<![CDATA[Before Dinner]]>https://beforedinner.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zUOk!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F508c9703-9686-435f-84e5-98eebc0378be_1024x1024.pngBefore Dinnerhttps://beforedinner.substack.comSubstackThu, 03 Sep 2026 22:14:12 GMT<![CDATA[Everyone has an opinion on the Lindsay Clancy trial...except the jury]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/everyone-has-an-opinion-on-the-lindsayhttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/everyone-has-an-opinion-on-the-lindsayThu, 03 Sep 2026 18:30:18 GMT

  • Read this piece on how the Maldives have become a hub for Russian sanction evasion

  • 13 looks that defined Dolly Parton’s style

  • A dictator’s survival guide, from BBC

  • Inside the fall of Apollo’s Leon Black

  • Inside the MET Gala drama over Galliano

  • Naomi Osaka is bringing style to the tennis court

  • Beautiful essay on the paradox of willpower

  • Ada Palmer podcast interview deep dive on Renaissance history

  • Profile on the state of affairs at OpenAI

  • Could old-fashioned psychoanalysis be the cure to mental illness?

  • Dr. Cornel West and Professor Robert George on civil discourse

  • It’s becoming easier to have an LA life in NYC

  • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King is part memoir and part practical guide to becoming a better writer. It is the only practical book on becoming a writer that I actually gift to people and recommend. King draws on his own life and career and argues that the path to becoming a stronger writer, with a distinct voice, comes from reading constantly, writing consistently, and cutting unnecessary language. More than a technical handbook, the book is a reflection on writing as a craft: like most things, something improved less through inspiration than through discipline, attention, and the willingness to keep doing the work.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • What question do you wish people asked you more?

  • What are you most looking forward to this Labor Day?

  • Who did you last tell that you missed them? Who do you want to tell but you haven’t?

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[The Art of Consequence]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/the-art-of-consequencehttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/the-art-of-consequenceWed, 02 Sep 2026 21:30:33 GMT

Every year, on the first Monday in May, celebrities, designers, and donors climb the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and walk into a party that has almost nothing to do with art and everything to do with the position of art in public life (more on this later). The Costume Institute is the only curatorial department at the museum expected to support itself, and the Met Gala is how it manages to do so. With tables priced in the hundreds of thousands, the event raises tens of millions of dollars for the Costume Institute with a guest list Anna Wintour has personally controlled since 1999. The Met Gala is the opening night of the new Costume Institute exhibition. Each year, a theme is selected, and in the entirety of the department’s history, exactly two living designers have been given a solo retrospective: Yves Saint Laurent in 1983, and Rei Kawakubo in 2017. Nearly a decade later, on July 31st, 2026, the Met announced John Galliano: Horizons as this year’s theme for the new Costume Institute exhibition.

This week, John Galliano announced that, “after much reflection and discussion with all those involved, I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time.”

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Galliano is among the most technically gifted designers of the past forty years. In June 1984, he showed his Central Saint Martins graduate collection, Les Incroyables. The London-based department store Browns bought it in its entirety. At the time, it was practically unheard of for a major luxury retailer to buy a graduation collection. In July 1995, at 34 years old, he was appointed head designer at Givenchy. In October 1996, he became the creative director of Dior where he would stay until he was fired in 2011 after he was recorded at a cafe in Paris in 2010, saying to a group, “ I love Hitler. People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed.” It’s hard even writing these words here to quote them, and hard to wrap one’s head around hearing someone say them. A few months later, he had an unprovoked anti-asian rant and another antisemitic outburst at Jewish curator Geraldine Bloch. “He made 30 anti-jewish insults in the space of 45 minutes.” At the time, he had a “triple addiction to alcohol, sleeping tables, and valium”. Nevertheless, the court deemed he had “sufficient awareness of his act despite his addiction and his fragile state.” Galliano was ultimately charged in French court for “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race, or ethnicity” and fined €16,500.

“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano,” Wintour said in July. The backlash was immediate. Donors threatened to step down from boards, Assemblyman Micah Lasher outlined the issue eloquently “This is not a freedom of expression issue…This is a judgment issue, and I am baffled that anyone saw this as anything other than a terrible idea that would amount to the normalization of antisemitism.” The dealer Arne Glimcher threatened to cut the Met out of his will. The donor Alice Tisch emailed CEO of The Met, Max Hollein, to say the exhibition “bespeaks a failure of governance.”

On Monday, as the board convened to decide the exhibition’s fate, Galliano withdrew. As shown in the image at the start of the piece, Galliano said he had decided “with great sadness” that the exhibition should not go ahead, and thanked the museum at length. In a post shared by Galliano on Instagram, he wrote, “...that meaningful atonement is not achieved through an exhibition, institutional recognition or a single public gesture. It is a continuing responsibility, demonstrated through listening, learning and one’s conduct over time.”

What is perplexing is that none of the information presented in this piece is new information. So, how did the board of directors not see this coming? One might argue that they may have asked the wrong question: whether Galliano’s repentance was credible. Since the incident, some could argue that Galliano has at least attempted atonement. He is sober and has met with rabbis and Jewish leaders like Abraham Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League in order to educate himself on Judaism, antisemitism, and the Holocaust. The issue is not a question of talent, but whether his career, stained reputation, and attempt at redemption, has earned the frame that the institution has placed on this particular award.

In the context of art, and fashion is art, there is something compelling about the distance between the audience a work was made for and the audience it ultimately meets. Who was meant to see it then? Who sees it now? And what changes when art moves beyond its original context and into the public sphere? In the past, the audience was kings, churches, and aristocrats. Their taste wasn’t just opinion. It determined whether an artist got paid. The art didn’t even have the opportunity to stray from the status quo. Today, art is made for buyers, museums, galleries, and fundamentally the public; hence, in both scenarios, there is a throughline. Depending on your point of view, it fortunately or unfortunately has to appease - If the public doesn’t like the work, we either aren’t paying to see it or we replace it with something better. An artist can ultimately create the art they want but it is still subject to an audience who decides whether to buy it or not. Therefore, this is not about Galliano’s craftsmanship, vision, and talent but about his association with values that people don’t want to be an audience to. We can experience his work, but do we need to celebrate it?

The Galliano events of this week can provide an invitation into a larger discussion about the role of consequence in our culture: What role should forgiveness play? What does it take to earn it? And are there some acts for which it can never be earned? We are living in what can sometimes feel like a post-peak cancellation culture, rightly more skeptical of the idea that every offensive act should result in permanent exile. But rejecting cancellation cannot mean rejecting consequence altogether. The First Amendment protects us from government censorship; it does not promise us celebration, institutional honor, or freedom from the judgment of the people around us. A culture committed to free speech still has to decide what it will reward, what it will elevate, and what it will condemn.

The harder question, then, is how we create meaningful consequences for hate speech without simply silencing people. I would hope the answer is more speech, not less: argument, criticism, conversation, and the willingness to say plainly when something crosses a moral line. Hate, in any form, should have consequences. But the most durable consequence may not be making the offending person disappear. It may be forcing all of us to talk about why the offense matters. Perhaps the most valuable thing to come from the cancellation of John Galliano: Horizons will not happen at the Met at all. It will happen at dinner tables, hopefully also in classrooms, and among friends asking the larger question of what exactly forgiveness both looks like and requires, what an institution confers when it gives someone a platform, and where we draw the line between examining important work and celebrating the person who made it. There is an important distinction here: the question is not whether the Met should ever show Galliano’s work. Museums should be places where difficult, consequential, and even morally complicated work can be examined and most importantly, invite discussion. If these conversations do not take place in environments of learning, they will not take place at all. The question that the events of this week invite is what it means to give Galliano himself the platform of a solo retrospective, an institutional gesture that does more than display the work but confers significance and, inevitably, a degree of honor on the person behind it. We should be able to study the work without pretending that every form of presentation is neutral. A healthy culture should be capable of holding all of those questions at once.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[My final straw was the “luxury” gas station, but the K-shaped economy cuts deeper than that]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/my-final-straw-was-the-luxury-gashttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/my-final-straw-was-the-luxury-gasSun, 30 Aug 2026 21:06:51 GMTI think my final straw was the luxury gas station opening in Beverly Hills. Make no mistake, I will have to give it a visit. But I must acknowledge my weariness that every new consumer innovation is created towards taking an already existing product or service, making the branding chic, and raising the price. Besides the fact that this is profoundly lazy, on a deeper level it is a symptom of our times, our modern unfolding Gilded Age, where almost our entire economy relies on an endless stream of spending from the top bracket of income earners, while everyone else buckles down and cuts back.

A “K-shaped” economy is one where wealthy spenders continue buying, as low-income spenders are forced to pull back. This is our modern reality in a world where artificial intelligence is minting billionaires by the hour, while high gas prices and fewer entry-level jobs create an entirely different reality for the everyday American. Nearly 60% of all consumer spending comes from the top 20% of income earners, nearing a record high. This explains the explosive growth in luxury markets– there are luxury grocery stores, luxury honey mustards, and, soon, luxury gas stations.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these products. They’re often great, even. But the presence of a luxury option for the everyday essential isn’t exactly advancing the ball of human progress. Unlike the proliferation of the telephone or the automobile, we’re not all benefiting from the technological innovation that is the $19 smoothie made with whatever colostrum is. The bifurcation of our economy is having profound social impacts on trends, but it’s also doing something more sinister. It’s creating entirely different realities for different income earners, fragmenting an already divided public.

Income inequality doesn’t just create trends. It generates entirely different realities. In wealthy neighborhoods in West LA, most residents will never interact with a police officer, but they do benefit from the private security services that patrol Brentwood and the Flats. A child raised in a Fifth Avenue penthouse will likely never set foot in a public school, nor will their parents ever fret over what the status is of the school they’re districted for. Private flights whisk the top earners away from TSA or airport waiting times. The black Escalade on-call removes the need for public transport. As our third spaces have declined, the opportunities for class isolation have increased. It’s as though gasoline has been dumped on an already growing campfire, making us divided by wealth more than at any time since the Gilded Age.

As consumer markets focus on those spending (the wealthy) and the opportunities for class isolation increase, people become more removed from the social promises of a society built upon caring for those around you. How can you adequately care for someone whose life is not remotely relatable to you? Who do you never see at the local rotary meeting or Sunday service? And, vice versa, how can someone believe the wealthy are people just like themselves when their life is so entirely different from their own that it becomes unrecognizable?

Income inequality is economically bad. It stunts productivity. But economics also has profound social implications. The divisiveness of our current moment is fostered by the rising gap in who our economy caters to. Spirit Airlines, a discount brand, has collapsed, while luxury airlines continue to expand. The luxury grocery store is a wonderful thing to indulge in once in a while, but I can’t help but grow increasingly conscious of an unsettling feeling in the back of my mind: that this is not a solution to anything, but instead a symptom.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[America mourns the Queen of Country ]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/america-mourns-the-queen-of-countryhttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/america-mourns-the-queen-of-countrySat, 29 Aug 2026 22:45:42 GMT

  • Flags will fly at half-mast, and the Nashville airport will be named in her honor after the passing of the Dolly Parton

  • The only thing Americans can all agree on: we loved Dolly

  • Massive earthquake triggers apocalyptic flood in rural Nepal, killing nearly 400

  • President signs executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” as trade war escalates in unprecedented manner

  • Meta will pay $17 billion settlement in media addiction claims

  • Bill Gates issues warning that artificial intelligence is more dangerous than tech companies admit

  • Taylor Swift is working on new music per Page Six

  • Mega-producer Shonda Rhimes, the mind behind Bridgerton and Grey’s Anatomy, re-signs with Netflix

  • California wants Paramount to sell its TV channels as it sues to block merger with Warner Bros. Discovery

  • Long wait times for gas in Iran amidst fuel shortage as US ups sanctions pressure

  • Famed statistician Nate Silver has a new podcast coming with Pod Save America

  • David Protein is launching protein shakes

  • How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days sequel is coming

  • US close to deal for Venezuelan oil fields that would double US oils reserves

  • Oura Ring is reportedly set to IPO in September

  • Puck set for capital infusion from media investment giant RedBird at massive $250M valuation

  • Prominent anti-Scientology activist and actress Leah Remini joins Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

  • Over 60 percent of federal judges are using at least one AI tool in their judicial work

  • Kylie Jenner and Stassie “clear the air” in their new podcast episode

  • Insane inside look at Silicon Valley’s most dramatic wedding

  • Read this piece on why Bill Gates thinks AI is more dangerous than we think

  • Inside look at the tumultuous empire behind America’s top crime podcast

  • How law firm Paul Weiss evolved from standing up to Trump to bending to his knee

  • Why does Hollywood have so much against Timothee?

  • Another exclusive pilates studio is opening in NYC

  • Watch the only living boy in NY starring Callum Turner, has a classic feel to it

  • 11 (free) how-to master Claude courses

  • Tusculan Disputations by Cicero is a series of philosophical dialogues exploring how to live well in the face of suffering, fear, and uncertainty. Cicero compiled the work after the death of his daughter and considers death, pain, grief, emotional disturbance, and the relationship between virtue and happiness, drawing heavily on Greek philosophy. Cicero argues that philosophy is a practical discipline that can train the mind to endure hardship and find happiness through virtue rather than circumstance.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • What is the kindest thing a stranger has done for you?

  • Where was your last power-lunch?

  • What book or film rearranged you?

  • There will never be another one. We will always love you, Dolly

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[Been There, Logged That]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/been-there-logged-thathttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/been-there-logged-thatWed, 26 Aug 2026 17:03:34 GMTWelcome back to Dinner Guest.

The premise is simple. We invite friends, collaborators, and people whose taste we trust to write about the corners of culture they care about, the shifts they’re noticing before everyone else does, and the trends quietly forming. Think of it less as criticism and more as informed field notes.

This week’s Guest is , a native New Yorker, writer, and perhaps overly enthusiastic restaurant-goer. As our Dinner Guest, she takes on the restaurant-app Beli, her own dining neuroses, and what an obsession among people with documenting every experience might say about the way we are all presently consuming culture.

I love getting Sadie’s takes on all things that require thoughtful trend-tracking. Bonus, she is hilarious.

X

Subscribe now

I am both mortified and proud to share that I am in the top 5% of Beli diners in New York City. The Beli app lets you track, rate, and share restaurants you’ve tried and discover new places through friends’ recommendations. As an indecisive girlie, it hits all my buzz words. In general, I look for a sultry ambiance, titillating company, and require finger-licking-good food. All that being said, I am not the biggest fan of the term “foodie” and have developed a new love-hate relationship with the Beli app.

For starters (pun intended), calling myself a “foodie” and being Jewish is redundant. That’s like jokingly saying you have a drinking problem if you’re a WASP—it’s to be assumed. But Beli takes a passion of mine—eating—and makes it into a competitive sport. Another synonym of Jewish—neurotic—I routinely relish checking off my to-do list at the end of the day. But while I can always add “make the bed” to the top of my list, you can’t check off the same restaurants on Beli. *Technically, you can rerank, but why would you.

At the start of 2026, I made my yearly goals: be healthy, spend time with family, and log 250 new restaurants on Beli. I thought it would be a resolution slam-dunk, especially considering I can’t cook. What I did not realize—similar to my health goals—is that 250 is a large number, and consistently eating out takes a financial, physical, and mental commitment I do not have.

But somewhere along the way, this obsession with tracking stopped being about restaurants. Beli had done what so many apps have successfully inflicted upon my generation: taken something I innocently enjoyed and given me a metric by which to enjoy it correctly. I’d race home from dinner, upload photos and notes of my meal, then proudly share my self-described, Bourdain-adjacent numeric-assessment on Beli.

In 2026, we’ve been socialized to think that experiences should produce something. A workout should close your rings. A vacation should produce an Instagram-post. An experience makes a story. And apparently, a meal should inch me closer to 250 restaurants. The platforms are different, but the impulse is the same: track it, rank it, share it, move on to the next one.

My innocent online challenge turned me into a dining freak, thwarting restaurants I know and hold dear for the hot-new younger sibling I itch to try. Upper East Side staple Mezzaluna is closing? Sayonara, because that money must be allocated to the new Dear Margo. Tired and want to order in your favorite slop-bowl? No can do. I must try a new $24 taco spot where you can see a grandma making fresh tortillas through a polished glass window.

While Beli hasn’t made me enjoy restaurants less, it has made repeating an experience feel like a missed opportunity. There is always another reservation to snag, an opening to try, and a little green dot to add to my map. Going back to the restaurant where I know exactly what I want suddenly feels less exciting than conquering somewhere new.

Novelty has always been seductive. There is a long-standing case study on the subject executed by middle-aged men trading in their wives for younger models. But now the same logic has seeped into Gen Z consumer culture. We don’t just want to experience things; we want to collect them. The new restaurant, new workout class, new vacation destination, new product. Been there, logged that, what’s next?

Yes, of course, I could say goodbye to Beli and go wherever I want. But that is also sort of the point. An app I downloaded because I live for restaurants has slowly changed the way I love restaurants. I’ve started to wonder how many other activities I once did out of habit, comfort, or pure enjoyment have quietly become exercises I feel the need to conquer and document.

My only eating-resolution in 2027 is to become a regular somewhere.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

]]><![CDATA[001 Open Tabs]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/001-open-tabshttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/001-open-tabsWed, 26 Aug 2026 01:34:17 GMTI’ve never been able to explain my love for clothes in one sentence, so I’ve stopped trying. What I can do is show you what’s been living in my browser tab — the outfits, the launches, the moments everyone’s talking about — and let that speak for itself.

Fashion moments everyone is talking about

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • Margaret Qualley in Chanel — the no shoe shoe — is this peak luxury? Anyway, the joke is that she wore this to the Dog Stars premiere and literally let her dogs out. Open to thoughts on this.

  • Jacob Elordi and Kendall Jenner’s couple style — not only is Kendall Jenner wearing great jeans, but the best accessory is Jacob Elordi holding onto her pocket. A “zero swag gap” couple.

  • Kasey Musgraves on “Disco Balls” - this image speaks for itself

Saving

My Fall wish list - A skinny scarf, statement belts, clunky jewelry. Layering bangles over sweaters. A bandana around your neck or on your head. Men’s shirts.

  1. Chan Lu Bandana - tie around neck or wear as a bandana

  2. TWP belt perfect for baggy vintage jeans

  3. This sweater from Zara

  4. A colorful transitional weather jacket

  5. A bucket bag that you can wear in any season - shown here in brown but the funkier the color the better

  6. A great plaid shirt - Emily Dawn Long says it best - “My dad, Jeff, had a striped shirt custom made while he was traveling around Asia in the 90’s and this is it, literally I didn’t change anything. Same dad cut.”

  7. Gold Bangle to layer with

  8. Another big bangle

  9. Skinny scarf that you can add to any outfit - white t shirt, sweater, long sleeve, long dress, short dress literally wear it with anything

  10. Some good vintage-esque sunglasses that will look great with your Jeff shirt

  11. The winter coat I want

  12. Just a great clutch that you can wear whenever and with whatever - may even fit a pair of leggings and be your new pilates bag

  13. I love everything Adrian Cashmere, they can do no wrong

Final thoughts …

I feel like one of the most difficult tasks is finding the perfect dress to wear as a wedding guest. I have been given the advice to always buy one when you find one that you like even if you don’t have a wedding to attend because when the time comes you won’t find anything. I am on the search for a great dress right now and here is some inspiration.

FYI …

Two cashmere things to note

  • Adrian Cashmere is having an in-person shopping moment

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[Megan and Harry are on their own Odyssey while the Hugo Spritz is everyone’s favorite ]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/megan-and-harry-are-on-their-ownhttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/megan-and-harry-are-on-their-ownMon, 24 Aug 2026 00:45:56 GMT

  • Gwyneth Paltrow hosts an “al fresco dinner” in honor of OpenAI’s Sam Altman...is a sentence we never thought we’d write

  • Carlos Alcaraz is back for the US Open, but Jannik Sinner and Nick Kyrgios are out for very different reasons

  • America is now receiving half of Venezuela’s total oil output

  • Marc Jacobs offered to dress Luigi Mangione for his murder trial

  • Big tech is spending $3T more than they’re claiming

  • George McNally’s new restaurant, Faux, opens September 3rd

  • Kaia Gerber had an exorcism as a child apparently

  • Top VC firm Andreessen Horowitz under DOJ investigation for serving on boards of competing AI companies

  • Prince Harry and Megan are fleeing back to the UK

  • Polling shows people would rather have a nuclear power plant in their neighborhood than an AI data center

  • Anthropic continues hitting unprecedented revenue growth, heading toward $65B this year

  • The US is gaining ground in the Strait of Hormuz, which might ease sky-high global oil prices

  • Moderna announces experimental mRNA vaccine that seemingly prevents melanoma

  • Interest payments on national debt hit 3.3% of GDP, the highest level in history

  • The Aperol spritz has been vanquished. Long live the Hugo spritz

  • Love this piece on Lauren Sherman, Puck’s fashion writer

  • Grim story about revelations that a Nobel Prize-winning scientist lived with dozens of children in the Pacific

  • The world’s most influential economist is oddly unconvincing

  • Stephen King on his traumatic accident and how writing impacted his recovery

  • Argument for outcomes-based contracting w/ vendors in education

  • What will it take to win the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination?

  • Reminder circa 2011: people.com is really entertaining

  • Bryan Johnson opens up about his philosophy behind attempting to defy death

  • Will the humanities survive AI?

  • Fascinated by the community that refers to itself as ”friends of attention”

  • Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut includes the dystopian short story “Harrison Bergeron.” Set in a future America where the government enforces absolute equality by handicapping anyone who is stronger, smarter, or more beautiful than average, this is a fascinating tale. Through the rebellious Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut explores the challenges that the relationship between individual excellence and equality present. He attempts to warn of what can happen when the pursuit of sameness comes at the expense of freedom and human potential. Through Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut brilliantly presents an argument about conformity and the cost of suppressing difference.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • Who was the last person to make you nervous?

  • What has recently inspired you?

  • What is something you want to accomplish this weekend?

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[Mickey Mouse replaces Lebron as extreme heat threatens Italy's cheese banks]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/mickey-mouse-replaces-lebron-as-extremehttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/mickey-mouse-replaces-lebron-as-extremeSat, 15 Aug 2026 22:21:25 GMT

  • Disney’s Bob Iger and Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner are buying the Lakers in a fire sale as FBI investigates current owner

  • AOC and her now ex-fiancé have split

  • Extreme heat threatens Italy’s financial system because Parmigiano-Reggiano backs loans as collateral...we’re serious

  • July was the hottest month ever in the contiguous United States

  • Taiwan will spend $1T on defense this year, specifically drones and booby traps, amidst rising tension with China

  • Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht ignored a distress call from a small boat, forcing a cruise ship to divert to help instead

  • Centrist senators push overhaul of Social Security as the program approaches insolvency

  • Bumble is now letting men make the first move

  • American travel to Europe has doubled in the past decade

  • Selena Gomez accused of fraud by investors in her defunct mental health startup, Wondermind

  • Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, faces overexposure and could be left worthless if market falls

  • China faces a severe jobs crisis, with 53M now working for low wages in food delivery and ride-hailing

  • Alex Cooper’s beverage brand folds, but her media empire is now worth $500M

  • Paramount has a plan ready to leave California if the state’s antitrust lawsuit continues

  • Forbes content chief fired after it’s revealed he took a $6M kickback...he created the Forbes 30 under 30 btw

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • What are you better at than you let on?

  • What book had the biggest impact on you?

  • What skill would you master if it took only a week?

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[Everybody lives with their parents, and nobody likes data centers]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/everybody-lives-with-their-parentshttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/everybody-lives-with-their-parentsSat, 08 Aug 2026 21:16:44 GMT

  • Airmail story on how Anna Delvey went from fraud to influencer

  • People are obsessed with squishies

  • How data centers broke politics

  • What is AOC’s foreign policy?

  • Never write with AI for your brain’s sake

  • Uber’s lawyers are playing hardball in sexual assault lawsuit

  • Acquired podcast breaks down how the world’s greatest companies were built

  • Amy Chozick breaks down her career covering women America loves to hate, from Hilary Clinton, Stormy Daniels, Elizabeth Holmes to LSB (Lauren Sanchez-Bezos)

  • Another good piece on Leopold Aschenbrenner

  • Apparently “no make-up make-up” is on the out

  • An interview with a member of FIRE, the viral Reddit community of “Financial Independence Retire Early” acolytes

  • Texas’ new curriculum is less about the Bible and more about bringing back a shared intellectual foundation

  • The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict is a historical novel inspired by the life of Hedy Lamarr. It follows Lamarr as she escapes an oppressive marriage, rises to Hollywood stardom, and quietly develops a groundbreaking frequency-hopping technology that would later help lay the foundation for modern wireless communication. The novel explores the tension between public perception and private brilliance, showing how one woman’s intellect was often overshadowed by her beauty.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • When did you last lose track of time?

  • What is something you have worked for that you are quietly proud of?

  • What was the last person like that you sat next to on a plane?

  • It’s the year of them

Inside Tom Holland and Zendaya's Reported Wedding Bash at Beaverbrook

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[Nantucket bans influencers and Elon demands The Odyssey get a fact check]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/nantucket-bans-influencers-and-elonhttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/nantucket-bans-influencers-and-elonFri, 31 Jul 2026 21:51:42 GMT

  • What is the best money you ever spent?

  • What did you need to hear a year ago?

  • Who is the last person you called?

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[Who Knew? It's Almost Like Homer Ages Well. Great Books Are Never Out.]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/who-knew-its-almost-like-homer-ageshttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/who-knew-its-almost-like-homer-agesMon, 27 Jul 2026 22:11:27 GMTI am a graduate of the University of Chicago.

Chicago is filled with traditions that make it distinct. When I was applying to college, I remember feeling that while there were so many excellent universities, there was something about UChicago that felt impossible to replicate. There was both a brand and a history that existed which was unmistakably, “so UChicago.” I found that incredibly compelling.

Part of that identity comes from the University’s Core Curriculum. Every student, regardless of their major, spends their first several years wrestling with many of the same foundational texts and ideas in a variety of courses. The point isn’t simply to read Great Books. It’s to create the conditions for an entire class of students to participate in one long conversation together.

When I walked into my empty dorm room during Orientation Week, one book was waiting for me on my desk: The Odyssey. Every first-year student receives a copy.

I’ve always loved this tradition because it reflects how Chicago thinks education should begin. Before students specialize, before they choose a major, before they decide what kind of career they want, they are invited into an open-ended conversation.

For a student’s first few years, they discuss shared texts from the Core with classmates, faculty, and staff. The goal isn’t to arrive at the correct interpretation. It’s to practice close reading, thoughtful disagreement, intellectual curiosity, and the habit of returning to a text that continues to reveal something new each time you encounter it. Books written nearly three millennia ago become the common ground for thousands of first-year strangers.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about that tradition while watching the excitement surrounding Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. People began to purchase tickets weeks in advance to see a story first composed orally nearly 2,800 years ago. There is something deeply encouraging about that.

We spend so much time worrying about our ability to focus, or on the fact that it can feel like culture is becoming disposable. Yet, here is one of humanity’s oldest stories once again becoming the center of public conversation.

I increasingly believe that primary sources have a unique ability to create mileage for conversation, and some might even say are neccesary to it. They ask questions instead of prescribing answers. They invite interpretation rather than consensus. Most importantly, they leave room for disagreement, which is precisely what makes them worth returning to. The best texts do not end conversations but are masterful at generating them.

In that sense, I think Nolan is doing something much larger than remaking a classic. He’s creating the conditions for people to once again argue about a shared story, to compare interpretations, and to wrestle with questions about leadership, loyalty, identity, home, and what it means to live well. As many have done for generations. Those conversations are exactly what great works have always been designed to produce. The greater the work, the more timeless the conversation.

My hope is that we’re only at the beginning of a broader return to the public square of ideas returning to the primary source. The fact that we continue reaching back nearly 2,800 years for entertainment isn’t a coincidence, it serves as evidence. Many of the questions that feel so particular to our present moment, have been considered at a previous point, and never stopped being relevant.

Now, if Hollywood is taking requests, I’d like to nominate Plato’s Gorgias.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

]]><![CDATA[Ancient Greece Is In While China's Kimi Takes the Lead in the AI Race]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/ancient-greece-is-in-while-chinashttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/ancient-greece-is-in-while-chinasThu, 23 Jul 2026 20:32:22 GMT

  • Future of venture capital in our AI-centered world, a profile on Sarah Guo of Conviction

  • Love Sofia Testino’s new brand and her thoughts on clothing

  • The 100 most powerful directors in Hollywood ranked

  • Are you team Mendel? Story of the man whose landlord objected to the 10,000 volumes in his NY studio apartment

  • Is going to the cinema a luxury experience?

  • On the world’s best-selling novelist, Agatha Christie

  • Lying by Sam Harris argues that honesty is not merely a moral ideal but a practical foundation for trust, healthy relationships, and a well-functioning society. Harris contends that even small lies often create unnecessary complexity and undermine personal integrity, while truthful communication fosters deeper connection and clearer decision-making. The book offers a concise ethical case for radical honesty in everyday life.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

  • What is something you changed your mind about this month?

  • What compliment have you never forgotten?

  • How can you be a part of something without becoming it? What steps do you personally take to make this condition possible?

Subscribe now

]]><![CDATA[Tech companies stop playing nice but influencers run the world anyway ]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/tech-companies-stop-playing-nicehttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/tech-companies-stop-playing-niceThu, 16 Jul 2026 21:55:06 GMT

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • What is the most meaningful gift you have received?

  • Who in your life most inspires you? What about them?

  • What is your lowest-cost item with the highest payoff?

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[Billionaires head to summer camp, while the Biebers move to the West Village]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/billionaires-head-to-summer-camphttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/billionaires-head-to-summer-campThu, 09 Jul 2026 23:12:54 GMT

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • What item do you cherish most?

  • Where in your life are you the most frugal?

  • Who is your friend who inspires your creativity?

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[We're getting older but we're not allowed to grow up]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/were-getting-older-but-were-not-allowedhttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/were-getting-older-but-were-not-allowedThu, 09 Jul 2026 00:45:38 GMTFor the first time, I’ve noticed myself getting older. I’m not old, mind you. I’m a 26-year-old who gets ID’d whenever I try to pick up a bottle of wine at Whole Foods. But for some reason, I have become fixated on the fact that time is passing while the world around me continues to change. And it’s become clear that this truth– that time will inescapably take its toll– is hitting our generation particularly hard. Our generation is incessantly worried about “falling behind,” leading to the advent of ‘preventative’ Botox, twelve-step skincare routines, and slurping sea moss every morning to prolong a youthful appearance. But these are symptoms, not the cause. Our obsession with appearance really stems from the generational frustration of an economic reality that won’t allow us to grow up.

In 1975, over half of adults between 24 and 35 had already moved out of their parents’ house, gotten a job, gotten married, and had kids. Today, less than a quarter of young people have achieved those four milestones of adulthood. Scientific American even proclaimed, “25 is the new 18.” High interest rates and soaring inflation have made home ownership a distant prospect for most people our age. Artificial intelligence has essentially frozen the market for entry-level jobs, making it harder for people our age to get a foot in the door. Even if they do, expanding life expectancies, while wonderful for humanity in general, have meant leaders are staying in power longer, leaving less opportunity for advancement for the next generation.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

When you feel frozen, right at the moment history suggests it’s your time to fly, the experience of aging becomes fundamentally unsettling. It’s why so many people our age are turning to plastic surgery at the age their parents would have been having kids, or why our generation throws “unc” around as an insult. Growing up is a part of life, but how can we grow up when it’s impossible to accomplish? Past generations view Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha as entitled and lazy. I don’t think that’s true. There’s obviously some level of entitlement in a culture that grew up with the privilege of the digital age (and, yes, I agree that we should not be DoorDash-ing every meal), but a deeper sickness has taken root. Our economy is preventing young people from building a life. You can build a social media empire or a start-up in today’s economy, but you can’t live the classic American dream: a house, a family, and a steady job where you get continued advancement.

I love tennis, and I have watched it constantly since I was a kid. Only recently did it hit me that Federer and Nadal are being remembered, no longer witnessed in action. Current players remark how “amazed” they are that Djokovic is still playing “at his age.” The Big Three that I admired on screen as children are now being replaced by a new generation, Sinner, Alcaraz, etc. The politicians I remember from my childhood are no longer in action. President Bush is long retired; President Obama just opened his library– they’re focused on legacy now, no longer on action. The baton has simply passed. Some industries are forced by aging to lead the next generation’s rise. Athletes have a prime, and politicians have a term-limit. The vast majority, though, have no such timetable, nor do they promise a permanent financial security blanket that celebrity offers. The majority of our generation has been left in limbo, unable to move up the ladder, unsure of where to go, and desperate to avoid the physical effects of aging when it feels like it’s not yet our time to take the steering wheel, even though it’s supposed to be.

The sensation of aging has arrived before its physical effects, and without the typical stability it offers. Peptides, skincare, filler– it’s all a band-aid for a psychological phenomenon in our culture that arises from our economic reality more than the social media bubble. I wonder if I will ever feel older. I feel (somewhat) wiser, more self-assured, and more adult. But in other ways, I feel perpetually young. There’s something profoundly destabilizing about our current moment, where the young feel time passing as they are stuck at a standstill, inundated with celebrities who seem to have it all figured out at 18, through luck of the draw. It’s easy to allow life to pass you by, as change happens so gradually that it just melts into the present. When you step back and really feel it, the world’s evolution is stark. The only way out of it is to do something. I write here; I’m drafting a book; I’m making connections without fully understanding what they might be “for.” The situation we’re in is not our doing; it’s of a past generation’s choices, and I don’t blame them for it. It’s not their fault we feel both 18 and 26, but it’s not fully our fault either.

Assigning fault is worthless at the end of the day; the only way out is through. Eventually, our generation will be the generation, and perhaps its reign over culture and power will be longer than ever. Banks proclaim the impending “Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History” when Millennials and Gen Z inherit the mantle and the bounty of their parents and grandparents. I don’t wish that day to come sooner, but I do understand the prayer many in my generation hold: for a world where a house and career at 26 didn’t seem so precious and rare.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[The art of the information routine]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-information-routinehttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-information-routineTue, 07 Jul 2026 15:11:17 GMTWhether it’s to a friend, a Founder, a professor, or even a stranger whose style or vocabulary catches my attention, I often find myself leading a conversation with the same question:

“What’s your information routine?”

We spend an enormous amount of time talking about our morning rituals, workout habits, and nutritional plans, but we rarely talk about the routine that quietly shapes the way we understand the world and what allows someone to intentionally cultivate such a habit.

As children, we read whatever books our teachers handed us. Our information routines happened almost accidentally. We watched whatever happened to be on television and read what was on the shelves in our classrooms. We absorbed the opinions of our caregivers, parents, and the people around us. Information largely found us before we ever considered finding it ourselves.

The older we become, the more our information routine stops feeling inevitable and at a certain point, has to start becoming intentional. We often talk about “all the noise,” that exists around us. As if it passively takes up space, but algorithms are both targeted and powerful. We consciously subscribe to fewer outlets than we should and scroll more than we’d probably like to admit. The people I admire most don’t necessarily consume more information than everyone else, rather, they take information in with intention and purpose. If you read my last Fireside Chat, they make it happen.

One of the reasons exists is because of this idea, to try to create a format where digestible information is gathered in an intentional and accessible format with far-reaching material.

Years ago, I started thinking about information routines the same way I approach getting physically stronger. If you only work out when you feel like it, you’re unlikely to build muscle. The same seems true intellectually. I wanted a disciplined, repeatable way of taking in the world, one that would expose me to new ideas, distinct formats, and innovative ways of thinking.

After asking enough people about their routines, I felt both inspired and confident enough to start building my own.

So, where does my information come from?

It takes the forms of printed newspapers, magazines, books, quarterly journals, Substack, RealClearPolitics, podcasts, and intentionally making the time for conversations with people who are particularly passionate about a subject I am interested in.

For all the people I have asked this question to, the most fascinating part hasn’t been about the recommendations themselves. It’s been realizing that the people I admire most almost never relied on a single source or a single format.

Take newspapers: There’s something different about the environment you are in when sitting down with a printed paper as opposed to opening an app on your phone. You don’t simply read what an algorithm believes you’ll enjoy. You discover stories you weren’t looking for.

The same is true of magazines. You might have originally been compelled to subscribe to a publication for a particular journalist or column, but often you will leave exposed to a thinker or idea you otherwise would have not typically gravitated to. I can always depend on Tablet Magazine and for this one.

The same can be said of the cadence of information you receive.

Take podcasts: Some release every week. Others disappear for months before unexpectedly returning with a new episode. The cadence itself becomes something to look forward to.

P.S. my new favorite podcast is Second Thought with .

Every so often, a quarterly journal I’ve forgotten I subscribed to shows up in the mail, and it’s a source of unexpected excitement. It reminds me that not every worthwhile idea needs to arrive instantly.

(Receiving in the mail will never get old.)

I've also found that receiving subscriptions on different cadences makes them much more manageable to keep up with.

Building an information routine requires discipline, but the joy comes from allowing yourself to be surprised. I can decide to reserve an hour every morning to read, but I can’t decide beforehand which publication or article will be the one I feel the urge to send to my closest friends. If I only consume information that confirms what I already believe, I usually leave having learned very little.

These unexpected pieces of information also condition me to do my best at maintaining an open mind. The range of sources I subscribe to are an essential ingredient. You cannot become open-minded by reading one newspaper or listening to one podcast. But you also can’t expect to have a thoughtful worldview if you consume everything indiscriminately. The discipline creates the conditions and the variety allows unexpected ideas to emerge.

There’s an old saying that we become the average of the people we spend the most time with. I increasingly think we also become the average of the information we repeatedly consume. So have a high bar, but one that is also broad.

Our information routine can change us in ways too subtle to notice in the moment and thoughtful conversation can expand the range of ideas we’re capable of agreeably entertaining.

The older I get, the less interested I become in simply asking people what they’re reading and the more interested I become in leading with how they built the habit in the first place.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

]]><![CDATA[The Supreme Court stayed busy while a couple illegally scaled the Empire State Building]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/the-supreme-court-stayed-busy-whilehttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/the-supreme-court-stayed-busy-whileThu, 02 Jul 2026 20:41:12 GMT

  • Liked this article on Brick, and it’s hope for saving our screen time

  • Vanity Fair profile on Garth Fisher, Hollywood’s favorite plastic surgeon

  • Personal dialect quiz

  • The Democratic Tea Party has arrived

  • Olivia Wilde interview as she forges a comeback

  • Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire claims to be plotting a $2B IPO, but is it real?

  • This administration is addicted to Signal

  • Every hotel Dua Lipa stayed at during her honeymoon

  • The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald follows Anthony and Gloria Patch, a glamorous young couple drifting through New York’s Jazz Age while waiting to inherit a massive fortune. Their lives become defined by excess and ambition, revealing how privilege without purpose can quietly erode a life of love and meaning. A classic novel that applies seamlessly to many of the fundamental questions facing the present age. Fitzgerald captures the seduction of wealth and youth while offering one of his sharpest portraits of disillusionment, all beneath the glitter of the Roaring Twenties.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • What is your best July 4th memory?

  • What are you afraid to want out loud?

  • Who is your favorite person to travel with?

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[I love having a friend crush ]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/i-love-having-a-friend-crushhttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/i-love-having-a-friend-crushTue, 30 Jun 2026 20:41:38 GMTOne of my favorite feelings in the world is having a friend crush.

It’s the excitement of realizing there is someone you would like to become a little more like, and you recognize, almost instinctively, that spending more time with them might change you.

We often talk about becoming the product of the people we surround ourselves with, but we rarely talk about the moment before that happens. I want to flesh out the circumstances that allow for that instance to occur.

As children, these moments happened constantly.

You arrived at summer camp, sat next to someone on the first day, and by dinner, they were your best friend. There was very little strategy involved. You simply shared enough time that a friendship emerged almost accidentally.

The older we become, the more meaningful friendships stop feeling inevitable and start feeling intentional. We move cities. Our calendars fill. We prioritize self-care in ways that leave little room for unstructured time. We spend more time maintaining relationships than fostering new ones. Friend crushes become rarer, not because remarkable people disappear, but because we stop placing ourselves in situations that allow them to form.

Recently, I met someone who immediately became one.

Somehow, we ended up talking not about work or current events but about how we approach our days. She told me she keeps a sticky note on the front of her notebook with a simple reminder:

Let life happen. Make life happen.

We tend to imagine these as opposing philosophies. Either you are someone who carefully architects your life or someone who trusts serendipity. Either you hustle, or you surrender.

After that conversation, I made two lists.

Where am I letting life happen?

  • The content of my journal.

  • Romance.

  • Conversations that wander with strangers.

Where am I making life happen?

  • Reserving time in the morning to write.

  • The music I listen to.

  • My work.

  • My information routine.

The interesting part wasn’t the lists themselves. It was realizing that the areas of my life that bring me the deepest sense of meaning appear on both.

Take journaling.

I have to make it happen by creating the space to sit down every morning. But once I begin writing, I have to let it happen. I can’t decide beforehand what I’ll discover. If I try to control every sentence, I usually end up saying nothing at all. The same is true of work.

Building something requires discipline, planning, and persistence. Yet almost every meaningful opportunity in my life has arrived unexpectedly: a conversation after an event, an introduction through a mutual friend. None of those moments could have been scheduled into existence. They happened because I was already in motion. Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Relationships may be the clearest example.

You cannot manufacture genuine friendship. But you also can’t expect it to appear if you never leave your apartment, never send the text, never accept the invitation, and it’s definitely not happening if you don’t go to the party. The making creates the conditions for the relationship to be possible. The letting allows the connection to occur.

There’s an old distinction in philosophy of mind between two ways of thinking about consciousness.

One view suggests consciousness is produced. Your brain generates your thoughts the way a factory produces goods.

Another suggests consciousness is transmissive. The mind is less like a factory and more like a receiver, filtering ideas that pass through us rather than creating them entirely ourselves. Whether either theory is correct isn’t really the point.

What I find beautiful is the posture implied by the second. It asks us to believe that not everything valuable has to originate from us. Sometimes our task is simply to become the kind of person who is open enough to receive what life is already trying to offer.

Maybe that is what friend crushes really are.

They remind us that becoming isn’t a solitary activity. Every person we admire expands our sense of what is possible. Every conversation changes us in ways too subtle to notice in the moment. We spend so much energy trying to optimize that we sometimes forget one of the simplest ways to grow is to spend more time around people who make us think differently.

The older I get, the less interested I become in choosing between making life happen and letting it happen. Perhaps that is the real purpose of discipline, not to eliminate surprise, but to create room for it. I want to build a life with enough intention that serendipity has somewhere to land.

The making exists so that, every now and then, life can surprise you with a new friend crush. I’m getting dinner with mine on the 7th of July.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

]]><![CDATA[Meta lands King Kylie as Britain gets yet another new leader ]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/meta-lands-king-kylie-as-britainhttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/meta-lands-king-kylie-as-britainThu, 25 Jun 2026 21:26:20 GMT

  • Kylie Jenner designed her own pair of Meta glasses (Snapchat is shaking)

  • World Cup tourists are smuggling back ranch and we get it tbh

  • Andy Burnham will likely become the UK’s fifth prime minister in 5-years as British politics continues its upheaval

  • Star-studded Luca Guadagnino film about OpenAI’s Sam Altman needs a new distributor as Amazon drops the movie

  • Morgan Stanley plans a $1.3B campus for Dallas as financial firms head south

  • DJ duo The Chainsmokers raised $100M for a VC firm… (!?)

  • Note from kidnappers tragically reports that Nancy Guthrie, mother of NBC “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie, has died

  • Ferrari fires marketing head after public backlash over their new electric vehicle design

  • Media investment is hot again, as Piers Morgan raises $28M and The Daily Wire plots an IPO at a $2B valuation

  • Jordyn Woods’ lucky Knicks bag is going in the Guggenheim

  • Paris records its highest temperature ever but Europe still refuses air conditioning

  • Indie film giant A24 goes big tech, with Google investing $80M in their AI program

  • Meta wants in on prediction markets, announces development of betting platform

  • Eli Lilly and the FDA gave one unknown 80-year-old early access for an experimental “super” GLP-1 ...the same age as the president, btw

  • Despite a public scandal, Frame has managed to hit a revenue milestone

  • Alex Cooper responds to the toxic workplace allegations

  • Polymarket’s shadowy social media campaign to get everyone gambling

  • Suddenly, we are all wearing jeans and hoodies to the office

  • NYT obituary of Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, one of the most influential economists in history

  • Four books to read to AI-proof your career

  • Yochai is a socratic AI “chevruta” (learning guide) for exploring the Jewish canon

  • Profile of the “mad scientist” behind Graham Platner’s insurgent campaign in Maine

  • The spiritual guru behind former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard

  • America heads for the infinite work week… (can we still have summer Fridays, please, I ask our AI overlords?)

  • This Madonna Interview is dramatic and wild, of course

  • Emily Ratajkowski wrote a controversial essay on being a single mother

  • Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen is a book most haven’t revisited in years, and returning to it is a reminder of why some classics never really leave us. My Mom gifted it to me, and then I expected a familiar love story. This time around, I found an astonishingly funny novel about first impressions, pride, misjudgment, and the slow work of seeing other people (and ourselves) more clearly. Beneath the wit and romance is a remarkably modern understanding of how easily intelligence can become overconfidence and how often our strongest convictions are built on incomplete information.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

  • Who is your biggest style inspiration?

  • What decision did you recently have to make that was challenging?

  • What is your appetizer of choice?

  • A JP Morgan Exec got caught stealing a Knicks themed trash can...they’ve had a rough go lately

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[Everyone Eats. Almost Nobody Invests.]]>https://beforedinner.substack.com/p/everyone-eats-almost-nobody-investshttps://beforedinner.substack.com/p/everyone-eats-almost-nobody-investsTue, 23 Jun 2026 12:38:13 GMTWelcome to our Second feature of Dinner Guest.

The premise is simple. We invite friends, collaborators, and people whose taste we trust to write about the corners of culture they care about, the shifts they’re noticing before everyone else does, and the trends quietly forming. Think of it less as criticism and more as informed field notes.

This week’s Dinner Guest is Cullen Gilchrist. Cullen is the CEO of First Run, a Washington, D.C.-based food venture platform and one of the most active early-stage investors in American food and beverage. He founded Union Kitchen in 2012, one of the country’s first food business accelerators, and later built and sold District Distribution to Odeko. He now leads First Run Fund II, his second venture fund.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I love getting Cullen’s takes on what I need to be paying attention to in the world of CPG, the role of venture capital in our nutritional consumption, and the unique set of challenges starting a food company entails.

X

I’ve spent nearly fifteen years helping food businesses get started, and one thing has become increasingly clear to me: most people think the hard part is coming up with the idea.

It isn’t.

The hard part is everything that happens after. We live in a moment where starting a food company has never been easier. A founder can spot a trend on social media, work with a co-packer, create a brand, build a website, and launch a product in a matter of months. The infrastructure that once required years of industry relationships and specialized knowledge is now available to almost anyone willing to put in the work. That’s a remarkable development, and in many ways it has democratized entrepreneurship in food.

It has also created an illusion because while starting a brand has become easier, building the business behind it has not.

Every year, thousands of founders launch food and beverage companies. They are smart, ambitious, and often deeply passionate about the products they are creating. Many of them follow a similar path. They identify a category that is growing, develop a product that feels differentiated, manufacture inventory, and begin selling. At first, the momentum is exciting. Friends love the product. Early customers respond. A few retailers take a chance. It feels like progress.

Then they encounter the realities of the business:

Margins are tighter than expected. Distribution is more expensive. Retailers have demands they didn’t anticipate. Inventory ties up cash. Velocity matters more than placement. Small operational mistakes have outsized consequences. The founder discovers that they are not simply selling a product. They are managing a complex system where every decision affects every other decision.

Some figure it out. Most don’t.

The reason is not a lack of intelligence or effort. The reason is that food, at least in part, is an experience business disguised as a product business. Success comes from understanding customers, retailers, operations, margins, and execution simultaneously. These lessons are difficult to learn from a book and expensive to learn through trial and error.

That’s what makes food investing so unusual. Venture capital was built for businesses where money is the scarce input. Once a software product works, each new dollar buys remarkably efficient growth. Food is the opposite — and not because it needs less capital. It needs more. Inventory, manufacturing, freight, slotting, trade spend. Atoms are expensive and margins are thin. The difference is what the capital buys. In software, money scales something that already works. In food, money without knowledge mostly buys faster mistakes. Capital is necessary. But it is nowhere near sufficient. Knowledge, experience, and pattern recognition determine whether capital compounds or evaporates.

The venture industry has responded to this in a strange way. Capital is leaving consumer altogether — last year roughly two-thirds of U.S. venture dollars went to AI alone. The capital that remains in consumer crowds into the same handful of de-risked Series A and Series B deals, where the traction is already visible and the price already reflects it. By the time most investors have enough conviction to invest, much of the value creation has already occurred.

Meanwhile the buyers never left: large strategics and private equity acquire roughly four hundred food and beverage brands a year, in good markets and bad, because people keep eating in every economy. Great brands are still being built and still being bought – just look at the recent billion-dollar acquisitions of Siete and Poppi. The capital has simply stopped showing up early, where it matters most.

The obvious response is to move earlier. But that creates a different challenge entirely.

If thousands of brands launch every year, how do you know which ones matter? How do you distinguish between a product that is benefiting from a temporary trend and a product that customers genuinely cannot live without? How do you identify the founder who can navigate ten years of setbacks, pivots, and operational complexity? Most importantly, how do you do this consistently?

The answer is that you cannot do it from a conference room. You have to be in the business.

You have to see hundreds of founders. You have to watch products succeed and fail. You have to understand why one item moves off the shelf while another sits untouched six inches away. You have to develop pattern recognition that only comes from proximity. And once you have it, it travels: the same signals that tell you which brand in your own building will endure tell you which brand anywhere will.

That conviction is ultimately why we built First Run.

We didn’t start with the belief that the world needed another venture fund. We started with the belief that founders needed a better path. For years, we watched entrepreneurs lose time, money, and momentum learning lessons that somebody else already knew. We saw talented people spend their first few hundred thousand dollars discovering avoidable mistakes. We saw promising businesses fail not because consumers didn’t want the product, but because the founder lacked the support system necessary to navigate the complexity of the industry.

Investing in food should be about working alongside entrepreneurs from the beginning. The goal is to help companies get retail-ready faster, and improve margins earlier. Over time, by focusing on customers instead of distractions, we help create better brands and better outcomes.

The venture industry often talks about finding winners. I’ve come to believe that’s only half the question. The other half is how to create more of them. And the two are not in tension: an ecosystem that helps hundreds of founders build is also the best vantage point for recognizing the handful who will endure.

Because the future of food won’t be built by investors writing larger checks. It will be built by founders making things people want, and by ecosystems that help those founders succeed. The firms that matter most in the next decade won’t be the ones furthest from the work. They’ll be the ones closest to it.

Food has never been easier to enter. It remains incredibly difficult to win.

Thanks for reading Before Dinner! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]>