Meet the typical Amazon customer, a college-educated married woman in the Southeast earning $80,000

The typical Home Depot shopper buys six items per visit for an average cost of $83.55, and they make an average of one trip per month. ALEX EDELMAN/AFP/Getty Images Home Depot has over 2,300 stores and employs about 475,000 people across North America. Half of US shoppers are Home Depot customers, and the store has similar customer loyalty as Costco. The store's average customer is a middle-aged white man with a college degree earning over $80,000 per year. Home Depot is the world's leading home improvement retailer, and the fourth-largest retailer in the US, making sales of $157.4 billion in 2022.Originally founded in 1978 in Atlanta, Georgia, the company now has 2,322 stores in all of North America and employs about 475,000 people.More than half of shoppers in the US make at least two trips to Home Depot each year, according to data from the analytics firm Numerator prepared for Insider.Numerator found that Home Depot's typical shopper is a middle-aged white man, who is married without children at home. They tend to live in the suburbs, have a college education, and earn more than $80,000 per year. The store is also especially popular among Hispanic or Latino shoppers.The store serves two core groups of customers that it refers to as DIY and pro segments. DIY shoppers turn to the store for supplies to complete their own projects, while pros are typically contractors and tradesmen, like electricians, plumbers, and painters. Home Depot says high-spending pros are the strongest piece of its business.About 83% of those who shopped in 2021 visited the store in 2022, per Numerator – on par with Costco and other big box retailers, but well behind Walmart's 97% customer loyalty percentage. Also, Home Depot added slightly fewer new customers than those it lost last year, indicating that the brand slightly shrank its customer base in 2022. The typical customer picks up an average of six items per trip for a cost of $83.55 and tends to visit 12 times per year for an annual expense of $1,052, Numerator found.About 3.3% of the typical shopper's overall spending takes place at Home Depot — about a third of what they spend at Walmart, where they spend the most of their shopping dollars.Home Depot carries between 30,000 and 40,000 different products, but the typical customer's favorite products to buy are building supplies, fasteners, paint (from Behr), and lawn and garden supplies (from Scotts).The company makes more in sales in its building materials category with $55 billion in 2021, followed by $50.4 billion for decor (like paint, flooring, and appliances), and $45.7 billion for other hardware, tools, and garden supplies.Read more typical shopper profiles:Walmart: A 59-year-old white suburban woman earning $80,000 a yearCostco: A 39-year-old Asian American woman earning more than $125,000 a yearTarget: A millennial suburban mom with a household income of $80,000Whole Foods: A highly educated West Coast millennial woman earning $80,000Amazon: A college-educated married woman in the South earning $80,000Dollar General: An older rural worker with a high school education and an income of less than $40,000Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The typical Target shopper visits every two to three weeks — about 23 trips per year — and buys 7 products for a total cost of about $49 per trip. Nearly 80% of US shoppers are Target customers, according to data from Numerator.Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters Target has more than 1,897 stores in the US, and makes over $92 billion in annual sales. The Minneapolis-based retailer has the second-highest customer loyalty, coming in behind Walmart. Target's average customer is a woman who is 39 years old, white, married, with a household income of $80,000. Target is the seventh-largest retailer in the world, pulling in more than $106 billion in sales in 2022. The chain operates across the US, with 1,897 stores spanning all 50 states, and it employs 450,000 people.Nearly eight out of 10 US shoppers are Target customers, according to data from the analytics firm Numerator prepared for Insider.Numerator found that Target's typical shopper is a white suburban mother between 35 and 44 years old. She typically has some college or a 4-year degree, with a household income of $80,000.The typical customer visits Target every other Saturday or so — about 23 trips per year — and picks up seven products for a total cost of about $50 per trip, Numerator found.Target enjoys higher than average customer loyalty when compared with other major retailers, coming in second place behind Walmart. The brand also adds a new customer for each one that it loses.In its annual report, Target says sales are roughly similar across four of its five product categories: apparel and accessories, food and beverage, "hardlines" (like appliances or sporting goods), home furnishings and décor, while sales of beauty and household essentials account for a quarter of its revenue.About 4% of the typical shopper's spending takes place at Target — about a third of what she spends at Walmart. Target shoppers also tend to choose Target-owned private labels, especially for children's apparel.The company says almost a third of its sales – or about $30 billion – are related to its exclusive in-house brands, including All in Motion, Cat & Jack, Made By Design, and Project 62.Read more of our typical shopper profiles:Walmart: A 59-year-old white suburban woman earning $80,000 a yearCostco: A 39-year-old Asian American woman earning more than $125,000 a yearWhole Foods: A highly educated West Coast millennial woman earning $80,000Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The typical Amazon customer buys just one or two items per transaction, and they make 83 purchases per year for an annual expense of $2,969. FILE PHOTO: Amazon boxes are seen stacked for delivery in Manhattan. Eight out of 10 US shoppers are Amazon customers, Numerator data show.Reuters Amazon has 1,285 facilities in the US and employs more than 1.5 million people around the world. Eight in 10 US shoppers are Amazon customers, and they place an average of 74 orders per year. Amazon's average customer is a white woman in the Southeast who earns more than $80,000 per year. Amazon sells stuff online. Maybe you've heard of it.The ecommerce giant is the second-largest retailer in the world, making net product sales of $242.9 billion in 2022.Amazon, founded in Seattle in 1994, has an estimated 1,285 distribution centers, fulfillment centers and other facilities in the US, with another 1,088 in other countries around the world, according to MWPVL , a supply chain consulting firm. The retailer has an employee headcount of 1.5 million around the world, and 1 out of 153 American workers works for Amazon.Meanwhile, eight out of 10 US shoppers are Amazon customers, according to data from the analytics firm Numerator prepared for Insider.Numerator found that Amazon's typical shopper is a college-educated, white married woman, and split across two age brackets: 35 to 44 and 55 to 64. She typically lives in the Southeast, does not have children, and earns more than $80,000 per year.Amazon has the third-highest customer loyalty after Walmart and Target among the major brands surveyed, with nearly 89% of its 2021 shoppers returning in 2022.At the same time, the ecommerce giant added far fewer new customers than it lost by a ratio of nearly five lapsed customers for each new one last year.The typical customer orders just one or two items per transaction, but she makes a comparatively high number of transactions per year, with 83 orders at an annual cost of $2,969, Numerator found.About 9% of her spending takes place at Amazon — slightly less than what she spends at Walmart, the world's largest retailer. Amazon customers are also highly likely to compare prices on Amazon, even when shopping elsewhere.Their favorite product categories on Amazon are cell phone accessories, cases, and chargers, as well as medical supplies and small kitchen appliances. They tend to buy Amazon's in-house labels, and their favorite name brands are Disney, Hanes, Kraft, and Apple.Read more of our typical shopper profiles:Walmart: A 59-year-old white suburban woman earning $80,000 a yearCostco: A 39-year-old Asian American woman earning more than $125,000 a yearTarget: A millennial suburban mom with a household income of $80,000Whole Foods: A highly educated West Coast millennial woman earning $80,000Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Roughly two-thirds of US shoppers shop at Walgreens, and the typical shopper visits every three weeks, spending about $22 per trip. Nick Ut/AP Images Walgreens has more than 9,000 stores in the US and filled 818 million prescriptions last year. The pharmacy's customer loyalty percentage is slightly above average for major retailers. Walgreens' average customer is a white suburban Baby Boomer earning over $80,000 per year. Walgreens is one of the leading drugstore chains in the US and Europe, with worldwide sales of $139.5 billion last year. The company estimates that 78% of the US population lives within five miles of one of its pharmacies, and it filled 818 million prescriptions in 2020.Originally founded in 1901 and based in Deerfield, Illinois, there now are over 9,000 Walgreens and Duane Reade retail locations across the US employing roughly 450,000 workers worldwide.Slightly less than two-thirds of all US shoppers are Walgreens customers, according to data from the analytics firm Numerator prepared for Insider.Numerator found that Walgreens' typical shopper is a white suburban Baby Boomer who has a college education and an annual income of more than $80,000. The brand is also very popular among Black and Latino shoppers with similar education and income.The typical customer visits Walgreens every three weeks on average — about 22 trips per year — and picks up 4 products for a total cost of $22.50 per trip, Numerator found.Prescription medication constitutes about 75% of Walgreens' US retail pharmacy revenues, and the drugstore offers a variety of over-the-counter medical supplies, personal-care items, food and beverages. This retail revenue accounts for the remaining 25% of the same segment.Three-quarters of Walgreens shoppers visited the store in 2020 and 2021, a loyalty percentage that is slightly higher than the other leading retailers in the survey. Last year, the pharmacy added a new customer to replace each one that stopped shopping with the brand, indicating a stable customer base overall.Like CVS shoppers, Walgreens customers have an affinity for M&M's and Reese's candies and Hallmark greeting cards, but prefer Coca Cola sodas where CVS customers prefer Colgate toothpaste.Some of their favorite categories to buy from the pharmacy include candy and soft drinks, as well as first-aid supplies, cough and cold remedies, and digestive health products. Just 1.3% of a Walgreens shopper's total dollars are spent at Walgreens, compared with 11% of their spending at Walmart.Read more typical shopper profiles:Walmart: A 59-year-old white suburban woman earning $80,000 a yearCostco: A 39-year-old Asian American woman earning more than $125,000 a yearTarget: A millennial suburban mom with a household income of $80,000Whole Foods: A highly educated West Coast millennial woman earning $80,000Amazon: A college-educated married woman in the South earning $80,000Dollar General: An older rural worker with a high school education and an income of less than $40,000Trader Joe's: A younger, married, college-educated person earning over $80,000Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The typical Costco shopper visits a little more than every other week — about 30 trips a year — and spends about $100 per trip. Costco shoppers outside one of its stores.Noam Galai/Getty Images Costco has more than 838 warehouses around the world and made more than $226 billion in sales in 2022. The wholesale club has similar customer loyalty as other big box stores, and it adds more new customers than it loses. The average Costco customer is a 39-year-old Asian American woman who's married and earns $125,000, Numerator found. Costco is the third-largest retailer in the US, pulling in more than $226.9 billion in sales in 2022. The store operates as a wholesale club, with nearly 119 million cardholders representing households and small and midsize businesses.The company has more than 838 warehouse stores around the world, including 585 in the US, and it employs nearly 304,000 people.Roughly one-third of US shoppers are Costco customers, according to data from the analytics firm Numerator prepared for Insider.More than 84% of those who shopped in 2021 returned to the store in 2022, per Numerator – up from 71% the year before and roughly on par with other big box retailers, but well behind Walmart's 97% customer loyalty rate. Costco also added about three new customers for every two that it lost last year, indicating that the brand is expanding its customer base. Numerator found that Costco's typical shopper in the US is an Asian American woman between 35 and 44 years old who is married and living in a city in the Pacific Northwest. (Costco was founded in Seattle and is based in Washington.)She typically has a four-year degree or higher level of education and earns more than $125,000 a year.The typical customer visits Costco on a weekend day every two weeks or so — about 30 trips per year — and spends about $100 per trip. The company stocks only 4,000 products (stock-keeping units, or SKUs), compared with 30,000 at many other retailers.About 11% of the average Costco shopper's spending is at the wholesale club, similar to what she spends with Amazon, and her top shopping categories in the store are groceries and personal-care items. She also buys a lot of Duracell batteries and Adidas apparel.Read more of our typical shopper profiles:Walmart: A 59-year-old white suburban woman earning $80,000 a yearWhole Foods: A highly educated West Coast millennial woman earning $80,000Target: A millennial suburban mom with a household income of $80,000Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The typical Walmart shopper visits at least once per week — about 63 trips per year — and picks up 13 products for a total cost of about $54 per trip. REUTERS/ Kevork Djansezian Walmart has more than 3,500 Supercenters across the US and made $600 billion in sales last year. The retail giant has the highest customer loyalty among the leading brands in a survey of shoppers. Walmart's average customer is a woman who is 59.5 years old, white, married, and earning $80,000 per year. Walmart is the largest retailer in the world, pulling in more than $600 billion in sales last year. Each week, 220 million customers visit its stores across 24 countries.In the US, the company has more than 5,000 locations, including 3,570 Supercenters, and it employs nearly 1.6 million people.Because of the retail giant's scale, the average Walmart shopper has a lot in common with the average US consumer, according to data from the analytics firm Numerator prepared for Insider.Roughly 95% of the shoppers in Numerator's survey visited Walmart two or more times in the past year. Not only that, Walmart has the highest customer loyalty of the leading retailers profiled by Numerator.More than 97% of those who shopped in 2021 visited the store in 2022, while only 1.4% quit shopping there – the lowest percentage of leavers of any brand in the survey.Numerator found that Walmart's typical shopper in the US is a white woman between 55 and 64 years old, who is married and living in the suburbs of the Southeast. She typically has an undergraduate degree and earns about $80,000 per year.She visits Walmart at least once per week — almost 65 trips per year — and picks up 13 products for a total cost of about $54 per trip. 13.5% of her spending takes place at Walmart, while she spends about 11% at Amazon.Her primary shopping categories in-store are groceries, including chicken, fruit, snacks and sweets, but she also gets a lot of fast food. Her favorite five brands at Walmart are Turkey Knob, Cheetos, Betty Crocker, Dole, and Tyson.Read more of our typical shopper profiles:Costco: A 39-year-old Asian American woman earning more than $125,000 a yearWhole Foods: A highly educated West Coast millennial woman earning $80,000Target: A millennial suburban mom with a household income of $80,000Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

    The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Dan Chung, Alger Funds, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, Bloomberg, and Acast. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ BARRY RITHOLTZ, HOST, MASTERS IN BUSINESS: This… Read More The post Transcript: Dan Chung appeared first on The Big Picture.     The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Dan Chung, Alger Funds, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, Bloomberg, and Acast. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ BARRY RITHOLTZ, HOST, MASTERS IN BUSINESS: This week on the podcast I have an extra special guest, his name is Dan Chung, and he has been with Alger Asset Management since 1994, where he started out in the e-commerce and technology sector as an analyst before eventually becoming President, Chief Investment Officer and then CEO. Dan Chang has been running that firm for quite a while, with quite a tremendous track record. The firm has $35 billion to $40 billion in assets. In addition to the CEO and CIO roles, he also runs a couple of different portfolios to a great acclaim. Alger is, you know, best known as founded by Fred Alger. We’d talk a little bit about various mentors, as well as what the firm’s experience was in 9/11 and what they’ve done after that in terms of their own philanthropy. They’re a fairly unique growth firm that focuses on tech, healthcare, a variety of other things, specifically growth companies, and we’d go over how they’re managing through what is both a challenging, but target rich period with great opportunities. So with no further ado, my interview with Alger Management’s Dan Chung. ANNOUNCER: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio. RITHOLTZ: My extra special guest this week is Dan Chung. He is the chief investment officer and chief executive officer at Alger Management, which runs over $35 billion in assets. He has been CIO since 2001. He earned his J.D. from Harvard in ’87, got a master’s in Law from NYU, before going to clerked for the Honorable Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. He is also a portfolio manager for multiple funds and strategies, including the $4.5 billion Alger Spectra Funds. Dan Chung, welcome to Bloomberg. DANIEL CHUNG, CEO AND CIO, ALGER ASSET MANAGEMENT: Thank you, Barry. So I’ve been looking forward to having this conversation with you for a while, and I have to start by asking, you had a storybook legal career, what happened? What made you say, “Yeah, to hell with Harvard and the Supreme Court, I’m going to switch gears and try something totally new?” CHUNG: Yeah. It was — it was a storybook career. And if I had another opportunity, I probably would have tested out what the legal world would have been like, but — where many of my friends still are today, including Justice Elena Kagan. RITHOLTZ: Were you a colleague of hers? CHUNG: We co-clerked together, and we went to law school together, and we served on the law review together. And she’s an amazing person. It’s very weird to have a friend who becomes a Supreme Court Justice. RITHOLTZ: Right. That’s kind of interesting. Do you guys ever stay in touch? Do you have a chat? CHUNG: You know, I was just getting to the point in my career where I wanted to sort of give back to the Harvard Law School. At that time, she was the dean. So you talked about a storied career, she was the dean. And so I — the last time I saw her on a one-on-one situation, it was like, you know, talking about “Let’s do something law and business.” And my whole issue was that lawyers are — you know, the vast majority of them are consulting in some way for businesses, and they don’t understand the business at all and it reduces the quality of their work. And she was — she was very into it. And then, I don’t know, a couple months later, she’s nominated for the Supreme Court. So that’s all over. RITHOLTZ: So — so she saved you writing a check like almost — CHUNG: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, saved some money. RITHOLTZ: So – so you end up at Simpson Thacher, which is known for international law and corporate law and litigation. CHUNG: Right. RITHOLTZ: What were you doing for them and then how did that end up transferring over to finance? CHUNG: Right. So I — my parents are both academics and knew absolutely nothing about Wall Street, and only a little bit about business generally. I, on the other hand, was always interested in it, probably not in a very educated way, but probably from things like the movies. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: I did grow up in the Silicon Valley, and so — but my Silicon Valley was Hewlett-Packard, not – RITHOLTZ: Undergraduate Stanford, right? I recall. CHUNG: Undergraduate Stanford. So that was an interest I had there in the business and in Wall Street, and frankly, in New York. And like the Frank Sinatra song, you know, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” And so I wanted — I wanted to — in some ways, I was more driven by the idea to come to New York, work at a top-notch law firm. That will be a way to learn about business as well as, you know, business law. And essentially, along the way, I realized I loved the clients who were making deals, complicated financial investments, you know, using numbers, accounting, analysis, fundamental as well as accounting analysis to figure out, you know, what’s the — what’s the right price to pay for something? And — but I was just — I was, as a lawyer, just an observer. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: I’m not making any decisions, really. And so, at some point, I realized, I thought I would be more interested in that and I thought I would be good at it. So I — so I started to call around Wall Street to try to get a job on Wall Street, basically. RITHOLTZ: Really? And what was that process like? CHUNG: Well, it started off extremely well, and that the first person I told was a client and it was like a — I don’t know what their title was, certainly a VP, not an MD, I believe, but not the head of the group. But it was a financial derivatives and complex financial instruments group, Merrill Lynch. So I always think very fondly of Merrill Lynch, they’re a big client of ours. Thank you, Merrill. And the associate — you know, we’ve been working on something and the associate — I told the associate we’d become friendly. And he said, “If you’re leaving Simpson, I’m sure my boss would want to talk to you, probably give you a job.” I said, “Okay, great.” So — so I go down, meet his boss, and he says like, “I loved working with you.” You know, my dad was a math professor, so he actually said something to the effect of, “You’re one of the few lawyers who seem to actually understand like the math that we’re doing here.” RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: That’s around options and derivatives. And I, you know — and basically, he gave me a job offer before I left his office, and he said, “It’s a standing offer. Stay at Simpson if you want, but anytime you want to leave, you got an offer here in our group, Merrill Lynch.” RITHOLTZ: Wow. CHUNG: And so — so that’s a confidence booster, right? RITHOLTZ: So here’s the question — CHUNG: That’s when I started looking around. RITHOLTZ: So — so was it the pre-existing math skills that translated to finance, or was it some of the legal training and experience that helped you once you started having a career in investing? CHUNG: I would say the math skills, it’s more about a number sense, seeing patterns in numbers, liking statistics, understanding probabilities. And again, like I mentioned, my father again, but he was actually a professor of Probability Theory. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: So — RITHOLTZ: Which I think is much more important for investors than the bulk of what you’re going to learn in the CFA exam. CHUNG: Yes. I mean, investing is basically, first, recognizing that nobody knows anything about the future. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: Anybody who tells you they’re predicting the future, you know, or sounds like they’re so confident that they’re going to be right, it’s like, you know — RITHOLTZ: They’re selling you something. CHUNG: They’re selling me stuff. So the only way really to approach it, at least from my perspective, and Alger’s is what are the probabilities of a bear case, a base case, a bull case? You know, what’s the black swan event? And you know, what works and what doesn’t work? What are the values, you know? And the stock market obviously is — I mean, it is the greatest real-world probability machine ever, right? RITHOLTZ: Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. CHUNG: I mean, the price of it — of any asset in the stock market is essentially the combined probabilities of everybody, bullish, bearish, neutral, ignorant, highly-informed insiders, outsiders. RITHOLTZ: Dollar-weighted. CHUNG: What is that worth? RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: And that changes because things happen and people change their minds a little bit, sometimes too much, and sometimes not enough, right? And that, I think, has always been — I’ve always been, I think, very good in number sense. I didn’t — I had to prove it at Alger. You know, I thought I had good number sense. I think — I think — I think I proved it at Alger. But the law I don’t want to underestimate. The law did — it did help me a lot. I think, one, I like complex situations because I know that a lot of people don’t, or they just don’t want to take the time to dig into them. And so, as a fundamental investing shop, getting into the details, getting into the complex situations is sometimes where you get the most opportunity — RITHOLTZ: Sure. CHUNG: — because of that. And then on the flip side, running the business, lawyers are very disciplined, organized, detailed, deadline-oriented. All of which is pretty good for a career, but it’s especially good if you’re trying to run a business. RITHOLTZ: So — so how did you end up at Alger? You joined in ’94. CHUNG: Right. RITHOLTZ: Was that your first job in finance out of Simpson Thacher? CHUNG: The first job in finance, and I ended up there because I — so I’ve gotten a couple offers on Wall Street. I had the Merrill Lynch one. I had gotten another offer. And I thought, you know, I don’t really know any serious Wall Street, you know, senior mentor types. So I should — I should try to find one to ask their advice, like where should I go? And at that time, the only one that I knew was my father-in-law. Fred Alger had just become my father-in-law. June ’93, I married his daughter, Alexandra, my wife today still. I can’t believe it’s been 29 years. So I hadn’t really met him much, but I knew he was on Wall Street and I knew that he did investing. And so, I figured it’s a great guy to ask. He must know the whole landscape. And I’ll never forget that — I didn’t know him really very well. You know, it’s sort of like, of course, we were engaged. So I’ve met him in some really kind of formal dinner with his wife. And you know, I’m the son-in-law. I have to admit I didn’t ask him permission to marry his daughter. I was — she isn’t that kind of woman and I’m not — I wasn’t that kind of guy. I sort of regret that, maybe I should have done it now. I hear kids are doing that now again. RITHOLTZ: It doesn’t surprise me. CHUNG: But I’m more like a ‘70s kid, because ‘70s kids didn’t ask permissions from their parents. Anyway — RITHOLTZ: So you speak to him about? CHUNG: So I say — yeah, I said, “I’m thinking of leaving the law firm and I have these offers on Wall Street. And I’d like your advice.” And he basically begins to tell me how bad both of the offers I have are. RITHOLTZ: Really? CHUNG: And how neither of the firms that I’m talking about are particularly good. Now, he stops there. But I would say less than a week later, maybe two weeks later, he calls me and says, “You know, what you got to really do is come down to my office and consider joining Alger.” RITHOLTZ: It took him two weeks to come around? CHUNG: Well, I think he was giving me like a little week to let it sink in. You know, look, he is a — he is who he is, not just a founder, but he was a master businessman because he’s pretty good at, let’s just say the M word of managing people has another word that’s a little bit, you know — RITHOLTZ: Motivated? CHUNG: Well, some people say manipulating. RITHOLTZ: Okay. CHUNG: You know, and I think he understood that I didn’t know much. And that is, you know — so anyway — RITHOLTZ: That turns out to be an insightful play on his part — CHUNG: Well — RITHOLTZ: — because not only do you join Alger — CHUNG: Yes. RITHOLTZ: — you eventually become president, then you become CIO, and then you become CEO. CHUNG: Right. RITHOLTZ: So clearly, he saw a potential in you to take over his work. CHUNG: Well, I’m going to — I’m going to be, you know, just really, really candid. I mean, his daughters all laugh about it because they said what they knew was that he had long longed for a successor that was in the family. His daughters had all passed — RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: — you know, not interested. And that as soon as I said this thing, he had no interest in actually advising me in any accurate objective sense. It was a campaign — RITHOLTZ: Got it. CHUNG: — to get me onboard — RITHOLTZ: Oh, that’s funny. CHUNG: — using, you know, a very wildly and very intelligent 60-plus years of experience against a pretty naive, you know, 30-year-old. RITHOLTZ: Well, it seemed to have worked out. CHUNG: It worked okay. RITHOLTZ: It worked out well. CHUNG: Absolutely. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) RITHOLTZ: Let’s talk a little bit about Alger’s investment philosophy. I like this description, “Discovering companies undergoing positive dynamic change,” which immediately raises the question, how do you identify these companies? Is this quantifiable? How much of this is less definable and squishy and qualitative? What is positive dynamic change? CHUNG: So, this is our investment philosophy. It’s what the firm was founded on in 1964. It’s also what we’re recognized for, as essentially creating the growth style of investing. So what does that mean? It’s, first, a recognition that change is all around us, and in our industries, in our customers and competitors. And the competitive pressures in an industry are basically always about adapting to change. So, what we recognize in our philosophy is the opportunities for investors, in particular fundamental investors, are where the change is the greatest. And the reason for that is because where the change is the greatest, for example, in what has driven revenue growth, or profits, or, you know, customer demand, you know, where the change is the greatest in those — those key drivers and others for an industry, it’s where the opportunity for new winners to be created, you know, for old winners potentially to continue. But if they don’t adapt, they potentially become losers. So the pressure to change, wherever that’s the greatest, is always of extreme interest to us. And what we recognize within an industry is there are two areas where the change, or the pressure to change is always the greatest. And one is, where is the highest new growth in an industry? If you look at any industry and ask what’s the highest, fastest growing new product or service, that is the kind of change, right? And that’s inherently innovation, a change in preferences by consumers, or maybe a change in costs. But whatever is growing the fastest is a huge challenge because you can either be a leader and innovator and capture that high growth, or you can be the company that’s selling the product that is getting cannibalized, right? It’s growing — it was once growing perhaps, but it’s now growing slower and slower and slower. So if you think about a high growth, a great example I like to use is the music industry as it transitioned from record to tape, from tape to cassette, cassette to CD, CD to digital, each one of those technology transitions. At the beginning of it, the new media is always the fastest growing. I mean, yes, it’s starting from zero. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: But — but also in each one of those, we can see it’s ultimately completely eaten up the past technology. And so, if you’re a company selling records, music, or you’re selling the electronics that play music, or a producer of it, you have to be aware that the transitions there are important for your company to adjust to. And we can think of a lot of leading companies from, say, the ‘80s which I — you know, I — I grew up loving music and going to college. But Tower Records — RITHOLTZ: Sure. CHUNG: — HMV Records, Sony with the Walkman, you know, that today either went out of business, or are no longer leaders in, you know, streaming digital music, which is really dominated essentially by Apple, Spotify and a few other, as you know. So we know that high growth is one area where the change is extreme, and the opportunity to identify fundamentally as investors, who are the leaders? Who are the ones driving that change? Is it going to be durable? And of course, you know, the examples are countless. In retail, first, you had department stores, then you had the big box retailers. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: And then you had Amazon come along and end it all. And now, it’s all e-commerce. And so it’s important to basically be in the right position there. But the other part of our philosophy, again, it’s about change and where is the pressure to change? Well, interestingly, it’s what we call lifecycle change. So that’s often at the other end of the spectrum. It’s industries in decline, companies really struggling and in decline. RITHOLTZ: Negative dynamic change? CHUNG: Well, for our hedge fund, absolutely interested in the negative dynamic. RITHOLTZ: Meaning you could both go along with short? CHUNG: Absolutely. On the long side, we’re looking for the past positive dynamic change, so the industries or companies with potentially new management, new innovation, restructuring, or just new opportunities that can reaccelerate and reinvigorate their companies into a new growth phase. And again, often companies like these, sometimes they’re turnarounds, sometimes it’s just industries shifting. They offer great investment opportunities. Because again, the — the key insight about change is where — is where change is happening. And if it’s extreme, it often translates into worry, fear in investors and it often — that often translates into undervaluation, right, missed up — missing an opportunity, because instead of sort of leaning into the situation, investors flee to what they think is safety, right? RITHOLTZ: So — so let’s talk about that, because what you’ve been describing is a fundamental change at a company level, either with a product or a service that’s penetrating a new market, finding new consumer acceptance. How do you contextualize what’s been going on in this market since sometime towards the back half of 2021, where all those fast-growing, high-flying tech stocks had been taken out to the woodshed? And it’s not that anything fundamental has changed in these companies or their prospects, but maybe it’s inflation, or a new interest rate regime, or the end of the pandemic, but something in the macro environment is changing and causing investors to revalue these. How do you look at that sort of cyclical change relative to what you’ve been describing as a fundamental element? CHUNG: So this is probably one of the most dynamic periods, you know, we have really ever seen in 30 years. And when I say the period, I actually want to go back into pre COVID. So if you think about what we have seen in our country and across the world and in the markets, pre COVID, right, political change. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: COVID, right? A global pandemic hasn’t been seen in basically a hundred years, right? Especially influenza — RITHOLTZ: Literally a hundred years. CHUNG: A hundred years, literally a hundred years. And then there’s no modern market back then, so this is completely different. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: COVID forcing a global experiment in logistics, healthcare, e-commerce, delivery — RITHOLTZ: Remote work. Right. CHUNG: — remote work and also lifestyles, you know, that we haven’t seen. And now, yes, to me, we’re still in the same period. Now, we’re in the coming out, yes, where COVID is ending in one way or the other. Economies are still trying to recover from it. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: Supply chains were tangled up. Before, we’re barely recovering. And now, of course, we’ve been hit by Ukrainian-Russian war. RITHOLTZ: Right. CHUNG: And China, they’re really in their COVID crisis right now because of the way they managed to delay it through zero COVID policy, right? So there are an incredible number of things happening in this period that are very challenging, and certainly are, in the sense that Alger likes, but yet is, of course, a challenge, dynamic and changing, right? Now, to the near term market action, clearly, yes, interest rates and inflation caused by supply chain shortages, exacerbated by Russian-Ukrainian war. And then also the concerns about what’s happening in China, because reme.....»»

Admissions departments are restricting opportunities to "the children of rich people and kids who are freakishly remarkable at 17," says Galloway. Galloway says colleges are becoming increasingly out of reach for the average American student. Sean de Burca/Getty Images Scott Galloway is a bestselling author and professor of marketing at NYU Stern. The following is a recent blog post, republished with permission, that originally ran on his blog, "No Mercy / No Malice." In it, Galloway says college education and its benefits need to be expanded to more people - including men. Each of the following trends, in isolation, is perplexing. In concert, they are disturbing: Scott Galloway I've mentioned this topic before, highlighting an emerging crisis among young men, and it elicits a range of emotions and responses - especially in the reductionist world of social media. Scott Galloway Thanks, Roxane.Neither the sex lives of young American men nor their relative rate of college attendance is that striking by itself. Except to the men involved. What should trouble all of us is what these statistics portend.Family mattersFamilies are the foundational element of society, and most successful families are the product of an intimate relationship between two adults. The most important decision most of us make in life is whether and whom to marry, and the most important person in our adult lives is our mate. Married people are 77% wealthier than single people, and their net worth typically increases 16% each year they're together. Married people live longer and are happier than single people. Higher marriage rates are correlated with greater GDP per capita, greater economic mobility, and a reduction in child poverty of as much as 80%.The path to forging these relationships typically involves sex. If a young adult hasn't had sex in the past year, it's unlikely that person is on the path toward a long-term bond with someone. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that it is any one group's responsibility to sexually "service" another. What we need to be thoughtful about is how our policies and attitudes ensure that the most people have the opportunity and motivation to pursue long-term, productive relationships.Meet up (online)We used to meet potential mates at school, at work, through friends, and out in the world. No longer. Scott Galloway And online dating … shares flaws with other technologies that scale our instincts. Algorithms are indifferent to social interests, and that, coupled with human nature, gave us January 6 and QAnon.Dating apps sort potential partners into a tiny group of haves and a titanic group of have-nots. On Hinge, the top 10% of men receive nearly 60% of the "likes" - the comparable figure for women is 45%. The bottom 80% of male Tinder users, based on percentage of likes received, are competing for the bottom 22% of women. If it were a country, Tinder would be among the most unequal in the world. Scott Galloway What is driving this division? As with so much else online, dating apps don't change human nature, they focus it - like a kid with a magnifying glass melting ants. Regardless of how we meet potential mates, we sort them in large part based on looks and earning potential. Algorithms magnify that effect.Women are particularly concerned with the earning potential of future mates, across cultures and over time. A 1989 study found that in 37 countries and sub-groups, women consistently value the financial capacity of a potential partner more than men do. In the US, financial prospects were nearly 30% more important to women than to men. In a 2017 survey, 71% of American women said it's "very important" for a man to support his family financially. Only 25% of men said the same about a woman. In sum, women mate (socioeconomically) horizontally and up, and men do it horizontally and down. Scott Galloway Winner take mostMarriage rates in the US have been on the decline for decades. The group that's seen the sharpest decline? Poor men. Between 1970 and 2011, the marriage rate for the lowest earning quartile fell by nearly 35%, while that of the highest quartile fell by less than 15%. Scott Galloway The most powerful signal of earning potential, especially for people in their 20s who haven't yet realized their potential, is a college degree. College-educated men earn a median $900,000 more over their lifetime than those who only graduated from high school. A college degree also increases your chances of getting married by 30%. Scott Galloway The result of fewer men in college? Fewer men that women are interested in.This is good for nobody. It's bad for women, who have fewer potential mates. Men at the top of the pyramid have access to near on-demand sexual partners, but that's a disincentive to forging a long-term relationship, which doesn't bode well for their long-term happiness - see the previous data about the benefits of marriage.And then there's the increasing number of men in the body of the pyramid, who will be left not merely without sex, but without any onramp to the intimate relationships upon which so much of their happiness, and our social capital, is built.Second-order effectsSo what? America spent its first 300 years treating women as second-class citizens - what's wrong with young men getting the short end of the stick for a while? If this were just about fairness or feelings, then fine, let there be churn. But there are several externalities that could have profound effects on our commonwealth and the global community.First, less partnering and propagation means fewer babies. Declining birth rates are toxic for economic health. For a glimpse at the declining-birth-rate future, look at Japan, where birth and marriage rates have fallen to record lows. There are now just 2.1 working-age Japanese for every retiree, the lowest ratio in the world. In the United States there are 3.9. The world average is 7.At the Code Conference this week, automaker and future Martian Elon Musk said: "Possibly the single greatest risk to human civilization is the rapidly diminishing birth rate … No babies, no humanity."My Pivot cohost, Kara Swisher, likes to claim that lesbians and evangelicals are the only groups having kids, but at less than 5% of the population, gay couples would need to have literally dozens of children to reverse these trends … Your move, Kara.Second, a large and growing cohort of bored, lonely, poorly educated men is a malevolent force in any society, but it's a truly terrifying one in a society addicted to social media and awash in guns and coarseness.Men are already more likely than women to believe in conspiracy theories. Increased frustration about their lack of life choices and greater jealousy stoked by the images of success they see on their screens will push underachieving men further toward conspiracy theories, radicalization, and nihilist politics. I say "will" because I'm focused on the future, but a preview of that future is already here. Of the 620 people charged so far in the January 6 riot, 86% are men.Global problems, including climate change and more frequent pandemics, require a massive investment of human capital and a renewed respect for intellectualism … and science.Third, while the forces of technology and social change are taking much from young men, it's unlikely they will lose their political power. This may be the dark heart of the matter. Politicians will emerge from this class, and many more will pander to them. Donald Trump was not an anomaly - privileged men of wealth rising to power on the message that "this isn't your fault," and then demonizing other groups is a greatest hit of nationalism and the facism it often inspires.Men have characteristics which make it easier for them to accumulate and protect wealth and power. Numerous studies have shown that candidates with deeper voices win more votes. A 25% lower vocal pitch is associated with an increase of $187,000 in annual CEO salary. People who are 6 feet tall earn $166,000 more over a 30-year career than those who are 5 feet 5 inches - even controlling for gender, age, and weight. The explanation, many psychologists believe, is increased confidence. One psychologist explains that the "process of literally 'looking down on others' may cause one to be more confident." Since the advent of mass media, every president has been taller than the average American male, and the winning candidate has been on average 1.5 inches taller than his opponent. Overall, American men are over 5 inches taller than American women. Scott Galloway Women who run for office face substantial opposition on the basis of gender, from sexist remarks to disinformation to physical violence. Trumpism, with or without Trump, is the politics of frustration, alienation, and rage. It will only gain in power if these emotions become more prevalent.For 40 years, more women have matriculated at colleges, yet only 24% of Congress is female. What we've witnessed is an explosion in elected officials who pander to a dangerous, and growing, cohort of men who refuse to embrace science - or even agree that there is "truth." Without the connective tissue of truth and science, it will be near impossible to address future pandemics, much less climate change. There's a link between a reduction in opportunities for young men and hundreds of millions of doses of Covid vaccine likely to expire unused by year-end.Turning the tideThe increase in opportunities for women (and for people of color) is an important step forward. There is no justification for reversing these hard-fought wins.However, we must do more.While men enjoy numerous inherent and societal advantages - from deeper voices to private clubs - there are actually significant obstacles facing boys. It starts early, with small differences. For example, 80% of kindergartener parents expect their girls to attend college, while 77% of parents expect their boys to. But such small differences expand over time. The disparity in parental expectations grows by 10 percentage points by fifth grade. Boys act out more than girls and face harsher discipline, especially in single-parent homes, where boys are 13 percentage points more likely than girls to have been spanked in the past week.Overall, one in 4 boys experience at least one school suspension in the eighth grade, compared to 1 in 10 girls. School suspension is predictive of college attendance and college completion, and boys, normalized for behavior, are twice as likely to be suspended. (Black students are also more likely to be disciplined, and black boys face even greater disparities.) Finally, in the nation with the world's highest incarceration rate, men are imprisoned at 14 times the rate of women. And 70% of prisoners didn't complete high school. Scott Galloway We must do more at every level, but I'd focus on college, because I believe it's a transformative experience for most people.When I applied to UCLA, the acceptance rate was 74%. I had to apply twice. After my initial rejection, I secured a job installing shelving in Ontario, California. Spending the day in closets, getting high with my coworkers after work … it dawned on me, "Maybe this isn't what I want to do with my life." So I appealed the decision and got in. That changed my life and set the foundation for me to become a robust citizen. Scott Galloway Today only 12 out of 100 kids get in. Admissions directors no longer have the capacity to reach into the homes of unremarkable kids raised by single immigrant mothers and give them the opportunities my generation enjoyed.This reflects a conscious decision in America to sequester opportunities to the children of rich people and kids who are freakishly remarkable at 17. This plays on a collective hallucination that all of us are raising remarkable children. I can prove that 99% of our children are not in the top 1%. We managed to scale Facebook from a $63 billion company in 2012 to almost $1 trillion today, but we couldn't increase the seats at UCLA by more than 6% in that same time?And UCLA is better than most (the UC system overall wants to add 20,000 seats by 2030). In 2007 the Ivy League schools accepted 22,180 applications. In 2021, they accepted 22,805. That's a 0.2% annual increase (while tuition increased by more than 4% per year). In 2007, Apple sold 1.4 million iPhones; in 2021 it sold 218 million - a 43% annual increase. We can figure out how to make more than 700 million supercomputers that run all day on a battery and fit in your pocket, but we can't add thousands of seats to colleges with $40 billion endowments?College has become the enforcer of an emerging caste system, abandoning promising, if not obviously remarkable young adults. And there are so many of us. We must, and we can, give them their shot. We need a grand bargain that, in exchange for additional funding, demands our great public institutions leverage technology to double the number of freshman seats in the next decade.Extend the benefits of a college education to more women, more people of color, more foreign students, more handicapped kids, more poor kids - and more artists and engineers and poets and biologists. And more men. America is not about exceptionalism, but acceptance.Life is so rich,ScottRead the original article on Business Insider.....»»

People who shop at Whole Foods typically visit a little more than once per month and spend about $42 per trip. They also drink a lot of kombucha. Whole Foods has relatively high customer turnover, but it added more new shoppers than it lost last year.Getty/Justin Sullivan Whole Foods has more than 500 stores, more than 105,000 employees, and makes an estimated $17 billion in annual sales. The grocer has high customer turnover, but added more new ones than it lost last year. Whole Foods' average shopper is a West Coast woman who is 29 years old and earning $80,000 per year. Whole Foods is around the 10th-largest grocery chain in the US, making sales in the neighborhood of about $17 billion, estimated by market-intelligence firm AlphaSense. The company no longer reports revenues since Amazon acquired it in 2017.Whole Foods was founded in Austin, Texas, in 1980 and the company says there will soon be as many as 546 Whole Foods locations across the US, Canada and the UK. It employs more than 105,000 workers.Just one out of 10 US shoppers are Whole Foods customers, according to data from the analytics firm Numerator prepared for Insider.Numerator found that Whole Foods' typical shopper is a West Coast millennial woman between 25 and 34 years old. She typically has a graduate degree and an annual income of more than $80,000.Although a slight majority of Whole Foods customers identify as white, the store is especially popular with Black and Asian American shoppers, according to Numerator.The typical customer visits Whole Foods a little more than once per month — about 15 trips per year — and picks up nine products for a total cost of about $42 per trip, Numerator found.Whole Foods has the highest customer turnover among the major brands surveyed, with less about 70% of its 2021 shoppers returning in 2022 — an improvement over the year before, however.At the same time, the grocer added a higher percentage of new customers than any other store in the survey last year, and the number of new shoppers exceeds the number that quit visiting the brand, suggesting that the store is gaining popularity.About 5% of the typical shopper's spending takes place at Whole Foods — about half of what she spends on Amazon. Whole Foods shoppers also tend to choose the store's in-house 365 brand, as well as Organic Valley dairy products and Applegate meats.Across all retailers, Whole Foods shoppers buy a lot more kombucha than the typical US shopper. They also love Driscoll's berries.Read more of our typical shopper profiles:Walmart: A 59-year-old white suburban woman earning $80,000 a yearCostco: A 39-year-old Asian American woman earning more than $125,000 a yearTarget: A millennial suburban mom with a household income of $80,000Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Tech CEOs get all the credit when things go well, with little accountability when they screw up. And thousands of tech workers pay the price. Happy first-Monday-of-the-month. I'm Matt Weinberger, deputy editor of Insider's tech analysis team, filling in for Diamond Naga Siu. This particular Monday comes with something of a hangover in the tech industry, after a week that saw Meta, Alphabet, Apple, and Amazon report earnings that showed just how much of a toll the economy has taken on Silicon Valley. The tech CEOs have struck a tone of contrition, apologizing for over-hiring and losing focus at the height of the pandemic, even as they all lay off workers (all except Apple, that is) and call for a renewed drive towards efficiency. But where does the buck really stop?  My friend Ed Zitron argues in a column for Insider that workers are taking the fall and losing their livelihoods for what's ultimately those CEOs' fault: "Any executive who participates in decision-making that leads to hundreds or thousands of people losing their jobs should be the one leading them out the door," he writes. The one thing that everybody seems to agree on is that it'll get darker before the next dawn in Silicon Valley, so expect a lot more conversation over how and why we got here. Here's what you want to know as we enter the first full week of February:If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Insider's app here.Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and GoogleMateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images1. Is it time for CEOs to start losing their jobs? Ed Zitron argues for Insider that the thousands of tech workers who lost their jobs in recent months are actually just taking the fall for the real problem in Silicon Valley — CEOs who aren't up to the task of leadership."As the sole person in charge, they're responsible for misjudging the macroeconomy, making terrible investments, and then following along with the industry in a shortsighted attempt to please Wall Street," Ed writes.CEO pay has skyrocketed over the years, but accountability of these top execs hasn't kept pace, he writes. It means they share in the upsides of their companies' growth, but rarely face consequences when something goes wrong.He praised the CEOs of Apple and Intel for recently taking pay cuts as their companies hit tougher times. But says that there needs to be more serious consequences for chief executives who fumble tough situations, up to and including losing their jobs.Read more about the tech CEO screw-up here.In other news:Yasin Ozturk/Getty Images2. Elon Musk secures a favorable verdict. Late Friday afternoon, a federal jury officially ruled that the Tesla CEO's infamous "funding secured" tweet didn't harm shareholders, making him not liable for damages.3. Robots are a programmer's best friend. OpenAI has a tool called Codex that writes code all on its own. But experts tell Insider's Tom Maxwell that there'll always be a good career for any human who knows how to program. Read more about how robots are helping programmers, not replacing them.4. The most normal Amazon shopper. New data shows that Amazon's typical retail customer is a white, college-educated woman who lives in the Southeast United States and makes about $80,000 a year. Now you know. Read more here.5. Robots may be a Wall Street worker's best friend, too. To go back to OpenAI again, here's Insider's look at how ChatGPT could shake up financial services. Industry insiders say that ChatGPT represents a powerful productivity-enhancing tool for portfolio managers, fraud investigators, and anyone else who works with money. 6. Twitter wants $100 from developers. Twitter CEO Elon Musk says that it's considering charging developers $100 a month for access to the social network's API, which lets third-party software access the platform's data. Musk says it'd help guard against "bad" bots, but it remains to be seen how those developers will respond. Read the full story.7. "As cities move to ban gas stoves, I tried going all-electric in the kitchen." Insider's Adam Rogers set out to answer one simple question: How well does induction actually cook? The results left him fired up. Read the full story. 8. Bill Gates says vaccines > Mars. The Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist says that Elon Musk's self-appointed mission to go to Mars isn't as good a use of money as investing in saving lives via spreading vaccine availability. No shade, though, as Gates also says that he thinks Musk's Tesla has had a positive impact on the world.Odds and Ends:Picsart9. Raise the red flag with AI. A new app called Picsart promises to use AI to literally turn your lyin', cheatin', snake of an ex into a snake (or a dog, or a literal red flag) in your old photos. It seems like a good way to make a statement on social media, at the very least. Read more.10. A Tesla loses its steering wheel. A Tesla driver says that the steering wheel on his brand-new Model Y fell off while he was driving on a New Jersey highway. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but the driver is calling on Tesla to take accountability.What we're watching today:Activision Blizzard, the video game giant that Microsoft is fighting American and European regulators to acquire, reports earnings after the bell.Pinterest and Take Two Interactive Software (the publishers of "Grand Theft Auto V," among other hit games) also report on Monday.Curated by Matt Weinberger in San Francisco. (Feedback or tips? Email mweinberger@insider.com or tweet @gamoid.) Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Maye Musk raised Elon Musk and his siblings while working multiple jobs and maintaining a career as a model. Maye Musk has been on the cover of several magazine, including "Sports Illustrated."Noam Galai/Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust Maye Musk has reportedly sat in on some of Elon Musk's Twitter meetings. The super model has also graced the cover of several magazines during her prolific career that started in the 60s. Maye Musk worked multiple jobs to support her children, but does not take credit for their successes. Maye Musk appears to do it all. She's raised one of the wealthiest men in the world, all while maintaining a successful modeling career.Most recently, the 74-year-old has been spotted in some of Elon Musk's Twitter meetings along with his 2-year-old son, according to a recent report from The Times. And in December, Musk brought his mom to a meeting with Twitter advertisers, Bloomberg reported.Throughout Elon Musk's career, Maye Musk has always appeared to be close at hand — supporting her son on social media and even sleeping in a garage at his house when she comes to visit him in Texas.Despite her support for her children, Maye Musk has been a celebrity in her own right for decades.Last year, the super model captured the spotlight when she became the oldest woman to ever be featured on a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover.The model was one of four cover models, including Kim Kardashian, for the edition. Maye Musk has continually pushed boundaries in her career, from posing nude on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 to becoming CoverGirl's oldest spokesperson at the age of 69."If I thought I could be a swimsuit model for Sports Illustrated, people would have locked me away as a crazy lady," Maye Musk said in a video released by the magazine. "I'm very excited to let people know that women in their 70s are gorgeous," she added.—Maye Musk (@mayemusk) May 16, 2022 Long before her son became the one of the richest men in the world, Maye Musk had already developed a prolific modeling career. She has appeared on the covers of multiple high-profile magazines, including Vogue and Time, played a role in a Beyonce music video, and been featured in numerous ads for brands like Revlon and Special K cereal.Maye Musk Maye Musk attended the Met gala with Elon Musk last year.Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images"I was famous until Elon became famous," Maye Musk told The New York Times in 2016.Success seems to run in the family and Elon Musk — the billionaire entrepreneur behind PayPay, Tesla, and SpaceX — is not the only one to make a mark. Maye Musk's other son, Kimbal Musk, is the founder of three food companies: The Kitchen Restaurant Group, a nonprofit called Big Green, and Square Roots, an urban-farming company. And her daughter, Tosca Musk, runs her own streaming service and is an award-winning producer and director of films and television shows."They followed their passions, and they all went in different directions," Maye Musk told Insider in a 2020 interview.But that success didn't come easily for Maye Musk or her children.  Early lifeMaye Musk has been modeling since she was 15 and was a finalist in the 1969 Miss South Africa beauty competition, but it wasn't until recent years that she could afford to take modeling gigs simply because she wanted to.That's because she was hustling to raise three children as a single mother while earning two master's degrees and establishing a career as a model, dietitian, and nutritionist. Maye Musk married Errol Musk in 1970. The two went to high school together, according to her most recent book, "A Woman Makes A Plan." Elon Musk's father is an engineer from South Africa, per a 2017 Rolling Stone profile. Maye Musk told Harper's Bazaar in 2019 that their marriage quickly went downhill and described the relationship as abusive. Errol Musk told Rolling Stone that he has never intentionally hurt anyone, excluding one scenario where he said he shot and killed three people who illegally entered his house.Maye Musk divorced Errol Musk in 1979.Denver Post Photo by Cyrus McCrimmonMaye Musk became pregnant with Elon Musk during the couple's honeymoon, she told Insider in a 2020 interview. The two were married for nearly a decade. Maye Musk said in her book that she wanted to leave the relationship, but the Divorce Act, which legalized the termination of a marriage in South Africa, was not enacted until 1979. The couple was divorced the same year the law was passed.Elon Musk is estranged from his father, and he told Rolling Stone that his father is "a terrible human being."Five jobs at onceIn 1989, Maye Musk moved with her family from Johannesburg in South Africa to Toronto. The model told CNBC in a 2018 interview that she had to work five jobs to make ends meet.She worked as a research officer for the University of Toronto so that her children could go to school there for free, and taught modeling and nutrition classes two nights a week. All while working on her practice and studying to become a registered dietitian.The family lived in a small rent-controlled apartment in Toronto. "We spent three weeks just taking staples out of the floor and removing the wallpaper, which was covered in green velvet vines and was peeling," Maye Musk told Insider in 2015.Maye Musk's modeling career started in the 1960s.Daniel Zuchnik/Getty ImagesThe apartment was bare when they initially moved in.  "And the first thing we did, after the first salary I got, [was] we got an inexpensive carpet put down because we didn't have chairs or anything," she said in 2015. "And the second thing we got was a computer for Elon. And so he would sit on the floor at his computer."Maye Musk recalls a time when the family couldn't afford to buy red meat for dinner. In the early 1990s, one of her clients who owned an abattoir (or slaughterhouse) would give the family a roast every month, even though he had no idea the family couldn't afford to buy one themselves."He gave us this huge roast once a month for the three of [my kids]," she said in 2015.  "And I'd cut it in four, freeze three [pieces], and we would have a roast once a week that we could share."The whole Musk family worked hard to support each other during that time.Tosca Musk worked at an upscale grocery store near their apartment while she went to school, and Maye Musk helped Elon Musk get a job at Microsoft before he went to college through the husband of one of her colleagues worked there. Later on, she also helped her sons find jobs at a bank through a friend.'I never helped my kids'Despite her achievements, Maye Musk insists that her influence isn't responsible for the success of her children, including Elon Musk."I never helped my kids," Maye Musk told Insider in 2015. "I was working too hard. My kids had to be responsible for themselves."Elon Musk, in particular, had tried his hardest in school, but only in the subjects he liked, Maye Musk said.Maye Musk does not claim credit for her children's success.Joanne Ho-Young Lee/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images"He knew everything, but he was the youngest and the smallest in his class," she said in 2015.Elon Musk took an interest in books, computer programming, and investing early on. Even at 14 years old, Maye Musk said Elon Musk had shown a passion for investing. Last year, Maye Musk recalled how she helped her teenage son invest 1000 South African Rands into a stock he felt passionate about.Although Maye Musk says she didn't have much influence on the success of her children, she played a big role in helping both of her sons get their first company up and running.Her 'best investment ever'In 1995, Elon Musk and Kimbal Musk started Zip2, a software company that provided business directories and maps to media companies and ecommerce clients.At the time, Maye Musk was running her dietetics practice in Toronto and was preparing to publish her first book, "Feel Fantastic." In addition to the multiple jobs she held at the time, Maye Musk worked tirelessly to help her sons start their first business. She started by encouraging Kimbal Musk to get more involved in the business after he had racked up her phone bill by constantly calling Elon Musk, who had moved to Silicon Valley.Maye Musk supported her sons business ventures.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images"[Kimbal Musk] would come over to my office at night to discuss business with Elon by phone," she said. "When my phone account reached $800 per month, I told Kimbal to stop working and join Elon."Since Maye Musk still lived in Toronto when Zip2 was getting started, she would fly out to Silicon Valley every six weeks. Maye Musk said she helped her sons with everything from the company's business plan to supervising interns and taking care of printing and office expenses. She also bought them food, clothes, and furniture at the time.Some time around 1996, Maye Musk donated all of her savings, which amounted to $10,000, to cover the office rental and expenses.She calls it her "best investment ever."Maye Musk was even up until 2 a.m. with Kimbal Musk at Kinko's helping him print out colored copies of Zip2's presentations to investors. "That night we were exhausted and exhilarated," she said in 2015. "We went to the best restaurant in Palo Alto, and I told them this was the last time I would use my credit card for our dinners. And that has been true."By 1997 and 1998, Zip2 began to really take off, and both Elon Musk and Kimbal Musk became busier with board meetings. Maye Musk was asked to meet with the company every week while running her practice and juggling modeling gigs. "I would rent a car every Friday night, do the Nordstrom fashion shows on Saturday morning at 8:30 am in San Francisco, San Jose, or Sacramento, and then drive to their office for our weekly business meeting," she said in 2015. Her children made — and kept — an ambitious promiseMaye Musk eventually moved to San Francisco for two-and-a-half years to be closer to her children and the business, before moving to New York in 1999. Back when the brothers and Tosca Musk were all working at Zip2, before the company sold, they couldn't afford to buy a big gift for their mother's 50th birthday.Instead, they made her a promise."They gave me a little toy house and a little toy car the size of a matchbox and said, 'One day we'll buy you the real thing,'" she said.Zip2 eventually sold to Compaq Computer for around $300 million, and the Musk children kept their word.Since, Maye Musk has been an outspoken supporter of Elon Musk on social media. She's promoted her son's work at Twitter, and she's also never been afraid to go to bat for her kids. In 2021, she repeatedly derided the Biden Administration for largely ignoring Tesla's role in the movement toward electric cars.Elon Musk brought his mother up on stage for his "Saturday Night Live" monologue in 2021.Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesMaye Musk told Insider in 2015 that she wishes the world would understand the well-intentioned mind of her son."Elon's intention is just to do whatever is possible in physics and engineering to make this planet better," she said. "People think there's an ulterior motive, but there isn't. That's all he's striving to do. And that really upsets me, when they think 'Oh, he's looking for more money.' No, he's never done that."Now, most of Maye Musk's days are spent modeling, promoting her latest book, and maintaining her nutrition practice. Maye Musk has been signed by the Creative Artists Agency (CAA).But she and her children still find time to meet regularly. Outside of accompanying Elon Musk to the Met Gala last year, the supermodel also made a cameo appearance in the billionaire's Saturday Night Live performance in 2021. Maye Musk has fully taken on the role of grandmother to Elon Musk's many children. In 2020, she posted several photos and videos of the billionaire's seventh child, X Æ A-12."We do a lot of get-togethers," she told Insider in 2015. "And I'm really fortunate to have three wonderful kids. We're in a good position now, that we can actually eat roast beef every day if we wanted to. But we wouldn't dare!"Earlier reporting by Lisa Eadicicco.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Mona Mejia, 44, earned $735,000 last year selling clothes and goods on social media. Her husband quit his job to help with her thriving business. Mona Mejia Mona Mejia, 44, was a stay-at-home mom when she began reselling on Poshmark in 2015. She earned $735,000 last year selling on social media livestreams and through brand partnerships.  She's confident others can have similar success as well, but it doesn't happen overnight.  Before 2015, Mona Mejia's full-time job was taking care of her three children. Now, the 44-year-old Houston-based mom boasts an income of $735,000 last year, according to documents verified by Insider, selling new and used clothing, home goods, and toys on social media. She says she's never invested a single dollar out-of-pocket into her business. Starting with just the clothes in her closet, she later used her earnings to purchase additional inventory to sell at a markup. "When I talk about everything that we've gone through, I'm still shocked about it from where we came from to now," Mejia told Insider.Mejia is one of millions of Americans who are finding ways to make ends meet without relying on a traditional 9-to-5 office job. US workers filed over five million new business applications in 2021, the most since 2005. A 2021 Upwork study found that 59 million Americans — or 36% of the US workforce — had performed freelance work over the prior 12 months. Others, like Mejia, have found ways to start businesses of their own. While these lifestyles are not without their challenges, they've provided some Americans the opportunity to finally get ahead financially. Mona Mejia"Everything was selling really quickly"In 2015, Mejia's family was in need of additional income to supplement her husband's pay. It was a "really hard time," she said. "You don't know where you're going to eat."When her sister introduced her to the reseller platform Poshmark, she began selling a few items from her closet. She remembers her first sale — a dress — which sold for $36 after 11 hours. When she began listing more items, she noticed that "everything was selling really quickly" and real money was trickling in.Two years in, Mejia's husband had open heart surgery and wasn't able to work — the responsibility fell on her to support the family, and she took her efforts to another level. As Mejia branched out to other reselling platforms, she says the $100-200 she was earning per week turned into $1,000 — translating to nearly $50,000 in total earnings in her first year. It wasn't until roughly a year ago, however — when she started selling on livestreams through Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, that her business really took off. While she earned $23,000 through Poshmark last year for example, she says social media is where the bulk of her income now comes from. Her husband's health has since improved, but rather than going back to his job, he now helps his wife keep up with her thriving business. Together, they now own a home that they've paid off in full and have sent two children to college without any student loans. Mona Mejia"The more you list, the more money you're going to make." After working through her closet, Mejia took her earnings and went to yard sales and clearance sections to look for bargain products she could buy and resell. That included clothes, shoes, home goods, kids items, accessories, jewelry — "pretty much everything." She's sold items for as low $15-20 to as high as $1,300-$1,400 for a Louis Vuitton or Chanel bag.While she still frequents yard sales and retail stores, the majority of her purchases are now bulk orders bought at a discounted price from various vendors. Mejia then lists most of her products at a roughly 40% off their market rate, or the price a customer would pay at a retail store for instance.  She says large discounts are typical on reselling platforms. She once paid $30 for a dress that sells for nearly $300 at Anthropologie. Despite discounting, she says she's able to maintain high levels of profitability by only selling items she bought at especially cheap rates.In a rare instance, however, she recalls making quite the profit on a pair of "flamingos and frogs" pants that she paid $1 for at a yard sale. "These are hideous but I'm going to try them," she thought. They sold for $100. Mejia doesn't think she has a particular talent for choosing what to sell, and that "the more you list, the more money you're going to make." "Everything sells," she said, adding that the shift to e-commerce when the pandemic began has fueled sales — which have risen 50% vs. pre-pandemic levels.Mona Mejia"I love it. It's an addiction to me."Mejia says she spends eight to ten hours doing the bulk of the work on her business, but really she is "working all day" and is on the clock "24/7."Early on, she recalls stuffing boxes in the corner of her dining room and kitchen in the family's one-bedroom apartment before they were shipped to customers. Now, they have a home with six-bedrooms, two of which — an "inventory" and "listing" room — are used to store future shipments. She lists at least 100 items each day, but it's the evenings — when customers tend to buy — that are especially busy. She says she stays up till 3:00 AM to ensure shipments get out the door — then wakes up at 7:30 to start the next day. "There's no stopping, but it's okay," she said. "I love it. It's an addiction to me."Mejia thinks anyone can find success as a reseller but emphasizes that it takes hard work and commitment — it took her seven years to get where she is now. A lot of people give up, she says, but perseverance can pay off. "A lot of people see where I'm at right now. And they're like, 'Oh, I want to do that right now,'" she said. "Yeah, it's going to happen eventually, but it's not just going to happen overnight. So I would say don't give up and just keep listing, keep sharing your closet, be consistent." Though her thousands of followers on social media are certainly helpful, she says "you really don't have to have a huge following to make money."Thanks to her selling success, Mejia says she has signed contracts with Torrid and Target, which pay her to wear and promote their clothing on social media. It's because of deals like these that she earned $735,000 last year.She plans to continue full steam ahead with her business as well. Sales have grown 30% over the last six months, and she has plans to open up a "pop-up" retail store of her own next January in Houston. She's planning to hire three employees in December to help out.  "We love what we do," she said, "and the only way to continue to grow is working." Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

A new Marist Poll showed Sen. Raphael Warnock with 47% support among registered voters in Georgia, while Herschel Walker garnered 42% support. Sen. Raphael Warnock arrives for a rally in Conyers, Ga., on August 18, 2022.AP Photo/Jeff Amy Warnock has a 47%-42% lead over Walker in the Georgia Senate race, per a new Marist Poll. In the poll, Warnock was backed by 94% of Democrats, while Walker earned 83% support among the GOP. The two candidates are set to meet for their first televised debate in Savannah on Oct. 14. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia holds a five-point lead over Republican challenger Herschel Walker in the state's high-stakes Senate race, according to a new Marist Poll.The survey showed Warnock with 47% support among registered voters in the Peach State, while Walker garnered 42% support and Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver sat at 4%; seven percent of respondents were undecided.In the poll, a near-unanimous 94% of Democrats backed Warnock, while the senator peeled off 10% of Republicans and held a nine-point lead over Walker among independents (45%-36%).Warnock performed strongly in the Atlanta metropolitan area; in the Atlanta suburbs, he edged out Walker by three-percentage points (47%-44%).The senator — a Savannah native — earned 39% support in the state's GOP-heavy coastal and southeast regions, compared to Walker's 46% support.Walker — a former University of Georgia football standout and first-time candidate — received the support of 83% of Republicans in the survey.The ex-NFL player boasted a robust level of support in North Georgia, besting Warnock by 21 percentage points (54%-33%) in the deeply conservative area.In Georgia, a longtime Republican bastion that in recent years has seen major Democratic gains at the statewide level — underlined by President Joe Biden's 2020 win and the 2021 runoff election victories of Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff — a rural-urban divide is apparent.Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker, center, talks with state Sen. Butch Miller, left, and former state Rep. Terry Rogers in Alto, Ga., on July 21, 2022.AP Photo/Bill Barrow, FileWarnock held a massive 76%-19% lead among survey respondents residing in big cities and a 54%-38% advantage with suburban respondents, while Walker fared best with voters in small towns (55%-33%) and rural Georgia (61%-21%).Democrats currently control the 50-50 Senate by the slimmest of margins — by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris' tiebreaking vote — and the Georgia contest has been seen as a marquee race that could determine which party leads the upper chamber in 2023.Warnock is seeking a full six-year term after winning the runoff election to fill the remaining term of Johnny Isakson, the veteran Republican lawmaker who retired from the Senate in December 2019 and passed away in December 2021.Walker has near-universal name recognition in Georgia, due in large part to his long football career, which has given him natural inroads with conservative-leaning Bulldogs fans.While Warnock has sought to highlight his push to cap insulin at $35 for patients on Medicare and his plan to reduce prescription drug costs for Americans — both of which were included in the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by Biden last month — Walker has tried to paint the senator as too closely tied to the commander-in-chief.The Marist poll showed Biden with a 39% job approval rating in Georgia, with 55% disapproving of the president's performance.(A recent CBS News/YouGov poll showed Warnock with a narrower 51%-49% edge over Walker.)Warnock and Walker are set to meet for their first televised debate in Savannah on Oct. 14.Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia.AP Photo/Megan Varner, FileAbrams vs. KempIn the state's other high-profile race, incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp holds a six-point lead (50%-44%) over Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams among registered voters in a rematch of their 2018 contest.While Abrams earned 93% support among Democrats, she trailed Kemp with independents — securing 41% of their vote compared to 47% for the governor.Kemp earned the support of 90% of Republicans and boasted an 18-point lead (58%-40%) among white college-educated voters, a demographic that has moved toward the Democratic Party in recent years.The survey also showed Kemp winning the support of 14% of Black respondents, while Abrams — a former state House minority leader — was backed by 78% of Black Georgians who were polled.Several recent reports have highlighted Abrams' need to boost her support among Black voters — notably Black men — as she seeks to become the first Black woman elected to a governorship in United States history.Marist polled 1,202 registered voters from September 12 through September 15; the survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

These are the most popular audiobooks on Audible that make for great road trip or beach day entertainment. When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more.These are the most popular audiobooks on Audible that make for great road trip or beach day entertainment.Crystal Cox/Insider Audible has thousands of books and podcasts. You can start a free 30-day Audible trial here. Below, we compiled its 30 bestselling audiobooks among Audible users right now. Books run the gamut from popular novels to self-help hits. If you're spending more time outside these days and have already cycled through your weekly podcasts, we'd recommend the slow burn of a great (and highly mobile) audiobook. If you're looking for a new title, we suggest starting with the books currently gaining buzz. Below are the top 30 bestselling audiobooks on Audible right now. The site has hundreds of thousands of titles to choose between, as well as a catalog of podcasts. If you're new to Audible or audiobook services in general, be sure to check out the FAQ section at the bottom of this article to get started. You can access Audible for free as part of a 30-day trial.The 30 bestselling audiobooks on Audible right now:Descriptions are provided by Amazon (lightly edited and condensed)."Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia OwensAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $12.39For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say.Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life — until the unthinkable happens."Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones" by James ClearAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $11.98No matter your goals, "Atomic Habits" offers a proven framework for improving every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.“The Summer I Turned Pretty” by Jenny HanAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $9.25Some summers are just destined to be pretty.Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the following summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys Belly has known since her very first summer — they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one wonderful and terrible summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.“Dreadgod: Cradle, Book 11” by Will WightAmazonPre-order: Free with 30-day trialThe battle in the heavens has left a target on Lindon's back.His most reliable ally is gone, the Monarchs see him as a threat, and he has inherited one of the most valuable facilities in the world. At any moment, his enemies could band together to kill him.If it weren't for the Dreadgods. All four are empowered and unleashed, rampaging through Cradle, and grudges old and new must be set aside. The Monarchs need every capable fighter to help them defend their territory.And Lindon needs time. While he fights, he sends his friends off to train. They'll need to advance impossibly fast if they want to join him in battle against the kings and queens of Cradle. Together, they will need enough power to rival a Dreadgod.“Scars and Stripes: An Unapologetically American Story of Fighting the Taliban, UFC Warriors, and Myself” by Tim Kennedy, Nick PalmiscianoAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $18.37From decorated Green Beret sniper and UFC headliner Tim Kennedy comes a rollicking, inspirational memoir. It offers lessons on embracing failure and weathering storms — to unlock the strongest version of yourself.“It’s Not Summer Without You: Summer I Turned Pretty, Book 2” by Jenny HanAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $9.36It used to be that Belly counted the days until summer until she was back at Cousins Beach with Conrad and Jeremiah. But not this year. Not after Susannah got sick again, and Conrad stopped caring. Everything right and good has fallen apart, leaving Belly wishing summer would never come. But when Jeremiah calls, saying Conrad has disappeared, Belly knows what she must do to make things right again. And it can only happen back at the beach house, the three of them together, the way things used to be. If this summer really and truly is the last summer, it should end the way it started — at Cousins Beach.“The Hotel Nantucket” by Elin HilderbrandAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $17.99Fresh off a bad breakup with a longtime boyfriend, Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton is desperately seeking a second act. When she's named the new general manager of the Hotel Nantucket, a once Gilded Age gem turned abandoned eyesore, she hopes that her local expertise and charismatic staff can win the favor of their new London billionaire owner, Xavier Darling, as well as that of Shelly Carpenter, the wildly popular Instagram tastemaker who can help put them back on the map. And while the Hotel Nantucket appears to be a blissful paradise, complete with a celebrity chef-run restaurant and an idyllic wellness center, there's a lot of drama behind closed doors. The staff (and guests) have complicated pasts, and the hotel can't seem to overcome the bad reputation it earned in 1922 when a tragic fire killed 19-year-old chambermaid Grace Hadley. With Grace gleefully haunting the halls, a staff harboring all kinds of secrets, and Lizbet's romantic uncertainty, is the Hotel Nantucket destined for success or doom?“I'd Like to Play Alone, Please” by Tom SeguraAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $18.33From Tom Segura, the massively successful stand-up comedian and co-host of chart-topping podcasts "2 Bears 1 Cave" and "Your Mom's House," come hilarious real-life stories of parenting, celebrity encounters, youthful mistakes, misanthropy, and so much more.“Verity” by Colleen HooverAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $23.99Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, the husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered.Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen's feelings for Jeremy intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife's words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.You can find more of Colleen Hoover's best books here.“Sparring Partners” by John GrishamAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $27.90"Homecoming" takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham's unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he's not in the courtroom. He's called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again — until now. In "Strawberry Moon," we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can't save him, the courts slam the door, and the governor says no to a last-minute request for clemency. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request. The "Sparring Partners" are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. "Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience" by Brené BrownAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $18.34In "Atlas of the Heart," Brown takes us on a journey through eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary skills and an actionable framework for meaningful connection, she gives us the language and tools to access a universe of new choices and second chances — a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heartbreaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection.Over the past two decades, Brown's extensive research into the experiences that make us who we are has shaped the cultural conversation and helped define what it means to be courageous with our lives. Atlas of the Heart draws on this research, as well as on Brown's singular skills as a storyteller, to show us how accurately naming an experience doesn't give the experience more power — it gives us the power of understanding, meaning, and choice.“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Taylor Jenkins ReidAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $22.49Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jump-start her career.Summoned to Evelyn's luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the '80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn's story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique's own in tragic and irreversible ways.You can read a review of "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" here.“Greenlights” by Matthew McConaugheyAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $15.98From the Academy Award-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.“Finding Me: A Memoir” by Viola DavisAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $18.53In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever.This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose, but also my voice in a world that didn't always see me.“The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization” by Peter ZeihanAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $31.50For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days — even hours — of when you decided you wanted it.America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going.Globe-spanning supply chains are only possible with the protection of the U.S. Navy. The American dollar underpins internationalized energy and financial markets. Complex, innovative industries were created to satisfy American consumers. American security policy forced warring nations to lay down their arms. Billions of people have been fed and educated as the American-led trade system spread across the globe.All of this was artificial. All this was temporary. All this is ending.In "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning," author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.The list of countries that make it all work is smaller than you think. This means everything about our interconnected world — from how we manufacture products, to how we grow food, to how we keep the lights on, to how we shuttle stuff about, to how we pay for it all — is about to change.“Finna: Book 1” by Nino CipriAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $14.99When an elderly customer at a Swedish big-box furniture store ― but not that one ― slips through a portal to another dimension, it's up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company's bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago.To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them. Can friendship blossom from the ashes of their relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible.“The Golden Couple” by Greer Hendricks, Sarah PekkanenAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $17.68Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all ― until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship driven by work and a lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers.Avery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn't stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they must adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate.When they glide through Avery's door, and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it's no longer simply a marriage that's in danger.“It Ends with Us” by Colleen HooverAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $10.26Lily hasn't always had it easy, but that's never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She's come a long way from the small town where she grew up — she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. And when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily's life seems too good to be true.Ryle is assertive, stubborn, and maybe even a little arrogant. He's also sensitive, brilliant, and has a soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn't hurt. Lily can't get him out of her head. But Ryle's complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his "no dating" rule, she can't help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan — her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.You can find more of Colleen Hoover's best books here."Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds" by David GogginsAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $20.10For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare — poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him The Fittest (Real) Man in America.In "Can't Hurt Me," he shares his astonishing life story and reveals that most of us tap into only 40% of our capabilities. Goggins calls this The 40% Rule, and his story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.“We’ll Always Have Summer: Summer I Turned Pretty, Book 3” by Jenny HanAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $9.31Belly has only ever been in love with two boys, both with the last name Fisher. And after being with Jeremiah for the previous two years, she's almost positive he is her soul mate. Almost. While Conrad has not gotten over the mistake of letting Belly go, Jeremiah has always known that Belly is the girl for him. So when Belly and Jeremiah decide to make things forever, Conrad realizes that it's now or never — tell Belly he loves her or loses her for good.Belly will have to confront her feelings for Jeremiah and Conrad and face the inevitable: She will have to break one of their hearts.“Happy-Go-Lucky” by David SedarisAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $17.79Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask — or not — was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As "Happy-Go-Lucky" opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he's stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences — the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger's teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone's son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with "Help Wanted" signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Book 1” by J.K. RowlingAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $6.98Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.“Match Game: Expeditionary Force, Book 14” by Craig AlansonAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $14.44For years, the ancient alien AI known as Skippy (the Magnificent, don't forget that part) has been able to do one impossible thing after another. What is his secret? It's simple: 100 percent Grade-A Extreme Awesomeness. And also because he had never been faced with an opponent of equal power. Until now.This time, he might need a little help from a band of filthy monkeys.“The Terminal List” by Jack CarrAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $11.99On his last combat deployment, Lieutenant Commander James Reece's entire team was killed in a catastrophic ambush. But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government.Now, with no family and free from the military's command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he's learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates. With breathless pacing and relentless suspense, Reece ruthlessly targets his enemies in the upper echelons of power without regard for the laws of combat or the rule of law."Project Hail Mary" by Andy WeirAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $17.32Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission — and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it's up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery — and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he's got to do it all alone. Or does he?You can read a review of "Project Hail Mary" here."12 Rules for Life" by Jordan B. PetersonAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $13.55What are the most valuable things that everyone should know?In this book, Jordan Peterson provides twelve profound and practical principles for how to live a meaningful life, from setting your house in order before criticizing others to comparing yourself to who you were yesterday, not someone else today. Happiness is a pointless goal, he shows us. Instead, we must search for meaning, not for its own sake, but as a defense against the suffering that is intrinsic to our existence.Drawing on vivid examples from the author's clinical practice and personal life, cutting-edge psychology and philosophy, and lessons from humanity's oldest myths and stories, "12 Rules for Life" offers a deeply rewarding antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to our modern problems.“Run, Rose, Run” by James Patterson, Dolly PartonAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $17.84From America's most beloved superstar and its greatest storyteller — a thriller about a young singer-songwriter on the rise and on the run, determined to do whatever it takes to survive.Nashville is where she's come to claim her destiny. It's also where the darkness she's fled might find her. And destroy her."The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" by Mark MansonAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $12.99In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.“The Paris Apartment” by Lucy FoleyAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $17.99Jess needs a fresh start. She's broke and alone, and she's just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn't sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn't say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up — to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? — he's not there.The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother's situation, and the more questions she has. Ben's neighbors are an eclectic bunch and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it's starting to look like it's Ben's future that's in question.The socialite — the nice guy — the alcoholic — the girl on the verge — the concierge.Everyone's a neighbor. Everyone's a suspect. And everyone knows something they're not telling.“Come with Me” by Ronald MalfiAmazonFree on Audible with 30-day trialAvailable on Amazon for $11.49Aaron Decker's life changes one December morning when his wife Allison is killed. Haunted by her absence — and her ghost — Aaron goes through her belongings, where he finds a receipt for a motel room in another part of the country. Piloted by grief and an increasing sense of curiosity, Aaron embarks on a journey to discover what Allison had been doing in the weeks prior to her death.Yet Aaron is unprepared to discover Allison's dark secrets, the death and horror that make up the tapestry of her hidden life. And with each dark secret revealed, Aaron becomes more and more consumed by his obsession to learn the terrifying truth about the woman who had been his wife, even if it puts his own life at risk.Audible FAQHow much is Audible?Audible Plus is $7.95/month and Audible Premium is $14.95 per month. You can compare the Audible plans here.Audible Plus and Audible Premium Plus have a 30-day free trial to most new members that come with one free credit to use on a title of your choice. And since Audible is an Amazon company, Prime members get two credits in their Audible trial as one of their perks.When your trial is over, you'll be automatically charged a monthly subscription fee. You can cancel anytime. What's the difference between Audible Plus and Audible Premium?Both memberships give you unlimited access to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, podcasts, and more.But, only Audible Premium gives you a credit that's good for one title of your choice in the premium selection every month and 30% off all additional premium titles, plus access to exclusive sales. You can toggle between some of the titles in the Premium selection and Plus selection here.Are there other good audiobook services out there?At Insider Reviews, we also like the service Scribd, which is $10/month for unlimited audiobooks and books. The company also has a joint NYT and Scribd membership for $12.99/month which can be a very good deal. You can start a free trial here, or find a full review of the service here. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

From sci-fi flicks to dramas and horror movies, these films all shine a spotlight on the ups and downs of fatherhood. When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more.Amazon; Disney Plus; The Criterion Channel Father's Day lands on June 19, and it's a great occasion to watch a movie with your dad. Below, we gathered 24 memorable films highlighting the ups and downs of fatherhood. You can stream our picks on services like Amazon, Netflix, Disney Plus, and more. A wide variety of films pay homage to the ups and downs of fatherhood, and Father's Day is a great time to put one on. If you're looking for a memorable movie to sit back and watch with your dad this year, we've got you covered.We've highlighted 24 of the best films about dads, from classics like "Father of the Bride" to new animated hits like "Onward." All of our picks feature fathers or grandfathers in key roles, and they each tell stories that examine the relationship between dads and their kids. Additionally, we've narrowed this list to only include films deemed "fresh" by the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes — that means a 60% rating or higher. We've also included a variety of genres for you to choose from, in case your dad prefers horror, drama, comedy, or all of the above.'A Quiet Place'Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount PicturesWatch "A Quiet Place" on Paramount Plus. For the horror-loving dad, "A Quiet Place" depicts a bleak, post-apocalyptic world where one family fights to survive in complete silence. John Krasinski directed and stars in the film as Lee Abbott, a father of three children who works hard to protect his family. The movie holds a "96% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 'Beginners'Focus FeaturesRent or buy "Beginners" on Amazon, Apple TV, or Vudu. Inspired by director Mike Mills' father, "Beginners" tells the story of Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a man searching for inspiration in his own love life through memories of his late dad. Christopher Plummer plays Hal, Oliver's father who came out as gay after the passing of his wife. Rated "85% Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes, "Beginners" is a multi-generational romance with a fresh take on fatherhood.'Bicycle Thieves'The Criterion ChannelWatch "Bicycle Thieves" on HBO Max or The Criterion Channel. "Bicycle Thieves" is an Italian neorealist film following a father and his son in post-World War II Rome searching for their stolen bike. Without the bike, the father won't be able to work his job to provide for his family. The classic movie is directed by Vittorio De Sica and is frequently included on many all-time best film lists. It's rated "99% Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.'Big Fish'AmazonWatch "Big Fish" on Netflix. A fantastical drama directed by Tim Burton, "Big Fish" focuses on one man's attempts to reconnect with his dying father by recalling his larger-than-life stories. Billy Crudup plays Will Bloom, and Albert Finney plays his father, Edward. Ewan McGregor plays a young Edward in the movie's many fantasy flashback sequences. "Big Fish" received a "75% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 'Boyz N the Hood'AmazonRent or buy "Boyz N the Hood" on Amazon, Apple TV, or Vudu.When Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is sent to live with his father, Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne) in South Central Los Angeles, he is reunited with his childhood friends and immersed in organized crime. "Boyz N the Hood" follows Tre's rocky adolescence influenced by local gangs while his father tries to sway him from a life of violence. The film is written and directed by John Singleton; it holds a "96% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'Father of the Bride'AmazonRent or buy "Father of the Bride" on Amazon, Apple TV, or Vudu. A remake of a 1950s comedy, "Father of the Bride" stars Steve Martin as George Banks, a successful businessman who's thrown for a loop when his 22-year old daughter (Kimberly Williams) announces her engagement to a man she's known for three months. It's a timeless film that's relatable for all dads who have a hard time letting go. It currently has a "70% Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A brand-new adaptation of the story also recently premiered on HBO Max, with Andy Garcia stepping into the main role.'Field of Dreams'UniversalWatch "Field of Dreams" on Amazon Prime Video.Directed by Phil Alden Robinson, "Field of Dreams'' is a sports drama based on the 1982 book, "Shoeless Joe." Kevin Costner stars as Ray Kinsella, an Iowa farmer haunted by his broken relationship with his late father. When he receives an inspirational vision from an unknown voice, he builds a baseball diamond on his farm. Before long, the ghosts of famous baseball players visit his field ready to play. The sentimental film holds an "87% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'Finding Nemo'Disney PlusWatch "Finding Nemo" on Disney Plus.A Pixar classic from 2003, "Finding Nemo" follows one clownfish's harrowing journey to find his son, who's been kidnapped. It's a film great for all ages and it illustrates the woes of an overprotective father and just how far he'll go for his child. The cast includes Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, and Willem Dafoe. "Finding Nemo" is rated "99% Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2'MarvelWatch "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" on Disney Plus.This sequel to the Marvel hit "Guardians of the Galaxy" follows the team on their next adventure, this time to meet Star-Lord's previously-unknown father. The film is action-packed, funny, and set to a nostalgic soundtrack, perfect for watching with dad this Father's Day. It also explores the idea of a found family, and the importance of those you care about regardless of blood relation. "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" holds an "85% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'Hearts Beat Loud'Gunpowder & SkyRent or buy "Hearts Beat Loud" on Amazon, Apple TV, or Vudu. Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons star as Frank and Sam Fisher, a father-daughter duo who  become an unlikely songwriting team in Sam's last summer before heading off to college. "Hearts Beat Loud" is a feel-good movie highlighting the love between a father and daughter, and just how hard it is to let go. The movie holds a "92% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'Paramount PicturesWatch "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" on Paramount Plus. The third installment in the "Indiana Jones" franchise follows Indy on an adventure to save his kidnapped father (Sean Connery) and find the fabled Holy Grail. It's one of the more light-hearted and comedic entries in the series, full of the typical Indiana Jones action that many dads love. The classic film is rated "88% Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.'Interstellar'Interstellar Movie/FacebookWatch "Interstellar" on Paramount Plus. "Interstellar" stars Matthew McConaughey as a father and former NASA pilot living in a dystopian future where humans must look to space for survival. He is forced to choose between spending his life aiding all of mankind or remaining earthbound and living out his days with his young children. This sci-fi epic is perfect for dads who love space and all of its unknowns. It holds a "72% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'Late Spring'Janus FilmsWatch "Late Spring" on HBO Max or The Criterion Channel."Late Spring" is a 1949 Japanese drama based on the novel "Father and Daughter." It follows Noriko (Setsuko Hara), a single young woman contentedly living with her widowed father. However, things change when she is pressured to get married, leading to a bittersweet and touching story about family. "Late Spring" is directed by legendary filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu and is rated "100% Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.'National Lampoon's Vacation'AmazonWatch "National Lampoon's Vacation" on HBO Max. A 1983 comedy classic, "National Lampoon's Vacation" stars Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold, a father and husband who decides to take his family on a cross-country road trip to a southern California amusement park. The Griswolds set out in high spirits, not knowing of the hijinks that will ensue. The wildly-popular film kicked off a whole franchise, with five sequels to follow; "Vacation" holds a "93% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'Onward'PixarWatch "Onward" on Disney Plus. "Onward" follows brothers Ian (Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt) as they embark on a journey to spend a day with their late dad, accompanied only by his magically-animated lower body. It's an animated journey filled with bumps and heartwarming moments that will make for a lighthearted watch this Father's Day. It currently holds an "88% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'Selena'Warner Bros/IMDBWatch "Selena" on HBO Max. A biographical drama following the life and career of Selena Quintanilla Perez, "Selena" also makes a good Father's Day flick because of what an active, if overbearing, role her father takes in her life. Jennifer Lopez stars as Selena and Edward James Olmos as her father, Abraham Quintanilla Jr. "Selena" is rated "67% Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.'The Birdcage'AmazonWatch "The Birdcage" on HBO Max. Armand and Albert, the openly-gay owners of a drag club called The Birdcage, are thrown for a loop when Armand's son Val asks them to meet his girlfriend's extremely conservative parents. The story continues as the two conceal their lifestyles, for Val's sake. It's a hilarious debacle starring Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman, and Dianne West. "The Birdcage" is rated "82% Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.'Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back'Disney PlusWatch "The Empire Strikes Back" on Disney Plus. After the events of the four earlier entries in the "Star Wars" saga, "The Empire Strikes Back" follows Luke, Han, and Leia as they continue to battle the Empire. It's the source of the iconic scene in which Luke learns the harsh truth about his father while dueling with Darth Vader. Directed by Irvin Kershner, this film holds a "94% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'The Godfather'AmazonWatch "The Godfather" on Paramount Plus. An award-winning, critically acclaimed masterpiece, "The Godfather" has a reputation that precedes it. Marlon Brando plays Don Corleone, the patriarch of his family. Based on the Mario Puzo novel of the same name, "The Godfather" focuses on the Corleone family life and the dark crimes they engage in behind the scenes. The film also stars Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, and Diane Keaton; it holds a "97% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'The Paper Tigers'Well Go USA EntertainmentWatch "The Paper Tigers" on Netflix.A comedy packed with stunts and martial arts, "The Paper Tigers" follows three has-been kung-fu prodigies who reunite decades later to avenge their master. Leading the trio is Danny "Eight Hands," who has long forgotten the kung fu life and is now a divorced father. The film is written by Bao Tran and stars Alain Uy, Ron Yuan, and Mykel Shannon Jenkins. It is rated "98% Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.'The Pursuit of Happyness'PeacockWatch "The Pursuit of Happyness" on Peacock. "The Pursuit of Happyness" is based on the real life of Chris Gardner, a man struggling to keep he and his son from falling into poverty while striving for a better life. Real-life father and son Will and Jaden Smith play the Gardners in this film directed by Gabriele Muccino. It's a heartwarming drama with powerful performances from its actors; "The Pursuit of Happyness" holds a "67% Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'The Royal Tenenbaums'Gene Hackman in "The Royal Tenenbaums."Buena Vista PicturesRent or Buy "The Royal Tenenbaums" on Amazon, Apple TV, or Vudu. Directed by Wes Anderson and co-written by Owen Wilson, "The Royal Tenenbaums" stars Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum, the father of three formerly-brilliant children who now live mediocre lives. He gathers them back together, decades older, in an attempt to reconnect before he dies. The cast also includes Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, and Danny Glover. The film is rated "81% Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.'The Shining'Warner Bros.Watch "The Shining" on HBO Max. Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, "The Shining" details the decline of Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), an aspiring writer who takes his wife and son with him on a job as an off-season hotel caretaker. The hotel has a dark past though, and his son becomes plagued with psychic visions. Perfect for the horror-loving father in your life, "The Shining" is a psychological horror classic to watch this Father's Day. It holds an "84% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.'To Kill a Mockingbird'UniversalRent or buy "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Amazon, Apple TV, or Vudu.Based on the award-winning novel by Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird" paints a picture of prejudice and racial discrimination in 1930s Alabama. Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch, a defense lawyer with two children who steps up to represent a Black man accused of rape. The story is told through the eyes of his young daughter, Scout (mary Badham), as she watches him fight for what's right. "To Kill a Mockingbird" holds a "93% Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

To retire comfortably, Americans say they will need $1.1 million. ‌Unfortunately, less than one in four will have the savings to do so. According to the 2022 Schroders US Retirement Survey, 22% of people approaching retirement say they’ll have enough money to maintain a comfortable standard of living. ‌The figure is down from 26% the […] To retire comfortably, Americans say they will need $1.1 million. ‌Unfortunately, less than one in four will have the savings to do so. According to the 2022 Schroders US Retirement Survey, 22% of people approaching retirement say they’ll have enough money to maintain a comfortable standard of living. ‌The figure is down from 26% the previous year. if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined') { document.write(''); } .first{clear:both;margin-left:0}.one-third{width:31.034482758621%;float:left;margin-left:3.448275862069%}.two-thirds{width:65.51724137931%;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element input{border:0;border-radius:0;padding:8px}form.ebook-styles .af-element{width:220px;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer{width:115px;float:left;margin-left: 6px;}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer input.submit{width:115px;padding:10px 6px 8px;text-transform:uppercase;border-radius:0;border:0;font-size:15px}form.ebook-styles .af-body.af-standards input.submit{width:115px}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy{width:100%;font-size:12px;margin:10px auto 0}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy p{font-size:11px;margin-bottom:0}form.ebook-styles .af-body input.text{height:40px;padding:2px 10px !important} form.ebook-styles .error, form.ebook-styles #error { color:#d00; } form.ebook-styles .formfields h1, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-logo, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-footer { display: none; } form.ebook-styles .formfields { font-size: 12px; } form.ebook-styles .formfields p { margin: 4px 0; } Get The Full Henry Singleton Series in PDF Get the entire 4-part series on Henry Singleton in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); Q1 2022 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Overall, there is a general expectation among Americans that their retirement savings will be inadequate. In fact, the majority (56%) expect to have less than $500,000 saved by the time they retire ‌and 36% anticipate‌‌ ‌‌having‌‌ ‌‌less‌‌ ‌‌than‌‌ ‌‌$250,000. Not surprisingly, American workers were most worried about inflation shrinking their assets in retirement. ‌The‌ ‌second‌ ‌most-feared‌ ‌scenario is becoming a reality, at least right now – 53% of respondents fear “a major market downturn significantly reducing assets.” “The list of concerns that retirees have, and that Americans in general have, are longer and they are more serious today,” Joel Schiffman, who oversees defined contribution products in North America for Schroders, told Bloomberg. “Inflation, the stock market, the cost of healthcare, taxes — there is this compounding effect.” People already retired said they were comfortable, or that their circumstances were “not terrible, not good.” ‌But 18% said their retirement was hard, and 5% said it was an absolute‌‌ ‌‌nightmare. Among respondents, a quarter said that in order to afford their “dream retirement” they must sacrifice what they want today; another 25% just need to keep on keeping on. ‌The study revealed that 35% of respondents between the ages of 60 and 67 said they would have to win the lottery to achieve their dreams. Before panicking, though, you should answer an important question. What is a comfortable retirement lifestyle? What is a Comfortable Lifestyle in Retirement? Your mileage will certainly vary. However, “Comfortable Retirees were more likely to have intermediate levels of financial assets (between $99,000 and $320,000) and income,” reports the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). ERBI also found that; One in two homeowners were mortgage-free, while 37 percent had a mortgage. ‌ A third had no debt, while 42 percent had debt that was easily manageable. They were most likely married and had college degrees. More than half said they plan to grow, maintain, or spend a small portion of their financial assets, and almost three-quarters said their retirement savings are sufficient or above their needs. “In this group, more retirees cited workplace retirement savings plans such as 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs), in addition to Social Security, as their major source of income than any other group,” they add. ‌The most common types of debt are credit card and auto loan debt, and 1 in 3 had at least one of each. “Half of the retirees in this group spend less than $3,000 a month, while the majority said they can afford their current level of spending,” states ERBI. “In this group of retirees, most think their standards of living have not changed since their working years; however, 1 in 4 believes it has declined.” Retired Comfortables were on average just behind Affluent Retirees in their level of happiness during retirement. Choosing a Comfortable Retirement Lifestyle Before getting too consumed with an exact dollar amount, a key question to ask when planning for retirement is, “What do I want to do when I retire?” ‌After all, putting money away for retirement without determining how you plan to make use of it can leave you unprepared for your golden years. In terms of retirement, men are looking at over 18 years and women at over 20 years, as per the Social Security Administration. ‌As such, it will be important to make sure you’re happy with how you spend that much time. If you’re stuck, you should take into account the things in life that are important to you. Examples include friends and family, socializing, travel, hobbies, etc. To get started, answer the following questions. ‌When you do, you should be able to figure out what your priorities for retirement are. Are there health concerns that will impact‌ ‌your‌ ‌retirement‌ ‌lifestyle? To what extent is the quality of health care where you live important to you? Are you planning to stay in your current residence? Would you like to live near your ‌family‌ ‌or‌ ‌friends? Are you interested in moving‌ ‌to‌ ‌another‌ ‌state? Do you think living somewhere with lower taxes is ‌important? Is it your dream‌ ‌to‌ ‌retire‌ ‌abroad? Would you like‌ ‌to‌ ‌move‌ ‌into‌ ‌a‌ ‌retirement‌ ‌community? When you get older, do you plan on moving into assisted living? During retirement, what kinds of activities do you want to pursue that you are passionate about? Are you interested in traveling? Is it important to you to participate‌ ‌in‌ ‌charitable‌ ‌activities? How much income will you need ‌in‌ ‌retirement? Would you like to remain in the workforce? Full-time‌ ‌or‌ ‌part-time? In retirement, are you interested in reinventing your life? When you figure out what your priorities are, you’ll get a better idea of what you should include in your retirement plan. And, more importantly what it will take to maintain a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. It’s Not About Money, It’s About Income When figuring out your retirement “number,” it’s important to take into account that it isn’t just about deciding how much you need to save,” explains Robin Hartill, CFP®. ‌Americans, for example, tend to want to retire with a million-dollar‌ ‌nest‌ ‌egg. ‌That, however, is a false assumption. “The most important factor in determining how much you need to retire is whether you’ll have enough money to create the income you need to support your desired quality of life after you retire,” adds Hartill. ‌Is a $1 million savings account enough to sustain an individual forever? ‌Possibly. So, how much income do you really need? Well, for most retirees, it’s definitely not 100% of your pre-retirement income. The reason? ‌These expenses are probably not an issue; There’ll be no need to save for retirement. If you don’t commute to work, you might spend less on transportation costs. By the time you retire, your mortgage may be paid off. If you do not have dependents, you may not need life insurance. “But retiring on 80% of your annual income isn’t perfect for everyone,” says Hartill. Depending on the type of retirement lifestyle you intend to have and the range of expenses you expect, you might need to adjust your goal. It may make sense to aim for 90% to 100% of your pre-retirement income if you plan to travel frequently in retirement. Alternatively, you may be able to comfortably live on less than 80% if you intend to pay off your mortgage before retiring or downsizing your living arrangements. “Let’s say you consider yourself the typical retiree,” she says. ‌Your annual income is $120,000 between you and your spouse. ‌Using the 80% rule, you can expect to need about $96,000 in annual income after retiring, or $8,000 a‌ ‌month. Social Security The‌ ‌good‌ ‌news‌? ‌If‌ ‌you’re‌ ‌like‌ ‌most‌ ‌people,‌ ‌your Social Security benefits may provide some additional help beyond your savings. ‌In‌ ‌fact,‌ ‌at the end of 2020, nearly nine in ten seniors were receiving Social Security benefits. ‌Moreover, Social Security benefits make up about 30% of an elderly person’s income. However, Social Security typically replaces a lower percentage of income ‌for higher-income‌ ‌retirees. “For example, Fidelity estimates that someone earning $50,000 a year can expect Social Security to replace 35% of their income,” clarifies Hartill. ‌On the other hand, if someone earned $300,000 a year, their Social Security income replacement rate would be only 11%. As a rule, you can expect to receive less than half your pre-retirement salary in Social Security benefits. ‌Therefore, you will be responsible for covering the‌ ‌difference. But, there are still ways for you to still live comfortable off just a social security check: Delay taking your benefits. Try to wait until after you have reached your full retirement age before starting to collect benefits. ‌Your Social Security benefits will be at their maximum if you wait until you are 70 years old. And, if you already filed, you can still withdraw your claim. Pay off your debt. ‌Before retiring, it is best to pay off all debts, including credit card bills and mortgages, so you can maximize your Social Security benefits. ‌So, instead of spending your benefits on things you have already bought, you can put them towards things you need today. Relocate. ‌By lowering your cost of living, you can reap greater Social Security benefits. If you can consider moving to a tax-friendly state. Alaska‌ ‌and‌ ‌New‌ ‌Hampshire‌ ‌do not levy sales or income taxes, while Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming do levy sales taxes, but do not levy income taxes or taxes on pensions. Don’t overpay for prescriptions. ‌Medications can get rather expensive. ‌Always choose generic over brand-name prescriptions when you can. ‌Additionally, you may want to join a prescription drug membership program at the pharmacy where you buy your medication so that you can earn rewards and receive discounts. Take advantage of discounts. Speaking of discounts, if you go out to eat only go to restaurants the offer senior discounts. Also, the same it true with retailers like Kohl’s. Consider Savings, Annuities, and Other Income Streams While it’s possible to live comfortably just off Social Security, I wouldn’t completely bank on that. As a general rule, Social Security will only replace around 40% of your pre-retirement income. And, if you’re using the 80% rule as a benchmark, then that’s only half of your retirement income. To make sure they are able to meet their bills and have a life in retirement, most people need additional income retirement streams. And, these income streams are typically; Qualified retirement savings plans. A 401(k) plan, an IRA, or another type of retirement plan are the most common in the private sector. ‌Throughout your working career, you invest money into the plan. ‌If you contribute to a retirement plan or take money out after you retire, you typically get a tax break. If you’re self-employed, you can contribute to a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP-IRA) or an Individual 401(k). Retirement portfolio. In addition to a qualified retirement, you should also have a diversified retirement portfolio. Generally, this consists of stock, high yielding bonds, high yield savings accounts, and dividend paying stocks. Annuities. ‌An‌ ‌annuity‌ ‌is‌ ‌a‌ ‌contract that you purchase from an insurance or annuity company. It can provide a steady and guaranteed stream of income in retirement. Pensions. ‌ Private pension plans have become rarer over time. ‌Government workers, who still have pensions, can rely on them as a regular source of income throughout their lives. Veterans pension benefits. Veterans Pension benefits may be available if you meet certain criteria, including serving during wartime, being 65 or older, having a service-connected disability, and little to no income. ‌It differs from your military retirement pension, which is based on your number of years of service. Work Part-Time. Moreover, you may want to consider working part-time. Besides the additional income, it can help make the transition into retirement smoother. And, it’s a surefire way to remain physically and mentally sharp. Some suggestions would be freelancing, consulting, or babysitting your grandkids. You could also enter the gig economy by driving for Lyft or Door Dash. And, you could even rent out a spare bedroom to a full-time roommate or list it on Airbnb. To learn more about the tax implications of retirement savings or collecting Social Security benefits during retirement, speak with your licensed financial advisor. ‌Your finances may be affected. Senior Living Options The cost of housing will likely be your largest retirement expense. Housing-related costs averaged $1,406.68 per month for Americans 65 and older between 2016 and 2020. The good news is that there are a number of ways to lower your monthly housing costs as well. ‌‌When you pay your mortgage off, you won’t have a large monthly expense. Instead, you would only have to pay taxes, insurance,‌‌ ‌‌and‌‌ ‌‌maintenance. Another‌ ‌choice would be to downsize to a home that costs much less and take advantage of the equity in your home. ‌You can also save money on heating, cooling, maintenance, and taxes if you live in a smaller home in a cheaper neighborhood. From what activities you can pursue to who you will socialize with to how much your new lifestyle will cost, where you live can make a big difference in your retirement lifestyle. With that in mind, here are some options worth exploring. Move to a more affordable state. Make sure you consider factors like taxes, cost of living, health care, and other quality of life issues before deciding where to retire within the United States. However, based on median home cost, medicare advantage cost, and the cost of living index, here are the 12 cheapest states to retire: Mississippi Alabama Oklahoma Arkansas Georgia Tennessee West Virginia Indiana Iowa South Carolina New Mexico 55+ retirement communities. Age-restricted retirement communities commonly offer detached houses as well as townhouses or apartments for active‌ ‌older‌ ‌adults. ‌The community may have golf courses, organized activities, social calendars,‌ ‌and‌ ‌other conveniences. Senior living apartments. Older Americans can benefit from age-restricted apartments, condos or townhouses, which are specifically suited to their needs. ‌The majority of them offer pools and fitness centers. On the other hand, medical or dining facilities aren’t usually available. ‌The equity in your home can be released when you move into an assisted living complex for travel or other retirement ‌activities. Living abroad. Approximately 432,000 retired Americans were receiving Social Security benefits in foreign countries at the end of 2019, ‌according‌ ‌to‌ ‌the‌ ‌Social Security‌ ‌Administration. Many countries offer retirement benefits for Americans while stretching their retirement dollars, such as; Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic Chitre, Panama Northern Belize Thailand’s Eastern Seaboard Popoli, Italy George Town Malaysia Cuenca, Ecuador The secret? ‌Finding a good balance between finances, a place you will enjoy living, and understanding the issues of becoming an expat, from health care to tax issues. ‌Also, in a foreign country, Medicare typically doesn’t cover your health care, so you’ll still need to pay income taxes in the states. Retirement Hobbies and Activities When you retire, you should be able to focus on what makes you happy and what makes you feel fulfilled. ‌However, you can still pursue hobbies and activities that meet both of these goals while living within your means. Here are some of the best hobbies and activities you can enjoy throughout your golden years. Creative ‌pursuits. In retirement, you can pursue hobbies that interest you and have time to devote to them, such as knitting and photography. ‌Also, here’s your chance to start a blog or write a book about something that interests you – without having to worry about going back to work every day. Outdoor adventures. Retirement‌ ‌is‌ ‌a great‌ ‌time to explore national and state parks or your favorite fishing hole during a weekday and avoid the weekend crowds. ‌Even better? Most parks offer senior discounts. Health and fitness. ‌Golf courses are commonly found in retirement communities. ‌There are dozens of healthy lifestyle choices to pursue after retirement, including running, swimming, biking, and dozens of other activities. ‌Physical activity is important for long-term health. ‌Adults 65 and older are recommended to get at least two and a half hours of moderate – or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous – physical activity every week. Travel. ‌ Traveling around the world may be limited only by your budget since you do not have a limited number of vacation days. ‌It may be affordable to spread out an RV adventure across the country over several‌ ‌weeks. But, ‌the cost of intercontinental travel can be reduced with flexible travel dates and group tour packages. And, with four-day packages that offer affordable options, cruises provide action-packed adventures at sea. Volunteer. ‌ An estimated 42% of retirees volunteer in their communities, according to AARP and Independent Sector, an organization that partners with nonprofits and foundations. ‌Volunteering‌ ‌is‌ ‌a‌ ‌great‌ ‌way‌ ‌to‌ ‌stay active, meet new people, and make a difference in your community while feeling fulfilled. Continue your education. ‌ By taking classes at your local university or community college, you can keep your mind active in retirement. ‌Studying a subject you were always curious about but never had time to investigate is a great idea when you are retired. ‌Senior citizens have access to reduced tuition rates at many colleges and universities. ‌Some may even be‌‌ ‌‌free. Frequently Asked Questions about Your Lifestyle in Retirement 1. How much will I spend in retirement? That depends as everyone’s situation is different. But, the 80% rule can provide a guideline. Based on your current income, you can start the planning process by assuming you’ll spend about 80% of the income you will make before you retire each year. ‌This ratio is called the retirement‌ ‌income‌ ‌replacement‌ ‌ratio. ‌You can expect to spend about $36,000 a year in retirement, for example, if your preretirement income was $45,000. Think‌ ‌of 80% as a good starting point. ‌You can modify this number based on your lifestyle, health expectations, and income. 2. Where does retirement income come from? The majority of retirees‌‌ ‌‌have‌‌ ‌‌multiple‌ ‌sources‌ ‌of‌ ‌income‌ ‌during‌ ‌their‌ ‌retirement‌ ‌years. Investment accounts that provide inflation protection, governmental benefits, or continuing paychecks are some examples. ‌To ensure you have enough income to live comfortably, it’s best to have multiple income sources. When‌ ‌deciding where your retirement income will come from, diversification is an important aspect to consider. ‌As a result, your future income can be protected and market risks can be reduced. 3. How long will I live? According to the CDC, the average life expectancy in the United States is 77 years. 4. What will my taxes look like in retirement? Your retirement planner can provide you with an estimate of your tax rate in retirement if you ask this question. ‌There are certain retirement savings, for example IRA and 401(k) accounts, that‌ ‌are‌ ‌taxable. ‌‌‌You may also have to pay taxes on your Social Security benefits based on your income. ‌You must also consider federal and state taxes. 5. Should I pay off my mortgage before I retire? It all‌ ‌comes‌ ‌down‌ ‌to‌ ‌personal‌ ‌preference. ‌Those who itemize deductions may find that their mortgage interest reduces their taxes. ‌If the interest rate is low enough, you might be better off investing more money than paying off the debt. If you plan on retiring comfortably, you need to consider the impact of paying off your mortgage. ‌Even though it’s best to enter retirement debt-free, it’s not a good idea to drain your retirement fund to pay off a house. Article by Deanna Ritchie, Due About the Author Deanna Ritchie is a financial editor at Due. She has a degree in English Literature. She has written 1000+ articles on getting out of debt and mastering your finances. She has edited over 40,000 articles in her life. She has a passion for helping writers inspire others through their words. Deanna has also been an editor at Entrepreneur Magazine and ReadWrite.   Updated on Jun 3, 2022, 4:31 pm (function() { var sc = document.createElement("script"); sc.type = "text/javascript"; sc.async = true;sc.src = "//mixi.media/data/js/95481.js"; sc.charset = "utf-8";var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(sc, s); }()); window._F20 = window._F20 || []; _F20.push({container: 'F20WidgetContainer', placement: '', count: 3}); _F20.push({finish: true});.....»»

Maye Musk raised Elon and his siblings while working multiple jobs and maintaining a career as a model. Maye Musk visits the Empire State Building as Sports Illustrated Swimsuit surprises Maye Musk as newest cover model on May 11, 2022 in New York City.Noam Galai/Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust Maye Musk graced the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition this week. The supermodel and mother of Elon Musk has had a prolific career that started in the 1960s. Maye Musk worked multiple jobs to support her children, but does not take credit for their success. Maye Musk captured the spotlight this week when she became the oldest woman to be featured on a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover.The 74-year-old super model was one of four cover models for the edition that included Kim Kardashian. Maye Musk has continually pushed boundaries in her career, from posing nude on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 to becoming CoverGirl's oldest spokesperson at the age of 69."If I thought I could be a swimsuit model for Sports Illustrated, people would have locked me away as a crazy lady," Maye Musk said in a video released by the magazine earlier this week. "I'm very excited to let people know that women in their 70s are gorgeous," she added.—Maye Musk (@mayemusk) May 16, 2022 Maye Musk is often identified based on her role as the mother of Elon Musk, but she has been a celebrity in her own right for decades.Long before her son became the richest man in the world, Maye Musk had already developed a prolific modeling career. She has appeared on the covers of multiple high-profile magazines, including Vogue and Time, played a role in a Beyonce music video, and been featured in numerous ads for anything from Revlon to Special K cereal.Maye Musk and Elon Musk attend The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York CityJamie McCarthy/Getty Images"I was famous until Elon became famous," Maye Musk told The New York Times in 2016.Success seems to run in the family and Elon Musk – the billionaire entrepreneur behind PayPay, Tesla, and SpaceX – is not the only one to make a mark. Maye Musk's other son, Kimbal Musk, is the founder of three food companies: The Kitchen Restaurant Group, a nonprofit called Big Green, and Square Roots, an urban-farming company. And her daughter, Tosca Musk, runs her own streaming service and is an award-winning producer and director of films and television shows."They followed their passions, and they all went in different directions," Maye Musk told Insider in a 2020 interview.But, that success didn't come easily for Maye Musk or her children.  Early lifeMaye Musk has been modeling since she was 15 and was a finalist in the 1969 Miss South Africa beauty competition, but it wasn't until recent years that she could afford to take modeling gigs simply because she wanted to without answering to an agent. That's because she was hustling to raise three children as a single mother while earning two master's degrees and establishing a career as a model, dietitian, and nutritionist. Maye Musk married Errol Musk in 1970. The two went to high school together, according to her most recent book, "A Woman Makes A Plan." Elon Musk's father is an engineer from South Africa, per a 2017 Rolling Stone profile. Maye Musk told Harper's Bazaar in 2019 that their marriage quickly went downhill and described the relationship as abusive. Errol Musk told Rolling Stone that he has never intentionally hurt anyone, excluding one scenario where he said he shot and killed three people who illegally entered his house.South African Errol Musk who was visiting his son Kimbal Musk in Boulder, CO on Friday, March 28, 2014. Musk is the father of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.Denver Post Photo by Cyrus McCrimmonMaye Musk became pregnant with Elon Musk during the couple's honeymoon, she told Insider in a 2020 interview. Elon Musk is estranged from his father. He told Rolling Stone that his father is "a terrible human being."The two were married for nearly a decade. Maye Musk said in her book that she wanted to leave the relationship, but the Divorce Act, which legalized the termination of a marriage in South Africa, was not enacted until 1979. The couple was divorced the same year the law was passed.Five jobs at onceIn 1989, Maye Musk moved with her family from Johannesburg in South Africa to Toronto. The model told CNBC in a 2018 interview that she had to work five jobs to make ends meet.She worked as a research officer for the University of Toronto so that her children could go to school there for free and taught modeling and nutrition classes two nights a week. All while working on her practice and studying to become a registered dietitian.The family lived in a small rent-controlled apartment in Toronto. "We spent three weeks just taking staples out of the floor and removing the wallpaper, which was covered in green velvet vines and was peeling," Maye Musk told Insider in 2015.Maye Musk is seen outside the Jason Wu show during New York Fashion Week: Women's A/W 2018 on February 9, 2018 in New York City.Daniel Zuchnik/Getty ImagesThe apartment was bare when they initially moved in.  "And the first thing we did, after the first salary I got, [was] we got an inexpensive carpet put down because we didn't have chairs or anything," she said in 2015. "And the second thing we got was a computer for Elon. And so he would sit on the floor at his computer."Maye Musk recalls a time when the family couldn't afford to buy red meat for dinner. In the early 1990s, one of her clients who owned an abattoir (or slaughterhouse) would give the family a roast every month, even though he had no idea the family couldn't afford to buy one themselves."He gave us this huge roast once a month for the three of [my kids]," she said in 2015.  "And I'd cut it in four, freeze three [pieces], and we would have a roast once a week that we could share."The whole Musk family worked hard to support each other during that time, too.Tosca Musk worked at an upscale grocery store near their apartment while she went to school, and Maye Musk helped Elon Musk get a job at Microsoft before he went to college since the husband of one of her colleagues worked there. Later on, she also helped her sons find jobs at a bank through a friend.'I never helped my kids'Despite her achievements, Maye Musk insists that her influence isn't responsible for the success of her children, including Elon Musk."I never helped my kids," Maye Musk told Insider in 2015. "I was working too hard, my kids had to be responsible for themselves."Elon Musk in particular had tried his hardest in school, but only in the subjects he liked, Maye Musk said.Elon Musk, the Chairman of the Board of Tesla Motors, a high performance electric car company, is photographed at the company's headquarters in San Carlos, California on November 28, 2006.Joanne Ho-Young Lee/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images"He knew everything, but he was the youngest and the smallest in his class," she said in 2015.Elon Musk took an interest in books, computer programming, and investing early on. While the Tesla CEO most recently announced he has made a $44 billion decision to buy Twitter, even at 14 years old Maye Musk said Elon Musk had shown a passion for investing. Last week, Maye Musk recalled how she helped her teenage son invest 1000 South African Rands into a stock he felt passionate about.Although Maye Musk says she didn't have much influence on the success of her children, she played a big role in helping both of her sons get their first company up and running.Her 'best investment ever'In 1995, Elon Musk and Kimbal Musk started Zip2, a software company that provided business directories and maps to media companies and ecommerce clients.At the time, Maye Musk was running her dietetics practice in Toronto and was preparing to publish her first book, "Feel Fantastic." In addition to the multiple jobs she held at the time, Maye Musk worked tirelessly to help her sons start their first business. She started by encouraging Kimbal Musk to get more involved in the business after he had racked up her phone bill by constantly calling Elon Musk, who had moved to Silicon Valley.SpaceX founder Elon Musk embraces his brother, Kimbal Musk, after being recognized by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence at NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building following the successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 20, 2020.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images"[Kimbal Musk] would come over to my office at night to discuss business with Elon by phone," she said. "When my phone account reached $800 per month, I told Kimbal to stop working and join Elon."Since Maye Musk still lived in Toronto when Zip2 was getting started, she would fly out to Silicon Valley every six weeks. Maye Musk said she helped her sons with everything from the company's business plan to supervising interns and taking care of printing and office expenses. She also bought them food, clothes, and furniture at the time.Some time around 1996, Maye Musk donated all of her savings, which amounted to $10,000, to cover the office rental and expenses.She calls it her "best investment ever."Maye Musk was even up until 2 a.m. with Kimbal Musk at Kinko's helping him print out colored copies of Zip2's presentations to investors. "That night we were exhausted and exhilarated," she said in 2015. "We went to the best restaurant in Palo Alto and I told them this was the last time I would use my credit card for our dinners. And that has been true."By 1997 and 1998, Zip2 began to really take off, and both Elon Musk and Kimbal Musk became busier with board meetings. So Maye Musk was asked to meet with the company every week while running her practice and juggling modeling gigs. "I would rent a car every Friday night, do the Nordstrom fashion shows on Saturday morning at 8:30 am in San Francisco, San Jose, or Sacramento, and then drive to their office for our weekly business meeting," she said in 2015. Her children made — and kept — an ambitious promiseMaye Musk eventually moved to San Francisco for two-and-a-half years to be closer to her children and the business before moving to New York in 1999. Back when the brothers and Tosca Musk were all working at Zip2, before the company sold, they couldn't afford to buy a big gift for their mother's 50th birthday.Instead, they made her a promise."They gave me a little toy house and a little toy car the size of a matchbox and said, 'One day we'll buy you the real thing,'" she said.Zip2 eventually sold to Compaq Computer for around $300 million, and the Musk children kept their word.Since, Maye Musk has been an outspoken supporter of Elon Musk on social media. Most recently, she repeatedly derided the Biden Administration for largely ignoring Tesla's role in the movement toward electric cars.Elon Musk with his mother Maye during his Saturday Night Live monologue on Saturday, May 8, 2021Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesMaye Musk previously told Insider in 2015 that she wishes the world would understand the well-intentioned mind of her son."Elon's intention is just to do whatever is possible in physics and engineering to make this planet better," she said. "People think there's an ulterior motive, but there isn't. That's all he's striving to do. And that really upsets me, when they think 'Oh, he's looking for more money.' No, he's never done that."Now, most of Maye Musk's days are spent modeling, promoting her latest book, and maintaining her nutrition practice. Maye Musk has been signed by the Creative Artists Agency (CAA).But she and her children still find time to meet regularly. Outside of accompanying Elon Musk to the Met Gala earlier this month, the supermodel also made a cameo appearance in the billionaire's Saturday Night Live performance in 2021. Maye Musk has fully taken on the role of grandmother to Elon Musk's many children. In 2020, she posted several photos and videos of the billionaire's seventh child, X Æ A-12."We do a lot of get-togethers," she told Insider in 2015. "And I'm really fortunate to have three wonderful kids. We're in a good position now, that we can actually eat roast beef every day if we wanted to. But we wouldn't dare!"Earlier reporting by Lisa Eadicicco.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Tucker Carlson's journey from prep school provocateur to Fox News flamethrower, according to his friends and former classmates. Tucker Carlson during a CNN National Town Meeting on coverage of the White House sex scandal, on January 28, 1998.Richard Ellis/Getty Images Tucker Carlson is remembered as a provocateur and gleeful contrarian by those who knew him in his early days. His bohemian artist mother abandoned her young family and cut Tucker and his brother out of her will. At a Rhode Island prep school and at Trinity College, classmates remember him as a skilled debater who could both amuse and infuriate his audiences. On Oct. 29, 1984, New York police killed an elderly Black woman named Eleanor Bumpurs in her own home. Bumpers, who lived in a public housing complex in the Bronx, had fallen four months behind on her rent. When officials from the city housing authority tried to evict her, she refused, and they called the police. Five officers responded by storming into her apartment. Bumpurs, who had a history of mental illness, grabbed a butcher knife as two officers pushed her against a wall with their plastic shields and a metal pole. A third officer fired two shots from his 12-gauge shotgun, striking Bumpurs in her hand and chest.Eleanor Bumpurs' death dominated the city's news for two months and led the NYPD to revise its guidelines for responding to emotionally disturbed individuals.At St. George's prep school, some 175 miles away in Rhode Island, the incident deeply haunted Richard Wayner. He was one of the school's few Black students and had grown up in a residential tower not far from where Bumpurs had lived. He earned straight As and was so admired that in 1984 his peers elected him senior prefect, the prep equivalent of student body president, making him the first Black class leader in the school's 125-year history. Harvard soon beckoned.Wayner was frustrated with how the St. George's community seemed to ignore the conversations about racial justice that were happening outside the cloistered confines of Aquidneck Island. It bothered Wayne that almost no one at St. George's seemed to know anything about Bumpurs' killing. "You had your crew, you put your head down, and you tried to get through three or four years of prep school with your psyche intact," Wayner said of those days.As senior prefect, one of the duties was to deliver an address each week at the mandatory Sunday chapel service. One Sunday, perched from the chapel podium, Wayner described the shooting as a sea of white faces stared back at him. He concluded with the words: "Does anyone think that woman deserved to die?"Near the front of the chapel, a single hand went up for a few brief seconds. It was Tucker Carlson.Eleanor Bumpurs was shot and killed by the New York Police Department on October 29, 1984APThen a sophomore, Tucker had a reputation as a gleeful contrarian – an indefatigable debater and verbal jouster who, according to some, could also be a bit of a jerk. "Tucker was just sort of fearless," said Ian Toll, a St. George's alumnus who would go on to be a military historian. "Whether it was a legitimate shooting may have been a point of debate but the fact was that Tucker was an underclassmen and the culture was to defer to the seniors." Wayner himself never saw Tucker's hand go up, and the two kept in touch over the years. (Note on style: Tucker Carlson and the members of his family are referred to here by their first names to avoid confusion.)  Four decades later, glimmers of that prep school provocateur appear on Tucker's Prime Time show on Fox, which garners an average of between 3 to 4 million viewers a night. His furrowed visage and spoiling-for-a-fight demeanor are all too familiar to those who have known him for decades. In the words of Roger Stone, a Republican political operative, frequent guest, and longtime friend of Tucker's: "Tucker Carlson is the single most influential conservative journalist in America… It is his courage and his willingness to talk about issues that no one else is willing to cover that has led to this development."Tucker's name has even been floated as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2024. "I mean, I guess if, like, I was the last person on earth, I could do it. But, I mean, it seems pretty unlikely that I would be that guy." he said on the "Ruthless" podcast in June, dismissing this possibility.Tucker's four decades in Washington, and his transition from conservative magazine writer to right-wing television pundit, have been well documented. But less well known are his early years and how they shaped him: his bohemian artist mother, who abandoned her young family and cut Tucker and his brother out of her will; the Rhode Island prep school where he met his future spouse; and his formation into a contrarian debater who could both amuse and infuriate his audience with his attention-getting tactics.Tucker declined to participate in an interview with Insider, saying in a statement. "Your level of interest in the boring details of my life is creepy as hell, and also pathetic," he wrote. "You owe it to yourself and the country to do something useful with your talents. Please reassess."California roots Tucker Carlson's West Coast roots burrow as deep as a giant redwood. He was born in San Francisco in May 1969 as the excesses of the Sixties peaked and the conservative backlash to the counterculture and the Civil Rights movement started to take shape. Tucker's mother, Lisa McNear Lombardi, born in San Francisco in 1945, came from one of the state's storied frontier families. Lisa's mother, Mary Nickel James, was a cattle baron heiress. Her great-great-grandfather had owned 3 million acres of ranchland, making him among the largest landowners west of the Mississippi. Her father Oliver Lombardi was an insurance broker and descendant of Italian-speaking Swiss immigrants. Lisa enrolled at UC Berkeley, where she majored in architecture. She met Richard Carlson, a San Francisco TV journalist from a considerably less prosperous background, while still in college. Lisa and Richard eloped in Reno, Nevada in 1967. The couple didn't notify Lisa's mother, who was traveling in Europe with her new husband at the time. "Family members have been unable to locate them to reveal the nuptials," a gossip item published in the San Francisco Examiner dished.Tucker arrived two years later. A second son, Buckley, was born two years after that. As Richard's career began to flourish, the family moved first to Los Angeles and then, in 1975, to La Jolla, a moneyed, beach-front enclave about 12 miles north of San Diego. When Lisa and Richard divorced a year later, in 1976, Richard got full custody of their sons, then 6 and 4. According to three of Tucker's childhood classmates, Lisa disappeared from her sons' lives. They don't recall Tucker talking about her, or seeing her at school events. Marc Sterne, Tucker's boarding school roommate who went on to be executive producer of the Tony Kornheiser Show, says the two didn't talk much about Tucker's relationship with his mother and he got the impression that Tucker and Richard were exceptionally close. When Sterne's own parents split up that year, he said Tucker was supportive and understanding. Lisa spent the next two decades as an artist – moving first to Los Angeles, where she befriended the painter David Hockney, and later split her time between France and South Carolina with her husband, British painter Michael Vaughan. In 1979, Richard Carlson married Patricia Swanson, heiress to the Swanson frozen foods empire that perfected the frozen Salisbury steak for hassle-free dinners. She soon legally adopted Tucker and Buckley.  When Lisa died in 2011, her estate was initially divided equally between Tucker, his brother Buckley, and Vaughan. But in 2013, Vaughan's daughter from another marriage found a one-page handwritten document in Lisa's art studio in France that left her assets to her surviving husband with an addendum that stated, "I leave my sons Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson and Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson one dollar each." A protracted battle over Lombardi's estate involving Vaughan and the Carlson brothers wound up in probate court. The Carlsons asserted the will was forged but a forensic witness determined that Lisa had written the note. The case eventually went to the California Appellate Court, which allowed the Carlson brothers to keep their shares in 2019."Lisa was basically sort of a hippie and a free spirit," said one attorney who  represented the Vaughan family and recalled having conversations about the case. "She was very liberal and she did not agree with Tucker's politics. But she stuck the will in the book, everyone forgot about it, and then she passed away."In a 2017 interview with The New Yorker, Tucker described the dissolution of his family as a "totally bizarre situation — which I never talk about, because it was actually not really part of my life at all." Several pieces of art produced by Tucker's mother, Lisa Lombardi, and her then-partner Mo Mcdermott in the home of a California collector.Ted Soqui for InsiderLisa When Lisa left her husband and two young sons, she was escaping suburban family life in favor of the more bohemian existence as an artist. One of Tucker and Buckley's former teachers said their mother's absence "left some sour grapes." "I felt they sided with the father," Rusty Rushton, a former St. George's English teacher said. After the divorce, Lisa returned to Los Angeles and tried to break into the city's thriving contemporary art scene. She befriended Mo McDermott, an LA-based British sculptor, model, and longtime assistant to David Hockney, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. A few years before he met Lisa, the scene was captured in Jack Hazan's 1974 groundbreaking documentary "A Bigger Splash," which followed Hockney and his coterie of gay male friends idly lounging around the pool in his Hollywood Hills home."When love goes wrong, there's more than two people who suffer," said McDermott, playing a slightly exaggerated version of himself, in a voiceover in the documentary.Lisa and McDermott became a couple and Lisa won admission into Hockney's entourage. Hockney lived a far more reclusive lifestyle than his pop art compatriot Andy Warhol but some four dozen or so artists, photographers, and writers regularly passed through his properties."She was more like a hippie, arty kind of person. I couldn't ever imagine her being a mother," said Joan Quinn, the then-West Coast editor of Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, who knew Lisa during those years and still owns several of her works. "She was very nervous all the time… She was ill-content."The pair were often seen at Hockney's Hollywood Hills home and at Friday night gallery openings on La Cienega Boulevard. They collaborated on playful, large-scale wood sculptures of animals, vegetables, and trees. A handful of their pieces could be seen around Hockney's hillside ranch."Hockney had me over to meet them. He wanted a gallery to handle their work," said Molly Barnes, who owns a gallery in West Hollywood and gave the pair shows in 1983 and 1984. "They were brilliant and David loved Mo. He thought they were the best artists around.""She was quiet and intellectual and somewhat withdrawn," Barnes said. "She had come from a lot of money and that reflected on her personality. She wasn't a snob in any way but she had the manners of a private school girl and someone who was fighting the establishment."A sculpture by Tucker's mother, Lisa Lombardi, and her then-partner Mo Mcdermott in the home of a California collector.Ted Soqui for InsiderNone of them recall Lisa discussing her two sons. McDermott died in 1988. After his death, Hockney discovered that McDermott had been stealing drawings from him and selling them. Hockney said the betrayal helped bring on a heart attack. "I believe I had a broken heart," Hockney told The Guardian in 1995. (Hockney did not answer multiple inquiries about Lisa or McDermott.)In 1987, Lisa met Vaughan, one of Hockney's peers in the British art scene known as the "Bradford Mafia." They married in February 1989 and for years afterward they lived in homes in the Pyrenees of southwest France and South Carolina's Sea Islands.Lisa continued to make art, primarily oversized, wooden sculptures of everyday household items like peeled lemons and dice, but she exhibited her work infrequently. She died of cancer in 2011, at which point Carlson was a decade into his media career and a regular contributor on Fox News. Richard In contrast to Lisa's privileged upbringing, Richard's childhood was full of loss. Richard's mother was a 15-year-old high school girl who had starved herself during her pregnancy, and he was born with a condition called rickets. Six weeks later, his mother left him at an orphanage in Boston called The Home for Little Wanderers. Richard's father, who was 18, tried to convince her to kidnap the infant and marry him, but she refused. He shot and killed himself two blocks from her home.A Massachusetts couple fostered Richard for two years until he was adopted by a wool broker and his wife, which he described in a 2009 reflection for the Washington Post. His adoptive parents died when he was still a teenager and Richard was sent to the Naval Academy Preparatory School. He later enlisted in the Marines and enrolled in an ROTC program at the University of Mississippi to pay for college.In 1962, Richard developed an itch for journalism while working as a cop in Ocean City, Maryland at the age of 21, and the future NBC political correspondent Catherine Mackin, helped him get a copy boy job at the Los Angeles Times. Richard moved to San Francisco three years later and his career blossomed. He started producing television news features with his friend, Lance Brisson, the son of actress Rosalind Russell. They filmed migrant farm workers in the Imperial Valley living in cardboard abodes in 110 degree weather, traipsed the Sierra Nevada mountains to visit a hermit, and covered the Zodiac Killer and Bay Area riots (during one demonstration in 1966, they sent television feeds from their car where they trapped for four hours  and a crowd roughed up Brisson, which required four stitches under his left eye). Another time, they rented a helicopter in search of a Soviet trawler but they had to jump into the Pacific Ocean when the chopper ran low on fuel near the shore and crashed.In 1969, Richard and Brisson co-wrote an article for Look Magazine that claimed San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto had mafia ties. Alioto sued the magazine's owner for libel and won a $350,000 judgment when a judge determined the article's allegations were made with "actual malice" and "reckless disregard for whether they were true or not." (Richard was not a defendant in the case and has stood by his story. Brisson declined an interview.)Richard moved back to Los Angeles to join KABC's investigative team two years later. One series of stories that delved into a three-wheeled sports car called the Dale and the fraudulent marketing practices of its founder, Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael, won a Peabody award in 1975. The series also outed Carmichael as a transgender woman. (Richard's role in Carmichael's downfall was explored in the HBO documentary "The Lady and the Dale.") Soon after arriving as an anchor for KFMB-TV, San Diego's CBS affiliate, Richard ran a story revealing that tennis pro Renee Richards, who had just won a tournament at the La Jolla Tennis Club, was a transgender woman."I said, 'You can't do this. I am a private person,'" Richards, who years later would advise Caitlyn Jenner about her transition, urged the television journalist to drop his story, according to a 2015 interview. "His reply? 'Dr. Richards, you were a private person until you won that tournament yesterday.'" By the time he left the anchor chair in 1977 to take a public relations job with San Diego Savings and Loan, Richard had soured on journalism. "I have seen a lot of arrogance and hypocrisy in the press and I don't like it," he told San Diego Magazine in 1977. "Television news is insipid, sophomoric, and superficial… There are so many things I think are important and interesting but the media can be counted on to do handstands on that kind of scandal and sexual sensation."Years later, Richard said that he never tried to encourage his eldest son in politics or journalism, but that Tucker had a clear interest in both from an early age. "I never thought he was going to be a reporter or a writer. I never encouraged him to do that," Richard told CSPAN of his eldest son in 2006. "I actually attempted not to encourage him politically, either. I decided those are the things that should be left up to them."A LaJolla, California post card.Found Image Holdings/Corbis via Getty ImagesA La Jolla childhoodAfter the divorce, Richard and his boys stayed in La Jolla in a house overlooking the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. Friends of Tucker's would later say that the trauma of their mother's absence brought the three of them closer together.  "They both really admired their dad. He was a great source of wisdom. He's one of the great raconteurs you'll ever meet. They loved that glow that came from him," said Sterne, Tucker's boarding school roommate. "They both looked up to him, it was clear from my eyes."In an essay included in his book "The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism," Tucker described Richard as a kind parent who imbued family outings with a deeper message.One of Tucker's earliest memories, he writes, was from just after the divorce, when Tucker was seven and Buckley was five: the brothers gripping the edge of a luggage rack on the roof of his family's 1976 Ford Country Squire station wagon, while their father gunned the engine down a dirt road."I've sometimes wondered what car surfing was meant to teach us," Tucker wrote. "Was he trying to instill in us a proper sense of fatalism, the acknowledgement that there is only so much in life you can control? Or was it a lesson about the importance of risk?... Unless you're willing to ride the roof of a speeding station wagon, in other words, you're probably not going to leave your mark on the world."More often, the boys were left unsupervised and found their own trouble. Tucker once took a supermarket shopping cart and raced it down a hill in front of their house with Buckley in its basket. The cart tipped over, leaving Buckley with a bloody nose. He also recalled building makeshift hand grenades with hydrochloric acid and aluminum foil – using a recipe from their father's copy of "The Anarchist Cookbook"  and tossing them onto a nearby golf course."No one I know had a father like mine," Tucker wrote. "My father was funnier and more outrageous, more creative  and less willing to conform, than anyone I knew or have known since. My brother and I had the best time growing up."Richard sent Tucker to La Jolla Country Day, an upscale, largely white private school with a reputation as one of the best in Southern California, for elementary and middle school. In his book, "Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution," Tucker described his first grade teacher Marianna Raymond as "a living parody of earth-mother liberalism" who "wore long Indian-print skirts," and sobbed at her desk over the world's unfairness. "As a conservative, I had contempt for the whiny mawkishness of liberals. Stop blubbering and teach us to read. That was my position," he wrote. "Mrs. Raymond never did teach us; my father had to hire a tutor to get me through phonics.""I beg to differ," Raymond countered in an interview, saying that she was also Tucker's tutor during the summer after first grade and was even hired again. "I'm a great teacher. I'm sure he liked me." For her part, she remembered Tucker as a fair-haired tot who was "very sweet" and "very polite." (When The Washington Post reached out her her, she said Carlson's characterization had been "shocking.")  Friends from La Jolla remember that Tucker loved swimming the mile-and-a-half distance between La Jolla Shores Park and La Jolla Cove, jumping off cliffs that jut out into the Pacific Ocean, riffing on the drums, and playing Atari and BB gun games at the mall with his friends. "He was a happy kid. We were young, so we used to go to the beach. We did normal kid stuff," said Richard Borkum, a friend who is now a San Diego-based attorney. When they weren't at the beach or the mall, Borkum and another friend, Javier Susteata, would hang out at the Carlson home listening to The Who, AC/DC, and other classic rock bands. Borkum said the adults at the Carlson household largely left them alone. "I'm Jewish and Javier was Mexican and I'm not sure they were too happy we were going to their house," Borkum said.Another friend, Warren Barrett, remembers jamming with Tucker and going snow camping at Big Bear and snorkeling off Catalina Island with him in middle school."Tucker and I literally ate lunch together every day for two years," Barrett said. "He was completely the opposite of now. He was a cool southern California surfer kid. He was the nicest guy, played drums, and had a bunch of friends. And then something must have happened in his life that turned him into this evil diabolical shithead he is today."LaJolla is a upscale beach community outside of San Diego. Carlson and his family moved their in 1975.Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesSan Diego's next mayorRichard, meanwhile, was exploring a second career in public service. By 1980, he had risen to vice president of a bank headed by Gordon Luce, a California Republican power broker and former Reagan cabinet official. The following year, Richard's public profile got a boost when he tangled with another veteran television journalist, CBS's Mike Wallace. The 60 Minutes star had interviewed Richard for a story about low-income Californians who faced foreclosures from the bank after borrowing money to buy air conditioners without realizing they put their homes up for collateral. Richard had his own film crew tape the interview, and caught Wallace saying that people who had been defrauded were "probably too busy eating their watermelon and tacos." The remark made national headlines and Wallace was forced to apologize.Pete Wilson, the U.S. Senator and former San Diego mayor, encouraged Richard to run for office. In 1984, Richard entered the race to challenge San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock's re-election. "He was a very well-regarded guy," Hedgecock told Insider. "He had an almost Walter Cronkite-like appearance, but because he was in local news he was all about not offending anybody. He didn't have particularly strong views. He was nice looking, articulate, and made good appearances, but what he had to say was not particularly memorable other than he wanted me out of office."Sometimes Tucker tagged along for campaign events. "He would always show up in a sport coat, slacks and a bowtie and I thought that's really nice clothing for someone who is a kid," Hedgecock remembers. He was a very polite young man who didn't say much."Five days before voters went to the polls, Hedgecock went on trial for 15 counts of conspiracy and perjury, an issue that Richard highlighted in his television campaign ads. Richard still lost to Hedgecock 58 to 42 percent despite pouring nearly $800,000 into the race and outspending Hedgecock two to one. (Hedgecock was found guilty of violating campaign finance laws and resigned from office in 1985 but his convictions were overturned on appeal five years later.)People are seen near a beach in La Jolla, California, on April 15, 2020.Gregory Bull/AP PhotoPrep school In the fall of 1983, a teenaged Tucker traded one idyllic beachfront community for another.At 14, Tucker moved across the country to Middletown, Rhode Island, to attend St. George's School. (Buckley would follow him two years later.) The 125-year-old boarding school sits atop a hill overlooking the majestic Atlantic Ocean, and is on the other side of Aquidneck Island where Richard Carlson went to naval school. The private school was known as a repository for children of wealthy East Coast families who were not as academically inclined as those who attended Exeter or Andover. Its campus had dorms named after titans of industry, verdant athletic fields, and a white-sand beach.Senators Claiborne Pell and Prescott Bush graduated, as did Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, and poet Ogden Nash. Tucker's class included "Modern Family" actor Julie Bowen; Dede Gardner, the two-time Oscar-winning producer of "12 Years a Slave" and "Moonlight"; and former DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson. Billy Bush – "Extra" host, and cousin to George W. Bush – was three years behind him.Tuition at St. George's cost $13,000 per year in the 1980s (it's now up to $67,000 for boarding school students) and student schedules were tightly regimented with breakfast, classes, athletics, dinner, and study hall encompassing each day. Students were required to take religion classes, and attend chapel twice a week. Faculty and staff would canvass the dorms on Thursdays and Sundays to ensure no one skipped the Episcopal service. Tucker impressed his new chums as an hyper-articulate merrymaker who frequently challenged upperclassmen who enforced dorm rules and the school's liberal faculty members."He was kind of a California surfer kid. He was funny, very intelligent, and genuinely well-liked," said Bryce Traister, who was one year ahead of Tucker and is now a professor at the University of British Columbia. "There were people who didn't like Tucker because they thought he was a bullshitter but he was very charming. He was a rascal and a fast-talker, as full of shit as he is today."Back then Tucker was an iconoclast more in the mold of Ferris Bueller than preppy neocon Alex P. Keaton, even if his wardrobe resembled the "Family Ties" star. Students were required to wear jackets, ties, and khakis, although most came to class disheveled. Tucker wore well-tailored coats and chinos, pairing his outfit with a ribbon-banded watch and colorful bowtie which would later become his signature. "He was always a very sharp dresser. He had a great rack of ties. He always knew how to tie a bowtie but he didn't exclusively wear a bowtie," said Sterne, Tucker's freshman year roommate. "He always had great clothes. It was a lot of Brooks Brothers." Their crew crew held court in each others' dorm rooms at Auchincloss, the freshman hall, kicking around a Hacky Sack and playing soccer, talking about Adolph Huxley, George Orwell, and Hemingway, and dancing to Tom Petty, the Grateful Dead, and U2 on the campus lawn. Televisions weren't allowed so students listened to their Sony Walkman swapping cassette recordings of live concerts. Tucker introduced several bands to his friends."He loved classic rock and he was and still is a big fan of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead," said Sterne, who saw a Dead show with Tucker at RFK Stadium in 1986.Sometimes the clique got slices at Aquidneck Pizza and played arcade games in town, hung out in history instructor William Schenck's office, and smoked pot and Marlborough Red cigarettes on a porch in the main building's common room that faced the ocean, according to multiple sources. When the school administrators banned smoking indoors the following year so they congregated behind the dumpster behind the dining hall. Vodka (often the brand Popov) mixed with Kool-Aid was the drink of choice and students stockpiled bottles under their beds.Tucker was an enthusiastic drinker, half a dozen classmates recall. In his book, "The Long Slide," Tucker credits Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" for enticing him to try drugs in 10th grade, The experience gave him "double vision and a headache." By the time he got to college, Tucker writes, "I switched to beer."By the late 1990s Tucker stopped smoking. He eventually cut alcohol too in 2002 after drinking so much while covering George W. Bush in New Hampshire during the 2000 primary that he accidentally got on the wrong plane, according to a friend.Most of Tucker's fellow students remember him best as a skilled speaker."He was always eager to take the less palatable side of the argument and argue that side," said Mahlon Stewart, who attended prep school and college with Tucker and is now a geriatric specialist at Columbia University. "Back then it was comedic. I thought it was an act.""His confidence was just amazing. He could just put out some positions and be willing to argue anything no matter how outlandish," Keller Kimbrough, a former classmate who's now a professor at the University of Colorado. "We were talking about politics and religion one time Tucker pulled this card out of his wallet and said, 'Well actually I'm an ordained minister, I'm an authority on the subject.' This was a stunt. He could literally play the religion card." "When he got the job at Fox I just thought 'Wow that's perfect for him, that's exactly what he can do.'"Their dorm room discourses were never serious. Tucker would pick a side in a debate between whether the color red or blue were better, and the crowd would erupt whenever he made a good point, friends said.  "Even at age 15 he was verbally dexterous and a great debater," Ian Toll said. "His conservative politics was fully formed even back then. He believed in strong defense and minimal government."His teachers saw a pupil who was primed for law school."Language and speaking came naturally to him. He took pleasure in it," said Rusty Rushton, Tucker's former English teacher. Tucker's politics, though, "seemed fluid to me," Rushton said. "I don't think of him as a deeply ensconced ideologue."He ditched soccer after sophomore year to act in a school theater production of Ayn Rand's courtroom thriller "Night of January 16th" (Julie Bowen starred as the prosecuting attorney. Tucker played a juror). But Tucker found his voice in competitive debate when he eventually joined the school's debate club. The team traveled to other private school campuses to compete against schools like Andover, Exeter, and Roxbury Latin in tournaments."He won some debate and basically did a victory lap afterward and got in the face of all the faculty there," one alum from a rival school who debated against Tucker said. "After defeating the student team, he started challenging the faculty, and said, 'Do any of you want to take me on? Are any of you capable of debating me?'"SusieIn the fall of Tucker's sophomore year, a new headmaster arrived at St. George's, Rev. George Andrews II. Andrews' daughter, Susie – who Tucker would eventually marry – was in Tucker's class. According to school tradition, a rotating group of underclassmen was charged with serving their classmates dinner and, one night in late September, Tucker and Susie had the shift at the same time. "They were sitting at a table at the far end of Queen Hall just leaning in, talking to each other," Sterne recalled. "You could see the sparks flying, which was cool."Susie floated between the school's friend groups easily. When she was seen mingling with Tucker, some questioned what she saw in him."People were saying, 'Come on Susie, why are you dating Tucker?' He's such a loser slacker and she was so sweet," Traister said. The pair started dating at the age of 15 and quickly became inseparable. Tucker gained notoriety on campus for repeatedly sneaking into Susie's room on the second floor of Memorial Schoolhouse, the school's stately administrative office that housed the headmaster's quarters. He had less time for his dumpster buddies now that the couple hung out on the campus lawn, attended chapel and an interdenominational campus ministry organization called FOCUS. His senior yearbook included a photo of Tucker squinting in concern to a classmate, with the caption "What do you mean you told Susie?While Susie was universally liked within the St. George's community, her father was polarizing.Andrews led the school during a turbulent period – it was later revealed – when its choirmaster Franklin Coleman was accused of abusing or having inappropriate conduct with at least 10 male students, according to an independent investigation by the law firm Foley Hoag in 2016. (Two attorneys representing several victims said 40 alumni contacted them with credible accounts of molestation and rape accusations at the hands of St. George's employees between 1974 and 2004 after a 2015 school-issued report detailed 26 accounts of abuse in the 1970s and 1980s. (Coleman was never criminally charged and he has not responded to Insider's attempts to reach him.) Over his eight-year tenure as school music director, from 1980 to 1988, Coleman invited groups of boys to his apartment for private parties. Sometimes he shared alcohol and pot with some of them, gave them back and neck rubs, showed pornographic videos, traveled with them on choral trips and stayed in their hotel rooms, and appeared nude around some of them, the report found. Several of Tucker's classmates and former faculty said they had no reason to believe he would have been aware of the accusations. "There were rumors circulating wildly that Coleman was bad news. The idea was he would cultivate relationships with young men," Ian Toll, a St. George's alum, said. "Anyone who was there at that time would have likely been aware of those rumors."Andrews told Foley Hoag investigators he was not aware of any complaints about Coleman until May 1988 (by then, Tucker had finished his freshman year in college) when school psychiatrist Peter Kosseff wrote a report detailing a firsthand account of misconduct. But Andrews acknowledged to investigators the school could have been aware of "prior questionable conduct" before then, the report said. Andrews fired Coleman in May 1988 after the school confronted Coleman with allegations of misconduct and he did not deny them. According to the investigation, Andrews told students Coleman resigned due to "emotional stress" and that he had the "highest regard and respect for him." On the advice of a school attorney, Andrews did not report the music teacher to child protective services. He also knew that his faculty dean wrote Coleman a letter of recommendation for a job at another school, according to investigators. Andrews left the school a few weeks after Coleman departed. By September 1989, he was named headmaster at St. Andrew's School in Boca Raton, Florida which he led for 18 years. (Andrews declined to speak about Tucker or his tenure at either school.) St. George's, meanwhile, reached an undisclosed settlement with up to 30 abuse survivors in 2016. Coleman found work as a choir director at Tampa Preparatory School in Tampa Bay, Florida before he retired in 2008. Tucker Carlson attended St. George’s School, a boarding school starting at age 14.Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty ImagesTrinity In the fall of 1987, Tucker enrolled at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where Rev. Andrews had also attended.Nearly two-thirds of Trinity's student body back then originated from private schools and many came from wealthy backgrounds. Tuition in 1987 cost $11,700 plus an additional $3,720 for room and board—around $27,839 in today's dollars."When the Gulf War broke out" in 1990, one Trinity alum who knew Tucker recalled, "there was a big plywood sign in front of the student center that read, 'Blood for Oil,' and someone else threw a bucket of paint on it."The posh campus was situated in the middle of Hartford, Connecticut, the state's capital and one of its poorest cities. Discussions about race and inequality were sometimes at the forefront of campus politics, but many students avoided engaging in them entirely."There were issues about whether black students should only date other black students, that kind of thing," said Kathleen Werthman, a classmate of Tucker's who now works at a Florida nonprofit for people with disabilities. "My sophomore year, for new students, they had a speaker talking about racism, and one of the students said, 'I never met a black student, how are you supposed to talk to them?' And the idea that only white people can be racist was challenged too."Susie was at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee. His brother remained in Rhode Island and other prep school friends had fanned out across the East Coast. Tucker moved into a four-bedroom dormitory overlooking the main quad. One suitemate, Neil Patel, was an economics major from Massachusetts who played intramural softball. (They would co-found the Daily Caller together two decades years later.) Other roommates played on the varsity soccer team and they formed a tight-knit group."I remember being struck by him. He was the same way he is now," said Rev. Billy Cerveny, a college friend of Tucker's who's now a pastor at Redbird Nashville. "He was a force of nature. He had a sense of presence and gravitas. You might get into an argument with him, but you end up loving the guy."Tucker often went out of his way to amuse his friends. Once during the spring semester, several activists set up a podium and microphone beneath his dorm window to protest the CIA's on-campus recruitment visits. The demonstration was open-mic so Tucker went up to the stage and told the crowd of about 15 people, "I think you're all a bunch of greasy chicken fuckers.""I think people laughed. He did," Cerveny said. "There was always a small collection of people any time there was an issue who tried to stir the pot in that way. Some people were dismissive and other people loved it, thinking 'Oh we're getting a fight here.'"As a sophomore, Tucker and his friends moved into a dingy three-story house on Crescent Street on the edge of the campus. He ditched his tailored jackets, khakis, and bowties for oversized Levi jeans, t-shirts, and untucked oxford shirts. Tucker commandeered a low-ceilinged room above the front porch with so many windows he had to hang up tapestries to keep out the sun. The tiny alcove had barely enough space for an eight-foot futon and several bookshelves Tucker built himself stacked with books he collected. Friends remember Tucker receiving an 8-by-10 manilla envelope that his father sent through the mail once or twice a month containing dozens of articles from newspapers and magazines.One of Tucker's friends, Cerveny, remembered stopping by Richard's home in Washington, D.C. and finding evidence of his hobbies, including the world's second largest collection of walking sticks."His house was filled with rare canes he collected from all over the world," Cerveny said. "The hallways had really amazing rows of canes hung on hooks that were specially made to mount these things on the house. One used to be a functional shotgun, another one was made out of a giraffe. His dad would pull out newspaper clippings of WWII Navy aircraft carriers. It changed the way I thought about a lot of things. I had never seen anything like that. Who collects canes?"During sophomore year, Tucker's friends decided to rush Delta Phi, a well-to-do fraternity also known as St. Elmo's. The Greek scene had a large presence on campus — about 20 percent of men joined them even though Trinity was a liberal arts school — and St. Elmo's had a reputation as freewheeling scamps. Once a year, a St. Elmo's brother would ride his motorcycle naked through the campus cafeteria. (Faculty voted in 1992 to abolish Greek life saying they were sexist and racist, and school administrators instead forced fraternities to become co-ed.)But Tucker refused to come aboard. Some classmates thought it was because he didn't want to be hazed."Tucker was not a joiner like that," Mahlon Stewart said. "He wouldn't have set himself up for whatever humiliation would have been involved. He would not have put up with that." But Cerveny, who pledged the fraternity, said it was a matter of faith."I remember explicitly him saying 'Look, I want to focus on what my faith is about and I thought this would be a big distraction,'" Cerveny said. "But he was very much in the mix with us. When we moved to a fraternity house [on Broad Street], we asked him to live with us."Tucker occasionally dropped in on his friends' fraternity events and occasionally brought Susie when she visited or Buckley when he drifted into town. Other times they hung out at Baker's Cafe on New Britain Avenue. Mostly Tucker stayed in his room."He was basically a hermit. It wasn't like he was going to a ton of parties" one Trinity St. Elmo's brother said. "He was not a part of the organizational effort of throwing big parties, or encouraging me to join the fraternity." Susie, who didn't drink or smoke, was a moderating influence. "Tucker and Susie had their moral compass pointing north even back then," Sterne said. "Tucker's faith was not something he was focused on in his early years but when he met Susie and he became close to her family, that started to blossom and grow in him. Now it's a huge part of his life."By the time his crew moved to another house on Broad Street, they each acquired vintage motorcycles and tinkered with them in their garage. Tucker owned a 1968 flathead Harley Davidson that barely ran and relied on a red Jeep 4X4 to transport friends around town (the Volkswagen van he had freshman year blew up). He smoked Camel unfiltered cigarettes, sipped bourbon, and occasionally brewed beer in the basement, including a batch he named "Coal Porter," according to GQ.When he wasn't reading outside of his courses or tinkering with his carburetor, Tucker took classes in the humanities and ultimately majored in history. Tucker dabbled in other fields including Russian history, Jewish history, Women's Studies, and Religious Studies, sitting in the back of lecture halls with his friends. Ron Kiener, who taught an introductory level course in Judaism, recalled Tucker performing "poorly" but earning a credit. "He did not get a stellar grade from me," Kiener said. "Based on what he says now he surely didn't get very much out of my courses."But Leslie Desmangles, who led courses in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Myth, Rite, and Sacrament, said Tucker was engaged and likely did just enough to pass his courses even if he wasn't very studious or vocal in class discussions."He was interested in understanding the nature of religious belief and studying different cultures and religions but I'm not sure if he had an interest in diversity," Desmangles said. "He was genuinely interested in ritual since a lot of the Episcopal church is highly ritualistic."Tucker's fascination with religion extended to his extracurricular activities too. He and several friends joined Christian Fellowship, a Bible study group that met weekly and helped the school chaplain lead Sunday services. Some members even volunteered with ConnPIRG, a student advocacy group on hunger and environmental issues, and traveled to Washington D.C. to protest the Gulf War. But Tucker steered clear of campus activism. He spent his free time reading and seeing Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, and Sting perform when they came through Connecticut. Sometimes he skipped school to follow his favorite band, the Grateful Dead, on tour.He took an interest in Central American politics too. At the end of freshman year, Tucker and Patel traveled to Nicaragua. "We did not have a place to stay or any set plans," Tucker told the Trinity Tripod, his college paper, in March 1990. "It was very spontaneous. We are both extremely political and we felt that getting to know the country and some of its citizens would give us a better perspective on the situation." In February 1990, Tucker returned with three friends to Managua for 10 days to observe Nicaragua's elections. The National Opposition Union's Violetta Chamoro, which was backed by the U.S. government, defeated the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front Daniel Ortega who had been in power since 1979. A month later Tucker and his classmate Jennifer Barr, who was separately in Nicaragua to observe elections and distribute medical supplies to the Sandinistas, shared their perspectives about their visits to a small crowd at the Faculty Club for the school's Latin America Week. Tucker thought press coverage of the election was too left-leaning and criticized the media for skewing a conservative victory, according to Barr."I don't think it was necessarily true," Barr said. "He was dismissive [about my views]. I did get a sense that he believed in what he was saying, and it was very different from my experience and my understanding of the race."Tucker's stance on U.S. politics at the time was less didactic. As the 1992 presidential election loomed his senior year, Tucker touted the independent candidacy of Ross Perot, a Texas business magnate, to his friends although it did not appear that Tucker was an ardent supporter."Tucker would go on and on about how Ross Perot was the answer to this or that, as a joke, and every one would participate" one St. Elmo's brother said. "He liked the way Ross Perot was basically throwing a wrench into the system. He wasn't a serious Ross Perot proponent. He was cheering on somebody who was screwing up the system."In Tucker's college yearbook, below his tousle-haired, bowtie wearing thumbnail photo, was a list of his extra-curricular activities: "History; Christian Fellowship 1 2 3 4, Jesse Helms Foundation, Dan White Society." Neither of the latter two – named, respectively, after the ultra-conservative North Carolina Senator, and a San Francisco supervisor who assassinated Harvey Milk in 1978 – ever existed. Tucker admired Helms for being a "bull in the china shop" of Congress, one classmate said. Some friends believed Tucker slipped in the off-color references as a lark."It's like a joke you and a friend would put in a series of anagrams that only you and two friends would remember and no one else would," the St. Elmo's friend said. "It's so niche that only someone like Tucker is thinking things like that or would even know the name of the person who killed Harvey Milk. He paid attention to things like that."Others claimed Tucker was the victim of a prank."It would not at all surprise me if one of the other guys in the [fraternity] house filled it in for him, and not just an inside joke, but pegging him with something that he got grief for," another close friend said. Protesters rally against Fox News outside the Fox News headquarters at the News Corporation building, March 13, 2019 in New York City.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesAn outsider among insidersBy the spring of 1991, Tucker's academic performance had caught up with him. He had accumulated a 1.9 grade point average and may have finished with a 2.1 GPA, according to one faculty member who viewed a copy of his transcript. Tucker would eventually graduate from Trinity a year late. Falling behind was not uncommon. About 80 percent of Trinity students completed their degrees in four years, according to Trinity College records. (A Trinity spokeswoman would not comment on Tucker's transcript due to FERPA laws, which protect student privacy.Tucker's post-collegiate plans fell through too. Tucker applied to the CIA that spring. The spy agency passed."He mentioned that he had applied and they rejected him because of his drug use," another college friend said, while declining to be named. "He was too honest on his application. I also probably should say I don't know whether he was telling the truth or not." Once the school year was over, Tucker and Neil Patel hit the road on a cross-country motorcycle ride. After that: Washington DC.  Tucker's family left Southern California for Georgetown after President Reagan named his father head of Voice of America. In June 1991, President George H.W. Bush appointed Richard ambassador to the Seychelles and the Carlson family upgraded to a nicer house in Georgetown with a pool in the basement. That summer, with Tucker's father and stepmother often out of town, the Carlson household was the center of Tucker's social lives, the place they retired to after a night drinking at Georgetown college dive bars like Charing Cross and Third Edition, and pubs like Martin's Tavern and The Tombs, immortalized in St. Elmo's Fire. In August, Tucker and Susie got married in St. George's chapel and held a reception at the Clambake Club of Newport, overlooking the Narragansett Bay. Back in Washington, Tucker's prep school, college, and his father's Washington-based networks began to mesh. Tucker took a $14,000-a-year job as an assistant editor and fact checker of Policy Review, a quarterly journal published at the time by the Heritage Foundation, the nation's leading conservative think tank. For the next three decades, Tucker thrived in the Beltway: He joined The Weekly Standard and wrote for several magazines before appearing on cable news networks as a right-of-center analyst and host at CNN, PBS, and MSNBC. His father embarked on a third career as a television executive where he ran the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and his brother became a political operative and a pollster. By the time Tucker reached the core of the conservative media sphere, a slot on Fox News's primetime opinion lineup, he shed friends from his youth who couldn't grapple with the hard-right turn he veered once he became the face of the network.One friend was not surprised with Tucker's act. In the spring of 2016, during the heat of Donald Trump's presidential campaign against Hilary Clinton and a few months before "Tucker Carlson Tonight" premiered on Fox, Tucker had lunch with his old prep school classmate Richard Wayner who made the speech about Eleanor Bumpurs all those years ago. Wayner believed Tucker's gesture from his pew was never serious. "As a 9th or 10th grader in a chapel full of people in a conversation, he was trying to get attention," Wayner said.The two stayed in touch over the years and Tucker at one point suggested he write a handful of pieces for the Daily Caller, the conservative news and opinion site that Tucker co-founded and ran in the 2010s. As they settled into their table at a Midtown Manhattan steakhouse, the two chatted about Wayner's experience on the board of St. George's (which Susie was about to join) and their respective careers. Tucker was floating around at Fox, and Wayner, now an investor and former Goldman Sachs investment banker, said the conversation drifted toward salaries."He was asking, 'How much do you make on Wall Street' and was like, 'Wow, Wall Street guys make a lot.'" Wayner said. When they left the restaurant and headed back toward the Fox News headquarters, several people recognized Tucker on the street even though he had jettisoned his trademark bowtie years ago. Wayner saw Tucker making the pragmatic decision to follow a business model that has made his conservative media counterparts a lot of money."I don't think he has a mission. I don't think he has a plan," Wayner said. "Where he is right now is about as great as whatever he thought he could be.""Tucker knows better. He does. He can get some attention, money, or both." he added. "To me, that's a shame. Because he knows better." Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Insider previously found that Aldi and Walmart consistently offer less-expensive products than Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's has a reputation for quirky offerings.Jeffrey Greenberg/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Trader Joe's is a grocery chain with a popular following. Recently, a TikTok went viral suggesting that the chain is quite expensive. Trader Joe's may offer some strong deals, but it's not the most practical place to save money. A video posted on TikTok sparked a wider conversation about Trader Joe's, a popular grocery store chain with a loyal following. User @katarinakitt posted a video on TikTok on April 5, referencing her discussions with coworkers about Trader Joe's. She said that her colleagues routinely shopped at Trader Joe's, while she never did because she had always considered the chain to be too costly."Where I'm from, me and my family, we don't shop at Trader Joe's because it's expensive to us," she said. @katarinakitt This is a hill I will die on. #traderjoes #workinginnyc #broke #9to5 ♬ Spongebob Tomfoolery - Dante9k Remix - David Snell The post spurred discussion around Trader Joe's, a chain with around 530 stores and 10,000 workers, predominantly being for rich people. It's not the first time that debate over the grocery chain's perceived priciness has gone viral on TikTok, either.Insider previously found that the grocery chain draws in an up-and-coming crowd, with the typical shopper being a married, college-educated individual between 25 and 44 years of age earning over $80,000 and living in an urban area.In a 2007 report published in Pepperdine University's Graziadio Business Review, researchers found that Trader Joe's eschews national brands and instead focuses on selling a constantly changing mix of merchandise that "are distinct from those sold in traditional supermarkets." The result is a slew of "high quality" products "offered at low prices" within a relatively small store, compared with larger grocers or big-box competitors.Whole Foods Market, another grocery chain that emphasizes high-quality offerings, tends to have similar prices for numerous products. In 2017, Insider found that most Whole Foods products were at least slightly more expensive than their Trader Joe's counterparts.While Trader Joe's may offer strong deals on unique items, that doesn't mean that it's a practical option for every shopper. Consumers on a budget — who benefit from buying generic options in bulk — could chafe against the chain's emphasis on novel snack items and seasonal offerings. Earlier this year, Insider found that Aldi and Walmart consistently beat the chain out on pricing. Are you a Trader Joe's employee with a story to share? Email acain@insider.com.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

In a few minutes, electronic music will start pulsing, stuffed animals will be flung through the air, women will emerge spinning Technicolor hula hoops, and a mechanical bull will rev into action, bucking off one delighted rider after another. It’s the closing party of ETHDenver, a weeklong cryptocurrency conference dedicated to the blockchain Ethereum. Lines… In a few minutes, electronic music will start pulsing, stuffed animals will be flung through the air, women will emerge spinning Technicolor hula hoops, and a mechanical bull will rev into action, bucking off one delighted rider after another. It’s the closing party of ETHDenver, a weeklong cryptocurrency conference dedicated to the blockchain Ethereum. Lines have stretched around the block for days. Now, on this Sunday night in February, the giddy energy is peaking. But as the crowd pushes inside, a wiry man with elfin features is sprinting out of the venue, past astonished selfie takers and venture capitalists. Some call out, imploring him to stay; others even chase him down the street, on foot and on scooters. Yet the man outruns them all, disappearing into the privacy of his hotel lobby, alone. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Vitalik Buterin, the most influential person in crypto, didn’t come to Denver to party. He doesn’t drink or particularly enjoy crowds. Not that there isn’t plenty for the 28-year-old creator of Ethereum to celebrate. Nine years ago, Buterin dreamed up Ethereum as a way to leverage the blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin for all sorts of uses beyond currency. Since then, it has emerged as the bedrock layer of what advocates say will be a new, open-source, decentralized internet. Ether, the platform’s native currency, has become the second biggest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin, powering a trillion-dollar ecosystem that rivals Visa in terms of the money it moves. Ethereum has brought thousands of unbanked people around the world into financial systems, allowed capital to flow unencumbered across borders, and provided the infrastructure for entrepreneurs to build all sorts of new products, from payment systems to prediction markets, digital swap meets to medical-research hubs. Photograph by Benjamin Rasmussen for TIME But even as crypto has soared in value and volume, Buterin has watched the world he created evolve with a mixture of pride and dread. Ethereum has made a handful of white men unfathomably rich, pumped pollutants into the air, and emerged as a vehicle for tax evasion, money laundering, and mind-boggling scams. “Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong,” the Russian-born Canadian explains the morning after the party in an 80-minute interview in his hotel room. Buterin worries about the dangers to overeager investors, the soaring transaction fees, and the shameless displays of wealth that have come to dominate public perception of crypto. “The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling,” he says, referring to the Bored Ape Yacht Club, an überpopular NFT collection of garish primate cartoons that has become a digital-age status symbol for millionaires including Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton, and which have traded for more than $1 million a pop. “There definitely are lots of people that are just buying yachts and Lambos.” Read More: Politicians Show Their Increasing Interest In Crypto at ETHDenver 2022 Buterin hopes Ethereum will become the launchpad for all sorts of sociopolitical experimentation: fairer voting systems, urban planning, universal basic income, public-works projects. Above all, he wants the platform to be a counterweight to authoritarian governments and to upend Silicon Valley’s stranglehold over our digital lives. But he acknowledges that his vision for the transformative power of Ethereum is at risk of being overtaken by greed. And so he has reluctantly begun to take on a bigger public role in shaping its future. “If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable,” he says, reedy voice rising and falling as he fidgets his hands and sticks his toes between the cushions of a lumpy gray couch. “And those are often far from what’s actually the best for the world.” The irony is that despite all of Buterin’s cachet, he may not have the ability to prevent Ethereum from veering off course. That’s because he designed it as a decentralized platform, responsive not only to his own vision but also to the will of its builders, investors, and ever sprawling community. Buterin is not the formal leader of Ethereum. And he fundamentally rejects the idea that anyone should hold unilateral power over its future. Benjamin Rasmussen for TIMEButerin dons Shiba Inu pajama pants onstage at ETHDenver Which has left Buterin reliant on the limited tools of soft power: writing blog posts, giving interviews, conducting research, speaking at conferences where many attendees just want to bask in the glow of their newfound riches. “I’ve been yelling a lot, and sometimes that yelling does feel like howling into the wind,” he says, his eyes darting across the room. Whether or not his approach works (and how much sway Buterin has over his own brainchild) may be the difference between a future in which Ethereum becomes the basis of a new era of digital life, and one in which it’s just another instrument of financial speculation—credit-default swaps with a utopian patina. Three days after the music stops at ETHDenver, Buterin’s attention turns across the world, back to the region where he was born. In the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin, cryptocurrency almost immediately became a tool of Ukrainian resistance. More than $100 million in crypto was raised in the invasion’s first three weeks for the Ukrainian government and NGOs. Cryptocurrency has also provided a lifeline for some fleeing Ukrainians whose banks are inaccessible. At the same time, regulators worry that it will be used by Russian oligarchs to evade sanctions. Buterin has sprung into action too, matching hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants toward relief efforts and publicly lambasting Putin’s decision to invade. “One silver lining of the situation in the last three weeks is that it has reminded a lot of people in the crypto space that ultimately the goal of crypto is not to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it’s to do things that accomplish meaningful effects in the real world,” Buterin wrote in an email to TIME on March 14. His outspoken advocacy marks a change for a leader who has been slow to find his political voice. “One of the decisions I made in 2022 is to try to be more risk-taking and less neutral,” Buterin says. “I would rather Ethereum offend some people than turn into something that stands for nothing.” The war is personal to Buterin, who has both Russian and Ukrainian ancestry. He was born outside Moscow in 1994 to two computer scientists, Dmitry Buterin and Natalia Ameline, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Monetary and social systems had collapsed; his mother’s parents lost their life savings amid rising inflation. “Growing up in the USSR, I didn’t realize most of the stuff I’d been told in school that was good, like communism, was all propaganda,” explains Dmitry. “So I wanted Vitalik to question conventions and beliefs, and he grew up very independent as a thinker.” The family initially lived in a university dorm room with a shared bathroom. There were no disposable diapers available, so his parents washed his by hand. Vitalik grew up with a turbulent, teeming mind. Dmitry says Vitalik learned how to read before he could sleep through the night, and was slow to form sentences compared with his peers. “Because his mind was going so fast,” Dmitry recalls, “it was actually hard for him to express himself verbally for some time.” Instead, Vitalik gravitated to the clarity of numbers. At 4, he inherited his parents’ old IBM computer and started playing around with Excel spreadsheets. At 7, he could recite more than a hundred digits of pi, and would shout out math equations to pass the time. By 12, he was coding inside Microsoft Office Suite. The precocious child’s isolation from his peers had been exacerbated by a move to Toronto in 2000, the same year Putin was first elected. His father characterizes Vitalik’s Canadian upbringing as “lucky and naive.” Vitalik himself uses the words “lonely and disconnected.” Courtesy Dmitry ButerinButerin on his IBM In 2011, Dmitry introduced Vitalik to Bitcoin, which had been created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. After seeing the collapse of financial systems in both Russia and the U.S., Dmitry was intrigued by the idea of an alternative global money source that was uncontrolled by authorities. Vitalik soon began writing articles exploring the new technology for the magazine Bitcoin Weekly, for which he earned 5 bitcoins a pop (back then, some $4; today, it would be worth about $200,000). Even as a teenager, Vitalik Buterin proved to be a pithy writer, able to articulate complex ideas about cryptocurrency and its underlying technology in clear prose. At 18, he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine and became its lead writer, earning a following both in Toronto and abroad. “A lot of people think of him as a typical techie engineer,” says Nathan Schneider, a media-studies professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who first interviewed Buterin in 2014. “But a core of his practice even more so is observation and writing—and that helped him see a cohesive vision that others weren’t seeing yet.” As Buterin learned more about the blockchain technology on which Bitcoin was built, he began to believe using it purely for currency was a waste. The blockchain, he thought, could serve as an efficient method for securing all sorts of assets: web applications, organizations, financial derivatives, nonpredatory loan programs, even wills. Each of these could be operated by “smart contracts,” code that could be programmed to carry out transactions without the need for intermediaries. A decentralized version of the rideshare industry, for example, could be built to send money directly from passengers to drivers, without Uber swiping a cut of the proceeds. Read the rest of Buterin’s interview in TIME’s newsletter Into the Metaverse. Subscribe for a weekly guide to the future of the Internet. You can find past issues of the newsletter here. In 2013, Buterin dropped out of college and wrote a 36-page white paper laying out his vision for Ethereum: a new open-source blockchain on which programmers could build any sort of application they wished. (Buterin swiped the name from a Wikipedia list of elements from science fiction.) He sent it to friends in the Bitcoin community, who passed it around. Soon a handful of programmers and businessmen around the world sought out Buterin in hopes of helping him bring it to life. Within months, a group of eight men who would become known as Ethereum’s founders were sharing a three-story Airbnb in Switzerland, writing code and wooing investors. While some of the other founders mixed work and play—watching Game of Thrones, persuading friends to bring over beer in exchange for Ether IOUs—Buterin mostly kept to himself, coding away on his laptop, according to Laura Shin’s recent book about the history of Ethereum, The Cryptopians. Over time, it became apparent that the group had very different plans for the nascent technology. Buterin wanted a decentralized open platform on which anyone could build anything. Others wanted to use the technology to create a business. One idea was to build the crypto equivalent to Google, in which Ethereum would use customer data to sell targeted ads. The men also squabbled over power and titles. One co-founder, Charles Hoskinson, appointed himself CEO—a designation that was of no interest to Buterin, who joked his title would be C-3PO, after the droid from Star Wars. The ensuing conflicts left Buterin with culture shock. In the space of a few months, he had gone from a cloistered life of writing code and technical articles to a that of a decisionmaker grappling with bloated egos and power struggles. His vision for Ethereum hung in the balance. “The biggest divide was definitely that a lot of these people cared about making money. For me, that was totally not my goal,” says Buterin, whose net worth is at least $800 million, according to public records on the blockchain whose accuracy was confirmed by a spokesperson. “There were even times at the beginning where I was negotiating down the percentages of the Ether distribution that both myself and the other top-level founders would get, in order to be more egalitarian. That did make them upset.” TIME Buterin says the other founders tried to take advantage of his naiveté to push through their own ideas about how Ethereum should run. “People used my fear of regulators against me,” he recalls, “saying that we should have a for-profit entity because it’s so much simpler legally than making a nonprofit.” As tensions rose, the group implored Buterin to make a decision. In June 2014, he asked Hoskinson and Amir Chetrit, two co-founders who were pushing Ethereum to become a business, to leave the group. He then set in motion the creation of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), a nonprofit established to safeguard Ethereum’s infrastructure and fund research and development projects. One by one, all the other founders peeled off over the next few years to pursue their own projects, either in tandem with Ethereum or as direct competitors. Some of them remain critical of Buterin’s approach. “In the dichotomy between centralization and anarchy, Ethereum seems to be going toward anarchy,” says Hoskinson, who now leads his own blockchain, Cardano. “We think there’s a middle ground to create some sort of blockchain-based governance system.” With the founders splintered, Buterin emerged as Ethereum’s philosophical leader. He had a seat on the EF board and the clout to shape industry trends and move markets with his public pronouncements. He even became known as “V God” in China. But he didn’t exactly step into the power vacuum. “He’s not good at bossing people around,” says Aya Miyaguchi, the executive director of the EF. “From a social-navigation perspective, he was immature. He’s probably still conflict-averse,” says Danny Ryan, a lead researcher at the EF. Buterin calls his struggle to inhabit the role of an organizational leader “my curse for the first few years at Ethereum.” It’s not hard to see why. Buterin still does not present stereotypical leadership qualities when you meet him. He sniffles and stutters through his sentences, walks stiffly, and struggles to hold eye contact. He puts almost no effort into his clothing, mostly wearing Uniqlo tees or garments gifted to him by friends. His disheveled appearance has made him an easy target on social media: he recently shared insults from online hecklers who said he looked like a “Bond villain” or an “alien crackhead.” Yet almost everyone who has a full conversation with Buterin comes away starry-eyed. Buterin is wryly funny and almost wholly devoid of pretension or ego. He’s an unabashed geek whose eyes spark when he alights upon one of his favorite concepts, whether it be quadratic voting or the governance system futarchy. Just as Ethereum is designed to be an everything machine, Buterin is an everything thinker, fluent in disciplines ranging from sociological theory to advanced calculus to land-tax history. (He’s currently using Duolingo to learn his fifth and sixth languages.) He doesn’t talk down to people, and he eschews a security detail. “An emotional part of me says that once you start going down that way, professionalizing is just another word for losing your soul,” he says. Benjamin Rasmussen for TIMEButerin, seen through a monitor at ETHDenver Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and a major crypto investor, says being around Buterin gives him “a similar vibe to when I first got to know Sir Tim Berners-Lee,” the inventor of the World Wide Web. “He’s very thoughtful and unassuming,” Ohanian says, “and he’s giving the world some of the most powerful Legos it’s ever seen.” For years, Buterin has been grappling with how much power to exercise in Ethereum’s decentralized ecosystem. The first major test came in 2016, when a newly created Ethereum-based fundraising body called the DAO was hacked for $60 million, which amounted at the time to more than 4% of all Ether in circulation. The hack tested the crypto community’s values: if they truly believed no central authority should override the code governing smart contracts, then thousands of investors would simply have to eat the loss—which could, in turn, encourage more hackers. On the other hand, if Buterin chose to reverse the hack using a maneuver called a hard fork, he would be wielding the same kind of central authority as the financial systems he sought to replace. Buterin took a middle ground. He consulted with other Ethereum leaders, wrote blog posts advocating for the hard fork, and watched as the community voted overwhelmingly in favor of that option via forums and petitions. When Ethereum developers created the fork, users and miners had the option to stick with the hacked version of the blockchain. But they overwhelmingly chose the forked version, and Ethereum quickly recovered in value. To Buterin, the DAO hack epitomized the promise of a decentralized approach to governance. “Leadership has to rely much more on soft power and less on hard power, so leaders have to actually take into account the feelings of the community and treat them with respect,” he says. “Leadership positions aren’t fixed, so if leaders stop performing, the world forgets about them. And the converse is that it’s very easy for new leaders to rise up.” Over the past few years, countless leaders have risen up in Ethereum, building all kinds of products, tokens, and subcultures. There was the ICO boom of 2017, in which venture capitalists raised billions of dollars for blockchain projects. There was DeFi summer in 2020, in which new trading mechanisms and derivative structures sent money whizzing around the world at hyperspeed. And there was last year’s explosion of NFTs: tradeable digital goods, like profile pictures, art collections, and sports cards, that skyrocketed in value. Skeptics have derided the utility of NFTs, in which billion-dollar economies have been built upon the perceived digital ownership of simple images that can easily be copied and pasted. But they have rapidly become one of the most utilized components of the Ethereum ecosystem. In January, the NFT trading platform OpenSea hit a record $5 billion in monthly sales. Benjamin Rasmussen for TIMEConference­goers line up to ask Buterin questions after his keynote Buterin didn’t predict the rise of NFTs, and has watched the phenomenon with a mixture of interest and anxiety. On one hand, they have helped to turbocharge the price of Ether, which has increased more than tenfold in value over the past two years. (Disclosure: I own less than $1,300 worth of Ether, which I purchased in 2021.) But their volume has overwhelmed the network, leading to a steep rise in congestion fees, in which, for instance, bidders trying to secure a rare NFT pay hundreds of dollars extra to make sure their transactions are expedited. Read More: NFT Art Collectors Are Playing a Risky Game—And Winning The fees have undermined some of Buterin’s favorite projects on the blockchain. Take Proof of Humanity, which awards a universal basic income—currently about $40 per month—to anyone who signs up. Depending on the week, the network’s congestion fees can make pulling money out of your wallet to pay for basic needs prohibitively expensive. “With fees being the way they are today,” Buterin says, “it really gets to the point where the financial derivatives and the gambley stuff start pricing out some of the cool stuff.” Inequities have crept into crypto in other ways, including a stark lack of gender and racial diversity. “It hasn’t been among the things I’ve put a lot of intellectual effort into,” Buterin admits of gender parity. “The ecosystem does need to improve there.” He’s scornful of the dominance of coin voting, a voting process for DAOs that Buterin feels is just a new version of plutocracy, one in which wealthy venture capitalists can make self-interested decisions with little resistance. “It’s become a de facto standard, which is a dystopia I’ve been seeing unfolding over the last few years,” he says. These problems have sparked a backlash both inside and outside the blockchain community. As crypto rockets toward the mainstream, its esoteric jargon, idiosyncratic culture, and financial excesses have been met with widespread disdain. Meanwhile, frustrated users are decamping to newer blockchains like Solana and BNB Chain, driven by the prospect of lower transaction fees, alternative building tools, or different philosophical values. Buterin understands why people are moving away from Ethereum. Unlike virtually any other leader in a trillion-dollar industry, he says he’s fine with it—especially given that Ethereum’s current problems stem from the fact that it has too many users. (Losing immense riches doesn’t faze him much, either: last year, he dumped $6 billion worth of Shiba Inu tokens that were gifted to him, explaining that he wanted to give some to charity, help maintain the meme coin’s value, and surrender his role as a “locus of power.”) In the meantime, he and the EF—which holds almost a billion dollars worth of Ether in reserve, a representative confirmed—are taking several approaches to improve the ecosystem. Last year, they handed out $27 million to Ethereum-based projects, up from $7.7 million in 2019, to recipients including smart-contract developers and an educational conference in Lagos. The EF research team is also working on two crucial technical updates. The first is known as the “merge,” which converts Ethereum from Proof of Work, a form of blockchain verification, to Proof of Stake, which the EF says will reduce Ethereum’s energy usage by more than 99% and make the network more secure. Buterin has been stumping for Proof of Stake since Ethereum’s founding, but repeated delays have turned implementation into a Waiting for Godot–style drama. At ETHDenver, the EF researcher Danny Ryan declared that the merge would happen within the next six months, unless “something insanely catastrophic” happens. The same day, Buterin encouraged companies worried about the environmental impact to delay using Ethereum until the merge is completed—even if it “gets delayed until 2025.” Benjamin Rasmussen for TIMEETHDenver attendee Brent Burdick checks his phone in an NFT gallery room In January, Moxie Marlinspike, co-founder of the messaging app Signal, wrote a widely read critique noting that despite its collectivist mantras, so-called web3 was already coalescing around centralized platforms. As he often does when faced with legitimate criticism, Buterin responded with a thoughtful, detailed post on Reddit. “The properly authenticated decentralized blockchain world is coming, and is much closer to being here than many people think,” he wrote. “I see no technical reason why the future needs to look like the status quo today.” Buterin is aware that crypto’s utopian promises sound stale to many, and calls the race to implement sharding in the face of competition a “ticking time bomb.” “If we don’t have sharding fast enough, then people might just start migrating to more centralized solutions,” he says. “And if after all that stuff happens and it still centralizes, then yes, there’s a much stronger argument that there’s a big problem.” As the technical kinks get worked out, Buterin has turned his attention toward larger sociopolitical issues he thinks the blockchain might solve. On his blog and on Twitter, you’ll find treatises on housing; on voting systems; on the best way to distribute public goods; on city building and longevity research. While Buterin spent much of the pandemic living in Singapore, he increasingly lives as a digital nomad, writing dispatches from the road. Those who know Buterin well have noticed a philosophical shift over the years. “He’s gone on a journey from being more sympathetic to anarcho-capitalist thinking to Georgist-type thinking,” says Glen Weyl, an economist who is one of his close collaborators, referring to a theory that holds the value of the commons should belong equally to all members of society. One of Buterin’s recent posts calls for the creation of a new type of NFT, based not on monetary value but on participation and identity. For instance, the allocation of votes in an organization might be determined by the commitment an individual has shown to the group, as opposed to the number of tokens they own. “NFTs can represent much more of who you are and not just what you can afford,” he writes. Read More: How Crypto Investors Are Handling Plunging Prices While Buterin’s blog is one of his main tools of public persuasion, his posts aren’t meant to be decrees, but rather intellectual explorations that invite debate. Buterin often dissects the flaws of obscure ideas he once wrote effusively about, like Harberger taxes. His blog is a model for how a leader can work through complex ideas with transparency and rigor, exposing the messy process of intellectual growth for all to see, and perhaps learn from. Some of Buterin’s more radical ideas can provoke alarm. In January, he caused a minor outrage on Twitter by advocating for synthetic wombs, which he argued could reduce the pay gap between men and women. He predicts there’s a decent chance someone born today will live to be 3,000, and takes the anti-diabetes medication Metformin in the hope of slowing his body’s aging, despite mixed studies on the drug’s efficacy. Subscribe to TIME’s newsletter Into the Metaverse for a weekly guide to the future of the Internet. You can find past issues of the newsletter here. As governmental bodies prepare to wade into crypto—in March, President Biden signed an Executive Order seeking a federal plan for regulating digital assets—Buterin has increasingly been sought out by politicians. At ETHDenver, he held a private conversation with Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat who supports cryptocurrencies. Buterin is anxious about crypto’s political valence in the U.S., where Republicans have generally been more eager to embrace it. “There’s definitely signs that are making it seem like crypto is on the verge of becoming a right-leaning thing,” Buterin says. “If it does happen, we’ll sacrifice a lot of the potential it has to offer.” To Buterin, the worst-case scenario for the future of crypto is that blockchain technology ends up concentrated in the hands of dictatorial governments. He is unhappy with El Salvador’s rollout of Bitcoin as legal tender, which has been riddled with identity theft and volatility. The prospect of governments using the technology to crack down on dissent is one reason Buterin is adamant about crypto remaining decentralized. He sees the technology as the most powerful equalizer to surveillance technology deployed by governments (like China’s) and powerful companies (like Meta) alike. If Mark Zuckerberg shouldn’t have the power to make epoch-changing decisions or control users’ data for profit, Buterin believes, then neither should he—even if that limits his ability to shape the future of his creation, sends some people to other blockchains, or allows others to use his platform in unsavory ways. “I would love to have an ecosystem that has lots of good crazy and bad crazy,” Buterin says. “Bad crazy is when there’s just huge amounts of money being drained and all it’s doing is subsidizing the hacker industry. Good crazy is when there’s tech work and research and development and public goods coming out of the other end. So there’s this battle. And we have to be intentional, and make sure more of the right things happen.” —With reporting by Nik Popli and Mariah Espada/Washington.....»»