Like anything else, we decide which receipts support the narrative that we already believe to be true.
Read More
